The last decade of what now equates to the second century BC saw the culmination of a generation of military overstretch and political turmoil in the Roman Republic. Simultaneously, Rome found herself fighting a difficult guerrilla war in the deserts of North Africa, whilst facing tribes of migrating barbarians from northern Europe. A series of reverses in both these theatres of war saw Rome suffer one of the heaviest defeats in her history at the Battle of Arausio and a barbarian invasion of Italy itself. Yet whilst the scenario of barbarian migration, defeat and invasion is all too familiar to the Late Roman Empire, all this occurred some five hundred years before the fall of Rome, at what is often seen as the height of the Republic’s power.
This decade of crises is often noted for the rise of a perceived outsider (C. Marius) to an unprecedented six consulships in eight years and a radical reform of the Roman Republican army, which culminated in two of the greatest Roman military victories, at Aquae Sextiae and Raudian Plain (Vercellae). Yet many claim that these ‘reforms’ laid the foundations for the Republic’s ultimate destruction at the hands of a series of oligarchs, such as Sulla, Pompey and Caesar (the latter of which was Marius’ nephew). Upon examination, however, each of these assumptions can be challenged, but only through an in-depth study of the military situation of the period in question.
Anyone seeking an understanding of the period is faced with a number of difficulties which stem from our surviving ancient sources. Firstly, we lack a detailed narrative history of the period as a whole, giving undue weight to accounts that do survive, notably Plutarch’s biography of Marius and Sallust’s monograph on the Jugurthine War, which if not handled properly can provide a distorted picture of the period in question. Of the two wars which Rome faced, the Jugurthine War in North Africa is the lesser of the two in terms of severity, yet we have a fuller account of it and little detail for the wars in the north.
Furthermore, the Jugurthine War itself must be separated from Sallust’s work on it, as he only represents one source and must be balanced, wherever possible, with other accounts to gain a better overall perspective of the war itself. No matter how detailed, relying on a sole account for any war should be avoided at all costs. Furthermore, given the loss of a wider narrative history, and the survival of works such as Appian’s Civil Wars and Plutarch’s biographies, it is all too easy to focus on the domestic political history of Rome in this period, as though it is somehow separate from the wars that were raging at the time.
Thus in many ways, a key part of this introduction is to establish just exactly what this work is not about; it is neither a commentary on Sallust’s Jugurthine Wars, nor is it a biography of Caius Marius; there are a number of excellent works already in these fields (listed in the bibliography). This work seeks a broader perspective and attempts to analyse the period as a whole, taking in all the conflicts involved. This will allow us to analyse the origins, progression and ultimate solution to this decade of military crises. Only then can any political or military reforms be placed in their proper context.
Central to this process is the analysis of both wars, in Europe and Africa simultaneously. All too often the Jugurthine War is isolated from the rest of the period as though it exists in a vacuum, and this is down to the random survival of a historical monograph on the war, which itself isolates the events in Africa and Rome from the rest of the period. To study this war in isolation fundamentally undermines any conclusions we may draw from it. As the reader will soon notice, it is true that the balance of the surviving evidence relates to the war in Africa not the one in Europe, yet we must extract all that we can from what little remains.
The picture that emerges from our meagre evidence shows an empire on the brink of collapse, with conflicts being fought from Spain to the Balkans, engulfing southern Gaul, northern Italy and Sicily with Roman armies fighting across the deserts of North Africa, facing a range of native enemies. To this period belong some of Rome’s greatest military disasters as well as some of their greatest victories. In Roman eyes the name Arausio stood alongside Cannae, Carrhae and Teutoburg Forest as a benchmark for military disasters, with some sources giving it as high a casualty rate as Cannae itself (see Chapter 8). Yet the battle is little known today, rendered obscure by the lack of a surviving account, an omission which hopefully will be corrected in this work.
There can be little doubt that the very future of the Roman Empire, as it came to be, was in peril at this point in its history. The culmination of these conflicts saw a barbarian army invade Italy itself, with the intent on settling there. Had the Romans failed at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, then Rome’s presence in mainland Europe would have vastly diminished, undermining the basis of western civilization.
Two further points need to be made before our exploration of this period can begin.
The first relates to the nomenclature of these conflicts. The war in Africa has been known as the bellum Iugurthinum or Jugurthine War, after its principal protagonist, since it took place. Yet there is always a danger in these cases, as with references to the Pyrrhic, Hannibalic or Mithridatic Wars, that too much emphasis is given to the individual rather than the wider military or political issues. What started as a war against a sole king soon turned into a struggle against the combined races of North Africa with Roman domination of that region of the continent at stake. Yet whilst the Romano-Numidian or Romano-African Wars would perhaps be more appropriate, the weight of history makes the title of the ‘Jugurthine War’ an inevitable one.
There is no such clarity with the other conflicts however. Rome faced a multitude of different native enemies, from the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones from northern Europe to the Tigurini from Helvetia (Switzerland) and the Scordisci in the Balkans, with each conflict being assigned its own title. Yet, as argued in this work, these individual conflicts formed part of a wider process which saw the collapse of Rome’s northern frontiers, in both western and eastern Europe. For that reason I have assigned this wider conflict the title of the Northern Wars, with reference to both Rome’s northern frontier in this period, and the source of the threat to Rome in this period.
The second point is that whilst our surviving sources allow us to view the Jugurthine War from both perspectives – Roman and Jugurthan – we have no such ability for the Northern Wars. All we have to analyse are a number of fragmentary references by Roman and Greek sources many centuries after the events that they were describing. This regrettably renders any analysis of these conflicts so hopelessly one-sided that they can only be viewed from the Roman perspective. Added to this were the widespread Graeco-Roman fears and prejudices concerning Gauls, with Rome and Greece suffering Gallic invasions that scarred the collective memory. This left a tendency to view all native tribes as one-dimensional savages. Nonetheless this should not detract from the readers’ understanding of these fundamental conflicts.