No More Learning

the no less complete defeat of the second Roman army.
It is asserted that 80,000 Roman soldiers and half as many of the immense and helpless body of camp-followers perished, and that only ten men escaped: this much is certain, that only a few out of the two armies succeeded in escaping, for the Romans had fought with the river in their rear. It was a calamity which materially and morally far surpassed the day of Cannae. The defeats of Carbo, of Silanus, and of Longinus had passed without producing any permanent impression on the Italians. They were accustomed to open every war with disasters ; the invin- cibleness of the Roman arms was so firmly established, that it seemed superfluous to attend to the pretty numerous exceptions. Bnt the battle of Arausio, the alarming proxi mity of the victorious Cimbrian army to the undefended passes of the Alps, the insurrections breaking out afresh
The opposition.
and with increased force both in the Roman territory beyond the Alps and among the Lusitanians, the defence less condition of Italy, produced a sudden and fearful awakening from these dreams. Men recalled the never wholly forgotten Celtic inroads of the fourth century, the day on the Allia and the burning of Rome : with the double force at once of the oldest remembrance and of the freshest alarm the terror of the Gauls came upon Italy ; through all the west people seemed to be aware that the Roman empire was beginning to totter. As after the battle
of Cannae, the period of mourning was shortened by decree of the senate. 1 The new enlistments brought out the most painful scarcity of men. All Italians capable of bearing arms had to swear that they would not leave Italy; the captains of the vessels lying in the Italian ports were instructed not to take on board any man fit for service.
It is impossible to tell what might have happened, had the Cimbri immediately after their double victory advanced through the gates of the Alps into Italy. But they first overran the territory of the Arverni, who with difficulty defended themselves in their fortresses against the enemy ; and soon, weary of sieges, set out from thence, not to Italy,
but westward to the Pyrenees.
If the torpid organism of the Roman polity could still of
'tse^ reach a crisis of wholesome reaction, that reaction could not but set in now, when, by one of the marvellous pieces of good fortune, in which the history of Rome is so rich, the danger was sufficiently imminent to rouse all the energy and all the patriotism of the burgesses, and yet did not burst upon them so suddenly as to leave no space for the development of their resources. But the very same phenomena, which had occurred four years previously after the African defeats, presented themselves afresh. In fact the African and Gallic disasters were essentially of the same
1 To this, beyond doubt, the fragment of Diodorus ( Vat. p. laa) relates.
438
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
439
kind. It may be that primarily the blame of the former
fell more on the oligarchy as a whole, that of the latter
more on individual magistrates ; but public opinion justly recognized in both, above all things, the bankruptcy of the government, which in its progressive development im
perilled first the honour and now the very existence of the
state. People just as little deceived themselves then as
now regarding the true seat of the evil, but as little now
as then did they make even an attempt to apply the
remedy at the proper point. They saw well that the system Wirfcw of was to blame ; but on this occasion also they adhered to {JJJJJ00" the method of calling individuals to account — only no
doubt this second storm discharged itself on the heads of the oligarchy so much the more heavily, as the calamity of 649 105. exceeded in extent and peril that of 645. The sure 109. instinctive feeling of the public, that there was no resource against the oligarchy except the tyrannis, was once more apparent in their readily entering into every attempt by officers of note to force the hand of the government and, under one form or another, to overturn the oligarchic rule
by a dictatorship.
It was against Quintus Caepio that their attacks were
first directed ; and justly, in so far as he had primarily occasioned the defeat of Arausio by his insubordination, even apart from the probably well-founded but not proved charge of embezzling the Tolosan booty; but the fury which the opposition displayed against him was essentially augmented by the fact, that he had as consul ventured on an attempt to wrest the posts of jurymen from the capitalists
On his account the old venerable principle, that the sacredness of the magistracy should be respected even in the person of its worst occupant, was violated; and, while the censure due to the author of the calamitous day of Cannae had been silently repressed within the breast, the author of the defeat of Arausio was decree of the people
376).
by
(p.
440
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH boor iv
unconstitutionally deprived of his proconsulship, and—what had not occurred since the crisis in which the monarchy had perished — his property was confiscated to the state-
105. chest (649 Not long afterwards he was second 104. decree of the burgesses expelled from the senate (650).
But this was not enough more victims were desired, and above all Caepio's blood. A number of tribunes of the people favourable to the opposition, with Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Norbanus at their head, proposed in
Gaul; in spite of the de facto abolition of arrest investigation and of the punishment of death for political offences, Caepio was arrested and the intention of pro nouncing and executing in his case sentence of death was openly expressed. The government party attempted to get rid of the proposal by tribunician intervention but the interceding tribunes were violently driven from the assembly, and in the furious tumult the first men of the senate were assailed with stones. The investigation could not be prevented, and the warfare of prosecutions pursued its
108. course in 651 as had done six years before Caepio himself, his colleague in the supreme command Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, and numerous other men of note were condemned tribune of the people, who was friend of Caepio, with difficulty succeeded by the sacrifice of his own civic existence in saving at least the life of the chief persons accused. 1
The deposition from office of the proconsul Caepio, with which was combined the confiscation of his property (Li v. Ep. 67), was probably pronounced by the assembly of the people immediately after the battle of
105. Arausio (6th October 649). That some time elapsed between the deposition and his proper downfall, clearly shown by the proposal made 104. in 650, and aimed at Caepio, that deposition from office should involve the forfeiture of a seat in the senate (Asconius in Corntl, p. 78). The
to appoint an extraordinary judicial commission in
101. 651
reference to the embezzlement and treason perpetrated in
fragments of Licinianus (p. 10 Caepio L. Saturnini rogation* up the allusion in Cic. ie Or.
Cn. Manilius oh eandem causam quam et civitate est eito [? ] eiectus which clears a8, 125) now inform us that iaw
during
1
: a
? ).
it
e;; ii.
a
is
; a ; by ;a
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
441
Of more importance than this measure of revenge was Marfai the question how the dangerous war beyond the Alps was eom'dm, to be further carried on, and first of all to whom the in-chiet supreme command in it was to be committed. With an
treatment of the matter it was not difficult to make a fitting choice. Rome was doubtless, in comparison
with earlier times, not rich in military notabilities; Quintus Maximus had commanded with distinction in Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and Quintus Minucius in the regions of the Danube, Quintus Metellus, Publius Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Marius in Africa ; and the object proposed was not to defeat a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal, but again to make good the often-tried superiority of Roman arms and Roman tactics in opposition to the barbarians of the north —an object which required no genius, but merely a stern and capable soldier. But it was precisely a time when nothing was so difficult as the unprejudiced settlement of a question of administration. The government was, as it
unprejudiced
yet
proposed by Lucius Appuleius Saturninus brought about this catastrophe.
This is evidently no other than the Appuleian law as to the minuta maiestas of the Roman state (Cic. de Or. ii. 35, 107 ; 49, aoi), or, as its
tenor was already formerly explained (ii. p. 143 of the first edition [of the German]), the proposal of Saturninus for the appointment of an extra ordinary commission to investigate the treasons that had taken place during
the Cimbrian troubles. The commission of inquiry as to the gold of Tolosa
(Cic. de N. D. lii. 30, 74) arose in quite a similar way out of the Appuleian
law, as the special courts of inquiry —further mentioned in that passage—as
to a scandalous bribery of judges out of the Mucian law of 613, as to the 141. occurrences with the Vestals out of the Peducaean law of 641, and as to the 118. Jugurthinewarout oftheMamilianlawof644. — A comparison of these cases 110. also shows that in such special commissions different in this respect from
the ordinary ones —even punishments affecting life and limb might be and were inflicted. If elsewhere the tribune of the people, Gaius Norbanus, is named as the person who set agoing the proceedings against Caepio and was afterwards brought to trial for doing so (Cic. de Or. 410, 167 48,
49, aoo Or. Part. 30, 105, et al. ), this not inconsistent with the view given above for the proposal proceeded as usual from several tribunes
of the people {ad Herenn. 14, 34 Cic. de Or. 47, 197), and, as Saturninus was already dead when the aristocratic party was in a position
to think of retaliation, they fastened on his colleague. As to the period of this second and final condemnation of Caepio, the usual very inconsiderate hypothesis, which places in 659, ten years after the battle of Arausio, 95. has been already rejected. rests simply on the fact that Crassus when
199
it
i.
It
;
; ;
ii.
ii.
;
is
;
442
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
could not but be and as the Jugurthine war had already shown, so utterly bankrupt in public opinion, that its ablest generals had to retire in the full career of victory, whenever it occurred to an officer of mark to revile them before the people and to get himself as the candidate of the opposition appointed by the latter to the head of affairs. It was no wonder that what took place after the victories of Metellus was repeated on a greater scale after the defeats of Gnaeus Mallius and Quintus Caepio. Once more Gaius Marius came forward, in spite of the law which prohibited the holding of the consulship more than once, as a candidate for the supreme magistracy ; and not only was he nominated as consul and charged with the chief command in the Gallic war, while he was still in Africa at the head of the army there, but he was reinvested with the consulship for five
104-100. years in succession (650-654)— in a way, which looked like an intentional mockery of the exclusive spirit that the
95. consul, consequently in 659, spoke in favour of Caepio (Cic. Brut. 44, 162) ; which, however, he manifestly did not as his advocate, but on the occasion when Norbanus was brought to account by Publius Sulpicius
99. 104. Rufus for his conduct toward Caepio in 659. Formerly the year 650 was assumed for this second accusation ; now that we know that it originated
108. from a proposal of Saturninus, we can only hesitate between 651, when he was tribune of the people for the first time (Plutarch, Mar. 14 ; Oros.
100. v. 17 ; App. i. 28 ; Diodor. p. 608, 631), and 654, when he held that office a second time. There are not materials for deciding the point with entire certainty, but the great preponderance of probability is in favour of the former year ; partly because it was nearer to the disastrous events in Gaul, partly because in the tolerably full accounts of the second tribunate of Saturninus there is no mention of Quintus Caepio the father and the acts of violence directed against him. The circumstance, that the sums paid back to the treasury in consequence of the verdicts as to the embezzlement of the Tolosan booty were claimed by Saturninus in his second tribunate for his schemes of colonization (De Viris III. 73, 5, and thereon Orelli, Ind. Legg. p. 137), is not in itself decisive, and may, more over, have been easily transferred by mistake from the first African to the second general agrarian law of Saturninus.
The fact that afterwards, when Norbanus was impeached, his Impeach ment proceeded on the very ground of the law which he had taken part in suggesting, was an ironical incident common in the Roman political procedure of this period (Cic. Brut. 89, 305) and should not mislead us into the belief that the Appuleian law was, like the later Cornelian, a general law of high treason.
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
443
nobility had exhibited in reference to this very man in all its folly and shortsightedness, but was also unparalleled in the
annals of the republic, and in fact absolutely incompatible with the spirit of the free constitution of Rome. In the Roman military system in particular —the transformation of which from a burgess-militia into a body of mercenaries, begun in the African war, was continued and completed by Marius during his five years of a supreme command un limited through the exigencies of the time still more than through the terms of his appointment —the profound traces of this unconstitutional commandership-in-chief of the first democratic general remained visible for all time.
The new commander-in-chief, Gaius Marius, appeared in 650 beyond the Alps, followed by a number of experi- enced officers—among whom the bold captor of Jugurtha, Lucius Sulla, soon acquired fresh distinction —and by a numerous host of Italian and allied soldiers. At first he did not find the enemy against whom he was sent. The singular people, who had conquered at Arausio, had in the meantime (as we have already mentioned), after
the country to the west of the Rhone, crossed the Pyrenees and were carrying on a desultory warfare in Spain with the brave inhabitants of the northern coast and of the interior; it seemed as if the Germans wished at their very first appearance in the field of history to display their lack of persistent grasp. So Marius found ample time on the one hand to reduce the revolted Tectosages to obedience, to confirm afresh the wavering fidelity of the subject Gallic and Ligurian cantons, and to obtain support and contingents within and without the Roman province from the allies who were equally with the Romans placed in peril by the Cimbri, such as the Mas- siliots, the Allobroges, and the Sequani ; and on the other hand, to discipline the army entrusted to him by strict training and impartial justice towards all whether high or
Roman jS? TM*
plundering
108.
Gmbri Teatones,
Helvetll
humble, and to prepare the soldiers for the more serious labours of war by marches and extensive works of entrench ing—particularly the construction of a canal of the Rhone, afterwards handed over to the Massiliots, for facilitating the transit of the supplies sent from Italy to the army. He maintained a strictly defensive attitude, and did not cross the bounds of the Roman province.
At length, apparently in the course of 651, the wave of tne Cimbri, after having broken itself in Spain on the brave resistance of the native tribes and especially of the Celtibe- rians, flowed back again over the Pyrenees and thence, as it appears, passed along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, where everything from the Pyrenees to the Seine submitted to the terrible invaders. There, on the confines of the brave confederacy of the Belgae, they first encountered serious resistance ; but there also, while they were in the territory of the Vellocassi (near Rouen), considerable rein forcements reached them. Not only three cantons of the Helvetii, including the Tigorini and Tougeni who had formerly fought against the Romans at the Garonne, associated themselves, apparently about this period, with the Cimbri, but these were also joined by the kindred Teutones under their king Teutobod, who had been driven by events which tradition has not recorded from their home on the Baltic sea to appear now on the Seine. 1 But even the united hordes were unable to overcome the brave
444
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
Expedition resistance of the Belgae. The leaders accordingly resolved,
resolved on.
now tnat tne'r numbers were tnus swelled, to enter in all
1 The view here presented rests in the main on the comparatively trust worthy account in the Epitome of Livy (where we should read reversi in Galliam in Vellocassii u Teutonit coniunxerunt) and in Obsequens ; to the disregard of authorities of lesser weight, which make the Teutones appear by the side of the Cimbri at an earlier date, some of them, such as Appian, Celt 13, even as early as the battle of Noreia. With these we connect the notices in Caesar (B. G. i. 33 ; 4, 29) as the invasion of the Roman province and of Italy by the Cimbri can only mean the
108. expedition of 65a.
ii. ;
cha*. v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
445
earnest on the expedition to Italy which they had several times contemplated. In order not to encumber themselves
with the spoil which they had heretofore collected, they
left it behind under the protection of a division of 6000 men, which after many wanderings subsequently gave rise
to the tribe of the Aduatuci on the Sambre. But, whether from the difficulty of finding supplies on the Alpine routes
or from other reasons, the mass again broke up into two hosts, one of which, composed of the Cimbri and Tigorini,
was to recross the Rhine and to invade Italy through the passes of the eastern Alps already reconnoitred in 641, and 113. the other, composed of the newly-arrived Teutones, the Tougeni, and the Ambrones —the flower of the Cimbrian
host already tried in the battle of Arausio—was to invade
Italy through Roman Gaul and the western passes. It Teutones was this second division,» which in the summer of 6? -j 2 once TM „i,£i? ? i
province of more crossed the Rhone without hindrance, and on its left Gaul,
bank resumed, after a pause of nearly three years, the struggle with the Romans. Marius awaited them in a well- chosen and well-provisioned camp at the confluence of the Isere with the Rhone, in which position he intercepted the passage of the barbarians by either of the only two military routes to Italy then practicable, that over the Little St Bernard, and that along the coast The Teutones attacked the camp which obstructed their passage; for three con secutive days the assault of the barbarians raged around the Roman entrenchments, but their wild courage was thwarted by the superiority of the Romans in fortress-warfare and by the prudence of the general. After severe loss the bold associates resolved to give up the assault, and to march onward to Italy past the camp. For six successive days they continued to defile—a proof of the cumbrousness of their baggage still more than of the immensity of their numbers. The general permitted the march to proceed without attacking them. We can easily understand
why
Battle of g^uae.
he did not allow himself to be led astray by the insulting inquiries of the enemy whether the Romans had no com missions for their wives at home ; but the fact, that he did not take advantage of this audacious defiling of the hostile columns in front of the concentrated Roman troops for the purpose of attack, shows how little he trusted his unpractised soldiers.
When the march was over, he broke up his encampment and followed in the steps of the enemy, preserving rigorous order and carefully entrenching himself night after night. The Teutones, who were striving to gain the coast road, marching down the banks of the Rhone reached the district of Aquae Sextiae, followed by the Romans. The light Ligurian troops of the Romans, as they were drawing water, here came into collision with the Celtic rear-guard, the Ambrones ; the conflict soon became general ; after a hot struggle the Romans conquered and pursued the retreating enemy up to their waggon-stronghold. This first successful collision elevated the spirits of the general as well as of the soldiers ; on the third day after it Marius drew up his array for a decisive battle on the hill, the summit of which bore the Roman camp. The Teutones, long impatient to measure themselves against their antagonists, immediately rushed up the hill and began the conflict. It was severe and protracted : up to midday the Germans stood like walls; but the unwonted heat of the Provencal sun relaxed their energies, and a false alarm in their rear, where a band of Roman camp-boys ran forth from a wooded ambuscade with loud shouts, utterly decided the breaking up of the wavering ranks. The whole horde was scattered, and, as was to be expected in a foreign land, either put to death or taken prisoners. Among the captives was king
Teutobod ; among the killed a multitude of women, who, not unacquainted with the treatment which awaited them as slaves, had caused themselves to be slain in desperate
446
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
447
resistance at their waggons, or had put themselves to death in captivity, after having vainly requested to be dedicated to the service of the gods and of the sacred virgins of Vesta
time, for their brothers-in-arms were already on the south side of the Alps. In alliance with the Helvetii, the Cimbri had without difficulty passed from the Seine to the upper valley of the Rhine, had crossed the chain of the Alps by the Brenner pass, and had descended thence through the valleys of the Eisach and Adige into the Italian plain. Here the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus was to guard the passes ; but not fully acquainted with the country and afraid of having his flank turned, he had not ventured to advance into the Alps themselves, but had posted himself below Trent on the left bank of the Adige, and had secured in any event his retreat to the right bank by the construc tion of a bridge. When the Cimbri, however, pushed forward in dense masses from the mountains, a panic seized the Roman army, and legionaries and horsemen ran off, the latter straight for the capital, the former to the nearest height which seemed to afford security. With great difficulty Catulus brought at least the greater portion of his army by a stratagem back to the river and over the bridge, before the enemy, who commanded the upper course of the Adige and were already floating down trees and beams against the bridge, succeeded in destroying it and thereby cutting off the retreat of the army. But the general had to leave behind a legion on the other bank, and the cowardly tribune who led it was already disposed to capitulate, when the centurion Gnaeus Petreius of Atina struck him down and cut his way through the midst of the enemy to the main army on the right bank of the Adige. Thus the army, and in some degree even the honour of their arms, was saved ; but the consequences of the neglect
(summer of 652).
102. Thus Gaul was relieved from the Germans ; and it was Cimbriani
448
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
to occupy the passes and of the too hasty retreat were yet very seriously felt. Catulus was obliged to withdraw to the right bank of the Po and to leave the whole plain between the Po and the Alps in the power of the Cimbri, so that communication was maintained with Aquileia only
102. by sea. This took place in the summer of 652, about the same time when the decisive battle between the Teutones and the Romans occurred at Aquae Sextiae. Had the Cimbri continued their attack without interruption, Rome might have been greatly embarrassed ; but on this occasion also they remained faithful to their custom of resting in winter, and all the more, because the rich country, the unwonted quarters under the shelter of a roof, the warm baths, and the new and abundant supplies for eating and drinking invited them to make themselves comfortable for
the moment. Thereby the Romans gained time to en counter them with united forces in Italy. It was no season to resume—as the democratic general would perhaps other wise have done — the interrupted scheme of conquest in Gaul, such as Gaius Gracchus had probably projected.
From the battle-field of Aix the victorious army was con ducted to the Po; and after a brief stay in the capital, where Marius refused the triumph offered to him until he had utterly subdued the barbarians, he arrived in person
101. at the united armies. In the spring of 653 they again crossed the Po, 50,000 strong, under the consul Marius and the proconsul Catulus, and marched against the Cimbri, who on their part seem to have marched up the river with a view to cross the mighty stream at its source.
Battle on Raudine
The two armies met below Vercellae not far from the confluence of the Sesia with the Po,1 just at the spot where
1 It is injudicious to deviate from the traditional account and to transfer the field of battle to Verona : in so doing the fact is overlooked that a whole winter and various movements of troops intervened between the conflicts on the Adige and the decisive engagement, and that Catulus, ac cording to express statement (Plut. Mar. 34), had retreated as far as the
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
449
Hannibal had fought his first battle on Italian soil. The Cimbri desired battle, and according to their custom sent
to the Romans to settle the time and place for it ; Marius gratified them and named the next day — it was the 30th
July 653 — and the Raudine plain, a wide level space, 10L which the superior Roman cavalry found advantageous for their movements. Here they fell upon the enemy expect
ing them and yet taken by surprise ; for in the dense morning mist the Cimbrian cavalry found itself in hand-to- hand conflict with the stronger cavalry of the Romans before it anticipated attack, and was thereby thrown back upon the infantry which was just making its dispositions for battle. A complete victory was gained with slight loss, and the Cimbri were annihilated. Those might be deemed fortunate who met death in the battle, as most did, includ ing the brave king Boiorix; more fortunate at least than those who afterwards in despair laid hands on themselves, or were obliged to seek in the slave -market of Rome the master who might retaliate on the individual Northman for the audacity of having coveted the beauteous south before it was time. The Tigorini, who had remained behind in the passes of the Alps with the view of subsequently following the Cimbri, ran off on the news of the defeat to their native land. The human avalanche, which for thirteen years had alarmed the nations from the Danube to the
Ebro, from the Seine to the Po, rested beneath the sod or toiled under the yoke of slavery ; the forlorn hope of the German migrations had performed its duty ; the homeless people of the Cimbri and their comrades were no more.
The political parties of Rome continued their pitiful The quarrels over the carcase, without troubling themselves ^j°2, about the great chapter in the world's history the first page partiea,
right bank of the Po. The statements that the Cimbri were defeated on the Po (Hier. Chron. ), and that they were defeated where Stilicho after wards defeated the Getae, i. e. at Cberasco on the Tanaro, although both inaccurate, point at least to Vercellae much rather than to Verona.
VOL. Ill
94
450
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
of which was thus opened, without even giving way to the pure feeling that on this day Rome's aristocrats as well as Rome's democrats had done their duty. The rivalry of the two generals — who were not only political antagonists, but were also set at variance in a military point of view by the so different results of the two campaigns of the previous year — broke out immediately after the battle in the most offensive form. Catulus might with justice assert that the centre division which he commanded had decided the victory, and that his troops had captured thirty-one standards, while those of Marius had brought in only two , his soldiers led even the deputies of the town of Parma through the heaps of the dead to show to them that Marius had slain his thousand, but Catulus his ten thousand. Nevertheless Marius was regarded as the real conqueror of the Cimbri, and justly ; not merely because by virtue of his higher rank he had held the chief command on the decisive day, and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae Sextiae. But at that period it was considerations of political partisan ship rather than of military merit which attached the glory
of having saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones entirely to the name of Marius. Catulus was a polished and clever man, so graceful a speaker that his euphonious language sounded almost like eloquence, a tolerable writer of memoirs and occasional poems, and an excellent con noisseur and critic of art ; but he was anything but a man of the people, and his victory was a victory of the aristocracy. The battles of the rough farmer on the other hand, who had been raised to honour by the common people and had led the common people to victory, were not merely defeats of the Cimbri and Teutones, but also defeats of the govern ment : there were associated with them hopes far different
CHAP, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
451
from that of being able once more to cany on mercantile transactions on the one side of the Alps or to cultivate the fields without molestation on the other. Twenty years had elapsed since the bloody corpse of Gaius Gracchus had been flung into the Tiber ; for twenty years the govern ment of the restored oligarchy had been endured and cursed ; still there had risen no avenger for Gracchus, no second master to prosecute the building which he had begun. There were many who hated and hoped, many of the worst and many of the best citizens of the state : was the man, who knew how to accomplish this vengeance and these wishes, found at last in the son of the day-labourer of Arpinum?
Were they really on the threshold of the
new much-dreaded and much-desired second revolution ?
«5a
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION BOOK IV
CHAPTER VI
Mario*. 155.
THE ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION AND THE ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained municipal rights as Cereatae Marianae and still at the present day bears the name of " Marius' home " (Casamare). He was reared at the plough, in circumstances so humble that they seemed to preclude him from access even to the municipal offices of Arpinum : he learned early—what he practised afterwards even when a general—to bear hunger and thirst, the heat of summer
and the cold of winter, and to sleep on the hard ground. As soon as his age allowed him, he had entered the army and through service in the severe school of the Spanish wars had rapidly risen to be an officer. In Scipio's Numantine war he, at that time twenty-three years of age, attracted the notice of the stern general by the neatness with which he kept his horse and his accoutrements, as well as by his bravery in combat and his decorous demeanour in camp. He had returned home with honour able scars and warlike distinctions, and with the ardent wish to make himself a name in the career on which he had gloriously entered ; but, as matters then stood, a man of even the highest merit could not attain those political offices, which alone led to the higher military posts, without
chap, vi ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
453
wealth and without connections. The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the
So by dint of great efforts and after various miscar
riages he succeeded, in 639, in attaining the praetorship, 111.
in which he found opportunity of displaying afresh his
military ability as governor of Further Spain. How he
thereafter in spite of the aristocracy received the consulship
in 647 and, as proconsul (648, 649), terminated the African 107. 104 war ; and how, called after the calamitous day of Arausio
to the superintendence of the war against the Germans, he
had his consulship renewed for four successive years from
650 to 653 (a thing unexampled in the annals of the 104-101. republic) and vanquished and annihilated the Cimbri in
Cisalpine, and the Teutones in Transalpine, Gaul—has
been already related. In his military position he had
shown himself a brave and upright man, who administered
justice impartially, disposed of the spoil with rare honesty and disinterestedness, and was thoroughly incorruptible ; a skilful organizer, who had brought the somewhat rusty machinery of the Roman military system once more into a state of efficiency ; an able general, who kept the soldier under discipline and withal in good humour and at the same time won his affections in comrade-like intercourse, but looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the proper time. He was not, as far as we can judge, a man of eminent military capacity; but the very respectable qualities which he possessed were quite sufficient under the existing circumstances to procure for him the reputation of such capacity, and by virtue of it he had taken his place in a fashion of unparalleled honour among the consulars and the triumphators. But he was none the better fitted on that account for the brilliant circle. His voice remained harsh and loud, and his look wild, as if he still saw before him Libyans or Cimbrians, and not well-
Julii.
Political
Marto"
4S4
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
bred and perfumed colleagues. That he was superstitious like a genuine soldier of fortune ; that he was induced to become a candidate for his first consulship, not by the impulse of his talents, but primarily by the utterances of an Etruscan haruspex ; and that in the campaign with the Teutones a Syrian prophetess Martha lent the aid of her oracles to the council of war, —these things were not, in the strict sense, unaristocratic : in such matters, then as at all times, the highest and lowest strata of society met. But the want of political culture was unpardonable ; it was com mendable, no doubt, that he had the skill to defeat the barbarians, but what was to be thought of a consul who was so ignorant of constitutional etiquette as to appear in triumphal costume in the senate I In other respects too the plebeian character clung to him. He was not merely— according to aristocratic phraseology—a poor man, but, what was worse, frugal and a declared enemy of all bribery and corruption. After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond of his cups, especially in his later years ; he knew not the art of giving feasts, and kept a bad cook. It was likewise awkward that the consular understood nothing but Latin and had to decline conversing in Greek ; that he felt the Greek plays wearisome might pass—he was presumably not the only one who did so — but to confess to the feeling of weariness was naive. Thus he remained throughout life a countryman cast adrift among aristocrats, and annoyed by the keenly-felt sarcasms and still more keenly -felt commiseration of his colleagues, which he had not the self-command to despise as he despised them selves.
Marius stood aloof from the parties not much less than from society. The measures which he carried in his tribu- 119. nate of the people (635) —a better control over the delivery of the voting- tablets with a view to do away with the
scandalous frauds that were therein practised, and the pre
chap, vi ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
455
vention of extravagant proposals for largesses to the people
(P- 375) —do not bear the stamp of a party, least of all that
of the democratic, but merely show that he hated what was unjust and irrational ; and how could a man like this, a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination, have been
from the first a revolutionist ? The hostile attacks of the aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of the opponents of the government ; and there he speedily found himself elevated in the first instance to be general of the opposition, and destined perhaps for still higher things hereafter. But this was far more the effect
of the stringent force of circumstances and of the general
need which the opposition had for a chief, than his own
work ; he had at any rate since his departure for Africa in 647-8 hardly tarried, in passing, for a brief period in the 107-A capital. It was not till the latter half of 653 that he 10L returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double honours —decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the
same time a novice in politics. It was certain beyond dispute, not only that Marius had saved Rome, but that he was the only man who could have saved it ; his name was on every one's lips ; the men of quality acknowledged his services ; with the people he was more popular than any one before or after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughness; he was called by the multitude a third Romulus and a second Camillus; libations were poured forth to him like the gods. It was no wonder that the head of the peasant's son grew giddy at
times with all this glory ; that he compared his march from Africa to Gaul to the victorious processions of Dionysus from continent to continent, and had a cup — none of the smallest — manufactured for his use after the model of that of Bacchus. There was just as much of hope as of gratitude
456
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
in this delirious enthusiasm of the people, which might well have led astray a man of colder blood and more mature political experience. The work of Marius seemed to his admirers by no means finished. The wretched government oppressed the land more heavily than did the barbarians : on him, the first man of Rome, the favourite of the people, the head of the opposition, devolved the task of once more delivering Rome. It is true that to one who was a rustic and a soldier the political proceedings of the capital were strange and incongruous : he spoke as ill as he commanded well, and displayed a far firmer bearing in presence of the lances and swords of the enemy than in presence of the
applause or hisses of the multitude; but his inclinations were of little moment. The hopes of which he was the object constrained him. His military and political position
was such that, if he would not break with the glorious past, if he would not deceive the expectations of his party and in fact of the nation, if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs and put an end to the government of the restoration ; and if he only possessed the internal qualities of a head of the people, he might certainly dispense with
those which he lacked as a popular leader.
He held in his hand a formidable weapon in the newly
The new
j,^. organized army. Previously to his time the fundamental tion. principle of the Servian constitution —by which the levy was
limited entirely to the burgesses possessed of property, and the distinctions as to armour were regulated solely by the property qualification 115, 396) —had necessarily been in various respects relaxed. The minimum census of 1,000 asses (£az)> which bound its possessor to enter the burgess- army, had been lowered to 4000 (^17 50). The older
six property-classes, distinguished
of armour, had been restricted to three
ance with the Servian organization they selected the cavalry
their respective kinds for, while in accord
by ;
; p.
1
(i.
chap. VI ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
457
from the wealthiest, and the light-armed from the poorest,
of those liable to serve, they arranged the middle class, the proper infantry of the line, no longer according to property
but according to age of service, in the three divisions of hastati, principes, and triarii. They had, moreover, long
ago brought in the Italian allies to share to a very great extent in war-service ; but in their case too, just as among
the Roman burgesses, military duty was chiefly imposed on
the propertied classes. Nevertheless the Roman military system down to the time of Marius rested in the main on
that primitive organization of the burgess-militia. But it
was no longer suited for the altered circumstances. The better classes of society kept aloof more and more from service in the army, and the Roman and Italic middle class
in general was disappearing ; while on the other hand the considerable military resources of the extra-Italian allies and subjects had become available, and the Italian proletariate
also, properly applied, afforded at least a very useful material
for military objects. The burgess -cavalry which
was meant to be formed from the class of the wealthy, had practically ceased from service in the field even before the time of Marius. last mentioned as an actual corps (Tarmie in the Spanish campaign of 614, when drove the ill general to despair by its insolent arrogance and its insub ordination, and war broke out between the troopers and
the general, waged on both sides with equal unscrupulous- ness. In the Jugurthine war continues to appear merely as
sort of guard of honour for the general and foreign princes; thenceforth wholly disappears. In like manner the filling up of the complement of the legions with properly qualified persons bound to serve proved in the ordinary course of things difficult so that exertions, such as were necessary after the battle of Arausio, would have been in all probability really impracticable with the retention of the existing rules as to the obligation of service. On the other hand even
it ;
a
a
it
it
(p. 8),
It is
458
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT RESOLUTION book iv
before the time of Marius, especially in the cavalry and the light infantry, extra- Italian subjects—the heavy mounted troopers of Thrace, the light African cavalry, the excellent light infantry of the nimble Ligurians, the slingers from the Baleares —were employed in ever-increasing numbers even beyond their own provinces for the Roman armies ; and at the same time, while there was a want of qualified burgess- recruits, the non-qualified poorer burgesses pressed forward unbidden to enter the army ; in fact, from the mass of the civic rabble without work or averse to and from the considerable advantages which the Roman war-service yielded, the enlistment of volunteers could not be difficult.
was therefore simply necessary consequence of the political and social changes in the state, that its military arrangements should exhibit transition from the system of the burgess-levy to the system of contingents and enlist ing that the cavalry and light troops should be essentially formed out of the contingents of the subjects — in the Cim- brian campaign, for instance, contingents were summoned from as far as Bithynia and that in the case of the infantry of the line, while the former arrangement of obligation to service was not abolished, every free-born burgess should at the same time be permitted voluntarily to enter the army,
107. as was first done by Marius in 647.
To this was added the reducing the infantry of the line
to level, which likewise to be referred to Marius. The Roman method of aristocratic classification had hitherto prevailed also within the legion. Each of the four divisions of the velites, the hastati, the principes, and the triarii —or, as we may say, the vanguard, the first, second, and third line — had hitherto possessed its special qualification for service, as respected property or age, and in great part also its distinctive equipment each had its definite place once for all assigned in the order of battle each had its definite military rank and its own standard. All these distinctions
;
;
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a;
is
;
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it,
chap, VI ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
459
were now superseded. Any one admitted as a legionary at
all needed no further qualification in order to serve in any division ; the discretion of the officers alone decided as to
his place. All distinctions of armour were set aside, and consequently all recruits were uniformly trained. Connected, doubtless, with this change were the various improvements which Marius introduced in the armament, the carrying of
the baggage, and similar matters, and which furnish an honourable evidence of his insight into the practical details
of the business of war and of his care for his soldiers ; and more especially the new method of drill devised by Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul 649) the comrade of Marius in the 10& African war. It is a significant fact, that this method con siderably increased the military culture of the individual soldier, and was essentially based upon the training of the future gladiators which was usual in the fighting-schools of
the time. The arrangement of the legion became totally different. The thirty companies (manipuli) of heavy infantry, which—each in two sections (centuriae) composed respect ively of 60 men in the first two, and of 30 men in the third, division—had hitherto formed the tactical unit, were replaced by 1 o cohorts (cohortes) each with its own standard and each of 6, or often only of 5, sections of 100 men apiece; so that, although at the same time 1200 men were saved by the suppression of the light infantry of the legion, yet the total numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to from 5000 to 6000 men. The custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, but, while previously each division had formed a distinct corps, it was in future left to the general to distribute the cohorts, of which he had the disposal, in the three lines as he thought best. Military rank was determined solely by the numerical order of the
soldiers and of the divisions.
several parts of the legion — the
head, the horse, the boar — which had hitherto probably been
The four standards of the wolf, the ox with a man's
460
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
carried before the cavalry and the three divisions of heavy infantry, disappeared; there came instead the ensigns of the new cohorts, and the new standard which Marius gave to the legion as a whole—the silver eagle. While within the legion every trace of the previous civic and aristocratic classification thus disappeared, and the only distinctions henceforth occurring among the legionaries were purely military, accidental circumstances had some decades earlier given rise to a privileged division of the army alongside of the legions —the bodyguard of the general. Hitherto selected men from the allied contingents had formed the personal escort of the general ; the employment of Roman legionaries, or even men voluntarily offering themselves, for personal service with him was at variance with the stern disciplinary obligations of the mighty commonwealth. But when the Numantine war had reared an army demoralized beyond parallel, and Scipio Aemilianus, who was called to
check the wild disorder, had not been able to prevail on the government to call entirely new troops under arms, he was at least allowed to form, in addition to a number of men whom the dependent kings and ficc cities outside of the Roman bounds placed at his disposal, a personal escort of 500 men composed of volunteer Roman burgesses (p. 230). This cohort drawn partly from the better classes, partly from the humbler personal clients of the general, and hence called sometimes that of the friends, sometimes that of the head
quarters (J>raetoriani), had the duty of serving in the latter (praetorium), in return for which it was exempt from camp and entrenching service and enjoyed higher pay and greater
repute.
This complete revolution in the constitution of the
Political
ligmficance Roman army seems certainly in substance to have originated Marian from purely military motives ; and on the whole to have
been not so much the work of an individual, least of all of a man of calculating ambition, as the remodelling which the
chap, vi ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
461
force of circumstances enjoined in arrangements which had become untenable. It is probable that the introduction of the system of inland enlistment by Marius saved the state in a military point of view from destruction, just as several centuries afterwards Arbogast and Stilicho prolonged its existence for a time by the introduction of foreign enlistment Nevertheless, it involved a complete — although not yet developed —political revolution. The republican constitu tion was essentially based on the view that the citizen was at the same time a soldier, and that the soldier was above all a citizen ; there was an end of so soon as soldier- class was formed. To this issue the new system of drill, with its routine borrowed from the professional gladiator, could not but lead the military service became gradually
Far more rapid was the effect of the admission —though but limited —of the proletariate to participate in military service especially connection with the primitive maxims, which conceded to the general an arbitrary right of rewarding his soldiers compatible only with very solid republican institutions, and gave to the capable and success ful soldier sort of title to demand from the general share of the moveable spoil and from the state portion of the soil that had been won. While the burgess or farmer called out under the levy saw in military service nothing but burden to be undertaken for the public good, and in the gains of war nothing but slight compensation for the far more considerable loss brought upon him by serving, was otherwise with the enlisted proletarian. Not only wag he for the moment solely dependent upon his pay, but, as there was no Hotel des Invalides nor even poorhouse to receive him after his discharge, for the future also he could not but wish to abide by his standard, and not to leave otherwise than with the establishment of his civic status. His only home was the camp, his only science war, his only hope the general —what this implied, clear. When Mariua
profession.
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a
a
a
in
a
a
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a
;
;
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Political
project! of Marius.
after the engagement on the Raudine plain unconstitution ally gave Roman citizenship on the very field of battle to two cohorts of Italian allies en masse for their brave conduct, he justified himself afterwards by saying that amidst the noise of battle he had not been able to distinguish the voice of the laws. If once in more important questions the in terest of the army and that of the general should concur to produce unconstitutional demands, who could be security that then other laws also would not cease to be heard amid the clashing of swords ? They had now the standing army, the soldier-class, the bodyguard ; as in the civil constitution, so also in the military, all the pillars of the future monarchy were already in existence : the monarch alone was wanting. When the twelve eagles circled round the Palatine hill, they ushered in the reign of the Kings ; the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed the near advent of the Emperors.
There is hardly any doubt that Marius entered into the brilliant prospects which his military and political position opened up to him. It was a sad and troubled time. Men had peace, but they were not glad of having it ; the state of things was not now such as it had formerly been after the first mighty onset of the men of the north on Rome, when, so soon as the crisis was over, all energies were roused anew in the fresh consciousness of recovered health, and had by their vigorous development rapidly and amply made up for what was lost. Every one felt that, though able generals might still once and again avert immediate destruction, the commonwealth was only the more surely on the way to ruin under the government of the restored oligarchy ; but every one felt also that the time was past when in such cases the burgess-body came to its own help, and that there was no amendment so long as the place of Gaius Gracchus remained empty. How deeply the multitude felt the blank that was left after the disappearance of those two illustrious youths
462
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
chap. VI ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
463
who had opened the gates to revolution, and how childishly
in fact it grasped at any shadow of a substitute, was shown
by the case of the pretended son of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although the very sister of the two Gracchi charged him with fraud in the open Forum, was yet chosen by the people
in 655 as tribune solely on account of his usurped name. 99. In the same spirit the multitude exulted in the presence of Gaius Marius ; how should it not ? He, if any one, seemed
the right man—he was at any rate the first general and the most popular name of his time, confessedly brave and up right, and recommended as regenerator of the state by his
very position aloof from the proceedings of party—how should not the people, how should not he himself, have held that he was so 1 Public opinion as decidedly as pos
sible favoured the opposition. It was a significant indication
of this, that the proposal to have the vacant stalls in the chief priestly colleges filled up by the burgesses instead of the colleges themselves — which the government had frustrated
in the comitia in 609 by the suggestion of religious scruples 145. —was carried in 650 by Gnaeus Domitius without the 104. senate having been able even to venture a serious resistance.
On the whole it seemed as if nothing was wanted but a chief, who should give to the opposition a firm rallying point and a practical aim; and this was now found in Marius.
For the execution of his task two methods of operation offered themselves ; Marius might attempt to overthrow the oligarchy either as imperator at the head of the army, or in the mode prescribed by the constitution for constitutional changes : his own past career pointed to the former course, the precedent of Gracchus to the latter. It is easy to understand why he did not adopt the former plan, perhaps did not even think of the possibility of adopting it The senate was or seemed so powerless and helpless, so hated and despised, that Marius conceived himself scarcely to need
The popular party.
passing those of Gracchus, deemed the overthrow of a constitution four hundred years old, and intimately bound up with the manifold habits and interests of the body-politic arranged in a complicated hierarchy, a far easier task than it was. But any one, who looked more deeply into the difficulties of the enterprise than Marius probably did, might reflect that the army, although in the course of transition from a militia to a body of mercenaries, was still during this state of transition by no means adapted for the blind instrument of a coup d'etat, and that an attempt to set aside the resisting elements by military means would have probably augmented the power of resistance in his antagonists. To mix up the organized armed force in the struggle could not but appear at the first glance superfluous and at the second hazardous ; they were just at the beginning of the crisis, and the antagonistic elements were still far from having reached their last, shortest, and simplest expression.
Marius therefore discharged the army after his triumph in accordance with the existing regulation, and entered on the course traced out by Gaius Gracchus for procuring to himself supremacy in the state by undertaking its constitu tional magistracies. In this enterprise he found himself dependent for support on what was called the popular party, and sought his allies in its leaders for the time being all the more, that the victorious general by no means possessed the gifts and experiences requisite for the command of the
464 ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
any other support in opposing it than his immense popu larity, but hoped in case of necessity to find such a support, notwithstanding the dissolution of the army, in the soldiers discharged and waiting for their rewards. It is probable that Marius, looking to Gracchus' easy and
apparently almost complete victory and to his own resources far sur
Thus the democratic party after long insignificance suddenly regained political importance. It had, in the long interval from Gaius Gracchus to Marius, materially deterio-
streets.
chap, vi ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
465
rated. Perhaps the dissatisfaction with the senatorial government was not now less than it was then ; but several of the hopes, which had brought to the Gracchi their most faithful adherents, had in the meanwhile been recognized as illusory, and there had sprung up in many minds a mis giving that this Gracchan agitation tended towards an issue whither a very large portion of the discontented were by no means willing to follow it In fact, amidst the chase and turmoil of twenty years there had been rubbed off and worn away very much of the fresh enthusiasm, the steadfast faith, the moral purity of effort, which mark the early stages of revolutions. But, if the democratic party was no longer what it had been under Gaius Gracchus, the leaders of the intervening period were now as far beneath their party as Gaius Gracchus had been exalted above This was im plied in the nature of the case. Until there should emerge
man having the boldness like Gaius Gracchus to grasp at the supremacy of the state, the leaders could only be stop gaps either political novices, who gave furious vent to their youthful love of opposition and then, when duly accredited as fiery declaimers and favourite speakers, effected with more or less dexterity their retreat to the camp of the government party or people who had nothing to lose in respect of property and influence, and usually not even any thing to gain in respect of honour, and who made their business to obstruct and annoy the government from per sonal exasperation or even from the mere pleasure of creating
noise. To the former sort belonged, for instance, Gaius Memmius 394) and the well-known orator Lucius Crassus, who turned the oratorical laurels which they had won in the ranks of the opposition to account the sequel as zealous partisans of the government.
But the most notable leaders of the popular party about
this time were men of the second sort. Such were Gaius Gland* Servilius Glaucia, called by Cicero the Roman Hyperbolus,
vou in
95
in
(p.
aa :
it
;
it.
Saturninns.
a vulgar fellow of the lowest origin and of the most shame less street -eloquence, but effective and even dreaded by reason of his pungent wit ; and his better and abler associate, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, who even according to the accounts of his enemies was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by motives of vulgar selfishness. When he was quaestor, the charge of the importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on account of maladministration, as in order to confer this—just at that time popular —office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of the ruling families. This mortification had driven the aspiring and sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition ; and as
466
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book :v
108. tribune of the people in 65 1 he repaid what he had received with interest. One scandalous affair had at that time fol lowed hard upon another. He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome by the envoys of king Mithradates —these revelations, compromising in the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his life. He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for
102. the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed ; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus—the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll — had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus. Saturninus mainly had carried that exceptional commission against Caepio and his associates 440) in spite of the most vehement resistance the government party; and in opposition to the same he had carried the
102. keenly-contested re-election of Marius as consul for 65-. Saturninus was decidedly the most energetic enemy of the
by
(p.
chap, VI ATTEMPT OF DKUSUS AT REFORM
467
senate and the most active and eloquent leader of tlie popular party since Gaius Gracchus ; but he was also violent and unscrupulous beyond any of his predecessors, always ready to descend into the street and to refute his antagonist with blows instead of words.
Such were the two leaders of the so-called popular party, who now made common cause with the victorious general.
It was natural that they should do so ; their interests and aims coincided, and even in the earlier candidatures of Marius Saturninus at least had most decidedly and most effectively taken his side. It was agreed between them
that for 654 Marius should become a candidate for a sixth 10ft consulship, Saturninus for a second tribunate, Glaucia for
the praetorship, in order that, possessed of these offices,
they might carry out the intended revolution in the state.
The senate acquiesced in the nomination of the less danger
ous Glaucia, but did what it could to hinder the election
of Marius and Saturninus, or at least to associate with the former a determined antagonist in the person of Quintus Metellus as his colleague in the consulship. All appliances, lawful and unlawful, were put in motion by both parties ;
but the senate was not successful in arresting the dangerous conspiracy in the bud. Marius did not disdain in person
to solicit votes and, it was said, even to purchase them ;
in fact, at the tribunician elections when nine men from
the list of the government party were proclaimed, and the tenth place seemed already secured for a respectable man
of the same complexion Quintus Nunnius, the latter was
set upon and slain by a savage band, which is said to have been mainly composed of discharged soldiers of Marius. Thus the conspirators gained their object, although by the most violent means. Marius was chosen as consul, Glaucia
as praetor, Saturninus as tribune of the people for 654; 100. the second consular place was obtained not by Quintus Metellus, but by an insignificant man, Lucius Valerius
121. The
l^^
Flaccus : the confederates might proceed to put into exe cution the further schemes which they contemplated and to complete the work broken off in 633.
Let us recall the objects which Gaius Gracchus pursued, and the means by which he pursued them. His object was to break down the oligarchy within and without. He aimed, on the one hand, to restore the power of the magistrates, which had become completely dependent on the senate, to its original sovereign rights, and to re-convert the senatorial assembly from a governing into a deliberative board; and, on the other hand, to put an end to the aristocratic division of the state into the three classes of the ruling burgesses, the Italian allies, and the subjects, by the gradual equalization of those distinctions which were
with a government not oligarchical. These ideas the three confederates revived in the colonial laws, which Saturninus as tribune of the people had partly intro- duced already (651), partly now introduced (654). 1 As early as the former year the interrupted distribution of the Carthaginian territory had been resumed primarily for the benefit of the soldiers of Marius—not the burgesses only but, as it would seem, also the Italian allies — and each of these veterans had been promised an allotment of ioo
jugera, or about five times the size of an ordinary Italian farm, in the province of Africa. Now not only was the provincial land already available claimed in its widest extent for the Romano-Italian emigration, but also all the land of the still independent Celtic tribes beyond the Alps,
1 It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus ; the more especially, as in both he evidently followed out the same Gracchan tendencies. The African agrarian law is definitely placed by the treatise De Viris III. 73, 1
108. 100.
468
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book iv
incompatible
108. in 651 ; and this date accords with the termination, which had taken place just shortly before, of the Jugurthine war. The second agrarian law 100. belongs beyond doubt to 654. The treason-law and the corn-law hare
108. been only conjecturally placed, the former in 651 (p. 442 note), the latter 100. in 654.
CHaP, vi ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
469
by virtue of the legal fiction that through the conquest of the Cimbri all the territory occupied by these had been acquired dejure by the Romans. Gaius Marius was called to conduct the assignations of land and the farther measures that might appear necessary in this behalf; and the temple- treasures of Tolosa, which had been embezzled but were refunded or had still to be refunded by the guilty aristocrats, were destined for the outfit of the new receivers of land. This law therefore not only revived the plans of con quest beyond the Alps and the projects of Transalpine and transmarine colonization, which Gaius Gracchus and Flaccus had sketched, on the most extensive scale ; but, by admitting the Italians along with the Romans to emigration and yet undoubtedly prescribing the erection of all the new com munities as burgess-colonies, it formed a first step towards satisfying the claims — to which it was so difficult to give effect, and which yet could not be in the long run refused —of the Italians to be placed on an equality with the Romans. First of all, however, if the law passed and Marius was called to the independent carrying out of these immense schemes of conquest and assignation, he would become practically —until those plans should be realized or rather, considering their indefinite and unlimited character, for his lifetime — monarch of Rome; with which view it may be presumed that Marius intended to have his consul ship annually renewed, like the tribunate of Gracchus. But, amidst the agreement of the political positions marked out for the younger Gracchus and for Marius in all other essential particulars, there was yet a very material distinc tion between the land-assigning tribune and the land- assigning consul in the fact, that the former was to occupy a purely civil position, the latter a military position as well ; a distinction, which partly but by no means solely arose out of the personal circumstances under which the two men had risen to the head of the state.
470
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION BOOK VI
While such was the nature of the aim which Marius and his comrades had proposed to themselves, the next question related to the means by which they purposed to break down the resistance — which might be anticipated to be obstinate —of the government party. Gaius Gracchus had fought his battles with the aid of the capitalist class and the proletariate. His successors did not neglect to make advances likewise to these. The equites were not only left in possession of the tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission — especially important to the merchants — as to extortions on the part of the public magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed
108. doubtless as early as 651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian movement in GauL For the benefit, moreover, of the proletariate of the capital the sum below cost price, which hitherto had to be paid on occasion of the distributions of grain for the modius, was lowered from 6 J asses to a mere nominal charge of \ of an
as. But although they did not despise the alliance with the equites and the proletariate of the capital, the real power by which the confederates enforced their measures lay not in these, but in the discharged soldiers of the Marian army, who for that very reason had been provided for in the colonial laws themselves after so extravagant a fashion. In this also was evinced the predominating military char acter, which forms the chief distinction between this attempt at revolution and that which preceded it,
They went to work accordingly. The corn and colonial laws encountered, as was to be expected, the keenest opposi- tion from the government. They proved in the senate by striking figures, that the former must make the public treasury bankrupt ; Saturninus did not trouble himself about that
violent
j^^" Toting.
CHAP. T! ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
471
They brought tribunician intercession to bear against both laws ; Saturninus ordered the voting to go on. They informed the magistrates presiding at the voting that a peal of thunder had been heard, a portent by which according to ancient belief the gods enjoined the dismissal of the public assembly; Saturninus remarked to the messengers that the senate would do well to keep quiet, otherwise the thunder might very easily be followed by hail. Lastly the urban quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be pre sumed, of the general condemned three years before,1 and like his father a vehement antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans dispersed the comitia by violence. But the tough soldiers of Marius, who had flocked in crowds to Rome to vote on this occasion, quickly rallied and dispersed the city bands, and on the voting ground thus reconquered the vote on the Appuleian laws was successfully brought to an end. The scandal was grievous ; but when it came to the question whether the senate would comply with the clause of the law that within five days after its passing every senator should on pain of forfeiting his senatorial seat take an oath faithfully to observe
all the senators took the oath with the single exception of Quintus Metellus, who preferred to go into exile. Marius and Saturninus were not displeased to see the best general and the ablest man among the opposing party removed from the state by voluntary banishment.
Their object seemed to be attained but even now to those who saw more clearly the enterprise could not but appear failure. The cause of the failure lay mainly in the awkward alliance between politically incapable general
All indications point to this conclusion. The elder Quintus Caepio was consul in 648, the younger quaestor in 651 or 654, the former conse- quently was born about or before 605, the latter about 624 or 627. The fact that the former died without leaving sons (Strabo, iv. 188) not inconsistent with this view, for the younger Caepio fell in 664, and the elder, who ended his life in exile at Smyrna, may very well have survived
The bSTet xevola-
party,
106. 108.
100. 141
130. . 137. 90.
is
1
it,
a
a
^e
;
473
ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION book it
and a street-demagogue, capable but recklessly violent, and filled with passion rather than with the aims of a statesman. They had agreed excellently, so long as the question related only to plans. But when the plans came to be executed, it was very soon apparent that the celebrated general was
in politics utterly incapable ; that his ambition was that of the farmer who would cope with and, if possible, surpass the aristocrats in titles, and not that of the statesman who desires to govern because he feels within him the power to do so ; that every enterprise, which was based on his personal standing as a politician, must necessarily even under the most favourable circumstances be ruined himself.
He knew neither the art of gaining his antagonists, nor
Opposition
whole arii- tnat of keeping his own party in subjection. The opposi-
tocracj.
tion against him and his comrades was even of itself sufficiently considerable ; for not only did the government party belong to it in a body, but also a great part of the burgesses, who guarded with jealous eyes their exclusive privileges against the Italians ; and by the course which things took the whole class of the wealthy was also driven over to the government Saturninus and Glaucia were from the first masters and servants of the proletariate and therefore not at all on a good footing with the moneyed aristocracy, which had no objection now and then to keep the senate in check by means of the rabble, but had no liking for street-riots and violent outrages. As early as the first tribunate of Saturninus his armed bands had their skirmishes with the equites ; the vehement
opposition 100.