This state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when

Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been

already described: the half-suppressed insurrection, the principal

army under the more than half-usurped command of a general whose

politics were very doubtful, the confusion and the manifold

activity of intrigue in the capital. The victory of the oligarchy

by force of arms had, in spite or because of its moderation,

engendered manifold discontent. The capitalists, painfully

affected by the blows of the most severe financial crisis which

Rome had yet witnessed, were indignant at the government on account

of the law which it had issued as to interest, and on account

of the Italian and Asiatic wars which it had not prevented.

The insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms, bewailed

not only the disappointment of their proud hopes of obtaining equal

rights with the ruling burgesses, but also the forfeiture of their

venerable treaties, and their new position as subjects utterly

destitute of rights. The communities between the Alps and the Po

were likewise discontented with the partial concessions made to

them, and the new burgesses and freedmen were exasperated by

the cancelling of the Sulpician laws. The populace of the city

suffered amid the general distress, and found it intolerable that

the government of the sabre was no longer disposed to acquiesce in

the constitutional rule of the bludgeon. The adherents, resident

in the capital, of those outlawed after the Sulpician revolution--

adherents who remained very numerous in consequence of the

remarkable moderation of Sulla--laboured zealously to procure

permission for the outlaws to return home; and in particular some

ladies of wealth and distinction spared for this purpose neither

trouble nor money. None of these grounds of ill-humour were such

as to furnish any immediate prospect of a fresh violent collision

between the parties; they were in great part of an aimless and

temporary nature; but they all fed the general discontent, and had

already been more or less concerned in producing the murder of

Rufus, the repeated attempts to assassinate Sulla, the issue

of the consular and tribunician elections for 667 partly in

favour of the opposition.

Cinna

Carbo

Sertorius

The name of the man whom the discontented had summoned to the head

of the state, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, had been hitherto scarcely

heard of, except so far as he had borne himself well as an officer

in the Social war. We have less information regarding the

personality and the original designs of Cinna than regarding those

of any other party leader in the Roman revolution. The reason is,

to all appearance, simply that this man, altogether vulgar and

guided by the lowest selfishness, had from the first no ulterior

political plans whatever. It was asserted at his very first

appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of money to

the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and the charge looks

very credible; but even were it false, it remains nevertheless

significant that a suspicion of the sort, such as was never

expressed against Saturninus and Sulpicius, attached to Cinna.

In fact the movement, at the head of which he put himself, has

altogether the appearance of worthlessness both as to motives and

as to aims. It proceeded not so much from a party as from a number

of malcontents without proper political aims or notable support,

who had mainly undertaken to effect the recall of the exiles by

legal or illegal means. Cinna seems to have been admitted into the

conspiracy only by an afterthought and merely because the intrigue,

which in consequence of the restriction of the tribunician powers

needed a consul to bring forward its proposals, saw in him among

the consular candidates for 667 its fittest instrument and so

pushed him forward as consul. Among the leaders appearing in the

second rank of the movement were some abler heads; such was the

tribune of the people Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who had made himself

a name by his impetuous popular eloquence, and above all Quintus

Sertorius, one of the most talented of Roman officers and a man

in every respect excellent, who since his candidature for the

tribunate of the people had been a personal enemy to Sulla and had

been led by this quarrel into the ranks of the disaffected to which

he did not at all by nature belong. The proconsul Strabo, although

at variance with the government, was yet far from going along

with this faction.

Outbreak of the Cinnan Revolution

Victory of the Government

So long as Sulla was in Italy, the confederates for good reasons

remained quiet. But when the dreaded proconsul, yielding not to

the exhortations of the consul Cinna but to the urgent state of

matters in the east, had embarked, Cinna, supported by the majority

of the college of tribunes, immediately submitted the projects

of law which had been concerted as a partial reaction against

the Sullan restoration of 666. They embraced the political

equalization of the new burgesses and the freedmen, as Sulpicius

had proposed it, and the restitution of those who had been banished

in consequence of the Sulpician revolution to their former status.

The new burgesses flocked en masse to the capital, that along with

the freedmen they might terrify, and in case of need force, their

opponents into compliance. But the government party was determined

not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against

Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in

great part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The

tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords

were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force

against force. His compact bands of armed men not only cleared the

Via Sacra and the Forum, but also, disregarding the commands of

their more gentle-minded leader, exercised horrible atrocities

against the assembled multitude. The Forum swam with blood on this

"Octavius' day," as it never did before or afterwards--the number

of corpses was estimated at ten thousand. Cinna called on the

slaves to purchase freedom for themselves by sharing in the

struggle; but his appeal was as unsuccessful as the like appeal of

Marius in the previous year, and no course was left to the leaders

of the movement but to take flight. The constitution supplied no

means of proceeding farther against the chiefs of the conspiracy,

so long as their year of office lasted. But a prophet presumably

more loyal than pious had announced that the banishment of the

consul Cinna and of the six tribunes of the people adhering to

him would restore peace and tranquillity to the country; and,

in conformity not with the constitution but with this counsel of

the gods fortunately laid hold of by the custodiers of oracles,

the consul Cinna was by decree of the senate deprived of his office,

Lucius Cornelius Merula was chosen in his stead, and outlawry was

pronounced against the chiefs who had fled. It seemed as if the

whole crisis were about to end in a few additions to the number

of the men who were exiles in Numidia.

The Cinnans in Italy

Landing of Marius

Beyond doubt nothing further would have come of the movement, had

not the senate on the one hand with its usual remissness omitted to

compel the fugitives at least rapidly to quit Italy, and had the

latter on the other hand been, as champions of the emancipation of

the new burgesses, in a position to renew to some extent in their

own favour the revolt of the Italians. Without obstruction they

appeared in Tibur, in Praeneste, in all the important communities

of new burgesses in Latium and Campania, and asked and obtained

everywhere money and men for the furtherance of the common cause.

Thus supported, they made their appearance at the army besieging

Nola, The armies of this period were democratic and revolutionary

in their views, wherever the general did not attach them to himself

by the weight of his personal influence; the speeches of the

fugitive magistrates, some of whom, especially Cinna and Sertorius,

were favourably remembered by the soldiers in connection with the

last campaigns, made a deep impression; the unconstitutional

deposition of the popular consul and the interference of the senate

with the rights of the sovereign people told on the common soldier,

and the gold of the consul or rather of the new burgesses made the

breach of the constitution clear to the officers. The Campanian

army recognized Cinna as consul and swore the oath of fidelity to

him man by man; it became a nucleus for the bands that flocked in

from the new burgesses and even from the allied communities; a

considerable army, though consisting mostly of recruits, soon moved

from Campania towards the capital. Other bands approached it from

the north. On the invitation of Cinna those who had been banished

in the previous year had landed at Telamon on the Etruscan coast.

There were not more than some 500 armed men, for the most part

slaves of the refugees and enlisted Numidian horsemen; but, as

Gaius Marius had in the previous year been willing to fraternize

with the rabble of the capital, so he now ordered the -ergastula-

in which the landholders of this region shut up their field-

labourers during the night to be broken open, and the arms which

he offered to these for the purpose of achieving their freedom were

not despised. Reinforced by these men and the contingents of the

new burgesses, as well as by the exiles who flocked to him with

their partisans from all sides, he soon numbered 6000 men under his

eagles and was able to man forty ships, which took their station

before the mouth of the Tiber and gave chase to the corn-ships

sailing towards Rome. With these he placed himself at the disposal

of the "consul" Cinna. The leaders of the Campanian army

hesitated; the more sagacious, Sertorius in particular, seriously

pointed out the danger of too closely connecting themselves with

a man whose name would necessarily place him at the head of

the movement, and who yet was notoriously incapable of any

statesmanlike action and haunted by an insane thirst for revenge;

but Cinna disregarded these scruples, and confirmed Marius in the

supreme command in Etruria and at sea with proconsular powers.

Dubious Attitude of Strabo

The Cinnans around Rome

Thus the storm gathered around the capital, and the government

could no longer delay bringing forward their troops to protect

it.(1) But the forces of Metellus were detained by the Italians

in Samnium and before Nola; Strabo alone was in a position to hasten

to the help of the capital. He appeared and pitched his camp at

the Colline gate: with his numerous and experienced army he might

doubtless have rapidly and totally annihilated the still weak bands

of insurgents; but this seemed to be no part of his design. On the

contrary he allowed Rome to be actually invested by the insurgents.

Cinna with his corps and that of Carbo took post on the right bank

of the Tiber opposite to the Janiculum, Sertorius on the left bank

confronting Pompeius over against the Servian wall. Marius with

his band which had gradually increased to three legions, and in

possession of a number of war-vessels, occupied one place on the

coast after another till at length even Ostia fell into his hands

through treachery, and, by way of prelude as it were to the

approaching reign of terror, was abandoned by the general to

the savage band for massacre and pillage. The capital was placed,

even by the mere obstruction of traffic, in great danger; by command

of the senate the walls and gates were put in a state of defence and

the burgess-levy was ordered to the Janiculum. The inaction of

Strabo excited among all classes alike surprise and indignation.

The suspicion that he was negotiating secretly with Cinna was

natural, but was probably without foundation. A serious conflict

in which he engaged the band of Sertorius, and the support which

he gave to the consul Octavius when Marius had by an understanding

with one of the officers of the garrison penetrated into the

Janiculum, and by which in fact the insurgents were successfully

beaten off again with much loss, showed that he was far from

intending to unite with, or rather to place himself under, the

leaders of the insurgents. It seems rather to have been his design

to sell his assistance in subduing the insurrection to the alarmed

government and citizens of the capital at the price of the

consulship for the next year, and thereby to get the reins

of government into his own hands.

Negotiations of Parties with the Italians

Death of Strabo

The senate was not, however, inclined to throw itself into the

arms of one usurper in order to escape from another, and sought

help elsewhere. The franchise was by decree of the senate

supplementarily conferred on all the Italian communities involved

in the Social war, which had laid down their arms and had in

consequence thereof forfeited their old alliance.(2) It seemed as

it were their intention officially to demonstrate that Rome in the

war against the Italians had staked her existence for the sake not

of a great object but of her own vanity: in the first momentary

embarrassment, for the purpose of bringing into the field an

additional thousand or two of soldiers, she sacrificed everything

which had been gained at so terribly dear a cost in the Social war.

In fact, troops arrived from the communities who were benefited by

this concession; but instead of the many legions promised, their

contingent on the whole amounted to not more than, at most, ten

thousand men. It would have been of more moment that an agreement

should be come to with the Samnites and Nolans, so that the troops

of the thoroughly trustworthy Metellus might be employed for the

protection of the capital. But the Samnites made demands which

recalled the yoke of Caudium--restitution of the spoil taken from

the Samnites and of their prisoners and deserters, renunciation of

the booty wrested by the Samnites from the Romans, the bestowal of

the franchise on the Samnites themselves as well as on the Romans

who had passed over to them. The senate rejected even in this

emergency terms of peace so disgraceful, but instructed Metellus to

leave behind a small division and to lead in person all the troops

that could at all be dispensed with in southern Italy as quickly as

possible to Rome. He obeyed. But the consequence was, that the

Samnites attacked and defeated Plautius the legate left behind by

Metellus and his weak band; that the garrison of Nola marched out

and set on fire the neighbouring town of Abella in alliance with

Rome; that Cinna and Marius, moreover, granted to the Samnites

everything they asked--what mattered Roman honour to them!--and a

Samnite contingent reinforced the ranks of the insurgents. It was

a severe loss also, when after a combat unfavourable to the troops

of the government Ariminum was occupied by the insurgents and thus

the important communication between Rome and the valley of the Po,

whence men and supplies were expected, was interrupted. Scarcity

and famine set in. The large populous city numerously garrisoned

with troops was but inadequately supplied with provisions; and

Marius in particular took care to cut off its supplies more and

more. He had already blocked up the Tiber by a bridge of ships;

now by the capture of Antium, Lanuvium, Aricia, and other townships

he gained control over the means of land communication still open,

and at the same time appeased temporarily his revenge by causing

all the citizens, wherever resistance was offered, to be put to

the sword with the exception of those who had possibly betrayed

to him the town. Contagious diseases followed on the distress and

committed dreadful ravages among the masses of soldiers densely

crowded round the capital; of Strabo's veteran army 11,000, and of

the troops of Octavius 6000 are said to have fallen victims to

them. Yet the government did not despair; and the sudden death of

Strabo was a fortunate event for it. He died of the pestilence;(3)

the masses, exasperated on many grounds against him, tore his

corpse from the bier and dragged it through the streets.

The remnant of his troops was incorporated by the consul

Octavius with his army.

Vacillation of the Government

Rome Capitulates

After the arrival of Metellus and the decease of Strabo the army

of the government was again at least a match for its antagonists,

and was able to array itself for battle against the insurgents at

the Alban Mount. But the minds of the soldiers of the government

were deeply agitated; when Cinna appeared in front of them, they

received him with acclamation as if he were still their general and

consul; Metellus deemed it advisable not to allow the battle to

come on, but to lead back the troops to their camp. The Optimates

themselves wavered, and fell at variance with each other. While

one party, with the honourable but stubborn and shortsighted consul

Octavius at their head, perseveringly opposed all concession,

Metellus more experienced in war and more judicious attempted to

bring about a compromise; but his conference with Cinna excited

the wrath of the extreme men on both sides: Cinna was called by

Marius a weakling, Metellus was called by Octavius a traitor.

The soldiers, unsettled otherwise and not without cause distrusting

the leadership of the untried Octavius, suggested to Metellus that

he should assume the chief command, and, when he refused, began

in crowds to throw away their arms or even to desert to the enemy.

The temper of the burgesses became daily more depressed and

troublesome. On the proclamation of the heralds of Cinna

guaranteeing freedom to the slaves who should desert, these flocked

in troops from the capital to the enemy's camp. But the proposal

that the senate should guarantee freedom to the slaves willing to

enter the army was decidedly resisted by Octavius. The government

could not conceal from itself that it was defeated, and that

nothing remained but to come to terms if possible with the leaders

of the band, as the overpowered traveller comes to terms with

the captain of banditti. Envoys went to Cinna; but, while they

foolishly made difficulties as to recognizing him as consul, and

Cinna in the interval thus prolonged transferred his camp close to

the city-gates, the desertion spread to so great an extent that it

was no longer possible to settle any terms. The senate submitted

itself unconditionally to the outlawed consul, adding only a

request that he would refrain from bloodshed, Cinna promised this,

but refused to ratify his promise by an oath; Marius, who kept by

his side during the negotiations, maintained a sullen silence.

Marian Reign of Terror

The gates of the capital were opened. The consul marched in with

his legions; but Marius, scoffingly recalling the law of outlawry,

refused to set foot in the city until the law allowed him to do

so and the burgesses hastily assembled in the Forum to pass the

annulling decree. He then entered, and with him the reign of

terror. It was determined not to select individual victims, but

to have all the notable men of the Optimate party put to death and

to confiscate their property. The gates were closed; for five days

and five nights the slaughter continued without interruption; even

afterwards the execution of individuals who had escaped or been

overlooked was of daily occurrence, and for months the bloody

persecution went on throughout Italy. The consul Gnaeus Octavius

was the first victim. True to his often-expressed principle, that

he would rather suffer death than make the smallest concession to

men acting illegally, he refused even now to take flight, and in

his consular robes awaited at the Janiculum the assassin, who was

not slow to appear. Among the slain were Lucius Caesar (consul in

664) the celebrated victor of Acerrae;(4) his brother Gaius, whose

unseasonable ambition had provoked the Sulpician tumult,(5) well

known as an orator and poet and as an amiable companion; Marcus

Antonius (consul in 655), after the death of Lucius Crassus beyond

dispute the first pleader of his time; Publius Crassus (consul

in 657) who had commanded with distinction in the Spanish and in

the Social wars and also during the siege of Rome; and a multitude

of the most considerable men of the government party, among whom

the wealthy were traced out with especial zeal by the greedy

executioners. Peculiarly sad seemed the death of Lucius Merula,

who very much against his own wish had become Cinna's successor,

and who now, when criminally impeached on that account and cited

before the comitia, in order to anticipate the inevitable

condemnation opened his veins, and at the altar of the Supreme

Jupiter whose priest he was, after laying aside the priestly

headband as the religious duty of the dying Flamen required,

breathed his last; and still more the death of Quintus Catulus

(consul in 652), once in better days the associate of the most

glorious victory and triumph of that same Marius who now had no

other answer for the suppliant relatives of his aged colleague

than the monosyllabic order, "He must die."

The Last Days of Marius

The originator of all these outrages was Gaius Marius.

He designated the victims and the executioners--only in exceptional

cases, as in those of Merula and Catulus, was any form of law

observed; not unfrequently a glance or the silence with which he

received those who saluted him formed the sentence of death, which

was always executed at once. His revenge was not satisfied even

with the death of his victim; he forbade the burial of the dead

bodies: he gave orders--anticipated, it is true, in this respect

by Sulla--that the heads of the senators slain should be fixed to

the rostra in the Forum; he ordered particular corpses to be dragged

through the Forum, and that of Gaius Caesar to be stabbed afresh

at the tomb of Quintus Varius, whom Caesar presumably had once

impeached;(6) he publicly embraced the man who delivered to him

as he sat at table the head of Antonius, whom he had been with

difficulty restrained from seeking out in his hiding-place,

an slaying with his own hand. His legions of slaves, and in

particular a division of Ardyaeans,(7) chiefly served as his

executioners, and did not neglect, amidst these Saturnalia of

their new freedom, to plunder the houses of their former masters

and to dishonour and murder all whom they met with there. His own

associates were in despair at this insane fury; Sertorius adjured

the consul to put a stop to it at any price, and even Cinna was

alarmed. But in times such as these were, madness itself becomes

a power; man hurls himself into the abyss, to save himself from

giddiness. It was not easy to restrain the furious old man and

his band, and least of all had Cinna the courage to do so; on the

contrary, he chose Marius as his colleague in the consulship for

the next year. The reign of terror alarmed the more moderate of

the victors not much less than the defeated party; the capitalists

alone were not displeased to see that another hand lent itself to

the work of thoroughly humbling for once the haughty oligarchs,

and that at the same time, in consequence of the extensive

confiscations and auctions, the best part of the spoil came to

themselves--in these times of terror they acquired from the people

the surname of the "hoarders."

Death of Marius

Fate had thus granted to the author of this reign of terror,

the old Gaius Marius, his two chief wishes. He had taken vengeance

on the whole genteel pack that had embittered his victories and

envenomed his defeats; he had been enabled to retaliate for every

sarcasm by a stroke of the dagger. Moreover he entered on the new

year once more as consul; the vision of a seventh consulate, which

the oracle had promised him, and which he had sought for thirteen

years to grasp, had now been realized. The gods had granted to him

what he wished; but now too, as in the old legendary period, they

practised the fatal irony of destroying man by the fulfilment of

his wishes. In his early consulates the pride, in his sixth the

laughing-stock, of his fellow-citizens, he was now in his seventh

loaded with the execration of all parties, with the hatred of the

whole nation; he, the originally upright, capable, gallant man, was

branded as the crackbrained chief of a reckless band of robbers.

He himself seemed to feel it. His days were passed as in delirium,

and by night his couch denied him rest, so that he grasped the

wine-cup in order merely to drown thought. A burning fever seized

him; after being stretched for seven days on a sick bed, in the

wild fancies of which he was fighting on the fields of Asia Minor

the battles of which the laurels were destined for Sulla, he

expired on the 13th Jan. 668. He died, more than seventy years

old, in full possession of what he called power and honour, and in

his bed; but Nemesis assumes various shapes, and does not always

expiate blood with blood. Was there no sort of retaliation in the

fact, that Rome and Italy now breathed more freely on the news of

the death of the famous saviour of the people than at the tidings

of the battle on the Raudine plain?

Even after his death individual incidents no doubt occurred, which

recalled that time of terror; Gaius Fimbria, for instance, who more

than any other during the Marian butcheries had dipped his hand in

blood, made an attempt at the very funeral of Marius to kill the

universally revered -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola (consul in

659) who had been spared even by Marius, and then, when Scaevola

recovered from the wound he had received, indicted him criminally

on account of the offence, as Fimbria jestingly expressed it, of

having not been willing to let himself be murdered. But the orgies

of murder at any rate were over. Sertorius called together the

Marian bandits, under pretext of giving them their pay, surrounded

them with his trusty Celtic troops, and caused them to be cut down

en masse to the number, according to the lowest estimate, of 4000.

Government of Cinna

Along with the reign of terror came the -tyrannis-. Cinna not

only stood at the head of the state for four years in succession

(667-670) as consul, but he regularly nominated himself and his

colleagues without consulting the people; it seemed as if these

democrats set aside the sovereign popular assembly with intentional

contempt. No other chief of the popular party, before or

afterwards, possessed so perfectly absolute a power in Italy

and in the greater part of the provinces for so long a time almost

undisturbed, as Cinna; but no one can be named, whose government

was so utterly worthless and aimless. The law proposed by

Sulpicius and thereafter by Cinna himself, which promised to

the new burgesses and the freedmen equality of suffrage with the

old burgesses, was naturally revived; and it was formally confirmed

by a decree of the senate as valid in law (670). Censors were

nominated (668) for the purpose of distributing all the Italians,

in accordance with it, into the thirty-five burgess-districts--by a

singular conjuncture, in consequence of a want of qualified

candidates for the censorship the same Philippus, who when consul

in 663 had chiefly occasioned the miscarriage of the plan of Drusus

for bestowing the franchise on the Italians,(8) was now selected

as censor to inscribe them in the burgess-rolls. The reactionary

institutions established by Sulla in 666 were of course overthrown.

Some steps were taken to please the proletariate--for instance,

the restrictions on the distribution of grain introduced some years

ago,(9) were probably now once more removed; the design of Gaius

Gracchus to found a colony at Capua was in reality carried out

in the spring of 671 on the proposal of the tribune of the people,

Marcus Junius Brutus; Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger

introduced a law as to debt, which reduced every private claim to

the fourth part of its nominal amount and cancelled three fourths

in favour of the debtors. But these measures, the only positive

ones during the whole Cinnan government, were without exception the

dictates of the moment; they were based--and this is perhaps the

most shocking feature in this whole catastrophe--not on a plan

possibly erroneous, but on no political plan at all. The populace

were caressed, and at the same time offended in a very unnecessary

way by a meaningless disregard of the constitutional arrangements

for election. The capitalist party might have furnished a support,

but it was injured in the most sensitive point by the law as to

debt. The true mainstay of the government was--wholly without

any cooperation on its part--the new burgesses; their assistance

was acquiesced in, but nothing was done to regulate the strange

position of the Samnites, who were now nominally Roman citizens,

but evidently regarded their country's independence as practically

the real object and prize of the struggle and remained in arms

to defend it against all and sundry. Illustrious senators were

struck down like mad dogs; but not the smallest step was taken to

reorganize the senate in the interest of the government, or even

permanently to terrify it; so that the government was by no means

sure of its aid. Gaius Gracchus had not understood the fall of the

oligarchy as implying that the new master might conduct himself on

his self-created throne, as legitimate cipher-kings think proper to

do. But this Cinna had been elevated to power not by his will, but

by pure accident; was there any wonder that he remained where the

storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second wave came

to sweep him away again?

Cinna and Sulla

Italy and the Provinces in Favour of the Government

The same union of the mightiest plenitude of power with the most

utter impotence and incapacity in those who held it, was apparent

in the warfare waged by the revolutionary government against the

oligarchy--a warfare on which withal its existence primarily

depended. In Italy it ruled with absolute sway. Of the old

burgesses a very large portion were on principle favourable to

democratic views; and the still greater mass of quiet people, while

disapproving the Marian horrors, saw in an oligarchic restoration

simply the commencement of a second reign of terror by the opposite

party. The impression of the outrages of 667 on the nation at

large had been comparatively slight, as they had chiefly affected

the mere aristocracy of the capital; and it was moreover somewhat

effaced by the three years of tolerably peaceful government that

ensued. Lastly the whole mass of the new burgesses--three-fifths

perhaps of the Italians--were decidedly, if not favourable to the

present government, yet opposed to the oligarchy.

Like Italy, most of the provinces adhered to the oligarchy--

Sicily, Sardinia, the two Gauls, the two Spains. In Africa

Quintus Metellus, who had fortunately escaped the murderers, made

an attempt to hold that province for the Optimates; Marcus Crassus,

the youngest son of the Publius Crassus who had perished in the

Marian massacre, resorted to him from Spain, and reinforced him

by a band which he had collected there. But on their quarrelling

with each other they were obliged to yield to Gaius Fabius Hadrianus,

the governor appointed by the revolutionary government. Asia

was in the hands of Mithradates; consequently the province of

Macedonia, so far as it was in the power of Sulla, remained the

only asylum of the exiled oligarchy. Sulla's wife and children

who had with difficulty escaped death, and not a few senators

who had made their escape, sought refuge there, so that a sort

of senate was soon formed at his head-quarters.

Measures against Sulla

The government did not fail to issue decrees against the oligarchic

proconsul. Sulla was deprived by the comitia of his command and of

his other honours and dignities and outlawed, as was also the case

with Metellus, Appius Claudius, and other refugees of note; his

house in Rome was razed, his country estates were laid waste.

But such proceedings did not settle the matter. Had Gaius Marius

lived longer, he would doubtless have marched in person against Sulla

to those fields whither the fevered visions of his death-bed drew him;

the measures which the government took after his death have been

stated already. Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger,(10) who after

Marius' death was invested with the consulship and the command in

the east (668), was neither soldier nor officer; Gaius Fimbria who

accompanied him was not without ability, but insubordinate; the

army assigned to them was even in numbers three times weaker than

the army of Sulla. Tidings successively arrived, that Flaccus, in

order not to be crushed by Sulla, had marched past him onward to

Asia (668); that Fimbria had set him aside and installed himself

in his room (beg. of 669); that Sulla had concluded peace with

Mithradates (669-670). Hitherto Sulla had been silent so far as

the authorities ruling in the capital were concerned. Now a letter

from him reached the senate, in which he reported the termination

of the war and announced his return to Italy; he stated that he

would respect the rights conferred on the new burgesses, and that,

while penal measures were inevitable, they would light not on the

masses, but on the authors of the mischief. This announcement

frightened Cinna out of his inaction: while he had hitherto taken

no step against Sulla except the placing some men under arms and

collecting a number of vessels in the Adriatic, he now resolved to

cross in all haste to Greece.

Attempts at a Compromise

Death of Cinna

Carbo and the New Burgesses Arm against Sulla

On the other hand Sulla's letter, which in the circumstances might

be called extremely moderate, awakened in the middle-party hopes

of a peaceful adjustment. The majority of the senate resolved,

on the proposal of the elder Flaccus, to set on foot an attempt

at reconciliation, and with that view to summon Sulla to come under

the guarantee of a safe-conduct to Italy, and to suggest to the

consuls Cinna and Carbo that they should suspend their preparations

till the arrival of Sulla's answer. Sulla did not absolutely

reject the proposals. Of course he did not come in person, but

he sent a message that he asked nothing but the restoration of

the banished to their former status and the judicial punishment of

the crimes that had been perpetrated, and moreover that he did not

desire security to be provided for himself, but proposed to bring

it to those who were at home. His envoys found the state of things

in Italy essentially altered. Cinna had, without concerning

himself further about that decree of the senate, immediately after

the termination of its sitting proceeded to the army and urged

it embarkation. The summons to trust themselves to the sea at

that unfavourable season of the year provoked among the already

dissatisfied troops in the head-quarters at Ancona a mutiny, to

which Cinna fell a victim (beg. of 670); whereupon his colleague

Carbo found himself compelled to bring back the divisions that had

already crossed and, abandoning the idea of taking up the war in

Greece, to enter into winter-quarters in Ariminum. But Sulla's

offers met no better reception on that account; the senate rejected

his proposals without even allowing the envoys to enter Rome, and

enjoined him summarily to lay down arms. It was not the coterie of

the Marians which primarily brought about this resolute attitude.

That faction was obliged to abandon its hitherto usurped occupation

of the supreme magistracy at the very time when it was of moment,

and again to institute consular elections for the decisive year

671. The suffrages on this occasion were united not in favour

of the former consul Carbo or of any of the able officers of the

hitherto ruling clique, such as Quintus Sertorius or Gaius Marius

the younger, but in favour of Lucius Scipio and Gaius Norbanus,

two incapables, neither of whom knew how to fight and Scipio not

even how to speak; the former of these recommended himself to the

multitude only as the great-grandson of the conqueror of Antiochus,

and the latter as a political opponent of the oligarchy.(11) The

Marians were not so much abhorred for their misdeeds as despised

for their incapacity; but if the nation would have nothing to do

with these, the great majority of it would have still less to do

with Sulla and an oligarchic restoration. Earnest measures of

self-defence were contemplated. While Sulla crossed to Asia and

induced such defection in the army of Fimbria that its leader

fell by his own hand, the government in Italy employed the further

interval of a year granted to it by these steps of Sulla in

energetic preparations; it is said that at Sulla's landing 100,000

men, and afterwards even double that number of troops, were arrayed

in arms against him.

Difficult Position of Sulla

Against this Italian force Sulla had nothing to place in the scale

except his five legions, which, even including some contingents

levied in Macedonia and the Peloponnesus, probably amounted to

scarce 40,000 men. It is true that this army had been, during

its seven years' conflicts in Italy, Greece, and Asia, weaned from

politics, and adhered to its general--who pardoned everything in

his soldiers, debauchery, brutality, even mutiny against their

officers, required nothing but valour and fidelity towards their

general, and set before them the prospect of the most extravagant

rewards in the event of victory--with all that soldierly

enthusiasm, which is the more powerful that the noblest and the

meanest passions often combine to produce it in the same breast.

The soldiers of Sulla voluntarily according to the Roman custom

swore mutual oaths that they would stand firmly by each other, and

each voluntarily brought to the general his savings as a contribution

to the costs of the war. But considerable as was the weight

of this solid and select body of troops in comparison with the

masses of the enemy, Sulla saw very well that Italy could not

be subdued with five legions if it remained united in resolute

resistance. To settle accounts with the popular party and their

incapable autocrats would not have been difficult; but he saw

opposed to him and united with that party the whole mass of those

who desired no oligarchic restoration with its terrors, and above

all the whole body of new burgesses--both those who had been

withheld by the Julian law from taking part in the insurrection,

and those whose revolt a few years before had brought Rome to

the brink of ruin.

His Moderation

Sulla fully surveyed the situation of affairs, and was far

removed from the blind exasperation and the obstinate rigour which

characterized the majority of his party. While the edifice of the

state was in flames, while his friends were being murdered, his

houses destroyed, his family driven into exile, he had remained

undisturbed at his post till the public foe was conquered and the

Roman frontier was secured. He now treated Italian affairs in the

same spirit of patriotic and judicious moderation, and did whatever

he could to pacify the moderate party and the new burgesses, and

to prevent the civil war from assuming the far more dangerous form

of a fresh war between the Old Romans and the Italian allies.

The first letter which Sulla addressed to the senate had asked

nothing but what was right and just, and had expressly disclaimed

a reign of terror. In harmony with its terms, he now presented

the prospect of unconditional pardon to all those who should even

now break off from the revolutionary government, and caused his

soldiers man by man to swear that they would meet the Italians

thoroughly as friends and fellow-citizens. The most binding

declarations secured to the new burgesses the political rights

which they had acquired; so that Carbo, for that reason, wished

hostages to be furnished to him by every civic community in Italy,

but the proposal broke down under general indignation and under the

opposition of the senate. The chief difficulty in the position of

Sulla really consisted in the fact, that in consequence of the

faithlessness and perfidy which prevailed the new burgesses had

every reason, if not to suspect his personal designs, to doubt at

any rate whether he would be able to induce his party to keep their

word after the victory.

Sulla Lands in Italy

And Is Reinforced by Partisans and Deserters

In the spring of 671 Sulla landed with his legions in the port

of Brundisium. The senate, on receiving the news, declared the

commonwealth in danger, and committed to the consuls unlimited

powers; but these incapable leaders had not looked before them,

and were surprised by a landing which had nevertheless been

foreseen for years. The army was still at Ariminum, the ports

were not garrisoned, and--what is almost incredible--there was

not a man under arms at all along the whole south-eastern coast.

The consequences were soon apparent Brundisium itself, a considerable

community of new burgesses, at once opened its gates without

resistance to the oligarchic general, and all Messapia and Apulia

followed its example. The army marched through these regions as

through a friendly country, and mindful of its oath uniformly

maintained the strictest discipline. From all sides the scattered

remnant of the Optimate party flocked to the camp of Sulla.

Quintus Metellus came from the mountain ravines of Liguria, whither

he had made his escape from Africa, and resumed, as colleague of

Sulla, the proconsular command committed to him in 667,(12) and

withdrawn from him by the revolution. Marcus Crassus in like

manner appeared from Africa with a small band of armed men. Most

of the Optimates, indeed, came as emigrants of quality with great

pretensions and small desire for fighting, so that they had to

listen to bitter language from Sulla himself regarding the noble

lords who wished to have themselves preserved for the good of the

state and could not even be brought to arm their slaves. It was of

more importance, that deserters already made their appearance from

the democratic camp--for instance, the refined and respected Lucius

Philippus, who was, along with one or two notoriously incapable

persons, the only consular that had come to terms with the

revolutionary government and accepted offices under it He met with

the most gracious reception from Sulla, and obtained the honourable

and easy charge of occupying for him the province of Sardinia.

Quintus Lucretius Ofella and other serviceable officers were

likewise received and at once employed; even Publius Cethegus,

one of the senators banished after the Sulpician -emeute- by Sulla,

obtained pardon and a position in the army.

Pompeius

Still more important than these individual accessions was the gain

of the district of Picenum, which was substantially due to the son

of Strabo, the young Gnaeus Pompeius. The latter, like his father

originally no adherent of the oligarchy, had acknowledged the

revolutionary government and even taken service in Cinna's army;

but in his case the fact was not forgotten, that his father had

borne arms against the revolution; he found himself assailed in

various forms and even threatened with the loss of his very

considerable wealth by an indictment charging him to give up

the booty which was, or was alleged to have been, embezzled by his

father after the capture of Asculum. The protection of the consul

Carbo, who was personally attached to him, still more than the

eloquence of the consular Lucius Philippus and of the young

Quintus Hortensius, averted from him financial ruin; but the

dissatisfaction remained. On the news of Sulla's landing he

went to Picenum, where he had extensive possessions and the best

municipal connections derived from his father and the Social war,

and set up the standard of the Optimate party in Auximum (Osimo).

The district, which was mostly inhabited by old burgesses, joined

him; the young men, many of whom had served with him under his

father, readily ranged themselves under the courageous leader who,

not yet twenty-three years of age, was as much soldier as general,

sprang to the front of his cavalry in combat, and vigorously

assailed the enemy along with them. The corps of Picenian

volunteers soon grew to three legions; divisions under Cloelius,

Gaius Carrinas, Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus,(13) were

despatched from the capital to put down the Picenian insurrection,

but the extemporized general, dexterously taking advantage of the

dissensions that arose among them, had the skill to evade them or

to beat them in detail and to effect his junction with the main

army of Sulla, apparently in Apulia. Sulla saluted him as

-imperator-, that is, as an officer commanding in his own name

and not subordinate but co-ordinate, and distinguished the youth

by marks of honour such as he showed to none of his noble

clients--presumably not without the collateral design of thereby

administering an indirect rebuke to the lack of energetic character

among his own partisans.

Sulla in Campania Opposed by Norbanus and Scipio

Sulla Gains a Victory over Norbanus at Mount Tifata

Defection of Scipio's Army

Reinforced thus considerably both in a moral and material point

of view, Sulla and Metellus marched from Apulia through the still

insurgent Samnite districts towards Campania. The main force of

the enemy also proceeded thither, and it seemed as if the matter

could not but there be brought to a decision. The army of the

consul Gaius Norbanus was already at Capua, where the new colony

had just established itself with all democratic pomp; the second

consular army was likewise advancing along the Appian road. But,

before it arrived, Sulla was in front of Norbanus. A last attempt

at mediation, which Sulla made, led only to the arrest of his

envoys. With fresh indignation his veteran troops threw themselves

on the enemy; their vehement charge down from Mount Tifata at the

first onset broke the enemy drawn up in the plain; with the remnant

of his force Norbanus threw himself into the revolutionary colony

of Capua and the new-burgess town of Neapolis, and allowed himself

to be blockaded there. Sulla's troops, hitherto not without

apprehension as they compared their weak numbers with the masses

of the enemy, had by this victory gained a full conviction of their

military superiority, instead of pausing to besiege the remains of

the defeated army, Sulla left the towns where they took shelter to

be invested, and advanced along the Appian highway against Teanum,

where Scipio was posted. To him also, before beginning battle,

he made fresh proposals for peace; apparently in good earnest.

Scipio, weak as he was, entered into them; an armistice was

concluded; between Cales and Teanum the two generals, both members

of the same noble -gens-, both men of culture and refinement

and for many years colleagues in the senate, met in personal

conference; they entered upon the several questions; they had

already made such progress, that Scipio despatched a messenger

to Capua to procure the opinion of his colleague. Meanwhile the

soldiers of the two camps mingled; the Sullans, copiously furnished

with money by their general, had no great difficulty in persuading

the recruits--not too eager for warfare--over their cups that it

was better to have them as comrades than as foes; in vain Sertorius

warned the general to put a stop to this dangerous intercourse.

The agreement, which had seemed so near, was not effected; it was

Scipio who denounced the armistice. But Sulla maintained that it

was too late and that the agreement had been already concluded;

whereupon Scipio's soldiers, under the pretext that their general

had wrongfully denounced the armistice, passed over en masse to the

ranks of the enemy. The scene closed with an universal embracing,

at which the commanding officers of the revolutionary army had to

look on. Sulla gave orders that the consul should be summoned to

resign his office--which he did--and should along with his staff be

escorted by his cavalry to whatever point they desired; but Scipio

was hardly set at liberty when he resumed the insignia of his

dignity and began afresh to collect troops, without however

executing anything further of moment. Sulla and Metellus took

up winter-quarters in Campania and, after the failure of a second

attempt to come to terms with Norbanus, maintained the blockade

of Capua during the winter.

Preparations on Either Side

The results of the first campaign in favour of Sulla were the

submission of Apulia, Picenum, and Campania, the dissolution of

the one, and the vanquishing and blockading of the other, consular

army. The Italian communities, compelled severally to choose

between their twofold oppressors, already in numerous instances

entered into negotiations with him, and caused the political

rights, which had been won from the opposition party, to be

guaranteed to them by formal separate treaties on the part

of the general of the oligarchy. Sulla cherished the distinct

expectation, and intentionally made boast of it, that he would

overthrow the revolutionary government in the next campaign and

again march into Rome.

But despair seemed to furnish the revolution with fresh energies.

The consulship was committed to two of its most decided leaders,

to Carbo for the third time and to Gaius Marius the younger; the

circumstance that the latter, who was just twenty years of age,

could not legally be invested with the consulship, was as little

heeded as any other point of the constitution. Quintus Sertorius,

who in this and other matters proved an inconvenient critic, was

ordered to proceed to Etruria with a view to procure new levies,

and thence to his province Hither Spain. To replenish the

treasury, the senate was obliged to decree the melting down of

the gold and silver vessels of the temples in the capital; how

considerable the produce was, is clear from the fact that after

several months' warfare there was still on hand nearly 600,000

pounds (14,000 pounds of gold and 6000 pounds of silver). In the

considerable portion of Italy, which still voluntarily or under

compulsion adhered to the revolution, warlike preparations were

prosecuted with vigour. Newly-formed divisions of some strength

came from Etruria, where the communities of new burgesses were very

numerous, and from the region of the Po. The veterans of Marius

in great numbers ranged themselves under the standards at the call

of his son. But nowhere were preparations made for the struggle

against Sulla with such eagerness as in the insurgent Samnium and

some districts of Lucania. It was owing to anything but devotion

towards the revolutionary Roman government, that numerous

contingents from the Oscan districts reinforced their armies;

but it was well understood there that an oligarchy restored by

Sulla would not acquiesce, like the lax Cinnan government, in

the independence of these lands as now de facto subsisting; and

therefore the primitive rivalry between the Sabellians and

the Latins was roused afresh in the struggle against Sulla.

For Samnium and Latium this war was as much a national struggle

as the wars of the fifth century; they strove not for a greater

or less amount of political rights, but for the purpose of appeasing

long-suppressed hate by the annihilation of their antagonist.

It was no wonder, therefore, that the war in this region bore

a character altogether different from the conflicts elsewhere,

that no compromise was attempted there, that no quarter was given

or taken, and that the pursuit was continued to the very uttermost.

Thus the campaign of 672 was begun on both sides with augmented

military resources and increased animosity. The revolution in

particular threw away the scabbard: at the suggestion of Carbo

the Roman comitia outlawed all the senators that should be found

in Sulla's camp. Sulla was silent; he probably thought that

they were pronouncing sentence beforehand on themselves.

Sulla Proceeds to Latium to Oppose the Younger Marius

His Victory at Sacriportus

Democratic Massacres in Rome

The army of the Optimates was divided. The proconsul Metellus

undertook, resting on the support of the Picenian insurrection, to

advance to Upper Italy, while Sulla marched from Campania straight

against the capital. Carbo threw himself in the way of the former;

Marius would encounter the main army of the enemy in Latium.

Advancing along the Via Latina, Sulla fell in with the enemy not

far from Signia; they retired before him as far as the so-called

"Port of Sacer," between Signia and the chief stronghold of the

Marians, the strong Praeneste. There Marius drew up his force for

battle. His army was about 40,000 strong, and he was in savage

fury and personal bravery the true son of his father; but his

troops were not the well trained bands with which the latter had

fought his battles, and still less might this inexperienced young

man bear comparison with the old master of war. His troops soon

gave way; the defection of a division even during the battle

accelerated the defeat. More than the half of the Marians were

dead or prisoners; the remnant, unable either to keep the field or

to gain the other bank of the Tiber, was compelled to seek

protection in the neighbouring fortresses; the capital, which they

had neglected to provision, was irrecoverably lost. In consequence

of this Marius gave orders to Lucius Brutus Damasippus, the praetor

commanding there, to evacuate it, but before doing so to put to

death all the esteemed men, hitherto spared, of the opposite party.

This injunction, by which the son even outdid the proscriptions of

his father, was carried into effect; Damasippus made a pretext for

convoking the senate, and the marked men were struck down partly in

the sitting itself, partly on their flight from the senate-house.

Notwithstanding the thorough clearance previously effected, there

were still found several victims of note. Such were the former

aedile Publius Antistius, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius,

and the former praetor Gaius Carbo, son of the well-known friend

and subsequent opponent of the Gracchi,(14) since the death of

so many men of more distinguished talent the two best orators in

the judicial courts of the desolated Forum; the consular Lucius

Domitius, and above all the venerable -pontifex maximus- Quintus

Scaevola, who had escaped the dagger of Fimbria only to bleed to

death during these last throes of the revolution in the vestibule

of the temple of Vesta entrusted to his guardianship. With

speechlesshorror the multitude saw the corpses of these last

victims of the reign of terror dragged through the streets,

and thrown into the river.

Siege of Praeneste

Occupation of Rome

The broken bands of Marius threw themselves into the neighbouring

and strong cities of new burgesses Norba and Praeneste: Marius in

person with the treasure and the greater part of the fugitives

entered the latter. Sulla left an able officer, Quintus Ofella,

before Praeneste just as he had done in the previous year before

Capua, with instructions not to expend his strength in the siege

of the strong town, but to enclose it with an extended line of

blockade and starve it into surrender. He himself advanced from

different sides upon the capital, which as well as the whole

surrounding district he found abandoned by the enemy, and occupied

without resistance. He barely took time to compose the minds of

the people by an address and to make the most necessary arrangements,

and immediately passed on to Etruria, that in concert with Metellus

he might dislodge his antagonists from Northern Italy.

Metellus against Carbo in Northern Italy

Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

Metellus had meanwhile encountered and defeated Carbo's lieutenant

Carrinas at the river Aesis (Esino between Ancona and Sinigaglia),

which separated the district of Picenum from the Gallic province;

when Carbo in person came up with his superior army, Metellus had

been obliged to abstain from any farther advance. But on the news

of the battle at Sacriportus, Carbo, anxious about his communications,

had retreated to the Flaminian road, with a view to take up his

headquarters at the meeting-point of Ariminum, and from that point

to hold the passes of the Apennines on the one hand and the valley

of the Po on the other. In this retrograde movement different

divisions fell into the hands of the enemy, and not only so,

but Sena Gallica was stormed and Carbo's rearguard was broken

in a brilliant cavalry engagement by Pompeius; nevertheless Carbo

attained on the whole his object. The consular Norbanus took

the command in the valley of the Po; Carbo himself proceeded to

Etruria. But the march of Sulla with his victorious legions to

Etruria altered the position of affairs; soon three Sullan armies

from Gaul, Umbria, and Rome established communications with each

other. Metellus with the fleet went past Ariminum to Ravenna, and

at Faventia cut off the communication between Ariminum and the

valley of the Po, into which he sent forward a division along the

great road to Placentia under Marcus Lucullus, the quaestor of

Sulla and brother of his admiral in the Mithradatic war. The young

Pompeius and his contemporary and rival Crassus penetrated from

Picenum by mountain-paths into Umbria and gained the Flaminian road

at Spoletium, where they defeated Carbo's legate Carrinas and shut

him up in the town; he succeeded, however, in escaping from it on

a rainy night and making his way, though not without loss, to the

army of Carbo. Sulla himself marched from Rome into Etruria with

his army in two divisions, one of which advancing along the coast

defeated the corps opposed to it at Saturnia (between the rivers

Ombrone and Albegna); the second led by Sulla in person fell in

with the army of Carbo in the valley of the Clanis, and sustained

a successful conflict with his Spanish cavalry. But the pitched

battle which was fought between Carbo and Sulla in the region of

Chiusi, although it ended without being properly decisive, was

so far at any rate in favour of Carbo that Sulla's victorious

advance was checked.

Conflicts about Praeneste

In the vicinity of Rome also events appeared to assume a more

favourable turn for the revolutionary party, and the war seemed

as if it would again be drawn chiefly towards this region.

For, while the oligarchic party were concentrating all their

energies on Etruria, the democracy everywhere put forth the utmost

efforts to break the blockade of Praeneste. Even the governor of

Sicily Marcus Perpenna set out for that purpose; it does not appear,

however, that he reached Praeneste. Nor was the very considerable

corps under Marcius, detached by Carbo, more successful in this;

assailed and defeated by the troops of the enemy which were at

Spoletium, demoralized by disorder, want of supplies, and mutiny,

one portion went back to Carbo, another to Ariminum; the rest

dispersed. Help in earnest on the other hand came from Southern

Italy. There the Samnites under Pontius of Telesia, and the

Lucanians under their experienced general Marcus Lamponius, set

out without its being possible to prevent their departure, were

joined in Campania where Capua still held out by a division of

the garrison under Gutta, and thus to the number, it was said, of

70,000 marched upon Praeneste. Thereupon Sulla himself, leaving

behind a corps against Carbo, returned to Latium and took up a

well-chosen position in the defiles in front of Praeneste, where

he barred the route of the relieving army.(15) In vain the garrison

attempted to break through the lines of Ofella, in vain the

relieving army attempted to dislodge Sulla; both remained

immoveable in their strong positions, even after Damasippus,

sent by Carbo, had reinforced the relieving army with two legions.

Successes of the Sullans in Upper Italy

Etruria Occupied by the Sullans

But while the war stood still in Etruria and in Latium, matters

came to a decision in the valley of the Po. There the general of

the democracy, Gaius Norbanus, had hitherto maintained the upper

hand, had attacked Marcus Lucullus the legate of Metellus with

superior force and compelled him to shut himself up in Placentia,

and had at length turned against Metellus in person. He encountered

the latter at Faventia, and immediately made his attack late in

the afternoon with his troops fatigued by their march; the consequence

was a complete defeat and the total breaking up of his corps, of which

only about 1000 men returned to Etruria. On the news of this battle

Lucullus sallied from Placentia, and defeated the division left behind

to oppose him at Fidentia (between Piacenza and Parma). The Lucanian

troops of Albinovanus deserted in a body: their leader made up

for his hesitation at first by inviting the chief officers of

the revolutionary army to banquet with him and causing them to be

put to death; in general every one, who at all could, now concluded

his peace. Ariminum with all its stores and treasures fell into the

power of Metellus; Norbanus embarked for Rhodes; the whole land between

the Alps and Apennines acknowledged the government of the Optimates.

The troops hitherto employed there were enabled to turn to the attack

of Etruria, the last province where their antagonists still kept

the field. When Carbo received this news in the camp at Clusium,

he lost his self-command; although he had still a considerable body

of troops under his orders, he secretly escaped from his headquarters

and embarked for Africa. Part of his abandoned troops followed the

example which their general had set, and went home; part of them were

destroyed by Pompeius: Carrinas gathered together the remainder and

led them to Latium to join the army of Praeneste. There no change

had in the meanwhile taken place; and the final decision drew nigh.

The troops of Carrinas were not numerous enough to shake Sulla's

position; the vanguard of the army of the oligarchic party,

hitherto employed in Etruria, was approaching under Pompeius;

in a few days the net would be drawn tight around the army of

the democrats and the Samnites.

The Samnites and Democrats Attack Rome

Battle at the Colline Gate

Slaughter of the Prisoners

Its leaders then determined to desist from the relief of Praeneste

and to throw themselves with all their united strength on Rome,

which was only a good day's march distant. By so doing they were,

in a military point of view, ruined; their line of retreat, the

Latin road, would by such a movement fall into Sulla's hands;

and even if they got possession of Rome, they would be infallibly

crushed there, enclosed within a city by no means fitted for

defence, and wedged in between the far superior armies of Metellus

and Sulla. Safety, however, was no longer thought of; revenge

alone dictated this march to Rome, the last outbreak of fury in

the passionate revolutionists and especially in the despairing

Sabellian nation. Pontius of Telesia was in earnest, when he

called out to his followers that, in order to get rid of the wolves

which had robbed Italy of freedom, the forest in which they

harboured must be destroyed. Never was Rome in a more fearful

peril than on the 1st November 672, when Pontius, Lamponius,

Carrinas, Damasippus advanced along the Latin road towards Rome,

and encamped about a mile from the Colline gate. It was threatened

with a day like the 20th July 365 u. c. or the 15th June 455 a. d.--

the days of the Celts and the Vandals. The time was gone by when

a coup de main against Rome was a foolish enterprise, and the

assailants could have no want of connections in the capital.

The band of volunteers which sallied from the city, mostly youths

of quality, was scattered like chaff before the immense superiority

of force. The only hope of safety rested on Sulla. The latter,

on receiving accounts of the departure of the Samnite army in

the direction of Rome, had likewise set out in all haste to the

assistance of the capital. The appearance of his foremost horsemen

under Balbus in the course of the morning revived the sinking

courage of the citizens; about midday he appeared in person with

his main force, and immediately drew up his ranks for battle at

the temple of the Erycine Aphrodite before the Colline gate (not

far from Porta Pia). His lieutenants adjured him not to send the

troops exhausted by the forced march at once into action; but Sulla

took into consideration what the night might bring on Rome, and,

late as it was in the afternoon, ordered the attack. The battle

was obstinately contested and bloody. The left wing of Sulla,

which he led in person, gave way as far as the city wall, so that

it became necessary to close the city gates; stragglers even

brought accounts to Ofella that the battle was lost. But on the

right wing Marcus Crassus overthrew the enemy and pursued him as

far as Antemnae; this somewhat relieved the left wing also, and an

hour after sunset it in turn began to advance. The fight continued

the whole night and even on the following morning; it was only the

defection of a division of 3000 men, who immediately turned their

arms against their former comrades, that put an end to the

struggle. Rome was saved. The army of the insurgents, for which

there was no retreat, was completely extirpated. The prisoners

taken in the battle--between 3000 and 4000 in number, including the

generals Damasippus, Carrinas, and the severely-wounded Pontius--

were by Sulla's orders on the third day after the battle brought to

the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius and there massacred to the

last man, so that the clatter of arms and the groans of the dying

were distinctly heard in the neighbouring temple of Bellona, where

Sulla was just holding a meeting of the senate. It was a ghastly

execution, and it ought not to be excused; but it is not right to

forget that those very men who perished there had fallen like a

band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and, had they

found time, would have destroyed them as far as fire and sword

can destroy a city and its citizens.

Sieges

Praeneste

Norba

Nola

With this battle the war was, in the main, at an end. The garrison

of Praeneste surrendered, when it learned the issue of the battle

of Rome from the heads of Carrinas and other officers thrown over

the walls. The leaders, the consul Gaius Marius and the son of

Pontius, after having failed in an attempt to escape, fell on each

other's swords. The multitude cherished the hope, in which it

was confirmed by Cethegus, that the victor would even now have

mercy upon them. But the times of mercy were past. The more

unconditionally Sulla had up to the last moment granted full pardon

to those who came over to him, the more inexorable he showed

himself toward the leaders and communities that had held out to

the end. Of the Praenestine prisoners, 12,000 in number, most

of the Romans and individual Praenestines as well as the women

and children were released, but the Roman senators, almost all

the Praenestines and the whole of the Samnites, were disarmed and

cut to pieces; and the rich city was given up to pillage. It was

natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new burgesses

which had not yet passed over should continue their resistance with

the utmost obstinacy. In the Latin town of Norba for instance,

when Aemilius Lepidus got into it by treason, the citizens killed

each other and set fire themselves to their town, solely in order

to deprive their executioners of vengeance and of booty. In Lower

Italy Neapolis had already been taken by assault, and Capua had,

as it would seem, been voluntarily surrendered; but Nola was only

evacuated by the Samnites in 674. On his flight from Nola the last

surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the

insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned

by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had

hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the

door of his own house. As to the Samnites, the dictator declared

that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed, and that

the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated from the earth; and,

as he verified these words in terrible fashion on the prisoners

taken before Rome and in Praeneste, so he appears to have also

undertaken a raid for the purpose of laying waste the country,

to have captured Aesernia(16) (674?), and to have converted that

hitherto flourishing and populous region into the desert which it

has since remained. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed

by Marcus Crassus. A longer resistance was offered in Etruria

by Populonium and above all by the impregnable Volaterrae, which

gathered out of the remains of the beaten party an army of four

legions, and stood a two years' siege conducted first by Sulla

in person and then by the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother

of the democratic consul, till at length in the third year after

the battle at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on

condition of free departure. But in this terrible time neither

military law nor military discipline was regarded; the soldiers

raised a cry of treason and stoned their too compliant general; a

troop of horse sent by the Roman government cut down the garrison

as it withdrew in terms of the capitulation. The victorious army

was distributed throughout Italy, and all the insecure townships

were furnished with strong garrisons: under the iron hand of the

Sullan officers the last palpitations of the revolutionary and

national opposition slowly died away.

The Provinces

There was still work to be done in the provinces. Sardinia had

been speedily wrested by Lucius Philippus from the governor of the

revolutionary government Quintus Antonius (672), and Transalpine

Gaul offered little or no resistance; but in Sicily, Spain, and

Africa the cause of the party defeated in Italy seemed still by

no means lost. Sicily was held for them by the trustworthy governor

Marcus Perpenna. Quintus Sertorius had the skill to attach to

himself the provincials in Hither Spain, and to form from among the

Romans settled in that quarter a not inconsiderable army, which in

the first instance closed the passes of the Pyrenees: in this he

had given fresh proof that, wherever he was stationed, he was in

his place, and amidst all the incapables of the revolution was the

only man practically useful. In Africa the governor Hadrianus, who

followed out the work of revolutionizing too thoroughly and began

to give liberty to the slaves, had been, on occasion of a tumult

instigated by the Roman merchants of Utica, attacked in his

official residence and burnt with his attendants (672); nevertheless

the province adhered to the revolutionary government, and Cinna's

son-in-law, the young and able Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus,

was invested with the supreme command there. Propagandism had

even been carried from thence into the client-states, Numidia

and Mauretania. Their legitimate rulers, Hiempsal II son of Gauda,

and Bogud son of Bocchus, adhered doubtless to Sulla; but with the

aid of the Cinnans the former had been dethroned by the democratic

pretender Hiarbas, and similar feuds agitated the Mauretanian

kingdom. The consul Carbo who had fled from Italy tarried on the

island Cossyra (Pantellaria) between Africa and Sicily, at a loss,

apparently, whether he should flee to Egypt or should attempt to

renew the struggle in one of the faithful provinces.

Spain

Sertorius Embarks

Sulla sent to Spain Gaius Annius and Gaius Valerius Flaccus,

the former as governor of Further Spain, the latter as governor

of the province of the Ebro. They were spared the difficult task

of opening up the passes of the Pyrenees by force, in consequence

of the general who was sent thither by Sertorius having been killed

by one of his officers and his troops having thereafter melted away.

Sertorius, much too weak to maintain an equal struggle, hastily

collected the nearest divisions and embarked at New Carthage--for

what destination he knew not himself, perhaps for the coast of

Africa, or for the Canary Islands--it mattered little whither,

provided only Sulla's arm did not reach him. Spain then willingly

submitted to the Sullan magistrates (about 673) and Flaccus fought

successfully with the Celts, through whose territory he marched,

and with the Spanish Celtiberians (674).

Sicily

Gnaeus Pompeius was sent as propraetor to Sicily, and, when he

appeared on the coast with 120 sail and six legions, the island was

evacuated by Perpenna without resistance. Pompeius sent a squadron

thence to Cossyra, which captured the Marian officers sojourning

there. Marcus Brutus and the others were immediately executed;

but Pompeius had enjoined that the consul Carbo should be brought

before himself at Lilybaeum in order that, unmindful of the

protection accorded to him in a season of peril by that very

man,(17) he might personally hand him over to the executioner (672).

Africa

Having been ordered to go on to Africa, Pompeius with his

army which was certainly far more numerous, defeated the not

inconsiderable forces collected by Ahenobarbus and Hiarbas, and,

declining for the time to be saluted as -imperator-, he at once

gave the signal for assault on the hostile camp. He thus became

master of the enemy in one day; Ahenobarbus was among the fallen:

with the aid of king Bogud, Hiarbas was seized and slain at Bulla,

and Hiempsal was reinstated in his hereditary kingdom; a great

razzia against the inhabitants of the desert, among whom a number

of Gaetulian tribes recognized as free by Marius were made subject

to Hiempsal, revived in Africa also the fallen repute of the Roman

name: in forty days after the landing of Pompeius in Africa all was

at an end (674?). The senate instructed him to break up his army--

an implied hint that he was not to be allowed a triumph, to which

as an extraordinary magistrate he could according to precedent make

no claim. The general murmured secretly, the soldiers loudly; it

seemed for a moment as if the African army would revolt against the

senate and Sulla would have to take the field against his son-in-

law. But Sulla yielded, and allowed the young man to boast of

being the only Roman who had become a triumphator before he was

a senator (12 March 675); in fact the "Fortunate," not perhaps

without a touch of irony, saluted the youth on his return from

these easy exploits as the "Great."

Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

In the east also, after the embarkation of Sulla in the spring of

671, there had been no cessation of warfare. The restoration of

the old state of things and the subjugation of individual towns

cost in Asia as in Italy various bloody struggles. Against the

free city of Mytilene in particular Lucius Lucullus was obliged

at length to bring up troops, after having exhausted all gentler

measures; and even a victory in the open field did not put an end

to the obstinate resistance of the citizens.

Meanwhile the Roman governor of Asia, Lucius Murena, had fallen

into fresh difficulties with king Mithradates. The latter had

since the peace busied himself in strengthening anew his rule,

which was shaken even in the northern provinces; he had pacified

the Colchians by appointing his able son Mithradates as their

governor; he had then made away with that son, and was now preparing

for an expedition into his Bosporan kingdom. The assurances of

Archelaus who had meanwhile been obliged to seek an asylum with

Murena,(18) that these preparations were directed against Rome,

induced Murena, under the pretext that Mithradates still kept

possession of Cappadocian frontier districts, to move his troops

towards the Cappadocian Comana and thus to violate the Pontic

frontier (671). Mithradates contented himself with complaining

to Murena and, when this was in vain, to the Roman government.

In fact commissioners from Sulla made their appearance to dissuade

the governor, but he did not submit; on the contrary he crossed

the Halys and entered on the undisputed territory of Pontus,

whereupon Mithradates resolved to repel force by force. His general

Gordius had to detain the Roman army till the king came up with

far superior forces and compelled battle; Murena was vanquished

and with great loss driven back over the Roman frontier to Phrygia,

and the Roman garrisons were expelled from all Cappadocia. Murena

had the effrontery, no doubt, to call himself the victor and to

assume the title of -imperator- on account of these events (672);

but the sharp lesson and a second admonition from Sulla induced

him at last to push the matter no farther; the peace between

Rome and Mithradates was renewed (673).

Second Peace

Capture of Mytilene

This foolish feud, while it lasted, had postponed the reduction

of the Mytilenaeans; it was only after a long siege by land and

by sea, in which the Bithynian fleet rendered good service, that

Murena's successor succeeded in taking the city by storm (675).

General Peace

The ten years' revolution and insurrection were at an end in the

west and in the east; the state had once more unity of government

and peace without and within. After the terrible convulsions of

the last years even this rest was a relief. Whether it was to

furnish more than a mere relief; whether the remarkable man, who

had succeeded in the difficult task of vanquishing the public foe

and in the more difficult work of subduing the revolution, would

be able to meet satisfactorily the most difficult task of all--

the re-establishing of social and political order shaken to its

very foundations--could not but be speedily decided

CHAPTER X

The Sullan Constitution

The Restoration

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between

Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable

temple, which had been erected by the kings, dedicated by the

youthful republic, and spared by the storms of five hundred years--

the temple of the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol--perished in the flames.

It was no augury, but it was an image of the state of the Roman

constitution. This, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruction.

The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the victory was far

from implying as a matter of course the restoration of the old

government. The mass of the aristocracy certainly was of opinion

that now, after the death of the two revolutionary consuls, it would

be sufficient to make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental

election and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should

seem farther requisite for the rewarding of the victorious army, for

the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists, and possibly also

for the prevention of similar outbreaks. But Sulla, in whose hands

the victory had concentrated for the moment all power, formed a

more correct judgment of affairs and of men. The aristocracy of

Rome in its best epoch had not risen above an adherence--partly

noble and partly narrow--to traditional forms; how should the clumsy

collegiate government of this period be in a position to carry out

with energy and thoroughness a comprehensive reform of the state?

And at the present moment, when the last crisis had swept away

almost all the leading men of the senate, the vigour and intelligence

requisite for such an enterprise were less than ever to be found there.

How thoroughly useless was the pure aristocratic blood, and how little

doubt Sulla had as to its worthlessness, is shown by the fact that,

with the exception of Quintus Metellus who was related to him by marriage,

he selected all his instruments out of what was previously the middle

party and the deserters from the democratic camp--such as Lucius

Flaccus, Lucius Philippus, Quintus Ofella, Gnaeus Pompeius.

Sulla was as much in earnest about the re-establishment of the old

constitution as the most vehement aristocratic emigrant; he understood

however, not perhaps to the full extent--for how in that case could

he have put hand to the work at all?--but better at any rate than

his party, the enormous difficulties which attended this work of

restoration. Comprehensive concessions so far as concession was

possible without affecting the essence of oligarchy, and the

establishment of an energetic system of repression and prevention,

were regarded by him as unavoidable; and he saw clearly that the senate

as it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and would

parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstruction. If Sulla had

already after the Sulpician revolution carried out what he deemed

necessary in both respects without asking much of their advice, he

was now determined, under circumstances of far more severe and intense

excitement, to restore the oligarchy--not with the aid, but in spite,

of the oligarchs--by his own hand.

Sulla Regent of Rome

Sulla, however, was not now consul as he had been then, but was

furnished merely with proconsular, that is to say, purely military

power: he needed an authority keeping as near as possible to

constitutional forms, but yet extraordinary, in order to impose his

reform on friends and foes. In a letter to the senate he announced

to them that it seemed to him indispensable that they should place

the regulation of the state in the hands of a single man equipped

with unlimited plenitude of power, and that he deemed himself qualified

to fulfil this difficult task. This proposal, disagreeable as it was

to many, was under the existing circumstances a command. By direction

of the senate its chief, the interrex Lucius Valerius Flaccus the

father, as interim holder of the supreme power, submitted to the

burgesses the proposal that the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla

should receive for the past a supplementary approval of all the

official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and should

for the future be empowered to adjudicate without appeal on the life

and property of the burgesses, to deal at his pleasure with the

state-domains, to shift at discretion the boundaries of Rome, of

Italy, and of the state, to dissolve or establish urban communities

in Italy, to dispose of the provinces and dependent states, to confer

the supreme -imperium- instead of the people and to nominate proconsuls

and propraetors, and lastly to regulate the state for the future by

means of new laws; that it should be left to his own judgment to

determine when he had fulfilled his task and might deem it time to

resign this extraordinary magistracy; and, in fine, that during its

continuance it should depend on his pleasure whether the ordinary

supreme magistracy should subsist side by side with his own or should

remain in abeyance. As a matter of course, the proposal was adopted

without opposition (Nov. 672); and now the new master of the state,

who hitherto had as proconsul avoided entering the capital, appeared

for the first time within the walls of Rome. This new office derived

its name from the dictatorship, which had been practically abolished

since the Hannibalic war;(1) but, as besides his armed retinue he was

preceded by twice as many lictors as the dictator of earlier times,

this new "dictatorship for the making of laws and the regulation of

the commonwealth," as its official title ran, was in fact altogether

different from the earlier magistracy which had been limited in point

of duration and of powers, had not excluded appeal to the burgesses,

and had not annulled the ordinary magistracy. It much more resembled

that of the -decemviri legibus scribundis-, who likewise came forward

as an extraordinary government with unlimited fulness of powers

superseding the ordinary magistracy, and practically at least

administered their office as one which was unlimited in point of

time. Or, we should rather say, this new office, with its absolute

power based on a decree of the people and restrained by no set term

or colleague, was no other than the old monarchy, which in fact just

rested on the free engagement of the burgesses to obey one of their

number as absolute lord. It was urged even by contemporaries in

vindication of Sulla that a king is better than a bad constitution,(2)

and presumably the title of dictator was only chosen to indicate

that, as the former dictatorship implied a reassumptionwith various

limitations,(3) so this new dictatorship involved a complete

reassumption, of the regal power. Thus, singularly enough,

the course of Sulla here also coincided with that on which Gaius

Gracchus had entered with so wholly different a design. In this

respect too the conservative party had to borrow from its opponents;

the protector of the oligarchic constitution had himself to

come forward as a tyrant, in order to avert the ever-impending

-tyrannis-. There was not a little of defeat in this last victory

of the oligarchy.

Executions

Sulla had not sought and had not desired the difficult and dreadful

labour of the work of restoration; out, as no other choice was left

to him but either to leave it to utterly incapable hands or to

undertake it in person, he set himself to it with remorseless energy.

First of all a settlement had to be effected in respect to the guilty.

Sulla was personally inclined to pardon. Sanguine as he was in

temperament, he could doubtless break forth into violent rage, and

well might those beware who saw his eye gleam and his cheeks colour;

but the chronic vindictiveness, which characterized Marius in the

embitterment of his old age, was altogether foreign to Sulla's easy

disposition. Not only had he borne himself with comparatively great

moderation after the revolution of 666;(4) even the second revolution,

which had perpetrated so fearful outrages and had affected him in

person so severely, had not disturbed his equilibrium. At the same

time that the executioner was dragging the bodies of his friends

through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of

the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand,

had given orders for his decent burial. On landing in Italy he had

earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to

make his peace had been rejected. Even after the first successes

he had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio; it was the

revolutionary party, which had not only broken off these negotiations,

but had subsequently, at the last moment before their downfall,

resumed the massacres afresh and more fearfully than ever, and had

in fact conspired with the inveterate foes of their country for the

destruction of the city of Rome. The cup was now full. By virtue

of his new official authority Sulla, immediately after assuming the

regency, outlawed as enemies of their country all the civil and

military officials who had taken an active part in favour of the

revolution after the convention with Scipio (which according to

Sulla's assertion was validly concluded), and such of the other

burgesses as had in any marked manner aided its cause. Whoever

killed one of these outlaws was not only exempt from punishment like

an executioner duly fulfilling his office, but also obtained for the

execution a compensation of 12,000 -denarii- (480 pounds); any one on

the contrary who befriended an outlaw, even the nearest relative, was

liable to the severest punishment. The property of the proscribed

was forfeited to the state like the spoil of an enemy; their children

and grandchildren were excluded from a political career, and yet,

so far as they were of senatorial rank, were bound to undertake their

share of senatorial burdens. The last enactments also applied to the

estates and the descendants of those who had fallen in conflict for

the revolution--penalties which went even beyond those enjoined by

the earliest law in the case of such as had borne arms against their

fatherland. The most terrible feature in this system of terror was

the indefiniteness of the proposed categories, against which there was

immediate remonstrance in the senate, and which Sulla himself sought

to remedy by directing the names of the proscribed to be publicly

posted up and fixing the 1st June 673 as the final term for closing

the lists of proscription.

Proscription-Lists

Much as this bloody roll, swelling from day to day and amounting

at last to 4700 names,(5) excited the just horror of the multitude,

it at any rate checked in some degree the mere caprice of the

executioners. It was not at least to the personal resentment of

the regent that the mass of these victims were sacrificed; his furious

hatred was directed solely against the Marians, the authors of the

hideous massacres of 667 and 672. By his command the tomb of the

victor of Aquae Sextiae was broken open and his ashes were scattered

in the Anio, the monuments of his victories over Africans and Germans

were overthrown, and, as death had snatched himself and his son from

Sulla's vengeance, his adopted nephew Marcus Marius Gratidianus,

who had been twice praetor and was a great favourite with the Roman

burgesses, was executed amid the most cruel tortures at the tomb

of Catulus, who most deserved to be regretted of all the Marian

victims. In other cases also death had already swept away the most

notable of his opponents: of the leaders there survived only Gaius

Norbanus, who laid hands on himself at Rhodes, while the -ecclesia-

was deliberating on his surrender; Lucius Scipio, for whom his

insignificance and probably also his noble birth procured indulgence

and permission to end his days in peace at his retreat in Massilia;

and Quintus Sertorius, who was wandering about as an exile on the

coast of Mauretania. But yet the heads of slaughtered senators were

piled up at the Servilian Basin, at the point where the -Vicus

Jugarius- opened into the Forum, where the dictator had ordered them

to be publicly exposed; and among men of the second and third rank in

particular death reaped a fearful harvest. In addition to those who

were placed on the list for their services in or on behalf of the

revolutionary army with little discrimination, sometimes on account of

money advanced to one of its officers or on account of relations of

hospitality formed with such an one, the retaliation fell specially on

those capitalists who had sat in judgment on the senators and had

speculated in Marian confiscations--the "hoarders"; about 1600 of

the equites, as they were called,(6) were inscribed on the proscription-

list. In like manner the professional accusers, the worst scourge of

the nobility, who made it their trade to bring men of the senatorial

order before the equestrian courts, had now to suffer for it--"how

comes it to pass," an advocate soon after asked, "that they have left

to us the courts, when they were putting to death the accusers and

judges?" The most savage and disgraceful passions raged without

restraint for many months throughout Italy. In the capital a Celtic

band was primarily charged with the executions, and Sullan soldiers

and subaltern officers traversed for the same purpose the different

districts of Italy; but every volunteer was also welcome, and the

rabble high and low pressed forward not only to earn the rewards

of murder, but also to gratify their own vindictive or covetous

dispositions under the mantle of political prosecution. It sometimes

happened that the assassination did not follow, but preceded, the

placing of the name on the list of the proscribed. One example shows

the way in which these executions took place. At Larinum, a town of

new burgesses and favourable to Marian views, one Statius Albius

Oppianicus, who had fled to Sulla's headquarters to avoid a charge

of murder, made his appearance after the victory as commissioner of

the regent, deposed the magistrates of the town, installed himself

and his friends in their room, and caused the person who had

threatened to accuse him, along with his nearest relatives and

friends, to be outlawed and killed. Countless persons--including

not a few decided adherents of the oligarchy--thus fell as the victims

of private hostility or of their own riches: the fearful confusion,

and the culpable indulgence which Sulla displayed in this as in every

instance towards those more closely connected with him, prevented

any punishment even of the ordinary crimes that were perpetrated

amidst the disorder.

Confiscations

The confiscated property was dealt with in a similar way. Sulla

from political considerations sought to induce the respectable

burgesses to take part in its purchase; a great portion of them,

moreover, voluntarily pressed forward, and none more zealously than

the young Marcus Crassus. Under the existing circumstances the

utmost depreciation was inevitable; indeed, to some extent it was the

necessary result of the Roman plan of selling the property confiscated

by the state for a round sum payable in ready money. Moreover, the

regent did not forget himself; while his wife Metella more especially

and other persons high and low closely connected with him, even

freedmen and boon-companions, were sometimes allowed to purchase without

competition, sometimes had the purchase-money wholly or partially

remitted. One of his freedmen, for instance, is said to have

purchased a property of 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds) for 2000

(20 pounds), and one of his subalterns is said to have acquired by

such speculations an estate of 10,000,000 sesterces (100,000 pounds).

The indignation was great and just; even during Sulla's regency an

advocate asked whether the nobility had waged civil war solely for the

purpose of enriching their freedmen and slaves. But in spite of this

depreciation the whole proceeds of the confiscated estates amounted to

not less than 350,000,000 sesterces (3,500,000 pounds), which gives

an approximate idea of the enormous extent of these confiscations

falling chiefly on the wealthiest portion of the burgesses. It was

altogether a fearful punishment. There was no longer any process or

any pardon; mute terror lay like a weight of lead on the land, and

free speech was silenced in the market-place alike of the capital and

of the country-town. The oligarchic reign of terror bore doubtless a

different stamp from that of the revolution; while Marius had glutted

his personal vengeance in the blood of his enemies, Sulla seemed

to account terrorism in the abstract, if we may so speak, a thing

necessary to the introduction of the new despotism, and to prosecute

and make others prosecute the work of massacre almost with indifference.

But the reign of terror presented an appearance all the more horrible,

when it proceeded from the conservative side and was in some measure

devoid of passion; the commonwealth seemed all the more irretrievably

lost, when the frenzy and the crime on both sides were equally balanced.

Maintenance of the Burgess-Rights Previously Conferred

In regulating the relations of Italy and of the capital, Sulla--

although he otherwise in general treated as null all state-acts done

during the revolution except in the transaction of current business--

firmly adhered to the principle, which it had laid down, that every

burgess of an Italian community was by that very fact a burgess also

of Rome; the distinctions between burgesses and Italian allies,

between old burgesses with better, and new burgesses with more

restricted, rights, were abolished, and remained so. In the case

of the freedmen alone the unrestricted right of suffrage was again

withdrawn, and for them the old state of matters was restored.

To the aristocratic ultras this might seem a great concession;

Sulla perceived that it was necessary to wrest these mighty levers

out of the hands of the revolutionary chiefs, and that the rule

of the oligarchy was not materially endangered by increasing

the number of the burgesses.

Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

But with this concession in principle was combined a most rigid

inquisition, conducted by special commissioners with the co-operation

of the garrisons distributed throughout Italy, in respect to

particular communities in all districts of the land. Several towns

were rewarded; for instance Brundisium, the first community which

had joined Sulla, now obtained the exemption from customs so

important for such a seaport; more were punished. The less guilty

were required to pay fines, to pull down their walls, to raze their

citadels; in the case of those whose opposition had been most

obstinate the regent confiscated a part of their territory, in some

cases even the whole of it--as it certainly might be regarded in law as

forfeited, whether they were to be treated as burgess-communities which

had borne arms against their fatherland, or as allied states which had

waged war with Rome contrary to their treaties of perpetual peace.

In this case all the dispossessed burgesses--but these only--were

deprived of their municipal, and at the same time of the Roman,

franchise, receiving in return the lowest Latin rights.(7) Sulla

thus avoided furnishing the opposition with a nucleus in Italian

subject-communities of inferior rights; the homeless dispossessed

of necessity were soon lost in the mass of the proletariate.

In Campania not only was the democratic colony of Capua done away

and its domain given back to the state, as was naturally to be

expected, but the island of Aenaria (Ischia) was also, probably

about this time, withdrawn from the community of Neapolis. In Latium

the whole territory of the large and wealthy city of Praeneste and

presumably of Norba also was confiscated, as was likewise that of

Spoletium in Umbria. Sulmo in the Paelignian district was even

razed. But the iron arm of the regent fell with especial weight

on the two regions which had offered a serious resistance up to

the end and even after the battle at the Colline gate--Etruria and

Samnium. There a number of the most considerable communes, such

as Florentia, Faesulae, Arretium, Volaterrae, were visited with total

confiscation. Of the fate of Samnium we have already spoken; there

was no confiscation there, but the land was laid waste for ever, its

flourishing towns, even the former Latin colony of Aesernia, were left

in ruins, and the country was placed on the same footing with the

Bruttian and Lucanian regions.

Assignations to the Soldiers

These arrangements as to the property of the Italian soil placed

on the one hand those Roman domain-lands which had been handed

over in usufruct to the former allied communities and now on their

dissolution reverted to the Roman government, and on the other hand

the confiscated territories of the communities incurring punishment,

at the disposal of the regent; and he employed them for the purpose

of settling thereon the soldiers of the victorious army. Most of these

new settlements were directed towards Etruria, as for instance to

Faesulae and Arretium, others to Latium and Campania, where Praeneste

and Pompeii among other places became Sullan colonies. To repeople

Samnium was, as we have said, no part of the regent's design.

A great part of these assignations took place after the Gracchan

mode, so that the settlers were attached to an already-existing urban

community. The comprehensiveness of this settlement is shown by the

number of land-allotments distributed, which is stated at 120,000;

while yet some portions of land withal were otherwise applied, as

in the case of the lands bestowed on the temple of Diana at Mount

Tifata; others, such as the Volaterran domain and a part of the

Arretine, remained undistributed; others in fine, according to

the old abuse legally forbidden(8) but now reviving, were taken

possession of on the part of Sulla's favourites by the right of

occupation. The objects which Sulla aimed at in this colonization

were of a varied kind. In the first place, he thereby redeemed

the pledge given to his soldiers. Secondly, he in so doing adopted

the idea, in which the reform-party and the moderate conservatives

concurred, and in accordance with which he had himself as early

as 666 arranged the establishment of a number of colonies--

the idea namely of augmenting the number of the small agricultural

proprietors in Italy by a breaking up of the larger possessions

on the part of the government; how seriously he had this at heart

is shown by the renewed prohibition of the throwing together of

allotments. Lastly and especially, he saw in these settled

soldiers as it were standing garrisons, who would protect his new

constitution along with their own right of property. For this

reason, where the whole territory was not confiscated, as at Pompeii,

the colonists were not amalgamated with the urban-community, but

the old burgesses and the colonists were constituted as two bodies

of burgesses associated within the same enclosing wall. In other

respects these colonial foundations were based, doubtless, like the

older ones, on a decree of the people, but only indirectly, in so

far as the regent constituted them by virtue of the clause of the

Valerian law to that effect; in reality they originated from the

ruler's plenitude of power, and so far recalled the freedom with

which the former regal authority disposed of the state-property.

But, in so far as the contrast between the soldier and the burgess,

which was in other instances done away by the very sending out of

the soldiers or colonists, was intended to remain, and did remain,

in force in the Sullan colonies even after their establishment,

and these colonists formed, as it were, the standing array of the

senate, they are not incorrectly designated, in contradistinction

to the older ones, as military colonies.

The Cornelian Freedmen in Rome

Akin to this practical constituting of a standing army for the senate

was the measure by which the regent selected from the slaves of the

proscribed upwards of 10,000 of the youngest and most vigorous men,

and manumitted them in a body. These new Cornelians, whose civil

existence was linked to the legal validity of the institutions of their

patron, were designed to be a sort of bodyguard for the oligarchy and

to help it to command the city populace, on which, indeed, in the

absence of a garrison everything in the capital now primarily depended.

Abolition of the Gracchan Institutions

These extraordinary supports on which the regent made the oligarchy

primarily to rest, weak and ephemeral as they doubtless might appear

even to their author, were yet its only possible buttresses, unless

expedients were to be resorted to--such as the formal institution

of a standing army in Rome and other similar measures--which would

have put an end to the oligarchy far sooner than the attacks of

demagogues. The permanent foundation of the ordinary governing

power of the oligarchy of course could not but be the senate,

with a power so increased and so concentrated that it presented a

superiority to its non-organized opponents at every single point

of attack. The system of compromises followed for forty years was

at an end. The Gracchan constitution, still spared in the first

Sullan reform of 666, was now utterly set aside. Since the time of

Gaius Gracchus the government had conceded, as it were, the right of

-'emeute- to the proletariate of the capital, and bought it off by

regular distributions of corn to the burgesses domiciled there;

Sulla abolished these largesses. Gaius Gracchus had organized and

consolidated the order of capitalists by the letting of the tenths

and customs of the province of Asia in Rome; Sulla abolished the

system of middlemen, and converted the former contributions of the

Asiatics into fixed taxes, which were assessed on the several

districts according to the valuation-rolls drawn up for the purpose

of gathering in the arrears.(9) Gaius Gracchus had by entrusting

the posts of jurymen to men of equestrian census procured for

the capitalist class an indirect share in administering and in

governing, which proved itself not seldom stronger than the official

adminis-tration and government; Sulla abolished the equestrian and

restored the senatorial courts. Gaius Gracchus or at any rate the

Gracchan period had conceded to the equites a special place at the

popular festivals, such as the senators had for long possessed;(10)

Sulla abolished it and relegated the equites to the plebeian benches.(11)

The equestrian order, created as such by Gaius Gracchus, was deprived

of its political existence by Sulla. The senate was to exercise

the supreme power in legislation, administration, and jurisdiction,

unconditionally, indivisibly, and permanently, and was to be

distinguished also by outward tokens not merely as a privileged,

but as the only privileged, order.

Reorganization of the Senate

Its Complement Filled Up by Extraordinary Election

Admission to the Senate through the Quaestorship

Abolition of the Censorial Supervision of the Senate

For this purpose the governing board had, first of all, to have its

ranks filled up and to be itself placed on a footing of independence.

The numbers of the senators had been fearfully reduced by the recent

crises. Sulla no doubt now gave to those who were exiled by the

equestrian courts liberty to return, for instance to the consular

Publius Rutilius Rufus,(12) who however made no use of the permission,

and to Gaius Cotta the friend of Drusus;(13) but this made only slight

amends for the gaps which the revolutionary and reactionary reigns

of terror had created in the ranks of the senate. Accordingly by

Sulla's directions the senate had its complement extraordinarily made

up by about 300 new senators, whom the assembly of the tribes had

to nominate from among men of equestrian census, and whom they

selected, as may be conceived, chiefly from the younger men of the

senatorial houses on the one hand, and from Sullan officers and

others brought into prominence by the last revolution on the other.

For the future also the mode of admission to the senate was

regulated anew and placed on an essentially different basis.

As the constitution had hitherto stood, men entered the senate

either through the summons of the censors, which was the proper and

ordinary way, or through the holding of one of the three curule

magistracies--the consulship, the praetorship, or the aedileship--

to which since the passing of the Ovinian law a seat and vote in

the senate had been de jure attached.(14) The holding of an inferior

magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship, gave doubtless a

claim de facto to a place in the senate--inasmuch as the censorial

selection especially turned towards the men who had held such

offices--but by no means a reversion de jure. Of these two modes

of admission, Sulla abolished the former by setting aside--at least

practically--the censorship, and altered the latter to the effect

that the right of admission to the senate was attached to the

quaestorship instead of the aedileship, and at the same time

the number of quaestors to be annually nominated was raised to

twenty.(15) The prerogative hitherto legally pertaining to the

censors, although practically no longer exercised in its original

serious sense--of deleting any senator from the roll, with a

statement of the reasons for doing so, at the revisals which

took place every five years (16)--likewise fell into abeyance for

the future; the irremoveable character which had hitherto de facto

belonged to the senators was thus finally fixed by Sulla.

The total number of senators, which hitherto had presumably not

much exceeded the old normal number of 300 and often perhaps had

not even reached it, was by these means considerably augmented,

perhaps on an average doubled(17)--an augmentation which was rendered

necessary by the great increase of the duties of the senate through

the transference to it of the functions of jurymen. As, moreover,

both the extraordinarily admitted senators and the quaestors were

nominated by the -comitia tributa-, the senate, hitherto resting

indirectly on the election of the people,(18) was now based throughout

on direct popular election; and thus made as close an approach to a

representative government as was compatible with the nature of the

oligarchy and the notions of antiquity generally. The senate had in

course of time been converted from a corporation intended merely to

advise the magistrates into a board commanding the magistrates and

self-governing; it was only a consistent advance in the same direction,

when the right of nominating and cancelling senators originally

belonging to the magistrates was withdrawn from them, and the senate

was placed on the same legal basis on which the magistrates' power

itself rested. The extravagant prerogative of the censors to revise

the list of the senate and to erase or add names at pleasure was

in reality incompatible with an organized oligarchic constitution.

As provision was now made for a sufficient regular recruiting of its

ranks by the election of the quaestors, the censorial revisions became

superfluous; and by their abeyance the essential principle at the

bottom of every oligarchy, the irremoveable character and life-tenure

of the members of the ruling order who obtained seat and vote,

was definitively consolidated.

Regulations As to the Burgesses

In respect to legislation Sulla contented himself with reviving the

regulations made in 666, and securing to the senate the legislative

initiative, which had long belonged to it practically, by legal

enactment at least as against the tribunes. The burgess-body

remained formally sovereign; but so far as its primary assemblies

were concerned, while it seemed to the regent necessary carefully

to preserve the form, he was still more careful to prevent any real

activity on their part. Sulla dealt even with the franchise itself

in the most contemptuous manner; he made no difficulty either in

conceding it to the new burgess-communities, or in bestowing it on

Spaniards and Celts en masse; in fact, probably not without design,

no steps were taken at all for the adjustment of the burgess-roll,

which nevertheless after so violent revolutions stood in urgent

need of a revision, if the government was still at all in earnest

with the legal privileges attaching to it. The legislative functions

of the comitia, however, were not directly restricted; there was

no need in fact for doing so, for in consequence of the better-

secured initiative of the senate the people could not readily

against the will of the government intermeddle with administration,

finance, or criminal jurisdiction, and its legislative co-operation

was once more reduced in substance to the right of giving assent to

alterations of the constitution.

Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges

Regulating of the Qualifications for Office

Of greater moment was the participation of the burgesses in the

elections--a participation, with which they seemed not to be able to

dispense without disturbing more than Sulla's superficial restoration

could or would disturb. The interferences of the movement party in

the sacerdotal elections were set aside; not only the Domitian law

of 650, which transferred the election of the supreme priesthoods

generally to the people,(19) but also the similar older enactments

as to the -Pontifex Maximus- and the -Curio Maximus-(20) were

cancelled by Sulla, and the colleges of priests received back the

right of self-completion in its original absoluteness. In the case

of elections to the offices of state, the mode hitherto pursued was

on the whole retained; except in so far as the new regulation of

the military command to be mentioned immediately certainly involved

as its consequence a material restriction of the powers of the

burgesses, and indeed in some measure transferred the right of

bestowing the appointment of generals from the burgesses to the

senate. It does not even appear that Sulla now resumed the previously

attempted restoration of the Servian voting-arrangement;(21) whether

it was that he regarded the particular composition of the voting-

divisions as altogether a matter of indifference, or whether it was

that this older arrangement seemed to him to augment the dangerous

influence of the capitalists. Only the qualifications were restored

and partially raised. The limit of age requisite for the holding

of each office was enforced afresh; as was also the enactment that

every candidate for the consulship should have previously held the

praetorship, and every candidate for the praetorship should have

previously held the quaestorship, whereas the aedileship was

allowed to be passed over. The various attempts that had been

recently made to establish a -tyrannis- under the form of a

consulship continued for several successive years led to special

rigour in dealing with this abuse; and it was enacted that at

least two years should elapse between the holding of one magistracy

and the holding of another, and at least ten years should elapse

before the same office could be held a second time. In this

latter enactment the earlier ordinance of 412 (22) was revived,

instead of the absolute prohibition of all re-election to the

consulship, which had been the favourite idea of the most recent

ultra-oligarchical epoch.(23) On the whole, however, Sulla left

the elections to take their course, and sought merely to fetter the

power of the magistrates in such a way that--let the incalculable

caprice of the comitia call to office whomsoever it might--the person

elected should not be in a position to rebel against the oligarchy.

Weakening of the Tribunate of the People

The supreme magistrates of the state were at this period practically

the three colleges of the tribunes of the people, the consuls and

praetors, and the censors. They all emerged from the Sullan

restoration with materially diminished rights, more especially

the tribunician office, which appeared to the regent an instrument

indispensable doubtless for senatorial government, but yet--

as generated by revolution and having a constant tendency to

generate fresh revolutions in its turn--requiring to be rigorously

and permanently shackled. The tribunician authority had arisen out

of the right to annul the official acts of the magistrates by veto,

and, eventually, to fine any one who should oppose that right and to

take steps for his farther punishment; this was still left to the

tribunes, excepting that a heavy fine, destroying as a rule a man's

civil existence, was imposed on the abuse of the right of intercession.

The further prerogative of the tribune to have dealings with the

people at pleasure, partly for the purpose of bringing up accusations

and especially of calling former magistrates to account at the bar

of the people, partly for the purpose of submitting laws to the vote,

had been the lever by which the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Sulpicius

had revolutionized the state; it was not abolished, but its exercise

was probably made dependent on a permission to be previously requested

from the senate.(24) Lastly it was added that the holding of

the tribunate should in future disqualify for the undertaking of

a higher office--an enactment which, like many other points in Sulla's

restoration, once more reverted to the old patrician maxims, and,

just as in the times before the admission of the plebeians to

the civil magistracies, declared the tribunate and the curule

offices to be mutually incompatible. In this way the legislator

of the oligarchy hoped to check tribunician demagogism and to keep

all ambitious and aspiring men aloof from the tribunate, but to

retain it as an instrument of the senate both for mediating

between it and the burgesses, and, should circumstances require,

for keeping in check the magistrates; and, as the authority of the

king and afterwards of the republican magistrates over the burgesses

scarcely anywhere comes to light so clearly as in the principle

that they exclusively had the right of addressing the people,

so the supremacy of the senate, now first legally established,

is most distinctly apparent in this permission which the leader

of the people had to ask from the senate for every transaction

with his constituents.

Limitation of the Supreme Magistracy

Regulation of the Consular and Praetorian Functions before--

The Time of Sulla