By a singular irony of fortune it chanced that the province of Gaul fell to Maximus and not to Rutilius. The strong-headed soldier was left at home to indulge his schemes of army reform while the new man went to his post in the north, to quarrel with the aristocratic Caepio, who was now serving as proconsul in those regions, and to share in the crushing disaster which this dissension drew upon their heads. The search for genius had to be renewed at the close of this melancholy year.[1224] Another "new man" was found in Caius Flavius Fimbria, a product of the forensic activity of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement speaker, but with a power that secured his efforts a transitory circulation as types of literary oratory.[1225] He is not known to have shown any previous ability as a soldier, and his election, so far as it was not due to his own unquestioned merit, may have been but a symbol of the continued prevalence of the distrust of the people in aristocratic influence and qualifications. His competitor was Catulus who was for the third time defeated. For the other place in the consulship there could be no competition. The close of the Numidian war had freed the hands of the man who was still believed to be the greatest soldier of the day. There was, it is true, a legal difficulty in the way of the appointment of Marius to the command in the north. Such a command should belong to a consul, but nearly fifty years before this date a law had been passed absolutely prohibiting re-election to the consulship.[1226] Yet the dispensation granted to the younger Africanus could be quoted as a precedent, and indeed the danger that now threatened the very frontiers of Italy was an infinitely better argument for the suspension of the law than the reverses of the Numantine war.[1227] The people were in no mood to listen to legal quibbles. They drove the protestant minority from the assembly, and raised Marius to the position which they deemed necessary for the salvation of the State.[1228] The formal act of dispensation may have been passed by the Comitia either before or after the election, but the senate must have been easily coerced into giving its assent, if its adherence were thought requisite to the validity of the act. The province of Gaul was assigned him as a matter of course,[1229] whether by the senate or the people is a matter of indifference. For the Roman constitution was again throwing off the mask of custom and uncovering the bold lineaments which spoke of the undisputed sovereignty of the people. Certainly, if a sovereign has a right to assert himself, it is one who is in extremis, who stands between death and revolution. Personality had again triumphed in spite of the meshes of Roman law and custom. It remained to be seen whether the net could be woven again with as much cunning as before, or whether the rent made by Marius was greater than that which had been torn by the Gracchi.
TITLES OF MODERN WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES
L'ANNÉE ÉPIGRAPHIQUE; revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a
l'antiquité Romaine (1896, pp. 30, 31, Fragmentum Tarentinum).
BARDEY, E.—Das sechste Consulat des Marius oder das Jahr 100 in der
römischen Verfassungsgeschichte. Brandenburg-a.-d.-H., 1884.
BEESLY, A.H.—The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla. 3rd ed. London, 1882.
BELOCH, J.—Der Italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie; staatsrechtliche
und statistische Forschungen. Leipzig, 1880.
BERGMANN, R.—De Asiae Romanorum provinciae praesidibus (Philologus,
ii., 1847, p. 641).
BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, M.A. VON.—Der römische Civilprozess (Der
Civilprozess des gemeinen Rechts, Bde. i., ii.). Bonn, 1864-5.
BIEREYE, J.—Res Numidarum et Maurorum annis inde ab a. DCXLVIII.
usque ad a. DCCVIII. ab u.c. perscribuntur. Halis Saxonum, 1885.
BOISSIER, GASTON.—L'Afrique Romaine; promenades archéologiques en
Algérie et en Tunisie. Paris, 1895.