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

by Mike Duncan

But Marius was not able to enjoy his triumph in peace. Men who disdained the usurping novus homo praised the young noble Sulla as the real captor of Jugurtha. According to military and political tradition, the man who held imperium over a province received all credit and all blame for the fortunes of war. It was how it had always been done. It was mos maiorum. But enemies of Marius encouraged Sulla to tell his story. The proud and ambitious Sulla was all too happy to play the game and went so far as to cast as his personal seal an image depicting the capture of Jugurtha....

The generals of this later time… who needed their armies for service against one another, rather than against the public enemy, were compelled to merge the general and the demagogue. PLUTARCH1

Eager to fight after nearly two years of anticipation, they could not understand why Marius did not give the order to attack. Was this not what they had been waiting for? Was this not what they had been training for? For three days, they endured the ferocious war cries and taunts from the enemy. They endured repeated attacks on the walls. They endured the enemy ravaging the countryside. But Marius refused to let them attack.2 The men’s indignation at their commander’s inaction soon turned to disgust. “What cowardice has Marius discovered in us that he keeps out of battle,” they asked. “Does he fear the fate of Carbo and Caepio, whom the enemy defeated? Surely it is better to do something, even if we perish as they did, rather than to sit here and enjoy the spectacle of our allies being plundered.” But Marius held fast, saying there was far more at stake than pride. “It was not,” he said, “triumphs or trophies that should now be the object of [your] ambition, but how [you] might ward off so great a cloud and thunder-bolt of war and secure the safety of Italy.” Instead of fighting, he ordered his soldiers to man the walls and observe the enemy. He told them to study their weapons and watch how their horsemen rode. Marius wanted his men to grow accustomed to the frightening war cries and painted faces of these northern warriors so that the legionaries understood they were facing ordinary men, not demons from the underworld.3 On the fourth day, the great mass of barbarians off...

The core of this new army was a reserve legion that had been conscripted by the previous year’s consul, Publius Rutilius Rufus. When his ill-fated colleague Mallius had gone off to battle the Cimbri, Rutilius had stayed behind in Rome to continue raising reinforcements. Not wanting these reinforcements to sit idle, Rutilius kept them busy with a training regimen adapted from the gladiatorial schools. The men engaged in hand-to-hand combat, calisthenics, and physical conditioning. When Marius inherited this small force in early 104 he found it to be one of the best-trained groups of soldiers he had ever commanded.5 To build around this core, Marius canvassed for new recruits. As with the Numidian campaign, Marius secured an exemption from the property requirements and drafted men of every class and background. He had little difficulty raising recruits. Men who had watched their friends and neighbors win riches and fame in North Africa now wanted in on the action. Where once the hopeless underclasses had been left behind by the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean, they now stood to profit along with the nobility. We do not know exactly how many men Marius took with him to Gaul, but it was perhaps as many as thirty thousand Romans plus forty thousand Italian Allies and foreign auxiliaries. One thing we know for sure, however, is that Marius made sure Sulla stayed by his side. Though Marius was annoyed that Sulla happily took credit for capturing Jugurtha, he could not deny th...

MEANWHILE BACK IN Rome, the populares who had kept the Senate under siege and carried Marius to two consulships continued to feel their oats. In fact, the reelection of Marius was not the only unprecedented result of the election of 105. Joining Marius in the consulship was another novus homo named Gaius Flavius Fimbria. Never in Roman history had two novus homo served as colleagues in the consulship.13

Marius wanted to be reelected consul, but having already served twice in a row, another campaign might seem arrogant and vain. So Marius returned to Rome in the lead-up to the election for 102 and announced that he was not interested in another consulship and that the people should elect another man. Right on cue, Saturninus accused Marius of treason for leaving the citizens of Rome defenseless and roused his audience to demand that Marius take back the consulship. Marius was reelected overwhelmingly and in January 102 entered an unprecedented third consulship in a row, now his fourth in total.30

Freedom, democracy, laws, reputation, official position, were no longer of any use to anybody, since even the office of tribune, which had been devised for the restraint of wrong-doers… was guilty of such outrages and suffered such indignities. APPIAN1

BACK IN ROME, jubilation reigned. With all their enemies finally dead or in chains, the Romans commenced with a nonstop victory party. The Assembly declared fifteen days of thanksgiving after news of Marius’s victory over the Cimbri and then prepared for his great triumphant return to the city. But Marius would not celebrate this triumph alone; he instead invited Catulus to share the stage with him. Joint triumphs were not unheard of, but they were incredibly rare—a triumph was a political expression of singular achievement. The point was to own the spotlight, not share it. Friendly sources paint this as an act of generous magnanimity. But hostile sources say Marius knew Catulus had really won the battle over the Cimbri and feared a revolt from Catulus’s legions if their commander was left out.19

But despite these clashes, Saturninus pushed through the bill allotting land to Marius’s veterans. Aware that it might be repealed when he left office, Saturninus inserted a clause requiring every senator to swear an oath that they would never repeal the law upon pain of banishment. With this oath, Saturninus and Marius had laid another trap for the hated Metellus Numidicus. Marius personally addressed the Senate and registered his approval of the law, but expressed misgivings about the oath, providing cover for more conservative senators like Metellus who were aghast at the requirement. But just hours before the deadline to take the oath, Marius abruptly changed his mind. He told his fellow senators he was going to swear the oath and walked over to the Temple of Saturn for the ceremony. Without time to think, the other senators had only minutes to choose between taking the oath and going into exile. They all chose to swear the oath—even optimate stalwarts like Scaurus and Crassus. The only one who refused was Metellus Numidicus. Saturninus’s supporters menaced him to the point of riot, but announcing that he could not abide such violence on his own account, Metellus accepted exile. “For,” he said, “either matters will mend and the people will change their minds and I shall return at their invitation, or, if matters remain as they are, it is best that I should be away.” Saturninus duly carried a law prohibiting any Roman from offering Metellus fire, water, and shelter. Thr...

Though we call this war a war against allies in order to lessen the odium of it, if we are to tell the truth it was a war against citizens. FLORUS1

QUINTUS POPPAEDIUS SILO HAILED FROM THE MARSI tribe of central Italy. Long respected for their martial valor, it was said that no Roman consul had ever celebrated a triumph over the Marsi, or without the Marsi. Silo himself was a veteran of the legions, almost certainly fighting in the armies of Gaius Marius against the Cimbri. A leader of wealth and standing at home, Silo also had plenty of friends in Rome and spent a great deal of time in the city. But though Silo was thoroughly integrated into the Roman system and had shed blood defending the Republic, he was still not technically an equal citizen—a fact that was becoming intolerable.2 In the summer of 91 BC, Silo paid a call to his old friend Marcus Livius Drusus, the son of the man who had so thoroughly stymied Gaius Gracchus in 122. Drusus the Younger was now tribune and furiously stirring up a political storm of his own. Silo traveled to Rome to implore Drusus to rethink some of his proposals. Drusus planned to revive the old Gracchan-style land commission, which threatened Italian communities with arbitrary confiscation of property. Silo said the Italians would only accept land redistribution if a bill finally delivering equal citizenship came with it.* Drusus agreed that the time had come to finally settle the matter once and for all. He promised to take the Italian citizenship bill to the Assembly.3 In return for this promise, Silo pledged to support Drusus without reservation. He said, “By Capitoline Jupiter, Ve...

UNTIL THE AGE of the Gracchi, the Italian Allies had prized their autonomy inside Rome’s Italian confederation. The complaints they lodged in the Senate usually had to do with the fact that too many of their citizens were migrating to Rome—often to avoid being conscripted into the legions. Meanwhile, the Senate and People of Rome were long concerned that waves of migrants would disrupt their own collective stranglehold on power. Elites in both Rome and the Italian cities often worked together to force the migrants to return to their original homes.5

But there was one persistent complaint lodged by both rich and poor Italians alike: arbitrary abuse at the hands of Roman magistrates. Gaius Gracchus highlighted a case in which slaves carried a Roman magistrate in a litter. A local Italian peasant “asked in jest if they were carrying a corpse.” The insulted magistrate ordered the peasant beaten to death. In another case, the wife of a magistrate was angry some public baths had not been cleared for her solitary use. As punishment, “a stake was planted in the forum and… the most illustrious man of his city, was led to it. His clothing was stripped and he was beaten with rods.” The longstanding protection...

Gaius Marius reintroduced the Italian question during the Cimbrian Wars. Marius was long a champion of the Italian cause. He had fought alongside them his whole life. He himself hailed from a provincial Italian city. When the Italians complained about harassment by the tax farmers, Marius pushed the Senate to stop Italian enslavement. Out on campaign, Marius routinely exercised his power as consul to reward exemplary Italian soldiers with citizenship. Coming from all classes, these enfranchised soldiers returned to their home cities with extra rights and privileges. As they remingled with friends and family who did not enjoy the same rights, the seeds of discord took root.9 The rest of the Italians were encouraged to think that broader rights might be on the way when the census of 97 came around. With the right of civitas per magistratum floating around, many affluent Italians residing in Rome passed themselves off as former magistrates and enrolled as citizens. The Marian censors were intentionally lax with checking credentials, and when the census was complete, many in the Senate were suspicious and wanted to take another look at it. As was now the established pattern, the Romans always dangled the possibility of citizenship only to snatch it away.10

The province of Asia had been at the forefront of Roman politics in the 130s and 120s and then, much like the Italian question, had gone dormant. After Asia was incorporated into the empire, Rome’s attention diverted to Africa and Gaul for the next twenty years. Asia had been left to just hum along. And there was no reason not to let it hum: it was generating the massive profits funding those wars in Africa and Gaul. Cicero later said, “Asia is so rich and so productive… it is greatly superior to all other countries.” Taxes that had once been owed to King Attalus now formed a steady stream of wealth that poured directly into the Temple of Saturn.13 But with just a handful of staff running the provincial government, the business of handling the Asian taxes fell into the unsupervised hands of the publicani, who routinely extorted more money than was owed. Since the men who owned the publicani companies sat in the jury pool of the Extortion Court, there was no one to complain to. Policing themselves, the publicani operated with impunity. But now that peace had returned to the Republic, the Senate wanted to go back to running their empire rather than just saving it from ruin. After helping clean up the citizenship rolls in 95, Mucius Scaevola led an old-style senatorial embassy to Asia to investigate how the province was running and make any appropriate reforms. It had been twenty-five years since anyone had really checked to see how things were going. Accompanying Scaevola wa...

THE MAN AT the center of the latest crisis was Marcus Livius Drusus. Not unlike the Gracchi, Drusus was an ambitious young noble on the make. He was one of the most talented orators of a new generation that had grown up on the speeches of Crassus and Antonius. He carried himself with the arrogant confidence of a young man who expected the world to come to him.

Drusus did not traffic in populare circles—he was a scion of the optimate and raised to be a talented, if arrogant, future leader of the nobility. His father, Drusus the Elder, had fully ingratiated himself with the optimates for his attacks on Gaius Gracchus, and later shared a censorship with Scaurus in 109. It is not surprising that Scaurus tapped the son of his old colleague to carry a package of bills to the Assembly to restore judicial power to the Senate.19

Knowing that transferring the jury pool back to the Senate would trigger Equestrian resistance, Drusus and the optimates planned to build the same coalition pioneered by Gaius Gracchus, except use its power this time to build the Senate up rather than tear it down. First, Drusus proposed enlarging the Senate from three hundred to six hundred men. That way even if “the Senate” controlled the courts, it would only be after it was augmented by three hundred prominent Equestrians. This was a provocative proposal, as existing senators might not like to see their prestige watered down—nor be happy about the arrival of uncouth commoners. But the senatorial prohibition on engaging in commerce meant if a potential new senator was a merchant, he would have to either give up his trade or decline admission. Either way, the new senators would all be landed gentry like the old senators, with only the men of business left out in the cold.20

As the Equestrians were quite capable of mobilizing public support for their interests, Drusus was ready with a slate of programs to feed the old Gracchan coalition. For the plebs urbana, Drusus proposed a new subsidized grain dole. For the rural poor, Drusus proposed an agrarian law that was modeled on the original Lex Agraria of Tiberius Gracchus. This was all very popular with the Roman voters, but put the Italians on alert. They had successfully deflected the Gracchan commission; now it appeared Drusus was coming back for another pass. This was the issue that led Silo to visit his friend Drusus, where each wound up pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of Italian citizenship.21 But though Drusus’s intention was to make everyone happy by promising everyone everything—he boasted that “he had left nothing for anyone else to distribute”—this time the people dwelt on the downsides. Neither rural farmers nor senatorial elites liked subsidizing grain for the plebs urbana. The ...

DRUSUS AND HIS optimate backers also faced stiff opposition from one of the consuls for the year, Lucius Marcius Philippus. Philippus was an old rival of Scaurus and Crassus going back to the crisis years of 104–100. Philippus was the one who said there were only two thousand men who owned property in Italy while proposing a radical land redistribution bill of his own. In fine Roman fashion, now that a similar bill was being proposed by his enemies, Philippus opposed it vehemently. He was backed by the publicani, who rightly felt threatened by Drusus’s package of laws. On the day of the vote, Drusus had done his work well and it looked like everything was going to pass. But then, Philippus marched into the Forum and tried to shut down the Assembly. One of Drusus’s men “seized him by the throat and did not let go until blood poured into his mouth and eyes.” Philippus managed to get away but he was furious at the maltreatment of a consul.23 Given the state of the historical record, it is hard to know exactly which of his reforms Drusus managed to enact. We know he carried the land bill and grain bill, as well as the jury reform. But either because it never made it to the rostra or...

THE CITIZENS OF Rome did not know what they were getting into when they rejected the Italian citizenship bill. Given the surprise they all showed when the Social War erupted under their feet, they were clearly oblivious to the ramifications of dropping the bill. For the Romans, it was just another rejection in a long series of rejections of Italian citizenship. No big deal. But for the Italians it was the last straw.32 Ignorant of the hornet’s nest they had just bashed with a stick, it slowly dawned on the Romans that something might be wrong. At the very least, Silo and his march of ten thousand men was enough to put the Senate on notice that something was happening out there. So after Drusus’s murder, the Senate dispatched agents to various Italian cities to take the temperature of the Allies. Most of these agents reported no trouble at all—at least on the surface. But in the city of Asculum, located on the far side of the Apennines northeast of Rome, a report came in that Roman citizens had been seized as hostages. A praetor hurried to the city to investigate. With the residents of Asculum on the verge of revolt anyway, they attacked the praetor and murdered him. Then the insurrectionaries rampaged through the city killing any other Roman citizen they could find. These murders marked the beginning of the revolt of Asculum and the beginning of the Social War.33 The speed with which the revolt spread is a testament to how long the Italians had been planning. A wide cresce...

Rebel leaders from across this central Italian crescent of insurrection met in the city of Corfinium. They rechristened the city Italia and established a capital. Roman historians would describe the Italians forming a government modeled on the Roman structure of consuls, praetors, and a Senate. But in realty the structure was far more decentralized. Individual tribes operated under their own leaders, who communicated with each other via a collective war council in Italia. That council presented to Rome its central demand: Either we are equal citizens in the Republic or we are independent. The choice was civitas or libertas.35

With the Senate not realizing yet the scope of the crisis they were falling into, they rejected the ultimatum out of hand. So the Italian armies gathered under their local generals and launched a simultaneous uprising in late 91. Since all the Italian generals were intimately familiar with both Roman politics and war, they knew exactly what to hit first. Going all the way back to the tribal wars of the early Republic, the Romans planted Latin colonies in the backyards of defeated enemies. These communities remained outposts of Roman military authority. The first thing the Italians did was attack these Latin colonies, then seize control of the ro...

WHILE THESE POLITICAL prosecutions unfolded, the campaign season arrived in the spring of 90, and the Romans were ready to start a counteroffensive in multiple theaters. Consul Lucius Julius Caesar* was assigned to the Samnites in the south, while Publius Rutilius Lupus operated in the north against the Marsi. Meanwhile, proconsul Sextus Caesar was dispatched across the Apennines to Asculum. Spread out beneath the senior magistrates were an array of legates and praetors who operated with an unusual amount of independence. Among them were the men who would define the next violent phase of Roman politics: Metellus Pius, Pompey Strabo, Cinna, Quintus Sertorius, even old Marius came out of retirement. But no one used his service in the Social War to better political advantage than Lucius Cornelius Sulla.42

Sulla had stayed on the sidelines during the explosive political battles of 104–100 that climaxed with Saturninus’s insurrection. When things started getting back to normal in 99, Sulla made a bid for praetor but was rebuffed by the voters, the story being that the voters were not happy Sulla was trying to skip out on being aedile. He was still old friends with King Bocchus of Mauretania and the people wanted Sulla to throw some fancy African-themed games. But wanting to get on with his career, Sulla promised to throw the desired games if he was elected praetor. Running again the next year, he was elected. The games were magnificent.43

Silo tried to goad Marius into a fight just as the Teutones had taunted him at Aquae Sextiae. Silo said, “If you are a great general, Marius, come down and fight it out with us.” But as always, Marius was smart and did not take the bait. He said, “If you are a great general, force me to fight it out with you against my will.” Marius would later be accused of timidity in his old age, but from the arc of his career, we know Marius wouldn’t be caught dead fighting a battle not of his own making. Gaius Marius was never considered a brilliant general in the mold of Alexander, Hannibal, or Scipio Africanus, but he was so careful in his preparations and so steady in executing his plans that he won wars no one else could win. Near the end of the year he did it again—Marius scored Rome’s first victory against the Marsi.51

Meanwhile out in Asculum, where this had all started, the proconsul Sextus Caesar maneuvered his way toward the city. His principal legate was a rising novus homo who was attached to the command because his family estates were principally held in the region: Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. Rendered in English as Pompey Strabo, he was the father and precursor of Pompey the Great, though at the moment his son was just a teenager preparing for his first campaign. Eventually the legions began a siege of Asculum, but over the winter Sextus Caesar himself succumbed to a camp illness and died. His legate Pompey Strabo was suddenly in charge.52

All these defeats and deaths of commanders came as troubling news back in Rome. As the year 90 proceeded, “many were the slaughters, sieges, and sacking of towns on both sides, during this war, victory hovering sometimes here and sometimes there… giving no assurance to either party which of them she favored.” With casualties running high, the Senate passed a decree that all war dead would be buried where they fell rather than be brough...

HAVING NOW PROVOKED the Italians to war, the Senate suddenly woke up to the fact that they were about to lose control of the whole peninsula. The question of Italian citizenship had been floating around for fifty years, and was rejected every time it arose. But with the mortal necessity of making sure no other Italians went into revolt, the Romans finally relented. The Italians could have their citizenship. After the consul Lucius Caesar returned to Rome to oversee the elections for the next year, he carried a bill through the Assembly: the Lex Julia. The Lex Julia offered full Roman citizenship to any Italian who had not yet taken up arms. The newly enrolled would enjoy the rights of full citizens, including protection from arbitrary abuse and the ability to vote in the Assembly. But even though it was pitched as full citizenship, the Senate could not resist a subtle catch. The entire population of Italy would be lumped into ten new tribes who would always vote last in the Assembly. With voting only proceeding until a majority of tribes agreed, the final tribes were rarely called on to vote. The Senate was willing to enfranchise the Italians, but not to let them take over the R...

THOUGH 89 WENT better than 90 for the Romans, the year still began with another dead consul. Lucius Porcius Cato* arrived to take over the troops under Marius in early 89, and like Lupus and Caepio was dismissive of the old man. Cato forced Marius to resign his legateship by claiming Marius was in poor health. But Cato promptly led...

But elsewhere things went better. A nascent rebellion in Umbria and Etruria fizzled out between the promise of citizenship and a sharp campaign from the new consul Pompey Strabo—aided now by both his teenage son Pompey and a young staff officer named Marcus Tullius Cicero. Strabo then returned to Asculum and continued the siege. The Italians mustered an army numbering in the tens of thousands to dislodge Strabo, but Strabo would not be dislodged. After the last relief effort failed, despair in the city led the Italian commander in charge to lose faith in his countrymen. He threw himself a great banquet and at the end drank a goblet full of wine and poison.58 Its capacity to resist exhausted, Asculum finally surrendered in November 89. Strabo was not forgiving in victory. When he entered the city he had “all the leading men beaten with rods and beheaded. He sold the slaves and all the booty at auction and ordered the remaining people to depart, free indeed, but str...

Down in the south, Sulla finally emerged with an independent command. He was ordered to march down the coast through Campania to return wayward towns to the fold. Sulla ended up outside the gates of insurgent Pompeii* and laid a siege. An Italian army rushed to the aid of Pompeii and defeated Sulla in their first encounter. But Sulla regrouped and sent the Italians running to the safety of nearby Nola. For his heroics during this campaign, Sulla’s men awarded him the prestigious grass crown for saving a legion in battle. Now brimming with confidence, Sulla led his forces back to Pompeii and captured it. Then he turned and plunged into the territory of the Hirpini. After using a massive bonfire to torch the principal city of Aeclanum, the rest of the Hirpini surrendered and Sulla moved into Samnium, where he took the city of Bovanium. It was a run of success that made Sulla hugely popular in Rome just in time for the consular elections.61

BY THE END of 89, the Social War was winding down, but the two years of conflict had devastated the population of Italy. Though ancient numbers are almost always inflated, allegedly three hundred thousand people died in the conflict, Romans and Italians being indistinguishable after funeral pyres turned their bodies to ash.62 Economically, the war was a disaster and crippled Italian productivity even more than the invasion of Hannibal. The lands of rich and poor alike were ruined by either plunder, neglect, or intentional destruction. Senators were cut off from their Italian estates—which would have been seized and ransacked by insurrectionary Italians. Every corner of Italy reported grain shortages and famine by the spring of 88, a famine compounded by the plebs urbana in Rome who, “like an insatiable stomach that consumes everything and yet remains always hungry… more wretched than all other cities that she was making wretched, left nothing untouched and yet had nothing.”63