There were, however, men in Rome who felt that dishonour was coming upon
the Republic from these things as well as danger. These men--aristocrats
of the old stamp--were, however, mostly rather inclined to turn aside
from politics, which filled them with disgust. Their feelings were not
keen enough to make them take action. But they saw that things were
going from bad to worse; and when at last one of their order came
forward who cared enough to take risks, they rallied round him. This was
M. Livius Drusus, a young man of lofty family, who thought the men of
his own order were partly to blame for what was happening. They held
aloof and let vulgar and ignorant men like Marius and his associates,
Glaucia and Saturninus (men of very low character who led the crowd by
promises and bribes), drag the good name of Rome down. Two things
stirred Drusus to action: one the shocking unfairness of the law courts,
the other the fact that the people of Italy were shut out of all share
in their own government. Everything was settled in Rome: the Italians
had no voice. The consuls and other magistrates who made and
administered the laws were chosen by Roman votes only. Yet the Italians
had to send men to the army and pay taxes.
Drusus got his Bill for the reform of the law courts through (91) in
spite of the moneyed men, since he proposed that the judges should be
partly chosen from the Senate, and a strong body of senators backed this
up. But when his Bill giving votes to the Italians came up things were
different. There he could count on very little support. It did not help
him in Rome that, when he fell ill, prayers for his recovery were put up
in every town in Italy. This was indeed used against him by his enemies
in Rome, who said there was a conspiracy going on. The rich Italians,
too, made common cause with the rich men in Rome. Some of the
aristocrats stood by Drusus, but the majority in Rome was against him.
Throughout Italy the struggle round his Bill raised an intense and deep
excitement. Then one night Drusus was murdered in the street as he was
going home. The murderer vanished. No inquiry was made. Drusus's Bill
was dropped; his party was crushed. His enemies at once rushed through a
measure setting up a court before which every one suspected of
sympathizing with votes for Italians was to be charged.
But the hopes of the Italians could not be crushed thus. The news of
Drusus's murder ran like an earthquake shock through Italy. Feeling was
at fever pitch. Rome refused to recognize Italian rights: the Italians
would compel it to do so by the sword. All over the peninsula feverish
preparations went on. A few months after Drusus's death fighting broke
out at Asculum in the south and spread like lightning all over the north
and centre.
This Social War, as it was called, was waged with dreadful bitterness on
both sides, and the misery and ruin it brought on the country was
terrible. In the first year (90) things went against Rome, though all
their best generals, including Marius and his hated rival Sulla, took
the field. In the second year (89) Marius did little or nothing, but in
the south Sulla carried everything before him. But while the Romans were
winning they were also beginning to see that the war need never have
taken place: it was time to let the Italians take their share and make
them Romans. A Bill giving them voting rights was drafted and passed
into law. This did more than anything in the actual campaign to bring
the fighting to an end.
The war was still raging when news came that the East was ablaze.
Mithridates, King of Pontus, the richest king in Asia Minor, and far the
ablest, had taken the field and was preparing to overrun the Roman
provinces. Hard on the heels of this came worse. Mithridates had
defeated a Roman general, destroyed his army, captured his fleet and was
invading Asia. He came, he said, to free the people from the Roman
tax-collectors who sucked their blood away. Slaves and prisoners were
set free, those who killed Italians pardoned. On a certain day of the
year 88 there was a massacre of no less than 80,000 Italians in Asia.
The rebellion against Rome, thus begun, spread to Greece. Athens threw
off the Roman yoke; Mithridates, who dreamed of ruling over the whole
East, sent his general to help overthrow the Roman garrisons in Greece.
Thus while Romans were fighting one another the lands beyond the seas of
which they were so proud, and which were the source of most of their
wealth, were in rebellion. Men of their own race had been massacred by
Asiatics. Each day the news grew worse. In Rome there were riots in the
streets. Sulla had been named commander against Mithridates. Marius
could not bear this. He got his friends to bring in a Bill transferring
the command to him. It was carried, but amid such disorder that senators
and consuls fled from the city. Sulla had left the riots and disorders
of Rome to go to his army at Nola. There he received the order to hand
over the command to Marius. If Marius expected him to obey he had
misread the character of the man he hated. Sulla's answer was to march
upon Rome at the head of his legions. There he was welcomed by the
remnant of the Senate as the restorer of law and order. Marius fled.
[Illustration: SULLA from a coin]
Of the sudden rise of Sulla, Plutarch gives the following account:
_Sulla Felix_
In the long Social War, with all its vicissitudes and disasters,
and dangers that threatened the safety of Rome, Marius could
achieve nothing great, and merely proved that military excellence
demands physical strength and vigour, while Sulla by many notable
victories gained the reputation of a great general with the
people, of the greatest of generals with his friends, and of the
most fortunate with his enemies. Yet he was not sensitive about
this last judgement as Timotheus the son of Conon was; for when
his enemies attributed all his successes to fortune, and painted
pictures in which he was represented asleep with Fortune casting a
net over the cities, Timotheus was rude to them and angry, feeling
that they deprived him of the credit due to his deeds. Sulla, on
the other hand, not only accepted without annoyance the 'felicity'
thus assigned to him, but even magnifying it and recognizing it as
divine, he made fortune responsible for his exploits, either in a
spirit of ostentation or from a genuine belief in providential
guidance. For example, he has written in his memoirs that of all
his decisions which were justified by results the happiest were
not reached by deliberation, but adopted in the hurry of the
moment. Moreover, when he says that he was born for fortune rather
than for war, he seems to have more respect for fortune than for
merit and to accept the control of an unseen power; insomuch that
he makes a divine good luck the cause of his harmony with
Metellus, his kinsman and colleague in the consulship; for he
expected to have much trouble with him, but found him a most
agreeable partner in office. Again, in the memoirs, which he has
dedicated to Lucullus, he bids him place most reliance on any
warning given him by a vision in the night. He tells us, too, that
when he was leaving the city with an army to fight in the Social
War, the earth opened near Laverna and a great fire gushed out,
shooting up a bright flame to the sky. The prophets interpreted
this to mean that a man of genius, who was of unusual and
remarkable appearance, would take the command and free the country
from its present disorders. Sulla declares that he was the man;
for his golden hair was the peculiarity in his appearance, and he
felt no diffidence in ascribing genius to himself after his great
achievements.
Plutarch, xxxiii. 6. 2-7.
In many respects Lucius Cornelius Sulla is the most extraordinary figure
in Roman history. Belonging to a very old family, the same as that of
the Scipios, he grew up in genteel poverty, living in one of the large
blocks of flats that had been built near the centre of the town. He was
extremely handsome, with every grace of form and feature, tall, well
built, with a face of classic outline, marred in later life by a hot and
somewhat mottled complexion, but distinguished by eyes of a brilliant
blue: eyes that could upon occasion flash fire. They did not often do
so, for Sulla was a person of ice-cold reserve, seldom carried away by
his feelings. Highly educated and gifted with unusual powers of mind, he
looked out upon the world and despised most people in it. His was a mind
incapable of feeling any sort of religious appeal. Most of the things
people strove after seemed to him stupid, because there was no pleasure
in them. He was what is called a cynic.
Until he was nearly fifty Sulla took no important part in public
affairs. He served with great distinction in Africa. His unshakable
courage and complete self-control, combined as they were with rare
powers of making men do what he wanted and an absolute belief in
himself, made him a successful commander. But for military glory in
itself he did not care, or for any other kind of glory. To him these
things were illusions. Nor was he stirred by patriotism in the ordinary
sense. He saw the Rome of his time very much as it was and did not
consider it worth the sacrifice of a pleasure. The aristocrats seemed to
him selfish and stupid: the popular party vulgar and stupid. He saw what
was going to happen but had none of the belief that inspires idealists
that he could change the course of events. 'Things are what they are;
the consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we seek to
be deceived?' This, said two thousand years later, was a true
description of Sulla's point of view. He looked on, coldly scornful; and
amused himself, like other well-to-do men of his class, with the arts in
their lower as well as their higher forms. But, when occasion called, he
could act. When the Social War broke out, and all hands in Rome were, as
it were, called to the pumps, Sulla was ready. He proved more
successful, if also more ruthless, than any other commander in the
field; he understood, better than any one else, the supreme danger in
which Rome stood. It was this, and not personal ambition in the ordinary
sense, that made him take the command against Mithridates, and march on
Rome when the Marius faction showed that they were incapable of keeping
order there.
Sulla could spend no time in Rome. The danger in the East was too
pressing. He sailed for Greece. Marius might return: if he did Sulla
knew that his own life might be in danger, but he could not trouble
about that. Roman rule in the East was threatened: it was his business
to save it. He saw, as Marius did not or could not see, that at this
terrible moment the fate of Rome trembled in the balance. Italy lay torn
and exhausted by civil war. Agriculture had been ruined, thousands
slain, and business of all kinds was at a standstill. The war in the
East shook the very life of the Republic to its foundations. Rome lived,
as London lives, on trade and supplies from overseas. They were stopped.
There was a money panic. The danger was the greater that the revolt
against Rome, both in Italy and in Asia, Greece, and elsewhere, had
right on its side. The Roman Government, in the years that had passed
since the defeat of Hannibal, had been bad: cruel, extortionate, and
unjust. In Rome itself there was bitter disunion.
When Sulla set sail he knew all this, knew how tremendous a task was
before him, and, believing as he did in his star, knew that he would
accomplish it. But only he of Romans then living could have done it.
Marius, hot-headed always and now old and weakened in will and mind by
drink, could not have succeeded. It needed all Sulla's extraordinary
coolness, all his iron will.
Though he saw that trouble would break out again in Rome as soon as his
back was turned, he also saw that the danger from the revolt of Greece
and from Mithridates was even more immediate and pressing. The whole
basis on which the Roman world rested would drop from under it if
Mithridates succeeded. The danger was, in its way, as great as that
which had threatened Rome when Hannibal crossed the Alps.
[Illustration: MITHRIDATES from a coin]
For Mithridates was an exceedingly able prince. His strength did not lie
in the huge hordes of soldiers he had behind him. Eastern soldiers were
a poor match for Roman legionaries, even when they far outnumbered them.
Nor did it lie in the vast wealth of the kingdoms over which he ruled:
though in both men and resources he outclassed the small army Rome could
send against him. His real strength was first his own ability, second,
the general and widespread revolt against Rome. The Roman State, as he
knew, was torn with revolution at home. There was a general sense of
panic and uncertainty. The Government had neither men, money, nor
supplies for the war against Mithridates.
Now, instead of closing ranks, as after Cannae, rich Romans fled, some
even joining Mithridates. Marius and his party saw in the dangers Sulla
went out to face nothing but their chance to come back to power in Rome.
Marius himself was old now and had taken to drink. Almost as soon as
Sulla sailed revolution broke out again in Rome. The streets ran with
blood; the town was heaped with the bodies of the slain. Cinna, one of
the consuls, proposed to recall Marius (who had fled to the ruins of
Carthage) and brought up first slaves and then armed Italians against
the Senate. He was defeated and declared a public enemy. With Sertorius,
a most able officer but a personal enemy of Sulla, Cinna then organized
the Samnites. Marius returned from Africa, and he, Cinna, Sertorius, and
Carbo marched on Rome (87). When they at last entered the city at the
head of their troops a terrible massacre took place. Marius, who was
almost mad with fury, struck down any one who had ever thwarted or
criticized him, among them some of the noblest men in Rome. Antonius,
first of living orators, Publius Crassus, a fine soldier, Catulus who
had shared with Marius the toils and honours of the wars against
Teutones and Cimbri, Merula the consul, shared the fate of hundreds of
less note. No one was safe. Marius walked about like a raging lion,
thirsting for blood. The heads of the dead stood in rows round the Forum
and above Marius's own house. For five days the massacre went on until
at last Sertorius, who had looked on with horror, stopped it by cutting
Marius's bodyguard of murderers to pieces. The old man was elected
consul for the seventh time (86): a few days later he died. Sulla
meantime was declared a public enemy, banished, and removed from his
command. His house was demolished, all his goods were sold, his wife and
family were driven into exile.
Such was the news that came to Sulla as he was besieging Athens and in
the greatest danger. The city appeared impregnable. His small army was
reduced by wounds, disease, and the shortage of supplies: the danger
that Mithridates would land and cut them off was immediate. They would
then be between the devil and the deep sea. But Sulla's iron will did
not quail. The man whom Rome regarded as a creature of pleasure shared
every hardship of the soldiers and encouraged them day and night by his
personal courage and calm. He showed marvellous ingenuity and resource
in collecting supplies and a complete disregard of everything but the
purpose in hand. He was a Greek scholar with a real admiration of Greek
literature and art: yet he ransacked the temples and melted down the
ornaments and treasures of centuries to make money; cut down the trees
of the Sacred Grove of the Academy where Plato had walked with Socrates
to make trench props. His ablest officer, Lucius Lucullus, was sent off
to collect a fleet, somehow or other.
All through the winter and the whole of the next year Athens held out.
The next winter came before Mithridates' fleet sailed: it could do
nothing till the spring. But with this news came that of a new danger.
The Roman Government of Cinna was sending out an army against Sulla. He
was between two fires. But his nerve did not fail. Athens fell to a
supreme assault on the 1st March (86) before the new Roman army left
Italy. Moving south Sulla then met Mithridates' army on the Boeotian
plain and at Chaeronea gained a victory that rang through the world. The
spell of Mithridates' name was broken: Rome was still invincible. The
revolted cities of the East began to come back. In the same year Sulla
gained another great victory. At first the Roman line broke,
panic-struck. Sulla, leaping from his horse, snatched a standard and
rushing into the hottest of the fight shouted to his men, 'Soldiers! If
you are asked where you abandoned your general, say it was at
Orchomenus.' Stung by this reproach and the supreme courage of their
general, the men recovered. The day was won. Flaccus, the Roman general,
made an agreement with Sulla: to him, whatever the orders of the Home
Government, it seemed impossible that Roman armies should fight against
one another when there was a common enemy to face. But a captain in the
ranks, Fimbria by name, stirred up a mutiny, Flaccus was murdered, and
Fimbria prepared to march on Sulla.
Sulla was now in a dilemma. His life was in danger unless he made peace
with Mithridates. To do so was not magnificent: it was not even highly
honourable. But Sulla was not a man to be stayed by such ideas. His own
life was at the moment more important than anything else. If he were
killed there would not be much left of the honour of Rome. He therefore
made a treaty with Mithridates. He made the treaty on his own terms,
however. Earlier, at a time when he was in extreme danger, Mithridates
had offered him an alliance. This he had utterly rejected. Now he
insisted that Mithridates should altogether abandon his plans and claims
against Rome. By the treaty of Dardanus (84) the king had to give up all
his conquests in Greece and Asia and hand over ships of war and a great
sum of money to Sulla. In return the man who had arranged the
cold-blooded murder of 80,000 Italians was made 'friend and ally' of
Rome. Sulla knew that Mithridates would sooner or later give trouble
again: but for the time being the danger was over. Rome's power and name
in the East had been saved, at a price. The treaty could not stand, but
for the moment it was necessary. Sulla could turn to saving Rome at
home. Fimbria's army began to desert to him. Fimbria in despair killed
himself. Sulla spent the next year in preparations for his own return in
Rome. Carbo, who had succeeded Cinna, was as bitter against him as Cinna
had been.
After a year in Asia collecting the taxes, not paid for the last four
years, Sulla landed at Brundisium (83) with a well-filled treasury and a
devoted army. On every soldier he imposed an oath: they were to treat
the Italians as friends and fellow citizens, not as enemies. But to the
Marian party in Rome he determined to show no mercy. The State must be
cleared of these people: there must be no more riot and revolution. As
Sulla marched north he defeated the forces sent against him: many of the
soldiers deserted to him: many cities opened their gates. The Government
of Marius, Cinna, and Carbo was thoroughly unpopular: and Sulla kept his
word, doing no harm to the country through which he passed. Only the
Samnites resisted strongly: them Sulla, who had been joined by young
Crassus and by Cnaeus Pompeius, defeated in a great battle lasting from
noon to the following mid-day outside the Colline Gate (82).
Rome and all Italy were now in Sulla's power. He entered the city and
assembled the Senate in the Temple of Bellona. As he explained his plans
for restoring order--he was to have the powers of a dictator till that
was done--a frightful sound was heard. Sulla gave his grim smile. 'Some
criminals being punished', he said. Six thousand Samnite prisoners were
being cut to pieces. In this spirit he proceeded to stamp out what had
been the party of Marius. Marius had been mad with rage: Sulla was quite
calm, but not a whit more merciful. The tomb of Marius was broken open,
his ashes scattered in the road. Samnium, which had resisted the
conqueror, was laid desert. The land was broken into allotments for
Sulla's soldiers.
The proscriptions followed. Lists of public enemies were posted and a
reward paid to any one who killed the men whose names appeared. Their
property was confiscated. Men put the names of private enemies on the
list before or sometimes after they had killed them. Catiline, for
instance, did this to his own brother. Sulla did not care. The State
must be cleared of dangerous men and it must get revenues from
somewhere. On the 1st June 81 the lists were closed: the executions and
confiscations ended. Nearly five thousand persons had perished. Their
property and that of those who had fled or been banished fell to the
State, which got four million pounds in this way.
By murder and robbery the State treasury was filled. Sulla's hard mind
did not shrink from these ugly words. He did the things and made no
pretences. In the same way he never pretended to believe in the rights
of the people. He despised them, thought them stupid, ignorant, and
lazy. What they needed was police. The Government he built up was of
this kind. He made the Senate much larger and stronger, for men of birth
and wealth, though no better than the others, could at least, he
thought, be trusted to keep things orderly and as they were. No one was
to be consul till he had passed through the lower offices, and then
consul only once. As consul he was to stay in Italy without an army; at
the end of his year he might be sent abroad, with an army, as a
pro-consul. In Italy there were to be no troops: no soldiers were to
cross the Rubicon. The law courts were reformed, the juries again drawn
from the Senate.
[Illustration: A BOAR HUNT
from a sculpture in the Capitoline Museum]
When he had finished his work of reorganization and built up the power
of the Senate--i.e. of the older men of birth and property--as strongly
as he could, Sulla laid down all his extraordinary powers and retired to
private life. He had built himself a lovely villa, full of the art
treasures he had brought from Greece and from the East, in the midst of
exquisite gardens. There he lived, writing his memoirs, and enjoying the
pleasures of hunting and fishing, banqueting and revelling, surrounded
by the most amusing people he could find. Many of these were writers,
artists, and actors. Actors were looked down upon in Rome, but Roscius
the tragedian was a great friend of Sulla's, for he scorned all such
notions as unreal. Always Sulla had provoked the Romans by his power of
casting off serious cares when he sat down at table and by what they
thought his ill-timed jests. They did not understand his view of life.
To him it was all a play, not a very good play: out of which, if one
were lucky, one might get some entertainment. He had been lucky: chance
was his goddess and he believed in nothing higher. Before he died, at
the age of sixty, he wrote his own epitaph, which was inscribed on the
great monument set up to him in the Campus Martius: 'No friend ever did
me so much good or enemy so much harm but I repaid him with interest.'
[Illustration: SCENE FROM A TRAGEDY
Terra-cotta relief]
[Illustration: CUTLER'S FORGE]