Chapter XLVIII: Section 7 (5)

"The victories of the last half-century seemed to promise ease
and wealth to Rome. She was to live on the spoils and revenue
from the conquered countries. Not only did they pay a fixed
tax to her exchequer, but the rich lands of Capua, the royal
domain lands of the kings of Syracuse and of Macedonia, became
public property, and produced a large annual rent. It was
found possible in 167 to relieve citizens from the property
tax or tributum, which was not collected again until the year
after the death of Julius Caesar. But the sudden influx of
wealth had the usual effect of raising the standard of
expense; and new tastes and desires required increased means
for their gratification. All manner of luxuries were finding
their way into the city from the East.
{2679}
Splendid furniture, costly ornaments, wanton dances and music
for their banquets, became the fashion among the Roman nobles;
and the younger men went to lengths of debauchery and
extravagance hitherto unknown. The result to many was
financial embarrassment, from which relief was sought in
malversation and extortion. The old standard of honour in
regard to public money was distinctly lowered, and cases of
misconduct and oppression were becoming more common and less
reprobated. … The fashionable taste for Greek works of art, in
the adornment of private houses, was another incentive to
plunder, and in 149 it was for the first time found necessary
to establish a permanent court or 'quaestio' for cases of
malversation in the provinces. Attempts were indeed made to
restrain the extravagance which was at the root of the evil.
In 184 Cato, as censor, had imposed a tax on the sale of
slaves under twenty above a certain price, and on personal
ornaments above a certain value; and though the 'lex Oppia,'
limiting the amount of women's jewelry, had been repealed in
spite of him in 195, other sumptuary laws were passed. A 'lex
Orchia' in 182 limited the number of guests, a 'lex Fannia' in
161 the amount to be spent on banquets; while a 'lex Didia' in
143 extended the operation of the law to all Italy. And though
such laws, even if enforced, could not really remedy the evil,
they perhaps had a certain effect in producing a sentiment;
for long afterwards we find overcrowded dinners regarded as
indecorous and vulgar. Another cause, believed by some to be
unfavourably affecting Roman character, was the growing
influence of Greek culture and Greek teachers. For many years
the education of the young, once regarded as the special
business of the parents, had been passing into the hands of
Greek slaves or freedmen. … On the superiority of Greek
culture there was a division of opinion. The Scipios and their
party patronised Greek philosophy and literature. … This
tendency, which went far beyond a mere question of literary
taste, was opposed by a party of which M. Porcius Cato was the
most striking member. … In Cato's view the reform needed was a
return to the old ways, before Rome was infected by Greece."

_E. S. Shuckburgh,
History of Rome to the Battle of Actium,
chapter 32._

ROME: B. C. 159-133.
Decline of the Republic.
Social and economic causes.
The growing system of Slavery and its effects.
Monopoly of land by capitalists.
Extinction of small cultivators.
Rapid decrease of citizens.

"In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate
oligarchy and a democracy not yet developed but already
cankered in the bud were interwoven in a manner pregnant with
fatal results. According to their party names, which were
first heard during this period, the ' Optimates' wished to
give effect to the will of the best, the 'Populares' to that
of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that
day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining
community. Both parties contended alike for shadows. … Both
were equally affected by political corruption, and both were
in fact equally worthless. … The commonwealth was politically
and morally more and more unhinged, and was verging towards
its total dissolution. The crisis with which the Roman
revolution was opened arose not out of this paltry political
conflict, but out of the economic and social relations which
the Roman government allowed, like everything else, simply to
take their course"; and which had brought about "the
depreciation of the Italian farms; the supplanting of the
petty husbandry, first in a part of the provinces and then in
Italy, by the farming of large estates; the prevailing
tendency to devote the latter in Italy to the rearing of
cattle and the culture of the olive and vine; finally, the
replacing of the free labourers in the provinces as in Italy
by slaves. … Before we attempt to describe the course of this
second great conflict between labour and capital, it is
necessary to give here some indication of the nature and
extent of the system of slavery. We have not now to do with
the old, in some measure innocent, rural slavery, under which
the farmer either tilled the field along with his slave, or,
if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed the
slave … over a detached farm. … What we now refer to is the
system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman state,
as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendancy of
capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary
transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of
slaves during the earlier period, this system of slavery was,
just like that of America, based on the methodically
prosecuted hunting of man. … No country where this species of
game could be hunted remained exempt from visitation; even in
Italy it was a thing by no means unheard of, that the poor
free man was placed by his employer among the slaves. But the
Negroland of that period was western Asia, where the Cretan
and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and
slave-dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek
islands; and where, emulating their feats, the Roman
revenue-farmers instituted human hunts in the client states
and incorporated those whom they captured among their slaves.
… At the great slave market in Delos, where the slave-dealers
of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to Italian speculators,
on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to have been
disembarked in the morning and to have heen all sold before
evening. … In whatever direction speculation applied itself,
its instrument was invariably man reduced in the eye of the
law to a brute. Trades were in great part carried on by
slaves, so that the proceeds belonged to the master. The
levying of the public revenues in the lower departments was
regularly conducted by the slaves of the associations that
leased them. Servile hands performed the operations of mining,
making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early
the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines. … The
tending of cattle was universally performed by slaves. … But
far worse in every respect was the plantation system
proper—the cultivation of the fields by a band of slaves not
unfrequent]y branded with iron, who with shackles on their
legs performed the labours of the field under overseers during
the day, and were locked up together by night in the common,
frequently subterranean, labourers' prison. This plantation
system had migrated from the East to Carthage, … and seems to
have been brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily. …
{2680}
The abyss of misery and woe which opens before our eyes in
this most miserable of all proletariates, we leave to be
fathomed by those who venture to gaze into such depths; It is
very possible that, compared with the sufferings of the Roman
slaves, the sum of all Negro suffering is but a drop. Here we
are not so much concerned with the distress of the slaves
themselves as with the perils which it brought upon the Roman
state. …

See SLAVE WARS IN SICILY AND ITALY.

The capitalists continued to buy out the small landholders, or
indeed, if they remained obstinate, to seize their fields
without title of purchase. … The landlords continued mainly to
employ slaves instead of free labourers, because the former
could not like the latter be called away to military service;
and thus reduced the free proletariate to the same level of
misery with the slaves. They continued to supersede Italian
grain in the market of the capital, and to lessen its value
over the whole peninsula, by selling Sicilian slave-corn at a
mere nominal price. … After 595 [B. C. 159], … when the census
yielded 328,000 citizens capable of bearing arms, there
appears a regular falling off, for the list in 600 [B. C. 154]
stood at 324,000, that in 607 [B. C. 147] at 322,000, that in
623 [B. C. 131] at 319,000 burgesses fit for service—an
alarming result for a period of profound peace at home and
abroad. If matters were to go on at this rate, the
burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and slaves;
and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the
Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market. Such was
the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state
entered on the 7th century of its existence. Wherever the eye
turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could
not but force itself on every sagacious and well disposed man,
whether this state of things were not capable of remedy or
amendment."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 4, chapter 2 (volume 3)._

ALSO IN:
_T. Arnold,
History of the Roman Commonwealth,
chapter 2._

_G. Long,
Decline of the Roman Republic,
volume 1, chapters 10-12._

_W. R. Brownlow,
Slavery and Serfdom in Europe,
lectures 1-2._

ROME: B. C. 151-146.
The Third Punic War: Destruction of Carthage.

"Carthage, bound hand and foot by the treaty of 201 B. C., was
placed under the jealous watch of the loyal prince of Numidia,
who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But
it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every
symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at
Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of
Hannibal in 195 B. C. nor his death in 183 B. C. did much to
check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure
while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim
satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the
increasing irritation of the Carthaginians under the harassing
raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour,
Masinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by
some breach of the conditions imposed upon her, supply Rome
with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 B. C. came the
news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was
actually at war with Masinissa. The anti-Carthaginian party in
the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the
opportunity; in spite of the protests of Scipio Nasica and
others, war was declared, and nothing short of the destruction
of their city itself was demanded from the despairing
Carthaginians. This demand, as the senate, no doubt, foresaw,
was refused, and in 149 B. C. the siege of Carthage began.
During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147
P. Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus, son of L. Æmilius Paulus,
conqueror of Macedonia, and grandson by adoption of the
conqueror of Hannibal, was, at the age of 37, and though only
a candidate for the ædileship, elected consul and given the
command in Africa. In the next year (146 B. C.) Carthage was
taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman
province of Africa, while Numidia, now ruled by the three sons
of Masinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman
suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the
raids of the desert tribes. Within little more than a century
from the commencement of the first Punic war, the whole of the
former dominions of Carthage had been brought under the direct
rule of Roman magistrates, and were regularly organised as
Roman provinces."

_H. F. Pelham,
Outlines of Roman History,
book 3, chapter 1._

See, also, CARTHAGE: B. C. 146.

ROME: B. C. 146.
Supremacy of the Senate.

"At the close of a century first of deadly struggle and then
of rapid and dazzling success, Rome found herself the supreme
power in the civilised world. … We have now to consider how
this period of conflict and conquest had affected the
victorious state. Outwardly the constitution underwent but
little change. It continued to be in form a moderate
democracy. The sovereignty of the people finally established
by the Hortensian law remained untouched in theory. It was by
the people in assembly that the magistrates of the year were
elected, and that laws were passed; only by 'order of the
people' could capital punishment be inflicted upon a Roman
citizen. For election to a magistracy, or for a seat in the
senate, patrician and plebeian were equally eligible. But
between the theory and the practice of the constitution there
was a wide difference. Throughout this period the actually
sovereign authority in Rome was that of the senate, and behind
the senate stood an order of nobles (nobiles), who claimed and
enjoyed privileges as wide as those which immemorial custom
had formerly conceded to the patriciate. The ascendency of the
senate, which thus arrested the march of democracy in Rome,
was not, to any appreciable extent, the result of legislation.
It was the direct outcome of the practical necessities of the
time, and when these no longer existed, it was at once and
successfully challenged in the name and on the behalf of the
constitutional rights of the people. Nevertheless, from the
commencement of the Punic wars down to the moment when with
the destruction of Carthage in 146 B. C. Rome's only rival
disappeared, this ascendency was complete and almost
unquestioned. It was within the walls of the senate-house, and
by decrees of the senate, that the foreign and the domestic
policy of the state were alike determined. … Though the
ascendency of the senate was mainly due to the fact that
without it the government of the state could scarcely have
been carried on, it was strengthened and confirmed by the
close and intimate connection which existed between the senate
and the nobility. This 'nobility' was in its nature and origin
widely different from the old patriciate.
{2681}
Though every patrician was of course 'noble,' the majority of
the families which in this period styled themselves noble were
not patrician but plebeian, and the typical nobles of the time
of the elder Cato, of the Gracchi, or of Cicero, the Metelli,
Livii, or Licinii were plebeians. The title nobilis was
apparently conceded by custom to those plebeian families one
or more of whose members had, after the opening of the
magistracies, been elected to a curule office, and which in
consequence were entitled to place in their halls, and to
display at their funeral processions the 'imagines' of these
distinguished ancestors. The man who, by his election to a
curule office thus ennobled his descendants, was said to be
the 'founder of his family,' though himself only a new man. …
Office brought wealth and prestige, and both wealth and
prestige were freely employed to exclude 'new men' and to
secure for the 'noble families' a monopoly of office. The
ennobled plebeians not only united with the patricians to form
a distinct order, but outdid them in pride and arrogance. …
The establishment of senatorial ascendency was not the only
result of this period of growth and expansion. During the same
time the foundations were laid of the provincial system, and
with this of the new and dangerous powers of the proconsuls."

_H. F. Pelham,
Outlines of Roman History,
book 3, chapter 3._

"The great struggle against Hannibal left the Senate the all
but undisputed government of Rome. Originally a mere
consulting board, assessors of the king or consul, the Senate
had become the supreme executive body. That the government
solely by the comitia and the magistrates should by experience
be found wanting was as inevitable at Rome as at Athens. Rome
was more fortunate than Athens in that she could develop a new
organism to meet the need. The growth of the power of the
Senate was all the more natural and legitimate the less it
possessed strict legal standing-ground. But the fatal dualism
thus introduced into the constitution—the Assembly governing
de jure, and the Senate governing de facto—made all government
after a time impossible. The position of the Senate being,
strictly speaking, an unconstitutional one, it was open to any
demagogue to bring matters of foreign policy or administration
before an Assembly which was without continuity, without
special knowledge, and in which there was no debate. Now, if
the Senate governed badly, the Assembly 'could not govern at
all;' and there could be, in the long run, but one end to the
constant struggle between the two sources of authority."

_W. T. Arnold,
The Roman System of Provincial Administration,
chapter 2. _

See, also, SENATE, ROMAN.

ROME: B. C. 133-121.
The attempted reforms of the Gracchi.

"The first systematic attack upon the senatorial government is
connected with the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and
its immediate occasion was an attempt to deal with no less a
danger than the threatened disappearance of the class to which
of all others Rome had owed most in the past. For, while Rome
had been extending her sway westward and eastward, and while
her nobles and merchants were amassing colossal fortunes
abroad, the small landholders throughout the greater part of
Italy were sinking deeper into ruin under the pressure of
accumulated difficulties. The Hannibalic war had laid waste
their fields and thinned their numbers, nor when peace
returned to Italy did it bring with it any revival of
prosperity. The heavy burden of military service still pressed
ruinously upon them, and in addition they were called upon to
compete with the foreign corn imported from beyond the sea,
and with the foreign slave-labour purchased by the capital of
the wealthier men. … The small holders went off to follow the
eagles or swell the proletariate of the cities, and their
holdings were left to run waste or merged in the vineyards,
oliveyards, and above all in the great cattle-farms of the
rich, while their own place was taken by slaves. The evil was
not equally serious in all parts of Italy. It was least felt
in the central highlands, in Campania, and in the newly
settled fertile valley of the Po. It was worst in Etruria and
in southern Italy; but everywhere it was serious enough to
demand the earnest attention of Roman statesmen. Of its
existence the government had received plenty of warning in the
declining numbers of able-bodied males returned at the census,
in the increasing difficulties of recruiting for the legions,
in servile out-breaks in Etruria and Apulia."

_H. F. Pelham,
Outlines of Roman History,
book 4, chapter 1._

The earlier agrarian laws which the Roman plebeians had wrung
from the patricians (the Licinian Law and similar ones—see
ROME: B. C. 376-367; also AGRARIAN LAWS) had not availed to
prevent the absorption, by one means and another, of the
public domain—the "ager publicus," the conquered land which
the state had neither sold nor given away—into the possession
of great families and capitalists, who held it in vast blocks,
to be cultivated by slaves. Time had almost sanctioned this
condition of things, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, elder
of the two famous brothers called "The Gracchi," undertook in
133 B. C. a reformation of it. As one of the tribunes of the
people that year, he brought forward a law which was intended
to enforce the provisions of the Licinian Law of 367 B. C., by
taking away from the holders of public land what they held in
excess of 500 jugera (about 320 acres) each. Three
commissioners, called Triumviri, were to be appointed to
superintend the execution of the law and to redistribute the
land recovered, among needy citizens. Naturally the proposal
of this act aroused a fierce opposition in the wealthy class
whose ill-gotten estates were threatened by it. One of the
fellow-tribunes of Tiberius was gained over by the opposition
and used the power of his veto to prevent the taking of a vote
upon the bill. Then Gracchus, to overcome the obstacle, had
recourse to an unconstitutional measure. The obstinate tribune
was deposed from his office by a vote of the people, and the
law was then enacted. For the carrying out of his measure, and
for his own protection, no less, Tiberius sought a re-election
to the tribunate, which was contrary to usage, if not against
positive law. His enemies raised a tumult against him on the
day of election and he was slain, with three hundred of his
party, and their corpses were flung into the Tiber. Nine years
later, his younger brother, Caius Gracchus, obtained election
to the tribune's office and took up the work of democratic
political reform which Tiberius had sacrificed his life in
attempting. His measures were radical, attacking the powers
and privileges of the ruling orders. But mixed with them were
schemes of demagoguery which did infinite mischief to the
Roman people and state.
{2682}
He carried the first frumentarian law (lex frumentaria) as it
was called, by which corn was bought with public money, and
stored, for sale to Roman citizens at a nominal price. After
three years of power, through the favor of the people, he,
too, in 121 B. C. was deserted by them and the party of the
patricians was permitted to put him to death, with a great
number of his supporters.

_G. Long,
Decline of the Roman Republic,
volume 1, chapters 10-13, 18-19._

"Caius, it is said, was the first Roman statesman who
appointed a regular distribution of corn among the poorer
citizens, requiring the state to buy up large consignments of
grain from the provinces, and to sell it again at a fixed rate
below the natural price. The nobles themselves seem to have
acquiesced without alarm in this measure, by which they hoped
to secure the city from seditious movements in time of
scarcity; but they failed to foresee the discouragement it
would give to industry, the crowds of idle and dissipated
citizens it would entice into the forum, the appetite it would
create for shows, entertainments and largesses, and the power
it would thus throw into the hands of unprincipled demagogues.
Caius next established customs duties upon various articles of
luxury imported into the city for the use of the rich: he
decreed the gratuitous supply of clothing to the soldiers, who
had hitherto been required to provide themselves out of their
pay; he founded colonies for the immediate gratification of
the poorer citizens, who were waiting in vain for the promised
distribution of lands: he caused the construction of public
granaries, bridges and roads, to furnish objects of useful
labour to those who were not unwilling to work. Caius himself,
it is said, directed the course and superintended the making
of the roads, some of which we may still trace traversing
Italy in straight lines from point to point, filling up
depressions and hollowing excrescences in the face of the
country, and built upon huge substructions of solid masonry.
Those who most feared and hated him confessed their amazement
at the magnificence of his projects and the energy of his
proceedings; the people, in whose interests he toiled, were
filled with admiration and delight, when they saw him attended
from morning to night by crowds of contractors, artificers,
ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and men of learning, to
all of whom he was easy of access, adapting his behaviour to
the condition of each in turn: thus proving, as they declared,
the falsehood of those who presumed to call him violent and
tyrannical. … By these innovations Caius laid a wide basis of
popularity. Thereupon he commenced his meditated attack upon
the privileged classes. We possess at least one obscure
intimation of a change he effected or proposed in the manner
of voting by centuries, which struck at the influence of the
wealthier classes. He confirmed and extended the Porcian law,
for the protection of citizens against the aggression of the
magistrates without a formal appeal to the people. Even the
powers of the dictatorship, to which the senate had been wont
to resort for the coercion of its refractory opponents, were
crippled by these provisions; and we shall see that no
recourse was again had to this extraordinary and odious
appointment till the oligarchy had gained for a time a
complete victory over their adversaries. Another change, even
more important, was that by which the knights were admitted to
the greater share, if not, as some suppose, to the whole, of
the judicial appointments. … As long as the senators were the
judges, the provincial governors, who were themselves
senators, were secure from the consequence of impeachment. If
the knights were to fill the same office, it might be expected
that the publicani, the farmers of the revenues abroad would
be not less assured of impunity, whatever were the enormity of
their exactions. … It was vain, indeed, to expect greater
purity from the second order of citizens than from the first.
If the senators openly denied justice to complainants, the
knights almost as openly sold it. This was in itself a
grievous degradation of the tone of public morality; but this
was not all the evil of the tribune's reform. It arrayed the
two privileged classes of citizens in direct hostility to one
another. 'Caius made the republic double-headed,' was the
profound remark of antiquity. He sowed the seeds of a war of
an hundred years. Tiberius had attempted to raise up a class
of small proprietors, who, by the simplicity of their manners
and moderation of their tastes, might form, as he hoped, a
strong conservative barrier between the tyranny of the nobles
and the envy of the people; but Caius, on the failure of this
attempt, was content to elevate a class to power, who should
touch upon both extremes of the social scale,—the rich by
their wealth, and the poor by their origin. Unfortunately this
was to create not a new class, but a new party. … One direct
advantage, at all events, Caius expected to derive, besides
the humiliation of his brother's murderers, from this
elevation of the knights: he hoped to secure their grateful
co-operation towards the important object he next had in view:
this was no less than the full admission of the Latins and
Italians to the right of suffrage."

_C. Merivale,
The Fall of the Roman Republic,
chapter 1._

ALSO IN:
_Plutarch,
Tiberius Gracchus;
Caius Gracchus._

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 4, chapters 2-3 (volume 3)._

_S. Eliot,
Liberty of Rome: Rome,
book 3, chapter 1._

See, also, AGER PUBLICUS.

ROME: B. C. 125-121.
Conquest of the Salyes and Allobroges in Gaul.
Treaty of friendship with the Ædui.

See SALYES; ALLOBROGES; and ÆDUI.

ROME: B. C. 118-99.
Increasing corruption of government.
The Jugurthine War.
Invasion and defeat of the Cimbri and Teutones.
The power of Marius.

"After the death of Caius Gracchus, the nobles did what they
pleased in Rome. They paid no more attention to the Agrarian
Law, and the state of Italy grew worse and worse. … The nobles
cared nothing for Rome's honour, but only for their own
pockets. They governed badly, and took bribes from foreign
kings, who were allowed to do what they liked if they could
pay enough. This was especially seen in a war that took place
in Africa. After Carthage had been destroyed, the greatest
state in Africa was Numidia. The king of Numidia was a friend
of the Roman people, and had fought with them against
Carthage. So Rome had a good deal to do with Numidia, and the
Numidians often helped Rome in her wars. In 118 a king of
Numidia died, and left the kingdom to his two sons and an
adopted son named Jugurtha. Jugurtha determined to have the
kingdom all to himself, so he murdered one of the sons and
made war upon the other, who applied to Rome for help.

See NUMIDIA: B. C. 118-104.

{2683}

The Senate was bribed by Jugurtha, and did all it could to
please him; at last, however, Jugurtha besieged his brother in
Cirta, and when he took the city put him and all his army to
death (112). After this the Romans thought they must
interfere, but the Senate for more money were willing to let
Jugurtha off very easily. He came to Rome to excuse himself
before the people, and whilst he was there he had a Numidian
prince, of whom he was afraid, murdered in Rome itself. But
his bribes were stronger than the laws. … The Romans declared
war against Jugurtha, but he bribed the generals, and for
three years very little was done against him. At last, in 108,
a good general, who would not take bribes, Quintus Metellus,
went against him and defeated him. Metellus would have
finished the war, but in 106 the command was taken from him by
Caius Marius the consul. This Caius Marius was a man of low
birth, but a good soldier. He had risen in war by his bravery,
and had held magistracies in Rome. He was an officer in the
army of Metellus, and was very much liked by the common
soldiers, for he was a rough man like themselves, and talked
with them, and lived as they did. … Marius left Africa and
went to Rome to try and be made consul in 106. He found fault
with Metellus before the people, and said that he could carry
on the war better himself. So the people made him consul, and
more than that, they said that he should be general in Africa
instead of Metellus. … Marius finished the war in Africa, and
brought Jugurtha in triumph to Italy in 104. … When it was
over, Marius was the most powerful man in Rome. He was the
leader of the popular party, and also the general of the army.
The army had greatly changed since the time of Hannibal. The
Roman soldiers were no longer citizens who fought when their
country wanted them, and then went back to their work. But as
wars were now constantly going on, and going on too in distant
countries, this could no longer be the case, and the army was
full of men who took to a soldier's life as a trade. Marius
was the favourite of these soldiers: he was a soldier by trade
himself, and had risen in consequence to power in the state.
Notice, then, that when Marius was made consul, it was a sign
that the government for the future was to be carried on by the
army, as well as by the people and the nobles. Marius was soon
wanted to carry on another war. Two great tribes of barbarians
from the north had entered Gaul west of the Alps, and
threatened to drive out the Romans, and even attack Italy.
They came with their wives and children, like a wandering
people looking for a home. … At first these Cimbri defeated
the Roman generals in southern Gaul, where the Romans had
conquered the country along the Rhone, and made it a province,
which is still called the province, or Provence. The Romans,
after this defeat, were afraid of another burning of their
city by barbarians, so Marius was made consul again, and for
the next five years he was elected again and again. … In the
year 102 the Teutones and the Cimbri marched to attack Italy,
but Marius defeated them in two great battles.

See CIMBRI AND TEUTONES: B. C. 113-102.

Afterwards when he went back to Rome in triumph he was so
powerful that he could have done what he chose in the state.
The people were very grateful to him, the soldiers were very
fond of him, and the nobles were very much afraid of him. But
Marius did not think much of the good of the state: he thought
much more of his own greatness, and how he might become a
still greater man. So, first, he joined the party of the
people, and one of the tribunes. Lucius Appuleius Saturninus,
brought forward some laws like those of Caius Gracchus, and
Marius helped him. But there were riots in consequence, and
the Senate begged Marius to help them in putting down the
riots. For a time Marius doubted what to do, but at last he
armed the people, and Saturninus was killed (99). But now
neither side liked Marius, for he was true to neither, and did
only what he thought would make himself most powerful. So for
the future Marius was not likely to be of much use in the
troubles of the Roman state."

_M. Creighton.
History of Rome (Primer).
chapter 7._

ALSO IN:
_H. G. Liddell,
History of Rome,
chapters 54-56 (volume 2)._

_V. Duruy,
History of Rome,
chapters 39-41 (volume 2)._

_Plutarch,
Marius._

ROME: B. C. 90-88.
Demands of the Italian Socii for Roman citizenship.
The Marsian or Social War.
Rise of Sulla.

"It is a most erroneous though widely prevalent opinion that
the whole of Italy was conquered by the force of Roman arms,
and joined to the empire [of the Republic] against its will.
Roman valour and the admirable organization of the legions, it
is true, contributed to extend the dominion of Rome, but they
were not nearly so effective as the political wisdom of the
Roman senate. … The subjects of Rome were called by the
honourable name of allies (Socii). But the manner in which
they had become allies was not always the same. It differed
widely according to circumstances. Some had joined Rome on an
equal footing by a free alliance ('fœdus æquum'). which
implied nothing like subjection. … Others sought the alliance
of Rome as a protection from pressing enemies or troublesome
neighbours. … On the whole, the condition of the allies, Latin
colonies as well as confederated Italians, seems to have been
satisfactory, at least in the earlier period. … But even the
right of self-government which Rome had left to the Italian
communities proved an illusion in all cases where the
interests of the ruling town seemed to require it. A law
passed in Rome, nay, a simple senatorial decree, or a
magisterial order, could at pleasure be applied to the whole
of Italy. Roman law gradually took the place of local laws,
though the Italians had no part in the legislation of the
Roman people, or any influence on the decrees of the Roman
senate and magistrates. … All public works in Italy, such as
roads, aqueducts, and temples, were carried out solely for the
benefit of Rome. … Not in peace only, but also in the time of
war, the allies were gradually made to feel how heavily the
hand of Rome weighed upon them. … In proportion as with the
increase of their power the Romans felt more and more secure
and independent of the allies, they showed them less
consideration and tenderness, and made them feel that they had
gradually sunk from their former position of friends to be no
more than subjects." There was increasing discontent among the
Italian allies, or Socii, with this state of things,
especially after the time of the Gracchi, when a proposal to
extend the Roman citizenship and franchise to them was
strongly pressed.
{2684}
In the next generation after the murder of Caius Gracchus,
there arose another political reformer, Marcus Livius Drusus,
who likewise sought to have justice done to the Italians, by
giving them a voice in the state which owed its conquests to
their arms. He, too, was killed by the political enemies he
provoked; and then the allies determined to enforce their
claims by war. The tribes of the Sabellian race—Marsians,
Samnites, Hirpenians, Lucanians, and their fellows—organized a
league, with the town of Corfinium (its name changed to
Italica) for its capital, and broke into open revolt. The
prominence of the Marsians in the struggle caused the war
which ensued to be sometimes called the Marsian War; it was
also called the Italian War, but, more commonly, the Social
War. It was opened, B. C. 90, by a horrible massacre of Roman
citizens residing at Asculum, Picenum,—a tragedy for the guilt
of which that town paid piteously the next year, when it was
taken at the end of a long siege and after a great battle
fought under its walls. But the Romans had suffered many
defeats before that achievement was reached. At the end of the
first year of the war they had made no headway against the
revolt, and it is the opinion of Ihne and other historians
that "Rome never was so near her destruction," and that "her
downfall was averted, not by the heroism of her citizens, as
in the war of Hannibal, but by a reversal" of her "policy of
selfish exclusion and haughty disdain." A law called the
Julian Law, because proposed by the consul L. Julius Cæsar,
was adopted B. C. 90, which gave the Roman franchise to the
Latins, and to all the other Italian communities which had so
far remained faithful. Soon afterward two of the new tribunes
carried a further measure, the Plautio-Papirian Law, which
offered the same privilege to any Italian who, within two
months, should present himself before a Roman magistrate to
claim it. These concessions broke the spirit of the revolt and
the Roman armies began to be victorious. Sulla, who was in the
field, added greatly to his reputation by successes at Nola
(where his army honored him by acclaim with the title of
Imperator) and at Bovianum, which he took. The last important
battle of the war was fought on the old blood-drenched plain
of Cannæ, and this time the victory was for Rome. After that,
for another year, some desperate towns and remnants of the
revolted Socii held out, but their resistance was no more than
the death throes of a lost cause.

_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 6, chapter 9, with foot-note,
and book 7, chapters 13-14._

ALSO IN:
_G. Long,
Decline of the Roman Republic,
volume 2, chapters 15-16._

_B. G. Niebuhr,
Lectures on the History of Rome,
lectures 83-84 (volume 2)._

ROME: B. C. 88-78.
Rivalry of Marius and Sulla.
War with Mithridates.
Civil war.
Successive proscriptions and reigns of terror.
Sulla's dictatorship.

The political diseases of which the Roman Republic was dying
made quick progress in the generation that passed between the
murder of Caius Gracchus and the Social War. The Roman rabble
which was nominally sovereign and the oligarchy which ruled
actually, by combined bribery and brow-beating of the
populace, had both been worse corrupted and debased by the
increasing flow of tribute and plunder from provinces and
subject states. Rome had familiarized itself with mob
violence, and the old respect for authority and for law was
dead. The soldier with an army at his back need not stand any
longer in awe of the fasces of a tribune or a consul. It was a
natural consequence of that state of things that the two
foremost soldiers of the time, Caius Marius and L. Cornelius
Sulla (or Sylla, as often written,) should become the
recognized chiefs of the two opposing factions of the day.
Marius was old, his military glory was waning, he had enjoyed
six consulships and coveted a seventh; Sulla was in the prime
of life, just fairly beginning to show his surpassing
capabilities and entering on his real career. Marius was a
plebeian of plebeians and rude in all his tastes; Sulla came
from the great Cornelian gens, and refined a little the
dissoluteness of his life by studies of Greek letters and
philosophy. Marius was sullenly jealous; Sulla was resolutely
ambitious. A new war, which promised great prizes to ambition
and cupidity, alike, was breaking out in the east,—the war
with Mithridates. Both Marius and Sulla aspired to the command
in it; but Sulla had been elected one of the consuls for the
year 88 B. C. and, by custom and law, would have the conduct
of the war assigned to him. Marius, however, intrigued with
the demagogues and leaders of the mob, and brought about a
turbulent demonstration and popular vote, by which he could
claim to be appointed to lead the forces of the state against
Mithridates. Sulla fled to his army, in camp at Nola, and laid
his case before the officers and men. The former, for the most
part, shrank from opposing themselves to Rome; the latter had
no scruples and demanded to be led against the Roman mob.
Sulla took them at their word, and marched them straight to
the city. For the first time in its history (by no means the
last) the great capital was forcibly entered by one of its own
armies. There was some resistance, but not much. Sulla
paralyzed his opponents by his energy, and by a threat to burn
the city if it did not submit. Marius and his chief partisans
fled. Sulla contented himself with outlawing twelve, some of
whom were taken and put to death. Marius, himself, escaped to
Africa, after many strange adventures, in the story of which
there is romance unquestionably mixed. Sulla (with his
colleague in harmony with him) fulfilled the year of his
consulate at Rome and then departed for Greece to conduct the
war against Mithridates. In doing so, he certainly knew that
he was giving up the government to his enemies; but he trusted
his future in a remarkable way, and the necessity, for Rome,
of confronting Mithridates was imperative. The departure of
Sulla was the signal for fresh disorders at Rome. Cinna, one
of the new consuls, was driven from the city, and became the
head of a movement which appealed to the "new citizens," as
they were called, or the "Italian party"—the allies who had
been enfranchised as the result of the Social War. Marius came
back from exile to join it. Sertorius and Carbo were other
leaders who played important parts. Presently there were four
armies beleaguering Rome, and after some unsuccessful
resistance the gates were opened to them, by order of the
Roman senate. Cinna, the consul, was nominally restored to
authority, but Marius was really supreme, and Marius was
implacable in his sullen rage.
{2685}
Rome was treated like a conquered city. The public and private
enemies of Marius and of all who chose to call themselves
Marians, were hunted down and slain. To stop the massacre, at
last, Sertorius—the best of the new masters of Rome—was
forced to turn his soldiers against the bands of the assassins
and to slaughter several thousands of them. Then some degree
of order was restored and there was the quiet in Rome of a
city of the dead. The next year Marius realized his ambition
for a seventh consulship, but died before the end of the first
month of it. Meantime, Sulla devoted himself steadily to the
war against Mithridates [see MITHRIDATIC WARS], watching from
afar the sinister course of events at Rome, and making no
sign. It was not until the spring of 83 B. C., four years
after his departure from Italy and three years after the death
of Marius, that he was ready to return and settle accounts
with his enemies. On landing with his army in Italy he was
joined speedily by Pompey, Crassus, and other important
chiefs. Cinna had been killed by mutinous soldiers; Carbo and
young Marius were the leaders of the "Italian party." There
was a fierce battle at Sacriportus, near Præneste, with young
Marius, and a second with Carbo at Clusium. Later, there was
another furious fight with the Samnites, under the walls of
Rome, at the Colline Gate, where 50,000 of the combatants
fell. Then Sulla was master of Rome. Every one of his
suspected friends in the senate had been butchered by the last
orders of young Marius. His retaliation was not slow; but he
pursued it with a horrible deliberation. He made lists, to be
posted in public, of men who were marked for death and whom
anybody might slay. There are differing accounts of the number
doomed by this proscription; according to one annalist the
death-roll was swelled to 4,700 before the reign of terror
ceased. Sulla ruled as a conqueror until it pleased him to
take an official title, when he commanded the people to elect
him Dictator, for such term as he might judge to be fit. They
obeyed. As Dictator, he proceeded to remodel the Roman
constitution by a series of laws which were adopted at his
command. One of these laws enfranchised 10,000 slaves and made
them citizens. Another took a way from the tribunes a great
part of their powers; allowed none but members of the senate
to be candidates for the office, and no person once a tribune
to hold a curule office. Others reconstructed the senate,
adding 300 new members to its depleted ranks, and restored to
it the judicial function which C. Gracchus had transferred to
the knights; they also restored to it the initiative in
legislation. Having remodeled the Roman government to his
liking, Sulla astounded his friends and enemies by suddenly
laying down his dictatorial powers and retiring to private
life at his villa, near Puteoli, on the Bay of Naples. There
he wrote his memoirs, which have been lost, and gave himself
up to the life of pleasure which was even dearer to him than
the life of power. But he enjoyed it scarcely a year, when he
died, B. C. 78. His body, taken to Rome, was burned with pomp.

_G. Long,
Decline of the Roman Republic,
volume 2, chapters 17-29._

ALSO IN:
_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 7, chapters 15-23._

_Plutarch,
Marius and Sulla._

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 4, chapters 9-10._

_C. Merivale,
The Fall of the Roman Republic,
chapters 4-5._

ROME: B. C. 80.
The throne of Egypt bequeathed to the Republic
by Ptolemy Alexander.

See EGYPT: B. C. 80-48.

ROME: B. C. 78-68.
Danger from the legionaries.
Rising power of Pompeius.
Attempt of Lepidus.
Pompeius against Sertorius in Spain.
Insurrection of Spartacus and the Gladiators.
The second Mithridatic War, and war in Armenia.

"The Roman legionary, … drawn from the dregs of the populace,
and quartered through the best years of his life in Greece and
Asia, in Spain and Gaul, lived solely upon his pay, enhanced
by extortion or plunder. His thirst of rapine grew upon him.
He required his chiefs to indulge him with the spoil of cities
and provinces; and when a foreign enemy was not at hand, he
was tempted to turn against the subjects of the state, or, if
need be, against the state itself. … Marius and Sulla, Cinna
and Carbo had led the forces of Rome against Rome herself. …
The problem which thus presented itself to the minds of
patriots—how, namely, to avert the impending dissolution of
their polity under the blows of their own defenders—was indeed
an anxious and might well appear a hopeless one. It was to the
legions only that they could trust, and the legions were
notoriously devoted to their chiefs. … The triumph of Sulla
had been secured by the accession to his side of Pompeius
Strabo, the commander of a large force quartered in Italy.
These troops had transferred their obedience to a younger
Pompeius, the son of their late leader. Under his auspices
they had gained many victories; they had put down the Marian
faction, headed by Carbo, in Sicily, and had finally secured
the ascendency of the senate on the shores of Africa. Sulla
had evinced some jealousy of their captain, who was young in
years, and as yet had not risen above the rank of Eques; but
when Pompeius led his victorious legions back to Italy, the
people rose in the greatest enthusiasm to welcome him, and the
dictator, yielding to their impetuosity, had granted him a
triumph and hailed him with the title of 'Magnus.' Young as he
was, he became at once, on the abdication of Sulla, the
greatest power in the commonwealth. This he soon caused to be
known and felt. The lead of the senatorial party had now
fallen to Q. Lutatius Catulus and M. Æmilius Lepidus, the
heads of two of the oldest and noblest families of Rome. The
election of these chiefs to the consulship for the year 676 of
the city (B. C. 78) seemed to secure for the time the
ascendency of the nobles, and the maintenance of Sulla's
oligarchical constitution bequeathed to their care. … But
there were divisions within the party itself which seemed to
seize the opportunity for breaking forth. Lepidus was inflamed
with ambition to create a faction of his own, and imitate the
career of the usurpers before him. … But he had miscalculated
his strength. Pompeius disavowed him, and lent the weight of
his popularity and power to the support of Catulus; and the
senate hoped to avert an outbreak by engaging both the consuls
by an oath to abstain from assailing each other. During the
remainder of his term of office Lepidus refrained from action;
but as soon as he reached his province, the Narbonensis in
Gaul, he developed his plans, summoned to his standard the
Marians, who had taken refuge in great numbers in that region,
and invoked the aid of
the Italians, with the promise of restoring to them the lands
of which they had been dispossessed by Sulla's veterans.
{2686}
With the aid of M. Junius Brutus, who commanded in the
Cisalpine, he made an inroad into Etruria, and called upon the
remnant of its people, who had been decimated by Sulla, to
rise against the faction of their oppressors. The senate, now
thoroughly alarmed, charged Catulus with its defence; the
veterans, restless and dissatisfied with their fields and
farms, crowded to the standard of Pompeius. Two Roman armies
met near the Milvian bridge, a few miles to the north of the
city, and Lepidus received a check, which was again and again
repeated, till he was driven to flee into Sardinia, and there
perished shortly afterwards of fever. Pompeius pursued Brutus
into the Cisalpine. … The remnant of [Lepidus'] troops was
carried over to Spain by Perperna, and there swelled the
forces of an abler leader of the same party, Q. Sertorius."
Sertorius had established himself strongly in Spain, and
aspired to the founding of an independent state; but after a
prolonged struggle he was overcome by Pompeius and
assassinated by traitors in his own ranks.

See SPAIN: B. C. 83-72.

"Pompeius had thus recovered a great province for the republic
at the moment when it seemed on the point of being lost
through the inefficiency of one of the senatorial chiefs.
Another leader of the dominant party was about to yield him
another victory. A war was raging in the heart of Italy. A
body of gladiators had broken away from their confinement at
Capua under the lead of Spartacus, a Thracian captive, had
seized a large quantity of arms, and had made themselves a
retreat or place of defence in the crater of Mount Vesuvius. …

See SPARTACUS, THE RISING OF.