Chapter 13
The period from 121 to 88 b.c.e. marks the Roman Republic’s progression from violent political rivalries and murder to the brink of civil war. The internal changes produced by overseas expansion plus the challenges of managing a Mediterranean-wide empire created greater opportunities for amassing preeminent popularity and power. The career of Gaius Marius perfectly illustrates the forces that were making the traditional Republic unsustainable in the context of its time.
Sources for the period from 121 to 88 b.c.e.
Just as for the Gracchi, the sources for this period are also in disarray. The brief summaries (Periochae) and epitomes of the relevant lost books of Livy provide only a bare outline, as does Velleius Paterculus. The fragments of Books 34–37 of Diodorus Siculus are valuable for the years from 111 to 88. The fragments of Books 26–29 in Cassius Dio are useful for events from 114 to 88.
The only lengthy extant sources are the Jugurthine War of the mid-first-century b.c.e. historian Sallust (p. 340); sections 27 to 54 of the first book on Rome’s civil wars in Appian’s history; and Plutarch’s lives of Marius and Sulla, part of which are based on Sulla’s Memoirs. Inscribed boundary stones, road markers, fragmentary inscriptions of laws, and excavations of colonial settlements help us to understand the process of land distribution after Gaius Gracchus. Cicero’s speech Pro Rabirio perduellionis discusses the civil strife of 101 and 100 b.c.e. Indeed, Cicero knew many of the major figures from this period and made numerous references to them in his works, especially his philosophical dialogues and rhetorical treatises (pp. 339–40).
Populares and optimates
In analyzing the political struggles marking the century of Roman history after the Gracchi, two labels are often applied to the protagonists. The label populares (sing. popularis) refers to those ambitious and even well-intentioned individuals who followed the Gracchi’s example in two ways: utilizing the sovereign powers of the concilium plebis without senatorial approval; building public support by promoting reforms and policies benefiting significant discontented groups of voters or potential voters. In Roman political rhetoric, such people were called populares by more traditionally minded aristocrats or those whose current domination in the senate was guaranteed by the status quo. The latter kinds of leaders did not approve of seeking popularity among large groups of voters on public issues. Instead, they preferred to rely on the traditional political tools of family reputation, personal alliances with other aristocrats, and the marshaling of personal clients. They labeled themselves optimates, the best people, in contrast with the populares, whom they accused of using dangerously demagogic tactics. The optimates naturally disliked anyone who sought a base of power that they did not control. Many may honestly have feared that the actions of populares (rendered in English as “populists”) would eventually produce a popular tyrant and destroy the Republic.
In no way did the labels populares and optimates represent anything like modern ideologically based institutional political parties. They do not even signify cohesive factions. Insofar as they mean anything, they broadly indicate two different types of political tactics: indeed, the career of a single individual could shift between optimate and populist positions (see Box 13.1). They can be applied only in the context of particular political conflicts between individuals or personal factions in the late Roman Republic. Both the social origins and the goals of optimates and populares were mostly identical. They almost always came from the senatorial aristocracy and sometimes from upwardly striving equestrian families allied with a powerful noble. Their goals were to retain or increase power and prestige in competition with their peers through the public service essential to the roles of aristocrats.
13.1 Optimate and popularis in a single career
The career of Cn. Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great, pp. 253–4) illustrates how an individual Roman politician could shift from an alignment with the optimates to one with the populares—and back again—as it suited his pursuit of political and military preeminence.
At the beginning of his career, in the 80s b.c.e., Pompey aligned himself with Sulla and the optimates who sought to restore the dominance of the senate and to strip power from the tribunes of the plebs and the popular assemblies. Then, in the face of growing senatorial opposition to his desires for extraordinary magistracies and military commands, in the late 70s b.c.e. Pompey took up the populist cause of returning power to tribuneship (earlier stripped away by Sulla) as way to garner popularity with the people. He was then able over the next several years to bypass the senate’s objections by having friendly tribunes put bills directly before the people to grant him power and lucrative military appointments. Eventually, Pompey entered into an alliance with two other populares, Caesar and Crassus, who were also popular with the people and the army and who were thwarted in their political aims by the senate. Over time, their union fell apart. After the death of Crassus, a civil war broke out between Caesar, who continued to defend popular interests, and Pompey, who found himself back with the optimates, once again the defender of senatorial preeminence.
Individual optimates were often just as much rivals with each other as they were with individual populares, and vice versa. Nor were populares always opposed to the dominant role of the senate in the Roman government. They themselves usually were members of the senate. They were looking for ways to establish their own dominance in the senate by utilizing the office of tribune of the plebs and other means of appealing to the mass of voters outside the senate. Many may also have been convinced of the rightness or justice of their positions as representing the popular will. In no way were they seeking to overthrow the power of the class to which they mostly belonged. They wished only to secure their individual preeminence in it.
Therefore, political conflicts in the late Roman Republic were not struggles between the senate as a monolithic institution and outside democratic leaders or reform groups. The question was what individual or group of personal allies would control the senate, which controlled Rome. Not even Julius Caesar, for example, ever sought to abolish the senate. In the civil war that Caesar precipitated at the end of the Republic, many senators supported him. He fought against those fellow senators who opposed him in the competition for glory and prestige, dignitas. Having beaten them, he merely packed the senate with his loyal supporters to ensure his personal domination.
The optimates let most of Gaius Gracchus’ legislation operate once he was dead and could not benefit from it at their expense. They ceased regular grain distributions, but they changed neither the selection of jurors for the extortion courts nor the administration of provincial taxes. Except for the previously repealed lex Rubria, even the land laws and laws for the founding of colonies were only modified, not overthrown.
The Senatus Consultum Ultimum
The reign of terror following Gaius Gracchus’ death seems to have silenced temporarily anyone who might have challenged the optimates. Opimius’ acquittal in his trial for murder appeared to confirm the legality of the Ultimate Decree of the Senate, Senatus Consultum Ultimum (S.C.U.). That decree advised the consuls to take whatever steps they deemed necessary to preserve the safety of the state. It could be construed as a decree of martial law suspending normal “constitutional” procedures. The senate’s right to issue such a decree, however, was not based on any legal statute or ancient customary practice.
Therefore, the question of the S.C.U.’s validity remained open and subject to the political passions of the moment. Popular politicians shunned it because of its origin as a weapon against the Gracchi and its lack of explicit legal sanction by a popular assembly. Optimates always considered it a perfectly acceptable weapon against those whom they considered threats to the established order during the late Republic. Because they were dominant at this point, their view temporarily prevailed. Even Popillius Laenas, who had been exiled by the people for killing the followers of Tiberius Gracchus, was now allowed to return to Rome. Nevertheless, many of the Gracchi’s followers who had suffered at the hands of optimates wielding the S.C.U. nursed their resentment and waited for a popular issue to exploit against them.
Post-Gracchan land legislation
In the meantime, the optimates who dominated the senate pursued policies designed to protect their interests while satisfying those groups to whom the Gracchi had appealed. Three successive laws gradually modified the Gracchan land legislation to benefit all who had been affected. The first, probably in 121 b.c.e., permitted settlers to sell their allotments. That would have undermined any intent to guarantee a supply of men who met the property requirement for assidui. Still, it would have pleased many proprietors, who could have turned their allotments into cash. The second law (perhaps in 118 b.c.e.) would have pleased the Italian allies as well as Rome’s small and large landholders. It abolished the land commission (whose work probably was already done), halted further division of ager publicus (public land) in Italy, and guaranteed, with a small rent, legal possession of lands already distributed. In 111 b.c.e., the third law benefited all of these groups: it abolished all rentals ordered by the second, declared as private property all public lands assigned by the Gracchan commission up to 320 acres, and guaranteed to colonies and municipalities secure tenure of lands already granted. It also forbade further encroachment and overgrazing on public pastures.
Other internal matters
Scanty sources do not give a clear picture of other internal matters in the decade after Gaius Gracchus’ death. There are, however, tantalizing hints of tension and chaos. For example, a number of aristocratic women seem to have been tried for poisoning their husbands. This was not the first time in Rome’s history that a group of upper-class matrons was accused of this very crime. The repetition of such incidents (the first documented occurrence is 331 b.c.e., see Box 23.1, p. 427) may be a sign of female rebellion against unwanted marriages or perhaps women taking a political stance, as when Sempronia was rumored to have helped murder Scipio Aemilianus (p. 218). It is also entirely possible that the deaths were a result of some kind of epidemic, that the women were completely innocent, and that Rome, for reasons we cannot now recover, was gripped by baseless hysteria.
Conflicts over the role of women, equites, and even ordinary voters in public religious life may be seen in another episode from the year 114. First, a prodigy was reported: the virgin daughter of an eques was out riding a horse. A bolt of lightning struck her, blew off her clothes, and left her naked. Soothsayers interpreted the incident as a bad portent for Vestal Virgins and equites. Subsequently, charges of unchastity were leveled against three Vestals: Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia. Here, as in the poisoning case discussed earlier, it is possible that the charges had some basis in fact, but it is equally possible that the women were innocent victims of political rivalries or widespread panic. The pontiffs, all aristocrats, condemned Aemilia to death but acquitted the other two. The outrage of ordinary citizens at this apparent cover-up by aristocratic priests enabled a tribune to obtain a plebiscite setting up a special secular prosecutor. All three Vestals were condemned and a number of men were also punished. The sources focus on the punishment of equites, although prominent aristocrats like the brothers of Aemilia and Licinia were also implicated. Mark Antony’s grandfather, who had just risen from equestrian to senatorial rank, was accused of involvement and successfully defended himself.
The Imperial background to domestic politics
Domestic politics have to be understood in the wider context of events throughout Rome’s empire. Different areas presented different problems and challenges. All helped to shape what happened in Rome.
Colonization and continued conquest in the West, 125 to 118 b.c.e.
The Gracchan program of land settlement in Italy was strongly reinforced both before and after the tribunates of Gaius by the conquest, colonization, and settlement of lands beyond the borders of Italy. Thousands of Roman settlers remained around Carthage after the formal abolition of the Roman colony. New settlements were made at Palma and Pollentia on the Spanish island of Majorca. Between 125 and 120, the Romans took over the coastal strip between the Alps and the Pyrenees, except for the small territory of Massilia (map, p. 368). It welcomed Rome’s suppression of its restless neighbors.
This coastal strip became the province of Transalpine Gaul, later called Narbonese Gaul (Gallia Narbonensis), or simply the Province (hence, modern Provence). In 118, the Romans founded a citizen colony of discharged veterans at Narbo, which gave its name to Gallia Narbonensis. It was a strategic site on the Via Domitia, which linked the Rhône valley to Spain. It not only provided commercial operators a trading center in southern Gaul but also gave small farmers from central Italy new lands to settle. Those who sold their Gracchan allotments in Italy could use the proceeds for a fresh start on bigger holdings in the rich transalpine province. In this way, the number of assidui, those qualified for military service, could be maintained, too.
Rome and the Greek East
After 133 b.c.e., the Romans tried to avoid direct involvement in the East beyond Macedonia and Thrace, Greece proper, and the newly acquired province of Asia. The governors of Macedonia supervised affairs in Greece. It remained calm enough for the Romans to remove previously imposed indemnities and restore some rights to leagues and cities. After the suppression of a minor revolt in Macedonia (ca. 140 b.c.e.), Roman governors were mainly occupied in fighting the Thracians and other tribes to the north and east in a series of campaigns from 135 to 101. As a result, Roman control spread toward the Hellespont.
In Asia, many refused to honor Attalus III’s bequest of Pergamum to Rome. They mounted armed resistance under the leadership of Aristonicus, who claimed to be Attalus’ illegitimate half-brother. Many of his followers came from the lower ranks of society (p. 182). Consequently, the propertied classes tended to favor Rome. The Romans also received aid from neighboring kings.
After a disastrous start, the Romans were finally victorious in 130 b.c.e. They sent a consul with a commission of ten senators to settle Asian affairs in 129. They granted large chunks of Attalus’ kingdom to two friendly client kings, Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia and Mithridates V of Pontus. The failure to give a similar prize to Nicomedes II of Bithynia, however, set the stage for serious conflict in the future, particularly because of the widespread belief that Mithridates had given the Roman consul a large bribe. Still, the Romans reserved the richest part of the kingdom and its revenues for themselves. When Gaius Gracchus secured legislation turning over the collection of those revenues to the publicani (p. 221), he inadvertently opened up the province to greater corruption and exploitation. They fueled resentment and eventual rebellion against Roman rule. Between 127 and 87 b.c.e., however, Rome’s military attention was focused elsewhere. The only significant military activity in Asia Minor consisted of naval operations against Cilician pirates (p. 236).
The Jugurthine War, 111 to 106 b.c.e.
The first great military problem that Rome faced after Gaius Gracchus’ death was in North Africa. As in Asia Minor after 133 b.c.e., the Romans had not annexed large amounts of territory after the destruction of Carthage in 146 b.c.e. They had left large tracts of North Africa to the friendly kings of Numidia. These friendly relations ended with the outbreak of the Jugurthine War in 111. Moreover, this war finally gave the vengeful and ambitious in post-Gracchan Rome an issue to exploit in a popularis manner against the dominant optimates in the senate.
The war was named after Jugurtha, a grandson of Scipio Aemilianus’ old Numidian ally Masinissa. Brave and quick witted, he had attracted Scipio’s favor during his service in the war against Numantia. Scipio persuaded King Micipsa, son of Masinissa, to adopt Jugurtha. Trouble followed when Micipsa died in 118 b.c.e. He left Numidia jointly to Jugurtha and his own two natural sons. Soon Jugurtha moved against his adoptive brothers as he sought control of the whole kingdom. He was aided by the connivance of powerful Roman senators.
In 112 b.c.e., Jugurtha besieged one of his rivals in the city of Cirta (Constantine, Algeria), an important center of the North African grain trade. Many equestrian grain merchants and their Italian agents were trapped in the besieged city. They were massacred when it fell. This massacre and the disruption of Rome’s grain supply incensed both the common people and the equites. Those issues could be exploited with popularis tactics. In 111, the tribune Gaius Memmius openly accused some senators of taking Jugurtha’s bribes. He attacked the senatorial leaders so vigorously that they were shamed into asking for a declaration of war.
The commanding consul, however, made only a pretense of fighting. He quickly offered Jugurtha easy terms. Popular opinion was outraged. Memmius ordered an investigation. Another tribune blocked him. Jugurtha then procured the murder of a cousin who was living in Rome and trying to get help against him. Such a slap in the face to the Roman People could not be ignored. The senate repudiated the tainted peace and renewed the war in 110 b.c.e. Jugurtha defeated the Roman army in 109 and demanded another humiliating peace. The people were even more outraged. Another tribune put through a bill setting up a special court to try senators deemed responsible for the debacle. The jury was filled from the list of equestrian jurors established by Gaius Gracchus for the extortion court. Among those condemned for corruption and sent into exile was the infamous Lucius Opimius, who had used the S.C.U. to slay the followers of Gaius Gracchus.
Command of the war finally went to a competent general, Quintus Caecilius Metellus. Consul in 109, he came from the most powerful family in Rome at the time. He was incorruptible and an excellent disciplinarian. Unfortunately for him, however, the damage to the army’s morale and preparedness could not be repaired overnight. Both the equites and the common people wanted speedy results. They accused Metellus of prolonging the war for his own glorification.
The popularis rise of Gaius Marius, 157 to 86 b.c.e.
Although fighting as one of Metellus’ senior officers in Numidia, Gaius Marius was calculating and unscrupulous enough to exploit popular unrest back in Rome in a popularis manner. He urged the equestrian merchants in North Africa to write letters to their friends and agents at Rome in praise of him and in protest of Metellus’ conduct of the war. The campaign was so successful that Marius won enough votes to be elected consul himself.
Born outside of Arpinum, a little town south of Rome, Marius was the son of a wealthy eques, not a poor peasant as Plutarch’s biography claims. His ambition was to reach the consulship at Rome and ennoble his family. He was an excellent soldier and was popular among the rank-and-file. Even after he became their commander, he is said to have slept on the same hard ground as they did. They would remember him at election time. His rough and ready appearance and his use of common idiom also endeared him to the average man.
Marius had been with Scipio Aemilianus at the siege of Numantia. His courage, physical endurance, and military professionalism had earned Scipio’s respect. Later, he became a client of the powerful Metelli. They helped him to become a tribune for 119 b.c.e. At that point, however, he deserted those patrons for the first time.
As tribune, Marius successfully proposed a bill to make it difficult for patrons to influence the votes of their clients. The Metelli and other nobles opposed it. Marius won further admiration from the common people by threatening to arrest the consuls, including Metellus’ brother, for obstructing the popular will. Outraged, the Metelli helped to ensure Marius’ defeat in a campaign for the aedileship. Marius managed with some difficulty and much bribery, however, to get elected to a praetorship in 115 b.c.e. After that, he was sent as a propraetor to Farther Spain, his first military command.
Marius’ praetorship had admitted him into the upper ranks of the senate. His money and success had earned him a useful connection with the ancient patrician family of the Julii Caesares: he married the aunt of the future Julius Caesar. He also had been able to mend fences with his offended former patrons and get Quintus Metellus to give him a post in the war against Jugurtha. Even so, without any noble ancestors of his own, Marius would have found the consulship beyond his reach, except perhaps under the most unusual circumstances.
Marius campaigns for the consulship
At first, Metellus scornfully refused when Marius asked for leave to campaign for the consulship. Finally, to get rid of a disgruntled officer, Metellus granted him permission to go to Rome, where he was elected consul for 107 b.c.e. Marius, now the first of his family to reach the consulship, was a novus homo, “new man,” resented deeply by the old nobility. To add insult to their injury, a plebiscite gave him the North African command against the will of Metellus’ optimate allies in the senate.
Recruiting troops for service in North Africa, Marius tried to solve the problem of military manpower by accepting as volunteers all who were physically fit, regardless of property qualifications. Such a move had occasionally been resorted to in past emergencies. After Marius, it became a regular practice.
Inadvertently, this change had serious political consequences. More and more men of little or no property joined the legions. Commanders who were generous with booty or promised other material rewards like grants of land could often count on their loyalty. Successful generals could now more easily compete with their political rivals by mustering the votes of loyal veterans or using them to intimidate their opponents. The value of military commands was thereby raised. Therefore, the temptation to provoke some foreign military crisis to obtain one became great. More ominously, a successful military commander backed by an experienced and personally loyal army was in a greater position to resort to civil war.
Marius defeats Jugurtha
Marius’ methodical warfare forced Jugurtha on the defensive by 106 b.c.e. Marius was ably assisted by his quaestor, the young noble and future dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who later became his bitter enemy. In the meantime, Sulla captured Jugurtha by persuading Jugurtha’s principal ally, King Bocchus of Mauretania, to betray him. The captured Jugurtha eventually was executed by strangulation in the dungeon of the Tullianum after appearing in Marius’ triumph (104 b.c.e.). Numidia was safe at last for investment and exploitation by Marius’ equestrian friends and relatives.
Rome, however, still faced a formidable series of foreign and domestic crises. First was the threat of attack from a number of migrating Germanic tribes. To fight them, the comitia centuriata elected Marius, now the most popular military hero, to five consecutive consulships (104–100 b.c.e.). Sometimes he was elected in absentia and always contrary to the law requiring a ten-year interval between repeated offices.
The war with the Cimbri and the Teutones, 105 to 101 b.c.e.
Driven south by overpopulation and coastal inundations, the Cimbri, Teutones, and other Germanic tribes had sought to settle in Transalpine Gaul. Often they offered to serve in Roman armies in return for land. Met with refusal, they smashed three Roman armies in 109, 106, and finally, at the Battle of Arausio (Orange), in 105 b.c.e. Even if the report of 80,000 Roman casualties is high, this last disaster left Italy open to invasion. Tribunes seized on popular fear and frustration at corruption and incompetence. They attacked prominent commanders and leading senators with prosecutions. They also promoted more laws to limit aristocratic influence over voters. Marius’ “unconstitutional” five consecutive consulships reflect the impact of fear and popular pressure on the Centuriate Assembly in a period of extreme crisis.
Marius’ impact on the Roman army
Although Marius was long thought to replace the maniple with the cohort as a tactical army unit in preparing to fight the Germans, the cohort appeared as far back as the elder Scipio Africanus’ command in Spain (210 b.c.e.). Metellus, Marius’ predecessor in North Africa, also employed it. Marius, however, seems to have made it the standard tactical unit. His legions each had 3000 to 5000 men in ten cohorts ranging from 300 to 500 heavy infantry. Each cohort had six centuries of sixty to eighty men. Cohorts were strong enough to fight separately but still numerous enough to deploy in various combinations. Without losing its flexibility, the legion acquired a new compactness and cohesion now symbolized by an identifying emblem carried on a standard topped by a silver eagle.
Marius’ major innovation in weapons was to substitute a wooden pin for one of the iron rivets that held the head of a javelin onto its shaft. It would break upon impact and render the javelin useless for the enemy to hurl back. Marius also issued oblong shields (scuta) to the light-armed velites. As a result, the velites became more like the heavy infantry, and the distinction between the two soon disappeared.
Following Metellus’ example, Marius emphasized hard training and standardization. Each soldier carried his own cooking kit, construction tools, tent, and rations for three days. Soldiers came to be called “Marius’ mules” because of their weighty backpacks. By a combination of open recruitment, cohesive organization, and hard training, Marius made the legion an even more formidable military force. In time, it would also become an effective political weapon in the hands of ambitious generals. Ironically, one of those generals would be his old quaestor Sulla, whom he now seems to have sent to help the other consul, Q. Lutatius Catulus.
Defeat of the Germans
With his well-trained, cohort-based legions, Marius defeated one group of Germans in 102 b.c.e. before they could cross the Alps into Italy, where the Cimbri defeated Catulus. In 101, he himself crossed the Alps to join Catulus in defeating the Cimbri at Vercellae (probably near Turin). After that, a third group of Germans wisely retreated home without a fight. Marius was now an even bigger popular hero.
The slave revolt in Sicily, 104 to 100 b.c.e.
Had the Germans invaded Italy and set at liberty a million slaves or more, the consequences might have been similar to a revolt of the slaves in Sicily that took five years to suppress. In 104 b.c.e., Marius asked the Roman client–kings of Asia Minor to send troops to help defend Italy against the Germanic invaders. The kings replied that up to half their able-bodied subjects had been kidnapped and sold as slaves by pirates. Many of those slaves were in Sicily. Marius and the senate ordered the governor of Sicily to release slaves held illegally. After the release of several hundred persons, the governor allowed himself to be browbeaten by the landowners. He harshly ordered the rest of the slaves applying for freedom to go back to their masters. They did not go back. Instead, they took to the hills, and the slave revolt swelled into full-scale war. For four years (104–101 b.c.e.), the slaves had control of the country. Before the defeat of the Germans released enough troops to put down the rebellion, 100,000 lives had already been lost.
Piracy in the eastern Mediterranean
Even before the suppression of the Sicilian slaves, Rome had to deal with piracy in the eastern Mediterranean. Ever since the destruction of Rhodes as a naval power, the pirates and slave traders of Cilicia and Crete had freely roamed the seas. Their kidnapping raids upon Syria and Asia Minor supplied the great slave market of Delos, where 10,000 slaves are said to have been sold daily. In 102 b.c.e., the praetor Marcus Antonius (grandfather of the famous Mark Antony [p. 229]) was commissioned to attack and destroy the chief pirate bases and strongholds in the eastern Mediterranean. After destroying many pirate hideouts, he annexed the coastal part of Cilicia as a Roman province and base of future operations against pirates. These measures may have checked, but did not destroy, the scourge of piracy, which the Romans’ own actions and policies had helped to create.
The political fall of Marius
Just returned from glorious victories in 101 b.c.e., Marius was the object of adulation at Rome. He was seen as “another Camillus,” a savior. He enjoyed the unfailing support of a devoted army and beheld a populace crying out for leadership. After five consulships, he wanted more.
Marius entered his sixth consulship in 100 b.c.e. Unfortunately for him, however, Rome was at peace. All of his jealous enemies in the senate now felt free to work against him. To overcome their opposition to legislation benefiting his veterans, equestrian supporters, and Italian clients, Marius had to rely on two opportunistic populares, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia. They, however, were prepared to go to greater political extremes than Marius wanted.
Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia, 103 to 100 b.c.e.
Saturninus was an eloquent speaker, an able and ambitious noble whose career had suffered a serious setback. Therefore, he became an active supporter of Marius in an attempt to gain popularity and a position of strength against rivals. Saturninus entered his first tribuneship in 103 b.c.e. He sponsored a law assigning one hundred iugera (sixty-five acres) of land in Africa to each of Marius’ African veterans. A colleague joined his opponents and attempted to veto the bill. After a shower of stones, the man promptly withdrew the veto. Saturninus had no patience with obstructive tactics or legal technicalities. Fists and stones were more effective than vetoes or signs from the gods.
In 103, Saturninus also introduced a law that made it a criminal offense to compromise, injure, or diminish the honor or dignity (maiestas) of the Roman People. By the very vagueness of the charge, this law would become dangerous to all as time went on. For his part, Saturninus used it to prosecute unpopular nobles and enhance his own power. For example, he prosecuted the unpopular ex-consul who had obtained passage of a law in 106 b.c.e. to give the extortion court back to senatorial jurors. In 101, Glaucia was tribune and obtained passage of a law that returned the extortion court to equestrian jurors.
In 100 b.c.e., during his second tribuneship, Saturninus embarked on a full program of social legislation. Glaucia, who was now a praetor, supported him. Saturninus’ legislation included a grain law (possibly dating back to his tribunate of 103 b.c.e.). It restored the regular monthly distributions of subsidized grain that had been suspended after the death of Gaius Gracchus. Saturninus’ second bill provided for the founding of veteran colonies in Sicily, Greece, Macedonia, and possibly Africa. A third bill, an agrarian law, assigned land once occupied by the Cimbri and Teutones in Gaul (possibly Transalpine Gaul) to Marius’ veterans. Finally, Saturninus proposed a general mobilization of Roman forces against the Cilician pirates and against Mithridates VI of Pontus. That command was intended for Marius. To these laws, Saturninus appended a clause requiring all senators to take an oath of obedience within five days or face loss of their seats, exile, and a fine of twenty talents. In spite of vetoes, divine signs, and violence, the laws were passed.
Marius and the fall of Saturninus and Glaucia
All eyes were fixed on Marius to see if he would take the oath of obedience appended to the bill assigning land in Gaul to his veterans. At the last minute, he did take the oath to observe the law with the qualification “so far as it is legal.” This express reservation turned the law into a farce. Senators who took the oath would be able to make the same reservation. Marius’ blunder lay in his indecision. He wanted to cooperate with the popular leaders. At the same time, he did not like to offend the powerful senators who opposed Saturninus. Marius thus reveals what was typical of most populares. He was quite willing to seek popularity by opportunistic means in order to gain high office and status, but he shared the same basic aristocratic outlook as his foes. He had achieved political equality with his former noble opponents and rivals. Now, he instinctively cooperated with them in preserving the political status quo and hoped to gain their respect and acceptance.
Saturninus had lost the support of both the equestrian class and the city masses before the end of his second tribuneship. The equites disliked his radical and revolutionary methods. They feared that he might next attack the sanctity of private property. The city voters turned against him because of his new agrarian law. It granted too many benefits to Marius’ veterans, many of whom were Italians: the interests of the people and the interests of the military were no longer the same thing. Hostile optimate senators and personal enemies were quick to take advantage of the situation to bring down populares like Saturninus and Glaucia.
Saturninus and Glaucia, determined to stay in office, campaigned successfully for the tribuneship and consulship, respectively. Glaucia, however, was in defiance of the Villian Law, which required a two-year interval between the offices of praetor and consul (p. 191). In order to rid himself of a possibly successful opponent, Glaucia hired thugs to kill the former tribune Gaius Memmius. The senate declared a state of emergency and ordered Marius to take action under the S.C.U.
Marius did not want to injure or destroy Saturninus, Glaucia, and the other popular politicians to whom he and his veterans owed so many benefits. He forced Saturninus and those who had taken refuge with him in the Capitol to surrender. To save their lives and follow the senate’s orders at the same time, he locked them up in the senate house (curia). An angry mob of nobles and equites climbed up to the roof, ripped off tiles, and pelted the prisoners to death. Glaucia, too, was murdered, but sources differ on the exact circumstances. Marius, still distrusted and disliked by his old enemies among the nobles, was now despised by his former friends for failing to protect those who had supported him. He was obliged to look on helplessly as the senate declared the laws of Saturninus null and void. This action apparently ruined Marius’ career and gave second thoughts to those who would seek political advantage through a popularis strategy. It is not surprising that Marius suddenly “remembered” that he had to go to the East to fulfill a vow. He may also have wanted to scout new opportunities for military glory against the growing power of King Mithridates VI of Pontus (p. 242).
A decade of optimate domination
Those who had tried to gain an edge in aristocratic political competition as populares had fallen to violence and murder once more. For most of the 90s b.c.e., optimate traditionalists firmly controlled public affairs through the senate. They were largely successful in dealing with Rome’s enemies and their own. They had already crushed the Sicilian slave rebellion in 100 b.c.e. In 93, they defeated a Spanish uprising. Then they successfully intervened in Asia Minor. Sulla, who had been elected praetor for 97 b.c.e., received a proconsular command in Cilicia to place the pro-Roman Ariobarzanes I on the throne of Cappadocia. Sulla’s actions in the East, however, had serious implications for the future. They drew the hostile attention of both Mithridates VI of Pontus and the neighboring Parthian Empire. They also set the stage for the disastrous rivalry between Sulla and Marius for command of Rome’s first war against Mithridates in 88 b.c.e.
Meanwhile, Marius had returned from Asia and tried to restore his political fortunes. He supported his veterans’ demands for land and the Italian allies’ demands for citizenship. The optimate leaders continued to refuse both. They even expelled Italians resident in Rome. Furthermore, they sponsored a law that made it more difficult for populares to utilize tribunician legislation. It required an interval of seventeen days between the promulgation and enactment of a tribunician bill. In that way, those whose power was guaranteed by the status quo would have enough time to marshal their opposition. As a result, serious problems and grievances continued to bubble beneath the surface and build up pressure for another eruption.
For example, in 92 b.c.e., the growing tension between the equites and the optimate- dominated senate manifested itself in the trial of P. Rutilius Rufus. He had married into the family of Gaius Gracchus’ opponent M. Livius Drusus (p. 222). As a legate in Asia, Rufus had tried to curb the abuses of publicani collecting taxes there. Marius was Rufus’ long-time rival and a supporter of tax-collecting companies. He encouraged Rufus’ prosecution on a charge of extortion. Since Gaius Gracchus had staffed the extortion court with equestrian jurors tied to or sympathetic to the publicani, Rufus was unjustly convicted.
The explosive reforms of M. Livius Drusus the Younger, 91 b.c.e.
Livius Drusus’ son, M. Livius Drusus the Younger, was allied with some moderate optimates who favored reforms to relieve the worst of the grievances that could be exploited in a popularis manner. As a tribune in 91 b.c.e., the younger Drusus launched a series of reforms with three major components: (1) doubling the size of the senate by admitting 300 of the richest and most prominent members of the equestrian class (to remove the chief source of friction between senators and equites, he proposed to choose jurors for the standing criminal courts from this expanded senate); (2) providing the poor with subsidized grain and with land through allotments and the establishment of colonies; (3) granting citizenship to the Italian allies.
These proposals could never be acceptable to all of the powerful optimate aristocrats, all of the equites, or even all of the Roman poor and Italian allies. The first two proposals seem to have passed initially. Then, vigorous opposition from extreme oligarchs and those equites who would not have been admitted to the senate caused them to be overturned. Even some powerful Italian allies were against the younger Drusus’ citizenship law. They would have had to give up public land and some control in their communities. Before Drusus was able to bring that proposal to a vote, he was stabbed to death by an unknown assassin.
The Italian, or Social, War, 90 to 88 b.c.e.
The demands by many of Rome’s Italian allies for citizenship were just. The allies had fought side by side with Romans to win them glory and empire. The Romans, however, no longer shared the fruits of victory equally with them. Roman selfishness and political rivalries made it difficult to grant their just demands. There may also have been a principled impediment from the Roman point of view. Roman citizens already occupied more territory than that of any previous Mediterranean city-state. It was far beyond what Aristotle considered to be ideal for such a polity. Such a state’s stability depended on face-to-face relationships among the leaders and the people, a sense of sharing a common life and purpose. How far could the Roman commonwealth, the res publica, be extended before it ceased to be?
The failure of Livius Drusus to reconcile competing interests and views over the matter of Italian citizenship resulted in a bloody uprising. It threatened to destroy Rome’s supremacy in Italy and, therefore, the Mediterranean. Among the insurgents, the Marsi and the Samnites were the fiercest. Together with their allies, they declared their independence and set up a confederacy. Its capital was at Corfinium, renamed Italia, about seventy-five miles due east of Rome. The Italian confederacy raised an army of 100,000 men (no lack of manpower on this occasion!). Many were hardened soldiers trained in the tactics and discipline of the Roman army, as their officers had been.
Sections of Umbria and Etruria, the more Romanized Latins and Campanians, and the Greek coastal cities from Naples to Tarentum remained loyal to Rome. The overseas provinces could supply extra manpower and resources. Nevertheless, the Romans fared badly in the first months of the war. Some of their defeats arose from many senators’ hostility and spite toward Marius. When he volunteered his services, they merely assigned him as a legate to an incompetent commander.
Citizenship for the Italians and collapse of the revolt, 90 to 88 b.c.e.
Finally, late in 90 b.c.e., one of the consuls, Lucius Julius Caesar (cousin of the more famous Gaius Julius Caesar), did what would have avoided war in the first place. He returned to Rome and carried a bill called the lex Julia to confer citizenship on all Latins and Italians still loyal to Rome and to those who would at once lay down their arms. In 89, two tribunes, M. Plautius Silvanus and C. Papirius Carbo, put through a more comprehensive bill, the lex Plautia Papiria. It granted citizenship to all free persons resident in any allied community who would register before a Roman praetor within sixty days. A third law, the lex Pompeia, was proposed by the consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. It extended citizenship to all free persons residing in Cisalpine Gaul south of the Po. It granted Latin rights to those living north of the river. The revolts began to collapse.
Strabo was a very good general and an opportunistic politician. He backed whatever side in Roman politics seemed most personally advantageous at the moment. His son, who became Pompey the Great, served on his staff with other future famous figures like Cicero and Catiline. The younger Pompey was militarily and politically much like Strabo but more personally charming. At one point, it was only the young Pompey’s pleas that saved his father from death at the hands of mutinous soldiers. Strabo ended the war in the North by capturing Asculum. He was also said to have misappropriated the booty. In 88 b.c.e., Strabo was guilty of complicity in the murder of his cousin, the consul Q. Pompeius Rufus, who was supposed to take over Strabo’s command. Thereupon, Strabo continued to fight until the Marsi and their allies were defeated in central Italy.
The other consul of 88 was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius’ old quaestor in the Jugurthine War and now a favorite of his enemies. Sulla and his staunch ally Quintus Caecilius Metellus (son of the commander whom Marius had double-crossed in the Jugurthine War) eventually ground down the Samnites in the South. In Campania, however, Sulla’s army still had to besiege Nola.
The aftermath of the Social War
The war had exacted a heavy price for the failure to adopt Livius Drusus’ proposal to grant citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies. The human and property losses may have been almost as great as those inflicted by Hannibal. Food was scarce and prices high. Rich and poor were oppressed by debts that they had no means of paying. Rome was crowded with Italian refugees. The city praetor of 89 b.c.e., A. Sempronius Asellio, attempted to give the debtors some relief by issuing an edict that revived the fourth-century b.c.e. law prohibiting interest. He was killed by a mob of angry creditors.
The Social War had practically been a civil war. It pitted against each other communities that in some cases had been fighting side by side for 200 years. Its bitter fighting set a dangerous precedent for actual civil warfare in Italy and trained a generation of leaders willing to resort to it in pursuit of personal political goals. With the war almost over, there was a move to avert the logical impact of the huge extension of citizenship that ended it. The strategy adopted limited the voting power of the new citizens by enrolling them in only eight or ten of the thirty-five tribes of citizens. This ploy merely fueled more divisive struggles that rent the Republic in the following years.
Nevertheless, the war produced some positive long-term results for Rome. It added almost 500,000 new citizens to the census rolls. From the Po River to the Straits of Messana, all free men were now Romans. The many different ethnic elements would in time be united by their common Roman citizenship. Local self-government still continued. All communities and municipalities enjoyed the right to elect their own boards of four magistrates (Quattuorviri). Gradually, they would adopt Roman private and public law as well as a common Latin language. The enfranchisement of Italy south of the Po eventually led to national unification and the development of a common Latin culture, but not under a republican form of government.
Suggested reading
Bispham , E. H. From Asculum to Actium: The Municipalization of Italy from the Social War to Augustus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Evans , R. Gaius Marius: A Political Biography. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1994.
Kendall , S. The Struggle for Roman Citizenship: Romans, Allies, and the Wars of 91–77 BCE. Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity 2. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013.
Mouritsen , H. Italian Unification. A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography (BICS Suppl. 70). London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1998.