[92-88 B.C.]
In the year 92, the Romans interfered to overturn the appointment Mithridates had made to the throne of Cappadocia. Mithridates did not venture to resist, but he secretly instigated Tigranes, king of Armenia, to invade the country and expel the nominee of the republic. Ariobarzanes fled to Rome, and there obtained assurance of support. Sulla, at this time prætor in Cilicia, was ordered to reinstate him, while the king of Pontus still remained tranquil. But the state of the republic’s affairs in Italy soon emboldened him. The death of a king of Bithynia gave him an opportunity; and he dared to defy the western conquerors by setting up a pretender to the throne of which they claimed the disposal. At the same time he made a descent upon Cappadocia in person, and expelled the luckless Ariobarzanes a second time.
The disasters of the Social War were now carrying dismay and consternation to the heart of the republic. Sulla had been recalled to aid the efforts of her best commanders in her defence. Nevertheless, when the fugitive appeared once more before the senate with entreaties for its support, he did not appeal in vain to the old Roman constancy. An army was despatched to restore him, and once more Mithridates bowed to the storm, and retired from the disputed territory. But the Roman officers in the East were not satisfied with this act of submission. They incited their allies to harass and invade his dominions, and when appealed to by him, refused to check their aggressions. Then at last did Mithridates arm in his own defence. With an immense force he burst upon the territories both of the republic and its allies. He chased Ariobarzanes a third time from his dominions, defeated the king of Bithynia, supported by the legions of Rome, in a great battle on the river Amnias in Paphlagonia, routed the Roman commander in a second engagement, overran Phrygia and Galatia, and proclaimed himself a deliverer to the subjects of the republic in the East. His advent was hailed by the provincials with acclamations. The insolence of the conquerors and the tyranny of their fiscal agents had excited deep discontent among them. On the mainland almost every city joyfully opened its gates to Mithridates, and when in the intoxication of his triumph he issued, as we are told, a decree for the massacre of all the Roman residents in Asia, it was promptly obeyed, if indeed, as we may fairly conjecture, it had not been spontaneously anticipated. Eighty thousand citizens—some say 150 thousand, though even the lesser number is probably a gross exaggeration—are stated to have fallen by this bloody act of retribution.
THE FIRST CIVIL WAR
[88-87 B.C.]
Meanwhile the senate was preparing to encounter this formidable assailant with adequate forces, and had pitched, as we have seen, upon Sulla to take the command. Marius was disgusted at the inactivity to which he found himself condemned amidst the derision of the populace. In his retirement at Misenum he meditated revenge. The new citizens of Latium and Italy were already mortified at finding the inefficiency of their votes, confined to a small minority of the tribes, and the slender importance attached to their favour. Their nobles complained of their want of influence, their proletaries of the paltry price their votes commanded. Marius conceived the idea of turning their discontent to his own advantage. Between him and them there was an ancient sympathy, and this it was easy to improve into strict alliance. He offered to repair the injustice of the senate towards them, and to diffuse them among the old tribes of the city, in which their voices would be more powerful than when cooped within the narrow limits of a few separate divisions. Marius recommenced his old game of popular agitation.
Among the tribunes was Sulpicius Galba, whose eloquence and learning and high aristocratic connections had raised him to eminence in the state, but who under the pressure of debt was ready to sell his services to a patron who could hold out to him at least a distant prospect of sharing the spoils of Mithridates. With this guerdon in view, he paused at no excess. Taking Saturninus as his model, he studied only to surpass him in audacity. He marshalled a body of six hundred knights around his person, and gave them the name of his opposition senate. He attacked the consuls in the public assembly with a band of armed men, and seized and massacred the son of Pompeius Rufus. Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made his escape into the house of Marius, where he was least likely to be sought for, and so baffled the pursuers who ran past him. Marius himself received the credit of concealing and letting him out by another door, but Sulla, we are told, made no acknowledgment of such a service in his memoirs. Marius indeed was for the moment triumphant. Sulpicius, having cleared the Forum of his chief opponents, prevailed on the populace to nominate his patron to the command in Asia; and the new proconsul, while preparing to set out on his mission, despatched two tribunes to receive the army of Sulla. But Sulla, escaping from the Forum, had repaired directly to his camp. He had inflamed the fury of his devoted soldiers by the recital of his double injury. While the officers, men of birth and national feeling, refused to listen to his solicitations, the men responded to them without scruple, and carried his banners towards Rome, killing the emissaries of Marius on the way. Joined by Pompeius Rufus with the ensigns of the consulship, these tumultuous bands resumed the appearance of a regular army; and Sulla could avow himself with some show of legality the defender of the state and avenger of the insults she had sustained in the person of her chief magistrates.
This daring movement was entirely unexpected. Six legions advanced upon the city, and the men who had just seized the government were totally unprovided with arms to resist them. Marius sent two prætors to meet the enemy, and command them to desist; but the soldiers neither listened to them, nor paused in their march. They were stripped of their togas, their fasces were broken, and themselves ordered to return with every mark of indignity. Such violence betokened worse to follow. The citizens were dismayed, and without regard either to Marius or Sulpicius, sent envoys to entreat the advancing generals to halt, while they promised to do full justice to their cause by legal and peaceful measures. Sulla himself, it is said, had faltered in his daring design; but he was reassured by a dream, in which a strange divinity, whom the Romans had learned to worship in the East, placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and directed him to launch it against his enemies. He advanced, and Marius, having vainly attempted to raise troops to oppose him, fled with precipitation. As he entered the city tiles and stones were hurled on his soldiers from the house-tops; but a threat of burning the city soon reduced every opponent to submission. Sulla had conquered Rome.[89]
But the conqueror was moderate in the use of his victory. He caused his troops to observe the strictest discipline, and limited his personal vengeance to exacting the death of twelve of his enemies. Sulpicius was betrayed by one of his own slaves, and put to the sword. Sulla enfranchised the betrayer for his obedience to the edict, and then cast him from the Tarpeian Rock for his treachery to his master. Marius himself escaped out of the city, while a price was set upon his head, and upon that of his son also. On the morrow Sulla summoned the people to assemble in the Forum. He explained to them that factious foes had compelled him to resort to force; but having once taken up arms he was determined not to lay them down till he had secured the power of the insulted nobles against the future aggressions of the tribunes. Sulpicius, during his brief tenure of power, had recalled the exiles of the Varian law, and increased the influence of the Italians in the comitia. Sulla abrogated all these enactments, and to insure the permanence of his own, repealed the solemn statute which gave the force of law to the plebiscita, or resolutions of the people. The violence of Marius drove his rival to the opposite extreme, and established a counter-revolution upon the ruins of tribunician ambition. But Sulla was not yet prepared to enforce an oligarchical tyranny against every constitutional prescription. He left the people the free exercise of their suffrages, and professed himself not dissatisfied with their boldness in rejecting a nephew of his own as a candidate for the consulship.
Cn. Octavius, a firm but independent supporter of the senate, obtained one place; but the people gave him for a colleague L. Cornelius Cinna, well known as a partisan of Marius. Sulla pretended, perhaps, to guide them in this latter choice; he claimed the right of binding the new consul to favour his own measures by a solemn vow. At his direction Cinna ascended the Capitol, with a stone in his hand, which, when he had taken the oath, he hurled to the ground, imprecating upon himself that he might be cast as violently out of the city, if he failed to observe it. The Romans were deeply impressed by such religious formalities; and the peculiar horror with which they regarded Cinna’s later atrocities was coloured, perhaps, by indignation at his perjury. For, no sooner had he entered upon his office than he proceeded at once to disturb the settlement he had pledged himself to respect, and caused a process to be instituted against Sulla himself. But Sulla was eager to commence operations against Mithridates, and neither stayed to meet the charge nor to punish the accuser. The victory he anticipated would be a sufficient answer to the people, and give him the means of completing the policy of which he had hitherto laid only the foundations.