THE DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC, PART II: THE ERA OF MILITARY COMMANDERS, 112-60 B.C. — GAIUS MARIUS AND LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA
After the death of the Gracchi, Romans identified either with the slain reformers or with conservative senators. The Senate regained control and elected numerous Caelli Metallae to consulship. The 118 B.C. land law allowed the sale of the ager publicus. But a new law passed in 111 B.C. froze the possession of the ager publicus. Land distribution was a one-shot attempt that did not solve the long-term problem.
Gaius Marius was born into an undistinguished family on a modest Arpinum farm in 159 B.C. and began work as a laborer. He joined the army as a common soldier and rose by merit to the rank of military tribune. He distinguished himself in Spain during the Numantian War. He had become military tribune in 119. He married Julia, the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar. His career began to advance as he became praetor in 116 and then propraetor in further Spain in 115, where he acquired a fortune. Marius was a relatively uneducated, rough, pushy and vulgar soldier. He had a good head for military strategy but showed less skill in politics. His speeches became the topic of jests in high society. But Marius never knew when he was beaten and eventually held the consulship an unprecedented seven times.
Numantia: "A small town of some four thousand Celtiberians, on the upper Durius River in Nearer Spain. It had successfully resisted a whole series of Roman armies and generals, starting with Cato the Censor in 195 B.C., and ending with Hostilius Mancinus in 137 B.C. Then in 135 B.C., Scipio Aemilianus was given the job of reducing it, and did so after a siege which lasted eight months. Jugurtha of Numidia, Gaius Marius, Publius Rutilius Rufus, and Quintus s Numidicus were all on Scipio Aemilianus’s staff. When the town finally surrendered, Scipio Aemilianus literally tore it apart, dismantled it, executed or deported its people, and used it as an object lesson to the Celtiberians to show them that they couldn’t win against Rome." [McCullough, The First Man in Rome, p. 1002.]
Marius Consul 107, 104-100, and 86 B.C.
"The principal architect of the Roman professional army. Gaius Marius was a wealthy novus homo whose military ability and political ambitions had found advancement under the patronage of the Metelli. After serving as legate of Metellus Numidicus in Africa for two years (109-108 B.C.), Marius was nearly fifty years old, and as an ex-praetor had a solid but unspectacular public career behind him. But, returning to Rome, he attacked Metellus’ handling of the war, and skillfully exploited the political situation to secure for himself the consulship of 107 and a special mandate to succeed Metellus in Africa. This was achieved by mobilizing the discontent in business circles (the equestrians) at the senate’s inability to end the war, and combining it with the popular agitation initiated by Memmius and Manilius against the conduct of the war. Thus Marius reached the consulship with a powerful anti-nobility coalition behind him; but thereafter he was a member of the nobility, and his conservative instincts led him to seek acceptance in that exalted circle. Of the military reforms associated with his name, by far the most important was the enlistment of proletarii (i.e. landless citizens) for his African campaign. Marius thus bypassed the chronic manpower shortage which Tiberius Gracchus had tried to solve, but thereby created a new kind of army with revolutionary political consequences, as his younger contemporaries, Sulla and Pompeius Strabo, demonstrated in his lifetime."
"By 105 Marius had ended the long war against Jugurtha and triumphed at Rome; in the emergency following the disastrous defeat of Caepio and Mallius at Orange. Marius was elected to a second consulship (104) to face the threat from the Cimbri and Teutones. For the duration of the crisis he held consecutive consulships in defiance of all constitutional precedent but apparently with the sanction of the senate, with whom his relations were at this time harmonious. This is shown by his assisting Catulus to the consulship of 102 and sharing a joint triumph with him after their final victory over the Cimbri at Vercellae (101). Moreover, he was elected without significant opposition to a sixth, ‘unnecessary’ consulship (100) and universally recognized as the saviour of the State."
"But Marius’ prestige required that his landless veterans be rewarded with land allotments. Conservative antipathy to such a measure in the senate was stirred up by Marius’ ex-patron and arch-enemy, Metellus Numidicus. Thus Marius was forced to turn to the anti-senatorial politicians, Saturninus and Glaucia, and allow his veterans to be used to promote popular legislation by violent intimidation. When the senate passed its emergency decree (senatus consultum ultimum) and called upon Marius as consul to save the State, he was happy to follow the precedent of L. Opimius in 121 and ruthlessly suppress Saturninus and Glaucia as the champion of the senatorial establishment. But Marius did not receive from the nobility the recognition he sired for his services. Increasingly isolated and ineffective, he regarded the return from exile of his enemy Metellus (98) as a personal humiliation, and undertook an embassy to Asia (97) as a self-imposed exile. However, the conviction of Rutilius Rufus (92) and the failure of Livius Drusas (91) reflect the political strength of an independent faction surrounding Marius, and as legate in 90 he was one of the more successful commanders in the Social War. But when the coveted command against Mithridates was allocated to Sulla in 88, Marius again looked to a popular leader, the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus to achieve his ends. Sulla’s unexpected march on Rome caused Marius to flee for his life before eventually finding refuge among his old veterans in Africa. When he returned to Rome with Cinna in 87, he instigated a ruthless massacre of political opponents. He died early in 86, aged 70, shortly after entering his seventh consulship." [Diana Bowder, ed., Who Was Who in the Roman World (New York: Pocket Books, 1980, pp. 328-330.]
Memmius, Gaius, Praetor 104 BC
"As tribune in 111 BC Memmius reopened the challenge to the senatorial establishment which had been suppressed with Gaius Gracchus in 121. He confined himself to denouncing the corrupt handling of relations with Jugurtha by leading senators, and in 109 he was prominent in securing convictions under the law of Mamilius. He met his death as a consular candidate in 100, probably at the instigation of Saturninus — an act which prompted the senate to declare a state of emergency." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, p. 343.]
Mamilius Limetanus, Gaius Tribune 109 BC
"As tribune in 109 BC Mamilius followed up the attack launched by Memmius on the senate’s handling of the war against Jugurtha. Under his law a commission was set up (the quaestio Mamiliana) to investigate corruption in recent dealings with Jugurtha. Several leading nobles were convicted, and the senate’s prestige was badly damaged." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, pp. 315-316.]
Metellus Numidicus Consul 109 B.C.
"A prominent member of the powerful Metellan family, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus took over the command as consul against Jugurtha at a time when the conduct of the war was under heavy attack. He achieved immediate and decisive military successes, thus earning the surname Numidicus. But he failed to finish the war, and in 107 BC was superseded by his former subordinate officer, Marius, whom he henceforth regarded with intense hatred. After initial opposition at Rome, Metellus was able to triumph in 106. A vigorous opponent of the popular demagogues, he attempted as censor in 102 to expel Saturninus and Glaucia from the senate, but was compelled by violent intimidation to back down. In 100 he was the only senator not to swear to observe an agrarian law of Saturninus, and went into exile. His recall (probably in 98) was a great triumph for the senatorial establishment." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, p. 348.]
Quintus Servilius Caepio: Consul 106 B.C.
""In 106 Q. Servilius Caepio, in an endeavour to make capital out of a revulsion of sentiment following the excesses of the Mamillian commission, carried a bill by which some control of the court de rebus repetundis was handed back to senators: all courts were now probably to be empanelled from both Equites and senators. But Caepio had missed his tide. In the same year a new current of hostility to the Senate set in, because of the failure of its representatives in the Cimbric Wars. The passing of a Roman army under the yoke at the hands of the Tigurini so inflamed public opinion that an impeachment for perduellio (treason) which a tribune directed against Popillius, the officer responsible for the capitulation, ended in a vote of condemnation by the Tribal Assembly." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 219.]
"An extreme conservative, Caepio promoted a law during his consulship which restored to the senate the control of the juries in Rome’s increasingly frequent political trials. He proceeded to a military command in southern Gaul where he captured Toulouse, the enormous booty from which mysteriously disappeared. As proconsul in 105 BC he refused to co-operate against the Cimbri with his military commander, but social inferior, the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. He thus caused at Arausio (Orange) the worst Roman defeat since Cannae. He was immediately deprived of his imperium and expelled from the senate. In 103 he succumbed to prosecution for appropriating the Tolosan treasure." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, p. 79.]
"After two years of roving in central France the Northmen returned with further reinforcements and now hesitated no longer to overstep the Roman boundary. The Senate took this invasion with due seriousness. With the end of the Jugurthan War in sight it ordered a large fresh levy and sent the consul Cn. Mallius Maximus with these new drafts to jon hands with Caepio. Before such a concentration of forces the Cimbri and Teutones stayed their advance and made fresh overtures for an amicable concession of land, which was again refused. But Mallius, a novus homo like Marius, was entirely lacking in Marius’s self-assurance. He failed to maintain discipline among his men, who converted their camp into a bazaar, and although as consul he was the superior of the proconsul Caepio, he could not prevail upon his subordinate to obey orders. Caepio condescended to rejoin Mallius on the left bank of the Rhone, but he refused to co-operate loyally with the consul, so that the invaders, giving battle near Arausio (modern Orange) were able to hurl back the Roman forces, section by section, against the river."
"The main impact of the people’s anger … was borne by Servilius Caepio, who was rightly singled out as the person chiefly responsible for the catastrophe of Arausio. The Tribal Assembly interfered to deprive him of his proconsulship, and a tribune named Cn. Servilius Glaucia made a side-attack upon him by procuring the repeal of his recent judiciary law and handing the court of de rebus repetundis back to the sole charge of the Equestrial Order. The unfortunate Caepio managed to escape serious penalty at the hands of a special inquiry concerned with the disappearance of the Tolosan gold, but in 103 he was condemned for Arausio by the people, while his colleague Mallius was exiled by a plebiscite." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 220.]
"In 102 the Northmen, after some rough handling by the Celtiberians of Spain and the Belgae of northern Gaul, reunited for a conclusive attack upon the Romans. With belated audacity they may have planned a converging advance upon Italy on three fronts; at any rate "Rome had to face a threefold attack. While the Teutones proceeded by the direct route through southern France, the Cimbri retraced their steps along the northern edge of the Alps in order to enter Italy by the valley of the Adige, and the Tigurini, fetching a still wider compass, proposed to invade Venetia by way of the Julian Alps. These dispositions threw the brunt of the Northmen’s assault in 102 upon the main Roman army under Marius’s personal command in the Rhine valley. For the greater part of the year Marius allowed the campaign to drag on, so as to harden his own troops and take full measure of the enemy; but once he saw his way clear he struck with the boldness of a Scipio. Leaving the Teutones to defile past him towards the coastal road he overtook them again by a side-road and engaged them on a site near Aquae Sextiae (modern Aix), where a narrowing valley would give a defeated army no room for retreat. Of the battle of Aquae Sextiae no satisfactory account survives. But it is clear that Marius invited the Teutones in Hannibalic fashion to attack him until the moment came for launching a reserve force on to their rear. Hardly an enemy escaped from the rout, so that Marius’s soldiers made a haul of prisoners exceeding all previous captures."
"While Marius was lying in wait for the Teutones in France, the defence of Italy was committed to Q. Lutatius Catulus, a nobleman more versed in letters than in warfare. Catulus took up a position in the narrow valley of the upper Adige, which left him with a difficult line of retreat. At the sight of Cimbric detachments escalading the surrounding mountains in order to work round his flanks he hurriedly withdrew his wavering troops to the south bank of the Po. Fortunately the invaders, intent on enjoying the harvest and vintages of the rich sub-"??Alpine plains, made no serious attempt to cross that river or to capture the neighbouring cities. Once more, therefore, Marius was given time to retrieve the Roman losses. In 101 he joined hands with Catulus, bringing the combined Roman forces to a total of 55,000 men. As in the previous season, he held his hand a long while before he struck, so that the midsummer heat of Lombardy might sap the vigour of the Northmen. Eventually he met them on the open site of the Campi Raudii, near Vercellae. This encounter spears to have been a soldiers’ action, in which the Roman troops outstayed the enemy, as in the battles of old against the Gauls, and ended the day in a slaughter and slave-haul rivaling that of Aquae Sextiae. In the same year Cornelius Sulla drove off the Tigurini in the eastern Alps. Thus the northern peril dissolved as if by magic." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 218.]
"Behind these prosecutions was a tribune named L. Appuleius Saturninus. This personage, appointed quaestor Ostiensis in the previous year [105], when the slave-war in Sicily was causing a shortage of grain in Rome, had been relieved of his functions by a senatorial decree which transferred the control of corn-transport to the more experienced hands of Aemilius Scaurus. To avenge what he considered a personal slight Saturninus sought election to the tribunate of 103 and became the greatest popular agitator since Gaius Gracchus, though his eloquence appealed to the eye rather than to the ear. Because other charge of perduellio — hostility to the State — was not particularly suitable for offences such as Caepio and Mallius had allegedly been guilty of (namely, military negligence leading to defeat), Saturninus therefore established a new permanent court (quaestio) to deal with the new crime ‘derogation of the majesty of Rome’ (maiestas populi Romani imminuta). The charge of maiestas was in itself a criminally vague indictment, under cover of which any unpopular person might be brought to court. In subsequent impeachments it was habitually misused as a makeweight or a substitute for more definite indictments." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 220.]
"In 107 B.C. Marius, to augment his forces for the completion of the Jugurthine War, ignored the property qualifications until then in force and opened the legions to all citizens will and able to serve. The senatorial class, unwilling to relinquish any of its holdings of public land, was compelled to acquiesce in this recruitment reform, hoping that it would siphon off large numbers of landless discontents from Rome and abate the agrarian agitation. But the senate thereby signed its own eventual death warrant: for thereafter the conscript army of Roman landholders gave way to professional armies composed almost entirely of propertyless volunteers, who signed on for the promise of booty during, and land after, military service (sixteen, later twenty, years); and as the senate continued to obstruct land reform, the soldiers came to look for their rewards to a succession of generals, the last of whom (Caesar) by his army, ended the senatorial regime of the Republic." [Lewis and Rinehold, I, pp. 293-294.]
Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was born about 135 B.C., of a respectable family with close links to Picenum (his sister was married to the Picentine Titus Labienus, his colleague in his last tribunate of the plebs). Elected quaestor for 104 B.C., he was given the job of looking after the grain supply and the port of Ostia, only to be sacked from his position and expelled from the Senate when Marcus Aemilius Scaurus the Princeps Senatus blamed him for a premature increase in the price of grain. Saturninus didn’t take the disgrace lying down; he stood for election as a tribune of the plebs in 103 B.C., and got in. During this first term as a tribune of the plebs Saturninus allied himself with Gaius Marius, and passed laws benefiting Marius, particularly one allocating land in Africa for Marius’s Jugurthine War veterans. He also passed a law establishing a special court to try those accused of a crime he called maiestas minuta — ‘little treason.’" [McCullough, The Grass Crown, p. 1059.]
Saturninus used systematic violence to force acceptance of his legislation. "After a first successful venture in turning a mob upon a colleague who had vetoed his allotment-law, he made habitual use of knuckles and sticks and stones in political battles."
"In 102 and 101 B.C. Saturninus was out of office, but sufficiently obnoxious to irritate the censor Metellus Numidicus, who tried to expel him from the Senate; the result was a riot in which Metellus Numidicus was severely beaten about. He stood for a second term as tribune of the plebs for 100 B.C., and was elected, still in alliance with Marius. A second land bill, to settle Marius’s veterans from the war against the Germans on land in Gaul-across-the Alps, provoked huge fury in the Senate, but Saturninus went ahead and procured it. The members of the Senate were required to swear an oath to uphold the law; all swore except Metellus Numidicus, who elected to pay a heavy fine and go into exile. From there on, Saturninus became an increasing embarrassment for Marius, who sloughed him off, his own reputation having suffered greatly." [McCullough, The Grass Crown, p. 1059.]
In 101 "he called upon the riffraff to break up the Tribal Assembly, before which he was being accused of having insulted the envoys of King Mithridates. In the same year he facilitated his own re-election to the tribunate by hiring bravos to murder one of his competitors." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 220.]
Glaucia, Gaius Servilius Praetor 100 BC.
"A popular leader, Glaucia was closely associated with L. Saturninus as tribune (101 BC) and praetor (100). His judiciary law reversed the recent measure of Q. Caepio by restoring control of criminal courts to the equestrians. But his hostility to the senatorial establishment must have been regarded as serious before 102, when the censor Metellus Numidicus unsuccessfully attempted to expel him and Saturninus from the senate. He broke with constitutional rules by standing for the consulship in 99, and he probably instigated the violent death of a rival candidate C. Memmius. This was the signal for the senate to authorize the consul Marius’ suppression of Saturninus, Glaucia and many of their supporters." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, pp. 228-229.]
Scaurus, Marcus Aemilius Consul 115 BC
"A conservative senator of immense influence in the period between 120 and 90 BC, Scaurus was originally a protégé of the Metelli, but rose to high political office and ultimately the leadership of their faction. In his consulship (115) he secured a triumph for victories in Liguria and was, surprisingly, appointed princeps senatus by the censors, in circumstances which are unclear. From 117 he was a consistent opponent of Jurgurtha’s partisans in the senate, and in 112 led an embassy to Numidia which frightened Jugurtha but failed to stop his aggression. When war was declared in the following year, Scaurus served as legate in Africa. His anti-Jugurtha record enabled him to swim with the popular tide and secure appointment as chairman of the quaestio of Mamilus in 109, the year in which he also became censor. His true conservative colours were shown in 100, when he proposed the emergency senatorial decree which empowered Marius, as consul, to use force against Saturninus and his supporters. Shortly before his death he gave some initial backing to M. Livius Drusus in his tribunate (91) but probably closed ranks with the senatorial establishment over the issue of Italian enfranchisement." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, 473-4474.]
Consular candidate killed -- break with Saturninus -- "Saturninus again stooped to assassination for personal ends. In order to rid his confederate Servilius Glaucia, who although praetor was illegally suing for the consulship of 99, of an inconvenient competitor, he procured the death of the ex-tribune C. Memmius by means of a band of bravos. By this wanton act he forfeited his alliance with Marius, whose soldierly sense of discipline asserted itself against mere murder. Observing their estrangement the Senate was emboldened to renew its declaration of emergency by passing the senatus consultum ultimum, and to summon Marius to exercise his consular powers for the safety of the State. In obedience to this call Marius penned up Saturninus with an improvised force on the Capitoline hill and drove him to capitulate. Before the Senate could decide on the tribune’s fate an angry crowd broke into his place of custody and claimed him as the next victim of mob law; with him perished Glaucia and several other agitators." [M. Cary and H.H. Scullard, A History of Rome Down to the Reign of Constantine, 3rd ed., p. 221.]
"In using Marius to rid them of Saturninus the nobles simultaneously reduced him to a state of paralysis. Unable to take a new line of action for himself, he looked on helpless while the Senate perhaps declared Saturninus’s legislation null and void in whole or part, on the valid ground of its having been carried by violence. To hide his confusion Marius quitted Italy for the East after a time (98), leaving the Senate once more in full possession of the political field." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd ed., p. 221.]
"At first sight Saturninus appears as a very inferior imitator of the Gracchi; yet he wielded a weapon which in more steady hands was destined to play a decisive part in the overthrow of the senatorial aristocracy. In the riots of 100 B.C. the most ominous feature was the intervention of Marius’s soldiers. This incident revealed that the new army, which had proved itself the saviour of the Republic, might in turn become its destroyer. Composed mainly of proletarians without a stake in the country, and serving continuously with the colours for long terms of years, it gave its loyalty to the officer who enlisted and led it rather than to the Senate and people. Luckily for them when the crisis came Marius hesitated. Whether from lack of political ability or ambition, or from an innate respect for law and order, he made no serious attempt to use his troops as a means to a personal domination. Future army commanders were to prove more ambitious and less scrupulous. The collision between Marius and the Senate over the provision of land-grants for his veterans also raised in an acute form the question of pay and pensions for the new army. Had the nobles promptly acknowledged the professional soldier’s claim to an assured livelihood and bound him to themselves by the nexus of cash and land-allotments, they might have retained their hold on the Roman army. In relinquishing to the generals the duty of making material provision for their troops the Senate in effect played into the generals’ hands, and brought nearer the day on which Roman commanders would use their forces as if they were private armies. Moreover, now that the Tribal Assembly was usurping the Senate’s previous sole right of making military appointments, the latter lost its surest guarantee of the generals’ loyalty to it. In the last decade of the second century the nobility lost more ground than in the age of the Gracchi." [Cary and Scullard, 3rd. ed. P. 221.]
The optimates celebrated their victory over the populares by repressive measure, including the banishment of Latin and Italian allies from Roman. They instituted a searching investigation to detect such. This was an insult to the allies.
Rutilius Rufus Consul 105 BC
"Publius Rutilius Rufus was an eminent figure whose wide intellectual learning, political conservatism, and moral integrity put him in the same mould as Scipio Aemilianus, under whom he served at Numantia (133 BC). Like Marius he obtained political advancement under the Metelli and served under Metellus Numidicus in Africa. But Rutilius maintained the connection, and, after reaching the consulship of 105 as a novus homo, remained a bastion of the senatorial establishment. As Scaevola’s legate in Asia (c. 95) he helped to rectify the financial abuses in the province, thus antagonizing the publicani. At Rome the publicani dominated the equestrian juries in the criminal courts, and their counter-attack was directed against Rutilius, who was politically more vulnerable than Scaevola. In a notorious trial (92 BC) he was condemned by an equestrian jury for ‘extortion’; the scandal caused a clamour for jury reform, which the tribune Drusus exploited the following year. Rutilius retired to exile in Asia, the scene of his ‘extortion’, where he received high honours and wrote his political memoirs. As a writer he was an important influence on Sallust and Plutarch." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, pp. 463-464.]
Drusus, Marcus Livius Tribune of the plebs 91 B.C.
"An ambitious and talented young noble, Drusus became tribune in 91 BC, seeking to emulate his father, Livius Drusus, in using that office to advance simultaneously his own career and the interests of the senatorial establishment. He was backed by a powerful faction in the senate, including Scaurus and L. Licinius Crassus, whose principal object was reform of the criminal juries after the recent scandal over Rutilius (Drusus’ uncle). To secure this reform Drusus tried to establish wide personal support by proposing a programme of popular legislation. Faced with opposition from the equestrians (backed by Marius) and the consul L. Marcius Philippus, Drusus became increasingly arrogant and demagogic. It is not clear at what point he espoused the revolutionary cause of Italian enfranchisement, or whether he intended to use Italian supporters to overawe his opponents by violence. But this alienated his conservative support in the senate and, increasingly isolated, he was killed in a violent clash in the Forum. His legislation was repealed, but the Italian issue immediately erupted into the Social War. [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, p. 177.]
"The agitation of the Italian allies for Roman citizenship, which had been growing ever since the death of Gaius Gracchus, flamed into armed rebellion upon the assassination of their latest champion, the tribune Livius Drusus. The establishment of an Italian Confederacy in the mountainous districts of central and southern Italy and the mobilization of large, well-trained force initiated a fierce struggle which exposed Rome to her greatest peril since Hannibal. Although most of Etruria, Umbria, Latium, Campania, and the Greek towns to the south remained loyal, the Romans were forced to call on auxiliary troops from the provinces. In 90 BC., after several reverses, the Romans passed the Julian Law granting full citizenship en masse to all communities in Italy which had not revolted, and probably authorizing commanders in the field to bestow the franchise on provincial auxiliaries as a reward for valor. [Plutarch (Moralia 202 C-D) reports that Marius had made similar grants on his own authority some ten years earlier; but the story may be apocryphal. In the empire, granting of citizenship to provincials after military service in the Roman army became a regular practice.) Early in 89 B.C. the Plautian-Papirian Law offered citizenship to individuals even in rebellious Italian communities. Except for a few die-hard Samnite bands, the revolt collapsed after two years; but out of the crucible of the struggle there emerged for all Italy south of the Po Valley a uniform citizenship which, in the next two generations, was to weld the peninsula into a common culture." [Lewis and Rinehold, I, pp. 283-284.]
Sulpicius Rufus, Publius Tribune of the plebs 88 BC
"Like his political associate Drusus, Sulpicius was an ambitious young noble who used increasingly demagogic methods as tribune in a crucial year (88 BC). His legislation providing for the equitable registration of new Italian citizens was carried by force with the support of Marius, to whom Sulpicius had transferred the consul Sulla’s command against Mithridates. This provoked Sulla’s first march on Rome in which Sulpicius was killed." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, p. 512.]
" Mithridates VI, king of Pontus (120-63) surnamed Eupator, also Dionysus, but more commonly ‘the Great,’ … was only eleven years old at the period of his accession. … It is said that immediately on ascending the throne he found himself assailed by the designs of his guardians, but that he succeeded in eluding all their machinations, partly by displaying a courage and address in warlike exercises beyond his years, partly by the use of antidotes against poison, to which he began thus early to accustom himself. In order to evade the designs formed against his life, he also devoted much of his time to hunting, and took refuge in the remotest and most unfrequented regions, under pretence of pursuing the pleasures of the chase. Whatever truth there may be in these accounts, it is certain that when he attained to manhood he was not only endowed with consummate skill in all martial exercises, and possessed of a bodily frame inured to all hardships as well as a spirit to brave every danger, but his naturally vigorous intellect had been improved by careful culture. As a boy, he had been brought up at Sinope, where he had probably received the elements of a Greek education; and so powerful was his memory that he is said to have learned not less than twenty-two languages and to have been able to in the days of his greatest power to transact business with the deputies of every tribe subject to his rule in their own peculiar dialect."
"The first steps of his career were marked by blood. He is said to have murdered his mother, to whom a share in the royal authority had been left by Mithridates euergetes; and this was followed by the assassination of his brother. In the early part of his reign he subdued the barbarian tribes between the Euxine and the confines of Armenia, including the whole of Colchis and the province called lesser Armenia, and even extended his conquests beyond the Caucasus. He assisted Parisades, king of the Bosporus, against the Sarmatians and Roxolani, and rendered the whole of the Tauric Chersonesus tributary to his kingdom. After the death of Parisades the kingdom of Bosporus itself was incorporated with his dominions. He was now in possession of such great power that he began to deem himself equal to a contest with Rome itself. Many causes of dissension had already arisen between them, but Mithridates had hitherto submitted to the mandates of Rome. Even after expelling Ariobarzanes from Cappadocia and Nicomedes from Bithynia in 90, he offered no resistance to the Romans when they restored these monarchs to their kingdom. But when Nicomedes, urged by the Roman legates, invaded the territories of Mithridates, the latter made preparations for immediate hostilities. His success was rapid and striking. In 88 he drove Ariobarzanes out of Cappadocia and Nicomedes out of Bithynia, defeated the roman generals who had supported the latter, made himself master of Phrygia and Galatin, and at last of the Roman province of Asia. During the winter he issued the sanguinary order to all the cities of Asia to put to death, on the same day, all the Roman and Italian citizens who were to be found within their walls. So hateful had the Romans rendered themselves, that these commands were obeyed with alacrity by almost all the cities of Asia, and eighty thousand Romans and Italians are said to have perished in this fearful massacre. Meantime Sulla had received the command of the war against Mithridates, and crossed over into Greece in 87. Mithridates, however, had resolved not to await the Romans in Asia, but had already sent his general Archelaus into Greece at the head of a powerful army. The war proved unfavorable to the king."
"Shortly afterwards Murena, who had been left in command of Asia by Sulla, invaded the dominions of Mithridates (83) under the pretext that the king had not yet evacuated the whole of Cappadocia. In the following year (82) Murena renewed his hostile incursions but was defeated by Mithridates on the banks of the river Halys. But shortly afterwards Murena received preemptory orders from Sulla to desist from hostilities, in consequence of which peace was again restored. This is usually called the Second Mithridatic War. Mithridates, however, was well aware that the peace between him and Rome was in fact a mere suspension of hostilities, and that the Republic would never suffer the massacre of her citizens in Asia to remain ultimately unpunished. No formal treaty was ever concluded between Mithridates and the Roman Senate; and the king had in vain endeavoured to obtain the ratification of the terms agreed on between him and Sulla."
Pompeius Strabo Consul 89 BC
"Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, father of Pompey, distinguished himself in the Social War first as legate (90 BC) and then as consul in 89, when he effectively ended Italian resistance in the north by the capture of Asculum, and secured the only triumph of the war. At Rome he carried a Lex Pompeia conferring Latin rights on Cisalpine Gaul, thus establishing a large personal clientela in that region. He emerged from the war at the head of a devoted army, which had been recruited largely through his enormous personal influence in Picenum, where he owned estates. For a further two years he did not disband his army, but maintained a powerful independent presence at Picenum, preparing to intervene decisively in the struggles at Rome. He refused to obey orders from the government at Rome, and allowed his soldiers to murder the consul of 88, who was sent to take over his army. He was probably negotiating with Cinna when he died in 87. With Sulla, he was the first of the military dynasts, and left a reputation for unprincipled ruthlessness."
"Sulla being thus wholly bent upon slaughter, and filling the city with executions without number or limit, many wholly uninterested persons falling a sacrifice to private enmity, through his permission and indulgence to his friends, Caius Metellus, one of the younger men, made bold in the senate to ask him what end there was of these evils, and at what point he might be expected to stop? ‘We do not ask you,’ said he, ‘tell us whom you will punish.’ This Sulla said he would do….
"Immediately upon; this, without communicating with any of the magistrates, Sulla proscribed eighty persons, and nothwithstanding the general indignation, after one day’s respite, he posted two hundred and twenty more, and on the third again, as many. In an address to the people on this occasion, he told them he had put up as many names as he could think of; those which had escaped his memory, he would publish at a future time. He issued an edict likewise, making death the punishment of humanity, proscribing any who should dare to receive and cherish a proscribed person, without exception to brother, son, or parents. And to him who should slay any one proscribed person, he ordained two talents reward, even were it a slave who had killed his master, or a son his father. And what was though most unjust of all, he caused the attainder to pass upon their sons, and son’s sons, and made open sale of all their property …. Those who perished through public animosity, or private enmity, were nothing in comparison of the numbers of those who suffered for their riches.
"Even the murderers began to say, that ‘his fine house killed this man, a garden that, a third, his hot bathe.’…"
"In the mean time, Marius, on the point of being taken, killed himself; and Sulla, coming to Praeneste, at first proceeded judicially against each particular person, till at last, finding it a work of too much time, he cooped them up together in one place, to the number of twelve thousand men and gave order for the execution of them all…." [Plutarch, "Life of Sulla," in A.H. Clough, ed., Plutarch’s Lives, vol 3, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1875.]
"After thus crushing Italy by war, fire, and murder, Sulla’s generals visited the several cities and established garrisons at the suspected places…. Sulla himself called the Roman people together in an assembly and made them a speech, vaunting his own exploits and making other menacing statements in order to inspire terror. He finished by saying that he would bring about a change which would be beneficial to the people if they would obey him, but of his enemies he would spare none but would visit them with the utmost severity. He would take vengeance by strong measures on the praetors, quaestors, military tribunes, and everybody else who had committed any hostile act after the day when the consul Scipio violated the agreement with him. After saying this, he forthwith proscribed about forty senators and 1,600 equites. He seems to have been the first to make such a formal list of those whom he condemned to death, to offer prizes to assassins and rewards to informers, and to threaten with punishment those who concealed the proscribed. Shortly afterward he added the names of other senators to the proscription. Some of these, taken unawares, were killed where they were caught, in their homes, in the streets, or in the temples. Others were hurled through mid-air and thrown at Sulla’s feet. Others were dragged through the city and trampled on, none of the spectators daring to utter a word of remonstrance against these horrors. Banishment was inflicted upon some, and confiscation upon others. Spies were searching everywhere for those who had fled from the city, and those whom they caught they killed."
"There much massacre, banishment, and confiscation also among those Italians who had obeyed Carbo, Norbanus, Marius, or their lieutenants. Severe judgments of the courts were rendered against them throughout all Italy on various charges — for exercising military command, for serving in the army, for contributing money, for rendering other service, or even for giving counsel against Sulla. Hospitality, private friendship, the borrowing or lending of money, were alike accounted crimes. Now and then one would be arrested for doing a kindness to a suspect or merely for being his companion on a journey. These accusations abounded mostly against the rich. When charges against individuals were exhausted, Sulla took vengeance on whole communities. He punished some of them by demolishing their citadels or destroying their walls, or by imposing collective fines and crushing them under heavy contributions. Among most of them he placed colonies of his troops in order to hold Italy under garrisons, sequestrating their lands and houses and dividing them among his soldiers, whom he thus made true to him even after his death."
"When everything had been accomplished against his enemies as he desired, and there was no longer any hostile force except that of Sertorius, Sulla sent Metellus into Spain against him and arranged everything in the city to suit himself. There was no longer any occasion for laws or elections or casting lots, because everybody was shivering with fear and in hiding, or mute. Everything that Sulla had done as consul or as proconsul was confirmed and ratified, and his gilded equestrian statue was erected in front of the Rostra with the inscription, ‘Cornelius Sulla, Commander Ever Fortunate.’….
"Thus Sulla became a king, or tyrant, de facto — not elected by holding power by force and violence…. There had been autocratic rule before — that of the dictators — but it was limited to short periods; under Sulla it first became unlimited, and so an absolute tyranny. But this much was added for propriety’s sake, that they chose him dictator for the enactment of such laws as he himself might deem best and for the settlement of the commonwealth…."
"By way of keeping up the form of the Republic, he allowed them to elect consuls. Marcus Tullius and Cornelius Dolabella were chosen. But Sulla, like a reigning sovereign, was dictator over the consuls. Twenty-four axes [the fasces} were borne in front of him as dictator, the same number that had been borne before the ancient kings, and he had also a large bodyguard. He repealed laws and enacted others. He forbade anybody to hold the office of praetor until he had held that of quaestor, or to be consul before he had been praetor, and he prohibited any man for holding the same office a second time till after a lapse of ten years. He reduced the tribunes’ power to such impotence as practically to destroy it, and he curtailed it by a law which provided that one holding the office of tribune should never afterward hold any other office for which reason all men of reputation or family, who formerly had contended for this office, shunned it thereafter…. To the senate, which had been much thinned by the sedition and the wars, he added about 300 members from the best of the equites, taking the vote of the tribes on each one. To the plebeians he added more than 10,000 slaves of the men who had been killed, choosing the youngest and strongest, to whom he gave freedom and Roman citizenship, and he called them Cornelii after himself. In this way he made sure of having 10,000 men among the plebeians always ready to obey his commands. In order to provide the same kind of safeguard throughout Italy, he distributed to the twenty-three legions [about 120,000 men] that had served under him a great deal of land in the various communities … some of which was public property and some taken from the communities by way of penalty …."
"The following year [80 B.C.] Sulla, although he was dictator, undertook the consulship a second time, with Metellus Pius for his colleague, in order to preserve the pretense and form of democratic government. … The next year the people, in order to pay court to Sulla chose him consul again, but he refused the office and nominated Servilius Isauricus and Claudius Pulcher, and voluntarily laid down the supreme power, although nobody interfered with him." [Appian, Civil Wars I. xi. 95-xii 103 (abridged, from LCL in Lewis and Rinehold, I, pp. 289-290.]
Lucius Cornelius Sulla: was by birth and party closely identified with the Republican tradition and became a champion of the old regime. Paradoxically he was a shameless debauchee, varying his bouts of abnormally hard work by orgies of intemperate self-indulgence. Wine and women gave him a blotched purple complexion. He was a philhellene on which the effect of the new culture had been gravely demoralizing. He possessed supreme self-confidence and ability and even his opponents acknowledged that he was thorough in his work as well as being thorough in his pleasures.
"Lucius Cornelius Sulla was an impoverished patrician endowed with a great many natural talents. To them were added a reputation for good fortune and his own belief in a lucky star that never failed him. In middle age his physical appearance was striking: ‘His eyes were an uncommonly pure and piercing blue, which the color of his face rendered still more terrible, as it was spotted with rough red blotches interspersed with white, a mulberry besprinkled with meal.’ Indulgence had left its mark on a strong constitution that had enjoyed all the pleasures of a cosmopolitan." [Hayes and Hanscom, Ancient Civilizations, p. 384.]
"The career of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an unorthodox and enigmatic figure who made much of his surname Felix (‘lucky’), accelerated the downfall of the aristocratic republican constitution which he sought to uphold. Born in 138 BC of an obscure patrician family, he saw military service under Marius in Africa (where he took some credit for capturing Jugurtha) and in Gaul. As propraetor in Cilicia in 92 he conducted the first negotiations between Rome and Parthia, and made a striking display of Roman superiority by seating himself between the Parthian envoy and a Roman client prince. As legate in the Social War (90-89) he was the most successful Roman commander in south Italy; for this he was rewarded with the consulship of 88 and was allotted the coveted command against Mithridates, who in that year invaded the Roman province of Asia. His command was transferred to Marius by a law of Publius Sulpicius Rufus, and Sulla was forced to leave Rome in the ensuing violence. Like Pompeius Strabo he had emerged from the Social War at the head of an army loyally devoted to him after two years’ fighting. He now took the unprecedented step of appealing to that army to march with him against the legitimate government in Rome. The men were attracted to follow him by the prospect of booty in the Mithridatic War, and by the ultimate prospect of land allotments; the upper class and naturally conservative officers refused, with the single exception of Lucullus. Sulla took control of the city by force, killing Sulpicius and forcing Marius to flee. He annulled Sulpicius’ laws and passed a largely reactionary body of legislation, which he obliged the new consuls L. Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius to swear to observe, before departing to fight Mithridates in 87."
"By 86 Sulla had captured Athens and driven Mithridates from Greece; he now turned towards Asia. But he no longer had any official authority: his command had been transferred to the consul of 86, L. Valerius Flaccus, who proceeded to Asia. Flaccus’ murderer and successor C. Fimbria, made notable advances there and nearly captured Mithridates. But Sulla refused to co-operate or to hand over his command, and allowed Mithridates to go free. He then quickly made peace with Mithridates at Dardanus (85) on the basis of the pre-wear status quo; this sell-out to Rome’s most formidable foreign enemy gave Sulla a free hand to eliminate Fimbria, but it required a lot of explaining in his memoirs, a literary document which he entrusted to Lucullus for publication and which colours the surviving historical tradition of the period."
"Sulla made numerous arrangements on his personal authority in Greece and Asia, principally to reward or punish states (and individuals) for their recent loyalty or lack of it. His personal influence became immense, and he was extravagantly honoured on a scale unparalleled since Flamininus. He also accumulated huge sums in booty and arrears of tribute with which to strengthen his personal position against the government in Rome. After Cinna’s death in 84 Sulla proceeded to an armed invasion of Italy and his second forcible seizure of power at Rome. Landing at Brindisi in 83 he received valuable military assistance from Pompey, Metellus Pius, and Crassus. By 82 he had overcome all resistance under Norbanus, Carbo, and the younger Marius, and was installed at Rome as dictator to revise the constitution, a position which he resigned before his death in 78 and possibly before his second consulship (80). His eastern settlement was ratified and a wide-ranging series of constitutional reforms was introduced, which aimed to improve administrative efficiency and to guarantee the ascendancy of the senatorial establishment. By suppressing the powers of tribunes Sulla sought to turn the clock back to the pre-Gracchan age. His revolutionary and unconstitutional methods were professedly used on behalf of the traditional regime and not in the pursuit of personal power, but they inevitably set an example to later ambitious dynasts." [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Roman World, pp. 509-511.]