MARIUS AND SULLA

Rome dominated the eastern Mediterranean, and her armies, strengthened by the military reforms of Marius, repulsed the barbarians. However, evil strife troubled the Roman world from within. The immense political power of a successful general was demonstrated in the struggle of Marius and Sulla.

■ Ancient Authorities

Sulla wrote his memoirs (Commentarii) and these, despite their personal bias, as a first-hand account by a protagonist in the main conflict of the epoch, would have been an invaluable source of knowledge if they had survived. As it is, Sulla’s testimony reaches us at second-hand in the writing of Sallust and Plutarch. In Sallust’s Jururthine War, the effect produced is one of inconsistency; Sallust’s hero was Gaius Marius, and Sallust’s political orientation place him on the side of the Popular party. Plutarch’s account of Sulla’s contemporaries and, of course, his biography of Sulla himself owe much to the memoirs.

Unfortunately, Sallust’s only other extant work is his monograph on the conspiracy of Catiline, which shook Rome in 63 BC and led to full-scale military operations. Sallust also wrote Histories relating to the period 78–67 BC, but his work has been lost except for a few fragments, some of them important, preserved by later writers.

Other valuable contemporary evidence for the earlier and middle decades of the first century BC is to be found in Cicero’s speeches. Here, we have the words of a participant in the violent political struggles of the day. Cicero rose to prominence after the death of Sulla, but his early career was passed in the period with which we are here concerned, and both his forensic and political oratations contain allusions to it. One does not, of course, expect from Cicero the impartial detachment of a historian, but his references to contemporary and near-contemporary events merit such regard as is due to the pronouncements of a moderate man.

Our knowledge of the period is also derived from later writers. Many of these preserve the substance of Livy’s lost books. They include Velleius Paterculus, who was an officer in the Imperial army early in the first century AD. He wrote a summary history of Rome down to the year AD 30. His contemporary Valerius Maximus composed a text book for students of rhetoric, based on a collection of memorable historic utterances and actions. Early in the second century AD, in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, Lucius Annaeus Florus wrote a summarized history of all Roman wars down to Imperial times. Other compilers of historical summaries are Eutropius, in the fourth century AD, and Orosius, a Christian writer of the fifth century AD. These chroniclers all wrote in Latin and, while availing themselves of various sources, to an important extent transmit the material of Livy’s lost books in their works.

Appian, who was a Greek of Alexandria, flourished in the early second century AD. He moved to Rome, and held high official posts there. His work dealing with the history of the Roman world was arranged mainly on a geographical and ethnographical plan. The Civil Wars, however, form a distinct section of five books. Of these, the latter part of the first book is mainly relevant here. Appian has access to many sources; it should be noted that he drew upon Sallust and is indebted to Sulla’s memoirs.

Some earlier books of Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio Cocceianus) and later books of Diodorus Siculus were also relevant to the epoch which here concerns us, but unfortunately these have survived only in fragments.

■ Political and Social Background

The Roman civil wars of the first century BC were in some sense 200 years overdue. In semi-legendary times, the class struggle between the privileged patricians and the unprivileged plebeian majority had centred on the right demanded by the plebeians to hold high offices of state. In eventually winning these rights, the plebeians secured for themselves other rights into the bargain, which theoretically made them the dominant partners in the Republic. For the plebs possessed their own officers (tribunes¹) and the power to pass resolutions in their own assemblies which had the force of law, binding on the whole community. A tribune also had the right to veto any action of a Roman magistrate. Indeed, significantly, as it later turned out, he possessed the right of veto against his fellow tribunes.

The Senate, by contrast, had always been a consultative body and its resolutions did not amount to laws. But it advised the consuls and other magistrates, who were normally elected for yearly terms. Its own membership, in the early days of the Republic, was based on the selection of the consuls and continued to include men who had served as consuls. Its wisdom and experience provided a thread of continuity which was otherwise lacking and its consuls were indispensable. The annual elections were a precaution against tyranny, but such precautions could have led only to chaos in foreign policy and defeat in war, if the Roman people had not been willing to accept senatorial guidance, together with the supremacy of those noble families which provided the nucleus of the Senate.

The fact that the Romans were willing, although by no means legally obliged, to accept such guidance meant that the Republic, in the early centuries of its development, closely approached the ideal of aristocratic government – just as fifth-century Athens had been able to present itself as the model of democracy. But with the meteoric rise to Mediterranean dominion, the Roman ruling caste were faced with problems and temptations which proved too great for it, and public confidence in its wisdom and integrity consequently declined.

The constitutional weapons for the class struggle which had been forged in the fifth, fourth and early third centuries BC were at last put to use at the end of the second century by Tiberius Gracchus, a high-minded aristocratic reformer. But the weapons proved two-edged. As we have observed, a tribune could veto a fellow tribune, as well as a magistrate, and it was not difficult for the ruling oligarchy (nobiles) to find a tribune who would defend their interests. Passions were aroused and Tiberius Gracchus was assassinated amid scenes of civil disturbance.

The main cause which Tiberius had championed was that of the unemployed farmers who were forced out of business by Rome’s newly found access to cheap overseas grain. The struggle was carried on by Tiberius’ brother Gaius. Since tribunician power had proved inadequate, Gaius invented new weapons with which to attack to nobles. He encouraged the wealthy but unprivileged classes of equites to attack the exclusive noble clique who enjoyed senatorial dignity. Theequites were the old Servian cavalry class whose military recruitment had been based on property qualifications. But in war, the cavalry was now supplied by allied contingents; the last known instance of the Roman equites having served as cavalrymen is in the fighting at Numantia. Equestrian rank therefore remained merely an economic and social classification. Thanks to Gaius Gracchus’ legislation, the juries of the law courts were now recruited from the equites. Provincial governors, normally of senatorial rank, on quitting office were frequently sued by those whom they had governed, on grounds of extortionate practice; but the fact that such trials had taken place before senatorial juries guaranteed the acquittal of the accused. Tried by the equites, they were now, regardless of justice, certain to be convicted – unless the jury was bribed. But the senatorial party was able to outbid Gracchus in demogogy. Roman domestic politics became increasingly violent. Gaius Gracchus, circumvented and discredited, was eventually found dead by a hostile mob which had pursued him; it appeared that he had ordered a faithful servant to kill him.

■ The Military Achievement of Marius

In the days when Marius had first served in North Africa, the nobiles were once more in precarious control of Roman politics. They were at least sufficiently in control to mismanage foreign wars. When Marius, a member of the equestrian class, declared his intention of standing for the consulate, his aristocratic commanding officer insulted him. However, Marius possessed ability, energy, wealth, influential family connections and a flair for intrigue. He became consul in 107 BC and superseded the general who had slighted him. However, no amount of intrigue could have raised Marius to the eminence for which he was destined if events had not conspired to demonstrate his very real military ability, both in the Jugurthine War and the campaigns against the barbarians.

A land-hungry Germanic tribe, the Cimbri, had left their homes in Jutland and together with other tribes, including the Teutones, whose name is remembered above all in this connection, had migrated southwards, carrying with them their entire families and moveable possessions. The Romans were alarmed and a consular army met the migrants in Noricum, a Celto-Illyrian area north-east of the Alps. In the ensuing battle the Romans were badly defeated. The Cimbri and their allies must have found that the Alps presented a more formidable barrier than the Rhône and they fortunately avoided Italy, moving westward into Gaul (Southern France), an area which was by now under Roman control. Several Roman armies attempted to eliminate the barbarian menace, but they met with a series of humiliating defeats culminating in a major disaster at Arausio (Orange) in 105 BC, which much disturbed Rome.

The campaigns against the migrants could be regarded as offensive wars. The German tribes were fighting in defence of the families they had with them, and the Romans had rigidly, though not unwisely, refused to negotiate or concede any right of settlement to the barbarians. After Arausio, however, the way to Italy lay open to the Germanic invaders and Rome was unquestionably on the defensive. A full state of emergency existed and in these circumstances Marius, who had recently emerged as conqueror of Jugurtha, was elected consul for the second and successive year (105 BC). Legally, ten years should have elapsed before his second election. Constitutional precedent required that the consul should be sponsored by the Senate. But the Popular Assembly, as the legislative body of the Republic, was free to do as it chose. In any case, the Romans rarely insisted on constitutional niceties where they conflicted with military expediency.

Marius gloriously justified his appointment. Fortunately, the Germans had not immediately attempted the invasion of Italy but moved westwards towards Spain. This gave Marius time to train his troops for the coming conflict. Much of his success may be attributed to good military discipline and administration. He was appointed consul for the third time before he came to grips with the enemy. He even had leisure to improve his supply lines by setting his men to dig a new channel at the mouth of the Rhône.

The Teutones and the Ambrones (another allied German tribe) parted company from the Cimbri and the Tigurini (a Celtic people who had joined them). While the former confronted Marius on the Rhône, the latter made for Italy by a circuitous march over the Alps. Marius restrained his men in their camp to allow them to become accustomed to the sight of the barbarians who surrounded them, calculating that familiarity would breed contempt. When the Teutones marched on towards Italy, bypassing his camp, he led his own men out and overtook the enemy near Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence). Here, he fought a battle on favourable ground and, making use of a cavalry ambush posted in the hills, completely annihilated the Teutones. Their allies, the Ambrones had already been slaughtered in great numbers in a fight at a watering place two days earlier.

Marius’ consular colleague in North Italy fared by no means so happily and was forced to withdraw before the invading Cimbri into the Po valley, leaving them to occupy a large part of the country. In 101 BC, Marius’ legions were brought to reinforce the north Italian army, Marius being now in his fifth consulate. A battle was fought at Vercellae (perhaps near Rivigo). The barbarians’ tactics were not utterly devoid of sophistication and had some success. Nor were the Germans ill-armed. Their cavalry wore lofty plumes on helmets grotesquely shaped like animal heads. Their breastplates were of iron and they carried flashing white shields, two javelins each and heavy swords for hand-to-hand fighting. The summer heat may have been in favour of the Romans, who were accustomed to the Mediterranean climate. Fighting was confused on account of a heavy dust storm. The Roman victory may be ascribed to superior training and discipline. Sulla, on whose account Plutarch relies, suggested that Marius’ tactics were mainly designed to secure glory for himself at the expense of his consular colleague. Sulla himself fought in the battle, but one would not expect his evidence to be unbiased. In any case, the entire Germanic horde was destroyed and Rome was spared a catastrophe that might have proved conclusive to its political existence. For unlike the victors of the Allia, three centuries earlier, the Cimbri were in search of land, not gold. The greatest threat presented by the northern barbarians lay in their numbers, estimated at a total of 300,000; some ancient historians thought that this was an underestimate. The Romans at Vercellae were a little more than 50,000 strong. At the same time, the barbarians’ great trek southward from Jutland, let alone their subsequent victories over Roman armies, cannot have been achieved without leadership. It is surprising that the names of the Germanic leaders are not at least as celebrated as that of Brennus.²

■ Recruitments

The wars against the Cimbri and the Teutones are poorly documented. Marius emerges as both strategist and tactician, a leader possessing formidable discipline and great physical courage. Yet the secret of his success may well have lain in his ability as a military administrator and the intelligence of his military reforms.

One has only to consider his methods of recruitment. Constitutionally, these were outrageous and exposed him to the ever-increasing hostility of the Senate. But from a social and strategic point of view, they were precisely what Rome needed. Since the time of the Servian reforms, the poorest section of the population (proletarii) had not qualified for enrolment in the legions, except in times of grave national emergency. The name proletarii in fact signifies those who contributed only their children (proles) to the community – not their taxes or their military service. Plutarch suggests that only propertied classes were required in the army, since their possessions were some sort of a security for their good behaviour. In any case, it must have been felt that they had a greater stake in the society they defended.

At the time when Marius had been appointed by ‘the People’ to his first term as consul, Roman citizens were undergoing a process of proletarianization. The land, from which the farmer was being forced by low overseas corn prices, was brought up by wealthy absentee landlords, who were able to run their estates with the help of cheap labour, supplied by a multitude of enslaved war captives. Meanwhile, the small farmer moved into the city, where he could at least take advantage of the cheap and subsidized corn which often proved to be the price of his political support.

The Senate had ruled that extra levies should be raised for the Jugurthine War. Marius, finding the measure inadequate, and always ready to provoke the Senate, recruited not only volunteers and time-expired veterans – which it was open to him to do – but also offered enlistment to members of the proletariat who wished to go soldiering. Whereas previously the field for recruitment had been progressively narrowing as property requirements became harder to satisfy, Marius raised a strong army and at the same time produced one remedy for the problem of unemployment.

As long as he enjoyed the support of the People’s Assembly and its tribunes, the Senate could not check Marius’ recruiting activities. His methods, however, had an ominous aspect. Roman soldiers, though now members of a fully professional army, owed personal loyalty to the general who enrolled and employed them. This loyalty was enhanced by traditional Roman concepts of the semi-sacred relationship which existed between a protector (patronus) and his protégé (cliens): a relationship which in some contexts acquired legal definition. Marius became a patron to his veteran soldiers, securing for them, through his political associates, a grant of farmland on retirement. The day of private armies, when soldiers owed prime allegiance to their generals rather than to the state, was not far off.

■ Army Reorganization

At the battle of Aquae Sextiae, Marius gave the order to his men, through the usual chain of command, that they should hurl their javelins as soon as the enemy came within range, then use their swords and shields to thrust the attackers backwards, down the treacherous slope. The instructions to discharge javelins and then join battle with swords and shields is such as we might expect to be given to an army which had adopted the pilum and the gladius, but the offensive use of shields and the application of pushing tactics sounds like a reversion to the old fifth- and fourth-century phalanx as it had been used both in Greece and Italy. The probability is that the traditional manipular formation with its three-line quincunx deployment had generally been superseded. In the course of the preceding century, Rome had come into conflict with a wide assortment of enemies, variously equipped and accustomed, and the Romans were nothing if not adaptable. They were ready to improve and to adopt such tactics as suited the terrain and were most likely to prove effective against the type of enemy with whom they had to deal in any particular battle. There were no longer any routine tactics. The maniple which had been the unit of the old three-line battle front was in the first place a tactical unit (see here). Once it had ceased to be tactically effective, there was no reason for its retention. Marius recognized this fact and reorganized his army accordingly.

For purposes of administration a larger unit than the maniple was convenient; and in this, subdivisions were necessary. The legion was consequently divided into ten cohorts, and every cohort contained six centuries, each commanded by a centurion, whose titles, ranging from that of the exalted primus pilus to hastatus posterior, reflected differences of position on the battlefield, rank and seniority. Before Marius’ time, the cohort, notably as used by Scipio in Spain (134 BC), was often a purely tactical formation, employed to cope with special circumstances. On the other hand, it had originated as an administrative infantry unit among the Italian allies. Cohorts had been mobilized originally as 500 and 1,000 strong respectively. Each had been under the command of a praefectus. As a legionary unit, the cohort was 500–600 strong. Its division into six centuries meant that these were each somewhat under 100 strong, larger than the old manipular centuries, which had sometimes contained as few as 60 men.

Marius abolished the velites, the skirmishers of the ancient Camillan army; and with them, their characteristic arms of light spear and small buckler (parma) disappeared. The pilum was now used by all legionaries, and Marius introduced a change in its manufacture. In place of one of the iron rivets which had secured the head to the shaft, he had a wooden peg inserted. When the javelin impaled an enemy shield, the peg broke on impact and the shaft sagged and trailed on the ground, though still attached to the head by the remaining iron rivet. Not only was the javelin thus rendered unserviceable to enemy hands, but it encumbered the warrior whose shield it had transfixed. According to Plutarch, this novelty was introduced in preparation for the battle with the Cimbri at the battle of Vercellae. At the later date, in Julius Caesar’s army, as a further refinement, the long shank of the pilum was made of soft iron, so that it bent even while it penetrated.

Marius was at pains to be sure that every soldier in his army should be fit and self-reliant. He accustomed his men to long route marches and to frequent moves at the double. In addition to their arms and trenching tools, he insisted on their carrying their own cooking utensils and required that every man should be able to prepare his own meals. Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote in the first century AD, describes the legionary as carrying a saw, a basket, a bucket, a hatchet, a leather strap, a sickle, a chain and rations for three days, as well as other equipment. If this was a legacy for Marius’ reforms, it is easy to understand why the men who patiently supported such burdens were nicknamed “Marius’ mules”. Campaigning in enemy country or where there was a danger of sudden attack, the Romans marched lightly equipped and ready for action at short notice, while the soldiers’ packs (sarcinae) were carried with the baggage train. Marius is also said to have introduced a quick-release system for the pack.

■ Military Standards and Banners

Another of Marius’ innovations was the introduction of a single silver eagle (aquila), mounted on a staff, as a legionary standard. It is difficult to know just what significance should be attached to this change, because we have no clear information about the military standards which were previously in use. The eagle was a bird sacred to Jupiter. According to one source, there had previously been five legionary standards. Apart from the eagle, these exhibited the forms of wolves, bears, minotaurs and horses, and they were carried severally before the several ranks of the army in battle. But from Marius’ time, they were relegated to subordinate and ceremonial usages.

The legionary eagles were later made of gold and they were embellished with wreaths and other ornaments. In peacetime, they were kept in the state treasury (aerarium) at Rome, the old temple of Saturn. In wartime, they were carried with the legion and had a little sanctuary allotted to them in the camp. They were objects of quasi-religious veneration.

This quasi-religious function of the standards was in conflict with their practical purpose. In so far as the standard was a sacred object symbolizing the corporate existence of a military unit, it qualified for the care and protection of the soldiers whom it represented and could not properly be exposed to danger of capture by the enemy in battle. Its loss was, in fact, regarded as a great disgrace. The standard therefore had to be placed behind the front line and surrounded by troops who would defend it.

Schoolboys are – or used to be – familiar with Caesar’s anecdote of the standard-bearer who leapt down from his ship as it beached on the Kentish coast, with an exhortation to the hesitant legionaries to follow him if they did not intend the betrayal of their eagle into enemy hands. An earlier example of the same attitude occurs in Plutarch’s account of the battle of Pydna. On this occasion, a captain of one of the Italian contingents seized his unit’s ensign and flung it into the enemy phalanx. Thus blackmailed by the threat of dishonour, his men redoubled their efforts to break the phalanx. For, as Plutarch observes, the Italians in particular regarded it as ignominious to desert their standards.

If, however, the standard was a sacred object which required protection, it could not discharge its practical function – which was to serve as a rallying point. As such, its place was in the forefront of the battle. The legionaries could not be expected to look over their shoulders to discover where they should take their stand. The very name of the standards in Latin, signa, suggests that they were in fact signals, and as tactics became increasingly mobile and less uniform, the need for them increased. Incidentally, the Greeks of the fifth century BC had made no corresponding use of military standards in their compact phalanx battles.

A study of ancient references to the position of the standards on the battlefield suggests that they may have been located immediately behind the front line. They were thus protected, and yet at the same time sufficiently far advanced to serve as marking signals for the greater part of the army. On the other hand, the whole point of Marius’ innovation may have been to confer a single standard on the legion, which would serve its emotional needs, at the same time leaving the standards of the smaller units free to be used, without sentimental inhibitions, for practical purposes. By contrast with legionary standards, the old signalling staves of the maniples had embodied no sacred animals. They had exhibited the open palm of a hand on a raised spear, but were later decorated with garlands and other emblems. When maniples were absorbed into cohorts, the cohort took the leading maniple’s standard.

Similarly, the cavalry standards (vexilla), consisting of flags suspended from a kind of yard-arm and identifying units, would lose their more emotional significance with the adoption of the uniform legionary emblem. By Marius’ time, the Italian cavalry had largely been superseded by overseas cavalry forces (auxilia), who perhaps did not share the Italian veneration for standards and banners. The eagle remained a permanent symbol throughout later centuries of military development. But other forms of standard were also imitated from the usage of outlying peoples on Rome’s frontiers. An interesting example is the draco, which was a windsock of coloured silk, with the silver head and gaping jaws of a dragon.

The Italian captain distinguished by his gesture at Pydna had been a Pelignian. Marius came from Arpinum, a town which had enjoyed full Roman citizen rights since the beginning of the second century BC. Arpinum was not far from the territory of the Peligni, and Marius was perhaps acutely conscious of the importance of military standards and banners in terms of local sentiment. As an eminently practical commander, he must also have been aware of the difficulties which such sentiments created. It is possible to regard the silver eagle as his solution.

■ The Social War and its Consequences

Marius apparently had a parade-ground voice and manner, which were extremely effective in the army, but as they were accompanied by no inkling of statesmanship, they made him a ludicrous figure in politics. After his defeat of the barbarian hordes, he was hailed as a third founder of Rome, a worthy successor to Romulus and Camillus, but during his sixth consulate, in which he was called upon to exercise the faculties of a civil administrator rather than a general, his popularity rapidly declined. The violent demagogues who had secured his previous extensions of office also fell foul of the mob and themselves perished as victims of violence. Unable to obtain a seventh appointment as consul, Marius left on a private tour of Asia Minor, which was already threatened by the growing power of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Marius was perhaps looking for a new war in which he would again have a chance of demonstrating his exclusively military talent. In the course of his travels, he was hospitably entertained by Mithridates, but contrived nevertheless to offend him. After that, the ex-general returned to Rome, where he was no longer very important.

Civil violence on the old party lines was not temporarily suspended. But a new kind of threat arose. An austere and dignified reformer, Marcus Livius Drusus, had proposed that full Roman citizenship should be conferred on the Italian allies. In earlier times, Rome had readily and generously granted such extensions of her citizenship, but latterly, able to recruit cavalry and auxiliary support from overseas, the Senate had felt itself in no need of conciliating the Italians. Drusus was eventually assassinated, and the Italians whom he had championed soon realised that the Popular party was as exclusive in its attitudes towards the franchise as were the nobles. Although the Latins, who possessed almost full citizen rights, remained loyal, the other Italian peoples, notably the Marsi, broke out in angry armed revolt. Their object was no longer to obtain the citizenship, but to establish an independent Italian state.

In the ensuing so-called “Social War” (i.e., war with the socii, or allies), Marius found himself once more serving the Republic in a military capacity, in company with senatorial commanders who would have been his enemies if the emergency had left time for party politics. As it was, he was disappointed by the modest powers entrusted to him on the northern front, while Sulla, operating south of Rome, gained distinguished victories. Perhaps there was no justification for jealousy. Sulla was about 20 years younger than Marius – who was by now 67 years old.

After a second year of struggle, the Romans gained the upper hand over the Italians and wisely decided to negotiate out of strength. Without undue loss of face, they were able to confer full citizenship in all Italy, and with this concession the extremist movement for an independent Italian state collapsed. The conciliatory Roman attitude may be praised as a return to exemplary political wisdom and moderation, but if it had manifested itself earlier, two years of bloody fighting would have been avoided.

Roman military organization had always been closely linked to the constitutional and social establishment. The constitutional changes that followed the Social War had foreseeable military consequences. The Italian populations, being now enfranchised, qualified for enlistment in the legions. There was no longer any question of separate Italian allied contingents. Indeed, these had already been made redundant by the use of overseas auxiliaries; a circumstance which must be counted among Italian grievances before the Social War.

The new prospects of enlistment, especially in view of the proletarian opportunities provided by Marius’ reforms, let alone the prospect of land grants to retired veterans, must have gone far to conciliating the aggrieved Italians. All that was now required was a new war to provide employment and new conquests to provide more land for the veterans. With Mithridates menacing the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, the pretext was not far to seek. In any case, Rome had never welcomed a large consolidated power on the frontiers of her territory.

■ Sulla’s March on Rome

Sulla’s prestige after the Social War was considerable. He was made consul in 88 BC, and the Senate placed him in command of operations against Mithridates. For the inevitable eastern war had by now broken out. But once the Italian allies had been placated, party politics in Rome reasserted themselves, and the same unscrupulous and violent methods were employed. In the People’s Assembly, at the instance of another tribunicial demagogue, the Senate’s appointment of Sulla was overruled, and command in the Mithridatic War was transferred to Marius, who was, even at his advanced age, ambitious to restore his waning reputation by some new military achievement.

At the time when the new legislation was due to take effect, Sulla hastened to rejoin his army in Campania, where it was preparing for the eastern campaign. He tested the consensus among his legionaries and found them ardently loyal to himself. Officers who came from Rome to arrange for the transfer of Sulla’s troops to Marius were roughly handled by the men and driven away with contumely. With six legions at his back, abandoning all pretence to constitutional procedure, Sulla marched on Rome. After a few hours of street-fighting, he was in control of the city. Marius was outlawed and fled, and the tribune who had legislated so blatantly in his favour was killed. However, although this action was made possible by the wholehearted support of Sulla’s men, his officers, with one exception, were appalled at the unprecedented violence of the action and firmly dissociated themselves from it.

Having purged the city ruthlessly of his political opponents, Sulla established his own partisans in power and left Rome once more in preparation for his Mithridatic expectation, which he rightly felt himself well qualified to undertake. For he had already, in the period between the Cimbrian and Social Wars, successfully championed the cause of a Roman protégé ruler in Asia Minor.

Sulla’s undisguised appeal to armed force as a political weapon in Roman internal politics certainly marked a new departure. But in a sense, it was merely the logical development of methods and policies which Marius had already initiated. The provision of land grants for retired veterans had the foreseeable – and no doubt foreseen – effect of securing the allegiance of the troops to their general rather than to the State. Troops who had confidence in the ability of their leader to manipulate legislation to their material advantage in this way were ready to give him enthusiastic support. It was only required in addition that he should offer the prospect of continuous warfare in which new land for distribution could be conquered and new spoils won. Sulla, as a gifted leader, certainly met both these requirements.

The relationship between political and military power became increasingly clear. It was a circular relationship in which political power was the reward of military achievement and military support was guaranteed by the use of political power. In these circumstances, although the Romans – sentiment apart – had an interest in the survival of the Roman State and its ascendancy over barbarous regimes, the allegiance of the armed forces was to their generals rather than to their republican institutions – or indeed to the State itself. It is noteworthy that Julius Caesar’s standard-bearer, a generation after Sulla’s march on Rome, as he leapt down into the sea on the steeply shelving Kentish beach, shouted aloud that he himself at least would do his duty to the Republic and to his general. To a constitutionalist, the order in which he proclaimed his allegiances must seem that of right priority. Such a priority, however, was not by any means universally reflected in military attitudes during the first century BC, as the enduring conflict between Marius and Sulla reveals.

■ Sulla’s War in Greece

The kingdom of Pontus, south of the Black Sea, over which Mithridates reigned, had once been a satrapy of the Persian Empire, but after the time of Alexander the Great its rulers had established themselves as an independent dynasty. The population may have contained Thracian, Scythian and Celtic elements such as had entered from the north, but it was dominated by Iranian feudal and priestly castes, and its kings adopted, or at any rate affected, Greek culture. Mithridates VI, with whom we are here concerned, had presented himself as a champion of Greek civilization, and in this role he had given military protection to the Greek cities on the northern shores of the Black Sea, firmly imposing his authority on this area. As a result, he had access to fertile grain-growing lands and to the resources of wealthy Greek maritime states, including a substantial navy.

However, when Mithridates turned his attention southwards into Asia Minor he came into conflict with rulers who were friends and allies of the Roman People: that is to say, Roman buffer states and protectorates. In this connection, he had already exercised Sulla’s considerable diplomatic ability in 96 BC, when the Roman had been appointed governor of Cilicia. Mithridates was not unwary, but Rome’s preoccupation with the Jugurthine, Cimbric and Social Wars, let alone its own internal dissensions, offered him opportunities which he could not resist.

In 88 BC, when a Roman commander, less adroit than Sulla, had attempted to use puppet forces against him – much as Masinissa had been used against Carthage – Mithridates reacted strongly and inflicted humiliating defeats not only on the puppets but on the Roman armed forces themselves. He then quickly extended his power throughout Asia Minor and the Aegean, where many Greeks, tired of Roman extortions, at first welcomed him. In these cities, Mithridates got rid of the Roman business population by massacring men, women and children, to the reported number of 80,000. He then sent his armies under Greek generals into Greece. Athens was already dominated by a disreputable popular tyrant, who was willing to serve as a Pontic puppet. The Roman governor of Macedonia and the officer whom he delegated acted with vigour and resolution and held the Pontic armies at bay in North Greece, but the arrival of Sulla and his five legions in Epirus (87 BC) was timely.

Sulla laid siege to Athens, starved the city for some time and finally took it by assault. The operation was expensive, but Sulla cut down sacred groves to provide timber for his siege works and appropriated the wealth of Greek temple treasuries to defray costs. He had a superstitious belief in his own good fortune, from which he and his men derived much confidence, but evidently did not worry unduly about the feelings of the gods. The siege of Athens was marked by elaborate mining operations. When the Roman earthworks subsided, the besiegers quickly divined the cause and dug a counter-mine. The sappers of the two sides met underground and fought a desperate battle with their spears amid subterranean gloom.

Sulla permitted the partial sack of Athens, then called a halt to it out of respect for the city’s historic past. Mithridates’ commander Archelaus still controlled the seas, and the rocky terrain in Attica did not provide food for the Roman army. Sulla moved off into the corn-growing Boeotian plain, already the destination of Pontic reinforcements. Here he fought two victorious battles at Chaeronea and Orchomenos.

Mithridates’ armies were a characteristic compound of Greek and Oriental elements. With a Macedonian-type phalanx, the king had put into the field a large contingent of scythe-wheel chariots. There was also a unit which bore the traditional name of “Brazen Shields”. Superior numbers, perhaps, as well as the imposing display of flashing gold and silver arms and armour, at first daunted the Romans. At Chaeronea, therefore, Sulla took up a defensive position and set his men to digging protective entrenchments on their flanks. As he had intended, they soon grew tired of the digging and showed willingness to fight. In the battle which followed, the Pontic phalangists appear to have been poorly trained, and the scythe-wheel chariots were a complete fiasco, provoking the Roman soldiers to open laughter and ironical applause. Casualty figures are derived from Sulla’s own record and seem very unconvincing. He reported 100,000 enemy dead, whereas Roman losses were confined to 14 missing, of whom two were found next day. But in any case, the result was a resounding success for Roman arms.

The flexible generalship of Archelaus cannot be blamed. He made the best of his multitudinous but unseasoned troops – some of whom were freed slaves recruited for the occasion. The phalanx broke under the impact of the Roman javelins and catapult missiles. The Pontic cavalry and light-armed troops continually menaced the Romans with encirclement. But Sulla and his officers averted danger thanks to their own vigilance and the mobility of the men under their command.

Archelaus, who escaped the battle, spent the following winter on the island of Euboea, where he was protected by his navy from Roman attack. Sulla and his army wintered in Athens. In the following spring (85 BC), the two armies met once more in Boeotia, in idyllic country near Orchomenos. Sulla again precipitated an engagement by digging entrenchments. But this time it was the enemy who were provoked, for they were in danger of being confined by Sulla’s earthworks to the marshland around Lake Copais. The Pontic cavalry had some initial success, but Sulla by his personal example saved the situation. Renewed assaults on the Roman entrenchments only exposed the Pontic army to counter-attacks, and Archelaus’ archers, finding themselves all too soon at grips with the legionaries, were reduced to using their arrows as swords. Sulla’s men continued their digging and on the following day, when the whole of the enemy force was committed to interrupting them, the Romans attacked suddenly, captured Archelaus’ camp and slaughtered his scattered troop. Archelaus himself again escaped.

■ War within a War

After Sulla’s dramatic march on Rome in 88 BC, Marius had tried to escape by sea, but found himself stranded on the west coast of Italy, where the local people, anxious only to back the winning side, did not know whether to protect or betray him. As a way out of the difficulty – according to Plutarch – a volunteer Gaul was secretly sent in to murder him. But Marius bellowed at the man in his parade-ground voice and the would-be assassin fled in confusion. The story may not be true, but it is in character.

Finally, Marius reached North Africa. Here, he was persona grata among the settlements of his own retired veteran soldiers. In the following year, Sulla being now occupied with Mithridates, party strife again broke out in Rome, and Marius, seeing his opportunity, landed in Etruria, where more of his old soldiers were settled. With the help of forces raised by his political associates, he sacked Ostia, captured Rome, and launched a reign of terror in which his political opponents were ruthlessly butchered. But the consciousness of Sulla’s power, still poised against him in the East, preyed on his mind. He took to drinking and died during his seventh consulate.

The Popular party, however, remained in power and had sent into Greece legions which purported to be the true army of the Republic. Sulla, now outlawed, was denounced and an appeal was made to his men to desert him and accept the authority of the legitimate Roman commander. However, when the new legions in Greece, respectful of Sulla’s military record, showed every inclination to leave their legitimate commander and join the outlaw, they were tactfully led away through Macedonia and Thrace to concentrate their efforts against Mithridates across the Hellespont. Gaius Flavius Fimbria, a highly efficient, if treacherous, officer had now taken command of them, having secured, in the course of a mutiny, the murder of the commanding officer originally appointed.

Sulla’s friends in Rome had been massacred, his houses burnt, and his wife and children had barely escaped into Greece to join him. In order to return to Rome, to square accounts there, he was now ready to negotiate with Mithridates, and to this end he negotiated with Archelaus at a convenient temple precinct on the Boeotian coast. It was suggested to Sulla that he should accept Mithridates as an ally against his own Roman enemies. Sulla responded with a suggestion that Archelaus should betray Mithridates. Archelaus appeared shocked: upon which, Sulla, who excelled in such negotiations, professed himself equally shocked at Archelaus’ treacherous offer. In the end, it was agreed that Mithridates should beallowed to retain his kingdom, but that he should give up his conquest, with much of his fleet, and pay an indemnity.

Sulla’s legions were offended by such a compromise peace. They felt patriotism for their nation, even if they cared nothing for its present government, and the Romans who had perished in Mithridates’ massacres were not forgotten. Sulla placated them with the rather specious argument that he would have been unable to fight against both Fimbria and Mithridates together. To be fair to Fimbria, he would have succeeded in capturing the Pontic king, if Lucius Licinius Lucullus, Sulla’s trusted officer, who had by now assembled a fleet, had not permitted Mithridates to escape.

With the Pontic menace removed, Sulla moved his army close to Fimbria’s camp in Lydia and settled down to entrenching operations – his characteristic military gambit. Fimbria’s men, dressed for fatigue duties, soon came over and helped with the digging; Fimbria, accurately assessing the situation, committed suicide. Sulla at once took charge of the deceased general’s troops. He punished the Greek cities who had acquiesced in Mithridates’ massacres with enormous financial impositions, which they were unable to support without more help from Roman money-lenders. Leaving Fimbria’s legions to garrison the East, Sulla then returned with his own army, like an avenging angel, to Italy.

Sulla’s army, when it landed at Brunisium (Brindisi), was vastly outnumbered by the armed forces of the Popular Party, but his men were dedicated to him, while those of his enemies were lukewarm. Officers in command of substantial units also joined him, particularly the sons of Marius’ victims and opponents, including Gnaeus Pompeius, who, as a result of the nickname which Sulla later bestowed on him, became known to history as Pompey the Great. Nevertheless, Sulla reached Rome too late to prevent the massacre of his supporters. He was also unpopular with the Samnite Italians, against whom he had fought in the Social War. These allied themselves with the Popular faction and constituted the most serious threat with which Sulla had to deal, but he was at last victorius over them in a fierce battle in Rome’s Colline Gate. Soon after, Marius’ son, besieged in Praeneste in Latium, committed suicide.

Sulla slaughtered his captives in large numbers. Completely in control of Rome and Italy, he drew up a series of lists outlawing his political opponents – who were accordingly massacred. He had himself made dictator in due constitutional form, and remained dictator, even when he had relinquished the formality, until his death from disease in 78 BC.

■ Lucullus and his Navy

Despite what has been said above, the achievements of Lucullus, while serving under Sulla against Mithridates, deserve honourable mention. Lucullus was connected with Sulla by marriage; dedication to the mighty warlord seems to have been the dominant motive in his life. Lucullus served with distinction during the Social War, and during the march on Rome in 88 BC he was apparently the only officer in Sulla’s force to applaud the coup. He was a man of rare literary and scholarly gifts. Sulla dedicated his memoirs to him, and he became Sulla’s literary executor. His negotiations with Fimbria, on the occasion to which we have already alluded, most clearly demonstrate his attitude. If Mithridates were prevented from escaping by sea – so it was urged – then Lucullus and Fimbria would share the glory of his capture, to the exclusion of Sulla. Neither self-interest nor loyalty to the Republic can have led Lucullus to reject Fimbria’s proposal. He must have been governed simply by his fidelity to Sulla.

While Sulla was laying siege to Athens – though himself cut off from supplies by the enemy’s navy – Lucullus had been detailed to raise a fleet from such maritime states in the eastern Mediterranean as had resisted Mithridates. He sailed from Greece for Alexandria in midwinter, over seas infested by Pontic and pirate squadrons, in a small sailing craft, with three other light ships and three Rhodian galleys as an escort. He won political support for the Romans in Crete and was accepted by the citizens of Cyrene as an impartial arbitrator in their own internal disputes. Changing ships several times to baffle enemy intelligence, he at last reached Alexandria, after narrow escapes from pirates in which he lost more than one vessel. But the young Ptolemy of Egypt did not wish to be committed, and his support went no further than a royal welcome, generous hospitality and gifts.

Around Cyprus, enemy war galleys lay in wait, and Lucullus was forced to slip away inconspicuously, hoisting sail only at night and relying on oars by day. But, fortunately, Rhodes had taken a firm stand against the Pontic menace and, with a nucleus of ships which the Rhodians placed at his disposal, Lucullus won over or conquered other Greek islands and steadily enlarged his fleet. In these operations, he was careful not to associate himself with cities which had become pirate havens. Apart from his innate respect for law and order, any such association would have offended his Rhodian allies.

Lucullus later fought two victorious battles with Mithridates’ navy in the north-east Aegean. At Tenedos, he led his fleet into action aboard a Rhodian quinquereme. The enemy admiral, however, came full tilt at the Rhodian with the intention of head-on ramming. On this occasion, the master of Lucullus’ flagship executed an unusual manoeuvre. Afraid to encounter the attacker head-on, he swung round, presented his poop, and, backing water, met the enemy stern first. The configuration of the Rhodian ship’s hull was apparently such that in this posture it sustained no damage.

1 Tribuni plebis, not to be confused with military tribunes (tribuni militum). By the middle fifth century BC, they were ten in number.

2 Boeorix, king of the Cimbri, negotiated with Marius before the battle of Vercellae, but does not appear as a conspicuous character.