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Under its influence, lifestyles will become more extravagant and the citizens will compete more fiercely than they should for public office and all that goes with it. For as degeneration begins, the first signs of the change for the worse be the coveting of office and the belief that obscurity is disgraceful.
The people will take the initiative, firstly when they feel aggrieved by individuals who have shown egregious covetousness, and secondly when they are puffed up by the flattery of those looking to hold office. Then, roused to fury, and their decisions ruled by emotion, they will no longer consent to obey or even to be the equals of their rulers. Polybius, ibid.
‘It is a most agreeable spectacle for a Roman soldier to see a general eating common bread in public, sleeping on a simple pallet, or helping with the construction of some trench or palisade’ remarks Marius’ biographer Plutarch,4 and Marius did all this and more.
Another relatively petty measure was to force on Marius a subordinate he was certain to dislike. This was a man called Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a man as drunken and dissolute as they come, but an aristocrat through and through.
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.
but by the time they bumped against the Roman frontier, the tribe had been on the move for at least a decade, wreaking havoc in its slow progress through central Europe.
In short, hospitium meant that Italy’s leaders had already a social old-boy network in place, and with the provocation of the Lex Licinia Mucia this network evolved from a social organization to the prototype command structure of an Italian rebellion.
Uniting the Italians against Rome would not be easy, for hostility to Rome was about all the Italians had in common.
Consequently Greece and Egypt were integrated into the Roman empire before the last bits of Italy officially became Roman. (Egypt was conquered in 32 BC, while some Alpine tribes were still resisting the legions in 6 BC.)
Appian says that Rome had celebrated ‘no triumph over the Marsi, and no triumph without them’,3 which shows how tightly the Marsi were integrated with the Roman army.
The loyalty of the Marsi was taken for granted, even by those Roman senators who helped themselves to Marsic land because it was so conveniently close to Rome. In retrospect, this was a mistake.
If there was a single land route to any area of Italy, the chances were that a Roman colony lay across that route.
In later centuries the political commentator Machiavelli considered Roman colonies as the most effective source of Roman strength.
It dealt with the colonies that were to have been founded when Drusus’ father was trying to outbid Gaius Gracchus for popular support.
For example, on one occasion when Philippus was orating against the proposals in the forum, Drusus went so far as to grab the consul by the throat. He choked the top magistrate in Rome so savagely that blood from a nosebleed flooded down Philippus’ chest.
From the Italian viewpoint, killing Drusus was an act of essential realpolitik.
Consequently there were to be no hard and fast battle lines in the coming war. Italians and Romans were too thoroughly intermixed.
religion. It was not even language, because by the early first century Latin either supplemented or had supplanted native tongues across much of the central peninsula. The main difference – and in many cases the only difference – between a Roman and an Italian was that one had the vote and the privileges that went with it and the other didn’t. The
This time around, the Romans faced an enemy as numerous as they were, who were every bit as much disciplined and ferocious fighters, and who knew the Roman military system
Varius’ take on maiestas was that aspects of the law should be refined to punish those who had shown sympathy to the Italian rebels.
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.
5 In other words, even when the two sides were at
Mutilus used terror as a tactical weapon. When he took a town, the leading Roman citizens were executed, and presumably any who sympathized too openly with them.
In quick order Stabiae and Herculaneum on the coast, the nearby Roman colony of Salernum and several other towns fell to the Italian leader, who forcibly
Attacking a Roman marching camp was a risky venture because the Romans had a lot of practice both at building and defending these camps.
This was news so cheering that when it reached Rome the senate decreed that the population should resume wearing the togas they had stopped wearing as a sign that their country was struggling at war.
But the legionaries knew the Samnites and Marsi from fighting alongside them, and knew there was nothing contemptible about their opponents. In
We are told that Publius [Pompaedius] Silo, the greatest and most powerful of the enemy once challenged him ‘So if you are such a great general, Marius, why not come down [from your fortifications] and fight it out?’ To this Marius retorted ‘Well, if you think you are any good as a general, why don’t you try to make me?’
The last cupful of wine Vidacilius ever enjoyed was laced with a lethal dose of poison. As he felt the effects, Vidacilius ordered the pile ignited, and threw himself into it.
Perhaps Mithridates felt that with their local difficulties in Italy, the Romans would be somewhat more conciliatory this time around. If so, he had forgotten the advice given to him by Marius (who had visited the region in the previous decade) that he should either be stronger than Rome, or do what he was told without complaint.1
about. One reason was that all concerned were Romans, and the Romans of the republic were very bad at compromise. The
If the Roman Republic had suffered from a sudden attack of statesmanship and brought the Italians gradually and peacefully into the body of the Roman state, this would have set a precedent. The resolution of other major issues, such as the alienation of the army, might also have been peacefully managed.
Given goodwill on all sides, something approximating representational government through senators from different regions was entirely possible.
The Republic did not collapse because Caesar crossed the Rubicon. It collapsed because nobody believed in it any more.
