SULPICIUS.
The terrible disintegration which the Social War had brought on Italy
was faithfully reproduced in Rome. There, too, every man's hand was
against his neighbour. Creditor and debtor, tribune and consul, Senate
and anti-Senate, fiercely confronted each other. Personal interests
had become so much more prominent, and old party-divisions were so
confused by the schemes of Italianising politicians, aristocratic in
their connexions, but cleaving to part at least of the traditional
democratic programme, that it is very hard to see where the views of
one faction blended with those of another and where they clashed.
[Sidenote: The Sulpician revolution difficult to understand.] Still
harder is it to dissect the character of individuals; to decide, for
instance, how far a man like Sulpicius was swayed by disinterested
principles, and how far he fought for his own hand. We need not make
too much of the fact that he appealed to force, because violence
was the order of the day, and submission to the law simply meant
submission to the law of force. But there are some parts of his career
apparently so inconsistent as almost to defy explanation which in any
case can be little more than guesswork.
[Sidenote: Sulpicius.] Publius Sulpicius Rufus was now in the prime of
life, having been born in 124 B.C. He was an aristocrat, an orator of
great force and fire, and a friend of Drusus, whose views he shared
and inherited. Cicero speaks of him in no grudging terms. 'Of all the
speakers I have heard Sulpicius was the grandest, and, so to speak,
most tragic. Besides being powerful, his voice was sweet and resonant.
His gestures and movements, elegant though they were, had nothing
theatrical about them, and his oratory, though quick and fluent, was
neither redundant nor verbose.' [Sidenote: Financial crisis at Rome.]
The year before his tribunate had been a turbulent one at Rome. The
Social War and Asiatic disturbances had brought about a financial
crisis. Debtors, hard pressed by their creditors, invoked obsolete
penalties against usury in their defence, and the creditors, because
the praetor Asellio attempted to submit the question to trial,
murdered him in the open Forum. The debtors responded by a cry for
_tabulae novae_, or a sweeping remission of all debts. Of these
debtors many doubtless would belong to the lower orders; but, from a
proposal of Sulpicius made the next year, it appears probable that
some were found in the ranks of the Senate. War had made money
'tight,' to use the phraseology of our modern Stock Exchange, and
reckless extravagance could no longer be supported by borrowing.
[Sidenote: Sulpicius the successor of Drusus.] Sulpicius inherited the
policy of Drusus, which was to reconstruct the Senatorial Government
on an Italian basis. Like Drusus he had to conciliate prejudices in
order to carry out his design. Plutarch says that he went about with
600 men of the equestrian order, whom he called his anti-Senate. No
doubt it was to please these equites, who would belong to the party of
creditors, that he proposed that no one should be a senator who owed
more than 2,000 denarii. No doubt, too, he would have filled the
vacancies thus created by the expulsion of reckless anti-Italian
optimates, from the ranks of these equites, just as Drusus had done.
[Sidenote: He attempts to remodel the government.] Just like Drusus,
too, he had to court the proletariate, and this he did by proposing to
enrol freedmen in the tribes. This, as they were generally dependent
on men of his own order, he could do without prejudice to the
new-modelled aristocracy which he was attempting to organize. He also
proposed to grant an amnesty to those who had been exiled by the Lex
Varia, hoping, no doubt, to gain more by the adherents who would
return to Rome than he would lose by the return of men like Varius
himself. He had opposed such an amnesty before; but on such a point he
might have easily changed his views, especially if a strong cry was
being raised by the friends of the exiles. He had a personal feud with
the Julian family, because he had opposed Caesar's illegal candidature
for the consulship; but, having fortified himself by such alliances,
he proceeded to carry out the main design of Drusus, namely, the
complete enfranchisement of the Italians. [Sidenote: Pro-Italian
measure of Sulpicius.] This, perhaps, would be especially distasteful
to the Julii, as superseding the Lex Julia and the Lex Plautia
Papiria, which to them, no doubt, seemed ample and more than ample
concessions. Sulpicius, on the other hand, and the minority of the
Senate which sided with him, saw that under the cover of clemency a
grievous wrong was being done. For not only were the Italians who had
submitted since the terms of the Lex Plautia took effect without the
franchise, but from the fact of their rebellion they had lost their
old privileges as allied States. Even those who had benefited by these
concessions had benefited only in name. As they voted in new tribes,
their votes were valueless, and often would not be recorded at all;
for a majority on most questions would be assured long before it came
to their turn to vote. To a statesman imbued with the views of Drusus
such a distribution of the franchise must have seemed impolitic
trickery; and, like Drusus, Sulpicius resorted to questionable means
in order to gain the end on which he had set his heart.
Rome was thus broken up into two camps, not as of yore broadly marked
off by palpable distinctions of rank, property, or privilege, but each
containing adherents of all sorts and conditions, though in the Senate
the opponents of Sulpicius had the majority. When Sulpicius proposed
to enrol the Italians in the old tribes, the consuls proclaimed a
justitium, or suspension of all public business for some religious
observances. It is said by some modern writers that the object of
Sulpicius in proposing to enrol the Italians in the old tribes was to
secure the election of Marius to the command against Mithridates. It
is certain, indeed, that Marius longed for it. [Sidenote: Attitude of
Marius.] Daily he was to be seen in the Campus Martius exercising with
the young men, and, though old and fat, showing himself nimble in
arms and active on horseback--conduct which excited some men's
good-humoured sympathy, but shocked others, who thought he had much
better go to Baiae for the baths there, and that such an exhibition
was contemptible in one of his years. Sulpicius may have thought
Marius quite fit for the command, and was warranted in thinking so
by the events of the Social War; but there is no more ground for
supposing that the election of Marius was his primary object than for
considering Plutarch's diatribe a fair estimate of his character.
[Sidenote: Connection of Marius and Sulpicius explained.] He was the
friend and successor of Drusus, and his alliance with Marius was a
means to the end which in common with Drusus he had in view, and
not the end itself. This consideration is essential to a true
understanding of the politics of the time, and just makes the
difference whether Sulpicius was a petty-minded adventurer or
deliberately following in the lines laid down for him by a succession
of statesmen. [Sidenote: Street-fighting.] To the manoeuvre of the
consul he replied by a violent protest that it was illegal. Rome was
being paraded by his partisans--3,000 armed men, and there was a
tumult in which the lives of the consuls were in danger. One, Pompeius
Rufus, escaped, but his son was killed. The other, Sulla, annulled
the justitium, but is said to have got off with his life only because
Marius generously gave him shelter in his own house. In these
occurrences it is impossible not to see that the consuls were the
first to act unfairly. Sulpicius had been intending to bring forward
his laws in the regular fashion. They thwarted him by a trick. Whether
he in anger gave the signal for violence, or whether, as is quite as
likely, his Italian partisans did not wait for his bidding, the blame
of the tumult lay at the door of the other side. In such cases he is
not guiltiest who strikes the first blow, but he who has made blows
inevitable.
[Sidenote: The Sulpician laws carried by force.] The laws of Sulpicius
were carried. [Sidenote: Sulla flies to the army, which marches on
Rome.] Sulla fled to the army; and, perhaps, it was only now that
Sulpicius, knowing or thinking that he knew that Sulla would march on
Rome, carried a resolution in the popular assembly for making Marius
commander in the east. Two tribunes were accordingly sent to the camp
at Nola to take the army from Sulla. His soldiers immediately slew
them; and, burning for the booty of Asia and attached to their
fortunate leader, they, when without venturing to hint at the means
by which he could avenge it, he complained of the wrong done to him,
clamorously called on him to lead them to Rome. All his officers,
except one quaestor, left him; but he set out with six legions and was
joined by Pompeius on the way. Two praetors met him and forbade his
advance. They escaped with their lives, but the soldiers broke their
fasces and tore off their senatorial robes. A second and a third time
the Senate sent to ask his intentions. 'To release Rome from her
tyrants,' was the grim reply. Then he vouchsafed an offer that the
Senate, Marius, and Sulpicius should meet him in the Campus Martius to
come to terms. If this meant that he would come with his army at his
back, it was an absurd proposal. If it meant that he would come alone,
it was a falsehood. In either case it was a device to fritter away
time. [Sidenote: Sulla's astuteness and superstition.] For all the
while that he was bandying meaningless messages he continued his
onward march. He had sacrificed, and the soothsayer Postumius, when he
saw the entrails, had stretched out his hands to him, and offered to
be kept in chains for punishment after the battle if it was not a
victory. He, too, had himself seen a vision of good omen. Bellona, or
another goddess, had, he dreamed, put a thunderbolt in his hands, and,
naming his enemies one by one, bidden him strike them, and they were
consumed to ashes.
Again envoys came from the Senate forbidding him to come within five
miles of Rome. Perhaps they still felt as secure in the immemorial
freedom of the city from military rule as the English Parliament did
before Cromwell's _coup d'état_. Again he amused them, and no doubt
himself also, with a falsehood, and, professing compliance, followed
close upon their heels. With one legion he occupied the Caelian Gate,
with another under Pompeius the Colline Gate, with a third the Pons
Sublicius, while a fourth was posted outside as a reserve. Thus, for
the first time, a consul commanded an army in the city, and soldiers
were masters of Rome. [Sidenote: Street-fighting.] Marius and
Sulpicius met them on the Esquiline and, pouring down tiles from the
housetops, at first beat them back. But Sulla, waving a burning torch,
bade his men shoot fiery arrows at the houses, and drove the Marians
from the Esquiline Forum. Then he sent for the legion in reserve, and
ordered a detachment to go round by the Subura and take the enemy in
the rear. In vain Marius made another stand at the temple of Tellus.
In vain he offered liberty to any slaves that would join him. He
was beaten and fled from the city. Thus Sulla, having by injustice
provoked disorder, quelled it by the sword, and began the civil war.
Sulpicius, Marius, and ten others were proscribed, and Sulla is said
to have still further stimulated the pursuit of Marius by setting a
price on his head. [Sidenote: Sulpicius slain.] Sulpicius was killed
at Laurentum, and, according to Velleius Paterculus, Sulla fixed up
the eloquent orator's head at the Rostra, a thing not unlikely to have
been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly
congenial. [Sidenote: Stories of Sulla.] He evinced it on this
occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Hugo his
episode of Lantenac and the gunner. He gave the slave who betrayed
Sulpicius his freedom, and then had him hurled from the Tarpeian Rock.
After this he set to work to restore such order as would enable him to
hasten to the east.
[Sidenote: Why Sulla left Italy.] Various explanations have been
offered to account for his moderation at this conjuncture, and for his
leaving Italy precisely when his enemies were again gathering for an
attack. But the true one has never yet, perhaps, been suggested. Who
was it that had made him supreme at Rome? The army. What had been the
bribe which had won it over? A campaign in Asia under the fortunate
Sulla. Without that army he was powerless, nay, he was a dead man.
Therefore it was absolutely necessary to execute his pledge to the
army, which would have no keen desire to encounter its countrymen in
Italy. No doubt he coveted the glory and spoil of the Asiatic command;
but it is absurd to suppose that he would have quitted Italy now of
his own free will. He had no choice in the matter. He was bound hand
and foot by his promises to the soldiers; and all that he could do was
by plausible moderation to win as many friends, conciliate as many
foes, as possible, throw on Cinna, whom he could not hope to keep
quiet, the guilt of perjury, and trust to fortune for the rest. This
is a probable and consistent view of what now took place at Rome; and
every other account makes out Sulla to have been either inconsistent,
which he never was, for he was always uniformly selfish; or patriotic,
which he never was, if patriotism consists in sacrificing private to
public considerations; or indifferent, which he was in principle but
never in practice, unless where his own interests were not threatened
and only the suffering of others involved.
[Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] His first measure was to annul the
Sulpician laws. Secondly, to relieve the debtors, some colonies were
established, and a law was passed about interest, the terms of which
we do not know. Thirdly, the Senate, thinned by the Social War and
the Varian law, was recruited by 300 optimates. Fourthly, because
Sulpicius had resisted the proclamation of a justitium--that device by
which the Senate had virtually, though not legally, retained in its
own hands the power of discussing any measure before it was submitted
to the people--therefore for the future no measure was to be submitted
to the people till it had been previously discussed by the Senate. In
other words, the Senate was now confirmed by law in a privilege
which it had hitherto only exercised by the employment of a fiction.
Fifthly, the votes were to be taken, not in the Comitia Tributa, but
in the Comitia of Centuries. Sixthly, the five classes were no longer
to have an equal voice, but the first class was, as in the Servian
constitution, to have nearly half the votes. As the first class
consisted of those who had an estate of 100,000 sesterces, this
ordinance changed the democracy into a timocracy, transferring the
power from the people generally to the wealthier classes: but,
considering how voting had been manipulated of late, it was perhaps a
measure due to the Senate quite as much as to Sulla. On the whole he
legislated as little as he could and proscribed as few as he could.
[Sidenote: Opposition to Sulla.] But he tried to get two of his
partisans, Servius and Nonius, elected consuls for the year 87.
Instead of them, however, L. Cornelius Cinna, a determined leader of
the populares, was elected; and though Cnaeus Octavius, his colleague,
was one of the optimates, he was not Sulla's creature. In another
quarter his arrangements were thwarted even more unpleasantly. He had
got a decree framed by the people, giving the army of the north to his
friend Q. Pompeius Rufus, and recalling Cn. Pompeius Strabo. But the
latter procured the assassination of the former, and remained at the
head of the army. Still Sulla showed no resentment. A tribune named
Virginius was threatening to prosecute him. But he contented himself
with making Cinna ascend the Capitol with a stone in his hand, and,
throwing it down before a number of spectators, solemnly swear to
observe the new constitution. Then, leaving Metellus in Samnium
and Appius Claudius at Nola, he hurried to Capua, and embarking at
Brundusium felt, no doubt, that if he must pay his debt to the army
before the army would commit fresh treasons for him, it was not
unpleasant now to be forced away from the wasps' nest which he had
stirred up round him at home. And so, making a virtue of a necessity,
he sailed with a light heart from the chance of assassination at Rome
to fame and fortune in the East.
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