The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician Revolution
Romans and Italians
From the time when the defeat of Pyrrhus had put an end to the last
war which the Italians had waged for their independence--or, in other
words, for nearly two hundred years--the Roman primacy had now
subsisted in Italy, without having been once shaken in its
foundations even under circumstances of the utmost peril. Vainly
had the heroic family of the Barcides, vainly had the successors
of Alexander the Great and of the Achaemenids, endeavoured to rouse
the Italian nation to contend with the too powerful capital; it had
obsequiously appeared in the fields of battle on the Guadalquivir
and on the Mejerdah, at the pass of Tempe and at Mount Sipylus, and
with the best blood of its youth had helped its masters to achieve
the subjugation of three continents. Its own position meanwhile had
changed, but had deteriorated rather than improved. In a material
point of view, doubtless, it had in general not much ground to
complain. Though the small and intermediate landholders throughout
Italy suffered in consequence of the injudicious Roman legislation
as to corn, the larger landlords and still more the mercantile and
capitalist class were flourishing, for the Italians enjoyed, as
respected the turning of the provinces to financial account,
substantially the same protection and the same privileges as
Roman burgesses, and thus shared to a great extent in the material
advantages of the political ascendency of the Romans. In general,
the economic and social condition of Italy was not primarily dependent
on political distinctions; there were allied districts, such as Umbria
and Etruria, in which the class of free farmers had mostly disappeared,
while in others, such as the valleys of the Abruzzi, the same
class had still maintained a tolerable footing or remained almost
unaffected--just as a similar diversity could be pointed out in the
different Roman burgess-districts. On the other hand the political
inferiority of Italy was daily displayed more harshly and more
abruptly. No formal open breach of right indeed occurred, at
least in the principal questions. The communal freedom, which
under the name of sovereignty was accorded by treaty to the Italian
communities, was on the whole respected by the Roman government;
the attack, which the Roman reform party at the commencement of the
agrarian agitation made on the Roman domains guaranteed to the
communities of better position, had not only been earnestly opposed
by the strictly conservative as well as by the middle party in Rome,
but had been very soon abandoned by the Roman opposition itself.
Disabilities and Wrongs of the Subjects
But the rights, which belonged and could not but belong to Rome as
the leading community--the supreme conduct of war-affairs, and the
superintendence of the whole administration--were exercised in a way
which was almost as bad as if the allies had been directly declared
to be subjects devoid of rights. The numerous modifications of the
fearfully severe martial law of Rome, which were introduced there in
the course of the seventh century, seem to have remained on the whole
limited to the Roman burgess-soldiers: this is certain as to the most
important, the abolition of executions by martial law,(1) and we may
easily conceive the impression which was produced when, as happened
in the Jugurthine war, Latin officers of repute were beheaded by
sentence of the Roman council of war, while the lowest burgess-soldier
had in the like case the right of presenting an appeal to the civil
tribunals of Rome. The proportions in which the burgesses and
Italian allies were to be drawn for military service had, as was fair,
remained undefined by treaty; but, while in earlier times the two had
furnished on an average equal numbers of soldiers,(2) now, although the
proportions of the population had changed probably in favour of the
burgesses rather than to their disadvantage, the demands on the allies
were by degrees increased disproportionately,(3) so that on the one
hand they had the chief burden of the heavier and more costly service
imposed on them, and on the other hand there were two allies now
regularly levied for one burgess. In like manner with this military
supremacy the civil superintendence, which (including the supreme
administrative jurisdiction which could hardly be separated from it)
the Roman government had always and rightly reserved to itself over
the dependent Italian communities, was extended in such a way that
the Italians were hardly less than the provincials abandoned without
protection to the caprice of any one of the numberless Roman
magistrates. In Teanum Sidicinum, one of the most considerable
of the allied towns, a consul had ordered the chief magistrate of
the town to be scourged with rods at the stake in the marketplace,
because, on the consul's wife expressing a desire to bathe in the
men's bath, the municipal officers had not driven forth the bathers
quickly enough, and the bath appeared to her not to be clean.
Similar scenes had taken place in Ferentinum, likewise a town
holding the best position in law, and even in the old and important
Latin colony of Cales. In the Latin colony of Venusia a free peasant
had been seized by a young Roman diplomatist not holding office but
passing through the town, on account of a jest which he had allowed
himself to make on the Roman's litter, had been thrown down, and
whipped to death with the straps of the litter. These occurrences are
incidentally mentioned about the time of the Fregellan insurrection;
it admits of no doubt that similar outrages frequently occurred, and
of as little that no real satisfaction for such misdeeds could anywhere
be obtained, whereas the right of appeal--not lightly violated with
impunity--protected in some measure at least the life and limbs of the
Roman burgess. In consequence of this treatment of the Italians on the
part of the Roman government, the variance, which the wisdom of their
ancestors had carefully fostered between the Latin and the other
Italian communities, could not fail, if not to disappear, at any
rate to undergo abatement.(4) The curb-fortresses of Rome and the
districts kept to their allegiance by these fortresses lived now under
the like oppression; the Latin could remind the Picentine that they
were both in like manner "subject to the fasces"; the overseers and
the slaves of former days were now united by a common hatred towards
the common despot.
While the present state of the Italian allies was thus transformed from
a tolerable relation of dependence into the most oppressive bondage,
they were at the same time deprived of every prospect of obtaining
better rights. With the subjugation of Italy the Roman burgess-body
had closed its ranks; the bestowal of the franchise on whole
communities was totally given up, its bestowal on individuals was
greatly restricted.(5) They now advanced a step farther: on occasion
of the agitation which contemplated the extension of the Roman franchise
to all Italy in the years 628, 632, the right of migration to Rome was
itself attacked, and all the non-burgesses resident in Rome were
directly ejected by decree of the people and of the senate from the
capital(6)--a measure as odious on account of its illiberality, as
dangerous from the various private interests which it injuriously
affected. In short, while the Italian allies had formerly stood to
the Romans partly in the relation of brothers under tutelage, protected
rather than ruled and not destined to perpetual minority, partly in
that of slaves tolerably treated and not utterly deprived of the hope
of manumission, they were now all of them subject nearly in equal
degree, and with equal hopelessness, to the rods and axes of their
Roman masters, and might at the utmost presume like privileged
slaves to transmit the kicks received from their masters onward
to the poor provincials.
The Rupture
Fregellan War
Difficulty of a General Insurrection
It belongs to the nature of such differences that, restrained by the
sense of national unity and by the remembrance of dangers surmounted
in common, they make their appearance at first gently and as it were
modestly, till the breach gradually widens and the relation between
the rulers, whose might is their sole right, and the ruled, whose
obedience reaches no farther than their fears, manifests at length
undisguisedly the character of force. Down to the revolt and razing
of Fregellae in 629, which as it were officially attested the altered
character of the Roman rule, the ferment among the Italians did not
properly wear a revolutionary character. The longing after equal
rights had gradually risen from a silent wish to a loud request,
only to be the more decidedly rejected, the more distinctly it was
put forward. It was very soon apparent that a voluntary concession
was not to be hoped for, and the wish to extort what was refused
would not be wanting; but the position of Rome at that time hardly
permitted them to entertain any idea of realizing that wish. Although
the numerical proportions of the burgesses and non-burgesses in Italy
cannot be properly ascertained, it may be regarded as certain that
the number of the burgesses was not very much less than that of the
Italian allies; for nearly 400,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms
there were at least 500,000, probably 600,000 allies.(7) So long
as with such proportions the burgesses were united and there was no
outward enemy worthy of mention, the Italian allies, split up into
an endless number of isolated urban and cantonal communities, and
connected with Rome by a thousand relations public and private,
could never attain to common action; and with moderate prudence the
government could not fail to control their troublesome and indignant
subjects partly by the compact mass of the burgesses, partly by the very
considerable resources which the provinces afforded, partly by setting
one community against another.
The Italian and the Roman Parties
Accordingly the Italians kept themselves quiet, till the revolution
began to shake Rome; but, as soon as this had broken out, they too
mingled in the movements and agitations of the Roman parties, with a
view to obtain equality of rights by means of the one or the other.
They had made common cause first with the popular and then with the
senatorial party, and gained equally little by either. They had been
driven to the conviction that, while the best men of both parties
acknowledged the justice and equity of their claims, these best men,
aristocrats as well as Populares, had equally little power to
procure ahearing for those claims with the mass of their party.
They had also observed that the most gifted, most energetic, and most
celebrated statesmen of Rome had found themselves, at the very moment
when they came forward as advocates of the Italians, deserted by their
own adherents and had been accordingly overthrown. In all the
vicissitudes of the thirty years of revolution and restoration
governments enough had been installed and deposed, but, however
the programme might vary, a short-sighted and narrow-minded spirit
sat always at the helm.
The Italians and the Oligarchy
The Licinio-Mucian Law
Above all, the recent occurrences had clearly shown how vain was the
expectation of the Italians that their claims would be attended to
by Rome. So long as the demands of the Italians were mixed up with
those of the revolutionary party and had in the hands of the latter
been thwarted by the folly of the masses, they might still resign
themselves to the belief that the oligarchy had been hostile merely
to the proposers, not to the proposal itself, and that there was still
a possibility that the mere intelligent senate would accept a measure
which was compatible with the nature of the oligarchy and salutary
for the state. But the recent years, in which the senate once more
ruled almost absolutely, had shed only too disagreeable a light on
the designs of the Roman oligarchy also. Instead of the expected
modifications, there was issued in 659 a consular law which most
strictly prohibited the non-burgesses from laying claim to the
franchise and threatened transgressors with trial and punishment--a
law which threw back a large number of most respectable persons who
were deeply interested in the question of equalization from the ranks
of Romans into those of Italians, and which in point of indisputable
legality and of political folly stands completely on a parallel with
that famous act which laid the foundation for the separation of North
America from the mother-country; in fact it became, just like that
act, the proximate cause of the civil war. It was only so much
the worse, that the authors of this law by no means belonged to
the obstinate and incorrigible Optimates; they were no other than
the sagacious and universally honoured Quintus Scaevola, destined,
like George Grenville, by nature to be a jurist and by fate to be
a statesman--who by his equally honourable and pernicious rectitude
inflamed more than any one else first the war between senate and
equites, and then that between Romans and Italians--and the orator
Lucius Crassus, the friend and ally of Drusus and altogether one of
the most moderate and judicious of the Optimates.
The Italians and Drusus
Amidst the vehement ferment, which this law and the numerous processes
arising out of it called forth throughout Italy, the star of hope once
more appeared to arise for the Italians in the person of Marcus
Drusus. That which had been deemed almost impossible--that a
conservative should take up the reforming ideas of the Gracchi,
and should become the champion of equal rights for the Italians--had
nevertheless occurred; a man of the high aristocracy had resolved to
emancipate the Italians from the Sicilian Straits to the Alps and
the government at one and the same time, and to apply all his earnest
zeal, all his trusty devotedness to these generous plans of reform.
Whether he actually, as was reported, placed himself at the head of
a secret league, whose threads ramified through Italy and whose
members bound themselves by an oath(8) to stand by each other
for Drusus and for the common cause, cannot be ascertained; but,
even if he did not lend himself to acts so dangerous and in fact
unwarrantable for a Roman magistrate, yet it is certain that he did
not keep to mere general promises, and that dangerous connections were
formed in his name, although perhaps without his consent and against
his will. With joy the Italians heard that Drusus had carried his
first proposals with the consent of the great majority of the senate;
with still greater joy all the communities of Italy celebrated not long
afterwards the recovery of the tribune, who had been suddenly attacked
by severe illness. But as the further designs of Drusus became
unveiled, a change took place; he could not venture to bring in
his chief law; he had to postpone, he had to delay, he had soon
to retire. It was reported that the majority of the senate were
vacillating and threatened to fall away from their leader; in rapid
succession the tidings ran through the communities of Italy, that the
law which had passed was annulled, that the capitalists ruled more
absolutely than ever, that the tribune had been struck by the hand
of an assassin, that he was dead (autumn of 663).
Preparations for General Revolt against Rome
The last hope that the Italians might obtain admission to Roman
citizenship by agreement was buried with Marcus Drusus. A measure,
which that conservative and energetic man had not been able under the
most favourable circumstances to induce his own party to adopt, was
not to be gained at all by amicable means. The Italians had no
course left save to submit patiently or to repeat once more, and
if possible with their united strength, the attempt which had been
crushed in the bud five-and-thirty years before by the destruction
of Fregellae--so as by force of arms either to destroy Rome and
succeed to her heritage, or at least to compel her to grant equality
of rights. The latter resolution was no doubt a resolution of
despair; as matters stood, the revolt of the isolated urban communities
against the Roman government might well appear still more hopeless
than the revolt of the American colonies against the British empire;
to all appearance the Roman government might with moderate attention
and energy of action prepare for this second insurrection the fate
of its predecessor. But was it less a resolution of despair, to sit
still and allow things to take their course? When they recollected
how the Romans had been in the habit of behaving in Italy without
provocation, what could they expect now that the most considerable
men in every Italian town had or were alleged to have had--the
consequences on either supposition being pretty much the same--an
understanding with Drusus, which was immediately directed against the
party now victorious and might well be characterized as treason? All
those who had taken part in this secret league, all in fact who
might be merely suspected of participation, had no choice left
save to begin the war or to bend their neck beneath the axe
of the executioner.
Moreover, the present moment presented comparatively favourable
prospects for a general insurrection throughout Italy. We are not
exactly informed how far the Romans had carried out the dissolution
of the larger Italian confederacies;(9) but it is not improbable that
the Marsians, the Paelignians, and perhaps even the Samnites and
Lucanians still were associated in their old communal leagues, though
these had lost their political significance and were in some cases
probably reduced to mere fellowship of festivals and sacrifices.
The insurrection, if it should now begin, would still find a rallying
point in these unions; but who could say how soon the Romans would
for that very reason proceed to abolish these also? The secret
league, moreover, which was alleged to be headed by Drusus, had lost
in him its actual or expected chief, but it continued to exist and
afforded an important nucleus for the political organization of the
insurrection; while its military organization might be based on the
fact that each allied town possessed its own armament and experienced
soldiers. In Rome on the other hand no serious preparations had
been made. It was reported, indeed, that restless movements were
occurring in Italy, and that the communities of the allies maintained
a remarkable intercourse with each other; but instead of calling the
citizens in all haste to arms, the governing corporation contented
itself with exhorting the magistrates in the customary fashion to
watchfulness and with sending out spies to learn farther particulars.
The capital was so totally undefended, that a resolute Marsian officer
Quintus Pompaedius Silo, one of the most intimate friends of Drusus,
is said to have formed the design of stealing into the city at the
head of a band of trusty associates carrying swords under their
clothes, and of seizing it by a coup de main. Preparations were
accordingly made for a revolt; treaties were concluded, and arming
went on silently but actively, till at last, as usual, the insurrection
broke out through an accident somewhat earlier than the leading
men had intended.
Outbreak of the Insurrection in Asculum
Marsians and Sabellians
Central and Southern Italy
The Roman praetor with proconsular powers, Gaius Servilius, informed
by his spies that the town of Asculum (Ascoli) in the Abruzzi was
sending hostages to the neighbouring communities, proceeded thither
with his legate Fonteius and a small escort, and addressed to the
multitude, which was just then assembled in the theatre for the
celebration of the great games, a vehement and menacing harangue.
The sight of the axes known only too well, the proclamation of
threats that were only too seriously meant, threw the spark into
the fuel of bitter hatred that had been accumulating for centuries;
the Roman magistrates were torn to pieces by the multitude in the
theatre itself, and immediately, as if it were their intention by a
fearful outrage to break down every bridge of reconciliation, the
gates were closed by command of the magistracy, all the Romans
residing in Asculum were put to death, and their property was
plundered. The revolt ran through the peninsula like the flame
through the steppe. The brave and numerous people of the Marsians
took the lead, in connection with the small but hardy confederacies
in the Abruzzi--the Paeligni, Marrucini, Frentani, and Vestini.
The brave and sagacious Quintus Silo, already mentioned, was here
the soul of the movement. The Marsians were the first formally to
declare against the Romans, whence the war retained afterwards the
name of the Marsian war. The example thus given was followed by
the Samnite communities, and generally by the mass of the communities
from the Liris and the Abruzzi down to Calabria and Apulia; so that
all Central and Southern Italy was soon in arms against Rome.
Italians Friendly to Rome
The Etruscans and Umbrians on the other hand held by Rome, as they
had already taken part with the equites against Drusus.(10) It is
a significant fact, that in these regions the landed and moneyed
aristocracy had from ancient times preponderated and the middle class
had totally disappeared, whereas among and near the Abruzzi the
farmer-class had preserved its purity and vigour better than anywhere
else in Italy: it was from the farmers accordingly and the middle
class in general that the revolt substantially proceeded, whereas the
municipal aristocracy still went hand in hand with the government of
the capital. This also readily explains the fact, that there were in
the insurgent districts isolated communities, and in the insurgent
communities minorities, adhering to the Roman alliance; the Vestinian
town Pinna, for instance, sustained a severe siege for Rome, and a
corps of loyalists that was formed in the Hirpinian country under
Minatius Magius of Aeclanum supported the Roman operations in Campania.
Lastly, there adhered to Rome the allied communities of best legal
position--in Campania Nola and Nuceria and the Greek maritime towns
Neapolis and Rhegium, and in like manner at least most of the Latin
colonies, such as Alba and Aesernia--just as in the Hannibalic war
the Latin and Greek towns on the whole had taken part with, and the
Sabellian towns against, Rome. The forefathers of the city had
based their dominion over Italy on an aristocratic classification,
and with skilful adjustment of the degrees of dependence had kept in
subjection the less privileged communities by means of those with
better rights, and the burgesses within each community by means of
the municipal aristocracy. It was only now, under the incomparably
wretched government of the oligarchy, that the solidity and strength
with which the statesmen of the fourth and fifth centuries had joined
together the stones of their structure were thoroughly put to the test;
the building, though shaken in various ways, still held out against
this storm. When we say, however, that the towns of better position
did not at the first shock abandon Rome, we by no means affirm that
they would now, as in the Hannibalic war, hold out for a length of
time and after severe defeats, without wavering in their allegiance
to Rome; that fiery trial had not yet been endured.
Impression As to the Insurrection in Rome
Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation
Commission of High Treason
The first blood was thus shed, and Italy was divided into two great
military camps. It is true, as we have seen, that the insurrection
was still very far from being a general rising of the Italian allies;
but it had already acquired an extent exceeding perhaps the hopes of
the leaders themselves, and the insurgents might without arrogance
think of offering to the Roman government a fair accommodation. They
sent envoys to Rome, and bound themselves to lay down their arms in
return for admission to citizenship; it was in vain. The public
spirit, which had been so long wanting in Rome, seemed suddenly to
have returned, when the question was one of obstructing with stubborn
narrow-mindedness a demand of the subjects just in itself and now
supported by a considerable force. The immediate effect of the
Italian insurrection was, just as was the case after the defeats
which the policy of the government had suffered in Africa and Gaul,(11)
the commencement of a warfare of prosecutions, by means of which
the aristocracy of judges took vengeance on those men of the government
whom they, rightly or wrongly, looked upon as the primary cause
of this mischief. On the proposal of the tribune Quintus Varius,
in spite of the resistance of the Optimates and in spite of tribunician
interference, a special commission of high treason--formed, of course,
from the equestrian order which contended for the proposal with
open violence--was appointed for the investigation of the conspiracy
instigated by Drusus and widely ramified in Italy as well as in Rome,
out of which the insurrection had originated, and which now, when
the half of Italy was under arms, appeared to the whole of the indignant
and alarmed burgesses as undoubted treason. The sentences of this
commission largely thinned the ranks of the senatorial party favourable
to mediation: among other men of note Drusus' intimate friend, the young
and talented Gaius Cotta, was sent into banishment, and with difficulty
the grey-haired Marcus Scaurus escaped the same fate. Suspicion went
so far against the senators favourable to the reforms of Drusus, that
soon afterwards the consul Lupus reported from the camp to the senate
regarding the communications that were constantly maintained between
the Optimates in his camp and the enemy; a suspicion which, it is true,
was soon shown to be unfounded by the arrestof Marsian spies. So far
king Mithradates might not without reason assert, that the mutual
enmities of the factions were more destructive to the Roman state
than the Social War itself.
Energetic Decrees
In the first instance, however, the outbreak of the insurrection,
and the terrorism which the commission of high treason exercised,
produced at least a semblance of unity and vigour. Party feuds were
silent; able officers of all shades--democrats like Gaius Marius,
aristocrats like Lucius Sulla, friends of Drusus like Publius
Sulpicius Rafus--placed themselves at the disposal of the government.
The largesses of corn were, apparently about this time, materially
abridged by decree of the people with a view to husband the financial
resources of the state for the war; which was the more necessary, as,
owing to the threatening attitude of king Mithradates, the province of
Asia might at any moment fall into the hand of the enemy and thus one
of the chief sources of the Roman revenue be dried up. The courts,
with the exception of the commission of high treason, in accordance
with a decree of the senate temporarily suspended their action; all
business stood still, and nothing was attended to but the levying of
soldiers and the manufacture of arms.
Political Organizatin of the Insurrection
Opposition--Rome
While the leading state thus collected its energies in the prospect
of the severe war impending, the insurgents had to solve the more
difficult task of acquiring political organization during the
struggle. In the territory of the Paeligni situated in the centre
of the Marsian, Samnite, Marrucinian, and Vestinian cantons and
consequently in the heart of the insurgent districts, in the beautiful
plain on the river Pescara, the town of Corfinium was selected as the
Opposition-Rome or city of Italia, whose citizenship was conferred on
the burgesses of all the insurgent communities; there a Forum and a
senate-house were staked off on a suitable scale. A senate of five
hundred members was charged with the settlement of the constitution
and the superintendence of the war. In accordance with its directions
the burgesses selected from the men of senatorial rank two consuls and
twelve praetors, who, just like the two consuls and six praetors of
Rome, were invested with the supreme authority in war and peace.
The Latin language, which was even then the prevailing language among
the Marsians and Picentes, continued in official use, but the Samnite
language which predominated in Southern Italy was placed side by
side with it on a footing of equality; and the two were made use of
alternately on the silver pieces which the new Italian state began to
coin in its own name after Roman models and after the Roman standard,
thus appropriating likewise the monopoly of coinage which Rome had
exercised for two centuries. It is evident from these arrangements--
and was, indeed a matter of course-that the Italians now no longer
thought of wresting equality of rights from the Romans, but purposed
to annihilate or subdue them and to form a new state. But it is also
obvious that their constitution was nothing but a pure copy of that
of Rome or, in other words, was the ancient polity handed down by
tradition among the Italian nations from time immemorial:--the
organization of a city instead of the constitution of a state, with
primary assemblies as unwieldy and useless as the Roman comitia, with
a governing corporation which contained within it the same elements
of oligarchy as the Roman senate, with an executive administered in
like manner by a plurality of coordinate supreme magistrates. This
imitation descended to the minutest details; for instance, the title
of consul or praetor held by the magistrate in chief command was
after a victory exchanged by the general of the Italians also for
the title of Imperator. Nothing in fact was changed but the name;
on the coins of the insurgents the same image of the gods appears, the
inscription only being changed from Roma to Italia. This Rome of the
insurgents was distinguished--not to its advantage--from the original
Rome merely by the circumstance, that, while the latter had at any
rate an urban development, and its unnatural position intermediate
between a city and a state had formed itself at least in a natural
way, the new Italia was nothing at all but a place of congress
for the insurgents, and it was by a pure fiction of law that the
inhabitants of the peninsula were stamped as burgesses of this new
capital. But it is significant that in this case, where the sudden
amalgamation of a number of isolated cantons into a new political unity
might have so naturally suggested the idea of a representative
constitution in the modern sense, no trace of any such idea occurs;
in fact the very opposite course was followed,(12) and the communal
organization was simply reproduced in a far more absurd manner than
before. Nowhere perhaps is it so clearly apparent as in this
instance, that in the view of antiquity a free constitution was
inseparable from the appearance of the sovereign people in person in
the primary assemblies, or from a city; and that the great fundamental
idea of the modern republican-constitutional state, viz. the expression
of the sovereignty of the people by a representative assembly--an idea
without which a free state would be a chaos--is wholly modern. Even
the Italian polity, although in its somewhat representative senates
and in the diminished importance of the comitia it approximated to a
free state, never was able in the case either of Rome or of Italia
to cross the boundary-line.
Warlike Preparations
Thus began, a few months after the death of Drusus, in the winter of
663-4, the struggle--as one of the coins of the insurgents represents
it--of the Sabellian ox against the Roman she-wolf. Both sides made
zealous preparations: in Italia great stores of arms, provisions, and
money were accumulated; in Rome the requisite supplies were drawn from
the provinces and particularly from Sicily, and the long-neglected walls
were put in a state of defence against any contingency. The forces
were in some measure equally balanced. The Romans filled up the
blanks in their Italian contingents partly by increased levies from
the burgesses and from the inhabitants--already almost wholly Romanized--
of the Celtic districts on the south of the Alps, of whom 10,000
served in the Campanian army alone,(13) partly by the contingents
of the Numidians and other transmarine nations; and with the aid
of the free cities in Greece and Asia Minor they collected a war
fleet.(14) On both sides, without reckoning garrisons, as many as
100,000 soldiers were brought into the field,(15) and in the ability
of their men, in military tactics and armament, the Italians were
nowise inferior to the Romans.
Subdivision of the Armies on Either Side
The conduct of the war was very difficult both for the insurgents and
for the Romans, because the territory in revolt was very extensive and
a great number of fortresses adhering to Rome were scattered up and
down in it: so that on the one hand the insurgents found themselves
compelled to combine a siege-warfare, which broke up their forces
and consumed their time, with the protection of an extended frontier;
and on the other hand the Romans could not well do otherwise than
combat the insurrection, which had no proper centre, simultaneously
in all the insurgent districts. In a military point of view the
insurgent country fell into two divisions; in the northern, which
reached from Picenum and the Abruzzi to the northern border of
Campania and embraced the districts speaking Latin, the chief command
was held on the Italian side by the Marsian Quintus Silo, on the Roman
side by Publius Rutilius Lupus, both as consuls; in the southern,
which included Campania, Samnium, and generally the regions speaking
Sabellian, the Samnite Gaius Papius Mutilus commanded as consul of the
insurgents, and Lucius Julius Caesar as the Roman consul. With each
of the two commanders-in-chief there were associated on the Italian
side six, on the Roman side five, lieutenant-commanders, each of whom
conducted the attack or defence in a definite district, while the
consular armies were destined to act more freely and to strike the
decisive blow. The most esteemed Roman officers, such as Gaius
Marius, Quintus Catulus, and the two consulars of experience in the
Spanish war, Titus Didius and Publius Crassus, placed themselves at
the disposal of the consuls for these posts; and though the Italians
had not names so celebrated to oppose to them, yet the result
showed that their leaders were in a military point of view nowise
inferior to the Romans.
The offensive in this thoroughly desultory war was on the whole on the
side of the Romans, but was nowhere decisively assumed even on their
part. It is surprising that the Romans did not collect their troops
for the purpose of attacking the insurgents with a superior force,
and that the insurgents made no attempt to advance into Latium and to
throw themselves on the hostile capital. We are how ever too little
acquainted with their respective circumstances to judge whether or
how they could have acted otherwise, or to what extent the remissness
of the Roman government on the one hand and the looseness of the
connection among the federate communities on the other contributed
to this want of unity in the conduct of the war. It is easy to see
that with such a system there would doubtless be victories and defeats,
but the final settlement might be very long delayed; and it is no less
plain that a clear and vivid picture of such a war--which resolved
itself into a series of engagements on the part of individual corps
operating at the same time, sometimes separately, sometimes in
combination--cannot be prepared out of the remarkably fragmentary
accounts which have come down to us.
Commencement of the War
The Fortresses
Caesar in Campania and Samnium
Aesernia Taken by the Insurgents
As also Nola
Campania for the Most Part Lost to the Romans
The first assault, as a matter of course, fell on the fortresses
adhering to Rome in the insurgent districts, which in all haste
closed their gates and carried in their moveable property from the
country. Silo threw himself on the fortress designed to hold in
check the Marsians, the strong Alba, Mutilus on the Latin town of
Aesernia established in the heart of Samnium: in both cases they
encountered the most resolute resistance. Similar conflicts probably
raged in the north around Firmum, Atria, Pinna, in the south around
Luceria, Beneventum, Nola, Paestum, before and while the Roman armies
gathered on the borders of the insurgent country. After the southern
army under Caesar had assembled in the spring of 664 in Campania which
for the most part held by Rome, and had provided Capua--with its
domain so important for the Roman finances--as well as the more
important allied cities with garrisons, it attempted to assume the
offensive and to come to the aid of the smaller divisions sent on
before it to Samnium and Lucania under Marcus Marcellus and Publius
Crassus. But Caesar was repulsed by the Samnites and Marsians under
Publius Vettius Scato with severe loss, and the important town of
Venafrum thereupon passed over to the insurgents, into whose hands
it delivered its Roman garrison. By the defection of this town,
which lay on the military road from Campania to Samnium, Aesernia was
isolated, and that fortress already vigorously assailed found itself now
exclusively dependent on the courage and perseverance of its defenders
and their commandant Marcellus. It is true that an incursion, which
Sulla happily carried out with the same artful audacity as formerly
his expedition to Bocchus, relieved the hard-pressed Aesernians for a
moment; nevertheless they were after an obstinate resistance compelled
by the extremity of famine to capitulate towards the end of the year.
In Lucania too Publius Crassus was defeated by Marcus Lamponius, and
compelled to shut himself up in Grumentum, which fell after a long
and obstinate siege. With these exceptions, they had been obliged
to leave Apulia and the southern districts totally to themselves.
The insurrection spread; when Mutilus advanced into Campania at the
head of the Samnite army, the citizens of Nola surrendered to him
their city and delivered up the Roman garrison, whose commander was
executed by the orders of Mutilus, while the men were distributed
through the victorious army. With the single exception of Nuceria,
which adhered firmly to Rome, all Campania as far as Vesuvius was lost
to the Romans; Salernum, Stabiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum declared for
the insurgents; Mutilus was able to advance into the region to the
north of Vesuvius, and to besiege Acerrae with his Samnito-Lucanian
army. The Numidians, who were in great numbers in Caesar's army,
began to pass over in troops to Mutilus or rather to Oxyntas, the son
of Jugurtha, who on the surrender of Venusia had fallen into the hands
of the Samnites and now appeared among their ranks in regal purple;
so that Caesar found himself compelled to send home the whole
African corps. Mutilus ventured even to attack the Roman camp;
but he was repulsed, and the Samnites, who while retreating were
assailed in the rear by the Roman cavalry, left nearly 6000 dead on
the field of battle. It was the first notable success which the Romans
gained in this war; the army proclaimed the general -imperator-, and
the sunken courage of the capital began to revive. It is true that
not long afterwards the victorious army was attacked in crossing a
river by Marius Egnatius, and so emphatically defeated that it had
to retreat as far as Teanum and to be reorganized there; but the
exertions of the active consul succeeded in restoring his army to
a serviceable condition even before the arrival of winter, and he
reoccupied his old position under the walls of Acerrae, which the
Samnite main army under Mutilus continued to besiege.
Combats with the Marsians
Defeat and Death of Lupus
At the same time operations had also begun in Central Italy, where
the revolt of the Abruzzi and the region of the Fucine lake threatened
the capital in dangerous proximity. An independent corps under Gnaeus
Pompeius Strabo was sent into Picenum in order that, resting for
support on Firmum and Falerio, it might threaten Asculum; but the
main body of the Roman northern army took its position under the
consul Lupus on the borders of the Latin and Marsian territories,
where the Valerian and Salarian highways brought the enemy nearest to
the capital; the rivulet Tolenus (Turano), which crosses the Valerian
road between Tibur and Alba and falls into the Velino at Rieti,
separated the two armies. The consul Lupus impatiently pressed for
a decision, and did not listen to the disagreeable advice of Marius
that he should exercise his men--unaccustomed to service--in the first
instance in petty warfare. At the very outset the division of Gaius
Perpenna, 10,000 strong, was totally defeated. The commander-in-
chief deposed the defeated general from his command and united the
remnant of the corps with that which was under the orders of Marius,
but did not allow himself to be deterred from assuming the offensive
and crossing the Tolenus in two divisions, led partly by himself,
partly by Marius, on two bridges constructed not far from each other.
Publius Scato with the Marsians confronted them; he had pitched his
camp at the spot where Marius crossed the brook, but, before the
passage took place, he had withdrawn thence, leaving behind the mere
posts that guarded the camp, and had taken a position in ambush
farther up the river. There he attacked the other Roman corps under
Lupus unexpectedly during the crossing, and partly cut it down, partly
drove it into the river (11th June 664). The consul in person and
8000 of his troops fell. It could scarcely be called a compensation
that Marius, becoming at length aware of Scato's departure, had crossed
the river and not without loss to the enemy occupied their camp.
Yet this passage of the river, and a victory at the same time obtained
over the Paelignians by the general Servius Sulpicius, compelled the
Marsians to draw their line of defence somewhat back, and Marius, who
by decree of the senate succeeded Lupus as commander-in-chief, at least
prevented the enemy from gaining further successes. But, when Quintus
Caepio was soon afterwards associated in the command with equal powers,
not so much on account of a conflict which he had successfully
sustained, as because he had recommended himself to the equites then
leading the politics of Rome by his vehement opposition to Drusus,
he allowed himself to be lured into an ambush by Silo on the pretext
that the latter wished to betray to him his army, and was cut to
pieces with a great part of his force by the Marsians and Vestinians.
Marius, after Caepio's fall once more sole commander-in-chief, through
his tenacious resistance prevented his antagonist from profiting by
the advantages which he had gained, and gradually penetrated far into
the Marsian territory. He long refused battle; when he at length
gave it, he vanquished his impetuous opponent, who left on the battle--
field among other dead Herius Asinius the chieftain of the Marrucini.
In a second engagement the army of Marius and the corps of Sulla
which belonged to the army of the south co-operated to inflict on
the Marsians a still more considerable defeat, which cost them 6000 men;
but the glory of this day remained with the younger officer, for, while
Marius had given and gained the battle, Sulla had intercepted the retreat
of the fugitives and destroyed them.
Picenian War
While the conflict was proceeding thus warmly and with varying success
at the Fucine lake, the Picenian corps under Strabo had also fought
with alternations of fortune. The insurgent chiefs, Gaius Iudacilius
from Asculum, Publius Vettius Scato, and Titus Lafrenius, had
assailed it with their united forces, defeated it, and compelled it
to throw itself into Firmum, where Lafrenius kept Strabo besieged,
while Iudacilius moved into Apulia and induced Canusium, Venusia, and
the other towns still adhering to Rome in that quarter to join the
insurgents. But on the Roman side Servius Sulpicius by his victory
over the Paeligni cleared the way for his advancing into Picenum and
rendering aid to Strabo; Lafrenius was attacked by Strabo in front
and taken in rear by Sulpicius, and his camp was set on fire; he
himself fell, the remnant of his troops fled in disorder and threw
themselves into Asculum. So completely had the state of affairs
changed in Picenum, that the Italians now found themselves confined
to Asculum as the Romans were previously to Firmum, and the war was
thus once more converted into a siege.
Umbro-Etruscan Conflicts
Lastly, there was added in the course of the year to the two difficult
and straggling wars in southern and central Italy a third in the
north. The state of matters apparently so dangerous for Rome after
the first months of the war had induced a great portion of the
Umbrian, and isolated Etruscan, communities to declare for the
insurrection; so that it became necessary to despatch against the
Umbrians Aulus Plotius, and against the Etruscans Lucius Porcius Cato.
Here however the Romans encountered a far less energetic resistance
than in the Marsian and Samnite countries, and maintained a most
decided superiority in the field.
Disadvantageous Aggregate Result of the First Year of the War
Thus the severe first year of the war came to an end, leaving behind
it, both in a military and political point of view, sorrowful
memories and dubious prospects. In a military point of view both
armies of the Romans, the Marsian as well as the Campanian, had been
weakened and discouraged by severe defeats; the northern army had
been compelled especially to attend to the protection of the capital,
the southern army at Neapolis had been seriously threatened in its
communications, as the insurgents could without much difficulty break
forth from the Marsian or Samnite territory and establish themselves
between Rome and Naples; for which reason it was found necessary to
draw at least a chain of posts from Cumae to Rome. In a political
point of view, the insurrection had gained ground on all sides during
this first year of the war; the secession of Nola, the rapid
capitulation of the strong and large Latin colony of Venusia, and
the Umbro-Etruscan revolt were suspicious signs that the Roman symmachy
was tottering to its very base and was not in a position to hold out
against this last trial. They had already made the utmost demands on
the burgesses; they had already, with a view to form that chain of
posts along the Latino-Campanian coast, incorporated nearly 6000
freedmen in the burgess-militia; they had already required the
severest sacrifices from the allies that still remained faithful;
it was not possible to draw the string of the bow any tighter
without hazarding everything.
Despondency of the Romans
The temper of the burgesses was singularly depressed. After the
battle on the Tolenus, when the dead bodies of the consul and the
numerous citizens of note who had fallen with him were brought back
from the neighbouring battlefield to the capital and were buried there;
when the magistrates in token of public mourning laid aside their
purple and insignia; when the government issued orders to the
inhabitants of the capital to arm en masse; not a few had resigned
themselves to despair and given up all as lost. It is true that the
worst despondency had somewhat abated after the victories achieved by
Caesar at Acerrae and by Strabo in Picenum: on the news of the former
the wardress in the capital had been once more exchanged for the dress
of the citizen, on the news of the second the signs of public mourning
had been laid aside; but it was not doubtful that on the whole the
Romans had been worsted in this passage of arms: and above all the
senate and the burgesses had lost the spirit, which had formerly
borne them to victory through all the crises of the Hannibalic war.
They still doubtless began war with the same defiant arrogance as then,
but they knew not how to end it as they had then done; rigid obstinacy,
tenacious persistence had given place to a remiss and cowardly
disposition. Already after the first year of war their outward and
inward policy became suddenly changed, and betook itself to compromise.
There is no doubt that in this they did the wisest thing which could
be done; not however because, compelled by the immediate force of
arms, they could not avoid acquiescing in disadvantageous conditions,
but because the subject-matter of dispute--the perpetuation of the
political precedence of the Romans over the other Italians--was
injurious rather than beneficial to the commonwealth itself.
It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another;
in this case cowardice in some measure remedied the mischief which
obstinacy had incurred.
Revolution in Political Processes
The year 664 had begun with a most abrupt rejection of the
compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war
of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic
selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were
suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession.
On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered
on his office on the 10th of December of the same year, carried a
law which took the commission of high treason out of the hands
of the capitalist jurymen, and entrusted it to other jurymen who
were nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class--
qualification; the effect of which was, that this commission was
converted from a scourge of the moderate party into a scourge of the
ultras, and sent into exile among others its own author, Quintus
Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst democratic
outrages--the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.
Bestowal of the Franchise on the Italians Who Remained Faithful--
or Submitted
Of greater importance than this singularly candid political
recantation, was the change in the course of their policy toward
the Italians. Exactly three hundred years had passed since Rome had
last been obliged to submit to the dictation of peace; Rome was now
worsted once more, and the peace which she desired could only be got
by yielding in part at least to the terms of her antagonists. With
the communities, doubtless, which had already risen in arms to subdue
and to destroy Rome, the feud had become too bitter for the Romans to
prevail on themselves to make the required concessions; and, had they
done so, these terms would now perhaps have been rejected by the other
side. But, if the original demands were conceded under certain
limitations to the communities that had hitherto remained faithful,
such a course would on the one hand preserve the semblance of voluntary
concession, while on the other hand it would prevent the otherwise
inevitable consolidation of the confederacy and thereby pave the way
for its subjugation. Accordingly the gates of Roman citizenship, which
had so long remained closed against entreaty, now suddenly opened when
the sword knocked at them; yet even now not fully and wholly, but in
a manner reluctant and annoying even for those admitted. A law carried
by the consul Lucius Caesar(16) conferred the Roman franchise on the
burgesses of all those communities of Italian allies which had not up
to that time openly declared against Rome; a second, emanating from
the tribunes of the people Marcus Plautius Silvanus and Gaius Papirius
Carbo, laid down for every man who had citizenship and domicile in
Italy a term of two months, within which he was to be allowed to acquire
the Roman franchise by presenting himself before a Roman magistrate.
But these new burgesses were to be restricted as to the right of
voting in a way similar to the freedmen, inasmuch as they could only
be enrolled in eight, as the freedmen only in four, of the thirty-five
tribes; whether the restriction was personal or, as it would seem,
hereditary, cannot be determined with certainty.
Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts
This measure related primarily to Italy proper, which at that time
extended northward little beyond Ancona and Florence. In Cisalpine
Gaul, which was in the eye of the law a foreign country, but in
administration and colonization had long passed as part of Italy,
all the Latin colonies were treated like the Italian communities.
Otherwise on the south side of the Po the greatest portion of the
soil was, after the dissolution of the old Celtic tribal communities,
not organized according to the municipal system, but remained withal in
the ownership of Roman burgesses mostly dwelling together in market-
villages (-fora-). The not numerous allied townships to the south of
the Po, particularly Ravenna, as well as the whole country between the
Po and the Alps was, in consequence of a law brought in by the consul
Strabo in 665, organized after the Italian urban constitution, so that
the communities not adapted for this, more especially the townships in
the Alpine valleys, were assigned to particular towns as dependent and
tributary villages. These new town-communities, however, were not
presented with the Roman franchise, but, by means of the legal fiction
that they were Latin colonies, were invested with those rights which
had hitherto belonged to the Latin towns of inferior legal position.
Thus Italy at that time ended practically at the Po, while the
Transpadane country was treated as an outlying dependency. Here
to the north of the Po, with the exception of Cremona, Eporedia
and Aquileia, there were no burgess or Latin colonies, and even
the native tribes here had been by no means dislodged as they were
to the south of the Po. The abolition of the Celtic cantonal, and
the introduction of the Italian urban, constitution paved the way
for the Romanizing of the rich and important territory; this was the
first step in the long and momentous transformation of the Gallic stock--
which once stood contrasted with Italy, and the assaults of which
Italy had rallied to repel--into comrades of their Italian masters.
Considerable as these concessions were, if we compare them with the
rigid exclusiveness which the Roman burgess-body had retained for
more than a hundred and fifty years, they were far from involving a
capitulation with the actual insurgents; they were on the contrary
intended partly to retain the communities that were wavering and
threatening to revolt, partly to draw over as many deserters as
possible from the ranks of the enemy. To what extent these laws and
especially the most important of them--that of Caesar--were applied,
cannot be accurately stated, as we are only able to specify in general
terms the extent of the insurrection at the time when the law was
issued. The main matter at any rate was that the communities hitherto
Latin--not only the survivors of the old Latin confederacy, such as
Tibur and Praeneste, but more especially the Latin colonies, with the
exception of the few that passed over to the insurgents--were thereby
admitted to Roman citizenship. Besides, the law was applied to the
allied cities that remained faithful in Etruria and especially in
Southern Italy, such as Nuceria and Neapolis. It was natural that
individual communities, hitherto specially privileged, should hesitate
as to the acceptance of the franchise; that Neapolis, for example,
should scruple to give up its former treaty with Rome--which
guaranteed to its citizens exemption from land-service and their
Greek constitution, and perhaps domanial advantages besides--for
the restricted rights of new burgesses. It was probably in virtue of
conventions concluded on account of these scruples that this city, as
well as Rhegium and perhaps other Greek communities in Italy, even
after their admission to Roman citizenship retained unchanged their
former communal constitution and Greek as their official language.
At all events, as a consequence of these laws, the circle of Roman
burgesses was extraordinarily enlarged by the merging into it of
numerous and important urban communities scattered from the Sicilian
Straits to the Po; and, further, the country between the Po and the
Alps was, by the bestowal of the best rights of allies, as it were
invested with the legal expectancy of full citizenship.
Second Year of the War
Etruria and Umbria Tranquillized
On the strength of these concessions to the wavering communities, the
Romans resumed with fresh courage the conflict against the insurgent
districts. They had pulled down as much of the existing political
institutions as seemed necessary to arrest the extension of the
conflagration; the insurrection thenceforth at least spread no
farther. In Etruria and Umbria especially, where it was just
beginning, it was subdued with singular rapidity, still more, probably,
by means of the Julian law than through the success of the Roman arms.
In the former Latin colonies, and in the thickly-peopled region of the
Po, there were opened up copious and now trustworthy sources of aid:
with these, and with the resources of the burgesses themselves, they
could proceed to subdue the now isolated conflagration. The two former
commanders-in-chief returned to Rome, Caesar as censor elect, Marius
because his conduct of the war was blamed as vacillating and slow, and
the man of sixty-six was declared to be in his dotage. This objection
was very probably groundless; Marius showed at least his bodily
vigour by appearing daily in the circus at Rome, and even as
commander-in-chief he seems to have displayed on the whole his old
ability in the last campaign; but he had not achieved the brilliant
successes by which alone after his political bankruptcy he could have
rehabilitated himself in public opinion, and so the celebrated champion
was to his bitter vexation now, even as an officer, unceremoniously laid
aside as useless. The place of Marius in the Marsian army was taken
by the consul of this year, Lucius Porcius Cato, who had fought with
distinction in Etruria, and that of Caesar in the Campanian army by
his lieutenant, Lucius Sulla, to whom were due some of the most
material successes of the previous campaign; Gnaeus Strabo retained--
now as consul--the command which he had held so successfully in
the Picenian territory.
War in Picenum
Asculum Besieged
And Conquered
Subjugation of the Sabellians and Marsians
Thus began the second campaign in 665. The insurgents opened it,
even before winter was over, by the bold attempt--recalling the grand
passages of the Samnite wars--to send a Marsian army of 15,000 men to
Etruria with a view to aid the insurrection brewing in Northern Italy.
But Strabo, through whose district it had to pass, intercepted
and totally defeated it; only a few got back to their far distant
home. When at length the season allowed the Roman armies to assume
the offensive, Cato entered the Marsian territory and advanced,
successfully encountering the enemy there; but he fell in the region
of the Fucine lake during an attack on the enemy's camp, so that the
exclusive superintendence of the operations in Central Italy devolved
on Strabo. The latter employed himself partly in continuing the
siege of Asculum, partly in the subjugation of the Marsian, Sabellian,
and Apulian districts. To relieve his hard-pressed native town,
Iudacilius appeared before Asculum with the Picentine levy and
attacked the besieging army, while at the same time the garrison
sallied forth and threw itself on the Roman lines. It is said that
75,000 Romans fought on this day against 60,000 Italians. Victory
remained with the Romans, but Iudacilius succeeded in throwing himself
with a part of the relieving army into the town. The siege resumed
its course; it was protracted(17) by the strength of the place and the
desperate defence of the inhabitants, who fought with a recollection of
the terrible declaration of war within its walls. When Iudacilius
at length after a brave defence of several months saw the day of
capitulation approach, he ordered the chiefs of that section of
the citizens which was favourable to Rome to be put to death under
torture, and then died by his own hand. So the gates were opened,
and Roman executions were substituted for Italian; all officers and
all the respectable citizens were executed, the rest were driven forth
to beggary, and all their property was confiscated on account of
the state. During the siege and after the fall of Asculum numerous
Roman corps marched through the adjacent rebel districts, and induced
one after another to submit. The Marrucini yielded, after Servius
Sulpicius had defeated them decidedly at Teate (Chieti). The praetor
Gaius Cosconius penetrated into Apulia, took Salapia and Cannae, and
besieged Canusium. A Samnite corps under Marius Egnatius came to the
help of the unwarlike region and actually drove back the Romans, but
the Roman general succeeded in defeating it at the passage of the
Aufidus; Egnatius fell, and the rest of the army had to seek shelter
behind the walls of Canusium. The Romans again advanced as far
as Venusia and Rubi, and became masters of all Apulia. Along the
Fucine lake also and at the Majella mountains--the chief seats of
the insurrection--the Romans re-established their mastery; the Marsians
succumbed to Strabo's lieutenants, Quintus Metellus Pius and Gaius
Cinna, the Vestinians and Paelignians in the following year (666) to
Strabo himself; Italia the capital of the insurgents became once more
the modest Paelignian country-town of Corfinium; the remnant of the
Italian senate fled to the Samnite territory.
Subjugation of Campania As Far As Nola
Sulla in Samnium
The Roman southern army, which was now under the command of Lucius
Sulla, had at the same time assumed the offensive and had penetrated
into southern Campania which was occupied by the enemy. Stabiae was
taken and destroyed by Sulla in person (30 April 665) and Herculaneum
by Titus Didius, who however fell himself (11 June) apparently at the
assault on that city. Pompeii resisted longer. The Samnite general
Lucius Cluentius came up to bring relief to the town, but he was
repulsed by Sulla; and when, reinforced by bands of Celts, he
renewed his attempt, he was, chiefly owing to the wavering of these
untrustworthy associates, so totally defeated that his camp was taken
and he himself was cut down with the greater part of his troops on
their flight towards Nola. The grateful Roman army conferred on its
general the grass-wreath--the homely badge with which the usage of
the camp decorated the soldier who had by his capacity saved a division
of his comrades. Without pausing to undertake the siege of Nola and
of the other Campanian towns still occupied by the Samnites, Sulla
at once advanced into the interior, which was the head-quarters of
the insurrection. The speedy capture and fearful punishment of
Aeclanum spread terror throughout the Hirpinian country; it submitted
even before the arrival of the Lucanian contingent which had set itself
in motion to render help, and Sulla was able to advance unhindered as
far as the territory of the Samnite confederacy. The pass, where the
Samnite militia under Mutilus awaited him, was turned, the Samnite army
was attacked in rear, and defeated; the camp was lost, the general
escaped wounded to Aesernia. Sulla advanced to Bovianum, the capital of
the Samnite country, and compelled it to surrender by a second victory
achieved beneath its walls. The advanced season alone put an end
to the campaign there.
The Insurrection on the Whole Overpowered
The position of affairs had undergone a most complete change.
Powerful, victorious, aggressive as was the insurrection when it
began the campaign of 665, it emerged from it deeply humbled, everywhere
beaten, and utterly hopeless. All northern Italy was pacified.
In central Italy both coasts were wholly in the Roman power, and the
Abruzzi almost entirely; Apulia as far as Venusia, and Campania as far
as Nola, were in the hands of the Romans; and by the occupation of the
Hirpinian territory the communication was broken off between the only
two regions still persevering in open resistance, the Samnite and the
Lucano-Bruttian. The field of the insurrection resembled the scene
of an immense conflagration dying out; everywhere the eye fell on
ashes and ruins and smouldering brands; here and there the flame
still blazed up among the ruins, but the fire was everywhere mastered,
and there was no further threatening of danger. It is to be
regretted that we no longer sufficiently discern in the superficial
accounts handed down to us the causes of this sudden revolution.
While undoubtedly the dexterous leadership of Strabo and still more
of Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration of the
Roman forces, and their more rapid offensive contributed materially
to that result, political causes may have been at work along with the
military in producing the singularly rapid fall of the power of the
insurgents; the law of Silvanus and Carbo may have fulfilled its design
in carrying defection and treason to the common cause into the ranks
of the enemy; and misfortune, as has so frequently happened, may
have fallen as an apple of discord among the loosely-connected
insurgent communities.
Perseverance of the Samnites
We see only--and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia,
that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions--that
the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo
who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the
capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring
people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their
own land, and, after "Italia" was vanquished, undertook to continue
the struggle as "Safini" or Samnites.(18) The strong Aesernia was
converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat
that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was
said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the
manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were
placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to
him. With astonishment men saw the Samnite wars beginning anew after
a pause of two hundred years, and the resolute nation of farmers making
a fresh attempt, just as in the fifth century, after the Italian
confederation was shattered, to force Rome with their own hand to
recognize their country's independence. But this resolution of the
bravest despair made not much change in the main result; although the
mountain-war in Samnium and Lucania might still require some time and
some sacrifices, the insurrection was nevertheless already
substantially at an end.
Outbreak of the Mithradatic War
In the meanwhile, certainly, there had occurred a fresh complication,
for the Asiatic difficulties had rendered it imperatively necessary
to declare war against Mithradates king of Pontus, and for next year
(666) to destine the one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor.
Had this war broken out a year earlier, the contemporary revolt of
the half of Italy and of the most important of the provinces would have
formed an immense peril to the Roman state. Now that the marvellous
good fortune of Rome had once more been evinced in the rapid collapse
of the Italian insurrection, this Asiatic war just beginning was,
notwithstanding its being mixed up with the expiring Italian
struggle, not of a really dangerous character; and the less so,
because Mithradates in his arrogance refused the invitation of the
Italians that he should afford them direct assistance. Still it
was in a high degree inconvenient. The times had gone by, when
they without hesitation carried on simultaneously an Italian and
a transmarine war, the state-chest was already after two years of
warfare utterly exhausted, and the formation of a new army in addition
to that already in the field seemed scarcely practicable. But they
resorted to such expedients as they could. The sale of the sites
that had from ancient times(19) remained unoccupied on and near the
citadel to persons desirous of building, which yielded 9000 pounds of
gold (360,000 pounds), furnished the requisite pecuniary means. No new
army was formed, but that which was under Sulla in Campania was destined
to embark for Asia, as soon as the state of things in southern Italy
should allow its departure; which might be expected, from the progress
of the army operating in the north under Strabo, to happen soon.
Third Campaign
Capture of Venusia
Fall of Silo
So the third campaign in 666 began amidst favourable prospects for
Rome. Strabo put down the last resistance which was still offered
in the Abruzzi. In Apulia the successor of Cosconius, Quintus Metellus
Pius, son of the conqueror of Numidia and not unlike his father in
his strongly conservative views as well as in military endowments,
put an end to the resistance by the capture of Venusia, at which 3000
armed men were taken prisoners. In Samnium Silo no doubt succeeded
in retaking Bovianum; but in a battle, in which he engaged the Roman
general Mamercus Aemilius, the Romans conquered, and--what was more
important than the victory itself--Silo was among the 6000 dead whom
the Samnites left on the field. In Campania the smaller townships,
which the Samnites still occupied, were wrested from them by Sulla,
and Nola was invested. The Roman general Aulus Gabinius penetrated
also into Lucania and gained no small advantages; but, after he had
fallen in an attack on the enemy's camp, Lamponius the insurgent
leader and his followers once more held almost undisturbed command
over the wide and desolate Lucano-Bruttian country. He even made an
attempt to seize Rhegium, which was frustrated, however, by the Sicilian
governor Gaius Norbanus. Notwithstanding isolated mischances the Romans
were constantly drawing nearer to the attainment of their end; the fall
of Nola, the submission of Samnium, the possibility of rendering
considerable forces available for Asia appeared no longer distant,
when the turn taken by affairs in the capital unexpectedly gave fresh
life to the well-nigh extinguished insurrection.
Ferment in Rome
The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations
Secondary Effect of the Political Prosecutions
Marius
Rome was in a fearful ferment. The attack of Drusus upon the
equestrian courts and his sudden downfall brought about by the
equestrian party, followed by the two-edged Varian warfare of
prosecutions, had sown the bitterest discord between the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie as well as between the moderates and the ultras.
Events had completely justified the party of concession; what it had
proposed voluntarily to bestow, men had been more than half compelled
to concede; but the mode in which the concession was made bore, just
like the earlier refusal, the stamp of obstinate and shortsighted
envy. Instead of granting equality of rights to all Italian
communities, they had only expressed the inferiority in another form.
They had received a great number of Italian communities into Roman
citizenship, but had attached to what they thus conferred an offensive
stigma, by placing the new burgesses alongside of the old on nearly
the same footing as the freedmen occupied alongside of the freeborn.
They had irritated rather than pacified the communities between the
Po and the Alps by the concession of Latin rights. Lastly, they had
withheld the franchise from a considerable, and that not the worst,
portion of the Italians--the whole of the insurgent communities
which had again submitted; and not only so, but, instead of legally
re-establishing the former treaties annulled by the insurrection, they
had at most renewed them as a matter of favour and subject to revocation
at pleasure.(20) The disability as regarded the right of voting
gave the deeper offence, that it was--as the comitia were then
constituted--politically absurd, and the hypocritical care of the
government for the unstained purity of the electors appeared to every
unprejudiced person ridiculous; but all these restrictions were
dangerous, inasmuch as they invited every demagogue to carry his
ulterior objects by taking up the more or less just demands of the
new burgesses and of the Italians excluded from the franchise. While
accordingly the more clear-seeing of the aristocracy could not but find
these partial and grudging concessions as inadequate as did the new
burgesses and the excluded themselves, they further painfully felt
the absence from their ranks of the numerous and excellent men whom
the Varian commission of high treason had exiled, and whom it was the
more difficult to recall because they had been condemned by the verdict
not of the people but of the jury-courts; for, while there was little
hesitation as to cancelling a decree of the people even of a judicial
character by means of a second, the cancelling of a verdict of
jurymen bythe people appeared to the betterportion of the aristocracy
as a very dangerous precedent. Thus neither the ultras nor the
moderates were content with the issue of the Italian crisis. But still
deeper indignation swelled the heart of the old man, who had gone
forth to the Italian war with freshened hopes and had come back from
it reluctantly, with the consciousness of having rendered new services
and of having received in return new and most severe mortifications,
with the bitter feeling of being no longer dreaded but despised by
his enemies, with that gnawing spirit of vengeance in his heart,
which feeds on its own poison. It was true of him also, as of the
new burgesses and the excluded; incapable and awkward as he had shown
himself to be, his popular name was still a formidable weapon in
the hand of a demagogue.
Decay of Military Discipline
With these elements of political convulsion was combined the rapidly
spreading decay of decorous soldierly habits and of military
discipline. The seeds, which were sown by the enrolment of the
proletariate in the army, developed themselves with alarming rapidity
during the demoralizing insurrectionary war, which compelled Rome
to admit to the service every man capable of bearing arms without
distinction, and which above all carried political partizanship
directly into the headquarters and into the soldiers' tent.
The effects soon appeared in the slackening of all the bonds of
the military hierarchy. During the siege of Pompeii the commander
of the Sullan besieging corps, the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus,
was put to death with stones and bludgeons by his soldiers, who believed
themselves betrayed by their general to the enemy; and Sulla the
commander-in-chief contented himself with exhorting the troops to efface
the memory of that occurrence by their brave conduct in presence of
the enemy. The authors of that deed were the marines, from of old
the least respectable of the troops. A division of legionaries raised
chiefly from the city populace soon followed the example thus given.
Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it
laid hands on the consul Cato. By an accident he escaped death on
this occasion; Titius was arrested, but was not punished. When Cato
soon afterwards actually perished in a combat, his own officers, and
particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were--whether justly or unjustly,
cannot be ascertained--designated as the authors of his death.
Economic Crisis
Murder of Asellio
To the political and military crisis thus beginning fell to be added
the economic crisis--perhaps still more terrible--which set in upon the
Roman capitalists in consequence of the Social war and the Asiatic
troubles. The debtors, unable even to raise the interest due and yet
inexorably pressed by their creditors, had on the one hand entreated
from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a
respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the
other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to
usury(21) and, according to the rule established in olden times,
had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest
paid to them contrary to the law. Asellio lent himself to bend the
actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and put into
shape in the usual way the desired actions for interest; whereupon
the offended creditors assembled in the Forum under the leadership of
the tribune of the people Lucius Cassius, and attacked and killed the
praetor in front of the temple of Concord, just as in his priestly
robes he was presenting a sacrifice--an outrage which was not even
made a subject of investigation (665). On the other hand it was
said in the circles of the debtors, that the suffering multitude could
not be relieved otherwise than by "new account-books," that is, by
legally cancelling the claims of all creditors against all debtors.
Matters stood again exactly as they had stood during the strife
of the orders; once more the capitalists in league with the
prejudiced aristocracy made war against, and prosecuted, the oppressed
multitude and the middle party which advised a modification of the
rigour of the law; once more Rome stood on the verge of that abyss
into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him.
Only, since that time the simple civil and moral organization of a
great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms
of a capital of many nations, and by that demoralization in which
the prince and the beggar meet; now all incongruities had come to be
on a broader, more abrupt, and fearfully grander scale. When the
Social war brought all the political and social elements fermenting
among the citizens into collision with each other, it laid the
foundation for a new resolution. An accident led to its outbreak.
The Sulpician Laws
Sulpicius Rufus
It was the tribune of the people Publius Sulpicius Rufus who in 666
proposed to the burgesses to declare that every senator, who owed more
than 2000 -denarii- (82 pounds), should forfeit his seat in the senate;
to grant to the burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts liberty
to return home; to distribute the new burgesses among all the tribes,
and likewise to allow the right of voting in all tribes to the
freedmen. They were proposals which from the mouth of such a man
were at least somewhat surprising. Publius Sulpicius Rufus (born in
630) owed his political importance not so much to his noble birth, his
important connections, and his hereditary wealth, as to his remarkable
oratorical talent, in which none of his contemporaries equalled him.
His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering on
theatrical display, the luxuriant copiousness of his flow of words
arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers. As a partisan
he was from the outset on the side of the senate, and his first public
appearance (659) had been the impeachment of Norbanus who was mortally
hated by the government party.(22) Among the conservatives he belonged
to the section of Crassus and Drusus. We do not know what primarily
gave occasion to his soliciting the tribuneship of the people for 666,
and on its account renouncing his patrician nobility; but he seems
to have been by no means rendered a revolutionist through the
fact that he, like the whole middle party, had been persecuted as
revolutionary by the conservatives, and to have by no means intended
an overthrow of the constitution in the sense of Gaius Gracchus.
It would rather seem that, as the only man of note belonging to
the party of Crassus and Drusus who had come forth uninjured from
the storm of the Varian prosecutions, he felt himself called on
to complete the work of Drusus and finally to set aside the still
subsisting disabilities of the new burgesses--for which purpose he
needed the tribunate. Several acts of his even during his tribuneship
are mentioned, which betray the very opposite of demagogic designs.
For instance, he prevented by his veto one of his colleagues from
cancelling through a decree of the people the sentences of jurymen
issued under the Varian law; and when the late aedile Gaius Caesar,
passing over the praetorship, unconstitutionally became a candidate
for the consulship for 667, with the design, it was alleged, of getting
the charge of the Asiatic war afterwards entrusted to him, Sulpicius
opposed him more resolutely and sharply than any one else. Entirely
in the spirit of Drusus, he thus demanded from himself as from
others primarily and especially the maintenance of the constitution.
But in fact he was as little able as was Drusus to reconcile things
that were incompatible, and to carry out in strict form of law the
change of the constitution which he had in view--a change judicious
in itself, but never to be obtained from the great majority of the
old burgesses by amicable means. His breach with the powerful
family of the Julii--among whom in particular the consular Lucius
Caesar, the brother of Gaius, was very influential in the senate--
and withthesectionof the aristocracy adhering to it, beyond doubt
materially cooperated and carried the irascible man through personal
exasperation beyond his original design.
Tendency of These Laws
Yet the proposals brought in by him were of such a nature as
to be by no means out of keeping with the personal character and
the previous party-position of their author. The equalization of
the new burgesses with the old was simply a partial resumption of
the proposals drawn up by Drusus in favour of the Italians; and,
like these, only carried out the requirements of a sound policy.
The recall of those condemned by the Varian jurymen no doubt sacrificed
the principle of the inviolability of such a sentence, in defence of
which Sulpicius himself had just practically interposed; but it mainly
benefited in the first instance the members of the proposer's own
party, the moderate conservatives, and it may be very well conceived
that so impetuous a man might when first coming forward decidedly
combat such a measure and then, indignant at the resistance which
he encountered, propose it himself. The measure against the
insolvency of senators was doubtless called forth by the exposure
of the economic condition of the ruling families--so deeply embarrassed
notwithstanding all their outward splendour--on occasion of the last
financial crisis. It was painful doubtless, but yet of itself
conducive to the rightly understood interest of the aristocracy,
if, as could not but be the effect of the Sulpician proposal, all
individuals should withdraw from the senate who were unable speedily
to meet their liabilities, and if the coterie-system, which found its
main support in the insolvency of many senators and their consequent
dependence on their wealthy colleagues, should be checked by the
removal of the notoriously venal pack of the senators. At the same
time, of course, we do not mean to deny that such a purification
of the senate-house so abruptly and invidiously exposing the senate,
as Rufus proposed, would certainly never have been proposed without
his personal quarrels with the ruling coterie-heads. Lastly, the
regulationin favour of the freedmen had undoubtedly for its primary
object to make its proposer master of the street; but in itself it
was neither unwarranted nor incompatible with the aristocratic
constitution. Since the freedmen had begun to be drawn upon for
military service, their demand for the right of voting was so far
justified, as the right of voting and the obligation of service had
always gone hand in hand. Moreover, looking to the nullity of the
comitia, it was politically of very little moment whether one sewer
more emptied itself into that slough. The difficulty which the
oligarchy felt in governing with the comitia was lessened rather than
increased by the unlimited admission of the freedmen, who were to a
very great extent personally and financially dependent on the ruling
families and, if rightly used, might quite furnish the government with
a means of controlling the elections more thoroughly than before.
This measure certainly, like every other political favour shown to
the proletariate, ran counter to the tendencies of the aristocracy
friendly to reform; but it was for Rufus hardly anything else
than what the corn-law had been for Drusus--a means of drawing
the proletariate over to his side and of breaking down with its aid
the opposition against the truly beneficial reforms which he meditated.
It was easy to foresee that this opposition would not be slight; that
the narrow-minded aristocracy and the narrow-minded bourgeoisie would
display the same stupid jealousy after the subduing of the insurrection
as they had displayed before its outbreak; that the great majority
of all parties would secretly or even openly characterize the partial
concessions made at the moment of the most formidable danger as
unseasonable compliances, and would passionately resist every attempt
to extend them. The example of Drusus had shown what came of
undertakingto carry conservative reforms solely in reliance on the
majority of the senate; it was a course quite intelligible, that his
friend who shared his views should attempt to carry out kindred designs
in opposition to that majority and under the forms of demagogism.
Rufus accordingly gave himself no trouble to gain the senate over to
his views by the bait of the jury courts. He found a better support
in the freedmen and above all in the armed retinue--consisting,
according to the report of his opponents, of 3000 hired men and an
"opposition-senate" of 600 young men from the better class--with
which he appeared in the streets and in the Forum.
Resistance of the Government
Riots
Position of Sulla
His proposals accordingly met with the most decided resistance from
the majority of the senate, which first, to gain time, induced the
consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus, both declared
opponents of demagogism, to enjoin extraordinary religious observances,
during which the popular assemblies were suspended. Sulpicius
replied by a violent tumult, in which among other victims the young
Quintus Pompeius, son of the one and son-in-law of the other consul,
met his death and the lives of both consuls themselves were seriously
threatened--Sulla is said even to have escaped only by Marius
opening to him his house. They were obliged to yield; Sulla agreed
to countermand the announced solemnities, and the Sulpician proposals
now passed without further difficulty. But this was far from
determining their fate. Though the aristocracy in the capital might
own its defeat, there was now--for the first time since the commencement
of the revolution--yet another power in Italy which could not be
overlooked, viz. the two strong and victorious armies of the proconsul
Strabo and the consul Sulla. The political position of Strabo might
be ambiguous, but Sulla, although he had given way to open violence
for the moment, was on the best terms with the majority of the senate;
and not only so, but he had, immediately after countermanding
the solemnities, departed for Campania to join his army. To terrify
the unarmed consul by bludgeon-men or the defenceless capital by
the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end:
Sulpicius assumed that his opponent, now when he could, would
requite violence with violence and return to the capital at the head
of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue and his laws
along with him. Perhaps he was mistaken. Sulla was just as eager
for the war against Mithradates as he was probably averse to the
political exhalations of the capital; considering his original spirit
of indifference and his unrivalled political nonchalance, there is
great probability that he by no means intended the coup d'etat which
Sulpicius expected, and that, if he had been let alone, he would have
embarked without delay with his troops for Asia so soon as he had
captured Nola, with the siege of which he was still occupied.
Marius Nominated Commander-in-Chief in Sulla's Stead
But, be this as it might, Sulpicius, with a view to parry the presumed
blow, conceived the scheme of taking the supreme command from Sulla;
and for this purpose joined with Marius, whose name was still
sufficiently popular to make a proposal to transfer to him the chief
command in the Asiatic war appear plausible to the multitude, and
whose military position and ability might prove a support in the
event of a rupture with Sulla. Sulpicius probably did not overlook
the danger involved in placing that old man--not less incapable than
vengeful and ambitious--at the head of the Campanian army, and as little
the scandalous irregularity of entrusting an extraordinary supreme
command by decree of the people to a private man; but the very tried
incapacity of Marius as a statesman gave a sort of guarantee that he
would not be able seriously to endanger the constitution, and above
all the personal position of Sulpicius, if he formed a correct
estimate of Sulla's designs, was one of so imminent peril that such
considerations could hardly be longer heeded. That the worn-out
hero himself readily met the wishes of any one who would employ him
as a -condottiere-, was a matter of course; his heart had now for
many years longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and not less
perhaps for an opportunity of once settling accounts thoroughly with
the majority of the senate. Accordingly on the proposal of Sulpicius
Gaius Marius was by decree of the people invested with extraordinary
supreme, or as it was called proconsular, power, and obtained the
command of the Campanian army and the superintendence of the war
against Mithradates; and two tribunes of the people were despatched
to the camp at Nola, to take over the army from Sulla.
Sulla's Recall
Sulla was not the man to yield to such a summons. If any one had a
vocation to the chief command in the Asiatic war, it was Sulla. He
had a few years before commanded with the greatest success in the
same theatre of war; he had contributed more than any other man to
the subjugation of the dangerous Italian insurrection; as consul of
the year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with
the command in it after the customary way and with the full consent
of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to
him by marriage. It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he
would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of
Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circumstances to an old
military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be
turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings.
Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such
an order, nor dependent enough to need to do so. His army was--
partly in consequence of the alterations of the military system
which originated with Marius, partly from the moral laxity and the
military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla--little
more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader
and indifferent to political affairs. Sulla himself was a hardened,
cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses
were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler,
formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison
and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily
captured than Nola.
Sulla's March on Rome
On these views he acted. He assembled his soldiers--there were six
legions, or about 35,000 men--and explained to them the summons that
had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander-
in-chief would undoubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood,
but another formed of fresh troops. The superior officers, who still
had more of the citizen than the soldier, kept aloof, and only one
of them followed the general towards the capital; but the soldiers,
who in accordance with earlier experiences(23) hoped to find in Asia an
easy war and endless booty, were furious; in a moment the two tribunes
that had come from Rome were torn in pieces, and from all sides the
cry arose that the general should lead them to Rome. Without delay
the consul started, and forming a junction with his like-minded
colleague by the way, he arrived by quick marches--little troubling
himself about the deputies who hastened from Rome to meet and
attempted to detain him--beneath the walls of the capital. Suddenly
the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the
bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; and then
two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed
the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter.
Many a worse quarrel, many an important feud had been brought to a
settlement within those walls, without any need for a Roman army
breaking the sacred peace of the city; that step was now taken,
primarily for thesake of the miserable question whether this or
that officer was called to command in the east.
Rome Occupied
The entering legions advanced as far as the height of the Esquiline;
when the missiles and stones descending in showers from the roofs made
the soldiers waver and they began to give way, Sulla himself brandished
a blazing torch, and with firebrands and threats of setting the houses
on fire the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market-place
(not far from S. Maria Maggiore). There the force hastily collected
by Marius and Sulpicius awaited them, and by its superior numbers
repelled the first invading columns. But reinforcements came up from
the gates; another division of the Sullans made preparations for
turning the defenders by the street of the Subura; the latter were
obliged to retire. At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline
begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more
to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens
to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself
had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned
against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general. Even
when the slaves were summoned to arm under the promise of freedom,
not more than three of them appeared. Nothing remained for the
leaders but to escape in all haste through the still unoccupied gates;
after a few hours Sulla was absolute master of Rome. That night
the watchfires of the legions blazed in the great market-place
of the capital.
First Sullan Restoration
Death of Sulpicius
Flight of Marius
The first military intervention in civil feuds had made it quite
evident, not only that the political struggles had reached the point
at which nothing save open and direct force proves decisive, but
also that the power of the bludgeon was of no avail against the
power of the sword. It was the conservative party which first drew
the sword, and which accordingly in due time experienced the truth
of the ominous words of the Gospel as to those who first have recourse
to it. For the present it triumphed completely and might put the
victory into formal shape at its pleasure. As a matter of course,
the Sulpician laws were characterized as legally null. Their author
and his most notable adherents had fled; they were, twelve in number,
proscribed by the senate for arrest and execution as enemies of their
country. Publius Sulpicius was accordingly seized at Laurentum and
put to death; and the head of the tribune, sent to Sulla, was by
his orders exposed in the Forum at the very rostra where he himself had
stood but a few days before in the full vigour of youth and eloquence.
The rest of the proscribed were pursued; the assassins were on the
track of even the old Gaius Marius. Although the general might have
clouded the memory of his glorious days by a succession of pitiful
proceedings, now that the deliverer of his country was running for
his life, he was once more the victor of Vercellae, and with breathless
suspense all Italy listened to the incidents of his marvellous
flight. At Ostia he had gone on board a transport with the view of
sailing for Africa; but adverse winds and want of provisions compelled
him to land at the Circeian promontory and to wander at random.
With few attendants and without trusting himself under a roof, the
grey-haired consular, often suffering from hunger, found his way on
foot to the neighbourhood of the Roman colony of Minturnae at the mouth
of the Garigliano. There the pursuing cavalry were seen in the
distance; with great difficulty he reached the shore, and a trading--
vessel lying there withdrew him from his pursuers; but the timid
mariners soon put him ashore again and made off, while Marius stole
along the beach. His pursuers found him in the salt-marsh of
Minturnae sunk to the girdle in the mud and with his head concealed
amidst a quantity of reeds, and delivered him to the civic authorities
of Minturnae. He was placed in prison, and the town-executioner, a
Cimbrian slave, was sent to put him to death; but the German trembled
before the flashing eyes of his old conqueror and the axe fell from
his hands, when the general with his powerful voice haughtily demanded
whether he dared to kill Gaius Marius. When they learned this, the
magistrates of Minturnae were ashamed that the deliverer of Rome should
meet with greater reverence from slaves to whom he had brought bondage
than from his fellow-citizens to whom he had brought freedom; they
loosed his fetters, gave him a vessel and money for travelling expenses,
and sent him to Aenaria (Ischia). The proscribed with the exception
of Sulpicius gradually met in those waters; they landed at Eryx and
at what was formerly Carthage, but the Roman magistrates both in
Sicily and in Africa sent them away. So they escaped to Numidia,
whose desert sand-dunes gave them a place of refuge for the winter.
But the king Hiempsal II, whom they hoped to gain and who had seemed
for a while willing to unite with them, had only done so to lull them
into security, and now attempted to seize their persons. With great
difficulty the fugitives escaped from his cavalry, and found a temporary
refuge in the little island of Cercina (Kerkena) on the coast of Tunis.
We know not whether Sulla thanked his fortunate star that he had been
spared the odium of putting to death the victor of the Cimbrians; at any
rate it does not appear that the magistrates of Minturnae were punished.
Legislation of Sulla
With a view to remove existing evils and to prevent future
revolutions, Sulla suggested a series of new legislative enactments.
For the hard-pressed debtors nothing seems to have been done, except
that the rules as to the maximum of interest were enforced;(24)
directions moreover were given for the sending out of a number of
colonies. The senate which had been greatly thinned by the battles
and prosecutions of the Social war was filled up by the admission of
300 new senators, who were naturally selected in the interest of the
Optimates. Lastly, material changes were adopted in respect to the
mode of election and the initiative of legislation. The old Servian
arrangement for voting in the centuriate comitia, under which the
first class, with an estate of 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds) or
upwards, alone possessed almost half of the votes, again took the
place of the arrangements introduced in 513 to mitigate the
preponderance of the first class.(25) Practically there was thus
introduced for the election of consuls, praetors, and censors, a
census which really excluded the non-wealthy from exercising the
suffrage. The legislative initiative in the case of the tribunes
of the people was restricted by the rule, that every proposal had
henceforth to be submitted by them in the first instance to
the senate and could only come before the people in the event
of the senate approving it.
These enactments which were called forth by the Sulpician attempt at
revolution from the man who then came forward as the shield and sword
of the constitutional party--the consul Sulla--bear an altogether
peculiar character. Sulla ventured, without consulting the burgesses
or jurymen, to pronounce sentence of death on twelve of the most
distinguished men, including magistrates actually in office and
the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these
proscriptions; a violation of the venerable and sacred laws of appeal,
which met with severe censure even from very conservative men, such
as Quintus Scaevola. He ventured to overthrow an arrangement as to
the elections which had subsisted for a century and a half, and to
re-establish the electoral census which had been long obsolete and
proscribed. He ventured practically to withdraw the right of
legislation from its two primitive factors, the magistrates and the
comitia, and to transfer it to a board which had at no time possessed
formally any other privilege in this respect than that of being asked
for its advice.(26) Hardly had any democrat ever exercised justice
in forms so tyrannical, or disturbed and remodelled the foundations of
the constitution with so reckless an audacity, as this conservative
reformer. But if we look at the substance instead of the form, we
reach very different results. Revolutions have nowhere ended, and
least of all in Rome, without demanding a certain number of victims,
who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone for the fault
of being vanquished as though it were a crime. Any one who recalls
the succession of prosecutions carried on by the victorious party
after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus(27) will be inclined
to yield to the victor of the Esquiline market the praise of candour
and comparative moderation, in so far as, first he without ceremony
accepted as war what was really such and proscribed the men who were
defeated as enemies beyond the pale of the law, and, secondly, he
limited as far as possible the number of victims and allowed at least
no offensive outbreak of fury against inferior persons. A similar
moderation appears in the political arrangements. The innovation as
respects legislation--the most important and apparently the most
comprehensive--in fact only brought the letter of the constitution
into harmony with its spirit. The Roman legislation, under which
any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any
measure at pleasure and bring it to the vote without debate, had from
the first been, irrational and had become daily more so with the
growing nullity of the comitia; it was only tolerated, because in
practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous
deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote
without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or
religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers;
andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its
results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow
the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more
natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize
formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect
had been hitherto given by a circuitous process? Something similar
may be said of the renewal of the electoral census. The earlier
constitution was throughout based on it; even the reform of 513 had
merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth. But since that
year there had occurred an immense financial revolution, which might
well justify a raising of the electoral census. The new timocracy
thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful
to its spirit, while it at the same time in the mildest possible form
attempted at least to check the disgraceful purchase of votes with all
the evils therewith connected. Lastly, the regulations in favour of
debtors and the resumption of the schemes of colonization gave express
proof that Sulla, although not disposed to approve the impetuous
proposals of Sulpicius, was yet, like Sulpicius and Drusus and all the
more far-seeing aristocrats in general, favourable to material reforms
in themselves; as to which we may not overlook the circumstance, that
he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own
free will. If we combine with such considerations the fact, that Sulla
allowed the principal foundations of the Gracchan constitution to
stand and disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the largesses
of grain, we shall find warrant for the opinion that the Sullan
arrangement of 666 substantially adhered to the status quo subsisting
since the fall of Gaius Gracchus; he merely, on the one hand, altered
as the times required the traditional rules that primarily threatened
danger to the existing government, and, on the other hand, sought to
remedy according to his power the existing social evils, so far as
either could be done without touching ills that lay deeper. Emphatic
contempt for constitutional formalism in connection with a vivid
appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrangements, clear
perceptions, and praiseworthy intentions mark this legislation
throughout. But it bears also a certain frivolous and superficial
character; it needed in particular a great amount of good nature
to believe that the fixing a maximum of interest would remedy the
confused relations of credit, and that the right of previous
deliberation on the part of the senate would prove more capable
of resisting future demagogism than the right of veto and religion
had previously been.
New Complications
Cinna
Strabo
Sulla Embarks for Asia
In reality new clouds very soon began to overcast the clear sky
of the conservatives. The relations of Asia assumed daily a more
threatening character. The state had already suffered the utmost
injury through the delay which the Sulpician revolution had
occasioned in the departure of the army for Asia; the embarkation
could on no account be longer postponed. Meanwhile Sulla hoped to
leave behind him guarantees against a new assault on the oligarchy
in Italy, partly in the consuls who would be elected under the new
electoral arrangement, partly and especially in the armies employed
in suppressing the remains of the Italian insurrection. In the
consular comitia, however, the choice did not fall on the candidates
set up by Sulla, but Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who belonged to the most
determined opposition, was associated with Gnaeus Octavius, a man
certainly of strictly Optimate views. It may be presumed that it
was chiefly the capitalist party, which by this choice retaliated
on the author of the law as to interest. Sulla accepted the
unpleasant election with the declaration that he was glad to see
the burgesses making use of their constitutional liberty of choice,
and contented himself with exacting from both consuls an oath that they
would faithfully observe the existing constitution. Of the armies,
the one on which the matter chiefly depended was that of the north,
as the greater part of the Campanian army was destined to depart for
Asia. Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the
people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and procured the recall
of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a manner as to spare as far
as possible his feelings--the more so, because the latter belonged to
the equestrian party and his passive attitude during the Sulpician
troubles had occasioned no small anxiety to the aristocracy. Rufus
arrived at the army and took the chief command in Strabo's stead;
but a few days afterwards he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo
returned to the command which he had hardly abdicated. He was
regarded as the instigator of the murder; it is certain that he
was a man from whom such a deed might be expected, that he reaped the
fruits of the crime, and that he punished the well-known originators
of it only with words. The removal of Rufus and the commandership of
Strabo formed a new and serious danger for Sulla; yet he did nothing
to deprive the latter of his command. Soon afterwards, when his
consulship expired, he found himself on the one hand urged by his
successor Cinna to depart at length for Asia where his presence was
certainly urgently needed, and on the other hand cited by one of
the new tribunes before the bar of the people; it was clear to
the dullest eye, that a new attack on him and his party was in
preparation, and that his opponents wished his removal. Sulla had
no alternative save either to push the matter to a breach with Cinna
and perhaps with Strabo and once more to march on Rome, or to leave
Italian affairs to take their course and to remove to another
continent. Sulla decided--whether more from patriotism or more from
indifference, will never be ascertained--for the latter alternative;
handed over the corps left behind in Samnium to the trustworthy and
experienced soldier, Quintus Metellus Pius, who was invested in
Sulla's stead with the proconsular commandership-in-chief over Lower
Italy; gave the conduct of the siege of Nola to the propraetor Appius
Claudius; and in the beginning of 667 embarked with his legions for
the Hellenic East.