The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

ON JANUARY 1, 104, Gaius Marius celebrated the beginning of his second consulship with a triumph. Not since the glory days of the conquest of Carthage and Greece had a triumph been this spectacular. Aemilianus’s parade after Numantia (a parade Marius himself would have marched in) was a famous disappointment. Since then it had been a string of victories against various Gallic and Thracian tribes whose spoils paled in comparison to the treasures Roman consuls had once returned from campaign with. But Marius’s triumph was of “great magnificence.” Treasure, slaves, and wondrous ornaments of the exotic African kingdom paraded to wild cheering from a population still reeling from the disaster at Arausio just three months earlier.39 The crown jewel of Marius’s triumph was King Jugurtha himself. The last time Jugurtha was in Rome he had bribed senators, defied the Assembly, and ordered an assassination. He managed to upend domestic Roman politics and stay one step ahead of the legions for a decade. Now he was bound in chains like a common criminal and forced to march alongside his two sons, facing the humiliation of being the object not of awe and fear, but mockery and ridicule. At the end of the triumphal parade, Jugurtha was tossed into a prison cell so roughly that the gold earring he wore—the last piece of gold he had to his name—was ripped clean out of his ear. There was no more bribery. No more cunning plans. The Romans left him to die in a dungeon pit naked and starving: “...