MARIUS’ SIXTH CONSULSHIP. L. APULEIUS SATURNINUS. C. SERVILIUS GLAUCIA.
Marius was not the man who could play his part well in quiet, peaceful times; and yet Rome was hastening towards dissolution in a way which compelled him to act. There are very many kinds of courage, as the greatest men have owned; there is a courage with regard to danger, which either looks death in the face with indifference, or forgets it altogether in the excitement of action. This is a fine quality in itself; but it does not follow, that the motive for its display should be as noble: he alone in whom this constancy is allied to a pure mind, and who is conscious of a lofty aim, will enjoy with it the full sense of personal freedom, and be enabled to achieve great things. Many are wanting in this sort of prowess, who yet possess a determined moral courage, owing to which they hold themselves above the opinion of those around them, it being all the same to them whether they be misjudged or not; others, who in the hour of danger show the courage of lions, are exceedingly timid in this respect, and afraid of acting up to a conviction which has been branded by the world’s anathema. It was in this latter sense that Marius was weak; for if one was to say that he let himself be used as a tool by the men who exercised such influence during his sixth consulship, this would be making him out to have been a most pitiful wretch; whereas it is the clue to his conduct, that he was at one time afraid of the demagogues, and at another of the senate, a deplorable, although partial, weakness of a great man who had no greatness of character.
Marius had joined himself with a sad knave, to get his sixth consulship. This was L. Apuleius Saturninus, who, undeservedly enough, is often named with the Gracchi, although there cannot be a wider interval than that between them and Saturninus. He was a man like Catiline, one indeed of whom the like is seldom seen; for though one can understand how ambition will lead people blindfold into acts of dangerous daring, yet how a man could have taken in his head to be so mad, is all but incomprehensible. It would seem that his was a revolutionary mind; that he formed no clear notion of what things would come to, being utterly regardless of institutions and government, and only thinking of violence and confusion. He had sprung from one of the richest and most eminent plebeian families; just as in the French revolution, men of the first nobility put themselves at the head of the rabble. I do not recollect whether it is of him, or of Servilius Glaucia, that Cicero says, that no one had been gifted with a more malignant wit:[85] it was by this means that they managed the people. He had started in life as an aristocrat. There were at that time eight quæstorships, which were given partly to consulars, and partly to other persons. They were places with an income attached to them, one of them being the quæstura Ostiensis, which had the charge of the granaries at Rome. Saturninus had, as quæstor, availed himself of the privilege of peculatus taken by the men of rank; but when the tables were suddenly turned, and the oligarchs were no longer able to screen the sins of their own body, owing to an honest party having been formed from both factions under the lead of the straight-forward C. Memmius, he got liable to the punishment of being deposed, and so he threw himself into the arms of the mob: it was a conspiracy of the dregs of the upper and middle classes. He now became a tribune of the people, and behaved in the most savage manner towards the very first men, for instance, the censors and others. When, on his standing the second time for the tribuneship, another candidate, A. Nonius was set up against him, he so hounded on the rabble against that unfortunate man, that they murdered him; and thus he made himself by force a tribune again. The magistrates had no more any authority; those who had the power, did just what they liked.
His accomplice was C. Servilius Glaucia, like him a man of very high rank, not a freedman, as might be inferred from his name: in a similar manner, a Scipio was nicknamed Serapio, from an actor to whom he bore a likeness. What these two really wanted, is hard to say: if their madness went even to utter recklessness, it might be assumed that they aimed at a tyranny for one of them; but if they believed that Marius would allow such a thing, this were just as great an insanity as that of the drunkard in Shakspeare’s Tempest. We must deem many of the men of that time to have been downright madmen. Of Robespierre also, it can never be said what purpose he had;—very likely he had none whatever. Thus also one of these men wanted to rule, no matter how, and for what end. When now Apuleius was tribune, Marius was consul for the sixth time. It was then that the former really began his career as a legislator, trying to win the favour of the people by a set of seditious motions: his aims were quite different from those which in earlier days were called seditious; he was striving to establish a tyranny, a design indeed which only a general, like Sylla or Cæsar, could have succeeded in carrying out. The legislation of Saturninus, however, has come down to us very obscure: thus much we know, that a most sweeping agrarian law was one of its main features, and that he changed the giving out of corn into a regular distribution of alms. It would seem as if the whole of the lands to be divided by his Lex agraria, were situated in Transpadane Gaul; for that they should have been in France itself, is not likely. He is said also to have made a Lex judiciaria. He now flattered Marius in every possible way. He wanted to found colonies, and the coloni were to consist of Romans and Italians: for as the Italian allies in the army of Marius, had also very much distinguished themselves, Apuleius favoured them as much as the Romans, and this was what exasperated many of the poorer Roman citizens against the law. Marius was moreover to have the power of giving in each of these colonies the Roman citizenship to three Italian allies, a thing which indeed went beyond all bounds of civil authority. Yet though at that time this was still something quite monstrous, as it trenched upon some of the rights of the sovereign people, no umbrage was taken afterwards when an imperator bestowed the citizenship. These laws were opposed, both on account of their author and their evident tendency, by all right-minded men, even by those who in former days had with all their might withstood the oligarchy; and likewise by the broken-down oligarchs themselves, who now wanted no more than what was reasonable. Hence it was that C. Memmius became the object of the rage of the seditious, though twelve years before, when tribune, he had called upon the people to quell the oligarchy: he had only behaved, as he ever did, like an honest man.
Owing to the Hortensian law, the new lex agraria did not require the sanction of the senate. That that body, however, might not afterwards attack it, Saturninus demanded that the senators should swear to it five days after its adoption by the tribes: and when this was debated in the senate, Marius at first declared, that it ought not to be done; that he would not take the oath, and that he hoped that every well-disposed person would follow his example. It was thought that he acted thus from craftiness, to draw in his enemies, particularly Metellus, to refuse the oath likewise: nor is this impossible. But he may also have honestly meant what he said, though afterwards false friends began to work upon him by means of his unhappy dread of the mob. Cicero had the strength of mind not to allow himself to be thus overawed; he says in a speech of his (pro Rabirio perduell.) nihil me clamor iste commovet, sed consolatur, quum indicat esse quosdam cives imperitos, sed non multos. Neither Plutarch nor Appian have thrown any light upon this subject. At the end of all the laws, there is the following formula, si quid sacri sanctique est quod non jus sit rogari, ejus hac lege nihil rogatur; or else, si quid jus non esset rogarier ejus ea lege nihilum rogatum.[86] These unlucky advisers now said that, if the law was not passed, blood would flow; but that if it were passed, this clause would give protection against everything in the body of the enactment which was thus made null and void. By such casuistry as this, they got Marius to declare on the fifth day in the senate, that even if they took the oath, they would still have this loophole left them. Thus the oath was taken by Marius, and after him by all the rest, except Q. Metellus Numidicus, who stood out against it with a constancy truly heroic, which does him greater honour than his Numidian victories, and which would lead one to pardon his haughtiness to Marius. In the day of trial, he showed a resolute consistency, and Saturninus, persisting in the course which he had taken, had him dragged out of the senate by his viator, and outlawed him (aqua et igni interdicebat); on which he went as an exile to Rhodes. The year was passed in horrors. The stain upon Marius’ character is his weakness: from henceforth he always stands in an undecided position, trimming between both factions; and thus he saw himself dependent upon the very storms which surrounded him. As good luck would have it, these fellows carried things so far, that they brought about a fusion of parties, and Marius himself, not wanting to have any more to do with them, was ready to declare against them.
The elections for the consulship were now held, and M. Antonius was unanimously chosen. On the following day, it seemed certain that C. Memmius would be elected: he was one of the most energetic and right-minded men of that age, being probably the tribune in Jugurtha’s time, or if not the same, at least a very near kinsman of his. Against this candidate, who was all but returned, Glaucia and Saturninus raised a tumult: they did not, however, venture to have him assailed in the open market-place; but when he fled into a booth, he was murdered in it. This was too bad to be borne; and Marius was applied to, who when he received the command from the senate, ut videret ne quid detrimenti res publica caperet, resolved to uphold the cause of order against the outrages of miscreants: he now called upon the equites and all respectable citizens. In this peril, it was seen how the great might likewise in other times have warded off many things, had they only had the spirit to make a stand. When the rebels found that all were turning against them, they withdrew to the Capitol, and there they were besieged. Marius now showed himself a good general. The clivus was taken, and the culprits sheltered themselves within the strong walls of the Capitoline temple, which it was looked upon as a crime to storm. As the water was conveyed thither by the pipes of the aqua Marcia, Marius ordered them to be cut off; so that the besieged must have perished from hunger and thirst. That most ancient well, therefore, which had supplied the Romans with water in the days of the Gallic invasion, must already at this time have been in the same state that it is now: it is altogether neglected, and every kind of filth is thrown into it. Glaucia was for setting fire to the temple, and thus dying; but the others, who had hopes of saving their lives, would not do this, and they surrendered at discretion. The most guilty were shut up in the Curia Hostilia, that they might be brought to justice. Yet either there was a change of feeling in the populace, or else the government, not to bring upon themselves the odium of putting so many men of rank to death, got up a sham riot: the roof of the Curia was scaled, and from thence the rebels were slain by the rioters. Marius’ conduct now reconciled to him men’s minds again; he retraced some of his steps, and even agreed to have Metellus recalled from banishment. Saturninus’ laws seem to have been repealed, as those of Livius were afterwards.
Thus ended this insurrection, which indeed is best understood by Velleius Paterculus. Marius for his own part retired into private life, and he had not a thought of making himself a tyrant.