THE SOCIAL WAR. MITHRIDATES. CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE PARTIES OF MARIUS AND SYLLA. L. CORNELIUS CINNA.
The Social War is one of those periods of Roman history in which the scantiness of our information is particularly annoying. Livy had described the events of those two years in four books; but the only connected narrative which we have, is the scanty one of Appian, and besides this there are some exceedingly brief notices.[91] And yet the Social War is one of the very greatest, not only on account of the passions which were displayed in it on both sides, but also because of the changes in its fortunes, and the excellent generalship which was to be found in both armies.
The first symptoms of a tendency of the allies to separate themselves, are met with even as early as the second Punic war, when the allies in the camp of Scipio mutinied, and chose two consuls from among themselves;[92] the insurrection of Fregellæ followed soon afterwards. The war was not begun by those who had originally planned it, but by the peoples which lived farther off. Which of these was the first to resolve upon it, is more than we know; but it is stated that in the year 662, during the tribuneship of M. Livius Drusus, there was a plot to kill the Roman consuls (Philippus especially) and the senate at the Latin Feast. At that solemnity indeed, the whole of the Roman magistracy (συναρχία), consuls, prætors, and even tribunes of the people, were present; so that there remained behind but a præfectus urbi Latinarum causa, who was a young man of rank. Now as the Latins mustered there in strong numbers, it is very probable that it was they who had entertained that design, especially the men of Tibur and Præneste; at the same time, it may have happened that so many Italians came thither, that they on their part, deemed the thing feasible. Drusus heard of this atrocious project, and denounced it: for, even if he had not been a man of honour, he was still a Roman, and he did what he wanted to do, just as much for the advantage of his own country, as from any love which he bore to the allies. After the death of Drusus, the Italians, making no secret of their unmitigated rage, sent round ambassadors, and gave each other hostages for mutual security. The Roman government, on the other hand, appointed commissioners with proconsular power for Picenum, where the commotion was fiercest, to remind the allies of their duty. There being what we would call a diet of the Picentines at Asculum, the proconsul Q. Servilius Cæpio, accompanied by M. or C. Fonteius (I do not exactly remember his prænomen[93]), came forward, and ventured to address the people, so as to induce them, either by exhortation or by threats, to desist from their intention. But their minds were so exasperated, that a rash word made them break out; and he and his companion were murdered in the theatre at Asculum. The Italians now wished no longer for the Roman franchise; but they wanted to form a sovereign Italian people, in which all who got out of the grasp of the Romans were to be received. All the Romans who were at Asculum were seized, and most of them slain. In the fragments of Diodorus, among the excerpta de sententiis, there is a little story of a harlequin, who was a great favourite with the Romans, and who just then made his appearance in the games at Asculum; the people, believing him to be a Roman, were going to kill him, when he only saved himself by proving that he was a Latin. (In this passage, instead of Σαυνίων, we are to read Σαννίων, the old name for Pulcinella; and this is the first mention of that mask.[94])
The insurrection now broke out everywhere; but the same atrocities do not seem to have been perpetrated among the other peoples as were done by the Picentines at Asculum, who were a cowardly abject race; the Marsians and other nations were quite equal to the Romans in refinement. The Italian peoples who at that time revolted, are mentioned in the Epitome of Livy, and by Orosius: they are the Picentines, Marsians, Marrucinians, Vestinians and Pelignians, the Samnites and Lucanians. Appian speaks also of the Apulians, who indeed were in arms; but it is very likely that they had no share in the Italian state. Those peoples in fact were all of them Sabellians, or Sabine colonies; the others, as well as the Apulians who were Oscans, may have joined them merely as being their dependents. Some of the towns also round the bay of Naples were among those which rebelled; of the Latin colonies, Venusia sided with them. Afterwards, the Umbrians likewise took up arms, and for a short time, the Etruscans as well; but they too did not belong to the republic.
The Italian peoples, according to Appian,[95] who alone has recorded this fact, had established a senate of five hundred persons, and chosen two consuls and twelve prætors, thus altogether adopting the forms of the Roman republic. One consul was Pompædius Silo, the soul of the undertaking, who was a Marsian and the guest-friend of Drusus, with whom he had formerly negotiated; the second was C. Papius Mutilus, a Sabine. And not to speak of this constitution, the nations were very widely distinct from each other: they had been parted for centuries, each standing by itself; so that when they now made themselves independent of Rome, there could not but have been a great temptation to be independent of each other, their principles and pursuits being different. The Samnites, whom afterwards C. Pontius Telesinus led against Rome, that he might, as he said, destroy the den of the wolf, had from of old entertained an implacable hatred against Rome; and indeed Pontius Telesinus himself, who in this war with Sylla showed such undaunted resolution, and whose thoughts were ever bent on Rome’s annihilation, may have sprung from the Gens Pontia of that C. Pontius who had so terribly humbled the Romans at Caudium. The Marsians, on the other hand, had never had a fierce and protracted war with the Romans, as the latter had always faithfully fulfilled their honourable conditions with them. These therefore were quite a heterogeneous element of the league. The seat of the government was Corfinium, in the country of the Pelignians, a small but valiant people, and the town now assumed the name of Italica: denarii are not unseldom found, which have the inscription Italia and Viteliu. The latter, which is the Oscan way of writing, belongs to the Samnites; the former, the Latin one, to the Marsians, who had a language of their own, but Latin letters: from this we see that those nations differed also in their languages. Among the Samnites, the Oscan was indeed the prevailing language; the Marsians and their allies were of far purer race than the Sabines, although in a wider sense of the word they were all of them Sabines. There are also coins still existing with the likeness of C. Papius Mutilus.
At the outbreak of the war, the allies had decidedly the advantage. The only thing which saved the Romans, was that the Latin colonies remained true to them; as there is no doubt but that as soon as ever the struggle began, the Romans granted the full franchise to the Latins by the lex Julia, which was so called from the consul L. Julius Cæsar. It is a common, but yet an incorrect way of speaking, to say that the Italians had got the rights of citizenship through the lex Julia; for they did not get these all at once by one law, but by several distinct enactments which were successively enlarged. Unhappily we know of none of their details. The lex Julia applied to the forty or fifty Latin colonies; and not only to those in Italy, but also to Narbo and Aquæ Sextiæ (the former is mentioned at a later period as colonia civium Romanorum), and without doubt to Tibur and Præneste as well, besides those other old Latin towns which had not received all the rights of citizenship in the year 417.[96] To this last class the Hernican towns especially belonged; and perhaps also Venafrum, Atina, and some others, in which at that time there was a præfectura. This gave a great increase to the strength of the Romans, who even in the war with Hannibal had thus brought into the field eighty thousand men able to bear arms, all of whom spoke Latin, Roman citizens likewise being mingled with them. It was now seen how foolish it was in the Romans to have let things go so far; for had they turned a deaf ear to the Latins also, Rome would have been lost. This grant of the franchise dates from the beginning of the year.
Although Hiero in his day had still said that the Romans employed none but Italian troops, yet they now carried on the war with soldiers raised from whatever country they could get them, with Gauls, Mauritanians, Numidians, Asiatics: not a place was spared in the levy. Thus by degrees the preponderance of the Italians was balanced by the Latins, and outweighed at last by the foreigners. Moreover, Rome had an immense advantage from her central position, and her colonies which were scattered all over Italy. By her position, she cut off the North from the South; by her colonies, which it was everywhere necessary to beset with troops, the resources of the allies were frittered away.
The history of the war is chiefly to be found in Diodorus and Appian. I have been at much pains about it, and have tried to put the materials in order; yet I have only just barely succeeded in getting anything like a clear notion of it. The scene of the war was in three different districts: there was an army of the south, a central, and a northern army. The southern army of the allies was in Campania as far as the Liris; that of the centre, was from the Liris, all through the country of the Sabines, to the neighbourhood of Picenum; that of the north, in Picenum: here was the utmost boundary of the operations, whilst the Greek towns in the rear of the Italians kept neutral. Nothing whatever is now said of the Bruttians; so much had that unfortunate nation suffered in the war of Hannibal: nor is there any mention of the Messapians, who may already have been entirely hellenized. The Roman colony of Venusia, as we remarked above, took the side of the allies, its population having at length almost become Apulian and Lucanian, so that indeed the Latin language was scarcely any longer the one most in use. In the army of the South, C. Papius Mutilus held the command against the Roman consul L. Julius Cæsar. Mutilus conquered Nola, Muceria, Pompeii, and Stabiæ, and carried the war into Campania. Capua was kept by the Romans; Naples and the Greek cities remained faithful, acting as if the war was no concern of theirs. The struggle was very sharp around Acerræ: at the end of the year, the allies had the best of it.
With the army of the centre, Pompædius, or Poppædius, Silo opposed P. Rutilius Lupus: the former showed himself to have been a great general, and the Roman commander, who was no match for him, lost his life in the battle. But Sylla and Marius were with the army there, which was the main one, as lieutenant-generals; and Rome owed it to these, that limits were put to the success of the enemy. The Latin colony of Æsernia in the midst of Samnium, was conquered by the Samnites. Here was seen the hatred of the colonies against the Italians; for the people of Æsernia, who seem to have had faith in the lucky star of Rome, held out until they were reduced by hunger: the Samnites in the beginning of the siege had certainly offered them a free retreat. The first who had any brilliant success, was Cn. Pompeius Strabo, the father of him who afterwards was called Magnus, a prætor proconsulari potestate: he had all the profligacy of his age, notwithstanding which he was a distinguished man. He defeated the Picentines in a battle near Asculum, where there were 75,000 Italians against 65,000 Romans: the Romans gained a decisive victory, and a terrible chastisement was inflicted upon Asculum. The Picentines, on the whole, had to suffer most grievously for their conduct. Cn. Pompeius now advanced from the north: the Italian peoples lost their feeling of confidence in victory, and owing to the want of hearty union among themselves, were no longer able to stand their ground. First of all, the Vestinians separated from the rest; and now the Romans held out allurements to the nations singly, granting them peace and the franchise. What the conditions were we know not, though there must have been more than the civitas sine suffragio: the Romans, however, must have taken care not to lay down a distinct rule; for afterwards there is a dispute about the meaning of the grant. Velleius Paterculus, a very ingenious writer who was perfectly master of his subject, whatever objections one may have to the man himself, tells us that nearly three hundred thousand Italians who were able to bear arms, perished in this war; and that the Romans had not yielded the citizenship to the Italians, until they had spent the last drop of blood which they had to shed. We may, therefore, take it for granted, that half of the whole number of men engaged on both sides were killed, and that therefore the struggle was carried on with the greatest fury, as in a civil war: hence Appian also places it in his work as such.
In the second year, the war is still less to be made out than in the first: thus much only is certain, that the northern Sabellian peoples also, the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians, had now a separate peace, even as early perhaps as the end of the first year. These new citizens were not distributed among the old tribes, but others were formed out of them: this was quite in keeping with the system of the ancients, as otherwise the old citizens would have been outnumbered in the assemblies of the people, and in the elections, by the new ones. It is not known for certain how many fresh tribes were created: according to a passage in Velleius, there were eight of them. Another statement in Appian[97] is evidently written wrong: there we find δεκατεύοντες ὰπέφηναν ἑτέρας (viz. φυλάς), from which δέκα φυλάς, has been gathered, though perhaps it would then have been better to read δέκα ἐξ αὐτῶν. Yet, from Appian’s usual way of speaking, it seems to have been δεκαπέντε. My reasons for this, are from a feeling of symmetry: if we add 15 to 35, we have 50; 35 is quite an awkward number, which had grown up by degrees, and at which one would not wish to stop; 15 is to 35 as 3 to 7, and is therefore somewhat less than half of the original number, which was now of necessity to be changed. That Velleius has eight, I account for by the circumstance that the Latins had eight tribes given them, and afterwards the Etruscans and Umbrians got seven.
The number of battles fought in this war, is even beyond belief. Corfinium took again its old name, and the seat of government was transferred to Æsernia; the Samnites now formed the real centre of the war, and they carried it on with the same perseverance as they had done in former times: this was at least the case with the three cantons of the Hirpinians, the Caudines, and the Pentrians. The Romans marched into Apulia, and entirely surrounded the Samnites; so that already by the end of the year 663, the war was well nigh decided. The Samnites indeed still held out; yet there were none in arms besides them, but a part of the Apulians and Lucanians. These peoples went on with the war from despair alone: they either reckoned on the movement in Asia caused by the war of Mithridates, or they had made up their minds to perish.
In this second year of the war, there was also a rising of the Etruscans and the Umbrians: but they soon made their peace with the Romans. Their rebellion took quite a different character from that of the Italians:—a prætor conquers the Etruscans, and they get the franchise at once. The Etruscans had formerly furnished no troops for the Roman army: yet now they were ready to take up arms for an honour to which they had not hitherto attached any value. The Roman of rank had in the Marsian a very dangerous rival for all the offices; whereas, on the other hand, the Etruscan, being as a foreigner quite distinct from the Roman, had far less chance of getting these places. The Marsians were to the Romans very much like what the Germans of the North are to those of the South; and therefore they readily blended with the Romans, whilst the Etruscans were to these, as the French, or the Slavonians are to the Germans. The Samnites, as in olden times, wished for the destruction of Rome.
The Italian war had raised the glory of Sylla to its highest point, and now his aversion and enmity against Marius showed itself conspicuously. In the year 664, Sylla had been elected consul at the age of forty-nine, while Marius was already past seventy: Sylla therefore decidedly belonged to a later generation. This utterly widened the breach which in everything had existed between them. Sylla (Sulla) is a most original character, and it is difficult to give a cut and dry opinion about him. He was a great general, and also a favourite of fortune, a circumstance on which he himself laid great stress, and which also drew the attention of the crowd upon him; nor is it a delusion, that some men are favoured by luck, either always, or for a long run. When still a very young man, being much under forty, he had distinguished himself in the war of Jugurtha, serving as quæstor under Marius; and he had had the good fortune to carry on the negotiations with Bocchus, so that he looked upon the ending of it as his own work. He had likewise won renown in the Cimbric, and still more so in the Italian war, in the which he far outshone Marius, as he was the only Roman who played a brilliant part in it. He was of the illustrious gens of the Cornelii, and was descended in the sixth generation from that P. Cornelius Rufinus who is honourably mentioned in the war with Pyrrhus; yet the family to which he belonged was undistinguished. The name of Sulla has been rightly derived by Gronovius from Sura (Surula, by contraction Sulla); consequently it is an apparent diminutive which has the same meaning as the root itself. Sura was a surname of the Lentuli and others. He was in every respect the opposite of Marius. The latter had risen from the ranks, and was a soldier of fortune; Sylla, on the contrary, was a refined man of the world: for his chief delight was in Greek literature; he was quite a master of the Greek language, and a writer of elegant taste. His family being poor, he rose from under as great difficulties as if he had been of humble parentage: the patrician ties were broken, and the Scipios and Lentuli were of no help to him. Marius had all the unhappy feelings of an old man against a younger one who is making his way: this rising sun troubled him, and made him ill at ease; and by treating that extraordinary man with envy and jealousy, he provoked him to an opposition, which—certainly from Marius’ own fault at first—gave birth to their mutual dislike. Ever since the time of the war with Jugurtha, Marius had done his best to keep his rival down; and Sylla must also have said to himself, “had I been in Marius’ place, I should have done just as he did.” Notwithstanding his old age, Marius was insatiable of ruling and commanding, and demanded for himself the conduct of the war against Mithridates, which had been given to Sylla as the consul of that year.
The motive for this war was the very justest on the side of Mithridates, the wrong done by the Romans being too glaring. Mithridates had sprung from a Persian family, which even as early as under the Persian kings had its satrapy in Pontus: the first whom we know of it, in all likelihood was Ariobarzanes, governor of those countries under Ochus. Perhaps it was one of the seven noble families which alone had freedom, being in some sort sacrosancti, and invested with the hereditary dignity of governors of those parts. The nation consisted of Syrians and Assyrians; that is to say, the great mass may originally have been Armenian, but as early as in the times of the Assyrian rule over Asia, a colony of Assyrians may have settled here, who called themselves Leuco-Syrians. It was their good fortune, that Alexander did not devastate their country; it was only under his successors, that they got involved in the Macedonian wars: Mithridates the son of the then governor, who arrogated to himself the dignity of a tributary prince, escaped by the friendship of Demetrius Poliorcetes from the jealousy of Antiochus the One-eyed, the father of Demetrius. These countries afterwards established their power on so firm a footing, that even in the fifth century of Rome, their governors already took the title of kings. During the long wars of the successors of Alexander, particularly those of the Syrian kings with Egypt, their strength was completely consolidated; but they were divided by inheritance into two kingdoms, Cappadocia and Pontus proper: they were either under the same dynasty, or at least both of them subject to Persian families. This separation still continued in the beginning of the seventh century (about the year 620), when a Mithridates ruled over Pontus proper and part of Paphlagonia: he gave help to the Romans against Aristonicus, and had before that sent galleys against Carthage; and as a reward they yielded up to him Great Phrygia, which until then had belonged to the kingdom of Pergamus. From a fragment of a speech of C. Gracchus, we find, however, that he had bought this grant from those, who were in power at Rome. Thus then his kingdom was of great extent, and its strength and its revenues were considerable, on quite a different scale from that of our poor Europe. At that time, Lesser Asia was divided into the kingdoms of Pontus and Bithynia, of which the former was the largest; into the Roman province; and into Cappadocia and the southern coast, where Cilicia, Caria, Pamphylia, and a number of small independent states, were then in a chaotic confusion.
Mithridates, justly called the Great, had at the death of his father—the Mithridates mentioned above—been left an infant, and had come to the throne after hard trials. Though he had given no provocation, he had very early been injured by the Romans, who, we know not why, took back from him that highly important possession of Great Phrygia which his father had gained. This treachery awakened in him an implacable feeling of revenge. Besides his many other remarkable qualities, Mithridates had an extraordinary talent for dissimulation; and thus while he seemed to be altogether quiet, but was silently making his preparations, he sought to widen his dominions without doing any mischief to the Romans. He conquered the Cimmerian Bosporus, the Crimea, and the south of the Ukraine as far as the Dnieper; which gave him a great accession of strength. Soon afterwards he found an opportunity of gaining Cappadocia, where there were quarrels about the succession, the reigning king having been declared supposititious: he now placed his own son or brother on that throne. This aroused the jealousy of the Romans, and they set up against him another pretender. Ever since he had become of age, he had done his utmost to collect a fleet and a large army, evidently against Rome; and in the meanwhile he reckoned on the war which was raging in Italy, nor is there any doubt of his being connected with the allies. Yet he had not completed his preparations at the right moment; and this circumstance, as in so many other cases, saved Rome, this time also, from the impending danger. Had he engaged in this undertaking two years earlier, at the beginning of the Social War, things might indeed have taken a different turn; but he made too sure of the success of the Italians, and he believed that they would render his conquests only still more easy.
Rome in the meanwhile recovered herself from the Marsian war, which lingered on but feebly. In the second year of the struggle, she had sent commissioners to Asia to prescribe laws to Mithridates; and this may have overawed him: for, much as they had fallen off, their political weight was still the same, and threatened as they were by the greatest dangers in Italy, they did not yet lose sight of Asia. Moreover Mithridates then abetted the designs of a brother of king Nicomedes of Bithynia, in whose worthless race parricide and fratricide were quite common occurrences. Nicomedes was expelled, and Mithridates became the ally of the new king; yet he allowed himself to be so far daunted by the Romans as to put up with the restoration of Nicomedes in Bithynia, and of Ariobarzanes in Cappadocia, though he did not indeed give up his plan of revenge. The Romans, however, might if they had wished it, have still kept off the war much longer, and the government would perhaps have liked to have done it; but individuals who governed the provinces, and hoped to gain booty, would not hear of peace, but forced Nicomedes into hostilities against Mithridates, that they might have an opportunity of coming to his assistance. Cappadocia was not allied to the Romans, and Nicomedes foreboded ill of the result. Mithridates, of course, revenged himself by invading Bithynia; and there, when he had defeated the king, he again set up against him his brother as a pretender: the Roman senate now thought it high time to interfere. Treating him as if he were the aggressor, they demanded that he should abstain from all hostilities against Bithynia, and acknowledge as king of Cappadocia the man of their own choice. Mithridates bitterly complained of this injustice, saying that the Romans had indeed already taken away Great Phrygia from him. In the meanwhile, the war in Italy was all but decided, as the Samnites only and the men of Nola were still in arms, all the rest having obtained the citizenship; but the Romans were so exhausted, that they could hardly make war. They opposed to him three armies, in which very few could have been Romans, chiefly consisting of Asiatic troops. The result of this undertaking was just what it deserved. After having utterly routed two armies, Mithridates overran the neighbouring countries, conquered Bithynia, placed his son again on the throne of Cappadocia, and took the whole of the Roman province, the inhabitants of which, to a man, welcomed him with enthusiasm as their liberator. The rage against the Romans was here so great, that the people in all the towns in Asia Minor, which were quite hellenized, looking upon the war as finished, slew on one and the same day, as a proof of their fidelity to Mithridates, all the Romans and Italians who were among them. The number of these is said to have been seventy thousand, which is almost beyond belief, as after all none but those who were well off, and men of business, could have resided there: the massacre was carried out with the greatest cruelty. Thus the many usurers and bloodsuckers perished, who after the hard wars of Aristonicus had wrung the highest rates of interest from the people which was in need of money; and who, backed by the cohort and the protection of the Roman præfect, had ventured upon every sort of outrage, and had raised the tolls and taxes in a most arbitrary and overbearing way. Mithridates met with scarcely any opposition on the peninsula; some maritime towns also surrendered to him. And thus, as he was brought up entirely in the Greek manner,—there are no traces of the Magian doctrines to be found in him, except on his coins on which the sun and the moon are to be seen,—the Greeks looked upon him as a fellow countryman in spite of his Persian descent, and he was received with rapture even in Greece itself. Athens unhappily allowed herself to be beguiled by a sophist of the name of Aristion, to open her gates to him, and this fellow set himself up as tyrant. The Peloponnesus and Bœotia went over to Mithridates; the whole of Greece, with the exception of a few places, and likewise the isles of Mitylene and Chios, began to waver. Cyzicus and Rhodes remained true to the Romans: the latter in its wisdom foresaw the issue of the war, and by unshaken fidelity made amends for the faults of which, in the opinion of the Romans, it had been guilty in the war of Perseus. Mithridates occupied all the Roman province but Magnesia, and laid siege to Rhodes. In Rome, these events called forth unbounded rage, and stirred men up to go on with the war in right earnest; but the debate to whom the command in it should be entrusted, gave rise to the first civil war.
By the Sempronian law, the decision lay with the senate, and it appointed Sylla. But Marius, who could not have kept up his great name by distinguishing himself in peace, wanted likewise to have the command in this war. Twelve years had elapsed since his triumph, and he had lost ground in the public opinion: besides which, he had grown old. He might perhaps have been still an able general, although, in the Social War, he distinguished himself but once. The older indeed he grew, the lower he sank in moral worth: he had no more those great qualities which in former days had thrown his faults into the background; but he had still a party, and was the man whom the foes of the aristocracy put forward. Yet all the commotions of that time are not to be accounted for by the feelings of the contending factions, as everything was soon resolved into a mere question of persons.
When Sylla entered upon his consulship, no one seems to have had a foreboding of any danger threatening the republic from a civil war; and before he marched against Mithridates, he wished to put an end to the struggle in Italy. Nola then held out, we know not by what means: this part of the Social War is called bellum Nolanum, even as its beginning is called bellum Marsicum. This bellum Nolanum, however, was chiefly kept up by the Samnites who were still in arms; it was more of an insurrection in which there were no large armies. It was one of Sylla’s great qualities, not for any consideration to leave any undertaking unfinished, in which he had once embarked; and the war with Mithridates which was now impending, did not make him withdraw from Nola. While Sylla was still staying there, P. Sulpicius was tribune of the people at Rome: it is he who in Cicero’s books de Oratore, as a youth, takes a share in the conversation. Whatever may now have led this young man of high family thus unhappily astray,—personal hatred perhaps against Sylla,—it was with him that the calamities of Rome originated. He brought forward a motion that the command in the war against Mithridates should be transferred to Marius; for according to precedent (since the Hortensian law), the people had the right of settling the matter, even though the senate had already assigned the provinces. At the same time, he proposed that instead of forming the new citizens (by whom are meant the Latins, Etruscans and Umbrians) into fresh tribes, as had been intended, they should be distributed among the old ones. The new tribes were in fact to have voted after the others, as the urbanæ did after the rusticæ, owing to which, as the prærogativa had great weight, their rights were much curtailed. The new citizens might indeed have a vote in their turn; but they deemed it a mockery, that a right was granted them by which, nine times out of ten (the Roman tribes being almost always unanimous), they would not be called upon at all: for as soon as there was a clear majority, the votes were no longer taken. That eighteen polled against seventeen, was what very seldom happened. Sulpicius’ motion therefore was in one respect an injustice to the old citizens; yet Velleius Paterculus takes too harsh a view of the case: for, as most of those who were in the tribus rusticæ lived far from Rome, and did not come to town at all, whilst, on the other hand, the libertini, who dwelt in the city itself, had got themselves enrolled among the tribus rusticæ, the measure must after all be termed a substantial improvement. A great deal therefore might have been said for and against it.
P. Sulpicius is very badly spoken of by Plutarch and Appian. That his conduct towards Sylla was unjustifiable, needs no further proof, and it is also possible that he did not act from pure motives; yet I cannot believe that he deserved to be so disparaged. The man of whom Cicero,—even though it be only from the recollections of his youth,—quite contrary to his usual feelings towards democrats, speaks with so much reverence, cannot have sunk so low. Sulpicius must, according to Cicero, have been a man of great refinement, and of the most brilliant genius; and though he may have allowed himself to be beguiled into acts of wickedness, Cicero could not indeed have looked upon the matter in such a bad light as the Greeks did. Cicero admires him also for his talents as a speaker: he had still heard him in his youth. Plutarch’s hatred of Sulpicius is not to be wondered at, as he followed the memoirs of Sylla who was most justly exasperated against him: yet for this very reason such statements are suspicious.
As the old citizens opposed the motions of Sulpicius,—for there is no longer any question of aristocrats and democrats,—Sulpicius called whole crowds of new citizens into the town to carry his laws by force. But as the bill for giving the command to Marius was tacked to them, Sylla resolved on taking up arms to prevent this. In former days, a man like Fabius Maximus Rullianus would perhaps with a bleeding heart have bowed himself to the will of fate; but those times were gone. That Sylla had recourse to arms, is a thing which, considering the age in which it was done, ought to be judged of with indulgence: he had to fear that Sulpicius and his party would not stop short, but that they would try and have his life. Calling together his soldiers near Nola, he pointed out to them that Marius would form a new army, and disband them, and thus the rich war would slip out of their grasp, and they would be left in disgrace: they resolved one and all to follow him to Rome. He marched with six legions along the Appian road; the senate, which was under the power of Sulpicius, stood aghast at the approach of an army, and sent delegates to enquire what he wanted. Sylla gave an evasive answer, but kept on advancing, and was joined by his colleague, Cn. Octavius.
Marius and Sulpicius had made preparations for a defence: but these were of little avail, as Rome was no fortress, and the eastern suburbs, which in fact were the most splendid quarters of the city, lay open. It was to no purpose that they closed the gates: for the walls afforded no longer any protection, having gone to ruin in some places, while in many others they could easily be climbed over from the suburbs, owing to the houses which were built against them on both sides, now that the town had so greatly increased. Even as late as the war with Hannibal, Rome might have still been defended; but this could now be done no more. Nor did Marius try to make a stand at the gates; he withdrew into the inner part of the city. There was some fighting at the Carinæ; but Sylla outflanked the enemy with his superior numbers, and he marched down the Via sacra to the Forum, on which all dispersed. Marius and Sulpicius made their escape.
Sylla used his victory with moderation; so that at that time he appears in a favourable light: yet he unhappily sinned against the forms of the constitution by causing Marius and his son, Sulpicius and nine of their followers, to be outlawed. Sulpicius was seized and put to death, as were also one or two besides; but these were all. Marius escaped with his son to the sea-coast; came in a boat to Tarracina, where he was in danger of being given up; and from thence he went on to Minturnæ on the Liris: there he hid himself in a marsh, and was taken. The magistrate had him thrown into prison, and as a price had been set on his head, sent a servus publicus to kill him. The latter, a Cimbric captive, affrighted at the sight of Marius, whom he recognised as his conqueror, ran away from him with a cry of terror at the fickleness of fortune. The decurions then let Marius go away in a boat; and he first went to Ischia, and from thence in a small vessel to Africa. Here he lived during the troubles which followed, among the ruins of Carthage, forgotten and unheeded: there was either no governor just then in Africa, or the proconsul must have belonged to his party. No one thought of seeking a refuge with Mithridates.
Sylla was so little of a tyrant as to leave the election of consuls for the next year free, owing to which men of both parties were chosen, Cn. Octavius (perhaps a son of the tribune M. Octavius), who belonged to that of Sylla, and L. Cornelius Cinna, who was on the side of Marius: which is another proof how utterly the division into patricians and plebeians was now forgotten, the democracy being headed by one of the Cornelii and one of the Valerii (L. Valerius Flaccus), downright demagogues, who trampled under foot every vested right. At the end of the year, Sylla, when he thought that he had put things in order, as the struggle with the Samnites was one that would last long, went over to Greece: there he carried on the war against Archelaus, who commanded the army of Mithridates.
To Q. Pompeius, the colleague of Sylla, the province of Italy was in the meanwhile given for the following year, that he might withstand Cinna, uphold Octavius, and end the Social War. Cn. Pompeius, the father of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, was still at that time with an army in Apulia, on the shores of the Adriatic. Of this Cn. Pompeius, Cicero says, homo diis nobilitatique perinvisus: he might also have said, populo Romano; for no one was more generally hated. He was a man of deep cunning and of crooked policy, like the men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in Italy. Neither party knew, whether he was for, or against them; nor was he for any of them, as in reality he was calculating how, at the end of all this confusion, the power might fall into his own hands. To this Cn. Pompeius, Q. Pompeius turned himself, to take the command from him. Cneius pretended to obey the senate, and to give up the imperium to him; but he secretly set the soldiers against Quintus, who, when he wanted to make them take the oaths, was murdered, on which Cneius, under a shallow pretence of popularity, was compelled by the troops to resume the command;—a farce, like those played off in Spanish South America by Bolivar, and others of the same stamp. He then wrote to the senate, reporting what a calamity had befallen him, and asked to be confirmed in his command, that he might set on foot an enquiry, and do what he could for the welfare of the republic; a request which indeed they were weak enough to grant him. He was now at the head of this army, and he waited to see what would happen. Sylla being in Greece, the Samnites had time to take breath.
It was not long (665) before the breach between Cinna and Octavius became an open one. In Italy, owing to the transactions concerning the franchise, the Latins, Italians, and Etruscans had different interests. Cinna, who was evidently aiming at absolute power, stood forth as the leader of the Marian party, and offered the Italians, as a bait to win them over, that they should be distributed among the old tribes. The Samnites were still in arms, hoping to conquer Rome or to remain independent; and therefore they would not hear of accepting the citizenship: this, however, separated them from all the rest, who earnestly wished to have it. Cinna’s party consisted of the old Latin towns from Tibur to the neighbourhood of Capua, especially Tibur, Præneste, the Hernican towns, and several places between the Liris and the Vulturnus. He now demanded that all these should be distributed among the old tribes; nor can we understand, why Sylla with his political principles should not have been for this measure, as it indeed was the only effectual means of infusing a sort of aristocracy into democracy:—it may have been that those old shadows of tribes were the very things which he was attached to. The new citizens came thronging in crowds to Rome to carry the law, for they hoped to overawe the people by their numbers. Cn. Octavius declared himself against it, and there was a fight in the city, in which many of the new citizens were killed: ten thousand are said to have fallen; but I consider that number as quite uncertain. The senate had now the courage to oppose Cinna; but it was guilty of the irregularity of depriving him by a senatus consultum of his consulship, which it had by no means the right of doing by itself: for according to the existing forms, the assent of the people was needed. Things had indeed come to such a pass, that the sovereignty of the people could not have been acknowledged any more; but in point of form, the step was certainly a revolutionary one. The war at Nola was still going on, that town being besieged by a Roman army which could not have been sufficient to overpower that of the Samnites. Thither Cinna went, and bribed the officers and soldiers. These had been taught by Sylla’s success what they could do; and they espoused his cause, and encouraged him to resume the consular insignia, to break the pride of the oligarchy, and to march to Rome and assert his dignity by force. It is very likely that a truce was concluded with the Samnites. To give a greater lustre to himself and his party, Cinna invited the aged Marius to return from Libya, and recalled the other outlaws. The old general came to Etruria, where he formed Etruscan cohorts, and gave freedom to all the slaves who joined him. Another man whom they called upon, was Q. Sertorius, a follower of Marius’ party, which he had joined from disgust to those who were ruling, though he kept himself quite clear of all the tyranny of the demagogues. He is one of the most spotless characters of that age: he was generous, open-hearted, and humane, free from the haughty exclusiveness of a Roman citizen, and gifted with all the qualities of a great general. He was in that position in which, at the outbreak of a revolution, the very best men will often find themselves, as they get involved at the beginning, and afterwards cannot go back, but without knowing what they are about, and against their own wishes, are made to share in the crimes which are sure to be committed at such times; yet he kept his hands unstained during the scenes of horror which he had to witness after the victory. Sertorius hastened to Cinna, who now marched with his army from Campania along the Appian road to Rome, as Sylla had done before. Cinna was joined by Carbo, a man deeply compromised in his guilt, who in the course of these events became notorious; and Marius likewise advanced from Etruria. In their distress, the senate called upon Cn. Pompeius for help; and the latter gave up the war on the shores of the Adriatic, and came to Rome. Octavius was encamped on the Janiculum; Pompeius, before the Porta Collina. For some time his conduct was so doubtful, that the senate only expected that he would betray them. Yet at last, a battle—probably an insignificant one—was fought with Cinna; and though the latter had the best of it, the senate had at least a pledge that Cn. Pompeius was serving them. A plague now broke out in both armies, each of which thus lost many thousands of soldiers. Pompeius also died of it: according to other accounts, he was struck within the camp by a flash of lightning. The people were so exasperated against him, that they tore his corpse from the bier, as it was passing through the city, and mutilated it.
Near Albano, at the foot of the Monte Cavo, there was another Roman army opposed by a rebel one. Latium, which formerly had dreadfully suffered in the Volscian and Samnite wars, but had enjoyed peace for more than two centuries, now got its death-blow. Ostia, Aricia, Lanuvium, and Antium, were taken by storm and laid waste by Marius; Tibur and Præneste joined him of their own accord. Rome was now hemmed in by four camps; and though these were indeed too weak to venture upon an assault, a terrible famine arose in the city, and both soldiers and commanders became so dispirited, that the senate determined upon parleying with Cinna, the very man whom it had denounced as a traitor. As he had not laid aside the consular insignia, he at once asked, whether he was treated with as consul; and to this the senate had to submit. Marius stood as a private individual by the side of the curule chair, with a sneering laugh, and with looks in which the delegates might have read their sentence of death. When it was stipulated that no blood should be shed, Cinna only gave the very ambiguous answer, that it should not be done with his wish; and on this he demanded that Merula, who had been chosen consul in his stead, should be deposed. To this humiliation also, the senate seems to have yielded. But Octavius, the other consul, would not give way: he betook himself with a small troop to the Janiculum, having the madness to think of defending himself. When Marius and Cinna entered the city, which was about the end of the year, the bloodshed immediately began, chiefly at Marius’ instigation. Cn. Octavius was cut down by the soldiers as soon as they had marched in; and L. Cornelius Merula, the Flamen Dialis, opened his veins and died near the altar of the temple of Jupiter.
Marius now had himself proclaimed consul for the seventh, and Cinna for the second time, without any election whatever. He had always hoped for this consulship which had been prophesied to him even from a child, when a nest, with seven young eagles in it, fell down into his lap from a tree which is called in Cicero Marius’ oak. His acquaintance also with the Syrian fortune teller may have led him to dwell upon the number seven, which was of high import among the Syrians and Jews, as was the number three with the Romans. The victory was followed up with the fellest cruelty: Marius had his body-guard of freed slaves which he sent out to murder people. All who were distinguished in the hostile party, the very flower of the senate, were put to death without any reason assigned, without even a proscription, on a bare order; especially his personal enemies, as the orators Antonius and Crassus. Q. Catulus, Marius’ colleague in the Cimbric war, was likewise marked out to die; but he killed himself: Marius’ conduct towards him is one of the most deplorable acts of that wretched man. Some very few persons of real worth were with Cinna, among whom was Sertorius, nor is Marius Gratidianus, a cousin of Marius, to be judged of too harshly; but Cinna, Carbo, and their friends were monsters, whereas those who were at the head of the other side, that of the senate, were the most refined, and, according to the standard of that corrupt age, the noblest of men.
The work of murder went on until Q. Sertorius prevailed upon Cinna, to have that band of assassins surrounded and put to the sword. Marius died in the middle of January, it would seem, a maniac, after having been consul for sixteen days. There now followed the rule of a faction, of which we know but little; the shedding of blood, however, was at an end.
Whilst Cinna was drawing near to the city with his army, the senate had given Metellus, who was stationed near Nola, full power to make peace with the Samnites on any terms. But the Samnites tried to drive the hardest possible bargain, not only demanding the franchise for themselves, the Campanians, and Lucanians, but also that the Romans should yield up their prisoners and deserters, without their doing the same on their side: on the contrary, the deserters, who abode with them were likewise to have the citizenship.[98] All this was granted by Metellus, and confirmed by Marius; and thus, when by a later law the Samnites had likewise become citizens, they were henceforth the main props of the party of Marius. The newly formed tribes were now done away with, and the citizens enrolled in the old tribes; whether in all of them, or in some only, is more than we know. In Cicero’s times, there is every reason to think that those Italian peoples which belonged to the same stock, were huddled together into one tribe; as, for instance, the Marsians and their neighbours in the tribus Sergia, and all the municipia round Arpinum in the Æmilia. This seems to have been one of Sylla’s changes, who drew the Italians out of the tribes, to take away from them their preponderance.
Three years now passed away, during which Sylla carried on the war in Achaia and Asia, whilst in Italy, Cinna, who was at the helm of the state, was preparing to attack him. But the latter became more and more hated on account of his exactions; so that he mistrusted even his own party, and began to demand hostages, which, however, were refused him. L. Valerius Flaccus, his colleague after the death of Marius, had gotten the command against Mithridates, and had gone to Asia by Illyricum, Macedon, and Greece; and he himself was on the eve of marching into Greece against Sylla, having formed a large army near Ariminum, which was to follow. But the soldiers refused to go on this expedition, and a mutiny broke out in which Cinna was killed. After him ruled Cn. Papirius Carbo, who did not have a colleague chosen: he was nominally a consul, but in reality a tyrant.