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

by Mike Duncan

Citizens were not called “good” or “bad” according to their public conduct because in that respect they were all equally corrupt; but those who were wealthiest and most able to inflict harm were considered “good” because they defended the existing state of affairs. SALLUST1

GAIUS GRACCHUS HAD A DREAM. IN THIS DREAM, HE WAS visited by the ghost of his dead brother Tiberius who said, “However much you may try to defer your fate, nevertheless you must die the same death that I did.” Another version of the dream has Tiberius asking, “Why do you hesitate, Gaius? There is no escape; one life is fated for us both, and one death as champions of the people.” Gaius liked to tell the story of his dream because it gave the impression that he was not just another politician indulging personal ambition: instead he was being called to public service by a higher power. But though he feigned humility it is clear that from a young age, Gaius Gracchus aimed to become the greatest Gracchus of them all.2

Gaius returned to Rome in 132. It had been less than a year since Tiberius’s death, and Gaius now found himself not just the patriarch of the household, but also expected to be the leader of a political movement his brother had started.

THE BREADTH AND depth of Gaius’s reform package was unprecedented. After what must have been years of careful preparation, Gaius Gracchus entered the tribunate of 123 with a multifaceted platform designed to appeal to different interest groups. If enacted in full, that platform would curb the power of the Senate and restore the balance of the Polybian constitution. It was later said that when Gaius was done, “he left nothing undisturbed, nothing untouched, nothing unmolested, nothing, in short, as it had been.”24

Just as Gaius was coming to office, a plague of locusts decimated crops in North Africa, causing food shortages back in Rome. Gaius introduced legislation directing the state to purchase and stockpile grain and then sell it to citizens for a fixed price. Cicero later denounced the project as an obvious handout to secure political support and said that better men at the time “resisted it because they thought that its effect would be to lead the common people away from industry to idleness.” But this was not the free-grain dole that would later become a hallmark of imperial municipal policy. It was simply offering grain at a fixed price to create some semblance of stability. The plebs urbana loved the bill so much they made further expansion of subsidized grain their central political demand for the next hundred years.30

Gaius then introduced measures to redress thirty years of complaints about the ruinous cost of service in the legions. The state had provided arms, equipment, and clothes for the legions through publicani contractors but always deducted expenses from a soldier’s pay—a ruinous burden for the already impoverished legionaries. Gaius passed a law that the state would stop deducting the expenses. As with the evolution of the grain dole, it would take a century to move from the ad hoc armies of the middle Republic to the permanent legions of Augustus, but Gaius’s law to move expenses from the citizens’ pockets to the state treasury was a big step.31

AS ELECTIONS FOR the next year’s tribunate approached, Gaius appeared ready to pass the baton to his old friend and ally Flaccus, who put himself forward as a candidate. Flaccus running for tribune was all on its own another chink in the unspoken armor of mos maiorum—a former consul had never before stood for the lesser office of tribune. With the backing of Gaius, Flaccus won election easily but then—as a result either of careful planning, unexpected luck, or some combination of the two—Gaius himself won reelection to the tribunate. The very thing that had once been so controversial it had literally gotten his brother killed.34 As shocking as it was, Gaius’s reelection remains historical mystery. We know that Gaius was still not technically a candidate when the elections occurred, but when the results came, a few of the ten tribune slots remained vacant—an unusual but not unheard of outcome. In such cases, it was the tribunes’ prerogative to assign men to fill the vacant seats and Gaius Gracchus was among those appointed. The question is, how much of this drama was preengineered? Was the first vote manipulated to ensure open seats remained? Or was it the spontaneous work of the goddess Fortuna, and Gaius was as surprised as anyone to find himself reelected? We do not know. We only know that Gaius was now tribune for a second consecutive year.35

Gaius’s enemies tapped a rival tribune named Marcus Livius Drusus to do their dirty work. Drusus was himself a rising star in Roman politics. Like Gaius he was eloquent, wealthy, and had been raised to expect a public career. But where Gaius sought advancement through popular reforms, Drusus planned to advance by blocking them. He entered office on a mission to undermine Gaius at every turn—if he was successful he would gain powerful allies in the Senate. Drusus opened by offering a new colonization project of his own. Though Gaius’s plan had until that point been the most ambitious colonization project in history, Drusus now promised twelve new colonies—each with generous land grants and startup capital for three thousand colonists. Fully thirty-six thousand families stood to benefit, and the news sent shockwaves through the population. Drusus also very carefully made sure everyone knew that only Roman citizens qualified for the new colonies. Italians would not be allowed.37

Drusus’s clever dividing of Roman from Italian came just as Gaius was preparing to introduce the measure Flaccus had failed to carry during his consulship: citizenship for the Italians. As a matter of principle and political interest, Gaius supported a broader franchise and had been a frequent spokesman on behalf of the Italians. Gaius proposed those with Latin Rights be elevated to full Roman citizenship, while Allies would be granted Latin Rights. Gaius’s bill fell short of blanket equality proposed in 125 by Flaccus, but this was a massive bomb to lob into the middle of the Forum—especially as it came on the heels of Drusus’s Romans-only colonization project.38

Just as had happened during Flaccus’s consulship, the Senate dealt with Gaius’s call for Italian citizenship by once again expelling non-Roman Italians from entering the city in the run-up to the vote. The decree stated, “Nobody who does not possess the right of suffrage shall stay in the city or approach within [five miles] of it while voting is going on concerning these laws.” Facing a population thoroughly hostile to the bill, Gaius let it die rather than risk his other plans. Another attempt at reform having failed, the issue of Italian citizenship would remain a persistent problem for the Romans. Especially becau...

AFTER LOSING THE vote on Italian citizenship, Gaius sailed for North Africa in the spring of 122. The first of his colonies being built was the most controversial of all. Located on the site of old Carthage, the colony would control a strategically advantageous port, but the superstitious Romans were wary of occupying haunted ground. Leaving Flaccus behind to mind Rome, Gaius personally traveled to Carthage to oversee the founding of the colony. It’s hard to say exactly why Gaius departed Rome at this moment—perhaps it was because he felt that his presence du...

Gaius spent seventy days in Africa, and during those seventy days nothing went right. The survey team laying out the plots of land and design of the colony were plagued with problems. A post planted to mark the center of town was hit with a gust of wind and snapped. The entrails for a required sacrifice were similarly scattered by winds. Then wolves set upon the boundary markers and carried them away. And to the superstitious Romans, these problems were not just setbacks, they were proof that the gods did not approve of Gaiu...

To ensure the survival of his legislation Gaius decided against all precedent to run for a third consecutive term. On election day, Gaius emerged with the necessary number of votes to secure reelection, but the observers who monitored the election tripped over themselves challenging Gaius’s ballots, alleging that most were fraudulent and that the ballot box had been stuffed. It did not take long for the magistrates in charge of the election to agree, toss out most of Gaius’s votes, and declare him defeated. Gaius protested, but there was nothing he could do. The election results were verified and that was that. When the new year arrived, Gaius was out of office, stripped of the immunity from prosecution and the sacrosanct protection from physical harm. Left powerless and unprotected, he was about to be forced to watch his legislation die.44

the Senate gave Opimius the authority he needed to restore order. They instructed Opimius to do “whatever he thought necessary to preserve the State.” The intent of this vague decree was clearly to authorize Opimius to act as a dictator would—without resurrecting the cumbersome and archaic authority of the Dictatorship itself. Though they did not know it at the time, the Senate’s improvised decree set a precedent for the future. In times of civil unrest the Senate would invoke the same formula, which became known as the senatus consultum ultimum—the Senate’s Final Decree. Opimius promptly ordered every senator to provide two armed men from their households and muster them in the Forum the next morning.49

GAIUS GRACCHUS SPENT his final night as his brother had—surrounded by bodyguards and partisans, knowing that a great confrontation loomed in the morning. Gaius had spent years telling people about his dream: “However much you may try to defer your fate,” the ghost of his brother told him, “you must die the same death that I did.” What had once been a stirring bit of propaganda now seemed morbidly specific. Flaccus seemed unconcerned—even eager—about the looming clash. He and his friends stayed up late drinking and boasting of the fight they would give the no-good bastards in the morning. Gaius was sober. And somber.50

Carbo, the last remaining Gracchan land commissioner, only survived the purge by switching sides. He likely secured a consulship for 120 by promising to defend Opimius’s conduct in front of the Assembly. But since no one likes a traitor, Carbo was himself arraigned on vague charges of treason the minute he left office in 119. The prosecution was led by a rising young noble named Lucius Licinius Crassus. Just twenty years old, Crassus dazzled the crowd with incisive wit and eloquence that shredded Carbo’s attempt to escape his past: “Although, Carbo, you defended Opimius, this audience will not on that account esteem you a good citizen; for it is clear that you dissembled and had other views.” For a decade Carbo had been a radical Gracchan—the last-minute defense of Opimius didn’t fool anyone. Loathed by all and his reputation destroyed, Carbo “rescued himself from the severity of the judges by a voluntary death” (as Cicero so eloquently put it). Gaius Papirius Carbo was the last victim of the Gracchan purge.59

As the years passed the Gracchi name came to mean more than just the brothers: it stood for an array of programs and tactics that collectively represented a new populare movement in Roman politics. The standard populare programs included a grain dole for the urban poor, land for the rural poor, control of the courts with the Equestrians, secret ballots in the Assembly, subsidies for military service, and punishment of corrupt nobles. Tactically, the populare harnessed the democratic power of the Assembly rather than the aristocratic weight of the Senate. While populare leaders came and went, the citizens of Rome remained the same and would support those who offered them what they wanted.

Opposing the populares were the optimates. Meaning literally “the best” or “the good,” the term invoked a variety of characteristics. But since Cicero is our main source, those characteristics tended to align with his own worldview. For Cicero, an optimate was a well-educated senator with an active interest in oratory, politics, and war, and skewing away from the severe Roman virtues in the mold of old Cato the Elder. An optimate senator was comfortable with exotic food and Greek ideas. These grandly sophisticated statesmen were the natural guardians of the Republic, standing as sentinels against enemies both foreign and domestic.

the Romans did not have political parties in the modern sense. There was no “Populare Party” and “Optimate Party.” Tactics, strategies, and alliances were fluid to all factions.

Sallust said, “It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.” Accepting defeat was no longer an option.

GAIUS MARIUS WAS BORN IN 157 BC IN ARPINUM, AN ITALian city that had only recently been enfranchised by the Senate. Though later denigrated as “a man of rustic birth, rough and uncouth, and austere in his life,” Marius was in fact the son of a respected Equestrian family, raised in comfort and privilege. But though he was the well-educated son of a prosperous family, Roman politics in the second century seemed designed to make a mockery of his ambitions. Marius was a novus homo Italian without sufficient ancestry or connections to dream of anything more than a respectable career in local government. But Marius wanted more than that. So upon completing his education he took the only path to political prominence available to a relative outsider: service in the legions. Marius had “no sooner reached the age for military life than he had given himself the training of active service, not of Grecian eloquence.”2

Jugurtha looked back at Rome and issued his famous judgment: “A city for sale and doomed to speedy destruction if it finds a purchaser.”51

For the first time resistance was offered to the insolence of the nobles, the beginning of a struggle which threw everything, human and divine, into confusion, and rose to such a pitch of frenzy that civil discord ended in war and the devastation of Italy. SALLUST1

SOMETIME AFTER 120 BC, A GREAT NORTHERN TRIBE CALLED the Cimbri left their homeland near modern Denmark and migrated south. Over the following months and years they progressed toward the Danube, and then followed the course of the river west toward the Alps. Since no one is thrilled when a horde of three hundred thousand strangers comes wandering over the horizon, wherever the Cimbri went, they were met by hostile natives. But since the Cimbri were not a conquering horde, they were willing to move on when faced with hostility from the existing inhabitants. All they were looking for was a peaceful place to settle where they could build a new life.2

Philosophers of war have maintained that victory in the field often goes to the general who is either able to choose the terrain of battle or maintain the element of surprise. At Noreia Carbo had both, but it did him little good because he dramatically underestimated the size of the enemy. When Carbo sprang his trap, the legions were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of Cimbric warriors, who smashed Carbo’s army and forced them into a disorganized retreat. It was a humiliating defeat.7 Luckily for the Romans, the Cimbri did not follow up their victory by invading Italy. It really did seem like they were searching for a peaceful homeland to settle and had no wish to tangle further with the duplicitous and warlike Romans. But the fate of the two nations was now linked—the Battle of Noreia was only the beginning of the Cimbrian Wars.

The trouble began on the Macedonian border in 114. The Scordisci, a Thracian tribe that dominated the Danube, began making incursions south into Roman territory. To stop the incursions, the Senate dispatched consul Gaius Porcius Cato, grandson of the legendary Cato the Elder, but Cato’s army was crushed. With the Roman defenses in Macedonia shattered, the Scordisci overwhelmed the reserve garrisons and carved a wide swath of destruction. One scandalized Roman colorfully described the Scordisci invasion: “They left no cruelty untried, as they vented their fury on their prisoners; they sacrificed to the gods with human blood; they drank out of human skulls; by every kind of insult inflicted by burning and fumigation they made death more foul.” This culminated with the sack of the Oracle of Delphi, one of the most famous and sacred institutions of the Greek world. Though known to hold a rich depository of treasure, the Oracle was protected by its universally recognized sanctity. But as the Scordisci recognized no such sanctity, they plundered Delphi at will.8

In his search for experienced soldiers, Metellus also made a point of enrolling the best officers he could find. The paucity of available talent goes a long way toward explaining what may otherwise be an inexplicable decision. Metellus asked Gaius Marius to serve as a legate. Though Marius had run afoul of the Metelli politically, there was no question that he was among the most capable officers in Rome. Marius did not hesitate to join the campaign. With the conflict in Numidia going so poorly and with the Senate clearly to blame, there would be plenty of opportunities for a mere novus homo to make a name for himself.14

Since the failure to capture Jugurtha meant the war would continue, Metellus admitted that a disgruntled Marius would be more a hindrance than a help in the next campaign. So just twelve days before the consular election Metellus finally gave Marius leave to return to Rome. His hope was that even if Marius won election that the Senate would not appoint him to take over Metellus’s command in Numidia.39

Marius campaigned with a thunderous fury. In yet another clear break with mos maiorum, Marius routinely denounced Metellus for his conduct during the war. It was unheard of for a subordinate to criticize his general so openly, but Marius refused to be a slave to tradition—especially after Metellus tried to block him from the consulship. Above all, Marius made a single forthright promise: “If they would make him consul, he would within a short time deliver Jugurtha alive or dead into the hands of the Roman People.” Not surprisingly, Marius was elected.45

As he prepared to raise new legions, Marius ran into the same problem that had plagued Rome for a generation. As more and more families were pushed off their land, fewer and fewer men met the minimum property requirement for service in the legions. But while the consuls were forced to scrape the bottom of a very dry barrel looking for potential legionaries, tens of thousands of young men sat idle. The only mark against them was that they did not own land. So to fill his legions, Marius took a fateful step in the long history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic—he requested exemption from the property qualification. Of this request to recruit from among the poorest plebs, Sallust says: “Some say that he did this through lack of good men, others because of a desire to curry favor… As a matter of fact, to one who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, since he has no regard for his property, having none, and considers anything honorable for which he receives pay.” Any man, no matter how poor and destitute, could now serve in the army. With the promise of plunder and glory dangled before their eyes, poor men from across Italy rushed to sign up for Marius’s open legions.48 Emergency suspension of the property requirements was not without precedent. An ancestor of the Gracchi had even led a legion composed of slaves and gladiators during the darkest days of the Second Punic War. But what makes this moment so important is that it marked a permanent transi...

Eager to begin, Marius sailed for Africa before his new army was completely assembled. New cohorts of cavalry were still in the process of being raised, so Marius left his newly elected quaestor to finish the job. That quaestor’s name was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Why, my son, do you so long for Ambition, that worst of deities? Oh, do not; the goddess is unjust; many are the homes and cities once prosperous that she has entered and left to the ruin of her worshippers. EURIPIDES1

LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA WAS BORN IN ROME IN 138 BC. AS a Cornelii he belonged to one of the oldest patrician families in Rome. But though he bore a noble name, and the easy arrogance that went with it, Sulla’s own particular branch of the family had long since faded into obscurity. No one in his family had risen beyond praetor for three generations, and Sulla did not seem particularly primed to restore the family to glory. As a young man he caroused with actors, poets, and musicians—the bottom feeders of the Roman social order. He and his friends drank and partied and lived their lives outside the stuffy confines of the respectable classes. During his youth, Sulla also began a romantic relationship with the actor Metrobius, who went on to become his lifelong companion. Even as Sulla married, had children, and climbed to the pinnacle of power, Metrobius remained by his side.2

Though Sulla was a carefree hedonist, he never neglected his studies. He had great natural intelligence and received a good education. By the time he was a teenager he was fluent in Greek and highly literate in art, literature, and history. Despite the low fortunes of his family, Sulla still spent his youth expecting to embark on a public career. But when his father died, Sulla discovered just how far the family fortunes had fallen. Sulla’s father was bankrupt and left his son no inheritance. Sulla could not even afford to join the legions as a cavalry officer, the prerequisite to any political career. So rather than spending his twenties in the legions, Sulla continued his dissolute life in Rome, renting an inexpensive apartment and living his life in the pursuit of wine, women, and song.3

Sulla cut a striking figure on the streets of Rome, with sharp gray eyes and light reddish hair. Though plagued by breakouts of red splotches on his face, Sulla was a handsome and charismatic young man who commanded the attention of any room: “He was eloquent, clever, and quick to make friends. He had a mind deep beyond belief in its power of disguising its purposes, and was generous with many things, especially with money.” He would never entirely leave his early life behind. The friends he made remained close at hand, and in the future, Sulla would live something of a double life: stern and composed while dealing with matters of...

Around age thirty, Sulla secured an advantageous marriage to a woman called only “Julia,” whom it is strongly suspected was a cousin of Gaius Marius’s wife Julia—creating an attachment to Marius just as Marius’s career was taking off. But though he was married, Sulla was not faithful. He was charismatic and indulged in numerous affairs, especially with older widows who were happy to help him maintain his libertine lifestyle. Sulla had a particularly prolonged affair with a woman known only by his pet name for her, “Nicopolis.” She died around 110 BC and named Sulla as her principal heir. Around this time, his stepmother also died and similarly left him all her property. Suddenly Sulla had wealth to match his ambitions. The fact that he had started with so little and acquired so much later made his enemies sneer: “How can you be an honest man,” they said, “when your father left you nothing, and yet you are so rich?”5...

Marius ordered Sulla to stay behind in Rome to raise cavalry units, ensuring that he would not get in the way as Marius sailed for Numidia to finish the war against Jugurtha.6

WHEN MARIUS ARRIVED in Africa in early 107, Metellus was unable to overcome his rage at being cast aside, and so he refused the custom of personally handing over command to a successor. Instead, Metellus sent his second in command to greet Marius and hand over the army. Metellus, meanwhile, sailed back to Rome under a dark cloud of not entirely unjustifiable bitterness.7

But upon his return to Rome, Metellus found that his honor was not totally besmirched. Though Marius had seized the consulship, the Metelli were still powerful, and so the family arranged for Metellus to be met by jubilant crowds and induced the Senate to vote him a triumph. There was a ham-fisted effort to prosecute Metellus for the same charges of extortion and corruption that the Mamilian Commission had used so effectively, but it went nowhere. The jury refused to even consider the charges and Metellus was acquitted on all counts. The Metelli family then induced the Senate to award Metellus the title Numidicus for his work...

SULLA HAD SPENT the beginning of the campaign in Italy gathering more cavalry. But with his units now filled, he joined Marius’s army just as the siege of the fortress along the Muluccha began. Despite Marius’s earlier doubts, Sulla turned out to be bright, talented, and a quick study. Sulla threw himself headlong into the soldier’s life, never avoided hardship, and was soon regarded as the “best soldier in the whole army.” Because he had spent his youth among the lower rungs of Roman society, Sulla had a natural rapport with the men. He laughed and joked with them, shared their toils, and was generous with favors and money without ever asking repayment—though the ever-cynical Sallust hints that this was just so Sulla could have as many men in his debt as possible. By the time the legions captured the fort of Muluccha, even Marius considered Sulla one of the best officers under his command.11

But if there was one thing the Romans had never done, and would never do, it was give up a fight. They certainly did not give back territory they had already won. So even though they seemed to lose every army they sent north, in 106 the Senate dispatched the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio to do something—anything—to salvage the situation. Caepio had long been connected to the Metelli faction through the patronage of the influential optimates Scaurus and Crassus. In most ways Caepio was everything that was wrong with the Senate at the time. He was arrogant, greedy, self-glorifying, and singularly unable to put the Republic’s interests above his own. And at his feet would be laid one of the greatest defeats in the history of the Roman Republic.

Arriving in Gaul for a campaign in 106, Caepio finally delivered some good news when he captured the city of Tolosa (modern Toulouse, in southwestern France). We might not know anything about Caepio’s activities were it not for a famous scandal that soon passed into legend. Upon taking the city, Caepio’s men stumbled across an incredible find: 50,000 bars of gold and 10,000 bars of silver. The fortune was soon identified as the missing treasure from a famous Gallic invasion of Greece way back in 279 that, much like the more recent incursions by the Scordisci, ended with the plunder of the Oracle of Delphi. But the sacred treasure had apparently carried with it a curse: “whoever touched a piece of gold from that sack died a wretched and agonizing death.” As the Gauls were driven out of Greece they came to suspect that the tainted treasure was a part of their problem. According to legend, the Gauls dumped most of it in the lakes around Tolosa, but some of it wound up in a temple inside the city. This was the stash that Caepio’s men discovered.18

But this is only half the story. Caepio ordered the sacred treasure boxed up and carried down south to the Massilia, where it could be shipped by sea to Rome, displayed in Caepio’s inevitable triumph, and then deposited in the Temple of Saturn. But that’s not what happened. While the treasure was being delivered, the convoy was set upon by a group of bandits and the gold was stolen. Few believed this was random chance—the common assumption was that Caepio had hired the bandits himself to steal the gold for him. If true, Caepio’s double crime of plundering cursed gold from a sacred temple, and then conspiring to steal it all for himself, goes a long way toward explaining his unhappy fate. The historian Justin agreed that “this sacrilegious act subsequently proved a cause of ruin to Caepio and his army. The rising of the Cimbrian war, too, seemed to pursue the Romans as if to avenge the removal of that devoted treasure.” But it could just have easily been that Caepio was a fool who provoked his own misfortunes without help from the gods.19

The next day Bocchus summoned a courtier he knew to be in touch with Jugurtha and passed along a message for the Numidian king. Bocchus said he was about to make a peace with Rome—what could Jugurtha offer to make him change his mind? A reply came back quickly from Jugurtha. The Numidian king promised Bocchus anything he wanted to restore the alliance; for starters, Jugurtha would hand over nearly a third of Numidian territory. Jugurtha also proposed that Bocchus kidnap Sulla, and then together they could ransom him to the Senate and force the legions to withdraw from Africa entirely. Bocchus agreed to meet Jugurtha at a secluded location outside of the city.27 With both sides having made their pitches, Bocchus found himself with an ulcer-inducing decision to make: betray his fellow king to the Romans and possibly risk the wrath of his subjects, or seize Sulla and risk the wrath of the legions. The king stayed up the whole night before the rendezvous with Jugurtha deciding what to do.28 The next day Bocchus, Sulla, and a small party of retainers rode out toward the secluded spot. Bocchus was about to double-cross either Sulla or Jugurtha, and to Sulla’s satisfaction, Jugurtha drew the short straw. Bocchus’s men surrounded the clearing and when Jugurtha appeared the men sprang out of the ambush. Jugurtha’s few remaining retainers were killed and the king himself was seized and handed over to Sulla. Sulla dutifully delivered Jugurtha in chains to Marius. Twelve years after J...

BUT THIS HAPPY news was about to be blotted out by an unfathomable disaster in the north. The Cimbri had first arrived in 113, defeated the Romans at Noreia, and then moved on. After a four-year hiatus, they had come down the Rhône river in 109 and defeated the Romans again. Now, after yet another four-year cycle, the Cimbri came back around in 105, once again migrating down the Rhône toward the Mediterranean coast. The Senate was understandably spooked by the return of this enemy that had bested them twice.30 Though now widely suspected of playing a role in the disappearance of the Tolosa gold, the Senate extended Caepio’s command in the north and kept his army intact—two full Roman legions plus twice as many Italian allies and Gallic auxiliary forces—bringing his combined numbers up to somewhere around thirty-five thousand. To double the number on the northern front the Senate instructed one of the consuls for 105, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, to gather an army of equal strength. This time the Cimbri must be destroyed. It was a good thing the property requirements had been dropped or Rome might not have been able to muster the strength to put the sixty to eighty thousand men through the Alps while simultaneously maintaining the legions in Numidia.31

Gnaeus Mallius was not just any newly elected consul, though. He was, like Marius, a novus homo. Between 191 and 107 only three confirmed novus homo had been elected consul. But in the rising tide of populare agitation, the Senate could not stop a string of novus homo from entering office. In the fourteen years between 107 and 94, five novus homo would be elected consul, and Gaius Marius himself would become far and away the most dominant leader in Rome. When Mallius drew Gaul as his province, the Senate was once again forced to trust a new man with the safety of Rome.32 In the Roman military hierarchy, no one outranked a consul, so when Mallius arrived in Gaul it was his right to supplant Caepio as commander in chief. But Caepio, being the arrogant noble that he was, greeted the novus homo Mallius with nothing but dismissive insolence. He claimed to be operating in a separate geographic province on the other side of the Rhône and insisted on maintaining autonomy on his side of the river. This lack of unity betw...

In early October 105, a forward patrol from Mallius’s legions scouting the approach of the Cimbri unexpectedly ran right into the main body. The patrol was surrounded and destroyed. Realizing the Cimbri would be arriving any minute, Mallius begged Caepio to cross the Rhône and join their armies together. Caepio mocked Mallius, saying that he would be happy to cross the river and help the frightened novus homo consul, who was obviously quaking in his boots over nothing. The two Roman armies converged near Arausio on the east bank of the Rhône, but out of a mixture of hubris and spite, Caepio still refused to join his army to Mallius’s. Caepio even blew off envoys from the Senate who begged him to submit. Caepio not only refused, he camped with his army situated between his colleague Mallius and the Cimbri. The long-held suspicion is that Caepio’s grand plan was to bring the Cimbri to battle first ...

We do not know whether Caepio then marched out to instigate battle or whether he waited for the Cimbri to come to him, but it’s clear he provoked the disaster to come. He never once seemed to realize that the Romans were about to face hundreds of thousands of Cimbric warriors and that even combined, the Romans would be outnumbered. When the battle began, it is likely that Caepio’s forward army was overwhelmed by the first wave. Pushed backward, Caepio’s forces would have run into Mallius’s army and created a confused tangle without form, direction, or unity of purpose. This frustrated mob of confused legionaries was then surrounded by the Cimbri and pinned against the Rhône. With nowhere to go and all order lost, the Cimbri consumed the trapped legions like acid eating through flesh.35 By nightfall, the Romans were not just defeated, they were annihilated. The sources place the total dead at somewhere between 60,000 to 80,000 legionaries plus another 40,000 camp followers. Everyone agrees that almost no one made it out alive. There were some survivors who got away—both Caepio and Mallius made it back to Rome, as did a young officer named Quintus Sertorius, who was able to swim a...

But a funny thing happened on the way to Armageddon—the Cimbri again withdrew. The ancient historians never spend much time trying to explain the motives and actions of the Cimbri, so it’s left to modern historians to speculate that in all likelihood the Cimbri were never interested in invading Italy, but instead simply wanted to keep the violent and aggressive Romans bottled up on the Italian peninsula. So after demonstrating to the Romans three times in a row that they best not mess with the Cimbri, the tribe withdrew again and migrated west toward Spain.37 The panic in Rome must have been severe. With the elections for next year’s consulship approaching, there was no question who the people thought could stave off the end of Roman civilization, which appeared to be the stakes. The Assembly did not want another incompetent Carbo, or overmatched Silanus, or fatally arrogant Caepio. The people wanted Gaius Marius. The Assembly tossed aside two more pieces of mos maiorum to get their wish. Roman law still forbade a man from serving a second consulship within ten year...

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...