Chapter XVIII: Marius and Sulla (1)

The personal rivalry of her two most fortunate generals becomes now the main channel of the history of Rome herself. In the year which closed the contest of the republic with her dependent allies (88), Sulla was forty-nine years old, Marius about seventy. The former was enjoying the full breeze of popularity and renown, while the latter, wearied but not sated with accumulated honours, was moodily throwing away the advantages he had earned in his earlier career. From campaign to campaign Sulla, as we have seen, had dogged the steps of the elder warrior, always ready to step in and seize the opportunities which the other cast recklessly in his way. Not that Marius in his exalted station was even from the first indifferent to this incipient rivalry. He was deeply jealous of his subordinate. He felt chagrin at the contrast presented by their respective birth and origin; for Sulla, though needy in point of fortune, was a scion of the illustrious house of the Cornelii, and plumed himself on the distinction and advantage such a lineage conferred. Sulla, moreover, was trained in the accomplishments of Hellenic education, which Marius, conscious of his want of them, vainly affected to despise. Sulla wrote and spoke Greek; his memoirs of his own life became the text-book of the Greek historians of Rome, from whom we principally derive our acquaintance with him. But this varnish of superior culture seems to have failed in softening a rough plebeian nature. Sulla was one of many noble Romans who combined with pretensions to literary taste the love of gross debauchery, and pleasure in the society of mimes and vulgar jesters. He was a coarse sensualist and by his disregard of the nuptial tie offended even the lax morality of his age. His eyes, we are told, were of a pure and piercing blue, and their sinister expression was heightened by the coarseness of his complexion and a countenance disfigured by pimples and blotches, compared by the raillery of the Greeks to a mulberry sprinkled with meal. His manners, except when he unbent in the society of his inferiors, were haughty and morose; nor is there any act of kindliness or generosity recorded of him. The nobles who accepted him as their champion had no personal liking for him. But selfish and ambitious though he was, the aggrandisement of his party and order was with Sulla a species of fanaticism. He despised the isolated ascendency of a Marius, and aspired to rule in Rome at the head of a dominant oligarchy.

Marius had quitted the camp at the most critical moment of the war, and while he buried himself in a distant retreat, Sulla brought the contest to a close, having obtained his election to the consulship for the year 88. The imminence of a new war with Mithridates had hastened the arrangements for the peace, and Sulla was still consul when it became necessary to select a general to command in the East. For this important service both his merits and his position gave Sulla the highest claim; but Marius was mortified and jealous, and cursed his own folly in having at such a moment withdrawn himself from the public eye. He returned impatiently to Rome, and showed himself once more among the young soldiers who trained and exercised themselves in the Field of Mars, running, wrestling, and climbing poles in rivalry with the most vigorous and active among them, to prove that, though old in years, he possessed the energy requisite for command. But the nobles had no wish to gratify the man they feared and distrusted, while they had found one of their own order, on whose fidelity they could rely as implicitly as on his valour. They mocked the clumsy feats of the veteran candidate, and persuaded the people to follow their example, and send their old favourite with jeers to his retreat in Campania.

The enterprise demanded a man of the maturest powers and the highest abilities. Pontus, on the eastern shores of the Euxine Sea, the region from which Mithridates derived his title, constituted but a small part of the dominions over which he ruled. His patrimonial kingdom he inherited from a succession of princes of high Persian extraction, and he was himself the sixth sovereign of his own name. To the north he had extended his sway over the tribes of the Cimbric Bosporus as far as the banks of the Borysthenes or Dnieper, while to the south he had received from his father the sovereignty of Phrygia, which the republic had sold for a sum of money. This country, indeed, the Romans had again wrested from him at an early period of his reign; but he had taken advantage of their dissensions to interfere in the affairs of Cappadocia, to murder, it is said, its sovereign, and at last to place upon its throne an infant child of his own. The armies of Mithridates were recruited from the hardy barbarians of the Caucasus and the Taurus; but his generals were mostly perhaps of Greek extraction, skilled in military science hardly less than the Romans themselves. Nor had he failed to enlist in his service many able citizens of the republic, for the allegiance of the Romans sat but loosely upon them in the provinces, and they were easily swayed from their principles by the seductions of eastern civilisation. His own genius was conspicuous both in war and peace. He was robust in bodily frame, and expert in martial exercises. The story that he had fortified his system against poison by the constant use of antidotes is a mere romance which modern science has pronounced impossible; nor is it much more credible that he could converse, as has been asserted, with the various tribes of which his kingdom was composed, in twenty-five different languages or dialects. Our accounts of the great king of Pontus are derived entirely from Roman sources, and we cannot rely implicitly upon the particular instances of ferocity and perfidy recorded of him. As an Oriental, however, it is but too probable that he maintained himself in power by the usual arts of oriental conquerors, by shameless fraud and remorseless cruelty.

THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR

[Sidenote: [92-88 B.C.]]

In the year 92, the Romans interfered to overturn the appointment Mithridates had made to the throne of Cappadocia. Mithridates did not venture to resist, but he secretly instigated Tigranes, king of Armenia, to invade the country and expel the nominee of the republic. Ariobarzanes fled to Rome, and there obtained assurance of support. Sulla, at this time prætor in Cilicia, was ordered to reinstate him, while the king of Pontus still remained tranquil. But the state of the republic’s affairs in Italy soon emboldened him. The death of a king of Bithynia gave him an opportunity; and he dared to defy the western conquerors by setting up a pretender to the throne of which they claimed the disposal. At the same time he made a descent upon Cappadocia in person, and expelled the luckless Ariobarzanes a second time.

The disasters of the Social War were now carrying dismay and consternation to the heart of the republic. Sulla had been recalled to aid the efforts of her best commanders in her defence. Nevertheless, when the fugitive appeared once more before the senate with entreaties for its support, he did not appeal in vain to the old Roman constancy. An army was despatched to restore him, and once more Mithridates bowed to the storm, and retired from the disputed territory. But the Roman officers in the East were not satisfied with this act of submission. They incited their allies to harass and invade his dominions, and when appealed to by him, refused to check their aggressions. Then at last did Mithridates arm in his own defence. With an immense force he burst upon the territories both of the republic and its allies. He chased Ariobarzanes a third time from his dominions, defeated the king of Bithynia, supported by the legions of Rome, in a great battle on the river Amnias in Paphlagonia, routed the Roman commander in a second engagement, overran Phrygia and Galatia, and proclaimed himself a deliverer to the subjects of the republic in the East. His advent was hailed by the provincials with acclamations. The insolence of the conquerors and the tyranny of their fiscal agents had excited deep discontent among them. On the mainland almost every city joyfully opened its gates to Mithridates, and when in the intoxication of his triumph he issued, as we are told, a decree for the massacre of all the Roman residents in Asia, it was promptly obeyed, if indeed, as we may fairly conjecture, it had not been spontaneously anticipated. Eighty thousand citizens--some say 150 thousand, though even the lesser number is probably a gross exaggeration--are stated to have fallen by this bloody act of retribution.

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

[Sidenote: [88-87 B.C.]]

Meanwhile the senate was preparing to encounter this formidable assailant with adequate forces, and had pitched, as we have seen, upon Sulla to take the command. Marius was disgusted at the inactivity to which he found himself condemned amidst the derision of the populace. In his retirement at Misenum he meditated revenge. The new citizens of Latium and Italy were already mortified at finding the inefficiency of their votes, confined to a small minority of the tribes, and the slender importance attached to their favour. Their nobles complained of their want of influence, their proletaries of the paltry price their votes commanded. Marius conceived the idea of turning their discontent to his own advantage. Between him and them there was an ancient sympathy, and this it was easy to improve into strict alliance. He offered to repair the injustice of the senate towards them, and to diffuse them among the old tribes of the city, in which their voices would be more powerful than when cooped within the narrow limits of a few separate divisions. Marius recommenced his old game of popular agitation.

Among the tribunes was Sulpicius Galba, whose eloquence and learning and high aristocratic connections had raised him to eminence in the state, but who under the pressure of debt was ready to sell his services to a patron who could hold out to him at least a distant prospect of sharing the spoils of Mithridates. With this guerdon in view, he paused at no excess. Taking Saturninus as his model, he studied only to surpass him in audacity. He marshalled a body of six hundred knights around his person, and gave them the name of his opposition senate. He attacked the consuls in the public assembly with a band of armed men, and seized and massacred the son of Pompeius Rufus. Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made his escape into the house of Marius, where he was least likely to be sought for, and so baffled the pursuers who ran past him. Marius himself received the credit of concealing and letting him out by another door, but Sulla, we are told, made no acknowledgment of such a service in his memoirs. Marius indeed was for the moment triumphant. Sulpicius, having cleared the Forum of his chief opponents, prevailed on the populace to nominate his patron to the command in Asia; and the new proconsul, while preparing to set out on his mission, despatched two tribunes to receive the army of Sulla. But Sulla, escaping from the Forum, had repaired directly to his camp. He had inflamed the fury of his devoted soldiers by the recital of his double injury. While the officers, men of birth and national feeling, refused to listen to his solicitations, the men responded to them without scruple, and carried his banners towards Rome, killing the emissaries of Marius on the way. Joined by Pompeius Rufus with the ensigns of the consulship, these tumultuous bands resumed the appearance of a regular army; and Sulla could avow himself with some show of legality the defender of the state and avenger of the insults she had sustained in the person of her chief magistrates.

This daring movement was entirely unexpected. Six legions advanced upon the city, and the men who had just seized the government were totally unprovided with arms to resist them. Marius sent two prætors to meet the enemy, and command them to desist; but the soldiers neither listened to them, nor paused in their march. They were stripped of their togas, their fasces were broken, and themselves ordered to return with every mark of indignity. Such violence betokened worse to follow. The citizens were dismayed, and without regard either to Marius or Sulpicius, sent envoys to entreat the advancing generals to halt, while they promised to do full justice to their cause by legal and peaceful measures. Sulla himself, it is said, had faltered in his daring design; but he was reassured by a dream, in which a strange divinity, whom the Romans had learned to worship in the East, placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and directed him to launch it against his enemies. He advanced, and Marius, having vainly attempted to raise troops to oppose him, fled with precipitation. As he entered the city tiles and stones were hurled on his soldiers from the house-tops; but a threat of burning the city soon reduced every opponent to submission. Sulla had conquered Rome.[89]

But the conqueror was moderate in the use of his victory. He caused his troops to observe the strictest discipline, and limited his personal vengeance to exacting the death of twelve of his enemies. Sulpicius was betrayed by one of his own slaves, and put to the sword. Sulla enfranchised the betrayer for his obedience to the edict, and then cast him from the Tarpeian Rock for his treachery to his master. Marius himself escaped out of the city, while a price was set upon his head, and upon that of his son also. On the morrow Sulla summoned the people to assemble in the Forum. He explained to them that factious foes had compelled him to resort to force; but having once taken up arms he was determined not to lay them down till he had secured the power of the insulted nobles against the future aggressions of the tribunes. Sulpicius, during his brief tenure of power, had recalled the exiles of the Varian law, and increased the influence of the Italians in the comitia. Sulla abrogated all these enactments, and to insure the permanence of his own, repealed the solemn statute which gave the force of law to the _plebiscita_, or resolutions of the people. The violence of Marius drove his rival to the opposite extreme, and established a counter-revolution upon the ruins of tribunician ambition. But Sulla was not yet prepared to enforce an oligarchical tyranny against every constitutional prescription. He left the people the free exercise of their suffrages, and professed himself not dissatisfied with their boldness in rejecting a nephew of his own as a candidate for the consulship.

Cn. Octavius, a firm but independent supporter of the senate, obtained one place; but the people gave him for a colleague L. Cornelius Cinna, well known as a partisan of Marius. Sulla pretended, perhaps, to guide them in this latter choice; he claimed the right of binding the new consul to favour his own measures by a solemn vow. At his direction Cinna ascended the Capitol, with a stone in his hand, which, when he had taken the oath, he hurled to the ground, imprecating upon himself that he might be cast as violently out of the city, if he failed to observe it. The Romans were deeply impressed by such religious formalities; and the peculiar horror with which they regarded Cinna’s later atrocities was coloured, perhaps, by indignation at his perjury. For, no sooner had he entered upon his office than he proceeded at once to disturb the settlement he had pledged himself to respect, and caused a process to be instituted against Sulla himself. But Sulla was eager to commence operations against Mithridates, and neither stayed to meet the charge nor to punish the accuser. The victory he anticipated would be a sufficient answer to the people, and give him the means of completing the policy of which he had hitherto laid only the foundations.

Meanwhile Marius was flying for his life, and hiding the head upon which a price had been set. His romantic adventures are narrated with great animation by his biographer Plutarch. On quitting Rome he was separated in the darkness of the night from the partisans who aided his escape. Retiring to a farm he possessed at Solonium he despatched his son to get provisions from a kinsman in the neighbourhood; but during his absence, fearful of a surprise, or suspicious, perhaps, of his nearest friends, he abandoned this retreat and hurried to Ostia, where he knew that a vessel was in waiting for him. The son reached the place to which he had been sent, but the house was immediately invested by the enemy’s scouts, and he was with difficulty saved from their pursuit, being conveyed in a wagon, hidden under a load of beans, to the house of his wife in Rome. The next night he made his way to the sea, and embarking in a vessel bound for Libya, arrived there in safety.

The elder Marius was wafted along the coast of Italy by a favourable wind, but fearing to fall into the hands of Geminius, a personal enemy, one of the chief people of Tarracina, he charged the mariners to avoid touching at that place. Unfortunately the wind changed, and a strong gale setting in shore, they were unable to keep out at sea. The old man himself, alarmed at his danger, and tormented with sea-sickness, bade them run to land, which they reached near Circeii. They were now also in want of provisions, in search of which they descended from the bark, and wandered along the shore. Some herdsmen to whom they applied, but who had nothing to give them, recognised Marius, and warned him that horsemen had been just seen riding about in quest of him. Weary and famishing, his life at the mercy of companions hardly less harassed than himself, he turned from the road and plunged into a deep forest, where he passed the night in extreme suffering. The next day, compelled by hunger, and wishing to make use of his remaining strength before he was completely exhausted, he once more sought the highways in quest of some hospitable retreat. He kept up his spirits and those of his followers by repeating to them the prodigies which had foretold his greatness in youth, and assured them that he was destined to enjoy the highest magistracy yet a seventh time. He had arrived within two or three miles of Minturnæ, when they perceived a troop of horse advancing towards them, and at the same moment two barks sailing along the coast. Running down to the sea as fast as their strength would allow, and casting themselves into the water, they swam towards the vessels. Marius, corpulent and heavy, and quite overcome with fatigue, was carried or hurried along by the exertions of his slaves, and with difficulty lifted on board, while the horsemen, following closely in pursuit, shouted to the sailors to abandon him in the waves. The sailors touched with pity at first refused to surrender him, and the horsemen rode off in anger; but they presently changed their minds, brought their bark to shore, and induced Marius to quit it, and take food and rest on land, while they waited, as they pretended, for the evening breeze. As soon as he was lifted out of the vessel and laid on the grass his bearers rejoined the ship; the sails were hoisted, and he found himself betrayed and abandoned. For some time he lay in despair; at last he rose, and made another effort to save himself.

The coast near the mouth of the Liris, at which he had been put on shore, was a desolate swamp, through which the wretched Marius waded with pain and difficulty, till he reached an old man’s lonely cottage. Falling at his feet he begged him to save a man who, if he escaped from his present dangers, would reward him beyond all his hopes. The man, who either knew Marius of old, or perceived in the expression of his countenance the greatness of his rank, offered him shelter in his hut, if shelter was all he needed, but promised to conceal him in the marshes, if he was flying from the pursuit of enemies. With the old man’s assistance Marius hid himself in a hole by the river’s side, and covered himself with reeds and sedge.

But Geminius of Tarracina was in hot pursuit. After ransacking every place of refuge far and near, he reached the hut in the morass, and loudly questioned the occupant. Marius, who overheard what was passing, seized with a paroxysm of terror, drew himself out of his hiding-place, and buried himself up to the chin in the water. In this position he was discovered, dragged out, and led naked to Minturnæ. The magistrates here and elsewhere had received orders to make search for the fugitive, and to put him to death when taken. The decurions of Minturnæ met to deliberate, and resolved to execute the sentence and claim the reward. But none of their citizens would undertake the ungracious office. Marius was placed in custody, in a private house; a Cimbrian slave, a captive of Vercellæ, was sent with a sword to despatch him. Marius was crouching in the darkest corner of the chamber, and the man, so ran the legend, declared that a bright flame glared from his eyes, and a voice issued from the gloom, “Wretch, dare you to slay Caius Marius?” The barbarian immediately took to flight, and throwing his sword down rushed through the door, exclaiming, “I cannot kill Caius Marius.” The Minturnians were shocked and penetrated with remorse: “Let him go,” they said, “where he pleases, as an exile, and suffer in some other place whatever fate is reserved for him. And let us pray that the gods visit us not with their anger, for ejecting Marius from our city in poverty and rags.” Thereupon all the chief people of the place presented themselves before him in a body, and offered to conduct him with honour to the seacoast, furnishing him at the same time with everything requisite for his comfort. There was need of expedition, and their nearest way lay through the sacred grove of Marica, into which whatever was once carried was never permitted to be again carried out. But when an old man exclaimed that no road was impassable to Marius, his voice was hailed as a divine monition, and superstition herself fell before the champion of Italy.

Marius thus effected his escape from his nearest pursuers. He set sail for Africa, but landing for water on the coast of Sicily, was very nearly taken and slain. On the shores of Africa he hoped to find allies among the chieftains of Numidia, with whom he had formed relations of amity at the period of his war against Jugurtha. He landed to await the result of his negotiations. While he sat in silent meditation among the ruins of Carthage, himself a livelier image of ruin hardly less appalling, the Roman governor of the province sent to warn him to be gone. The Numidians could not venture to shelter him, and he was compelled to take refuge on an island off the coast, where he continued for a time unmolested.

While the conqueror of the Cimbrians was thus flying before the face of his own countrymen, and his triumphant rival prosecuting the war against Mithridates in the East, affairs were hurrying on to a new and unexpected revolution at Rome. The Samnites had never entirely laid down their arms at the general pacification of Italy; they rose under their leader, Pontius Telesinus, excited fresh movements among the slaves and bandits in the south of the peninsula, and at one moment threatened a descent upon Sicily. Metellus Pius, to whom the repression of this new Social War was entrusted, was unable to bring the enemy to a decisive engagement, but continued to make head against them with various alternations of success. The army of the north was still arrayed in Picenum, under the banners of Pompeius Strabo, who showed no disposition to relinquish his command at the conclusion of hostilities in that quarter. The senate despatched the late consul Pompeius Rufus to receive its legions from his hands. But it had no means of satisfying the soldiers’ demands for pay or largesses, and its emissary met with a cold reception from these disappointed mercenaries. Their discontent soon broke out in open mutiny, instigated, as has been generally suspected, by Pompeius Strabo himself. Rufus was massacred before the altar at which he was sacrificing. Strabo presently appeared among the mutineers, and restored order, without instituting inquiry or inflicting punishment. Such were the dispositions of the army and the general upon whom Rome was now compelled to rely, both for the pacification of Italy and the maintenance of the established government.

As soon as Sulla had withdrawn to Asia, Cinna made no further concealment of his designs. Avowing himself the restorer of the late order of things, he demanded the recall of the exiles of his party, and the restoration of the laws of Sulpicius, that is to say, the full and final emancipation of Italy. In the actual temper of the public mind, such demands could not fail to produce a sedition in the Forum. Such, in fact, was the result. A disturbance ensued, and blood was shed. But Cinna had miscalculated his strength. The new citizens, upon whose efforts he relied, were few in number. The senate, his colleague Octavius, and even a majority of the tribunes of the plebs, together with the mass of the original citizens, united themselves against him. They flew to arms, and drove his partisans out of the city. Cinna, we may suppose, counted in this abortive attempt upon the support of Pompeius Strabo, while that general, reserved and perhaps undecided, contented himself with observing it from a distance, and leaving the two factions to weaken and exhaust each other.

The victorious party proceeded to deprive Cinna of the consulship, and elected L. Merula, a flamen of Jupiter, a man respectable for his birth and reputed integrity, in his room. Cinna, proscribed and outlawed, betook himself to the new citizens of Campania, and declaimed to them on the persecution to which he was exposed for his devotion to their interests. The Campanians discovered more zeal for the defence of their newly acquired rights than they had evinced in the struggle to obtain them. Cinna succeeded in collecting an armed following. Many exiles of his party flocked to his standard, and among them was Q. Sertorius, an officer of distinction. Nor did he scruple to unite himself with the Samnites and Lucanians, the avowed enemies of the republic. Clothed in black, with disordered hair and beard, he ventured to enter the camp of the Roman general commanding in Campania, and moved the soldiers to compassion at the sight of a consul kneeling to them in supplication. They insisted on placing themselves under his orders. At the head of a Roman army he demanded the restitution of his rights, and vowed the destruction of his opponents.

Wandering from coast to coast, and threading the ambuscades of a thousand enemies, Marius was not unapprised of the events that were passing. He found means of communicating with his friends, and when he suddenly threw himself on the coast of Etruria, he was joined by several adherents with a band of five hundred fugitive slaves. Etruria was crowded, as we have seen, with a population of serfs, whose native masters kept them in a state of degradation and misery. Unconscious of the political questions in agitation, these men flocked to the adventurer’s banner as the symbol of vengeance and plunder. While Marius advanced upon the city from the west, Cinna was slowly approaching in the opposite direction.

At the same time Sertorius and Carbo threatened her from other quarters, and Rome found herself encircled by four armies of her own rebellious citizens, backed by the resources of the Samnite insurrection. To resist these accumulating dangers, the senate hastily recalled Metellus, bidding him make peace with the Samnites on any terms. But the conditions they exacted in the insolence of this triumph--admission to the franchise, compensation for their losses, the surrender without return or reciprocity of their fugitive slaves--were intolerable to the pride of the Roman general. Metellus ventured to disobey his orders, and broke off the negotiation. He left a small detachment under his lieutenant Plautius to check the advance of the enemy, while he hastened in person to Rome. Plautius was speedily overpowered, and the rebel Romans were reinforced by the whole strength of the Samnite confederacy, which devoted Rome itself to destruction. There can be no peace, they exclaimed, for Italy until the forest shall be extirpated in which the Roman wolves have made themselves a den. The senate was reduced to extremity. Envoys were despatched to the quarters of Pompeius Strabo in Picenum; his command was acknowledged, his services were invoked, his return to the defence of the city earnestly entreated. At this moment Strabo might feel himself the arbiter of his country’s destinies; but he still vacillated as to his course, and continued apparently to treat with both parties, until the advancing successes of the Marians diminished the value of his adhesion.

Treason was at work within the city. For a moment Rome was opened to Marius, and he well-nigh succeeded in effecting his entrance by a gate on the side of the Janiculum, from which he was repulsed after a sharp engagement. Mutiny broke out in Strabo’s camp, which he had advanced almost to the walls. His soldiers seem to have personally detested him; a conspiracy was formed against his life, and defeated only by the devotion of his son, who threw himself on the ground and declared that the mutineers should pass over his body before they reached the object of their fury. The young Pompey was already beloved by the soldiers, and this spirited defiance saved the life of the father. But famine and pestilence quickly followed. The populace of the city were swept off in great numbers, nor were the soldiers, on either side, exempt from the contagion. The consuls, abandoning the unwholesome districts round the walls, withdrew their legions to the Alban mount. Strabo himself fell a victim to the disease, or, as some accounts relate, was killed by lightning. It is not improbable that he was actually assassinated.

This last blow paralysed the resistance of the senate. A first deputation was sent to Cinna, to arrange terms of accommodation. When these were refused, a second was only charged to solicit an amnesty. Cinna received it seated in his curule chair, with the ensigns of the consular office which he claimed to bear. Marius stood by his side, squalid and unshorn, and clothed in the black rags of an exile and an outlaw, and his gloomy silence interpreted, in the worst sense, the ambiguous reply which Cinna vouchsafed the deputation. But no further time was allowed for parley. The senate hastened to invite her conquerors within the walls.

Then, at last, Marius opened his mouth with bitter words: “An exile,” he exclaimed, “must not enter the city.” The restoration of Cinna to his consulship, of his associate to his dignities and privileges, may have saved Rome from being delivered to the Samnites for destruction; but the victorious generals had still their own soldiers to satisfy, and they did not shrink from surrendering the city to plunder and massacre. They had pledged their words for the safety of the consul Octavius, and the augurs whom he had consulted had ventured to assure him of his security. Fortified by these assurances he had repelled the entreaties of his friends to effect his escape, and had declared that as consul he would never desert his country. He had betaken himself with a small retinue to the Janiculum, and there seated himself in his curule chair, with the ensigns of his office around him. Here he soon learned that neither the dignity of his office nor the promises of the victors would command respect. But he refused to rise from his place, and when a band of assassins approached him, calmly offered himself to the sword.[90] His head was severed from his body, and carried to Cinna, by whose order it was suspended before the rostra. This, it is said, was the first instance of the public exhibition of these horrid trophies of civil war, and the custom, which became but too frequent in the subsequent contests of the Roman factions, was thus inaugurated in the person of the highest magistrate of the city. As the massacre proceeded, the bodies of the knights and meaner citizens were cast out for burial, but the mangled heads of the senators were reserved for exhibition in the Forum. The thirst for vengeance or plunder was succeeded by a savage delight in the horrors which accompanied it, and the populace itself, debauched and degraded, learned to gloat upon the blood of the victims. In the list of slain are included many of the noblest names of Rome. P. Crassus, who had been both consul and censor, either slew himself or was killed by the assassins. M. Antonius, celebrated at the time, and long afterwards remembered as one of the greatest of Roman orators, was murdered by the leader of a body of soldiers, whom he had almost moved by his eloquence to spare him. Two of the Julii, kinsmen of Julius Cæsar, the future dictator, suffered. Some were caught and murdered in the act of flying; others, who ventured to throw themselves upon the mercy of Marius, were coldly repulsed and cruelly slaughtered.

Marius himself seldom condescended to answer their entreaties; but his followers were instructed to spare those only to whom he held out his hand to kiss. The swords of the hired assassins were directed, in the first instance, against the adherents of Sulla and the aristocratic faction, the special objects of the conqueror’s vengeance; but their numbers were speedily swelled by slaves and Italians, who sacrificed men of every party to their indiscriminate fury.

For a few days Cinna and Marius allowed these ruffians to riot unchecked. At last they deemed it necessary to arrest their career of systematic murder and pillage. Sertorius was charged with the task of repressing them with a military force, and the assassins themselves were made to feel the edge of the sword they had so long wielded with impunity. But the new rulers of the city continued to destroy by the forms of judicial process the victims who had escaped tumultuary violence. Cinna could not pardon the illustrious Merula the crime of having succeeded to the consulship of which he had been himself deprived. The flamen of Jupiter opened his own veins, after a solemn declaration in writing that he had previously laid aside his tufted cap of office, that he might not involve his country in the guilt of sacrilege. Catulus, the noble colleague of Marius in the last battle against the Cimbri, threw himself on his knees, and vainly begged for life. “You must die,” was the only response vouchsafed him; and he was compelled to suffocate himself with charcoal in a newly plastered chamber.

[Sidenote: [87-86 B.C.]]

Cinna and Marius now began to reorganise the government of the state. Not deigning even to summon the assembly of the tribes, they nominated themselves by their own authority to the highest magistracy. Marius became consul for the seventh time. At the age of seventy, with his health broken and strength failing, which had borne him through so many fatigues, he reached the summit of his aspirations and accomplished the prediction, the assurance of which had nerved his courage in such dire vicissitudes. Nevertheless, while Cinna reserved for himself the administration of affairs in Italy, the old general was destined to resume the command of the legions, and wrest from Sulla the conduct of the war against Mithridates.

Sulla, indeed, it was already reported, had driven the king of Pontus to sue for peace, and was about to return and measure himself once more with the usurpers of the commonwealth. Marius, upon whom the auguries of his young rival’s ultimate success had made no less impression than the prognostications of his own triumphs, shuddered at the approaching contest, in which he felt himself doomed to be worsted. Harassed by terrific dreams, or worn out by nightly watchings, he sought escape from his own thoughts by constant intoxication.[91] Wearied with life, he could hardly wish to protract the existence which had become so intolerable a burden to him. One evening, it was related, while walking with some friends after supper, he fell to talking of the incidents of his life, beginning with his boyhood; and after enumerating his triumphs and his perils, no man of sense, he said, ought to trust fortune again after such alternations; upon which he took leave of his friends, and keeping his bed for seven days successively, thus died. We are tempted to suspect that, impelled by disgust and despair, he shortened his last days by suicide. The deceased consul’s obsequies were celebrated with pomp, and accompanied, if we may believe the story told us, with a frightful ceremony. In ancient times, according to tradition, it had been customary to slaughter slaves or captives on the tomb of the departed hero; but if any such usage had actually prevailed among the Romans, it had been long softened at least into an exhibition of gladiatorial combats.

On this occasion, however, the tribune Flavius Fimbria determined to immolate a noble victim to the manes of the dead. He therefore caused the venerable Mucius Scævola, the chief of Roman jurists, to be led before the pyre, and bade the sacrificer plunge a sword into his bosom. The wounded old man was allowed to be carried off and tended by his friends, under whose care he recovered. But when Fimbria heard that he still lived, he brought him to the bar of judgment, and being asked what charge he had against him, coldly replied, “Having escaped with life.” The story thus told by Valerius Maximus is founded, perhaps, on a misapprehension of a passage in Cicero, who only says that Fimbria required Scævola to be wounded.[92] If the tribune had intended to make a sacrifice, he would hardly have suffered it to remain incomplete. Only eleven years before, human sacrifices had been abolished by a decree of the senate. But in many expiatory and lustral rites, the shedding of a drop of blood was retained as a type of the ancient usage with which it has been frequently confounded. It may be added, that the historians have passed over this shocking occurrence in total silence; and the actual death of Scævola will be related at a later period.[b]

IHNE’S ESTIMATE OF MARIUS

“The judgment pronounced on Marius by posterity is not, like that on many other eminent men, wavering and contradictory. He is not one of those who to some have appeared heroes, to others malefactors, nor has he had to wait for ages, like Tiberius, before his true character became known. Disregarding the conscious misrepresentations of his personal enemies, we may say that he has always been taken for a good specimen of the genuine old Roman, uniting in his person in an exceptional degree the virtues and the faults of the rude illiterate peasant and the intrepid soldier. No one has ever ventured to deny that by his eminent military ability he rendered essential service to his country. Nobody has doubted his austere virtues, his simplicity and honesty, qualities by which, no less than by his genius for war, he gained for himself the veneration of the people. On the other hand, it is universally admitted that as a politician he was incompetent, and that he was only a tool in the hands of those with whom he acted. But morbid ambition and revengeful passion urged him at last to deeds which make it doubtful whether it would not have been better for Rome if he had never been born. He has, therefore, neither deserved nor obtained unmixed admiration; but as his darkest deeds were committed in moments when he was half mad from sufferings and indignities he had endured, and when perhaps he hardly knew what he was doing, he may, in the opinion of humane judges, gain by comparison with Sulla, who acted from reflection and in cool blood when he consigned thousands to death and enacted the horrid spectacle of the proscriptions.”[e]

Cinna now chose for his colleague Valerius Flaccus, the same who, as consul fourteen years before, had aided Marius to crush the conspiracy of Saturninus; an appointment which seems to betoken considerable respect for the usages of the state; for Flaccus, though formerly both consul and censor, had taken much less part in the recent contest than either Carbo or Sertorius, whose inferior rank counterbalanced their higher services. Cinna was now actively engaged in fulfilling his pledges to his allies. Censors were elected on purpose to effect the complete emancipation of Italy by suppressing the ten Italian tribes, and enrolling the new citizens of the Plautian law among the thirty-five tribes of the city. Whether this inscription was based upon a principle of numerical equalisation, or of geographical distribution, or whether it was attempted to combine the two, we have, perhaps, no means of determining; but thus the last remaining distinction between the Romans and Italians was effaced, for as many at least of the latter class as chose to avail themselves of the proffered privilege. The Samnites, Lucanians, and others still scorned to accept it. Another measure, undertaken by Flaccus, was more delicate, and more generally interesting. The consul ventured to enact an adjustment of debts, and relieve the accumulating distress of the poorer citizens, by enabling all obligations to be cancelled by the payment of one-fourth of the principal. He exchanged, as the Romans phrased it, silver for coppers; for the copper coin called the as was made equivalent for the purpose to the silver sesterce, which at this time was of four times its intrinsic value. After so long a series of wars and revolutions, and the fatal changes which had long been operating in the possession of property, it is possible that this measure was adopted as a necessary expedient. But whatever the urgency of the occasion may have been, the stroke was of fearful augury for the future, and did not fail to kindle criminal hopes in the dissolute and discontended for more than one succeeding generation. Having accomplished this important measure, Flaccus placed himself at the head of the legions destined for the Pontic War, and proceeded to the East to watch the movements of Sulla.

While yet unchecked by the best troops and most accomplished generals of the republic, Mithridates had obtained the most astounding successes. The kingdoms of Bithynia and Cappadocia had fallen without resistance into his hands. The Roman province of Asia had succumbed, and even received its new master with acclamations. From thence he had crossed the Ægean Sea, accepting the submission of its rich and flourishing islands, and his admiral Archelaus had captured Athens itself, with its harbour in the Piræus and all its naval stores and equipments. The Greek cities were, for the most part, favourably disposed towards the liberator, who promised to break the rod of proconsular oppression. It was impossible to foresee how far the contagion of provincial disaffection might spread; and when Sulla landed on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, his task had swelled to the reconquest of one hemisphere of the empire.

SULLA IN GREECE

Nor had he now, like his predecessors in the career of eastern conquest, the undivided resources of the commonwealth to sustain him. Sulla was conscious that he was only the general of a party which, though for the moment triumphant, was, he well knew, insecure, and every express that arrived to him from Rome brought him alarming accounts of the fears and perils of the friends he had left behind him. He reached Greece at the commencement of the year 87 with a force of five legions, which he had no means of recruiting, and he might apprehend that in the course of another year he would be superseded by another commander, the nominee, perhaps, of his enemies. He had not a moment to lose. Instead of checking the licentiousness of his soldiers, and drawing tighter the long relaxed bands of discipline, which must have been a work of time and leisure, he was compelled to stimulate their ardour and secure their obedience by additional indulgence and license more complete. The course of his march he allowed to be marked by plunder, devastation, and sacrilege. He traversed Greece and Asia to gorge his men with booty before he turned their arms against the invader from the East. The sacred treasures of the temples at Epidaurus, Ephesus, and Olympia fell successively into his hands. When the spirits of his soldiers were elated to the utmost, he led them under the walls of Athens, which he speedily reduced, and devoted to pillage. In Bœotia he encountered the enemy in the open field, and routed them in the great battle of Chæronea (86). Flaccus was now advancing upon his steps, and summoning him to surrender his command to his legitimate successor.

[Sidenote: [86-84 B.C.]]

He was about to turn boldly upon the intruders, confident of his soldiers’ devotion, when Mithridates placed a second army within his reach. A second great battle at Orchomenos broke the power of the king of Pontus, reducing him to act on the defensive beyond the waters of the Ægean. Greece remained as a clear stage for the Roman armies to contend upon. At the close of the year 86 Sulla had taken up his quarters in Thessaly, while Flaccus, not venturing to engage him, had moved in a lateral direction, and watched him from the neighbourhood of Byzantium. Among the new consul’s officers was Flavius Fimbria, the tribune whose ferocity has already been signalised. Beloved by the soldiers whose licentiousness he encouraged, while his general strove fruitlessly to repress it, Fimbria conceived the idea of making himself independent of the government at home, and acting the part of a Strabo or a Sulla himself. Flaccus was assassinated in his camp, and Fimbria, who may be supposed to have instigated the deed, was proclaimed general in his room by the soldiers themselves. But neither they nor their new leader chose to measure themselves with the rival imperator in Thessaly. Passing over into Asia (85) they ravaged every fertile plain and wealthy city, attacked the forces of Mithridates wherever they could reach them, and defeated a son of the great king himself. Mithridates was driven out of Pergamus, and reduced to shelter himself in Pitane, where he must have been captured, had not Lucullus, a lieutenant of Sulla, removed the fleet with which he co-operated to a distance, in order to prevent the upstart Fimbria from snatching the honour of such a triumph from his own superior. Mithridates escaped by sea, and Sulla opened negotiations with him. Upon his surrendering Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, renouncing his pretensions to the province of Asia, and delivering up a large portion of his fleets and treasures, he was solemnly admitted to the alliance and amity of Rome. Sulla thus confined the enemy of the republic to the limits of his dominions, such as they existed before the war; but, doubtless, had his own resources been more abundant and his position more secure, he would not have been content with a barren victory, nor have returned from the frontiers of the empire without an effort to advance them.

Sulla had entered Asia to conduct his negotiations at the sword’s point. As soon as they were concluded he turned abruptly upon Fimbria. The two Roman armies met near Thyatira; but Fimbria’s soldiers, plied with gold, rapidly deserted, and even those who still kept to their standards, refused to engage their brethren in the field. Having failed in an attempt to procure his rival’s assassination, Fimbria found himself deprived of his last resource. In this extremity Sulla promised him his life, on condition that he should resign his command, and withdraw from Asia. When Rutilius, on the part of his general, offered him a safe conduct to retire by sea, he replied proudly that he knew a shorter and a better way, and pierced himself with his sword.

Fimbria might well despair when he saw the forces with which his own victory over Mithridates had armed the champion of the party he had outraged. Sulla could leave in the East the legions which his rivals had brought to share or contest his laurels, while he took himself the route of Italy with a force of thirty thousand veterans, who had served three years under his standard, and had learned in a rapid career of glory and plunder to regard him as the founder and the pledge of their fortunes. The treasures of Mithridates, swelled by the ransom of an hundred Greek and Asiatic cities, furnished him with ample means for securing their fidelity. The vast fleets of Asia, delivered into his hands, might be used to abridge the long march through Thrace and Macedonia. The news of the surrender and death of Fimbria was accompanied by the announcement of Sulla’s speedy return; and the moderation he had professed while his successes were still incomplete was already exchanged for bitter complaints of the injuries he had received, the confiscation of his estates, the banishment of his family, the proscription of his own person, and persecution of his party. But his foes and those of the republic, whom he classed together, were now, he declared, about to suffer due chastisement; in proclaiming an amnesty for honest men of all parties, he announced that he would respect the privileges of the Italians, and leave them no excuse for devoting themselves to his adversaries.

THE RETURN OF SULLA; AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

[Sidenote: [84-83 B.C.]]

The senate, no less than the populace, was terrified by this manifesto. So many of the Marian party had become incorporated among the thinned ranks of the ancient aristocracy, that the counter-revolution now impending seemed not only to menace the safety of the particular faction which had aspired to rule the state, but to threaten the great mass of the nobility with indiscriminate massacre. Both in Rome and throughout the states of the peninsula, the vicissitudes of war and conflicts of special interests had gone far to efface the old distinctions of parties, and both Cinna and Sulla relied rather upon personal than political attachments. The senate, as an order in the state, could only pretend to mediate between rival chieftains.