Caius Gracchus was killed at the close of the year 122. The storm was
over. The Senate was once more master of the situation, and the
optimates, "the best party in the State," as they were pleased to call
themselves, smoothed their ruffled plumes and settled again into their
places. There was no more talk of reform. Of the Gracchi there remained
nothing but the forty thousand peasant-proprietors settled on the
public lands; the jury law, which could not be at once repealed for
fear of the equites; the corn grants, and the mob attracted by the
bounty, which could be managed by improved manipulation; and the law
protecting the lives of Roman citizens, which survived in the
statute-book, although the Senate still claimed the right to set it
aside when they held the State to be in danger. With these exceptions,
the administration fell back into its old condition. The tribunes
ceased to agitate. The consulships and the praetorships fell to the
candidates whom the Senate supported. Whether the oligarchy had learnt
any lessons of caution from the brief political earthquake which had
shaken but not overthrown them remained to be seen. Six years after the
murder of Caius Gracchus an opportunity was afforded to this
distinguished body of showing on a conspicuous scale the material of
which they were now composed.
Along the south shore of the Mediterranean, west of the Roman province,
extended the two kingdoms of the Numidians and the Moors. To what race
these people belonged is not precisely known. They were not negroes.
The negro tribes have never extended north of the Sahara. Nor were they
Carthaginians or allied to the Carthaginians. The Carthaginian colony
found them in possession on its arrival. Sallust says that they were
Persians left behind by Hercules after his invasion of Spain. Sallust's
evidence proves no more than that their appearance was Asiatic, and
that tradition assigned them an Asiatic origin. They may be called
generically Arabs, who at a very ancient time had spread along the
coast from Egypt to Morocco. The Numidians at this period were
civilized according to the manners of the age. They had walled towns;
they had considerable wealth; their lands were extensively watered and
cultivated; their great men had country houses and villas, the surest
sign of a settled state of society. Among the equipments of their army
they had numerous elephants (it may be presumed of the African breed),
which they and the Carthaginians had certainly succeeded in
domesticating. Masinissa, the king of this people, had been the ally of
Rome in the last Carthaginian war; he had been afterward received as "a
friend of the Republic," and was one of the protected sovereigns. He
was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who in turn had two legitimate
children, Hiempsal and Adherbal, and an illegitimate nephew Jugurtha,
considerably older than his own boys, a young man of striking talent
and promise. Micipsa, who was advanced in years, was afraid that if he
died this brilliant youth might be a dangerous rival to his sons. He
therefore sent him to serve under Scipio in Spain, with the hope, so
his friends asserted, that he might there perhaps be killed. The Roman
army was then engaged in the siege of Numantia. The camp was the
lounging-place of the young patricians who were tired of Rome and
wished for excitement. Discipline had fallen loose; the officers'
quarters were the scene of extravagance and amusement. Jugurtha
recommended himself on the one side to Scipio by activity and good
service, while on the other he made acquaintances among the high-bred
gentlemen in the mess-rooms. He found them in themselves dissolute and
unscrupulous. He discovered, through communications which he was able
with their assistance to open with their fathers and relatives at Rome,
that a man with money might do what he pleased. Micipsa's treasury was
well supplied, and Jugurtha hinted among his comrades that if he could
be secure of countenance in seizing the kingdom, he would be in a
position to show his gratitude in a substantial manner. Some of these
conversations reached the ears of Scipio, who sent for Jugurtha and
gave him a friendly warning. He dismissed him, however, with honor at
the end of the campaign. The young prince returned to Africa loaded
with distinctions, and the king, being now afraid to pass him over,
named him as joint-heir with his children to a third part of Numidia.
The Numidians perhaps objected to being partitioned. Micipsa died soon
after. Jugurtha at once murdered Hiempsal, claimed the sovereignty, and
attacked his other cousin. Adherbal, closely besieged in the town of
Cirta, which remained faithful to him, appealed to Rome; but Jugurtha
had already prepared his ground, and knew that he had nothing to fear.
The Senate sent out commissioners. The commissioners received the
bribes which they expected. They gave Jugurtha general instructions to
leave his cousin in peace; but they did not wait to see their orders
obeyed, and went quietly home. The natural results immediately
followed. Jugurtha pressed the siege more resolutely. The town
surrendered; Adherbal was taken, and was put to death after being
savagely tortured; and there being no longer any competitor alive in
whose behalf the Senate could be called on to interfere, he thought
himself safe from further interference. Unfortunately in the capture of
Citra a number of Romans who resided there had been killed after the
surrender, and after a promise that their lives should be spared. An
outcry was raised in Rome, and became so loud that the Senate was
forced to promise investigation; but it went to work languidly, with
reluctance so evident as to rouse suspicion. Notwithstanding the fate
of the Gracchi and their friends, Memmius, a tribune, was found bold
enough to tell the people that there were men in the Senate who had
taken bribes.
The Senate, conscious of its guilt, was now obliged to exert itself.
War was declared against Jugurtha, and a consul was sent to Africa with
an army. But the consul, too, had his fortune to make, and Micipsa's
treasures were still unexpended. The consul took with him a staff of
young patricians, whose families might be counted on to shield him in
return for a share of the plunder. Jugurtha was as liberal as avarice
could desire, and peace was granted to him on the easy conditions of a
nominal fine, and the surrender of some elephants, which the consul
privately restored.
Public opinion was singularly patient. The massacre six years before
had killed out the liberal leaders, and there was no desire on any side
as yet to renew the struggle with the Senate. But it was possible to
presume too far on popular acquiescence. Memmius came forward again,
and in a passionate speech in the Forum exposed and denounced the
scandalous transaction. The political sky began to blacken again. The
Senate could not face another storm with so bad a cause, and Jugurtha
was sent for to Rome. He came, with contemptuous confidence, loaded
with gold. He could not corrupt Memmius, but he bought easily the rest
of the tribunes. The leaders in the Curia could not quarrel with a
client of such delightful liberality. He had an answer to every
complaint, and a fee to silence the complainer. He would have gone back
in triumph, had he not presumed a little too far. He had another cousin
in the city who he feared might one day give him trouble, so he
employed one of his suite to poison him. The murder was accomplished
successfully; and for this too he might no doubt have secured his
pardon by paying for it; but the price demanded was too high, and
perhaps Jugurtha, villain as he was, came at last to disdain the
wretches whom he might consider fairly to be worse than himself. He had
come over under a safe-conduct, and he was not detained. The Senate
ordered him to leave Italy; and he departed with the scornful phrase on
his lips which has passed into history: "Venal city, and soon to perish
if only it can find a purchaser." [1]
A second army was sent across, to end the scandal. This time the Senate
was in earnest, but the work was less easy than was expected. Army
management had fallen into disorder. In earlier times each Roman
citizen had provided his own equipments at his own expense. To be a
soldier was part of the business of his life, and military training was
an essential feature of his education. The old system had broken down;
the peasantry, from whom the rank and file of the legions had been
recruited, were no longer able to furnish their own arms. Caius
Gracchus had intended that arms should be furnished by the government,
that a special department should be constituted to take charge of the
arsenals and to see to the distribution. But Gracchus was dead, and his
project had died with him. When the legions were enrolled, the men were
ill armed, undrilled, and unprovided--a mere mob, gathered hastily
together and ignorant of the first elements of their duty. With the
officers it was still worse. The subordinate commands fell to young
patricians, carpet knights who went on campaigns with their families of
slaves. The generals, when a movement was to be made, looked for
instruction to their staff. It sometimes happened that a consul waited
for his election to open for the first time a book of military history
or a Greek manual of the art of war.[2]
[Sidenote: B.C 109.] An army so composed and so led was not likely to
prosper. The Numidians were not very formidable enemies, but, after a
month or two of manoeuvring, half the Romans were destroyed and the
remainder were obliged to surrender. About the same time, and from
similar causes, two Roman armies were cut to pieces on the Rhone. While
the great men at Rome were building palaces, inventing new dishes, and
hiring cooks at unheard-of salaries, the barbarians were at the gates
of Italy. The passes of the Alps were open, and if a few tribes of
Gauls had cared to pour through them, the Empire was at their mercy.
Stung with these accumulating disgraces, and now really alarmed, the
Senate sent Caecilius Metellus, the best man that they had and the
consul for the year following to Africa. Metellus was an aristocrat,
and he was advanced in years; but he was a man of honor and integrity.
He understood the danger of further failure; and he looked about for
the ablest soldier that he could find to go with him, irrespective of
his political opinions.
Caius Marius was at this time forty-eight years old. Two thirds of his
life were over, and a name which was to sound throughout the world and
be remembered through all ages had as yet been scarcely heard of beyond
the army and the political clubs in Rome. He was born at Arpinum, a
Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year 157. His
father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He
joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual
discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was
strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in
the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha was there, and made himself
especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily upward, by his
mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too,
had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the
year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he
belonged naturally to the popular party. While in office he gave
offence in some way to the men in power, and was called before the
Senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is
likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could
make nothing of their charges against him. He was not bidding at this
time, however, for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and
sense to oppose the largesses of corn; and he forfeited his popularity
by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed
into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak,
gnarled and knotted, but sound in all its fibres. His professional
merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became
praetor, and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the
successful severity by which he cleared the province of banditti. He
was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the
world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had
made himself respected and valued in high circles, for after his return
from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of
the patrician families.
The Caesars were a branch of the Gens Julia, which claimed descent from
Iulus the son of Aeneas, and thus from the gods. Roman etymologists
could arrive at no conclusion as to the origin of the name. Some
derived it from an exploit on an elephant-hunt in Africa--Caesar
meaning elephant in Moorish; some to the entrance into the world of the
first eminent Caesar by the aid of a surgeon's knife;[3]some from the
color of the eyes prevailing in the family. Be the explanation what it
might, eight generations of Caesars had held prominent positions in the
Commonwealth. They had been consuls, censors, praetors, aediles, and
military tribunes, and in politics, as might be expected from their
position, they had been moderate aristocrats. Like other families they
had been subdivided, and the links connecting them cannot always be
traced. The pedigree of the Dictator goes no further than to his
grandfather, Caius Julius. In the middle of the second century before
Christ, this Caius Julius, being otherwise unknown to history, married
a lady named Marcia, supposed to be descended from Ancus Marcius, the
fourth king of Rome. By her he had three children, Caius Julius, Sextus
Julius, and a daughter named Julia. Caius Julius married Aurelia,
perhaps a member of the consular family of the Cottas, and was the
father of the Great Caesar. Julia became the wife of Caius Marius, a
_mésalliance_ which implied the beginning of a political split in the
Caesar family. The elder branches, like the Cromwells of Hinchinbrook,
remained by their order. The younger attached itself for good or ill to
the party of the people.
Marius by this marriage became a person of social consideration. His
father had been a client of the Metelli; and Caecilius Metellus, who
must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited
him to go as second in command in the African campaign. He was
moderately successful. Towns were taken; battles were won: Metellus was
incorruptible, and the Numidians sued for peace. But Jugurtha wanted
terms, and the consul demanded unconditional surrender. Jugurtha
withdrew into the desert; the war dragged on; and Marius, perhaps
ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general's want of vigor, began to
think that he could make quicker work of it. The popular party were
stirring again in Rome, the Senate having so notoriously disgraced
itself. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could
defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic
consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to
be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The
law required that he must be present in person at the election, and he
applied to his commander for leave of absence. Metellus laughed at his
pretensions, and bade him wait another twenty years. Marius, however,
persisted, and was allowed to go. The patricians strained their
resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm. Metellus
was recalled, and the conduct of the Numidian war was assigned to the
new hero of the "populares."
A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate-house when the
determination of the people was known. A successful general could not
be disposed of so easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was
not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier, and
had a soldier's way of thinking on government and the methods of it.
His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman
legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the
moment from their various occupations, to return to them when the
occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer
men, better trained and disciplined, could he made more effective and
be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had
perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident,
and that there was a latent force in the Roman State which needed only
organization to resume its ascendency. "He enlisted," it was said, "the
worst of the citizens," men, that is to say, who had no occupation and
who became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property
could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have
carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the
expense of the State. His discipline was of the sternest. The
experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for war in earnest,
and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit
and credit of the improvements, were willing to go with him; among them
a dissipated young patrician called Lucius Sylla, whose name also was
destined to be memorable.
By these methods and out of these materials an army was formed such as
no Roman general had hitherto led. It performed extraordinary marches,
carried its water-supplies with it in skins, and followed the enemy
across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two years
the war was over. The Moors to whom Jugurtha had fled surrendered him
to Sylla, and he was brought in chains to Rome, where he finished his
life in a dungeon.
So ended a curious episode in Roman history, where it holds a place
beyond its intrinsic importance, from the light which it throws on the
character of the Senate and on the practical working of the
institutions which the Gracchi had perished in unsuccessfully
attempting to reform.
[1] "Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem
invenenit."--Sallust,
_De Bello Jugurthino_, c. 35. Livy's account of the business,
however, differs from Sallust's, and the expression is perhaps not
authentic.
[2] "At ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules facti sunt, acta
majorum, et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere coeperint. Homines
praeposteri!"--Speech of Marius, Sallust, _Jugurtha_, 85.
[3] "Caesus ab utero matris."