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October 20 - November 12, 2021
Polybius saw societies as revolving through six stages – from anarchy to monarchy, through monarchy to tyranny, from tyranny to aristocracy, from aristocracy to oligarchy, and from oligarchy to democracy. Then from democracy to anarchy and round and around again.
The consuls provided the monarchical element, but they were prevented from becoming tyrants by the senate, which represented the aristocratic element. The senate was prevented from becoming oligarchical by the people, whose democracy was prevented from
degenerating into mob rule by the monarchical and aristocratic elements,
After 81 BC Rome constantly tottered on the brink of military anarchy, and in 49 BC it fell off the edge altogether when Caesar led his army across the Rubicon. Assassinations, purges, and civil wars followed thick and fast, until from the chaos was produced Augustus – Rome’s first emperor and an undoubted autocrat. The Polybian cycle had come the full circle as its author had predicted.
The problems facing the Roman state had begun developing soon after the end of Rome’s drawn-out war with Hannibal of Carthage
There were many things wrong with the Roman Republic of the late second century, but most of these could be traced to one fundamental problem and one major secondary issue. These were, respectively, the failure of inclusivism and dispossession from the land.
Rome began to guard the citizenship jealously, creating divisions between those who had the privileges and rights of citizenship and those who wanted them.
That is, the Roman political elite, which until then had seen its duty as service to the state, now increasingly adopted the view that the state existed to serve it.
Declining military manpower, an increasingly precarious food supply, massive resentment among the common people and ever-more mutinous allies – the self-absorbed greed of the Roman nobility had certainly managed to create an abundance of problems. Even some members of the Roman nobility noticed it.
Gaius Gracchus proposed that the present holders of the Latin Right become Romans, and the other Italian allies should get the Latin Right. From there, with the precedent established, a process would exist by which conquered people could first become involuntary allies, then Latins and finally Roman citizens. This, as with much of Gaius Gracchus’ other legislation, was reasonable, far-sighted and addressed one of the fundamental problems underlying
the structure of the Roman Republic. Also, as with much of Gaius Gracchus’ other legislation, the optimates were determined that it should not pass, if for no other reason than it was proposed by Gaius Gracchus and would greatly benefit Gaius Gracchus.
the Roman voters loved this bidding war for their favour and were not at all prepared to remove any of the participants from the political stage. So Gaius Gracchus had to put up with Livius Drusus, and while Livius Drusus was prepared to go further than Gracchus in almost any direction, he drew the line at extending the citizenship. This he vetoed, and there was nothing Gaius Gracchus could do about it.
As one of the main protagonists of the catastrophe that struck the Roman Republic in the years 91–81 BC, Caius Marius deserves our close attention. He was a man of great energy and ambition, as was demonstrated by the fact that he had forced himself into the largely closed ranks of Rome’s governing class. Marius was also a politician to the core, and the sort of politician who gives the breed a bad name. He was unscrupulous and immoral, and did not care what persons or principles he sacrificed so long as the sacrifice helped his rise to the top. Ordinarily Marius would have been
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The disastrous war in Africa was tailor-made for Marius to promote himself further. We do not know what odd combination of pledges given and called in resulted in Marius being selected as the foremost of Metellus’ subordinates, but it is unlikely that Marius was the man that Metellus himself would have chosen.
It was clear almost from the start that Marius had joined the African army with the long-term aim of taking control of it for himself. Since the army already had a general in command, and finally a rather good one too, Marius had first to set about undermining his boss.
Once he was elected consul he arranged for a friendly tribune to propose that command of the African war be transferred to Marius by law. This was both legal and had precedent dating back to 131 BC and before then to the Second Punic War. Metellus was replaced and Marius got his army – furthermore, as will be seen, it gave Marius a technique for gaining control of an army he was to re-attempt to apply in 88 BC with disastrous consequences.
These two events – the overturning of a senatorial command by a popular law, and the bringing together of Sulla and Marius – seemed not particularly extraordinary at the time. However, they established the fault lines along which the Roman Republic would later be ripped apart.
Then, when taking his army to war, Marius – contrary to law and custom – recruited men who failed to meet the basic property qualifications for membership of the legions.
This move raised a few eyebrows at the time, but no one noted the wider implications – that once they had completed their time of service, these men would have no smallholdings to go home to, and they might look to their general to provide for their retirement.
Sulla got Jugurtha as his captive, and Marius had the African war won at a stroke.
Firstly, Marius was deeply irked that although he had won the war, the Roman nobility made much of the fact that it was one of their own who had actually effected the capture of Jugurtha. Secondly, and much more importantly, the Roman people decided that Marius’ exemplary generalship made him uniquely qualified to lead the state in its hour of peril. For Rome now faced a danger that made the African war look like the sideshow it was. In the north, the barbarians were coming.
While a viable excuse, this fails to explain
The biggest Roman army since the battle of Cannae suffered the greatest Roman defeat since the battle of Cannae. Almost all of the 80,000 strong army were killed.
All that saved Italy from invasion and sack that year was the fact that it was late in the campaigning season, and the Cimbri did not fancy tackling the Alps in autumn.
the Roman legion adopted the cohort, a unit of 480 men. The cohort was not a total innovation – it certainly existed in the Roman army prior to 105 BC – but Marius may have been responsible for making this the standard tactical unit.
The larger cohort allowed a legion to be more flexible than a phalanx, but the individual components now maintained their internal integrity better under pressure than had maniples. Also at about this time – though it is uncertain how the implementation happened – the legions abandoned other animal totems to give primacy to the eagle.
In fact the ‘Marian reforms’ formed the basis for the organization of the Roman army for at least the next three hundred years,
The Italian people were a diverse lot, but resentment of Rome in all its facets gave them common ground.
Uniting the Italians against Rome would not be easy, for hostility to Rome was about all the Italians had in common.
Allegiance in the Hannibalic war appears to have been something of a litmus test for events of a century later, because many of the areas that sided with Hannibal tended to also be anti-Roman a century later, while those sides that stuck with Rome through the Hannibalic war could generally be counted on not to rebel, or at least to do so reluctantly.
That left everything else west and south of Rome – a fairly contiguous block of land and peoples, all with ancient grudges against the Romans and seething resentment for recent mistreatment. Beyond a doubt, the conspirators assured each other at their clandestine meetings, the South would rise again.
There was just one problem with this happy picture. Rome had carefully inserted a great many flies into the ointment in the form of colonies. A Roman colony was not occupied land cultivated for the benefit of Rome – it was an extension of Rome itself.
However, most Roman colonists were content to remain where they were, because Roman colonies were founded on three main criteria. Firstly, the settlers tended to be former legionaries and their families. Secondly, the land they were settled on tended to be the richest and most fertile lands in the territory the Romans were occupying, and thirdly, even more than rich farmlands, Roman colonies were founded on defensible sites of strategic importance.
In the early first century we have something of a hole in the historical record.
Therefore the exact order and details of what Drusus did during his tribunate are lost, though the general outline remains clear.
Unfortunately, while the senate wanted a partisan who would fight their corner whether they were right or wrong, and the plebs wanted a scourge for the equites, Drusus wanted to actually put things right. Drusus probably foresaw that this would infuriate everyone but the equites (who didn’t count, since they were furious with him already).
Perhaps Drusus was prepared to face the storm of outrage his actions would cause in the short term because he thought everyone would thank him later, once it was all sorted out.
Essentially Drusus had provided a solution to the problem of partisan and unjust courts that the equites certainly did not want and which failed to satisfy the senate and people because they wanted revenge, not solutions. The Lex iudiciaria was not popular.
For years the Roman Republic had been sliding toward disaster. If we are to pick a single point when the entire crumbling structure lurched past the point of no return, it is probably the moment when the senate voted to undo all that Drusus had done and was trying to achieve.
As far as the senate were concerned, they had successfully restored the status quo. It was left to the survivors and later generations to realize that this was the status quo ante bellum (‘The way things were before the war’).
When war broke out no one doubted that the colonies were going to be attacked. They occupied some of the richest land in southern Italy and had been located at choke points
in overland communications with the express purpose of being a crippling nuisance to any rebels. Whether the colonists were prepared to withstand the privations of siege from people with whom they shared so many bonds, and whether they would be prepared to kill and be killed in defence of a deeply flawed and unjust Roman state that had done little to merit such service was a question that would ultimately decide the future of Italy.
As it turned out, the defection of the Latins and the colonies started and stopped at Venusia. Had it not, Rome would not have survived. The military significance of the colonies goes without saying. The military significance of the other Latin tribes is less remarked upon, but they were the weight that finally tipped the scales. Every tribe and region that rebelled counted as double in this coming war, because apart from the somewhat bemused Gallic regions of northern Italy, there were few neutrals. You either fought for Rome, or you fought against it.
The troops that Italians and Romans commanded were very much alike. Both sides relied on heavy infantry to win their battles, and it is probable that both used the cohort formations that had become the standard unit of their armies since Marius had employed them so effectively against the Cimbri.
most of those called to arms on either side would have donned the same coats of chain mail that they would have worn had they served together in Rome’s foreign wars that year. Each set of infantry relied on a heavy throwing spear (pilum) to be used just before engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a sword.
As a general rule, the Italians had more skirmishers, since the hillmen from allied tribes were accustomed to this sort of fighting, and as a bonus many were also expert with the sling. On the other hand, the Romans had the better cavalry, both because they could recruit warriors skilled in this arm of combat from Cisalpine Gaul, and because most of northern Campania had stayed loyal and this region traditionally provided the Roman army with the bulk of its cavalry.
In the year 90 BC, it was Rome’s generals who brought the state to the brink of collapse, and the politicians who pulled them away from it.
Militarily the Italians could not operate freely until the colonies had been taken out of the war so the colonies had to go for that reason alone, but there was also a political aspect, in that the colonies represented Roman domination of the people and the lands around. If the Italians were fighting to be rid of Roman domination then the colonies – the aspect of Rome which most impinged on their daily lives – would have to go too.
While the Marsi concentrated on breaking the ring of colonies that surrounded them, the southern group aimed at consolidating and extending the territory under their control by taking the countryside and smaller towns away from Rome.
With the heartlands secured, it would thereafter be a war in which the Romans attempted to grind down the Italians in much the same way as the Romans had ground down Hannibal a century previously. The trick was not so much to win victories as to avoid defeat. Rome had an empire and could draw on it for money and manpower and if necessary simply outlast the Italians.
