The republic (c. 121–91 bc)
- Date:
- 753 BCE - c. 500
- Related Topics:
- Roman law
- Neoclassical art
- Senate
- aqueduct
- civitas
- Related Places:
- Italy
- Roman Empire
- ancient Egypt
- Pompeii
- Petra
War against Jugurtha
Since Roman historians were no more interested in internal factional politics than (on the whole) in social or economic developments, the struggles of the aristocratic families must be pieced together from chance information. It would be mere paradox to deny the importance in republican Rome, as in better known aristocratic republics, of family feuds, alliances, and policies, and parts of the picture are known—e.g., the central importance of the family of the Metelli, prominent in politics for a generation after the Gracchi and dominant for part of that time. In foreign affairs the client kingdom of Numidia—loyal ever since its institution by Scipio Africanus—assumed quite unwarranted importance when a succession crisis developed there soon after 120.
After the death of its first ruler, Masinissa (148), Numidia was divided into three parts, each to be ruled by one of Masinissa’s sons. However, two of them soon died, and power fell to the eldest, Micipsa, who himself had two sons. Micipsa also adopted Jugurtha, the natural son of his brother Mastanabal. Following Micipsa’s death in 118, Jugurtha sought to oust his two cousins from their shares of the divided Numidia, relying on his superior ability and aristocratic Roman connections. Rome’s usual diplomatic methods failed to stop Jugurtha from disposing of his cousins, but the massacre of Italian settlers at Cirta by his soldiers forced the Senate to declare war (112). The war was waged reluctantly and ineffectively, with the result that charges of bribery were freely bandied about by demagogic tribunes taking advantage of suspicion of aristocratic political behaviour that had smoldered ever since the Gracchan crisis. Significantly, some eminent men, hated from those days, were now convicted of corruption. The Metelli, however, emerged unscathed, and Quintus Metellus, consul in 109, was entrusted with the war in Africa. He waged it with obvious competence but failed to finish it and thus gave Gaius Marius, a senior officer, his chance.
The career of Gaius Marius
Marius, born of an equestrian family at Arpinum, had attracted the attention of Scipio Aemilianus as a young soldier and, by shrewd political opportunism, had risen to the praetorship and married into the patrician family of the Julii Caesares. Though Marius had deeply offended the Metelli, once his patrons, his considerable military talents had induced Quintus Metellus to take him to Africa as a legatus. Marius intrigued against his commander in order to gain a consulship; he was elected (chiefly with the help of the equites and antiaristocratic tribunes) for 107 and was given charge of the war by special vote of the people. He did little better than Metellus had, but in 105 his quaestor Lucius Sulla, in delicate and dangerous negotiations, brought about the capture of Jugurtha, opportunely winning the war for Marius and Rome.
During the preceding decade a serious threat to Italy had developed in the north. Starting in 125, several Roman commanders (Marcus Flaccus has been noted) had fought against Ligurian and Gallic tribes in southern France and had finally established a Roman sphere of influence there: a road had been built linking Italy with Spain, and some garrison posts probably secured it; finally, a colony was settled at Narbonne, an important road junction (c. 118). But, unwilling to extend administrative responsibilities, the Senate had refused to establish a regular provincia. Then some migrating German tribes, chief of them the Cimbri, after defeating a Roman consul, invaded southern France, attracting native sympathy and finding little effective Roman opposition. Two more consular armies suffered defeat, and in October 105 a consul and proconsul with their forces were destroyed at Orange. There was panic in Rome, allayed only by the firm action of the other consul, Publius Rutilius Rufus.
At this moment news of Marius’ success in Africa arrived, and he was at once dispensed from legal restrictions and again elected consul for 104. After a brilliant triumph that restored Roman morale, he took over the army prepared and trained by Rutilius. He was reelected consul year after year, while the German tribes delayed attacking Italy. Finally, in 102–101, he annihilated them at Aquae Sextiae (Aix-les-Bains) and, with his colleague, Quintus Catulus, on the Campi Raudii (near the Po delta). Another triumph and a sixth consulship (in 101) were his reward.
In his first consulship, Marius had taken a step of great (and probably unrecognized) importance: aware of the difficulties long endemic in the traditional system of recruitment, he had ignored property qualifications in enrolling his army and, as a result, had recruited ample volunteers among men who had nothing to lose. This radical solution was thenceforth generally imitated, and conscription became confined to emergencies (such as the Social and Civil wars). He also enhanced the importance of the legionary eagle (the standard), thus beginning the process that led to each legion’s having a continuing corporate identity. At the same time, Rutilius introduced arms drill and reformed the selection of senior officers. Various tactical reforms in due course led to the increasing prominence of the cohort (one-tenth of a legion) as a tactical unit and the total reliance on non-Roman auxiliaries for light-armed and cavalry service. The precise development of these reforms cannot be traced, but they culminated in the much more effective armies of Pompey and Caesar.
Marius’ African army had been unwilling to engage in another war, and Marius preferred to use newly levied soldiers (no longer difficult to find). But neither he nor the Senate seemed aware of any responsibilities to the veterans. In 103 a tribune, Lucius Saturninus, offered to pass a law providing land in Africa for them in return for Marius’ support for some anti-oligarchic activities of his own. Marius agreed, and the large lots distributed to his veterans (both Roman and Italian) turned out to be the beginning of the Romanization of Africa. In 100, with the German wars ended, Saturninus again proved a welcome ally, arranging for the settlement of Marius’ veterans in Gaul. An incidental effect was the departure of Marius’ old commander and subsequent enemy, Quintus Metellus, who refused to recognize the validity of Saturninus’ law and, choosing martyrdom, went into exile. But this time Saturninus exacted a high price. With his ally, the praetor Gaius Glaucia, he introduced laws to gain the favour of plebs and equites and proceeded to provide for the settlement of veterans of wars in Macedonia and Sicily in the same way as for those of Marius’ war. He planned to seek reelection for 99, with Glaucia illegally gaining the consulship. Violence and even murder were freely used to accomplish these aims.
Marius now had to make a choice. Saturninus and Glaucia might secure him the continuing favour of the plebs and perhaps the equites, though they might also steal it for themselves. But as the saviour of his country and six times consul, he now hoped to become an elder statesman (princeps), accepted and honoured by those who had once looked down on him as an upstart. To this end he had long laboured, dealing out favours to aristocrats who might make useful allies. This was the reward Marius desired for his achievement; he never thought of revolution or tyranny. Hence, when called on to save the state from his revolutionary allies, he could not refuse. He imprisoned them and their armed adherents and did not prevent their being lynched. Yet, having saved the oligarchy from revolution, he received little reward; he lost the favour of the plebs, while the oligarchs, in view of both his birth and his earlier unscrupulous ambition, refused to accept him as their equal. Metellus was recalled; this was a bitter blow to Marius’ prestige, and he preferred to leave Rome and visit Asia.
Before long a face-saving compromise was found, and Marius returned; but in the 90s he played no major part. Though he held his own when his friends and clients were attacked in the courts, his old aristocratic protégés now found more promising allies. Sulla is typical: closely associated with Marius in his early career, he was by 91 ready to take the lead in attacking Marius and (significantly) found eager support. The oligarchy could not forgive Marius.
Wars and dictatorship (c. 91–80 bc)
Events in Asia
In foreign affairs the 90s were dominated by Asia, Rome’s chief source of income. Mithradates VI, king of Pontus, had built a large empire around the Black Sea and was probing and intriguing in the Roman sphere of influence. Marius had met him and had given him a firm warning, temporarily effective: Mithradates had proper respect for Roman power. Scheming to annex Cappadocia, he had been thwarted by the Senate’s instructing Sulla, as proconsul, to install a pro-Roman king there in 96–95. (It was on this occasion that Sulla received a Parthian embassy—the first contact between the two powers.) But dissatisfaction in the Roman province of Asia gave new hope to Mithradates. Ineffectively organized after annexation and corrupt in its cities’ internal administration, it was soon overrun with Italian businessmen and Roman tax collectors. When the Senate realized the danger, it sent its most distinguished jurist, Quintus Mucius Scaevola (consul in 95 and pontifex maximus), on an unprecedented mission to reorganize Asia (94). He took Publius Rutilius Rufus—jurist, stoic philosopher, and former consul—with him as his senior officer, and after Scaevola’s return Rutilius remained behind, firmly applying the new principles they had established. This caused an outcry from businessmen, whose profits Scaevola had kept within bounds; he was prosecuted for “extortion” in 92 and convicted after a trial in which Roman publicani and businessmen unscrupulously used their power among the class that provided criminal juries. The verdict revealed the breakdown of Gaius Gracchus’ system: the class he had raised to watch over the Senate now held irresponsible power, making orderly administration impossible and endangering the empire. Various leading senators were at once vexatiously prosecuted, and political chaos threatened.
Developments in Italy
The 90s also saw dangerous developments in Italy. In the 2nd century bc, Italians as a whole had shown little desire for Roman citizenship and had been remarkably submissive under exploitation and ill-treatment. The most active of their governing class flourished in overseas business, and the more traditionally minded were content to have their oligarchic rule supported by Rome. Their admission to citizenship had been proposed as a by-product of the Gracchan reforms. By 122 it had become clear that the Roman people agreed with the oligarchy in rejecting it. The sacrifices demanded of Italy in the Numidian and German wars probably increased dissatisfaction among Italians with their patently inferior status. Marius gave citizenship to some as a reward for military distinction—illegally, but his standing (auctoritas) sufficed to defend his actions. Saturninus admitted Italians to veteran settlements and tried to gain citizenship for some by full admission to Roman colonies. The censors of 97–96, aristocrats connected with Marius, shared his ideas and freely placed eminent Italians on the citizen registers. This might have allayed dissatisfaction, but the consuls of 95 passed a law purging the rolls and providing penalties for those guilty of fraudulent arrogation. The result was insecurity and danger for many leading Italians. By 92 there was talk of violence and conspiracy among desperate men.
It was in these circumstances that the eminent young noble, Marcus Livius Drusus, became tribune for 91 and hoped to solve the menacing accumulation of problems by means of a major scheme of reforms. He attracted the support of the poor by agrarian and colonial legislation and tried to have all Italians admitted to citizenship and to solve the jury problem by a compromise: the courts would be transferred to the Senate, and 300 equites would be admitted to it. (To cope with the increase in business it would need this expansion in size.) Some leading senators, frightened at the dangerous situation that had developed, gave weighty support. Had Drusus succeeded, the poor and the Italians might have been satisfied; the equites, deprived of their most ambitious element by promotion, might have acquiesced; and the Senate, always governed by the prestige of the noble principes rather than by votes and divisions, could have returned, little changed by the infusion of new blood, to its leading position in the process of government. But Drusus failed. Some members of each class affected were more conscious of the loss than of the gain; and an active consul, Lucius Philippus, provided leadership for their disparate opposition. After much violence, Drusus’ laws were declared invalid. Finally he himself was assassinated. The Italians now rose in revolt (the Social War), and in Rome a special tribunal, manned by the Gracchan jury class, convicted many of Drusus’ supporters until the Senate succeeded in suspending its sittings because of the military danger.
The first year of the Social War (90) was dangerous: the tribes of central and southern Italy, traditionally among the best soldiers in Rome’s wars, organized in a confederacy for the struggle that had been forced upon them. Fortunately all but one of the Latin cities—related to Rome by blood and tradition and specially favoured by Roman law—remained loyal: their governing class had for some time had the privilege of automatically acquiring Roman citizenship by holding local office. Moreover, Rome now showed its old ability to act quickly and wisely in emergencies: the consul Lucius Caesar passed a law giving citizenship to all Italians who wanted it. The measure came in time to head off major revolts in Umbria and Etruria, which accepted at once.
Civil war and the rule of Lucius Sulla
In 89 the war in central Italy was won, and Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo celebrated a triumph. Attention now turned to the East, where Mithradates had taken advantage of Rome’s troubles to expel the kings of Cappadocia and Bithynia. A Roman embassy restored them, and he withdrew. However, when the envoys incited Bithynian incursions into his territory, Mithradates launched a major offensive; he overran the two kingdoms and invaded Roman territory, where he attracted the sympathy of the natives by executing thousands of Italians and defeating and capturing the Roman commanders in the area.
In Rome, various men, including Marius, had hoped for the Eastern command. But it went to Sulla, elected consul for 88 after distinguished service in the Social War. Publius Sulpicius, a tribune in that year and an old friend of Drusus, tried to continue the latter’s policy of justice to the Italians by abolishing the gerrymandering that in practice deprived the new citizens of an effective vote. Finding the oligarchy firmly opposed, he gained the support of Marius (who still commanded much loyalty) for his plans by having the Eastern command transferred to him. After much street-fighting, the consuls escaped from Rome, and Sulpicius’ bills were passed. Sulla’s response was totally unforeseen: he appealed to the army he had led in the Social War, which was still engaged in mopping-up operations in Campania, and persuaded them to march on Rome. He occupied the city and executed Sulpicius; Marius and others escaped. Significantly, Sulla’s officers left him. It was the first time a private army of citizens had occupied Rome—an effect of Marius’ army reform, which had ended by creating a “client army” loyal chiefly to its commander, and of the Social War, which had made the use of force within Italy seem commonplace. The end of the republic was foreshadowed.
Having cowed Rome into acquiescence and having passed some legislation, Sulla left for the East. Cinna, one of the consuls of 87, at once called for the overthrow of Sulla’s measures. Resisted by his colleague Octavius, he left Rome to collect an army and, with the help of Marius, occupied the city after a siege. Several leading men were killed or condemned to death, Sulla and his supporters were outlawed, and (after Marius’ death early in 86) another commander was sent to Asia. The policy now changed to one of reconciliation: the Social War was wound up, and the government gained wide acceptance until Cinna was killed by mutinous soldiers (84).
Sulla meanwhile easily defeated Mithradates’ forces in two battles in Boeotia, took Athens, which under a revolutionary regime had declared for Mithradates, and cleared the king’s army out of Greece. While negotiating with Cinna’s government, Sulla also entered upon negotiations with Mithradates and, when he heard of Cinna’s death, quickly made peace and an alliance with Mithradates, driving the government’s commander in Asia to suicide. After wintering his troops in the rich cities of Asia, Sulla crossed into Greece and then into Italy, where his veteran army broke all resistance and occupied Rome (82). Sulla was elected dictator and, while Italy and all the provinces except Spain were quickly reduced, began a reign of terror (the “proscriptions”), in which hundreds of his enemies or those of his adherents were killed without trial, while their property went to enrich him and his friends. Wherever in Italy he had met resistance, land was expropriated and given to his soldiers for settlement.
While the terror prevailed, Sulla used his powers to put through a comprehensive program of reform (81). Although he had twice taken Rome with a private proletarian army, he had earlier had connections with the inner circles of the oligarchy, and after Cinna’s death some eminent men who had refused to collaborate with Cinna joined Sulla. By the time Sulla’s success seemed certain, even most of those who had collaborated were on his side, and he was acclaimed as the defender of the nobility who had defeated an illegal revolutionary regime. His reforms aimed chiefly at stabilizing Senate authority by removing alternative centres of power. The tribunate was emasculated; the censors’ powers were reduced; provincial governors were subjected to stricter Senate control; and the equites, who had been purged of Sulla’s opponents by the proscriptions, were deprived of some symbols of dignity and made leaderless by the inclusion of 300 of Sulla’s chief supporters in the Senate. The jury reform of Gaius Gracchus, seen by some leading senators as the prime cause of political disintegration, could now be undone, and the criminal courts could once more become a monopoly of senators.
Sulla’s measures were by no means merely reactionary. His program was basically that of Marcus Drusus. His overriding aim was the restoration of stable government, and this could only come from the Senate, directed by the principes (former consuls and those they chose to consult). Sulla accepted and even extended recent developments where they seemed useful: the Italians retained full citizenship; the system of standing criminal courts was expanded; the practice of praetors normally spending their year of office in Rome and then going to provinces for a second year was extended to consuls and became an integral part of his system. To prevent long command of armies (which might lead to careers like his own), Sulla increased the number of praetors so that, in principle and in normal circumstances, each province might have a new governor every year. As for the overriding problem of poverty, his contribution to solving it was to settle tens of thousands of his veterans on land confiscated from enemies in Italy; having become landowners, the veterans would be ready to defend the social order, in which they now had a stake, against the dispossessed.
At the beginning of 80 Sulla laid down his dictatorship and became merely consul, with the senior Metellus (Quintus Metellus Pius), a relative of his wife, as his colleague. The state of emergency was officially ended. At the end of the year, after seeing to the election of two reliable consuls, Sulla retired to Campania as a private citizen; he hoped that the restored oligarchy would learn to govern the state he had handed over to them. For 78 Marcus Lepidus, an ambitious patrician whom Sulla disliked and distrusted, was elected consul. Sulla did not intervene. Within a few months, Sulla was dead. Lepidus at once attacked his system, using the grievances of the expropriated as a rallying cry and his province of Gaul as a base. But he was easily defeated by his former colleague Quintus Catulus, assisted by young Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey).
The Roman state in the two decades after Sulla (79–60 bc)
The early career of Pompey
Pompey was the son of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, who had triumphed after the Social War but had incurred general hatred because of cold-blooded duplicity during the troubles of 88 and 87. After Strabo’s death, young Pompey, who had served under him and inherited his dubiously won wealth, was protected by Cinna’s government against his father’s enemies. Following in his father’s footsteps, he deserted the government after Cinna’s death, raised a force among his father’s veterans in central Italy, and helped to conquer Italy and, in a lightning campaign, Sicily and the province of Africa for Sulla. Though not old enough to hold any regular magistracy (he was born in 106), he had, from these military bases, blackmailed Sulla into granting him a triumph (81) and had married into the core of the Sullan oligarchy. Out of pique against Sulla, he had supported Lepidus’ election for 78, but he had too great a stake in the Sullan system to permit Lepidus to overthrow it.
Meanwhile a more serious challenge to the system had arisen in Iberia. Quintus Sertorius, a former praetor of tough Sabine gentry stock, had refused to follow most of his social betters in joining Sulla; instead he had left for Spain, where he claimed to represent the legitimate government. Although acting throughout as a Roman proconsul, with a “counter-Senate” of eminent Roman citizens, Sertorius won the enthusiastic support of the native population by his fairness, honesty, and charisma, and he soon held most of the Iberian Peninsula, defending it successfully even against a large force under Quintus Metellus Pius. When the consuls of 77 would have nothing to do with this war, Pompey was entrusted by the Senate, through the efforts of his eminent friends and sponsors, with the task of assisting Metellus. The war dragged on for years, with little glory for the Roman commanders. Although Sertorius had many sympathizers in Italy, superior numbers and resources finally wore him down, and he was assassinated by a Roman officer. Pompey easily defeated the remnants of Sertorius’ forces in 72.
The death of Nicomedes IV of Bithynia (74) led to another major war. Like Attalus of Pergamum, Nicomedes left his kingdom to Rome, and this provoked Mithradates, who was in contact with Sertorius and knew of Rome’s difficulties, to challenge Rome again. The Eastern command again led to intrigues in Rome. The command finally went to Lucius Lucullus, a relative of Sulla and consul in 74, who hoped to build up a countervailing power in the East.
At the same time, Marcus Antonius, father of the later Triumvir, was given a command against the pirates in the eastern Mediterranean (whom his father had already fought in 102–100), partly, perhaps, as further reinsurance against Pompey. With Italian manpower heavily committed, a minor slave rising led by Spartacus (73) assumed threatening dimensions, until Marcus Crassus (an old Sullan and profiteer in the proscriptions) volunteered to accept a special command and defeated the slaves. At this point (71) Pompey returned from Spain with his army, crucified the remnants of the slave army, and claimed credit for the victory.
