CHAPTER VIII
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."