MARIUS RETURNS TO ROME
Sulla, you remember, entered the city with his troops as Marius fled
from Rome. He at once revoked the laws of Sulpicius, and ruled in his
own way.
But he was impatient to go to war against Mithridates, and so, in the
summer of 87 B.C., he set out with his army for Greece.
No sooner was he gone than Cinna, one of the Consuls, proposed that
Marius and his friends should be recalled. But Octavius, his colleague,
was greatly opposed to this, and determined to frustrate Cinna’s
schemes.
The Consul soon gave Octavius the opportunity he wished. For when the
citizens assembled to vote for or against the return of the exile,
Cinna led a band of armed men to the Forum, that they might be too
frightened to vote save as he wished. He drove away, too, the tribunes
who attempted to speak against him.
This was against all laws of justice, and Octavius did not hesitate to
go to the Forum at the head of an armed force to punish Cinna’s men.
In the struggle many of the rioters were killed, while Cinna himself
was forced to flee. The Senate then declared that he was no longer
Consul, but had become a public enemy.
When Cinna heard of the Senate’s decree he was very angry, and
determined to gather together troops to fight against Octavius. He was
speedily joined by Marius, who was no sooner told what had happened in
Rome than he hastened back to the city.
[Illustration: Gaius Marius sitting in exile among the ruins of
Carthage.]
When he arrived Cinna received the exile with great honour, and urged
him to wear the robes of a pro-Consul.
But Marius pretended to be too humble to don such garments, and he
persisted in wearing old and shabby clothes.
His hair, which had not been cut since his banishment, he left still
untouched, although it now reached to his shoulders, while he walked as
though bent with the weight of his seventy years. It did not seem, to
judge from his pitiable appearance, as if the old man could be of much
use to Cinna.
But his enemies muttered that Marius was only trying in these ways to
make the people sorry for all he had suffered. They needed only to look
in his face to see that he was harbouring grim thoughts of revenge on
those who had ever shown themselves to be his enemies.
Soon Cinna had four armies ready to march on Rome. One was under
Marius, another Cinna himself intended to lead, while two more were
under his legates, Sertorius and Carbo.
The city walls were in no fit state to stand an attack, for in many
places they were even broken down. Octavius ordered these weak places
to be repaired and strengthened by fortifications, while at the same
time he sent messengers to the lieutenants of Sulla, bidding them
hasten to the aid of the city.
Two of these officers, Metellus and Strabo, hastened to obey Octavius.
But they did, perhaps, more harm than good, so many of their troops
deserted and joined Cinna’s army.
Metellus did not stay in the city long, and refused to take the command
of the troops, as Octavius wished.
Strabo did his best, for although his men were suffering from fever he
attacked Sertorius. But the battle was undecided, and soon after this
Strabo was killed by lightning. Octavius was thus left without the
officers on whose help he had relied.
Marius, meanwhile, had, as it seemed, thrown off the weight of his
years. He was as active and as successful as in his earlier battles.
Ostia, the port of Rome, was taken by his troops, and this, as he meant
it to do, kept the corn supply from reaching the city, and Rome began
to fear that famine was before her.
Before long Cinna and Marius were able to meet on the Janiculum. Large
numbers of the troops under Octavius continued to desert and to join
their army.
Then the Senate saw that they would gain nothing by continuing to defy
the successful generals. So they bent their pride, and invited Cinna
and Marius to meet them within the city.
When the generals arrived, the Senate begged that they would spare the
lives of the citizens, even if they saw fit to punish them.
Cinna did not scruple to promise that all should be as the Senate
wished. Marius, who stood close to the chair of Octavius, said not a
word, but his face was stern and forbidding. And again those who looked
at him foresaw that dire punishment would overtake his enemies.
Marius and his followers were still under the ban of exile, so the
first thing Cinna demanded was that the sentence should be withdrawn.
But Marius was now within sight of his revenge, and he was too
impatient to begin his cruel work to wait for the decision of the
people.
When only a few tribes had voted, he dashed into the Forum, closely
followed by a band of slaves, which band he called his bodyguard.
The slaves were ruffians hired to do his bidding, and now, at a word or
sign from their master, they began to murder the citizens. The glance
of Marius was enough to show them whom to slay. Soon they did not even
look to him for a sign, but simply fell upon all whose greetings Marius
did not return.
Octavius was cut down as he sat in his consular chair, and his head was
taken to Cinna.
Catulus, too, who had fought side by side with Marius against the
Cimbri, was doomed, although his friends begged that his life might be
spared. Marius answered their petitions roughly, saying only, ‘He must
die.’
But Catulus did not wait for the cruel sentence to be carried out.
He shut himself up in a room, and making a huge fire, he suffocated
himself.
These were days of terror in Rome, for no man knew if his life was safe.
At length even Cinna grew ashamed of the cruelty of Marius’s slaves,
and he and Sertorius put a number of the ruffians to death. After this
the citizens’ lives were in less danger.
The time had now come to elect Consuls for the year 86 B.C. As usual
the people assembled, but they had no choice save to vote for Marius
and Cinna. To do otherwise would have been to court death.
Thus, as Marius had believed would happen, even during the miserable
days of his flight, he became Consul for the seventh time. But he did
not live many days to enjoy the new honour, if honour it could be
called, when fear alone had bestowed it upon him. Worn out with the
passion of revenge to which he had yielded, and attacked by fever, he
died on the 13th January 86 B.C.
Cinna was now the most powerful man in Rome. He had no difficulty in
making the people elect himself and Carbo Consuls for the years 85 and
84 B.C.
There was but one name Cinna dreaded, and that was the name of Sulla.
But he thought that, if he proclaimed that the great general who was
fighting for Rome in the East was a public enemy, he soon would have
no reason to fear him. So he did this, and at the same time ordered
Sulla’s house in the city to be pulled down.
Cinna, however, had now gone too far. Many of the Optimates, who
belonged to the best families in Rome, at once left the city and fled
to Greece to the camp of Sulla. So many senators also joined the
general, that Sulla could act in the name of the Senate more truly than
could his rival in Rome herself. He therefore proclaimed that when the
war was over he would come back to Rome with his army and overthrow
Cinna and his government.
The Consuls, when they heard this, at once began to enrol troops, that
they might be prepared to hold the city against Sulla when he came.
But Cinna, after all, was not alive to meet his dreaded enemy. For in
84 B.C. the soldiers of the Consul mutinied and murdered him. Sulla did
not return to Italy until the spring of 83 B.C.