Cataclysm 90 BC: The Forgotten War that Almost Destroyed Rome

by Philip Matyszak

Anyone wanting to vote had to do so in Rome, in person. It was one thing if a citizen felt strongly enough about an issue that he had to travel to Rome to make his voice heard, but it was completely another issue if a citizen could not travel to Rome and vote there because he was already serving his country elsewhere as a soldier. It was always galling for the army to find that it had voted an incompetent to command it, but at least the voters in the army had done that to themselves. Now the Romans in the army found that people in Rome (who did not have to do the fighting) had voted them a general whom they did not want and had thrown out the general that they did. A gap had opened between the Roman voter and the Roman soldier, effectively disenfranchising the latter. This ‘secret disease’ had been made all the more virulent by the recent war, as the legions now contained soldiers who had never even voted (because the censors had not yet got around to putting them on the voter’s roll). The soldiers gathered for the Asian campaign expressed their opinion of the Roman voters and of Sulpicius’ legislation by lynching the officers sent by Marius to take over. With that mutiny it became clear that Marius did not have his army after all. But Sulla had one, and he was bringing it to Rome.