That he had an innate desire for order and efficiency in public life can hardly be doubted, though it accorded ill with the disorderliness of his private life. His personality reflected a strange mixture, like his blotched face which was compared with a mulberry sprinkled with flour. A cynic, yet superstitious, self-indulgent yet energetic, scrupulous on occasion yet on others heartlessly cruel, fox and lion combined, he was forced to go on if only to secure his own personal safety. The only path that he saw led him through civil war to absolute power: a restoration of orderly government might follow, and then he could return to ease and private pleasures.
11. SULLA’S REFORMS
In carrying through his reforms Sulla observed constitutional procedure and passed them through the Comitia in a normal manner. He allowed consuls to be elected for 81, though they were in fact of little note. One candidate, Q. Ofella (or Afella) whom Sulla had put in charge of the siege of Praeneste, was not qualified to stand since he had not held even a quaestorship; when he went on canvassing against Sulla’s orders, Sulla promptly had him killed. In the summer of 81 the proscription lists were at length closed.38 While continuing to hold the dictatorship Sulla allowed himself to be elected consul (a rare, but apparently legitimate combination of offices) with Metellus Pius for 80, but he refused re-election for 79. Early in his dictatorship he started his work of reconstruction.
If the Senate was to resume firm control and become an effective governing body once again, Sulla’s first task was clearly to increase its numbers, which through war and the massacres of Marius and Sulla had dropped to some 150 members. The new senators would naturally include Sulla’s own supporters, both men of senatorial families and others who had rendered him good service during the wars, but he also included 300 Equites. This appears surprising when it is recalled how bitterly hostile he had been towards the Knights in Rome. Many of those chosen, however, may have belonged to the eighteen equestrian centuries in which younger members of noble families were enrolled, but others probably came from the ordo equester in a wider sense and included some of the local aristocracy of the cities of Italy which had recently been enfranchised. Whether Sulla’s motive was to attempt to heal the breach between the two Orders or to blunt the opposition of the Equites by winning over some of their leaders, is not clear. One reason for the increase in numbers will have been to ensure an adequate supply of jurors for the law-courts which he intended to reorganize and to hand back to the Senate. The political result, however, was clear enough: in a new Senate of 500 or 600 members the majority would owe their position and allegiance to the dictator.39
Sulla also arranged for the automatic recruitment of the Senate in the future: the number of quaestors was raised from twelve to twenty and all ex-quaestors were to enter the Senate. This had two consequences: since quaestors were elected by the People, the Senate itself in the future would be indirectly elected by the People. Also the censors were deprived of one of their most important functions, the lectio senatus. Further, it is known that consuls handled some contracts (censoriae locationes) in 80 and again after a five-year interval in 75. It thus appears that Sulla was suspicious of the censorship and while not going so far as to abolish it, arranged to manage without it.40
Since the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus this office had increasingly become a powerful weapon in the armoury of the opponents of the Senate. Sulla decided to change that. Henceforth tribunes could not propose legislation to the People (except perhaps measures already sanctioned by the Senate); they were deprived of their judicial powers (the new senatorial quaestiones replacing tribunician impeachments); their right of veto was limited, perhaps being taken away in criminal cases; and above all, tribunes were made ineligible for any other office. Thus the tribunate was disarmed and all ambitious young men would tend to avoid this political dead-end.41
Sulla determined to curb the regular magistrates also. Although perhaps he did not make it obligatory for all magistrates (besides the tribunes) to secure the patrum auctoritas before presenting legislation to the People, since it was from the tribunes rather than from the consuls that he feared possible attacks on the constitution, he nevertheless decided to prevent young men gaining high office and political power too quickly. He therefore redrafted the lex Villia Annalis of 180 B.C.: the cursus honorum was rigidly enforced, and no man was to become quaestor before the age of thirty, praetor before thirty-nine and consul before forty-two; further, no man was to hold the same office twice within ten years.42 At the same time the number of quaestors was raised to twenty, and of praetors to eight. The principle of co-optation was restored to the college of pontiffs and augurs (cf. p. 45) and the membership of each body was increased to fifteen.
Magistrates at home were easier to control than magistrates abroad, and no one had demonstrated more clearly than Sulla himself what danger might threaten a government in Rome from a provincial proconsul backed by a loyal army. There were now ten provinces: Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, the two Spains, Macedonia, Africa, Asia, Cilicia, Gallia Narbonensis, and Cisalpine Gaul.43 Since the praetors had been increased to eight, they provided, with the two consuls, ten higher magistrates each year. Sulla probably did not establish by legislation a cut-and-dried scheme, but hoped that it would become normal practice for the magistrates of the year to remain in Rome or Italy and then as promagistrates to go out to govern provinces and command armies. The Senate would decide which provinces were to go to proconsuls and which to propraetors, and thus could partly control potentially dangerous men. Tenure of a province would normally be for one year only. Sulla also passed a lex de maiestate, a treason law which regulated the conduct of a promagistrate in his province, e.g. that he should not on his own initiative start a war, march his troops beyond the frontiers, or leave his province. By such measures Sulla hoped that magistrates both at home and abroad would be brought under the general control of the Senate.44
Other measures included the abolition of the corn distributions, some sumptuary laws and a forced levy on the empire, but by far the most lasting of his reforms was his handling of criminal justice. Since the establishment of the first standing court in 149 to try cases of extortion, some other similar courts may have been created. Sulla now undertook to increase and organize this method of trial, which was replacing trials before the People. Seven permanent quaestiones were organized in order to cover all major crimes: murder and poisoning, forgery, extortion, treason, electoral bribery, peculation and assault.45 Penalties were fixed and from the verdicts of these iudicia publica there was no appeal. The empanelling of them, which had become a burning political issue since they had been handed over by Gaius Gracchus to the Equites, was now decided in favour of the Senate, who were given the exclusive right to supply the juries. Though the jury question remained controversial for the next ten years, the main system established by Sulla endured throughout the Republic into the Principate.
12. SULLA’S RETIREMENT
In 79 Sulla, no longer consul, resigned his dictatorship (now, if not earlier) and became a private citizen. He soon retired to his country estate in Campania, where he spent the rest of his life with Valeria, a young divorcée whom he married; there he wrote his autobiography, hunted, fished and, according to his enemies, indulged in less reputable pleasures. When against his wishes Aemilius Lepidus was elected consul for 78, Sulla did not bestir himself. He died aged sixty in 78 and the public funeral accorded to him in Rome was of unparalleled magnificence. His epitaph recorded that no friend ever surpassed him in kindness, and no enemy in ill-doing.
His abdication has puzzled posterity: Julius Caesar is alleged to have said that Sulla did not know his political ABC: ‘Sullam nescisse litteras qui dictaturam deposuerit’. One solution offered by a modern historian is that Sulla’s action was forced on him: he really hoped to become monarch, and thus he lost the support of Pompey, the Metelli and the rest of the nobility, who combined against him and forced him into retirement since he was unwilling to appeal to arms again.46 This view
, which well illustrates that Sulla was neither a mere reactionary nor at first a mere tool of the nobles and that the trend of events was carrying Rome towards autocratic rule, cannot be accepted. It may be that there is a tendency to regard events, with Caesar, too exclusively in the light of later history: to some of Sulla’s contemporaries his retirement may have seemed tardy rather than premature. It is improbable that he saw a solution to Rome’s problems in monarchy: it required thirty years more of political unrest and military menace to make that answer practical and another twenty to make it palatable. The pill was too bitter for a sickening but still strong patient to swallow voluntarily; later it was sugared by Augustus.
Sulla’s solution was apparently to give the Senate another chance and to make the government more effective by curbing those forces that threatened it: tribunes, censors and magistrates, especially the army commanders. He realized that the People, meeting in the Concilium Plebis, was an unrepresentative and irresponsible body unworthy to govern, but he largely failed to infuse a new sense of responsibility into the Senate. Nor did he make an effective attempt fully to utilize the talent of the new citizens from the Italian municipalities. Above all, arrangements to control the use or abuse of proconsular imperium, the threat from which his own career had so nakedly demonstrated, were clearly inadequate against men of determined ambition. It would have required, however, more prescience than Sulla or perhaps any of his contemporaries possessed to have foreseen that within ten years two of his own lieutenants, backed by military force, would have overthrown his constitution. He may well have thought that he had made reasonable and efficient arrangements which could be worked by men of good will. If the senatorial nobility should fail Rome, that was their responsibility: Sulla probably cynically shrugged his shoulders and with that cool and ruthless detachment that had not deserted him in war or peace, he resolved to enjoy in felicity the remaining span of life that fate should allow to him.
V
THE RISE OF POMPEY1
1. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION OF LEPIDUS
Any hope that Sulla’s settlement after the grim years of civil war might usher in a period of tranquillity was rudely shattered by the ambitions of M. Aemilius Lepidus. This noble, who had rallied against Saturninus (probably his father-in-law) in 100, soon afterwards abandoned the Optimate cause. He enriched himself during Sulla’s proscriptions and his own propraetorship in Sicily (80). In 79 he stood for the consulship, supported by Pompey and advocating a policy hostile to Sulla’s constitution. As Sulla did not trouble to intervene, he was elected for 78, but with a conservative colleague, Q. Lutatius Catulus, son of the consul of 102.2 His programme included proposals to renew the sale of cheap corn, to give back confiscated lands to the dispossessed, to recall the Marian exiles, and to restore its old powers to the tribunate.3
He soon found a chance to promote trouble. Some dispossessed farmers at Faesulae in Etruria had attacked the Sullan colonists. Both consuls were sent there, but Lepidus soon fell out with Catulus, and the Senate made them both swear to avoid civil war. Whether or not Lepidus made a demonstration march on Rome now, he managed to secure Transalpine and probably Cisalpine Gaul as his province. His legate, M. Iunius Brutus, began to raise troops for him in Cisalpina where Lepidus had strong family connexions. When early in 77 Lepidus was reported to be marching on Rome, L. Marcius Philippus (cos. 91) persuaded the Senate to pass the senatus consultum ultimum and to declare him a public enemy. Catulus, as proconsul, met and repelled Lepidus at the Mulvian Bridge, while Pompey, to whom the Senate had rashly given a special grant of propraetorian imperium, went north against Brutus, whom he besieged in Mutina; after Brutus had surrendered, Pompey had him put to death, perhaps being uncertain whether to treat him as a citizen or enemy. Pompey then defeated Lepidus at Cosa in Etruria. Lepidus managed to slip away to Sardinia, but he soon died, and the survivors of his army, led by Perperna, joined Sertorius in Spain.
Lepidus’ rising had been crushed without much difficulty, but not without granting a special command to a young man who had held no magistracy, an action of the kind that Sulla had wished to make impossible. Any senators who began to feel that in making this appointment they had unwisely given way to nervous fears, soon had further cause to regret their action. When ordered by Catulus to disband his army, Pompey delayed and suggested that he should be sent to help Metellus in his struggle against Sertorius in Spain. The Senate capitulated, and Pompey was given a proconsular command which made him a colleague, not a legate, of Metellus: Philippus wrily observed that Pompey was being sent ‘non pro consule, sed pro consulibus’. The reason for the Senate’s action is not clear. It is said that no senator was willing to go to Spain, and the consuls of 77 possibly hesitated either on grounds of military inexperience or for political reasons (they may not have wished to act against Sulla’s intentions, but significantly they were a Lepidus and a Brutus). But even if there was a real lack of competent generals, to invest a young man who was not yet even a senator with proconsular imperium was a disastrous blow to Sulla’s intentions, and in the event proved suicidal to the Senate that sanctioned the grant.
2. Q. SERTORIUS4
Action was certainly demanded in Spain, where Sertorius had built up a widespread and independent power. This Sabine-born leader was a man of remarkable ability who had served under Marius against the northern barbarians (102–1), under Didius against the Celtiberians (95), and in the Social War when he lost an eye. Thwarted by Sulla in an attempt to win the tribunate in 88, Sertorius turned to the Marians. In 87 he fled and returned with Cinna, defeating Strabo and putting an end to Marius’ massacres. As praetor in 83 he helped the consuls against Sulla, and then withdrew to Etruria and from there went to his province of Hither Spain. During these years of civil war he had shown great moderation: ‘inter arma civilia aequi bonique famam petit’ (Sallust).
In Spain he began to win the support of the natives and to build up an army and ships, until Sulla sent two legions against him under Annius Luscus, who forced him out of the peninsula (81). With his followers Sertorius sailed out into the Atlantic and thought of settling first in the Islands of the Blessed (Madeira or Canaries) and then in Tingis (Tangier). Envoys from Lusitania, however, begged him to return to Spain to help them against Rome. This he did. His sympathetic approach to the Spaniards, combined with a skilful exploitation of their superstitions (he had a white fawn that was alleged to reveal the future), enabled him to build up a formidable army with which he defeated Fufidius the governor of Further Spain in 80. In undertaking this resistance and appealing to the Romans and Italians in Spain (the Hispanienses), he claimed to be fighting against Sulla’s illegal government in Rome, not against Rome itself. Indeed to his Roman supporters he was no rebel, but a truer representative of Rome.
As the threat in Spain increased, the government in Rome decided to send out Sulla’s colleague in the consulship of 80, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius, as governor of Further Spain. In an attempt to reduce, the south-west, Metellus established headquarters at Metellinum (modern Medellin) from which he struck out in different directions: northwards to Castra Caecilia (modern Carceres, near which a camp of his still survives), westwards to Dipo and Caeciliana (near Lisbon), and south-west to attack Lacobriga (near Cape Saint Vincent) where he was thwarted by Sertorius (79–8). Meantime Sertorius’ lieutenant Hirtuleius had defeated the governor of Nearer Spain, Domitius Calvinus, at Consabura (south of Toledo) and then crossed the Ebro to defeat the governor of Narbonese Gaul who was coming to help his colleagues. In 77 Sertorius advanced through central Spain to the middle Ebro where he was joined by Perperna, who brought from Sardinia the remains of Lepidus’ army and built up a force of some 20,000 men. Not far away, at Osca, Sertorius set up a school for the sons of Celtiberian chiefs, who thus showed their enthusiasm for his cause and at the same time unintentionally provided him with hostages. On the Mediterranean coast, of which he controlled the greater part, he was able to get in touch with the pirates and co-operate with them.
Thus in some four years he had defeated or held in check all the Roman forces which had been sent against him and he had built up a really formidable power which embraced the greater part of the peninsula. Well might the Senate fear that a second Hannibal might come from Spain, and decide that at all cost a competent general must be sent to help Metellus, even if it meant giving in to young Pompey’s claims. A few years earlier Pompey is alleged to have told Sulla, who was opposing his request for a triumph, that more men worship the rising than the setting sun. The Senate, now blinded by his audacity, failed to see the political consequences of their concession.
On his arrival in Spain in 76 Pompey’s first objective was to win control of the eastern coast road, especially the area around Valentia. He forced his way down as far as Saguntum, sweeping aside Sertorius’ lieutenants, but Sertorius himself, who was in a reserve position on the upper Ebro, came down to the coast and thrust Pompey back northwards over the Ebro. Meantime, however, in the south Sertorius’ lieutenant Hirtuleius foolishly got involved in a battle with Metellus at Italica and was defeated. It was perhaps during the following winter (76/5) that Sertorius negotiated with Mithridates for help: in return for money and ships he would recognize the king’s claims to Bithynia and Cappadocia, but scarcely to the Roman province of Asia as the tradition hostile to Sertorius asserts. In fact the treaty had little practical result, except that knowledge of Mithridates’ support would increase Sertorius’ prestige, not least with the pirates, just as it would alienate sympathy in Italy.
From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 Page 14