Map 1: The Mediterranean World in 91 BC.
Map 2: Campaigns in Italy, 90 BC.
Map 3: Campaigns in Italy, 89 BC.
Map 4: The Mediterranean World in 86 BC.
Map 5: Campaigns in Italy, 83–82 BC.
Map 6: The Mediterranean World in 83–82 BC.
Map 7: Campaigns in Italy, 77 BC.
Map 8: Campaigns in Spain, 81–77 BC.
Map 9: Campaigns in Spain, 77–72 BC.
Map 10: The Mediterranean World in 70 BC.
Although this may sound like the opening line to a particularly unfunny joke, it is an important question that faces anyone who examines the period 91–70 BC of the Roman Republic. It was during this period that the Republican system, which underpinned Rome’s rise to Mediterranean preeminence, collapsed. There are two crucial differences between this event and the fall of the Roman Empire some 500 years later. Firstly, this collapse was not due to Rome being overrun by external enemies but internal ones, with sections of Italy and Rome’s own aristocracy taking up arms against each other. Secondly, on this occasion the collapse of the Roman system, whilst severe, was not permanent, and a new Republic was able to emerge from the ashes of the old one.
This conflict was the greatest that Rome had seen, surpassing even the Second Punic War. Not only did the conflicts that made up the war span two decades, but fighting ranged across the whole Mediterranean world, from Spain in the west to Asia Minor in the east, encompassing Africa, Sicily and Sardinia, Gaul, Illyria, Greece and Macedon. Most importantly, however, was the fact that Italy itself and the city of Rome were turned into battlegrounds as the various factions fought for supremacy.
Conflicts raged across the peninsula between the years 91 and 87, again in 83 and 82, and finally in 77 BC. Furthermore, whilst neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal had managed to attack Rome itself, which had lain untouched for 300 years at this point, the city was attacked on five occasions in just two decades; it was taken by force on no less than three of them, one of which resulted in what can only be described as a sacking. As well as the scope of the war was the significant number of fighting men involved and the casualties sustained, with well over 200,000 men under arms at the peak of the war and estimates of the casualties varying between 150,000 and 300,000 killed across the whole period.
This collapse and recovery spanned over two decades, and yet historiography on these events, both ancient and modern, has struggled to define them properly, with the various elements of this twenty-year period being compartmentalized and studied separately. It seems that for many, the answer to the initial question ‘When is a civil war not a civil war?’ is ‘When it’s an Italian or a Social War, a Lepidian Revolt or a Sertorian War.’ The Romans themselves had no consistent historiographical approach for this period, with various commentators holding different opinions. Cicero himself, who was contemporaneous to these events, used a variety of conflicting terms for the conflicts throughout his works. In modern times, the First Roman Civil War is considered to be either between the years 88 and 82 BC or composed of two periods of 88–87 BC and 83–82 BC. I subscribe to neither argument.
To my mind this has always been a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. During these two decades the Republican system was taken considerably beyond the brink, and faced social, political, military and economic collapse. Rome was affected by a series of crises that were all interlinked and overlapping, forming into one whole, stretching from the Italian rebellion of 91 BC to the consulships of the younger Pompeius and Crassus, and spanning two generations. After more than a decade of studying this period, I am more convinced than ever that by studying these crises in separation, or drawing artificial boundaries between the various crises, one fails to appreciate the whole picture of the ‘collapse and recovery’ of the Republic.
Yet this work is a not a narrative of decline, but an analysis of the underlying strengths of the Republican system, by which it was able not only to survive these collective onslaughts, but to reconstitute a working Republican system, albeit one that was different to the Republic of 91 BC. The other issue that needs to be addressed is the over-emphasis given to the individual figure, rather than the wider issues, a tendency that is partially a result of the apparent compartmentalization of the various conflicts within the period. Although these conflicts involved a number of important and fascinating historical figures, both well known (Marius, Sulla, Sertorius and Pompeius Magnus) and not so well known (Pompeius Rufus, Pompeius Strabo, Cinna and Lepidus), this book is not simply a narrative of great men, but also an account of the forces that shaped them and the events in which they took part.
In a similar vein, we must move away from seeing this civil war in modern terms, based on the European model, with two clear-cut sides separated by an ideological argument, such as with the American or English Civil Wars. To this end, we must move beyond seeing the war as Marians vs. Sullans, terms used by many both in ancient and modern times. This was not a war of Optimates vs. Populares, but a civil war more marked by the collapse of central authority and the rise of warlords, as seen in the collapse of the Chinese Empire in the early twentieth century or many of the modern African civil wars. Throughout this period we do see the rise of alliances and factions, sometimes coalesced under either one leader, such as Sulla, or two leaders, most notably the duumvirate of Marius and Cinna. Yet these factions and alliances were at best temporary and were aimed solely at the gaining of power or the holding onto it.
The period in question covers a huge range of military activity, especially in the Italian and Spanish theatres of conflict. Yet regrettably, due to the limited number of surviving ancient sources, we have only the barest detail for the vast majority of the military engagements in this period. The lack of a surviving detailed narrative history, such as Livy, Sisenna, or even Lucceius, does leave us analysing scraps of information on what were key events at the time. In military terms, this robs us of the ability to analyse in-depth the first time that the Roman legionary system was used on both sides of a conflict, legion vs. legion, which would have been a truly fascinating analysis.
Whilst this does mean that these twenty years of conflict can be covered within one volume, it also means that for a number of what must have been crucial military engagements there is very little surviving detail for us to discuss and analyse. One of the most frustrating aspects of the poor state of our ancient sources is that there are certain key periods (90–89, 83–82 and 77–72 BC) during which we know there were a large number of battles being fought, yet for which we have only one or two lines of evidence. For most of the conflicts of this period, we know neither the size of the armies involved nor the tactics used, and thus we must construct whole campaign narratives from the slightest of evidence. Where possible the author has provided the few ancient sources that survive in order to allow the reader the opportunity to see for themselves how little detail actually remains.
This work is the culmination of over a decade of thought and sometimes obsession. It began life in the spring of 2001 as a master’s thesis at the University of Manchester entitled Crisis and Renewal; The Two Decades of the First Civil War 91–70 BC, under the auspices of Professor Tim Cornell, who had the patience to supervise and guide my endeavours. Naturally, the end product represents my own views and not his. The work has been honed with several papers, notably Still Waiting For Sulla at the 2002 Classical Association Conference and The Twenty Years War; the Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Republic 91–70 BC in Manchester during 2004. On both occasions, vociferous debate ensued, and I am under no illusions that the views expressed in this work will find favour with everyone, but I present them nonetheless.
After more than a decade of working on the subject, I still find the topic a fascinating one and hope that others will do likewise.