The Two Great Republics: Rome and the United States Part 10

Seeing his political power almost gone, Saturninus, in company with his fellow-tribune Glaucia and a band of the ruffians with which Rome was so badly infested at this time, seized the citadel on the capitol and attempted to raise an insurrection against the republic. The citadel was considered to be impregnable to an attack, but Saturninus and his followers were soon forced into submission by the cutting off of their water supply. The insurgents had surrendered upon the condition that their lives should be spared. Marius, in order to protect their safety, imprisoned them in a large building, known as the Curia Hostilia. The mob, however, climbed to the top of the building, tore off the roof, and murdered all the prisoners by dropping rocks upon them.

For centuries one of the most striking characteristics of Roman political life had been the forbearance with which all political factions restrained themselves from the use of violence. Such a condition of affairs, however, no longer existed, and from the beginning of the first century before Christ the use of force in political controversies at Rome became the rule rather than the exception. The exact reasons for the sudden change of sentiment upon the part of the Roman mob against Saturninus is doubtful. It may have been solely on account of his advocacy of Italian suffrage, or it may have been due to the belief by the mob in the accusation made by the senators that Saturninus was seeking to make himself king.

The political history of Rome during the first quarter of the first century before Christ was extremely complicated on account of the existence, side by side, of the two great contests,--the one between the aristocratic party and the popular party at Rome; the second, between the Romans and the Italians. Both contests were from this time on to be marked by the most extreme bitterness on both sides, and each soon became a military rather than a political contest.

The complicated system of laws regulating the status of the citizens of the various Italian cities under the Roman republic has already been discussed in previous chapters. It is also to be noted that at an earlier date the political rights of a Roman citizen were of doubtful value and were often refused by Italian cities to which they were offered. This state of affairs no longer existed, and the time had come when all Italians desired and demanded the political rights of the Roman citizen.

The death of Saturninus and the departure of Marius for the East, in 99 B.C., gave an opportunity for a new set of political leaders at Rome. The first of these politicians to rise into prominence was M.

Livius Drusus. Drusus occupied the unique position among the Roman politicians of this period of having attempted to play the role of conciliator between the various conflicting factions. Originally brought forward in political life by the senatorial party with the intention that he should play the part formerly taken by his father at the time of the Gracchian conflicts, and destroy the influence of the popular leaders by outbidding them in their efforts for popular support--he soon went beyond the objects of his sponsors and endeavored to secure real reforms for the benefit of the people and of the state. Some historians would rank Drusus as the best and ablest of all the Roman politicians who lived during the latter part of the republic. It is difficult, however, either to form an accurate opinion of the policies or merits of Drusus or to a.s.sign to him his proper niche in history. The accounts which we have of his political activities are conflicting and fragmentary, and his work left few permanent results. The measure for which he is best remembered was his proposed law to grant the franchise to the Latins and Italians.

Together with the increase of the franchise Drusus sought to secure the allotment of land to the needy Roman citizens, and a reform in the method of administering justice and government in Rome.

The franchise law of Drusus secured for him unbounded popularity throughout Italy and bitter opposition at Rome. This opposition in his own city culminated in his a.s.sa.s.sination in 91 B.C.

The murder of Drusus was the spark which produced the conflagration of the Social War. Losing hope of securing any justice from Rome voluntarily, ten of the Italian tribes, the Samnites, Trentanians, Hirpini, Lucanians, Apulians, Picentines, Vestini, Marrucini, Marsians, and Paeligni banded themselves together and declared war against Rome. The Romans seemed to have been completely taken by surprise. The Roman legates sent to the camp of the Italians were murdered, together with all the Roman citizens upon whom the insurgents could lay their hands, and a policy of extermination was resolved upon. Rome was to be destroyed, and Italy was to be made into a great republic with Corfinium as its capital. The government of the new republic was modeled after that of Rome. Marsian and Mutilus were chosen consuls for the first year of the new Italian republic.

The war at first went against the Romans and for a while it seemed as if the Italians might even succeed in their scheme for the overthrow and the destruction of Rome. Again the Romans were obliged to look to Gaius Marius for their safety. Marius, who shortly before this time had returned from the East and who had been suffered to hold only a subordinate command during the first year of the war, now being put in control of one of the Roman armies turned the tide of the Italian success by winning the first great victory achieved by the Romans during the war. The sympathy of Marius, however, was so strongly with the demands of the Italians, and his desires so great to bring the war to a close by conceding these demands, that he failed to follow up the success with his accustomed vigor, with the result that a younger general was enabled to rise into prominence.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla had already acquired considerable military reputation from the campaign which he had served in Africa under Marius, and was now in command of one of the Roman armies. Sulla, throughout his whole life, was a consistent adherent of the extreme oligarchical party. Nowhere in his life's history do we find the slightest degree of regard for popular rights, or any opposition to injustice which might rest on the lower cla.s.ses. With no sympathy for the Italians or the cause which they represented, and possessed with military ability almost equal to that of Marius, Sulla became the military hero of the Social War. Nevertheless, it was soon evident that the Romans themselves would not be able to bring the war to a successful termination. Therefore, by the Julian Law, the Roman franchise was extended to those tribes and cities in possession of the Latin rights, who, in return for the grant of the franchise to themselves, seemed to have willingly a.s.sisted in preventing its acquisition by the others. With the aid of the Latins, Sulla was able to compel the subjugation of the Italians, of whom more than three hundred thousand are reported to have been killed in the short war.

The conclusion of this war, however, brought not even a temporary peace. The Roman sky was overshadowed with clouds both of foreign invasion and internal dissension. In the far East the great Mithridates, king of Pontus, had defeated the Romans, murdered in cold blood eighty thousand Roman citizens whom he had found in Asia Minor, and was preparing to invade Greece, which was only too ready to rise and aid in the overthrow of the hated and oppressive Roman rule.

In the meantime the battle of the Italians, lost in the field, was being renewed at Rome by the Roman politicians of the popular party.

Under the leadership of the tribune Sulpicius the popular party was induced to take up the advocacy of the claims of the Italians.

The fear which had been produced in the minds of all Romans by the disquieting news from the East tended to make all cla.s.ses willing to conciliate the Italians, from whom soldiers for foreign service must mainly be recruited.

By the Lex Plautia-Popiria the very same privileges were extended to all the Italian allies of Rome that had been extended to a favored few by the Lex Julia. A few cities in Italy, however, mainly those of Grecian origin, declined to take advantage of this law, preferring to retain their local system of self-government rather than become citizens of Rome.

From the standpoint of Roman supremacy the pa.s.sage of the Lex Plautia-Popiria was the wisest action in the whole course of Roman history. The efforts of years immediately preceding the pa.s.sage of this act had shown that the citizenship of Rome, as const.i.tuted prior to the year 90 B.C., was far too limited to be able to long remain as the base upon which the great pyramid of the Roman foreign possessions should rest. Nevertheless, by the additions made by the Lex Julia and the Lex Plautia-Popiria, it was rendered broad and strong enough to sustain the great weight and bulk of the Roman empire for several centuries.

The Lex Plautia-Popiria, however, fell far short of giving to the Italians the full political influence to which their numbers would ent.i.tle them. The number of the new citizens enrolled by the censors under the provisions of this new act were divided into eight (or perhaps ten) new tribes, instead of being divided among all the existing thirty-five tribes as had been demanded by Sulpicius.

The pa.s.sage of these laws, however, while it terminated one of the great contests between the Romans and Italians, did nothing toward terminating that between the oligarchical and the popular parties.

During the period of the Social War the oligarchical and the popular parties in Rome had been by one common danger united against the combined force of the Latins, but with the close of the war this union was brought to an end. The popular party at Rome was augmented by the ma.s.ses of the Italians; while with the oligarchical party was a.s.sociated the aristocracy and n.o.bles of the various Italian cities.

The contest at Rome soon flamed up again over the question as to whom the command against Mithridates should be given. Again the question was settled by force instead of by ballot, Sulla marching to Rome at the head of his army, and Marius, to whom the command of the army had been given by the vote of the people, being obliged to flee for his life. Many stories are told about the hairbreadth escapes of Marius at this time. It is even related that, being captured in a marsh in Campania, he was taken before the magistrate at Minturnae and a sentence of death pa.s.sed upon him; that a Gaul was sent to his cell with the command to cut off his head, but that the barbarian was so frightened by the look in the eyes of Marius, which seemed to flash fire in the darkness of the cell, and by the awful tones in which the old man called out, "Wretch, dare you slay Gaius Marius?" that the Gaul fled from the prison in dismay without executing his command, and that Marius was afterwards released and succeeded in reaching Africa.

It is hardly possible, however, in view of the blood which flowed in Rome at the command of Sulla, both at this time and a few years later upon his return from the East, that Marius would have succeeded in escaping death if he had, in reality, been captured by his opponents at this time.

The political situation in Rome was now in the condition where political supremacy depended upon force instead of upon the ballot; and the rule of the aristocratic party in Rome was destroyed by the departure of Sulla and his army for the East.

The consuls for the year 87 B.C. were Octavius, who belonged to the aristocratic party, and Cornelius Cinna, the friend of Marius, who belonged to the popular party. The latter attempted to once more bring forward the law for dividing the new Italian citizens among all the tribes of Rome, and was deprived of his consulship and exiled by the oligarchy on this account. Civil war now again broke out in Rome, and the city soon found herself threatened from all sides. At one time no less than four distinct and independent rebellious Roman armies were marching against Rome, while the Samnites, always the most vindictive and irreconcilable enemies of Rome, again brought their forces in the field--nominally to aid the popular party, in reality with the hope of being able to finally strike a blow against the very existence of Rome.

Marius, who had fled to Africa, returned to Italy and in connection with Cinna put himself once more at the head of the popular party. No military leader of the aristocratic party, capable of successfully contending against the veteran leader of the popular party, remained in Italy, and once again the political wheel of fortune revolved in Rome, leaving the oligarchical party at the mercy of Marius.

His recent experiences had embittered the old soldier, and aroused within him a desire for vengeance and for blood which he had never before exhibited in his long political and military life. In dramatic fashion he placed before the eyes of the Roman citizens the ungrateful treatment which he had received in return for the great services he had rendered his country. Clad in the ragged costume of an exile, he led his victorious army to Rome, and, saying with bitterness that "an exile must not enter the city," he waited outside the walls of Rome until the decree of exile against him was formally repealed. If Marius, however, was scrupulous in his observation of the form of the laws prior to his entrance into the city, all his regard for either the form or substance of the law seems to have been lost after such entrance.

Marius and Cinna declared themselves consuls of Rome for the year 86 B.C. without any election and without even the formality of summoning a meeting of the comitia tributa. Much more serious than this was the disregard which was manifested by Marius and his followers for the life and property of the Roman citizens. For several days Rome was given up to almost indiscriminate plunder and murder by the soldiers in the armies of Marius and Cinna; and after a stop was finally brought to this extra-judicial pillage and murder it was succeeded by a series of prosecutions almost as destructive, and fully as unjust.

It was with these days of slaughter, the most sanguinary and unjust of Marius's whole career, that his life was to end. He was now an old man of seventy, enfeebled by sickness and hardship, and after his desire for vengeance on his enemies had been satisfied there appeared to him nothing left in life worth living for. Reports from the East indicated the military triumph of his great rival Sulla, and the prospect of the speedy return of the leader. To his other worries there was added the belief that the present triumph of his party was but temporary.

Finally, overcome by sickness and melancholy, he took to his bed, and died at the end of seven days. Many believed that he had committed suicide, but the truth of this theory can never be anything but a matter of conjecture.

Of the character of Marius little need be said. He was primarily a soldier, and only incidentally a politician. The debt which Rome owed to the military ability of Marius can hardly be overestimated. It is probable that but for his services the Roman republic might have been destroyed on either of two different occasions.

As a politician Marius exerted little influence on the course of the development of Roman history. The part which he played was rather forced upon him by circ.u.mstances and the conditions of the times than one which he himself created. His sympathies throughout were on the side of popular rights and equal justice. He supported the popular party at Rome against the oligarchical party, and was one of the strongest sympathizers with the Italians in their efforts for the Roman franchise. He was the first to draw the sword to protect the rights of the people against the oligarchy, but the members of the oligarchy had themselves drawn it to overthrow the Gracchi, and force, having been entered into Roman politics, must be met with force, unless the people were willing to surrender all their claims to right and justice and permit the whole control of the state to pa.s.s to the aristocracy.

The only real blemish upon the record of Marius is found in the cruel revenge which he took upon his enemies in the last years of his life.

Even on this occasion there was something more than mere revenge and cruelty in the policy of Marius. If the control of the popular party in Rome was to be permanent, it was necessary that the aristocratic party should be completely crushed before the return of Sulla from the East.

In concluding the career of Gaius Marius, summaries of his character given by two historians are here inserted:

"'When Caius Gracchus fell,' said Mirabeau, 'he seized a handful of dust tinged with his blood and flung it toward the sky; from that dust was born Marius.' This phrase of Mirabeau's, though a whit rhetorical, is historically true.

The patricians were willing to cede nothing to the Gracchi, and they were decimated by Marius. The struggle changed its methods: one fought no more with laws as the only weapons, but yet more with proscriptions. Marius was the incarnated pleb; as ignorant, pitiless, formidable, he had something of Danton, except that Danton was no soldier." (J. J. Ampere, _L'Empire romaine a Rome_.)

"The judgment p.r.o.nounced 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. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sion 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." (William Ihne, _The History of Rome_.)

Marius was succeeded as consul by Valerius Flaccus, who had held the same office fourteen years before. The two consuls Cinna and Flaccus now attempted to fulfill the pledges to the Italians, and censors were elected for the express purpose of doing away with the eight (or ten) new Italian tribes and distributing the Italians throughout the whole thirty-five tribes.

Another important law pa.s.sed at this time was in the nature of a temporary bankruptcy law for the relief of the Roman debtors. By this new law all debtors were enabled to clear themselves of their debts by paying one fourth of the amount owed.

Sulla, in the meantime, had brought to a successful close the war against Mithridates, although, on account of his anxiety to return to Italy as soon as possible, he did not completely crush the king of Pontus, as he could have done easily at this time. Disregarding the decree removing him from command of the army and appointing his successor, Sulla retained the command of his victorious army and returned with it to Italy, with the express purpose of crushing the popular party, and placed Rome once more completely under the control of the oligarchy.

Even before starting for Italy Sulla had issued a manifesto which showed that no mercy could be expected for his opponents in the event of his success. The Roman Senate at this crisis made a feeble effort to act as a mediator between the rival parties. It sent an emba.s.sy to endeavor to dissuade Sulla to desist from his threatened vengeance, while on the other hand it forbade the consuls to make any military preparations to resist. Both parties disregarded the orders of the Senate. Cinna and Carbo, who were at that time the consuls of Rome, began to make large levies of soldiers for the purpose of resisting Sulla upon his return. An attempt by Cinna to lead an expedition to attack Sulla in the East was frustrated by the refusal of his soldiers to leave Italy, and Cinna himself was soon after murdered.

After the death of Cinna, Carbo for some time remained as the sole consul of Rome. The worst possible use of this undivided power was made by the consul at this period, and his terror at the approach of Sulla was shown by the cruelty with which his enemies in the city were murdered or exiled.

Sulla returned to Italy with only forty thousand soldiers, while the popular party, under Carbo and the younger Marius, a nephew of the veteran general, had secured an army said to have numbered two hundred thousand. The army of Sulla, however, was composed of trained veterans, and that of Carbo and Marius consisted, in the main, of inexperienced recruits.

Soon after his return Sulla was joined by many of the senatorial party, with large levies of soldiers. Among the most notable accessions to the army of Sulla was that led by Cneius Pompey, at that time a youth of only twenty-three years of age but destined later to be the great rival of Julius Caesar for the first place in Roman politics.

The war from the start went against the popular party, and its final outcome can hardly be said to have been at any time doubtful, although it dragged along for some considerable time. The first important battle was near Capua, in the year 83 B.C., where the consul Norba.n.u.s was defeated by Sulla. The final fighting was around the city of Praeneste, where all the generals of the popular party had made their headquarters.

After the strength of the Roman popular party had been crushed, the fighting was still kept up by the combined forces of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Campanians, who, originally drawn into the war as allies of Carbo and Marius, now continued in a last desperate effort to overthrow Rome altogether. At the battle of the Colline Gate these allied Italian forces, under Pontius Telesinus, came very near inflicting a worse defeat upon Rome than this city had ever received.

The left wing of the Roman army, commanded by Sulla, was in fact routed, and the battle was saved only by the right wing under the command of Cra.s.sus. In the end the victory of the Romans under Sulla in this battle was complete, and the great Italian general Pontius Telesinus was left dead upon the field.

This battle practically ended the fighting, although a few unimportant cities still held out against Sulla for a short period. The long contest between the Romans and the Italians was now definitely over.

The victory of the oligarchical party at Rome over the popular party was merely temporary, although the supremacy of the latter was never attacked during the lifetime of Sulla. The victory of Sulla was followed by the terrible proscriptions with which the name of this general must ever be a.s.sociated. The number of names appearing in the list of those who were proscribed, and liable to be killed by any one willing to carry out the orders of Sulla, reached the enormous total of forty-seven thousand. In this list were included most of the leaders of the popular party, all the personal enemies of Sulla himself, and also the names of all those whom for any reason of personal enmity or greed the friends of Sulla desired to have proscribed. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the friends of the young Julius Caesar were able to save his life on this occasion.

There is an historic anecdote to the effect that Sulla, in sparing him, warned the aristocratic party to beware of him in the future, as in this young man there was more than one Marius. It is hardly probable that this story is true, as Caesar at this time had done nothing to show his ability.

The vengeance which Sulla took upon the Italians who had resisted him was even more terrible. Whole cities were destroyed, and the Samnite race was practically annihilated. The vengeance of Sulla extended even to the remote provinces, where the members of the popular party were everywhere hunted down and murdered.

In the year 81 B.C. the dictatorship, which had been unknown in the Roman government for considerably more than a century, was once more resorted to, and by the means of this office Sulla obtained absolute power at Rome. The legal changes made by Sulla were few, but all in favor of the aristocratic party. The laws pa.s.sed during the previous half century in favor of the people were disregarded. The presidency of the courts was limited to the n.o.bility, and the jurymen were again taken from the senators. Sulla also secured the pa.s.sage of a large number of sumptuary laws of the most minute and, it might be added, of the most ridiculous character.

Because of poor health, Sulla was compelled, in the year 79 B.C., to resign the dictatorship, and he died the following year at the age of sixty.

To such minds as naturally incline to the democratic side of political controversies, whether past or present, the character of Sulla will be apt to appear as perhaps that character in all Roman history most absolutely without a redeeming trait.

Sulla's military triumphs consisted in the reconquest of provinces which had been goaded into rebellion by the terrible exactions of the Roman tax collectors and the unspeakable atrocities of the Roman slave hunters.