History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 1 of 2

by Emperor of the French Napoleon III

Sylla (666).

VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of dissension.[699] Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called the Anti-Senate,[700] he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of the public place.[701] He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death, was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the prestige of the eternal city.[702] In vain deputations are addressed to him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome. Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force of arms.

Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the presentation of a law. The comitia by centuries were substituted for the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the inferior magistrates.[703] Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death, and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius, forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome. Marius and his son had reached Africa through a thousand dangers. This revolution appears not to have been sanguinary, and, with the exception of Sulpicius, the historians of the time mention no considerable person as having been put to death. The terror inspired at first by Sylla lasted no long time. Reprobation of his acts was shown both in the Senate and among the people, who seized every opportunity to mark their discontent. Sylla was to resume the command of the army of Asia, and that of the army of Italy had fallen to Pompeius. The massacre of this latter by his own soldiers made the future dictator feel how insecure was his power; he sought to put a stop to the opposition to which he was exposed by accepting as a candidate at the consular comitia L. Cornelius Cinna, a known partisan of Marius, taking care, however, to exact from him a solemn oath of fidelity. But Cinna, once elected, held none of his engagements, and the other consul, Cn. Octavius, had neither the authority nor the energy necessary to balance the influence of his colleague.

Sylla, after presiding at the consular comitia, went in all haste to Capua to take the command of his troops, whom he led into Greece against the lieutenants of Mithridates. Cinna determined to execute the law of Sulpicius, which assimilated the new citizens to the old ones;[704] he demanded at the same time the return of the exiles, and made an appeal to the slaves. Immediately the Senate, and even the tribunes of the people, pronounced against him. He was declared deposed from the consulate. “A merited disgrace,” says Paterculus, “but a dangerous precedent.”[705] Driven from Rome, he hurried to Nola to demand an asylum of the Samnites, who were still in arms. Thence he went to sound the temper of the Roman army employed to observe Samnium, and, once assured of the dispositions of the soldiers in his favour, he penetrated into their camp, demanding protection against his enemies. His speeches and promises seduced the legions: they chose Cinna for their chief by acclamation, and followed him without hesitating. Meanwhile two lieutenants of Marius, Q. Sertorius and Cn. Papirius Carbo, both exiled by Sylla, proceeded to levy troops in the north of Italy; and the aged Marius landed in Etruria, where his presence was immediately followed by an insurrection. The Etruscan peasants accused the Senate as the cause of all their sufferings; and the enemy of the nobles and the rich appeared to them as an avenger sent by the gods. In ranging themselves under his banner, they believed that they were on the way with him to the pillage of the eternal city.

War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius, Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna, master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and challenged them to pass over his body.[706] Death delivered Pompeius Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe. According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.

The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them.[707]

Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms, that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about 150,000 men.[708] Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb: the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow fairly.[709]

While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI., and gained two great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and gave plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla. Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return. Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians.[710] He complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife, who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his camp.[711] He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.

This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers, Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and, moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise the rebels that they should not quit Italy.

Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen hundred vessels.[712] He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium.[713] He brought the gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle. Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla his sword, already redoubtable.