In the year of the first tribuneship of Caius Gracchus, the Belearic
islands were added to the Roman dominion; and six years afterwards (B.
C. 117), Dalmatia was reduced to a Roman province. About this time the
famous Jugurtha, the illegitimate son of one of the sons of Masinissa,
already mentioned as a king of Numidia in the Roman interest, was left
heir to that kingdom, in conjunction with his two cousins, by Micipsa,
their father and his uncle. Aspiring to the undivided sovereignty, he
killed one of his cousins, and drove the other to Rome. Interfering in
behalf of the expelled prince, the Romans compelled Jugurtha to share
Numidia with him. By bribing the commissioners, however, who were sent
to effect the division, Jugurtha obtained the best part for himself;
and not long after (B. C. 112), he showed his contempt for the Romans
by invading his cousin’s dominions, and putting him to death. Bribes
and wily tactics protected him for a while from the vengeance of the
Romans; but at length, in the year B. C. 109, the brave consul
Metellus, who was proof against bribes, went over to Numidia to
conduct the war which his predecessors had mismanaged. After he had
carried on the war successfully for two years, he was supplanted by
his second in command, Caius Marius, a man of humble birth, and nearly
fifty years of age, who, although almost without education, had raised
himself to high rank by his military talents, and whose services under
Metellus had been so favorably represented at Rome, that he was
appointed consul (B. C. 107), with the express intention that he
should end the Jugurthine war. This he speedily accomplished, greatly
assisted by his quæstor, a young man of high patrician family and
unusual literary accomplishments, named Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
Jugurtha was sent to Rome, where he was starved in prison (B. C. 106);
and the services of Marius were at the disposal of the Romans for a
war of an infinitely more formidable character than that which had
been waged against this ill-fated African.
About the year B. C. 113, a numerous tribe of savages, called Cimbri,
but who were most probably Celts, had been set in motion in the
south-east of Europe; and emigrating westward, they had communicated
their restlessness to the Tutones, and undoubtedly German race,
through whose territories they must have passed. Roving about in quest
of settlements, sometimes together, and sometimes separately, the two
barbarian hosts, consisting of men, women, and children, had thrown
all Gaul into consternation; and as the Romans had already colonized
the portion of Gaul contiguous to the Alps, the duty of checking the
savages devolved on them, the more especially as there was some danger
that Italy would be invaded. But such a moving mass of human beings,
driven by that hardest of forces, hunger, was not easily to be
checked; and army after army sent by the Romans to oppose them had
been shivered to pieces. All Italy began to tremble, and there was a
universal cry among the Romans, ‘Make Marius again consul.’
Accordingly Marius was chosen consul a second time in his absence (B.
C. 104), that he might drive back the Cimbri. Meanwhile the poor
homeless creatures had made a general rush towards Spain; and the
Romans, to secure the services of Marius when they should be required,
reëlected him to the consulship in B. C. 102. In the latter year, when
Marius was consul for the fourth time, the barbarians, repulsed from
Spain, directed their march towards the Alps. Fortunately, they
divided themselves into two masses――the Teutones taking one route, the
Cimbri another. The former, amounting to about 300,000 men, were met
by Marius, and slaughtered, all except 90,000, who were made
prisoners, and sold as slaves. Meanwhile the Cimbri had been making
progress in their route, and to oppose them, Marius was elected to a
fifth consulship (B. C. 101). Another bloody field, in which about
140,000 were slain, and 60,000 taken prisoners, delivered Italy from
its fears. Strange and affecting thought, that half a million of human
beings, women and children, should be wandering through Europe for
years, poor outcasts, with their little carts and cooking-kettles, and
that a civilized nation should have been compelled, by the necessity
of self-preservation, to take means to sweep them out of existence!
Marius was rewarded for his exertions with a sixth consulship (B. C.
100), which, there being now no enemy to call forth his military
activity, he employed in political schemes for the humiliation of the
aristocratic or senatorial party, to which, both by the accident of
birth and on principle, he was a determined enemy. The efforts of the
nobles, however, assisted by the violent conduct of the partisans of
Marius, especially a tribune named Saturninus, occasioned a reaction;
and on the expiry of his consulship, Marius withdrew from Rome, and
undertook a journey to the East, where the Roman influence was
extending itself. During the following ten years the political
agitations were incessant, the liberal spirit of that party of which
Marius was the head developing itself every year in fresh
manifestations, and the aristocratic party becoming every year more
fierce and dogged in their opposition. On the aristocratic side, the
ablest and most earnest man, although not yet the most distinguished,
was Sulla――the former quæstor of Marius, and who had since been
employed in various capacities both military and civil. At length, in
the year B. C. 90, a storm which had been long gathering burst out in
that war which is denominated in history ‘the Social or Marsic War,’
or ‘the War of Italian Independence.’
As early as the tribuneship of Caius Gracchus, a clamor had been
raised for the emancipation of the various Italian states from the
thraldom in which they were held by the Romans. The progress of time
welding the various Italian nationalities into one common society, and
giving to all parts of the peninsula a common interest, had made them
sensible to the grievances arising from their subordinate condition.
The system of a triple franchise――Roman, Latin, and Italian――inevitable
perhaps at first, had now become a source of gross injustice. To put
an end to this injustice, the Italians demanded the full Roman
franchise. Caius Gracchus wished to bestow it on them; and from the
time of his death, ‘Italian emancipation’ had been one of the
watchwords of the liberal party. Despairing of effecting their end by
agitation, and especially provoked by a recent persecution of the
Italian tradesmen who had settled in Rome, the Italian nations had
recourse to arms (B. C. 90). Ten of these――namely, the Piceni, the
Vestinians, the Marrucenians, the Marsians, the Pelignians, the
Samnites, the Frentanians, the Hirpinians, the Lucanians, and the
Apulians, constituted themselves into a confederacy for the
destruction of Rome, and the foundation of a new Commonwealth, of
which Corfinium, under the new name of Italica, was to be the capital,
and which was to embrace the whole peninsula. Fortunately for Rome,
the Latins (including the various colonies of the Latin name
throughout Italy), the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and the Campanians,
did not join the confederacy. The Latins were instantly rewarded with
the Roman franchise, and the field was taken against the confederacy.
During two years, the war was carried on vigorously on both sides, the
most distinguished of the Roman generals being Marius, Sulla, and
Cneius Pompeius Strabo. At length (B. C. 89), the Italians having been
greatly reduced, and the whole peninsula having suffered much, the
Romans saw fit to yield to demands which many even of those whose
patriotism led them to fight against the allies believed to be just.
The Roman citizenship was extending to all the nations of the
peninsula south of the Po, the new citizens being either distributed,
according to one account, among eight of the old tribes, or arranged,
according to another, in fifteen new ones. At the same time the Latin
franchise was conferred on the Gauls between the Po and the Alps.
Sulla had gained greater distinction in the Marsic War than Marius,
who was now verging on old age. The public eye was consequently turned
to Sulla; and as, on the appearance of the Cimbric hosts twenty years
before, the Romans had placed their dependence on Marius, so now, on
the breaking out of war in the East, they placed their dependence on
his younger rival. Mithridates VI, the young king of Pontus, an
Oriental by birth, but of Greek education, and a man of splendid
abilities, had been for some years silently extending his dominions in
western Asia; and the Romans, long jealous of his movements, had at
length openly warned him to desist. Mithridates scouted the warning;
marched through Asia Minor, putting the Romans to the sword; and was
welcomed everywhere by the Asiatic Greeks as a deliverer from the
Roman yoke: ultimately (B. C. 88), crossing over into Greece, he
menaced the Empire near its centre.
Sulla, then engaged with the Samnites, the last dregs of the Social
War, was chosen consul, and invested with the command against the
Eastern monarch. He was then in the forty-ninth year of his age. Vexed
at the preference of his rival, the grim old Marius used all his
efforts to have the appointment canceled, and himself nominated to the
Mithridatic command. His political opinions recommending him to many,
and a tribune named Sulpicius having procured the passing of a
preliminary measure distributing the new Italian citizens among all
the old tribes, which had now attained the number of thirty-five, he
at length carried his point, and Sulla was superseded. But the
aristocratic general was not a man to be trifled with. Marching from
the south of Italy, where he was when he heard the news, he appeared
with his army before the city, forced his entrance through the rotten
walls, dislodged his antagonists from the houses from which they were
throwing stones and missiles at his men, and compelled Marius and his
adherents to save their lives by a precipitate flight. Marius escaped
to Africa; Sulla, after settling affairs at Rome, set out for Greece.
Here he speedily retrieved the Roman losses; sacked Athens, which had
provoked him by its opposition; and reduced Archelaus, the general of
Mithridates, to such extremities, that having crossed into Asia,
Mithridates was glad to conclude a peace with him (B. C. 84), by which
he renounced all he had gained, and agreed to pay the expenses of the
war. Meanwhile a terrible reaction had occurred at Rome in Sulla’s
absence. Scarcely had he left the city (B. C. 87), when Lucius
Cornelius Cinna, one of the consuls whose appointment he had
sanctioned, proclaimed himself on the popular side, and commenced a
series of measures directly opposed to Sulla’s views. His colleague
Octavius drove him from Rome, and the senate deposed him from the
consulship. The Italians, however, gathered round Cinna; Marius and
his fellow-exiles hearing of the movement, hastened back to Italy; all
the able military men of the Marian party, and among them a young and
generous commander named Sertorius, exerted themselves to raise
troops; and at length the aristocratic party found themselves besieged
in Rome. Famine and pestilence began their ravages in the city; and
the senate, reinstating Cinna in the consulship, capitulated on the
understanding that blood should not be shed. But there was little
softness in the nature of Marius. Admitted into the city, the stern
old man, who was already tottering on the brink of the grave, revenged
his wrongs by a frightful massacre, in which many men of distinction
fell. Marius then caused himself to be elected to a seventh consulship
(B. C. 86), his colleague being Cinna. He enjoyed the unprecedented
honor but a few days, dying on the 13th of January (B. C. 86), and
Valerius Flaccus was named his successor. Flaccus, setting out with
authority to supersede Sulla in the Mithridatic war, was murdered by
his legate Flavius Fimbria, who assumed the command of the army, and
gained some successes; but being afterwards hard pressed by Sulla, and
deserted by his army, committed suicide. This occurred about the time
of the conclusion of the peace with Mithridates (B. C. 84); and Sulla,
after settling the affairs of Asia Minor, and draining the country of
money, so remorselessly as to affect its prosperity for a century,
commenced his journey homewards, with bloody purposes against Cinna
and his adherents, and an army ready to execute them.
Cinna did not live to face his dreadful enemy. Murdered by his
soldiers in his fourth consulship, he left, as his successors in the
leadership of the popular party, Caius Marius the Younger, Papirius
Carbo, and the brave Sertorius――the two former of whom were chosen
consuls for the year B. C. 82, to oppose Sulla in Italy, while
Sertorius was despatched to Spain to secure that province. But Carbo
and the younger Marius, even when backed by the brave Samnites and
other Italian nations, were not equal to a contest with such a general
as Sulla, assisted as he was by commanders like Metellus, Lucullus,
and young Cneius Pompeius Strabo, more commonly called Pompey, the son
of that Pompeius who had been one of the Roman generals in the Marsic
War. The consular armies were defeated; Marius killed himself; Carbo
fled to Africa; and Sulla remained master of Italy. Fearful was his
vengeance. The massacre which Marius had ordered five years before,
was slight compared with the butcheries which took place by the
command of Sulla. In Rome, and over all Italy, every man of
distinction implicated in the popular movement was sought out and
slain. Proscription lists, as they were called――that is, lists of
doomed individuals――were published; and soldiers were ready to track
them out for the prices put upon their heads. Military colonies were
likewise planted in all parts of Italy――lands being taken by force for
that purpose: thus purging Italy of the Marian leaven, Sulla was
resolved to create in it a new population, which should be pliant to
aristocratic influence.
The work of the soldier over, Sulla commenced that of the legislator.
Appointed perpetual dictator B. C. 82, he continued for three years to
exercise the sovereignty, making alterations in the constitution, the
general effect of which was to lessen the power of the people in
political affairs, and reforming the criminal law. In B. C. 79, he
surprised every one by abdicating the dictatorship, and retiring into
private life; and in the following year he died of a loathsome and
incurable disorder, brought on by his debaucheries. Among other
evidences of Sulla’s literary accomplishments, he left memoirs of his
own life composed in Greek.