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.
THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR. SYLLA RETURNS TO ROME. HIS DICTATORSHIP AND DEATH.
In the year 665, Sylla had gone to Achaia and Thessaly. At that time, Archelaus and Taxiles, the generals of Mithridates, were masters of the Peloponnesus, and of Greece south of Thermopylæ. Then Sylla won the battle of Chæronea from a countless host of Asiatics,—a battle which he surely could not have classed among those on which he rested his glory; for the Asiatics, who were a hundred thousand men, showed themselves as cowardly as ever were the troops of Indian princes. They were indeed drawn up in phalanx; but it was true of them what somebody has said with regard to those ingeniously prepared dishes in Lent, that fish, even when dressed by the very best of cooks, is after all nothing but fish. Sylla lost but a few men here and there. A different defence was made by Archelaus in the Piræeus. The walls between the city of Athens and its port had been destroyed, perhaps by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and as early as the siege by Antigonus Gonatas the communication seems not to have been free; but the huge walls of Themistocles, as restored by Conon, were still standing. In the Piræeus, where there was a Pontic garrison, Archelaus gallantly held out; in the city, the tyrant withstood the enemy with hired troops. Archelaus did everything in his power to supply Athens with provisions; but to no purpose, as he was baffled by the vigilance of Sylla, who far surpassed him in talent and resources. The distress in the city rose to such a height, that the inhabitants had no strength left; the circumference of the wall amounted to a German mile, and there were not men enough to defend it. The town was stormed, and a frightful slaughter ensued, as if the Athenians had been the deadliest enemies of the Romans. Afterwards the Piræeus also was taken. In Athens itself, few of the buildings were touched, not even the walls being destroyed: in the Piræeus, however, the walls, the noble arsenal, and other buildings, were completely demolished; so that from that time the place was like the decayed towns in the north of Holland, where the grass grows in the streets: Pausanias found only a small hamlet where it had stood. Athens was almost depopulated, and after this the saying of Lucan held good with regard to it, Rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat.
Sylla now gained several other advantages, and drove the generals of the king of Pontus quite out of Europe into Asia. Even before him, L. Valerius Flaccus had come thither as proconsul; but he had been murdered by his quæstor or legatus, C. Flavius Fimbria, who took upon himself the imperium in his stead. Mithridates, thus hemmed in between two armies which were hostile to each other, marched first against Fimbria who had destroyed Ilium. Sylla now concluded a peace which almost startles one’s belief. Mithridates abandoned all his conquests, and renounced all claim to Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Phrygia, thus confining himself to his hereditary dominions; moreover, he paid down two thousand talents, and yielded over seventy ships of war: in return for this, Sylla did not insist upon his advisers being given up. Sylla now pressed Fimbria so hard, that he took away his own life, and his soldiers went over to his rival, who, however, did not trust them, as they were as contaminati cœde consulis, and partizans of Marius: for most of them were certainly Italians, enlisted against Sylla at the time that Marius was in power. These soldiers still remained there, under the name of Valeriani, for many a year, until the days of Pompey and Lucullus; just as the soldiers of Cannæ had to stay so long in Sicily.
After having made this peace, he laid a fine on the Greeks and the Hellenized inhabitants of Asia Minor, the Ionians, Lydians, and Carians, who had murdered the Romans, even to the amount of five years’ taxes,—probably the arrears for the whole period of the war,—and a war contribution besides. This crushed them for a long time: but the countries in those parts may so truly be called an earthly paradise, that even under a bad government, be it only not so barbarous as that of the Turks, the land must, after a few generations, again be rich and thriving, and more so perhaps than any in the south of Europe. Thus they also then recovered, and under the emperors, they were most flourishing; but it had taken indeed several generations to set them up again: the first generation after the days of Sylla, was utterly ruined. An officer once told me, how he had seen a succession of countries, each finer than the other: first Rome; then Naples, which is much more blooming still; then the Peloponnesus, which in fertility and luxuriance of vegetation, is infinitely ahead of Naples; then Smyrna, which, beyond comparison, far surpasses all the rest. The contributions, which amounted to thirty millions (of Prussian dollars), were collected with the greatest harshness within a wonderfully short space. The Roman knights, who always followed in the train of the generals, now advanced the money at the rate of twenty-four, thirty-six, even forty-eight per cent., and afterwards enforced the payment of principal and interest with the help of the governors. This was the most frightful tyranny, the sword itself having wasted those countries not near so much as usury did: but Sylla, it is true, could not have carried on his war without money.