To understand the strange and in many ways sinister characters of Caius
Marius and of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, we must have in our minds a
picture of the dark times in which they lived. At a crisis in the life
of the State Sulla showed courage, decision and will, and a stern
devotion to his country which enabled him, in his own way, to save it.
In these things he showed that he was a Roman of the old breed. Until
this crisis came Sulla appeared no better than the other aristocrats of
his time: like them he was careless of everything save his own selfish
pleasure; always he remained hard, cruel, indifferent to the lives,
feelings, and happiness of others. Whereas both Tiberius and Caius
Gracchus lived and died for an idea greater than themselves, Sulla's was
a mind incapable of idealism. He and Caius Marius, his great rival, are
alike in nothing except the harsh cruelty that belongs to times of
revolutionary upheaval. In all other respects they are as unlike as any
two men that ever lived. Marius was a son of the soil, a soldier with a
soldier's merits--courage, rude good humour, careless generosity--and
his faults--cruelty, coarseness, indifference to everything but the
rudest of pleasures. His one big work was the reconstruction of the
army. Sulla was an aristocrat to the finger-tips: proud, cold-blooded,
indifferent, highly educated, with a deep disbelief in everything and
everybody. He had a remarkable intellect, and a physical beauty which
attracted women without number. But it is doubtful whether he ever cared
for a human creature. His extraordinary courage and his equally
extraordinary indifference rested on a chilling belief in Fate. He was
lucky: he called himself Sulla Felix; but nothing in the end was going
to make any difference.
[Illustration: THE ARISTOCRAT distributing largesse]
To see Marius and Sulla against the background of their time the events
must be traced that followed on the death of Caius Gracchus.
Tiberius Gracchus, and far more clearly his brother Caius, had seen the
growing dangers that threatened Rome, if no wise steps were taken in
time to meet them. Both brothers gave their lives in the effort to save
their country. Their sacrifice was vain. The men who had power in their
hands were blind to the great change that was taking place. They tried
to compel the stream to go on flowing in its old channels, although the
weight of waters had grown too great for them to carry. The result was
that suddenly the waters broke loose and flooded everything. Rome, all
Italy, was torn by a bloody and terrible civil war.
At the time many people put these things down to the Gracchi. They had
stirred up the lower orders and the Italians to discontent and
bitterness. They had set strife between classes in Rome: roused the
middle class against the senators and the mob against both. This was not
a just statement. Caius Gracchus had thought out a great plan of reform
that, if carried through, might have saved Rome and Italy from
revolution and civil war. He had to win people to his side. In order to
do so he passed measures that were not good in themselves but only as
means to his great end. Thus he made the knights, the new class of
wealthy men, judges instead of the senators; and gave doles of bread to
the Roman populace in the hope that he would then be able to persuade
them to give votes to the Italians and so make Italy really one.
The evil that men do lives after them:
The good is oft interréd with their bones.
It was so with Caius Gracchus.
[Illustration: THE FISHERMAN]
But the real cause of the civil war lay much deeper than the work of any
single man or group of men. It was, in the main, the fact that while
Rome had grown, and grown into a new world, the old system of government
remained, and did not fit this new world. Rome was beginning to be a
great trading empire. Yet wealth and power was jealously held by a small
class in Rome in their own hands. The men of this class grew rich. They
went out to the provinces, to Sicily, Greece, and Spain, as governors
and made great fortunes. They came home with their riches and bought up
the land that had once belonged to peasants and farmers, and worked this
land with slaves. The condition of these slaves in the country was
miserable, especially that of those who lived herded in camps. The greed
of the agents of the tax-collecting companies made the Roman name hated
in the provinces. In Italy, too, there was deep discontent. To keep the
Roman poor quiet the ruling classes gave them games and bread-doles;
they altered the laws so that no Roman citizen could be condemned to
death for any offence. This kept the Romans quiet, but it made the
Italians, who had no share in it, increasingly restive.
[Illustration: THE RICH MATRON]
It had been clear to the far-seeing mind of Caius Gracchus that unless
Rome could draw fresh blood and life and energy from Italy it must
perish. The material wealth that was pouring into the city from all
parts of the world, from Carthage and Corinth and the conquered kingdoms
of the East, was doing more harm than good. Too many men, rich as well
as poor, were beginning to care only for pleasure and for money as a
means to pleasure. The luxury and extravagance of the rich made the
poverty of the poor bitter, and these poor, uneducated, idle, accustomed
to be kept in a good temper by splendid shows and presents of corn and
wine, were ready at any moment to rise in disorder and destroy those who
tried to help them. Most of them were not liable to military
service--that was still confined to the old classes of men who held
land; but they had votes, while the Italians had none. The town mob was
swollen by freedmen--slaves who had saved enough money to buy themselves
off--they too had votes.
The Roman voters cared nothing for the wrongs of the Italians, or of the
people of the provinces. Like the rich, who lived on the revenues of the
tax-collecting companies, they thought the rest of the world was there
merely to supply them with comfort and luxuries. But while in Rome
itself people were more and more sharply divided between the 'have nots'
and the 'haves', all round them there was a growing dissatisfaction and
discontent. The strife at home meant that enterprises abroad were badly
managed. Many army commanders and provincial governors were incompetent
and corrupt. There was no longer the old high Roman sense of duty and
honesty. In its stead were pride, greed, and cruelty. The spirit that
had shown itself in the savage destruction of Carthage and Corinth was
shown again in the treatment of Jugurtha.
[Illustration: THE SHEPHERDESS]
Jugurtha, the King of Numidia, threw off the Roman yoke and defied every
Roman general sent against him until Caius Marius was sent out (107).
Marius, the son of humble parents, had been marked by Scipio Aemilianus,
under whom he served in Africa, as a coming man: but though he had
already shown great gifts as a leader the Senate did not want to give
him the command against Jugurtha because of his low birth, rude manners,
and the love in which he was held by the Roman mob. He was at last
elected by a huge majority, and, thanks in part to the brilliant
exploits of a cavalry officer, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, ended the
campaign in triumph. Jugurtha was captured, marched in chains through
the Roman streets and cast naked into an ice-cold dungeon to die of
hunger and exposure.
In Marius's triumph there was a drop of bitterness. His glory was shared
with Sulla. For it was Sulla who had actually captured Jugurtha. With a
small body of men he had daringly entered the camp of Bocchus, King of
Mauretania, with whom Jugurtha had taken refuge, and persuaded Bocchus
to make friends with Rome by giving him up. He had a ring made with a
picture of the scene, which annoyed Marius every time he saw it.
[Illustration: TROPHY OF VICTORY
Capitoline Museum]
But no one at the moment thought that Sulla could be a real rival to
Marius. There was no question of naming any one else as general when the
strife of parties in Rome was suddenly interrupted by terrible news--the
Northern barbarians were on the march. This danger, from the Cimbri and
the Teutones, had actually been threatening for a long time. In 113 a
consular army had been routed by the Cimbri. For the next eight years,
joined by other tribes, they remained on the North Italian frontier,
a perpetual menace, defeating, one after another, the armies sent
against them. In 105, when Marius was still in Africa, two Roman armies
were annihilated at Arausio on the Rhone (105). More than 80,000 men
perished in a single battle. Only a handful escaped to bring the
terrible news home. Such a disaster had not happened since Cannae. The
way to Rome stood open: there was no army to stop the victors had they
marched on to Italy. They did not. They turned to Spain. Marius, who was
called home, given chief command, and made consul in three successive
years, had time to create a new army.
In doing this he tackled one of the most pressing problems of the time.
Gracchus had seen how great a danger the falling-off of the supply of
men from the land might be: but no one had really grasped and dealt with
the question from the army point of view until Marius took it in hand.
This was indeed his greatest and most lasting work. First he changed the
whole basis of service. Every one was liable to be called on, not only
the shrinking class of holders of land. He took soldiers from the towns
as well as from the country, from among freedmen and paupers as well as
from among citizens. Second, he paid to every soldier a small daily
wage. This was an immense change. It at once created a new class: the
professional soldier. Formerly men had done their time in the army and
then returned to ordinary civil life. Now the soldier was a soldier for
life. Next Marius reorganized the army from within, sweeping away the
differences between the Roman legions and those made up of Italians and
allies. He improved the equipment of all ranks. This done he set himself
to training his new men, encamped in Transalpine Gaul, in readiness to
meet the foe.
A soothsayer, in whose prophecy he placed great faith, had told Marius
he should be consul seven times. As consul for the fourth time he
finally attacked the Teutones with his new armies. At Aquae Sextiae
(to the north of Marseilles) 100,000 barbarians were slain (102). It was
a terrible slaughter. For centuries after the fields were covered with
blackening bones, and the people of Massilia used them to make fences
for their vineyards. Next year Marius, consul for the fifth time, met
the Cimbri, who had crossed the Alps and descended into the plains of
Lombardy, at Vercellae (101). Before the battle messengers came from the
Cimbri, demanding land for themselves and the Teutones. They had not
heard of the rout of Aquae Sextiae. Marius smiled grimly. 'Do not
trouble yourselves about your brothers,' he replied. 'They have land
enough which we have given them to keep for ever.' When battle was
joined next day it was the height of summer; the blazing heat exhausted
the Northerners. Boiorix, the Cimbrian king, the tallest and strongest
man in the army, perished; round him there lay, at the day's end,
100,000 of his countrymen.
Marius returned home to be hailed as the saviour of his country, the
peer of Camillus and Fabius. He was made consul for the sixth time.
Marius had won great victories; but the rejoicings in Rome over the
terrible dangers that had been averted by his generalship were brief.
Men's minds were profoundly disturbed: many felt dimly that great and
terrible events were coming without seeing what they were or how to deal
with or prevent them. Marius certainly was not the man who had either
the insight or the power to do this; he was a man of camps with no
knowledge or understanding of politics. His victories and the great
shows that followed them made him the idol of the mob: but the idol of
the mob was the last man to deal wisely with the difficulties of Rome.
The men of wealth and birth detested him as a dangerous, rude,
unlettered boor, who knew nothing of government or public business.
Marius could not even keep order. There were constant riots. People were
set upon and murdered in the open streets. Alarming reports came from
the provinces, especially from the East. But any one who had the courage
to demand justice for the provincials was certain to be detested in
Rome. Thus the honest Rutilius Rufus, who tried to defend the people of
Asia against the greed of the Roman tax-collectors, was driven into
exile. Nor did the Roman mob care a fig for the grievances of the
Italians--or the senators either.