THE SOCIAL WAR
In a previous chapter the relations now existing between Rome and her
dependents have been described. For two centuries the Italians had
remained faithful to Rome through repeated temptations, and even
through the fiery trial of Hannibal's victorious occupation. But the
loyalty, which no external or sudden shock could snap, had been slowly
eaten away by corrosives, which the arrogance or negligence of the
government supplied. [Sidenote: Interests of Italian capitalists and
Italian farmers opposed.] It is clear from the episode of Drusus
that there was as wide a breach between Italian capitalists and
cultivators, as there had been between Roman occupiers and the first
clamourers for agrarian laws. So, at the outbreak of the war, Umbria
and Etruria, whence Philippus had summoned his supporters, because the
farmer class had been annihilated and large land-owners held the
soil, remained faithful to Rome. But where the farmer class still
flourished, as among the Marsi, Marrucini, and the adjacent districts,
discontent had been gathering volume for many years. No doubt the
demoralisation of the metropolis contributed to this result; and, as
intercourse with Rome became more and more common, familiarity with
the vices of their masters would breed indignation in the minds of the
hardier dependents. Who, they would ask themselves, were these Scauri,
these Philippi, men fit only to murder patriots and sell their country
and themselves for gold, that they should lord it over Italians? Why
should a Roman soldier have the right of appeal to a civil tribunal,
and an Italian soldier be at the mercy of martial law? Why should two
Italians for every one Roman be forced to fight Rome's battles? Why
should insolent young Romans and the fine ladies of the metropolis
insult Italian magistrates and murder Italians of humbler rank? This
was the reward of their long fidelity. If here and there a statesman
was willing to yield them the franchise, the flower of the
aristocracy, the Scaevolae and the Crassi, expelled them by an
Alien Act from Rome. They had tried all parties, and by all been
disappointed, for Roman factions were united on one point, and one
only--in obstinate refusal to give Italians justice. The two glorious
brothers had been slain because they pitied their wrongs. So had
Scipio. So had the fearless Saturninus. And now their last friend,
this second Scipio, Drusus, had been struck down by the same cowardly
hands. Surely it was time to act for themselves and avenge their
benefactors. They were more numerous, they were hardier than their
tyrants; and if not so well organized, still by their union with
Drusus they were in some sort welded together, and now or never was
the time to strike. For the friends of Drusus were marked men. Let
them remain passive, and either individual Italians would perish by
the dagger which had slain Drusus, or individual communities by the
sentence of the Senate which had exterminated Fregellae.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of the Social War.] The revolt broke out at
Asculum. Various towns were exchanging hostages to secure mutual
fidelity. Caius Servilius, the Roman praetor, hearing that this was
going on at Asculum, went there and sharply censured the people in the
theatre. He and his escort were torn to pieces, the gates were shut,
every Roman in the town was slain, and the Marsi, Peligni, Marrucini,
Frentani, Vestini, Picentini, Hirpini, the people of Pompeii and
Venusia, the Iapyges, the Lucani, and the Samnites, and all the people
from the Liris to the Adriatic, flew to arms; [Sidenote: The allies
who remained faithful to Rome.] and though here and there a town like
Pinna of the Vestini, or a partisan like Minutius Magius of Aeclanum,
remained loyal to Rome, all the centre and south of Italy was soon in
insurrection. Perhaps at Pinna the large land-owners or capitalists
were supreme, as in Umbria and Etruria, which sided with Rome, as also
did most of the Latin towns, the Greek towns Neapolis and Rhegium, and
most of Campania, where Capua became an important Roman post during
the war. [Sidenote: The rebels demand the franchise.] The insurgents,
emboldened by the swift spread of the rebellion, sent to demand the
franchise as the price of submission. But the old dogged spirit which
extremity of danger had ever aroused at Rome was not dead. [Sidenote:
Rage of the equites. The law of Varius.] The offer was sternly
rejected, and the equites turned furiously on the optimates, or the
Italianising section of the optimates, to whose folly they felt that
the war was due. With war the hope of their gains was gone; and,
enraged at this, they took advantage of the outbreak to repay the
Senate for its complicity in the attempt of Drusus to deprive them of
the judicia. Under a law of Varius, who is said by Cicero to have been
the assassin of Drusus and Metellus, Italian sympathisers were brought
to trial, and either convicted and banished, or overawed into silence.
Among the accused was Scaurus. But now, as ever, that shifty man
emerged triumphant from his intrigues. He aped the defence of Scipio,
and retired not only safe, but with a dignity so well studied that but
for his antecedents it might have seemed sincere. A Spaniard accused
him, he said, and Scaurus, chief of the Senate, denied the accusation.
Whether of the twain should the Romans believe?
[Sidenote: Perils of the crisis.] For such prosecutions there was
indeed some excuse, for the prospect was threatening. Mithridates
might at any moment stop the supplies from Asia. The soldiers of the
enemy were men who had fought in Roman armies and been trained to
Roman discipline; they were led by able captains, and were more
numerous than the forces opposed to them. And yet the war must be a
war of detachments, where numbers were all-important. It was no time
for hesitation about purging out all traitors or waverers. But
the courts that tried other cases were closed for the time. The
distributions of grain were curtailed. The walls were put in order.
Arms were prepared as fast as possible. A fleet was collected from
the free cities of Greece and Asia Minor. Levies were raised from
the citizens, from Africa, and from Gaul. Lastly, in view of the
inevitably scattered form which the fighting would take, each consul
was to have five lieutenants. [Sidenote: Generals of Rome.] Lupus was
to command in the northern district, from Picenum to Campania. Among
the generals who acted under him were the father of Pompeius Magnus,
and Marius. Samnium, Campania, and the southern district fell to
Lucius Julius Caesar, and among the five officers who went with him
were also two men of mark, Publius Licinius Crassus and Sulla. We
shall see how by an exhaustive process the Romans, after a series of
defeats, were at last driven to employ as generals-in-chief the two
rivals who were now subordinates and were thus carefully kept aloof.
[Sidenote: Corfinium the capital of the confederates.] The
confederates on their part were equally energetic. They had chosen as
their capital Corfinium, on the river Aternus (Pescara), because of
its central position with reference to the insurrection, and soon made
it evident that the Roman franchise was no longer the limit to their
aspirations, but that they aimed at the conquest of Rome herself.
[Sidenote: Measures of the confederates.] They called their capital
Italica. In it they built a forum, and fortified its walls. They
issued a new coinage. They chose two consuls, twelve praetors, and a
senate of five hundred, and gave the franchise to every community
in arms on their side. They mustered an army of 100,000 men, and
entrusted the command against Lupus in the north and west to
Pompaedius Silo, with six lieutenants under him; the command against
Caesar in the south and east was given to a noted Samnite, named Caius
Papius Mutilus.
It is easier to get a general idea of the war than of its details,
though the latter are not without interest. The results of the first
year were, in spite of some victories, most unfavourable to Rome. The
insurgents were encouraged. The insurrection had spread to Umbria and
Etruria, and the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote:
General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they
had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise
checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt
in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the
second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually
at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its
absolute extinction, and some embers of it still lingered for five
years more, and though Roman forces were still required after 89 B.C.
among the Sabines in Samnium, in Lucania, and at Nola, the war as
a war ended in that year. [Sidenote: Twofold division of the war.]
Consequently we may divide it into two periods, each well defined and
each consisting of a year, the first in which the confederate cause
triumphed and Marius lost credit; the second in which the cause of
Rome triumphed, and Sulla enhanced his reputation and became the
foremost man at Rome.
[Sidenote: B.C. 90. First year of the war. Attempt on Asculum by
Pompeius.] The war began, as was natural, with an attempt to take
Asculum. But the townsmen, manning the walls with the old men past
service, surprised Cnaeus Pompeius by a sally, and defeated him.
[Sidenote: Pompeius defeated and driven into Firmum.] Subsequently he
was again defeated at Faleria and driven into Firmum, a Latin colony
which held out for Rome. There he stayed till Servius Sulpicius came
to his help. [Sidenote: Pompeius, relieved by Sulpicius, besieges
Asculum.] On the approach of Sulpicius he sallied out. The enemy,
taken in front and rear, was routed, and Pompeius began the siege of
Asculum. It was not taken till the next year, 89, and only after a
desperate battle before its walls. Judacilius, who had come to relieve
the town of which he was a native, though the day was lost, forced his
way inside the walls, and held out for several months longer. Finally,
when it was impossible to protract the defence, he had a pile of wood
made, and a table placed on it at which he feasted with friends. Then,
taking poison, he had the pile fired. When the Romans got in they
took fearful vengeance, slaying all the officers and men of position,
expelling the rest of the inhabitants, and confiscating their
property. Such was the fate of the ringleaders of the rebellion.
[Sidenote: The confederates assail the towns which cling to Rome.] As
Asculum was the first object of Roman vengeance, so the confederates
directed their first efforts against the towns in their neighbourhood
which refused to join them. Silo assailed Alba and Mutilus Aesernia.
The consul Caesar, sending ahead Marcellus and Crassus into Samnium
and Lucania, followed in person as soon as he could. Put he was beaten
by Vettius Scato in Samnium with the loss of 2,000 men. [Sidenote:
They take Aesernia and are joined by Venafrum.] Venafrum thereupon
revolted; and, though one account says that Sulla relieved Aesernia,
it was at best only a partial or a temporary relief, for it
capitulated before the close of the year. How the siege of Alba
ended we do not know. Defeat after defeat was now announced at Rome.
[Sidenote: Perperna defeated.] Perperna lost 4,000 men, and most of
his other soldiers threw away their arms on the battlefield. For this
Lupus deprived him of his command and attached his troops to those
of Marius. [Sidenote: Crassus defeated. Grumentum taken by the
confederates.] Crassus was beaten in Lucania and shut up in Grumentum,
which was besieged and taken. [Sidenote: Story of the generosity of
some slaves.] A pleasant story is told about some slaves of this
town. They had deserted to the confederates, and when the town was
taken made straight for the house where they had lived and dragged
their mistress away, telling people they were going to have their
revenge on her at last. And so they saved her. [Sidenote: Nola taken
by the confederates.] While the troops of Crassus were cooped up in
Grumentum Mutilus descended into Campania and obtained possession of
Nola by treason. Two thousand soldiers also went over to him. The
officers remained loyal and were starved to death. [Sidenote: Town
after town won by the confederates.] Stabiae, Salernum, Pompeii,
Herculaneum, and probably Nuceria were taken in quick succession;
and, with his army swollen by deserters and recruits from the
neighbourhood, Mutilus laid siege to Acerrae. Caesar hastened to
relieve it. But Canusium and Venusia had joined the insurgents, and
in Venusia Oxyntas, son of Jugurtha, had been kept prisoner by the
Romans. Mutilus now put royal robes on him, and the Numidians in
Caesar's army, when they saw him, deserted in troops, so that Caesar
was forced to send the whole corps home.
[Sidenote: Caesar gains the first success for Rome; but is afterwards
defeated.] But out of this misfortune came the first gleam of success
which had as yet shone on the Roman arms. Mutilus ventured to attack
Caesar's camp, was driven back; and in the retreat the Roman cavalry
cut down 6,000 of his men. Though Marius Egnatius soon afterwards
defeated Caesar, this victory in some sort dissipated the gloom of
the capital; and while the two armies settled again into their old
position at Acerrae, the garb of mourning was laid aside at Rome for
the first time since the war began. Lupus and Marius meanwhile had
marched against the Marsi. Marius, in accordance with his old tactics
against the Cimbri, advised Lupus not to hazard a battle. But Lupus
thought that Marius wanted to get the consulship next year and reserve
for himself the honours of the war. So he hastened to fight, and,
throwing two bridges over the Tolenus, crossed by one himself, leaving
Marius to cross by the other. [Sidenote: Lupus defeated by the Marsi.]
As soon as the consul had reached the opposite bank, an ambuscade set
by Vettius Scato attacked him, and slew him and 8,000 of his men.
Their bodies, floating down the river, told Marius what had happened.
Like the good soldier that he was, he promptly crossed and seized the
enemy's camp. This disaster happened June 11, B.C. 90, and caused
great consternation in Rome. But at Rome small merit was now discerned
in any success gained by the veteran general, and Caepio, who had
opposed Drusus and was therefore a favourite with the equites, was
made joint commander in the north. It was a foolish choice. The
prudence of Marius and a victory over the Peligni gained by Sulpicius
were neutralised by the new general's rashness. Pompaedius Silo, who
must have been a thoroughly gallant man, came in person to the Roman
camp, bringing two young slaves whom he passed off as his own children
and offered as hostages for the sincerity of the offer he made, which
was to place his camp in Caepio's hands. [Sidenote: Caepio defeated
and slain by Silo.] Caepio went with him, and Pompaedius, running up a
hill to look out, as he said, for the enemy, gave a signal to men whom
he had placed in ambush. Caepio and many of his men were slain, and at
last Marius was sole commander. He advanced steadily but warily into
the Marsian country. Silo tauntingly told him to come down and fight,
if he was a great general. [Sidenote: Prudence of Marius.] 'Nay,'
replied Marius, 'if you are a great general, do you make me.' At
length he did fight; and, as he always did, won the day. In another
battle the Marrucinian leader, and 6,000 of the Marsi were slain.
[Sidenote: Success of Sulla.] But Sulla was at that time co-operating
with Marius, having apparently, when the Romans evacuated most of
Campania, marched north to form a junction with him; and beside his
star that of Marius always paled. Marius had shrunk from following the
enemy into a vineyard. Sulla, on the other side of it, cut them off.
Not that Marius was always over-cautious. Once in this war he said
to his men, 'I don't know which are the greatest cowards, you or
the enemy, for they dare not face your backs, nor you theirs.' But
everything he now did was distrusted at home; and while some men
disparaged his successes, and said that he was grown old and clumsy,
others were more afraid of him than of the enemy, with whom indeed
there was some reason to think that he had too good an understanding.
[Sidenote: A secret understanding, possibly, between Marius and the
confederates.] For once, when his army and Silo's were near each
other, both generals and men conversed, cursing the war, and with
mutual embraces adjuring each other to desist from it. If the story be
true, it is a sufficient reason for the Senate's conduct, inexplicable
except by political reasons, in not employing Marius at all in the
following year.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Umbrians and Etruscans.] It was probably at
the close of this year that the revolt of the Umbrians and Etruscans
took place, and that Plotius defeated the Umbrians, and Porcius Cato
the Etruscans. On a general review of this piecemeal campaign it is
plain that the Romans had been worsted. On the main scene of war,
Campania, they had been decisively defeated, and the country was in
the enemy's power. In Picenum and the Marsian territory the balance
was more even; but Lupus and Caepio had been slain, Perperna and
Pompeius had been defeated, and on the whole the confederates had
carried off the honours of the war. [Sidenote: Results of the first
year of the war.] Now Umbria was in insurrection, Mithridates was
astir in Asia, and there were symptoms of revolt in Transalpine Gaul.
A selfish intriguer like Marius might very likely have thought of
throwing in his lot with the Italians, for theirs seemed to be the
winning side. But on honester men such considerations produced quite
another effect. [Sidenote: The party of Drusus revives.] The party of
Drusus took heart again, and appealed to the results of the war as
a proof of his patriotic foresight and of the moderation of his
counsels. They got the administration of the Varian Law into their own
hands, and turned it against its authors, Varius himself being exiled.
The consul Caesar had personal reasons for being disquieted with
the war, if the story of Orosius be true, that, when he asked for a
triumph for his victory at Acerrae, the Senate sent him a mourning
robe as a sign of what they thought of his request. [Sidenote: The Lex
Julia.] In any case he was the author of that Lex Julia which really
terminated the Social War. [Sidenote: Various accounts of the law.]
There are different accounts given of this law. According to Gellius
it enfranchised all Latium, by which he must mean to include all the
Latin colonies. According to Cicero it enfranchised all Italy except
Cisalpine Gaul. According to Appian it enfranchised all the Italians
still faithful. In any case those enfranchised were not to be enrolled
in the old tribes lest they should swamp them by their votes, but in
eight new ones, which were to vote only after the others. [Sidenote:
The Lex Plautia Papiria.] The Lex Julia was immediately followed by
the Lex Plautia Papiria, framed by the tribunes M. Plautius Silvanus
and C. Papirius Carbo. This law seems to have been meant to supplement
the other. The Lex Julia rewarded the Italians who had remained
faithful. The Lex Plautia Papiria held out the olive branch to the
Italians who had rebelled. It enfranchised any citizen of an allied
town who at the date of the law was dwelling in Italy, and made a
declaration to the praetor within sixty days. In the same year, and in
connexion no doubt with these measures, the Jus Latii was conferred on
a number of towns north of the Po, by which every magistrate in his
town might, if he chose, claim the franchise. Some of the free allies
of Rome did not look upon the Lex Julia as a boon. Heracleia and
Neapolis hesitated to accept it, the latter having special privileges,
such as exemption from service by land, which it valued above the
franchise. Probably these towns and Rhegium made a special bargain,
and, while accepting the franchise, retained their own language and
institutions. [Sidenote: Effects of these laws.] The general result
of the legislation was this. All Italy and all Latin colonies in
Cisalpine Gaul, together with all allied communities in Cisalpine Gaul
south of the Po, received the franchise. All the other Cisalpine towns
north of the Po received the Jus Latii. A general amnesty was in
fact offered; and though the provisions as to the new tribes were
unsatisfactory, its effect was soon apparent.
[Sidenote: B.C. 89 The second year of the war.] [Sidenote: Successes
of Pompeius in the north.] The consuls for 89 were Lucius Porcius
Cato, who took command of the army in the Marian district, and Cnaeus
Pompeius, who retained the command in Picenum. Caesar was succeeded
in Campania by Sulla. Flushed with hope, the confederates opened the
campaign by despatching 15,000 men across the Apennines to join the
Etruscan insurgents. But Pompeius intercepted and slew 5,000 of them,
and dispersed the rest, who, even if they had reached Etruria, would
have found that they had come on a bootless errand. He followed up
this success by blow after blow. One of his lieutenants, Sulpicius,
crushed the Marrucini at Teate. Another, Q. Metellus Piso, subdued the
Marsi. Pompeius in person fought a great battle before Asculum, as
before related, and captured the town; and in the following year
the Peligni and Vestini submitted to him.
[Sidenote: Successes of Cosconius in the south-east.] In the
south-east of Italy, Cosconius, the praetor, burnt Salapia in Apulia,
received the submission of Cannae, and besieged Canusium. Marius
Egnatius came to its aid; but though he at first drove back Cosconius
to Cannae, he or his successor was defeated and slain in another
fight, and Cosconius became master of all Apulia and the Iapygian
peninsula, which he laid waste with fire and sword.
[Sidenote: Successes of Sulla in the south-west.] While the Roman
supremacy was thus re-established all along the east coast, Sulla, in
Campania, was equally triumphant. He recovered Stabiae in April, and
his lieutenant, T. Didius, took Herculaneum in June. Didius, however,
lost his life in the assault. Sulla next besieged Pompeii, defeated
Cluentius who came to its aid, again defeated him between Pompeii
and Nola, and a third time at the gates of Nola, where Cluentius was
slain. About this time Aulus Postumius Albinus, while in charge of
the fleet, was murdered by his own men, recruits probably whom he was
bringing from Rome to Sulla's army. Sulla pardoned the mutineers,
saying that he knew they would wipe out their crime by their bravery,
and they did so in the fights with Cluentius. By such politic clemency
and never-varying good fortune Sulla bound the army to his own
interests.
Leaving Nola behind him, he crossed the Hirpinian frontier and marched
on Aeclanum. The townsmen, who were expecting a Lucanian reinforcement
that day, asked for time to deliberate. Sulla gave them an hour, and
occupied the hour in heaping vine osiers round the wooden walls. Not
choosing to be burnt the townsmen surrendered, and Sulla sacked the
place. He then marched northwards into Samnium. The mountain-passes
were held by Mutilus, who hemmed in Sulla near Aesernia. Sulla
pretended to treat for peace, and, when the enemy were off their
guard, marched away in the night, leaving a trumpeter to sound all
the watches as if the army was still in position. He seems to have
defeated Mutilus after this, and, leaving Aesernia behind as he had
left Nola, finally, before going home to sue for the consulship of 88
B.C., stormed Bovianum. He had managed the campaign in a bold and able
way, where less daring generalship might have failed.
[Sidenote: First Bovianum, and then Aesernia, becomes the confederate
capital.] As the insurrection was thus being stamped out on either
coast, Bovianum had become the capital of the insurgents instead of
Corfinium. Now Bovianum was taken, and Aesernia became its centre. The
occupation of the Hirpinian territory cut off the Samnites from the
South of Italy, where the Lucanians and Bruttians remained in arms.
Except for some trifling operations, which Pompeius had to carry out
in order to complete the pacification of his district, all that was
now left for the commanders of 88 was to crush the rebels in these two
isolated divisions, and the war would be at an end. [Sidenote: B.C.
88. Desperation of the confederates.] The rebels indeed prepared for a
desperate resistance. Five generals were appointed, Pompaedius Silo,
the Marsian, at their head; and, by enrolling slaves and calling out
fresh levies, the Samnites mustered an army of 50,000 men. Once more,
almost single-handed, they prepared to strive with their old enemy for
the sovereignty of Italy. The gallant Silo signalised his appointment
by recovering Bovianum, but he was soon afterwards slain. He is said
to have been defeated in a great battle by Mamercus Aemilius, and to
have fallen in it. Appian says that Metellus defeated him in Iapygia;
Orosius, that Sulpicius defeated him in Apulia. However that may be,
with him the last gleam of hope for the Samnite cause faded away. They
made, it is said, a treaty with Mithridates; but long before that king
could have reached Italy, if he had been able to make the attempt,
there would have been no allies to support him. In Lucania Aulus
Gabinius, made rash by some successes, assaulted the confederate camp,
but was repulsed and slain. Lamponius, the Lucanian general, remained
master of the country, and attempted to take Rhegium, with the view
of crossing over to Sicily and renewing the rebellion there. But the
attempt failed. [Sidenote: Revolution at Rome, and the part taken by
the insurgents in it.] Nola, however, still held out in Campania; and
now there occurred a revolution at Rome which postponed the final
subjugation of the insurgents till after the battle of the Colline
Gate. For convenience and clearness the part taken by them in this
revolution may be here summarised. Sulla, as consul, was besieging
Nola when he was recalled to Rome by the Sulpician revolution and his
election to the command against Mithridates. A Samnite army had come
to relieve it, but had been defeated by Sulla. Three Roman corps
still remained to keep the Samnites in check and besiege Nola, under
Claudius, Metellus, and Plotius. It was to Nola that Cinna came, and
seduced a large portion of the besiegers to follow him to Rome. Upon
this the insurgents suddenly found themselves, instead of hunted
desperadoes, courted as allies by two parties. The Senate again
offered the terms of the Lex Plautia Papiria to all in arms, and some
accepted them. But the Nolans, when Metellus was recalled and the long
siege was then raised in 87 B.C., marched out and burnt Abella.
The Samnites demanded, as the price of their assistance, that the
prisoners, spoils, and deserters should be restored, and that they
and the Romans who had joined them should receive the franchise. The
Senate refused, and the Samnites at once joined Cinna and Marius, who
were pledged not only to give the franchise, but also to enrol all
the new voters in the old tribes; a measure which was ratified by the
Senate in the year of Cinna's last consulship, 84 B.C. On Sulla's
return to Italy they with the Lucanians, who had meanwhile been
practically independent, were the most eager supporters of Marius's
son. [Sidenote: Pontius of Telesia.] In 82 Pontius of Telesia, at the
head of a Samnite force, with the desperate hardihood inspired by
centuries of hatred, marched straight on Rome, and the city was saved
only by Sulla's victory at the Colline Gate. Three days after the
battle Sulla massacred all his prisoners. He knew that death alone
could disarm such implacable foes. The Samnite name, he said, with
his cold ferocity, must be erased from the earth, or Rome could never
rest. The Samnites evacuated Nola in the year 80 B.C., and then their
last great leader, C. Papius Mutilus, having fled in disguise to his
wife at Teanum, was disowned by her and slew himself. [Sidenote:
Fate of Samnium.] Sulla carried his threats into effect. He captured
Aesernia, and spread a desolation all around, from which the country
has never recovered to this day. Then, and not till then, the stubborn
resistance of the most relentless foes of Rome was finally suppressed.
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