From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68

by H. H. Scullard

  The next year, 75, was critical. Pompey again reached the area of Valentia, but was checked on the Sucro by Sertorius. However, a decisive battle was fought at Segovia, in central Spain, where Metellus again defeated Hirtuleius and was enabled to join Pompey. Near Saguntum Sertorius then fought an even engagement against their united forces, and they withdrew slowly to the Pyrenees for the winter. Pompey was in fact getting desperately short of supplies and warned the Senate in a despatch that unless he received reinforcements the whole war might sweep into Italy itself. He obtained two legions and in 74 turned away from the coast to attack the highlands of Celtiberia, whence Sertorius drew much of his strength; he met with varying fortune, including a joint defeat with Metellus at Calagurris. But Sertorius’ forces were gradually declining: his Spanish allies were beginning to tire and it is alleged that his own character was degenerating under the strain and that he was becoming more cruel. However that may be, Perperna turned against him and treacherously murdered him in 72. This usurpation of leadership did Perperna little good, since he was quickly defeated and killed by Pompey, who brought the war to an end by 71. His settlement was liberal and humane. By virtue of a consular law of 72 (lex Gellia-Cornelia) he granted Roman citizenship to many Spaniards, including Balbus of Gades, who had supported the Roman cause; and instead of massacring some of the obstinate, he transferred them to a new settlement north of the Pyrenees, Lugdunum Convenarum.

  Though Sertorius is sometimes depicted in too romantic a light, he was certainly one of Rome’s greatest sons. His military genius is undisputed: he gave to the guerilla warfare, which he imposed on his opponents and which the nature of the country demanded, a leadership and understanding seldom equalled. Self-restrained and humane, he appreciated the needs of the provincials and won their loyalty, as had Scipio Africanus earlier. Had he been able to devote his gifts to peace rather than to war, he might have served his country with great distinction. It may be that if the Senate had had the foresight to attempt to negotiate with him after the death of Sulla, his personal enemy, instead of raising up Pompey against him, a reconciliation might have been achieved. But though Sertorius’ military genius did not ultimately prevail against the oligarchical government in Rome, it nevertheless by a tragic paradox indirectly created the stepping-stone by means of which Pompey gained a political ascendancy that rested on military power and thus overthrew Sulla’s constitution. The influence of the army commanders now dominated Roman life.

  3. THE SENATE’S ADMINISTRATION

  The Senate, whose hand Sulla had tried to strengthen, had successfully coped with Lepidus and by utilizing Pompey had taken steps to suppress Sertorius, but as the seventies advanced its difficulties increased and its weakness became more apparent. Foreign affairs also occasioned increasing anxiety. Further efforts which had to be made against the pirates, were tolerably successful at first (78–75), but less effective later (74–72). In Macedonia the governors were kept busy repelling the Thracian tribes that attacked the frontiers (78–74) until M. Terentius Varro, brother of Lucullus, advanced to the Danube, defeating the Bessi and Dardani and even plundering the Greek cities on the western coast of the Black Sea. Rome also took action in Cyrene, which had been bequeathed to her on the death of its ruler in 96: for over twenty years she had been content to leave the government in the hands of the local Greek cities, but in 74 as part of her drive against the pirates she decided to annex Cyrene as a province.5 But the greatest upheaval was in the East. The king of Bithynia died in 75/4 and bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. The Senate decided to accept, although this would obviously upset the status quo and balance of power in Asia. Mithridates was quick to act. He advanced into Bithynia, and Rome had a Third Mithridatic War on her hands. This war and the campaigns against the pirates, which are discussed more fully below, seriously increased the problems with which the Senate had to wrestle at this time.

  At home also the Senate ran into stormy weather, though it is not now easy to distinguish the cross-current of feelings and pressures that determined its policy. Besides the interests of the Optimates, Populares and Equites, there had now been injected into the State a large body of new citizens, the enfranchised Italians, some of whom must have been exerting fresh influences, even if we cannot now easily detect or analyse them. Some members of the municipal aristocracies entered the Roman Senate and even if they were typified by the ‘homo novus parvusque senator’, they will have contributed their quota.

  The main political issue was the question of the restoration of the powers of the tribunes. When a tribune of 76, Cn. Sicinius, began to agitate for this, he was checked by one of the consuls, but a successor in 75, Q. Opimius, kept up the pressure. This was followed by a remarkable success: one of the consuls, C. Aurelius Cotta, who had been a friend of the younger Drusus, took up the cause and carried a measure which allowed tribunes to hold further office. If the Senate was in a more liberal mood, this was only passing: in 74, although this law of Cotta was allowed to stand, another of his measures was repealed and Opimius was prosecuted for misuse of his veto. The agitation for complete restoration of tribunes’ powers was continued by L. Quinctius in 74 and the annalist C. Licinius Macer in 73.

  Quinctius was also active in another field where the conduct of senators was being discredited: the law-courts. He defended Oppianicus who was accused of poisoning his step-son A. Cluentius; the bribery at the trial was scandalous and did much to bring the senatorial juries into disrepute (after the trial Quinctius in fact secured the condemnation of the iudex quaestionis and of one of the jurors).6 At two other trials a young nobleman, who had just returned from serving in the East and had wisely kept clear of the revolt of Lepidus, C. Iulius Caesar, gained some publicity. In 77 he unsuccessfully prosecuted Dolabella, proconsul of Macedonia, on a charge of extortion, and in 76 he was equally unsuccessful in his prosecution of an agent of Sulla, C. Antonius Hybrida (later consul in 63) on a charge of plundering some Greeks. A certain Terentius Varro was accused twice (in 75 and 74) of extortion in Asia: his acquittal, secured with the help of the oratory of Hortensius and marked ballots, added a further scandal to the series, which exposed the unscrupulousness of some senators in the provinces as well as the corruption of senatorial juries at home.

  Foreign affairs led to fresh appointments of significance. The new struggle against Mithridates meant that the consuls of 74 were sent to the East: M. Aurelius Cotta was assigned to Bithynia, while his colleague L. Licinius Lucullus, by luck and intrigue, secured Cilicia, the command against Mithridates and probably also the province of Asia. If Sulla had hoped that consuls would remain in Italy and without armies (p. 70), his expectations did not long outlive him. Worse still, M. Antonius (later Creticus) was invested by the Senate with a special proconsular imperium infinitum to deal with the pirates (74).7 In 73 the consuls carried a corn law (lex Terentia Cassia frumentaria): the demands of war and the activities of the pirates had been making corn scarce and expensive. This law aimed at speeding up the delivery of corn from Sicily and prescribed the distribution of five modii a month to perhaps 40,000 recipients at the Gracchan price of 6 1/3 asses a modius.8 In the following year the situation abroad was improving: Sertorius was murdered, Mithridates was driven out of Pontus, and the position beyond the frontiers of Macedonia was better. But in Italy matters were far worse: the slave revolt of Spartacus (see below), which had broken out in 73, had assumed such alarming proportions that a special proconsular command was entrusted to Crassus, who had probably held a praetorship in 73. Thus a proconsul was in command of an army in Italy itself, the very thing that Sulla had hoped to prevent at all costs. Worse still for the Senate, in 71 a second army arrived in Italy, that of Pompey back from Spain after his victory over the Sertorians. But before this double threat to the Sullan constitution and the Senate’s predominance is discussed, the fate of Spartacus must be considered.

  4. SPARTACUS9

  War and piracy had kept up the supply of slaves in Italy. Though no very large scale risin
g had taken place in sympathy with either of the two Servile Wars in Sicily (pp. 11 and 46), there was much potential unrest. Further, the Romans had developed a greater taste for blood, and gladiatorial shows (munera) at both public and private funerals became more common and elaborate. One of the gladiators in a training school at Capua was a Thracian-born slave named Spartacus, who at one time had served as an auxiliary in the Roman army. In 73 he managed to escape with a handful of companions and seized Mount Vesuvius (which was not an active volcano until A.B. 79). Joined by runaway slaves and herdsmen, he quickly built up a considerable force with which he overran Campania and Lucania and defeated the forces that Rome sent against him. Realizing perhaps that he could not hope to secure complete or permanent control of Italy, Spartacus wisely wanted to withdraw north of the Alps so that his followers could scatter to their original homelands; but the Gauls and Germans refused and preferred to stay in Italy to plunder, so that Spartacus had to withdraw to S. Italy for the winter.

  As his forces now numbered some 70,000, the Senate at last realized the gravity of the threat and sent both consuls of 72 against him. They were, however, defeated first separately and then united. Again Spartacus moved north and defeated the proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul at Mutina; but once again his men would not leave Italy and he was again forced to march south, perhaps with the good plan of crossing to Sicily. The Senate then turned to Crassus, whom they appointed commander-in-chief with six legions. After Spartacus had broken through some lines by which Crassus hoped to bar him in the toe of Italy, the People voted that Pompey, who had just returned from Spain, should be associated with Crassus in the command. Crassus, however, wanted to win his own war. In this he was helped by M. Lucullus, who landed at Brundisium on his way back from Thrace and drove Spartacus back on Crassus. As Spartacus’ forces insisted on dividing, Crassus was able to crush them in three successive engagements. Spartacus was killed and 6000 of his followers were crucified along the Appian Way. Some fugitives, who managed to escape northwards, were intercepted in Etruria by Pompey, who thus claimed credit for finishing the war. This boastful claim, which he made in an official despatch to the Senate, would not endear him to Crassus.

  The revolt of Spartacus appears tragic, because the odds were too heavy against him. He was relatively humane and able. His achievement in creating, disciplining and arming from scratch forces that could defeat consular armies was little short of a miracle. But he could not always impose his will on them. On occasion they naturally turned to pillage and savage vengeance, dissensions arose among their various leaders, and complete unity of command eluded him. Idealized by Marxist historians as the champion of the revolutionary masses, he was rather the product of local conditions and scattered support: he made no appeal to the slaves in the towns, but drew his strength from the downtrodden and unsettled elements in the countryside. He was not a political theorist going into action, but a courageous individual who fought for the personal liberty that was denied him by the ghastly conditions of his place and time. The revolt caused much loss and destruction to the country, but it may have taught some of the large landowners to treat their slaves with less inhumanity; some began to make greater use of free tenants (coloni). Beside this social and economic aspect, the political repercussions were startling.

  5. THE CONSULSHIP OF POMPEY AND CRASSUS (70 B.C.)

  The administration of the Senate, both at home and abroad, had brought it little credit, so that its stock was low when the armies of Pompey and Crassus approached the city. It might well have tried to play off one of these commanders against the other in view of their mutual jealousies, but they decided to work together and they prevailed. Both wanted the consulship of 70. The claim of Crassus was reasonable enough: he had held the praetorship, defeated a dangerous enemy, and through his great wealth was a representative of the business interests of Rome. But Pompey was not qualified: he was six years too young and had held none of the requisite offices. He also wanted a triumph, and made that an excuse for keeping his army together near Rome. Under these circumstances the Senate gave way: Pompey was granted legal dispensation from the requirements of the lex Annalis of Sulla, and was allowed his triumph. He also enjoyed wide popular support, since he had made it known as early as 73 that he favoured the restoration of tribunician powers and he may have been known to approve of some equestrian participation in the law-courts: in any case the Equites would support him as a political ally of Crassus. Thus both men were elected. Pompey celebrated his triumph (Metellus Pius also received a triumph for his share in the defeat of Sertorius, and M. Lucullus for victory in Macedonia), but Crassus had to be content with the lesser honour of an ovatio. Political amicitia, however, did not always involve personal friendship, and the coolness between the two consuls was such that each hesitated to disarm. Further, as long as their armies remained in being (and the exact duration is uncertain),10 they will have enjoyed an additional visible means of coercing the Senate. Finally, however, they staged a public reconciliation and disbanded their forces.

  Pompey and Crassus, who had both been lieutenants of Sulla, now proceeded to sweep away much that remained of his constitution. First they carried a measure which restored to the tribunate all the powers it had enjoyed before it had been muzzled by Sulla; whether Pompey could have had any idea that the restored tribunate might prove a means by which his own career might later be advanced, cannot of course be known. Then they revived the dormant censorship: the censors elected were the two consuls of 72, whose claim to fame was their defeat by Spartacus: they promptly ejected 64 members from the Senate.

  Before the third main measure of the year was carried, Rome was shaken by a grave scandal: the prosecution of C. Verres, who had plundered and misgoverned his province of Sicily (73–1) on a shocking scale. Though Verres’ victims included some of Pompey’s Sicilian clients, he had many powerful friends in Rome, among them the orator Hortensius and three members of the Metellus family. In their need the unfortunate Sicilians turned for a prosecutor to the man who had dared to stand up to Sulla’s agent some ten years before (p. 69, n. 38), M. Tullius Cicero. This young man, who came from the municipal aristocracy of Arpinum, was seeking political advancement through the bar rather than the army, and he had reached the quaestorship in 75 when he served in Sicily. He now undertook their request to prosecute Verres. After various intrigues by his opponents, Cicero defeated in his Actio Prima an attempt to postpone the trial till 69 when two of Verres’ friends would be consuls, and a third would preside over the court. In view of the damning evidence that Cicero produced, Verres’ counsel Hortensius abandoned his brief and Verres went into exile. Cicero then published the Actio Secunda, which he had not had opportunity to deliver; it formed a terrible indictment of senatorial government in the provinces. Cicero thus became Rome’s foremost advocate, but he had also incidentally paved the way for further reform.10a

  This was undertaken, not by Pompey and Crassus in their own names, but by a praetor, L. Aurelius Cotta, a brother of the liberal consul of 75. By the lex Aurelia the Senatorial monopoly of the law-courts, which Sulla had enacted, came to an end, and in future they were to be empanelled in equal numbers from three groups: senators, Equites and tribuni aerarii.11 As this last group had similar interests to the Equites, the new arrangement was a political victory for the Equites, who would control some two-thirds of each jury. Thus within ten years of his retirement the essential parts of Sulla’s reforms had been swept away: little remained but his reorganization of the courts themselves. His attempts to check tribunes and army commanders alike had failed, but although the restored tribunate might chastise the Optimates with whips, the military dictators chastised them with scorpions. The Senate had failed to rise to the opportunity that Sulla had given it, and the ultimate result was further civil wars in which the Republic perished.

  6. POMPEY’S COMMANDS

  For the moment there was a lull. Neither Pompey nor Crassus took a proconsular command, but both retired into private life afte
r their consulship and apparently made no effort to get any of their supporters into the consulship for the next years. Thus Optimate control, despite the weakening of Sulla’s work, might appear to be re-established, though the populares were not silent: in the funeral oration which Julius Caesar delivered at the death of his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, when the imagines of Marius were displayed, he emphasized his connections with this group. He also drew attention to his family’s alleged descent from the kings of Rome (from Ancus Marcius) and the gods (from Venus, through Iulus, Aeneas’ son).

  Caesar’s early life had not been uneventful. When he refused Sulla’s order to divorce his wife Cornelia, Cinna’s daughter, he was forced to flee from Rome. Later he was pardoned by Sulla and then served in the East (80–78), where he gained the civic crown (a decoration like the V.C.) for saving the life of a soldier in the assault of Mytilene. After his return to Rome, where he displayed his oratorical gifts in the courts, he left (75/4) to study rhetoric at Rhodes. He was captured by pirates, and, according to the anecdote, after his ransom he returned to fulfil the promise that he had made to them during his captivity that one day he would crucify all his captors. He then helped some communities in Asia to remain loyal against the appeal of Mithridates (74), and received news that he had been chosen a member of the college of pontiffs. On his return to Rome he drew closer to the populares: he backed the agitation for restoring tribunician power, held a military tribunate (71?) and supported the lex Plotia de reditu Lepidanorum by which citizenship was restored to the followers of Lepidus who had joined Sertorius (possibly in 70). He served as quaestor in Spain (69 or 68) and on his way home he extended his political clientela by interesting himself in the desire of the Transpadanes for full citizenship (cf. p. 58). Then in 67 he lent his support to Pompey.12