“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.[b]
Marius had taken no part hitherto in the old contentions of classes at Rome. But his plebeian origin, the attitude of defiance he had assumed towards the nobles on the occasion of his first election to the consulship, the outrage he had done to establish usage in the enlistment of proletarians, above all, perhaps, the arrogance with which he had extorted so many successive consulships from the hands of the most illustrious competitors, all combined to mark him as the champion of the “movement party,” whatever its immediate objects or popular cry might be.
Under the shadow of his anti-oligarchical aggressions, the people and their tribunes renewed the demands of the era of the Gracchi. The knights were irritated by the loss of their monopoly of the judicia, and a cry for a new agrarian distribution was always sure to interest a portion at least of the multitude. But envy and spite against unpopular individuals among the nobles were still more effective instruments to work with. Q. Servilius Cæpio, who had been defeated by the Cimbrians, was selected as an object of popular persecution. A few years before he had captured Tolosa in Gaul by an act of signal treachery, such, however, as the Romans seldom animadverted severely upon as long as they were successful. But Cæpio had forfeited their forbearance by his recent disaster, and the hoards of gold which he had rifled from the temples of the Gallic deities were supposed to have brought the vengeance of Heaven upon him, and the country whose armies were entrusted to him. The people, at the instigation of their demagogues, proposed to deprive him of his imperium, confiscate his property, and declare him incapable of serving the state in future. The senate defended its luckless proconsul, who had helped to restore to it a share in the judicia; but the tribune Vibius Norbanus drove the nobles from the comitium, together with two of his own colleagues who sided with them. In the tumult by which this act of violence was consummated Æmilius Scaurus, the prince of the senate, was wounded on the head by a stone. Cæpio was deprived, cast into prison and subsequently banished, unless indeed, according to another account, he was strangled in his dungeon. The retribution of his crime did not stop here. His noble family was further dishonoured by the licentious conduct of his two daughters, and the gold of Tolosa passed into a proverb, for the unlawful gain which precipitates its possessor into misery and disgrace.
[102-100 B.C.]
In the year 102 the tribune Domitius, transferred to the people the election of the chief pontiff, which had formerly been invested in the appointment of the pontifical college. The head of the national religion was an important political personage. He held in his hands the threads of the state policy, which opened or shut the oracular books of the Sibyls, appointed sacrifices and ceremonials, interpreted the will of the gods from portents, and placed the seal of the divine approbation upon every public act, or withheld it from it. This engine of government had been long firmly grasped by the nobles; it could still be handled only by patricians; but the patricians had ceased to be identified in interest and feeling with the ruling oligarchy, and from the hands of patricians the traditions of the old republic were destined to receive their rudest shocks. The appointment of the chief pontiff by the people became eventually an important agent in the overthrow of the Roman constitution. In the year of the battle of Aquæ Sextiæ, Marcius Philippus proposed an agrarian law, which, however, was rejected. But at the same time another tribune, Servilius Glaucia, carried a resolution of the people for wresting the judicia once more from the senators, and conferring them again upon the knights exclusively. He increased the stringency of an existing law against extortion in the provinces; and to the holder of the Latin franchise, who should convict a senator of its violation, he assured the superior privileges of full Roman citizenship.
THE SIXTH CONSULATE OF MARIUS
[100 B.C.]
When Marius returned to Rome (101) he was already for the fifth time consul. But he was not satisfied with this extraordinary series of honours, and was not the less anxious to obtain a further renewal of his long lease of office. The nobles, he felt, were his natural opponents. He hastened therefore to connect himself with the leaders of the people, to whom the chief of the aristocracy was personally hostile. Allying himself with the tribunes Servilius Glaucia and Appuleius Saturninus, he mingled his disbanded legionaries with the dissolute mob of the Forum, and by threats, promises, and largesses easily overpowered the votes of the honest citizens.[84] Marius was raised to a sixth consulship: yet he was neither popular in his manners nor eloquent in his address (100). On the contrary, in all civil matters, it is said, and amid the noise of popular assemblies, the conqueror of the Cimbrians was utterly devoid of courage and presence of mind. The undaunted spirit he showed in the field entirely failed him in the Forum, where he was disconcerted by the most ordinary praise or censure.
In his policy also Marius was unfixed and wavering; and instead of steadily courting the prejudices of the Roman rabble, he favoured and rewarded the Italians, of whom the Roman commons now entertained a deep jealousy. After his late victories he ventured to stretch the prerogative of the consulship to confer the citizenship on a thousand soldiers of the state of Camerinum, who had served him well in the field. The act was illegal as well as unpopular, and Marius did not, perhaps, make it more palatable by the excuse he gave for it: “Amid the din of arms,” he said, “I could not hear the voice of the laws.”[85]
The tribunes, however, who wished to strengthen their position by a new alliance, bestowed their countenance upon the Italians also. They caused a measure to be enacted, by which Marius was allowed to create three Roman citizens in every colony which enjoyed the Latin franchise, thus enabling him to bestow the boon they chiefly coveted upon many of the soldiers who had distinguished themselves in his service. With the same view Saturninus carried another measure, by which the unfortunate inhabitants of the trans-Alpine provinces were deprived of their estates, and forced to make room for the victors of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ. The nobles resented these concessions to the conquered Italians, and even the commons regarded them with uneasiness and distrust. They sought to interrupt the proceedings on the occurrence of rain or thunder. “Be still,” cried Saturninus, “or it shall presently hail.” His adherents armed themselves with stones. Tumults arose in the Forum; the senators and their partisans among the populace were driven away by the fury of the veterans, and Saturninus carried his rogation with open violence. Marius kept warily aloof, and affected great horror at the illegal disturbance. He excited the nobles underhand to protest against the execution of a law carried in a manner so irregular, which the tribunes insisted on their accepting under specified penalties. As soon, however, as they had committed themselves, Marius withdrew his countenance from them, and left them the choice of submitting with dishonour, or enduring the punishment of refusal. The senators, entrapped and cowed, took the oath required, till it came to the turn of Metellus; but the haughtiest of the nobles, though urged and entreated by his friends to yield to necessity, disdained to swerve from the principles he had avowed. Saturninus demanded that he should be outlawed, and fire and water forbidden him. His friends were numerous and strong enough to have defended him with arms, but he forbade them to draw their swords, and went proudly into banishment.