MARIUS AND SULLA
The Roman government after the death of Gaius Gracchus, while still
nominally a republic, had lost all its democratic character and had
once more become an oligarchy such as had existed centuries before,
during the period of the patrician republic. It was evident, however,
that the existing situation could not permanently continue. The
oligarchical government is that form of government which from its very
nature can never acquire stability. Both democracy and monarchy
possess elements of strength which may give to such governments a long
continuance of life; the oligarchy, lacking both the strength of
foundation of the one and the unity of action of the other, must
inevitably be supplanted by a freer or a more restricted system of
government. After the fall of Gaius Gracchus the last opportunity for
the re-creation in Rome of a truly democratic form of government was
lost. It should have been evident to any one who could read the signs
of the future that the power for the time possessed by the senatorial
oligarchy would soon be snatched from it, either by the frenzied hand
of a mob or by the strong hand of a despot.
Few in Rome at this time, however, seem to have been thinking much
about the future. To reactionists or even to conservatives the future
is always almost an unknown word; satisfied with the present, or
looking back with regret to the past, the supporters of special
interests and the votaries of tradition walk backward over the
precipice, the near presence of which they will neither see for
themselves nor be warned of by others.
A flicker of life on the part of the popular party was seen in an
effort by the tribune Decius to indict the former consul Opimius for
his part in the murder of Gaius Gracchus and his friends. The defense
of Opimius was undertaken by the renegade Carbo. The life of this
politician seems an excellent example in proof of the statement that
the demagogue seeks the favor of the people only for his own
advantage, and that as soon as he has acquired such favor, and has
become a person of influence, his next step is to sell himself, now
valuable on account of the political power he has acquired through
his hypocrisy toward the people, to the special interests. No better
contrast can be found in history between the true reformer and the
unprincipled demagogue than is the contrast between Tiberius Gracchus
and Carbo. While it is comparatively easy, however, to go back into
past ages and to separate the sheep from the goats, and to distinguish
between reformer and hypocrite, it is a much harder undertaking to do
this with the living politicians. It often happens that the people are
too ready to follow the demagogue and to repudiate and ridicule the
honest reformer. Striking illustrations of this phenomenon could
easily be given from recent American history. The doctrine of the
survival of the fittest applies in all sciences, social as well as
natural. In all its applications, however, this doctrine is that of
the survival of the fittest to meet existing conditions, not the
survival of the fittest from the standpoint of absolute merit. With
those who attempt to secure the political support of the proletariat
of a great city, merit is to a great extent a handicap, and a certain
class of vices the greatest advantage.
There are some men naturally so constituted that the doctrine that the
end justifies the means can be consistently and safely applied by them
in their public life. To this class have belonged most of those men
through whom all the greatest victories for liberty and the greatest
reforms in this world have been finally achieved. The mass of mankind,
however, are incapable of consistently and permanently following the
doctrine; and with all men, except the few above referred to, the
character of their objects and methods must act and react upon each
other. The result is that those seeking reform and honesty in
politics, in the main seek to accomplish their purposes by honest
methods; while the demagogue, seeking his own interests alone, a
hypocrite as to his motives, will never consider as to the honesty of
his methods. It is only on exceptional occasions that the honest
advocate of popular rights can win the support of the mob by honest
methods. Several causes work together to accomplish this result. In
the lower economic strata the individual is far more strongly
influenced by his own immediate interests than by the permanent
interests of the class to which he belongs. Perhaps it would be too
much to expect the contrary.
We have constantly before us to-day the spectacle of men who--loudest
in their denunciation of the discrimination which public officials
exercise in favor of the special classes and against the common
citizen--at election time, in consideration of a few dollars for
themselves, exert all their influence in favor of the worst exponents
of the system they denounce. By the return, in the form of direct or
indirect bribes to a selected few of the proletariat, of a small
portion of the money previously illegally or unjustly exploited from
the poor, the politicians of the "practical" type are able to secure
the assent of the greater portion of the proletariat to the
continuation of such exploitation.
Again, the candidate or political leader who intends to carry out his
promises is under a disadvantage in comparison with the candidate or
leader who does not. There are limitations to what government can
accomplish; there are no limitations to what a demagogue can promise.
There is no more unfavorable criticism possible upon the lack of
proper intelligence of the majority of the American voters than the
character of the promises and the arguments which are received with
applause at political meetings of every political party.
This criticism upon the political actions of the poorer classes,
economically, by no means indicates that they are the least desirable
class of voters in a country, or that a country would be better
governed if the ballot were taken away from them. The truth of the
matter is that it is mainly by the votes and efforts of the lowest
classes in a community (from the standpoint of wealth and social
status) that every great reform or popular victory must be achieved.
It is at the great crises that the masses are most generally right,
and the classes most generally wrong. No phenomenon of history is more
clear and more striking than that, at every great crisis of the
world's history, the mass of the wealthy and educated classes has been
always wrong. Nowhere is this more plainly to be discerned than in the
history of our own country. In the Revolutionary days the great mass
of the wealth and education in the country was to be found on the
Tory side. At the crisis the concrete question of personal interest
prevails over the abstract idea of public welfare; those who are
personally satisfied with existing conditions are slow to advocate a
change; those who have little to lose find it easier to be courageous.
Next to the small nucleus of true reformers, the first adherents of
any reform movement are apt to be the discontented and restless
elements of the community.
We can see a working example of this phenomenon, many centuries ago,
in the brief account which the Bible gives us of the recruiting of the
force with which David first offered resistance to King Saul. "David
therefore departed thence, and escaped to the Cave Adullam: and when
his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down
thither to him. And every one that was in distress, and every one that
was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves
unto him; and he became a captain over them."
In the case of the demagogue Carbo, we find him, after a violent
career as a popular tribune, selling his influence and services to the
senatorial party, of which he was henceforth the most servient tool.
He was rewarded for his services to this party by an election as
consul, and it was during his consulship (120 B.C.) that the
indictment was brought against Opimius. Carbo's influence, coupled
with the fear which the murderers of the Gracchi and their followers
had left in the minds of the people, was sufficient to secure the
acquittal of Opimius. The triumph of Carbo, however, was short-lived.
He was himself indicted by L. Licinius Crassus, brother-in-law of
Gaius Gracchus, and the manifestation of the feeling against him
became so bitter that Carbo was driven to take his own life by poison.
The Roman politicians of the next few years, the Metelli, Æmilius
Scaurus, and others, left little impress upon the course of Roman
history, and their lives and triumphs are of little interest to us.
Their aims were of a strictly personal character, their civic work was
of a routine character; if they did little harm to the state, they
conferred no benefit upon it.
The most important event of the closing years of the second century
before Christ was the famous, or rather infamous, Jugurthine War. The
story of this war furnishes the final evidence as to the corruption
and degradation of Roman politics and officials at this time. This war
arose out of a disputed succession to the throne of Numidia. Jugurtha,
at first the friend and ally of Rome, after he had secured possession
of the whole country through the murder of his two rivals, his
cousins, found himself at last at war with Rome. The fortune of war
going against him, he secured an advantageous peace by bribing the
Roman general. The facts relative to this peace becoming known at
Rome, Jugurtha was summoned to appear at Rome to give his account of
the proceedings. His history, during this famous visit to Rome, is
thus related by the Roman historian Sallust:
"During the course of these proceedings at Rome, those whom
Bestia had left in Numidia in command of the army, following
the example of their general, had been guilty of many
scandalous transactions. Some, seduced by gold, had restored
Jugurtha his elephants; others had sold him his deserters;
others had ravaged the lands of those at peace with us; so
strong a spirit of rapacity, like the contagion of a
pestilence, had pervaded the breasts of all.
"Cassius, when the measure proposed by Memmius had been
carried, and whilst all the nobility were in consternation,
set out on his mission to Jugurtha, whom, alarmed as he was,
and despairing of his fortune, from a sense of guilt, he
admonished 'that, since he had surrendered himself to the
Romans, he had better make trial of their mercy than their
power.' He also pledged his own word, which Jugurtha valued
not less than that of the public, for his safety. Such, at
that period, was the reputation of Cassius.
"Jugurtha, accordingly, accompanied Cassius to Rome, but
without any mark of royalty, and in the garb, as much as
possible, of a suppliant; and, though he felt great
confidence on his own part, and was supported by all those
through whose power or villainy he had accomplished his
projects, he purchased, by a vast bribe, the aid of Caius
Bæbius, a tribune of the people, by whose audacity he hoped
to be protected against the law, and against all harm.
"An assembly of the people being convoked, Memmius, although
they were violently exasperated against Jugurtha (some
demanding that he should be cast into prison, others that,
unless he should name his accomplices in guilt, he should be
put to death, according to the usage of their ancestors, as
a public enemy) yet, regarding rather their character than
their resentment, endeavoured to calm their turbulence and
mitigate their rage; and assured them that, as far as
depended on him, the public faith should not be broken. At
length, when silence was obtained, he brought forward
Jugurtha, and addressed them. He detailed the misdeeds of
Jugurtha at Rome and in Numidia, and set forth his crimes
towards his father and brothers; and admonished the prince
'that the Roman people, though they were well aware by whose
support and agency he had acted, yet desired further
testimony from himself; that, if he disclosed the truth,
there was great hope for him in the honour and clemency of
the Romans; but if he concealed it, he would certainly not
save his accomplices, but ruin himself and his hopes
forever.'
"But when Memmius had concluded his speech, and Jugurtha was
expected to give his answer, Caius Bæbius, the tribune of
the people, whom I have just noticed as having been bribed,
enjoined the prince to hold his peace; and though the
multitude who formed the assembly were desperately enraged,
and endeavoured to terrify the tribune by outcries, by angry
looks, by violent gestures, and by every other act to which
anger prompts, his audacity was at last triumphant. The
people, mocked and set at naught, withdrew from the place of
assembly, and the confidence of Jugurtha, Bestia, and the
others whom this investigation had alarmed, was greatly
augmented.
"There was at this period in Rome, a certain Numidian named
Massiva, a son of Gulussa and grandson of Masinissa, who,
from having been, in the dissensions among princes, opposed
to Jugurtha, had been obliged, after the surrender of Cirta
and the murder of Adherbal, to make his escape out of
Africa. Spurius Albinus, who was consul with Quintus
Minucius Rufus the year after Bestia, prevailed upon this
man, as he was of the family of Masinissa, and as odium and
terror hung over Jugurtha for his crimes, to petition the
senate for the kingdom of Numidia. Albinus, being eager for
the conduct of a war, was desirous that affairs should be
disturbed, rather than sink into tranquillity; especially
as, in the division of the provinces, Numidia had fallen to
himself, and Macedonia to Minucius.
"When Massiva proceeded to carry these suggestions into
execution, Jugurtha, finding that he had no sufficient
support in his friends, as a sense of guilt deterred some
and evil report or timidity, others from coming forward in
his behalf, directed Bomilcar, his most attached and
faithful adherent, to procure by the aid of money, by which
he had already effected so much, assassins to kill Massiva;
and to do it secretly if he could, but if secrecy should be
impossible, to cut him off in any way whatsoever. This
commission Bomilcar soon found means to execute; and, by the
agency of men versed in such service, ascertained the
direction of his journeys, his hours of leaving home, and
the times at which he resorted to particular places, and,
when all was ready, placed his assassins in ambush. One of
their number sprang upon Massiva, though with too little
caution, and killed him; but, being himself caught, he made
at the instigation of many, and especially of Albinus the
consul, a full confession. Bomilcar was accordingly
committed for trial, though rather on the principles of
reason and justice than in accordance with the law of
nations, as he was in the retinue of one who had come to
Rome on a pledge of the public faith for his safety. But
Jugurtha, though clearly guilty of the crime, did not cease
to struggle against the truth, until he perceived that the
infamy of the deed was too strong for his interest or his
money. For that reason, although at the commencement of the
proceedings, he had given fifty of his friends as bail for
Bomilcar, yet thinking more of his kingdom than of the
sureties, he sent him off privately into Numidia, for he
feared that if such a man should be executed, his other
subjects would be deterred from obeying him. A few days
after, he himself departed, having been ordered by the
senate to quit Italy. But, as he was going from Rome, he is
said, after frequently looking back on it in silence, to
have at last exclaimed that 'it was a venal city, and would
soon perish, if it could but find a purchaser.'"
Upon the resumption of the war with Jugurtha the Romans at first met
with a great disaster, the army under Spurius Albinus being defeated
and compelled to pass under the yoke and withdraw from Numidia. The
result of this defeat was a sweeping investigation of the wholesale
bribery of Roman officials by Jugurtha. Many, though not all, of those
guilty in this respect were punished by banishment. The conduct of the
war was now delegated to Q. Cæcilius Metellus, by whom it was soon
after brought to a successful termination. This result, however, was
due less to the military genius of Metellus than to that of his
lieutenant Gaius Marius, who immediately afterwards became the central
figure in the political arena at Rome.
Marius was born near Arpinum about 157 B.C. of peasant parents.
Abandoning agriculture for the army, at a very early age he had won
distinction not only for personal strength and courage but also for
military ability. As early as the year 132 B.C. Scipio Africanus, once
being asked by a flatterer where a general could be found to fill his
place, touched the arm of Marius, who happened to be present on the
occasion, and answered, "Perhaps here." It was not only in the field
of war but also in that of politics that Marius had won a reputation
before the time that he served under Metellus against Jugurtha. Being
elected tribune in 119 B.C., his actions, upon some unimportant
controversies which arose during the year, had been such as to show
the determination and ferocity of his disposition, and to win the
favor of the populace and the distrust of the senatorial party.
Through the influence of the aristocracy Marius was defeated for both
the ædileships, but was finally elected prætor in 115 B.C.
It was while he was serving under Metellus in Africa that Marius
became a candidate for the consulship. The idea of Marius as consul
was very distasteful to Metellus, who permitted Marius to leave the
camp for Rome only twelve days before the day set for the election.
Marius, by almost superhuman exertions, succeeded in making the
journey to Rome in the first six of these days, and in the remaining
six conducted a successful campaign for the consulship.
The election of Marius to the consulship marks the beginning of the
last age of the Roman republic. With Marius began the habitual rule of
might rather than of right; rule by armies, instead of rule by
majorities. For something over half a century power at Rome was to be
shuffled backward and forward between different military commanders,
until finally a military despot arose strong enough both to overthrow
the oligarchy and to put down the mob. The manner in which the Romans
had abstained from internal violence for centuries, during all the
heat of so many bitter political and class contests, is one of the
wonders of ancient history. The aristocracy first broke this rule by
resorting to force to block the reforms of the Gracchi. Such a
procedure must always be a two-edged weapon, and Marius was the man
fated to turn the sword against those who first drew it in Roman
politics. The very election of Marius as consul (107 B.C.) was the
occasion of much disquietude to the oligarchy.
Although the consulship had at this time, in theory, been for two
hundred sixty years open to all Roman citizens, nevertheless, in
practice, it had, with occasional exceptions, been confined to the
members of the few great families. In fact, so general had this become
that a man who was the first of his family to be elected to this
office was known as a "new man." Not only was Marius a "new man," but
his immediate ancestors, in all probability, were men lower in the
social and economic scale than had been the father and grandfather of
any previous Roman consul. If the rise of Marius was a source of
danger to the senatorial party, the qualities which had rendered his
success possible were a source of danger to the whole community.
Marius was and had been a soldier, and a soldier only. There is
nothing in his whole life to indicate that he combined with the
attributes of the general any of those of the statesman, as did Cæsar
and Napoleon. The same fighting qualities which brought to him success
in war likewise produced success in politics, and the same ferocity of
disposition was manifested in both fields.
The military ability of Marius, in connection with the peculiar
circumstances of the times, soon secured to this general a more
absolute control of the Roman community than had previously been
possessed by any consul of Rome. The military ability of Marius has
never been disputed either by his contemporaries or by later
historians. His military successes after his election to the
consulship were rapid and decisive. Where his predecessors had failed,
Marius succeeded in the Jugurthine War, and the year 104 B.C.
witnessed at Rome the triumph of Marius, with the craftiest, ablest,
and most unscrupulous of African kings walking in chains as a captive
in his train.
Of greater importance and benefit to Rome were the great victories won
by Marius over those terrible invaders, the Teutones and the
Cimbrians, who had been threatening Rome and harassing northern Italy
for a number of years. In 102 B.C. the Teutones were defeated by
Marius at the battle of Aquæ Sextiæ, where the number of the
vanquished who were killed is variously estimated at from one hundred
twenty thousand to two hundred thousand. The following year, during
the fifth consulship of Marius, the Cimbrians were practically
annihilated, sixty thousand being captured and sold as slaves and the
remainder of the vast host, with few exceptions, killed.
The second century before Christ thus closed with brilliant foreign
victories for the Roman arms. This close likewise saw the beginning of
another period of slave insurrections and civil war. As before, the
principal resistance by the slaves occurred in the island of Sicily.
The immediate cause of this insurrection was the neglect or refusal of
the Roman prætor in Sicily to obey a decree of the Senate. So great a
scandal had arisen from the continued actions of the Roman tax
collectors in the East in seizing and selling into slavery persons who
failed to pay the exorbitant taxes demanded from them that the Senate
passed a decree providing that all persons illegally held as slaves
should be immediately released. This decree would have affected so
many slaves in the island of Sicily that the prætor suspended its
operation. The slaves, rendered desperate by seeing this promised
liberty snatched from them, once more rose in rebellion.
Again the slaves were commanded by able leaders, and again they won a
number of victories over Roman armies before they were finally put
down.
"The revolt was thus apparently suppressed, yet many years
the disturbances continued, and there were innumerable local
insurrections, causing great carnage and unspeakable misery.
A Roman knight, Titus Minucius, harassed by debt, and
annoyed by the importunities of his creditors, through
revenge incited an insurrection, and placed himself at the
head of three thousand slaves. A bloody battle ensued before
he was put down. Soon after this, two very able slaves,
Sabrius and Athenio, headed revolts. Their forces were
marshaled in well-disciplined bands, and for some time they
successfully repelled all the power Rome could bring against
them. Several Roman armies were defeated with great loss,
and the whole island was surrendered to blood and violence.
The poorer class of the free inhabitants availed themselves
of the general confusion to indulge in unrestrained license
and devastation. This insurrection became so formidable,
that again Rome was compelled to rouse her energies. A
consular army was sent, which drove the insurgents into
their strongholds and then subdued them by the slow process
of siege. The carnage and misery resulting from these
servile wars no tongue can tell. The whole power of the
Roman empire was pledged to put down insurrections; and
though the captives could avenge their wrongs and sell their
lives dearly, it was in vain for them to hope for ultimate
success.
"A law was passed prohibiting any slave from carrying a
warlike weapon. Rigorously was this law enforced. At one
time a boar of remarkable size was sent as a present to L.
Domicius, then prætor of the island. He inquired who had
killed it. On being informed that it was a slave, who was
employed as a shepherd, he summoned the man before him, and
asked how he had contrived to kill so powerful an animal.
The shepherd replied that he had killed it with a boar
spear. The merciless Domicius ordered him immediately to be
crucified for having used a weapon in violation of the law.
This rigor was pursued so unrelentingly, that, for a long
period, there were no more revolts!" (Abbott's _History of
Italy_.)
The victories of Marius over the Teutones and Cimbrians had been
followed by his sixth election to the consulship. This election,
however, had not been secured without great difficulty and tumult. The
aristocratic party had been consistently the opponents and enemies of
Marius throughout his whole career. The great victories which he had
won for Rome, instead of reconciling this class to him, had made them
only the more jealous and fearful of him.
By this time Marius had in addition, to a great extent, alienated the
lower classes of the Roman citizens. The enmity between the
proletariat at Rome and the Italians, which had commenced at the time
of the younger Gracchus, had been constantly increasing. Marius had
inclined more and more toward the side of the Italians. Like most
generals, his thoughts and affections were for his soldiers rather
than for the state which he served; and the soldiers over whom Marius
had command and with whom he had won his great victories were mainly
Italians. The degenerate city mob at Rome no longer desired or was fit
for military life, and the safety of Rome and the extension of her
territories now rested mainly upon those to whom the rights of her
citizenship were denied.
The Italians, probably appreciating both the strength of their
position and the injustice of their treatment, were demanding the
rights of Roman citizenship, and in this demand they found a
sympathizer in the consul Marius. Immediately after his victories in
the north of Italy, Marius, in direct violation of the law, had
granted Roman citizenship to one thousand soldiers in his army who had
distinguished themselves in the campaign. His excuse was
characteristic of the existing conditions and prophetic of the course
of Roman history during the succeeding century: "Amid the din of arms,
I could not hear the voice of the laws."
During his sixth consulship Marius endeavored to secure the Roman
franchise for certain of his soldiers in a more regular manner. The
tribunes, Apuleius Saturninus and Servilius Glaucia, secured the
passage of a law by which Marius was authorized to grant the rights of
Roman citizenship to three persons in every colony which enjoyed the
Latin franchise.
The career of the tribune Saturninus is illustrative of the condition
of anarchy into which Rome was rapidly drifting. Saturninus was the
first of the Roman politicians to rely as a regular practice upon
"strong-arm methods" to carry elections. In his first race for the
tribuneship he had brazenly murdered one of the opposing candidates;
he had been the principal campaign manager for Marius at the time of
his sixth election to the consulship, when the disbanded army of
Marius had been distributed among the Roman citizens in the meetings
of the comitia tributa in such numbers as to overawe all opposition.
Finally, when C. Memmius, a bitter political enemy of his, seemed
about to be elected to the consulship, he caused him to be stabbed in
the Forum by one of the thugs who constituted his own bodyguard.
Saturninus, however, had now reached the point where he stood almost
alone. The senatorial party were his natural enemies; the Roman mob
had, in the main, fallen away from his support on account of his
friendly feeling toward the Italians, and his extreme methods had
compelled even Marius to withdraw his support.
Seeing his political power almost gone, Saturninus, in company with
his fellow-tribune Glaucia and a band of the ruffians with which Rome
was so badly infested at this time, seized the citadel on the capitol
and attempted to raise an insurrection against the republic. The
citadel was considered to be impregnable to an attack, but Saturninus
and his followers were soon forced into submission by the cutting off
of their water supply. The insurgents had surrendered upon the
condition that their lives should be spared. Marius, in order to
protect their safety, imprisoned them in a large building, known as
the Curia Hostilia. The mob, however, climbed to the top of the
building, tore off the roof, and murdered all the prisoners by
dropping rocks upon them.
For centuries one of the most striking characteristics of Roman
political life had been the forbearance with which all political
factions restrained themselves from the use of violence. Such a
condition of affairs, however, no longer existed, and from the
beginning of the first century before Christ the use of force in
political controversies at Rome became the rule rather than the
exception. The exact reasons for the sudden change of sentiment upon
the part of the Roman mob against Saturninus is doubtful. It may have
been solely on account of his advocacy of Italian suffrage, or it may
have been due to the belief by the mob in the accusation made by the
senators that Saturninus was seeking to make himself king.
The political history of Rome during the first quarter of the first
century before Christ was extremely complicated on account of the
existence, side by side, of the two great contests,--the one between
the aristocratic party and the popular party at Rome; the second,
between the Romans and the Italians. Both contests were from this time
on to be marked by the most extreme bitterness on both sides, and each
soon became a military rather than a political contest.
The complicated system of laws regulating the status of the citizens
of the various Italian cities under the Roman republic has already
been discussed in previous chapters. It is also to be noted that at an
earlier date the political rights of a Roman citizen were of doubtful
value and were often refused by Italian cities to which they were
offered. This state of affairs no longer existed, and the time had
come when all Italians desired and demanded the political rights of
the Roman citizen.
The death of Saturninus and the departure of Marius for the East, in
99 B.C., gave an opportunity for a new set of political leaders at
Rome. The first of these politicians to rise into prominence was M.
Livius Drusus. Drusus occupied the unique position among the Roman
politicians of this period of having attempted to play the role of
conciliator between the various conflicting factions. Originally
brought forward in political life by the senatorial party with the
intention that he should play the part formerly taken by his father at
the time of the Gracchian conflicts, and destroy the influence of the
popular leaders by outbidding them in their efforts for popular
support--he soon went beyond the objects of his sponsors and
endeavored to secure real reforms for the benefit of the people and of
the state. Some historians would rank Drusus as the best and ablest of
all the Roman politicians who lived during the latter part of the
republic. It is difficult, however, either to form an accurate opinion
of the policies or merits of Drusus or to assign to him his proper
niche in history. The accounts which we have of his political
activities are conflicting and fragmentary, and his work left few
permanent results. The measure for which he is best remembered was
his proposed law to grant the franchise to the Latins and Italians.
Together with the increase of the franchise Drusus sought to secure
the allotment of land to the needy Roman citizens, and a reform in the
method of administering justice and government in Rome.
The franchise law of Drusus secured for him unbounded popularity
throughout Italy and bitter opposition at Rome. This opposition in his
own city culminated in his assassination in 91 B.C.
The murder of Drusus was the spark which produced the conflagration of
the Social War. Losing hope of securing any justice from Rome
voluntarily, ten of the Italian tribes, the Samnites, Trentanians,
Hirpini, Lucanians, Apulians, Picentines, Vestini, Marrucini,
Marsians, and Pæligni banded themselves together and declared war
against Rome. The Romans seemed to have been completely taken by
surprise. The Roman legates sent to the camp of the Italians were
murdered, together with all the Roman citizens upon whom the
insurgents could lay their hands, and a policy of extermination was
resolved upon. Rome was to be destroyed, and Italy was to be made
into a great republic with Corfinium as its capital. The government of
the new republic was modeled after that of Rome. Marsian and Mutilus
were chosen consuls for the first year of the new Italian republic.
The war at first went against the Romans and for a while it seemed as
if the Italians might even succeed in their scheme for the overthrow
and the destruction of Rome. Again the Romans were obliged to look to
Gaius Marius for their safety. Marius, who shortly before this time
had returned from the East and who had been suffered to hold only a
subordinate command during the first year of the war, now being put in
control of one of the Roman armies turned the tide of the Italian
success by winning the first great victory achieved by the Romans
during the war. The sympathy of Marius, however, was so strongly with
the demands of the Italians, and his desires so great to bring the war
to a close by conceding these demands, that he failed to follow up the
success with his accustomed vigor, with the result that a younger
general was enabled to rise into prominence.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla had already acquired considerable military
reputation from the campaign which he had served in Africa under
Marius, and was now in command of one of the Roman armies. Sulla,
throughout his whole life, was a consistent adherent of the extreme
oligarchical party. Nowhere in his life's history do we find the
slightest degree of regard for popular rights, or any opposition to
injustice which might rest on the lower classes. With no sympathy for
the Italians or the cause which they represented, and possessed with
military ability almost equal to that of Marius, Sulla became the
military hero of the Social War. Nevertheless, it was soon evident
that the Romans themselves would not be able to bring the war to a
successful termination. Therefore, by the Julian Law, the Roman
franchise was extended to those tribes and cities in possession of the
Latin rights, who, in return for the grant of the franchise to
themselves, seemed to have willingly assisted in preventing its
acquisition by the others. With the aid of the Latins, Sulla was able
to compel the subjugation of the Italians, of whom more than three
hundred thousand are reported to have been killed in the short war.
The conclusion of this war, however, brought not even a temporary
peace. The Roman sky was overshadowed with clouds both of foreign
invasion and internal dissension. In the far East the great
Mithridates, king of Pontus, had defeated the Romans, murdered in cold
blood eighty thousand Roman citizens whom he had found in Asia Minor,
and was preparing to invade Greece, which was only too ready to rise
and aid in the overthrow of the hated and oppressive Roman rule.
In the meantime the battle of the Italians, lost in the field, was
being renewed at Rome by the Roman politicians of the popular party.
Under the leadership of the tribune Sulpicius the popular party was
induced to take up the advocacy of the claims of the Italians.
The fear which had been produced in the minds of all Romans by the
disquieting news from the East tended to make all classes willing to
conciliate the Italians, from whom soldiers for foreign service must
mainly be recruited.
By the Lex Plautia-Popiria the very same privileges were extended to
all the Italian allies of Rome that had been extended to a favored few
by the Lex Julia. A few cities in Italy, however, mainly those of
Grecian origin, declined to take advantage of this law, preferring to
retain their local system of self-government rather than become
citizens of Rome.
From the standpoint of Roman supremacy the passage of the Lex
Plautia-Popiria was the wisest action in the whole course of Roman
history. The efforts of years immediately preceding the passage of
this act had shown that the citizenship of Rome, as constituted prior
to the year 90 B.C., was far too limited to be able to long remain as
the base upon which the great pyramid of the Roman foreign possessions
should rest. Nevertheless, by the additions made by the Lex Julia and
the Lex Plautia-Popiria, it was rendered broad and strong enough to
sustain the great weight and bulk of the Roman empire for several
centuries.
The Lex Plautia-Popiria, however, fell far short of giving to the
Italians the full political influence to which their numbers would
entitle them. The number of the new citizens enrolled by the censors
under the provisions of this new act were divided into eight (or
perhaps ten) new tribes, instead of being divided among all the
existing thirty-five tribes as had been demanded by Sulpicius.
The passage of these laws, however, while it terminated one of the
great contests between the Romans and Italians, did nothing toward
terminating that between the oligarchical and the popular parties.
During the period of the Social War the oligarchical and the popular
parties in Rome had been by one common danger united against the
combined force of the Latins, but with the close of the war this union
was brought to an end. The popular party at Rome was augmented by the
masses of the Italians; while with the oligarchical party was
associated the aristocracy and nobles of the various Italian cities.
The contest at Rome soon flamed up again over the question as to whom
the command against Mithridates should be given. Again the question
was settled by force instead of by ballot, Sulla marching to Rome at
the head of his army, and Marius, to whom the command of the army had
been given by the vote of the people, being obliged to flee for his
life. Many stories are told about the hairbreadth escapes of Marius at
this time. It is even related that, being captured in a marsh in
Campania, he was taken before the magistrate at Minturnæ and a
sentence of death passed upon him; that a Gaul was sent to his cell
with the command to cut off his head, but that the barbarian was so
frightened by the look in the eyes of Marius, which seemed to flash
fire in the darkness of the cell, and by the awful tones in which the
old man called out, "Wretch, dare you slay Gaius Marius?" that the
Gaul fled from the prison in dismay without executing his command, and
that Marius was afterwards released and succeeded in reaching Africa.
It is hardly possible, however, in view of the blood which flowed in
Rome at the command of Sulla, both at this time and a few years later
upon his return from the East, that Marius would have succeeded in
escaping death if he had, in reality, been captured by his opponents
at this time.
The political situation in Rome was now in the condition where
political supremacy depended upon force instead of upon the ballot;
and the rule of the aristocratic party in Rome was destroyed by the
departure of Sulla and his army for the East.
The consuls for the year 87 B.C. were Octavius, who belonged to the
aristocratic party, and Cornelius Cinna, the friend of Marius, who
belonged to the popular party. The latter attempted to once more bring
forward the law for dividing the new Italian citizens among all the
tribes of Rome, and was deprived of his consulship and exiled by the
oligarchy on this account. Civil war now again broke out in Rome, and
the city soon found herself threatened from all sides. At one time no
less than four distinct and independent rebellious Roman armies were
marching against Rome, while the Samnites, always the most vindictive
and irreconcilable enemies of Rome, again brought their forces in the
field--nominally to aid the popular party, in reality with the hope of
being able to finally strike a blow against the very existence of
Rome.
Marius, who had fled to Africa, returned to Italy and in connection
with Cinna put himself once more at the head of the popular party. No
military leader of the aristocratic party, capable of successfully
contending against the veteran leader of the popular party, remained
in Italy, and once again the political wheel of fortune revolved in
Rome, leaving the oligarchical party at the mercy of Marius.
His recent experiences had embittered the old soldier, and aroused
within him a desire for vengeance and for blood which he had never
before exhibited in his long political and military life. In dramatic
fashion he placed before the eyes of the Roman citizens the ungrateful
treatment which he had received in return for the great services he
had rendered his country. Clad in the ragged costume of an exile, he
led his victorious army to Rome, and, saying with bitterness that "an
exile must not enter the city," he waited outside the walls of Rome
until the decree of exile against him was formally repealed. If
Marius, however, was scrupulous in his observation of the form of the
laws prior to his entrance into the city, all his regard for either
the form or substance of the law seems to have been lost after such
entrance.
Marius and Cinna declared themselves consuls of Rome for the year 86
B.C. without any election and without even the formality of summoning
a meeting of the comitia tributa. Much more serious than this was the
disregard which was manifested by Marius and his followers for the
life and property of the Roman citizens. For several days Rome was
given up to almost indiscriminate plunder and murder by the soldiers
in the armies of Marius and Cinna; and after a stop was finally
brought to this extra-judicial pillage and murder it was succeeded by
a series of prosecutions almost as destructive, and fully as unjust.
It was with these days of slaughter, the most sanguinary and unjust of
Marius's whole career, that his life was to end. He was now an old man
of seventy, enfeebled by sickness and hardship, and after his desire
for vengeance on his enemies had been satisfied there appeared to him
nothing left in life worth living for. Reports from the East indicated
the military triumph of his great rival Sulla, and the prospect of the
speedy return of the leader. To his other worries there was added the
belief that the present triumph of his party was but temporary.
Finally, overcome by sickness and melancholy, he took to his bed, and
died at the end of seven days. Many believed that he had committed
suicide, but the truth of this theory can never be anything but a
matter of conjecture.
Of the character of Marius little need be said. He was primarily a
soldier, and only incidentally a politician. The debt which Rome owed
to the military ability of Marius can hardly be overestimated. It is
probable that but for his services the Roman republic might have been
destroyed on either of two different occasions.
As a politician Marius exerted little influence on the course of the
development of Roman history. The part which he played was rather
forced upon him by circumstances and the conditions of the times than
one which he himself created. His sympathies throughout were on the
side of popular rights and equal justice. He supported the popular
party at Rome against the oligarchical party, and was one of the
strongest sympathizers with the Italians in their efforts for the
Roman franchise. He was the first to draw the sword to protect the
rights of the people against the oligarchy, but the members of the
oligarchy had themselves drawn it to overthrow the Gracchi, and force,
having been entered into Roman politics, must be met with force,
unless the people were willing to surrender all their claims to right
and justice and permit the whole control of the state to pass to the
aristocracy.
The only real blemish upon the record of Marius is found in the cruel
revenge which he took upon his enemies in the last years of his life.
Even on this occasion there was something more than mere revenge and
cruelty in the policy of Marius. If the control of the popular party
in Rome was to be permanent, it was necessary that the aristocratic
party should be completely crushed before the return of Sulla from the
East.
In concluding the career of Gaius Marius, summaries of his character
given by two historians are here inserted:
"'When Caius Gracchus fell,' said Mirabeau, 'he seized a
handful of dust tinged with his blood and flung it toward
the sky; from that dust was born Marius.' This phrase of
Mirabeau's, though a whit rhetorical, is historically true.
The patricians were willing to cede nothing to the Gracchi,
and they were decimated by Marius. The struggle changed its
methods: one fought no more with laws as the only weapons,
but yet more with proscriptions. Marius was the incarnated
pleb; as ignorant, pitiless, formidable, he had something of
Danton, except that Danton was no soldier." (J. J. Ampère,
_L'Empire romaine à Rome_.)
"The judgment pronounced on Marius by posterity is not, like
that on many other eminent men, wavering and contradictory.
He is not one of those who to some have appeared heroes, to
others malefactors, nor has he had to wait for ages, like
Tiberius, before his true character became known.
Disregarding the conscious misrepresentations of his
personal enemies, we may say that he has always been taken
for a good specimen of the genuine old Roman, uniting in his
person in an exceptional degree the virtues and the faults
of the rude illiterate peasant and the intrepid soldier. No
one has ever ventured to deny that by his eminent military
ability he rendered essential service to his country. Nobody
has doubted his austere virtues, his simplicity and honesty,
qualities by which, no less than by his genius for war, he
gained for himself the veneration of the people. On the
other hand, it is universally admitted that as a politician
he was incompetent, and that he was only a tool in the hands
of those with whom he acted. But morbid ambition and
revengeful passion urged him at last to deeds which make it
doubtful whether it would not have been better for Rome if
he had never been born. He has, therefore, neither deserved
nor obtained unmixed admiration; but as his darkest deeds
were committed in moments when he was half mad from
sufferings and indignities he had endured, and when perhaps
he hardly knew what he was doing, he may, in the opinion of
humane judges, gain by comparison with Sulla, who acted from
reflection and in cool blood when he consigned thousands to
death and enacted the horrid spectacle of the
proscriptions." (William Ihne, _The History of Rome_.)
Marius was succeeded as consul by Valerius Flaccus, who had held the
same office fourteen years before. The two consuls Cinna and Flaccus
now attempted to fulfill the pledges to the Italians, and censors were
elected for the express purpose of doing away with the eight (or ten)
new Italian tribes and distributing the Italians throughout the whole
thirty-five tribes.
Another important law passed at this time was in the nature of a
temporary bankruptcy law for the relief of the Roman debtors. By this
new law all debtors were enabled to clear themselves of their debts by
paying one fourth of the amount owed.
Sulla, in the meantime, had brought to a successful close the war
against Mithridates, although, on account of his anxiety to return to
Italy as soon as possible, he did not completely crush the king of
Pontus, as he could have done easily at this time. Disregarding the
decree removing him from command of the army and appointing his
successor, Sulla retained the command of his victorious army and
returned with it to Italy, with the express purpose of crushing the
popular party, and placed Rome once more completely under the control
of the oligarchy.
Even before starting for Italy Sulla had issued a manifesto which
showed that no mercy could be expected for his opponents in the event
of his success. The Roman Senate at this crisis made a feeble effort
to act as a mediator between the rival parties. It sent an embassy to
endeavor to dissuade Sulla to desist from his threatened vengeance,
while on the other hand it forbade the consuls to make any military
preparations to resist. Both parties disregarded the orders of the
Senate. Cinna and Carbo, who were at that time the consuls of Rome,
began to make large levies of soldiers for the purpose of resisting
Sulla upon his return. An attempt by Cinna to lead an expedition to
attack Sulla in the East was frustrated by the refusal of his soldiers
to leave Italy, and Cinna himself was soon after murdered.
After the death of Cinna, Carbo for some time remained as the sole
consul of Rome. The worst possible use of this undivided power was
made by the consul at this period, and his terror at the approach of
Sulla was shown by the cruelty with which his enemies in the city were
murdered or exiled.
Sulla returned to Italy with only forty thousand soldiers, while the
popular party, under Carbo and the younger Marius, a nephew of the
veteran general, had secured an army said to have numbered two hundred
thousand. The army of Sulla, however, was composed of trained
veterans, and that of Carbo and Marius consisted, in the main, of
inexperienced recruits.
Soon after his return Sulla was joined by many of the senatorial
party, with large levies of soldiers. Among the most notable
accessions to the army of Sulla was that led by Cneius Pompey, at that
time a youth of only twenty-three years of age but destined later to
be the great rival of Julius Cæsar for the first place in Roman
politics.
The war from the start went against the popular party, and its final
outcome can hardly be said to have been at any time doubtful, although
it dragged along for some considerable time. The first important
battle was near Capua, in the year 83 B.C., where the consul Norbanus
was defeated by Sulla. The final fighting was around the city of
Præneste, where all the generals of the popular party had made their
headquarters.
After the strength of the Roman popular party had been crushed, the
fighting was still kept up by the combined forces of the Samnites,
Lucanians, and Campanians, who, originally drawn into the war as
allies of Carbo and Marius, now continued in a last desperate effort
to overthrow Rome altogether. At the battle of the Colline Gate these
allied Italian forces, under Pontius Telesinus, came very near
inflicting a worse defeat upon Rome than this city had ever received.
The left wing of the Roman army, commanded by Sulla, was in fact
routed, and the battle was saved only by the right wing under the
command of Crassus. In the end the victory of the Romans under Sulla
in this battle was complete, and the great Italian general Pontius
Telesinus was left dead upon the field.
This battle practically ended the fighting, although a few unimportant
cities still held out against Sulla for a short period. The long
contest between the Romans and the Italians was now definitely over.
The victory of the oligarchical party at Rome over the popular party
was merely temporary, although the supremacy of the latter was never
attacked during the lifetime of Sulla. The victory of Sulla was
followed by the terrible proscriptions with which the name of this
general must ever be associated. The number of names appearing in the
list of those who were proscribed, and liable to be killed by any one
willing to carry out the orders of Sulla, reached the enormous total
of forty-seven thousand. In this list were included most of the
leaders of the popular party, all the personal enemies of Sulla
himself, and also the names of all those whom for any reason of
personal enmity or greed the friends of Sulla desired to have
proscribed. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the friends
of the young Julius Cæsar were able to save his life on this occasion.
There is an historic anecdote to the effect that Sulla, in sparing
him, warned the aristocratic party to beware of him in the future, as
in this young man there was more than one Marius. It is hardly
probable that this story is true, as Cæsar at this time had done
nothing to show his ability.
The vengeance which Sulla took upon the Italians who had resisted him
was even more terrible. Whole cities were destroyed, and the Samnite
race was practically annihilated. The vengeance of Sulla extended even
to the remote provinces, where the members of the popular party were
everywhere hunted down and murdered.
In the year 81 B.C. the dictatorship, which had been unknown in the
Roman government for considerably more than a century, was once more
resorted to, and by the means of this office Sulla obtained absolute
power at Rome. The legal changes made by Sulla were few, but all in
favor of the aristocratic party. The laws passed during the previous
half century in favor of the people were disregarded. The presidency
of the courts was limited to the nobility, and the jurymen were again
taken from the senators. Sulla also secured the passage of a large
number of sumptuary laws of the most minute and, it might be added, of
the most ridiculous character.
Because of poor health, Sulla was compelled, in the year 79 B.C., to
resign the dictatorship, and he died the following year at the age of
sixty.
To such minds as naturally incline to the democratic side of political
controversies, whether past or present, the character of Sulla will be
apt to appear as perhaps that character in all Roman history most
absolutely without a redeeming trait.
Sulla's military triumphs consisted in the reconquest of provinces
which had been goaded into rebellion by the terrible exactions of the
Roman tax collectors and the unspeakable atrocities of the Roman slave
hunters.
The historians of the reactionary and aristocratic school, while they
are able to find much to praise in the life and work of this bitterest
of the enemies of human lives and liberty, are nevertheless compelled
to qualify their praise because of the many features of his character
and the many acts of his life which even they are compelled to
condemn. The historian Charles Merivale has made perhaps as strong a
plea for Sulla as it is possible to make, in the following words:
"The personal rivalry of her two most fortunate generals
becomes now the main channel of the history of Rome herself.
In the year which closed the contest of the republic with
her dependent allies (88), Sulla was forty-nine years old,
Marius was about seventy. The former was enjoying the full
breeze of popularity and renown, while the latter, wearied
but not sated with accumulated honours, was moodily throwing
away the advantages he had earned in his earlier career.
From campaign to campaign Sulla, as we have seen, had dogged
the steps of the elder warrior, always ready to step in and
seize the opportunities which the other cast recklessly in
his way. Not that Marius in his exalted station was even
from the first indifferent to this incipient rivalry. He was
deeply jealous of his subordinate. He felt chagrin at the
contrast presented by their respective birth and origin; for
Sulla, though needy in point of fortune, was a scion of the
illustrious house of the Cornelii, and plumed himself on the
distinction and advantage such a lineage conferred. Sulla,
moreover, was trained in the accomplishments of Hellenic
education, which Marius, conscious of his want of them,
vainly affected to despise. Sulla wrote and spoke Greek; his
memoirs of his own life became the text-book of the Greek
historians of Rome, from whom we principally derive our
acquaintance with him. But this varnish of superior culture
seems to have failed in softening a rough plebeian nature.
Sulla was one of many noble Romans who combined with
pretensions to literary taste the love of gross debauchery,
and pleasure in the society of mimes and vulgar jesters. He
was a coarse sensualist, and by his disregard of the nuptial
tie offended even the lax morality of his age. His eyes, we
are told, were of a pure and piercing blue, and their
sinister expression was heightened by the coarseness of his
complexion and a countenance disfigured by pimples and
blotches, compared by the raillery of the Greeks to a
mulberry sprinkled with meal. His manners, except when he
unbent in the society of his inferiors, were haughty and
morose; nor is there any act of kindliness or generosity
recorded of him. The nobles who accepted him as their
champion had no personal liking for him. But selfish and
ambitious though he was, the aggrandisement of his party and
order was with Sulla a species of fanaticism. He despised
the isolated ascendency of a Marius, and aspired to rule in
Rome at the head of a dominant oligarchy....
"Slowly and with many a painful struggle the Roman
commonwealth had outgrown the narrow limits of a rustic
municipality. The few hundred families which formed the
original nucleus of her citizenship, and which in her
earliest and simplest days had sufficed to execute all the
functions of her government, had been compelled to
incorporate allies and rivals in their own body, to enlarge
their views, and to expand their institutions. The main
object of Sulla's policy was to revive at least the spirit
of the old restrictions. The old families themselves had
perished almost to a man; he replaced them by a newer
growth; but he strove to pare away the accretions of ages,
and restore the government of the vast empire of Rome to a
small section of her children. It contravened the essential
principle of national growth; while the career of conquest,
to which the Romans devoted themselves, required the most
perfect freedom of development.
"Nevertheless the legislation of Sulla was undoubtedly
supported by a vast mass of existing prejudice. He threw
himself into the ideas of his time, as far as they were
interpreted by history, by tradition, and by religious
usage. The attempt to enlarge the limits of the constitution
was in fact opposed to every acknowledged principle of
polity. It was regarded equally by its opponents and its
promoters as anomalous and revolutionary. It had as yet no
foundation in argument, or in any sense of right, as right
was then understood. Society at Rome was in a highly
artificial state; and Sulla, with many of his ablest
contemporaries, mistook for the laws of nature the
institutions of an obsolete and forgotten expediency. But
nature was carrying on a great work, and proved too strong
for art. Ten years sufficed to overthrow the whole structure
of this reactionary legislation, and to launch the republic
once more upon the career of growth and development. The
champions of a more liberal policy sprang up in constant
succession, and contributed, perhaps unconsciously, to the
great work of union and comprehension, which was now rapidly
in progress. The spirit of isolation which had split Greece
and Italy into hundreds of separate communities was about to
give way to a general yearning for social and moral unity.
The nations were to be trained by the steady development of
the Roman administration.
"But though Sulla's main policy was thus speedily
overthrown, he had not lived in vain. As dictator he wasted
his strength in attempting what, if successful, would have
destroyed his country; but as proconsul he has saved her.
The tyranny of the Roman domination had set the provinces in
a blaze. Mithridates had fanned the flame. Greece and Asia
had revolted. The genius of the king of Pontus might have
consolidated an empire, such as Xerxes might have envied, on
either shore of the Ægean Sea. But at this crisis of her
fate, hardly less imminent than when Hannibal was wresting
from her allies and subjects within the Alps, Rome had
confided her fortunes to the prowess of Sulla. The great
victory of Chæronea checked the dissolution of her empire.
The invader was hurled back across the Ægean; the cities of
Greece returned reluctantly to their obedience, never more
to be tempted to renounce it. Sulla followed Mithridates
into Asia; one by one he recovered the provinces of the
republic. He bound his foe by treaties to abstain from
fomenting their discontents. He left his officers to enforce
submission to his decrees, and quartered the armies of Rome
upon the wretched populations of the East. The pressing
danger of the moment was averted, though it took twenty
years more to subdue the power of Mithridates, and reduce
Asia to passive submission. Rome was relieved from the last
of her foreign invaders; and this was the great work of
Sulla, which deserved to immortalise his name in her
annals."