The Crisis of Rome

by Gareth Sampson

  Furthermore, it is true that Marius utilized his veterans in Roman politics, but then it would be difficult to say that this was any different from usual Roman custom and practice. Any leading Roman statesmen utilized his clients in Rome for his own political ends and if he had been a general then a number would be veterans of his. What we have to separate is this usual non-violent practice from the events that took place in Rome in 133, 121 and 100, when normal Roman political practice was transformed into bloodshed. Whilst the Gracchan bloodshed was managed without the use of veterans, they certainly made it easier and if Roman politics was becoming bloodier, it was certainly safer to use veterans in Rome.

  Attested Military Reforms (104–102 BC)

  During the three years that Marius had command of his army in Gaul, awaiting the return of the northern tribes, it is clear that he undertook an intensive programme of training and reform. This crucial period apparently allowed him to mould his army into one capable of reversing a decade of losses and defeat to the vastly-numerically-superior tribal armies. Regrettably for us, this is one of the least-known periods in our surviving sources, who are all too eager to move onto accounts of the battles that followed. Thus, despite all that is said about the Marian reforms of the Roman army we actually possess very little real evidence for these reforms, around half a dozen passages at most.

  Furthermore, this situation is further complicated by the poor state of our knowledge concerning the Roman army prior to this period, as so well detailed by Rawson.438 Added to this is the question of permanency. Each army was moulded by its commander and then disbanded upon the completion of a campaign. Thus there is no certainly that an innovation introduced by Marius would automatically be copied by the commanders and armies that followed. Given that so much is made of these reforms, we need to go back to the evidence and see what we actually know.

  i) Mobility

  In terms of mobility, Marius is credited with the introduction of the practice whereby each legionary carried his own baggage. Frontinus’ Stratagems tells us:

  For the purpose of limiting the number of pack animals, by which the march of the army was especially hampered, Caius Marius had his soldiers fasten their utensils and food up in bundles and hang these on forked poles, to make the burden easy and to facilitate rest, whence the expression Marius’s mules.439

  From Plutarch:

  he [Marius] laboured to perfect his army as it went along, practicing the men in all kinds of running and in long marches and compelling them to carry their own baggage and to prepare their own food. Hence, in later times, men who joined upon them contentedly and without a murmur were called Marian mules.440

  Thus each legionary carried his own tools and utensils. We are given no details as to what they comprised, but in later times legionary had to carry his bed roll and cloak, cooking pot and three days worth of supplies as well as a number of tools, all supported on a T-shaped pole carried on their backs.

  Carrying the bulk of their own supplies greatly increased the army’s mobility as a whole (even if it did weigh the individual soldiers down), and reduced the size of the baggage trains. This would have allowed them to move quicker, and thus be more responsive. This would especially have been useful against an army the size of the northern tribes, who, as well as their vast numbers, also had their families with them. It must be pointed out that this did not eliminate the need for baggage trains altogether from the Roman army, and as late as 36 BC, Antony’s Parthian campaign was undermined by the loss of his baggage train.441 In the short term, however, it made the Roman army far more adept at responding to any moves made by the tribes.

  ii) Weaponry

  Plutarch reports that Marius introduced a new type of javelin (pilum) to the legion:

  Marius introduced an innovation in the structure of the javelin. Up to this time its seems that part of the shaft which was let into the iron head was fastened there by two iron nails; but now, leaving one of these as it was, Marius removed the other and put in its place a wooden pin that could easily be broken. His design was that the javelin after striking the enemy’s shield should not stand straight out, but that the wooden peg should break, thus allowing the shaft to bend in the iron head and trail along the ground, being held fast by the twist at the point of the weapon.442

  The point behind this was that it rendered the pilum buckled and useless and thus was not able to be used by the enemy. Archaeology, however, has shown that both types of pilum (modified and not) were still in use in the late Republic. Here we again encounter the issue of whether a Marian reform was introduced as standard after these wars.

  iii) Standards

  Although the legionary eagle is considered to be the archetypal Roman standard, it was not always the case. Pliny reports the following:

  The eagle was assigned to the Roman legions as their special badge by Caius Marius in his second consulship (104 BC). Even previously it had been their first badge, with four others; wolves, minotaurs, horses and boars going in front of the respective ranks; but took a few years before the custom came into action, the rest being left behind in camps.443

  Thus it seems that Marius made the legionary eagle the sole standard, instead of being just one amongst many.

  Possible Military Reforms – The Introduction of the Cohort

  Given the noted role Marius is supposed to have played in reforming the Roman military, it is perhaps surprising that we have evidence only for the three reforms attested above. Thus Marius gave his legionaries more mobility, with less reliance on a baggage train, armed them with a modified type of pilum, and made the legionary eagle the sole Roman standard. Yet given the paucity of our evidence, why has so much been made of the so-called Marian military reforms? In short, this is a recent construct, created by modern historians. The argument goes that these few fragments form part of an overarching process of military reform that Marius undertook in this period. Central to this problem is the replacement of the maniple by the cohort as the basic tactical unit in battle. Bell sums up the problem that modern historians face with this issue most succinctly:

  At some point between the time of Polybius and that of Julius Caesar, a major tactical reform of the Roman army took place, which is not explicitly described by any ancient authority. The major component of this reform was the replacement of the legion of thirty maniples by the legion of ten cohorts. In addition, the velites or Roman light troops distributed among the maniples were abolished.444

  Thus the problem is one of modern making, in that Polybius’ account of the Roman military centres primarily on the use of the maniple, whereby a hundred years later in the accounts of Caesar we have the cohort. Put simply, many historians, unable to accept that there was a major military reform which is no longer documented, chose Marius as being the most logical source of this reform, given that he is recorded as having introduced some measure of military reform. Parker, in his work on the Roman legions even goes into the details of why Marius would have introduced the measures, being that the maniple was a smaller tactical unit and fought with more gaps between them, thus making them unsuited to meet the challenge of a massed tribal army.445 This ignores the fact that such an army seemed to present no problems to the Romans in their victories in southern Gaul in the 120s BC (see Chapter 1).

  Aside from the inherent problems of ascribing such a sweeping change in the Roman military system to a particular time period without a single shred of actual evidence, it is clear that Polybius’ account is far from consistent in his use of the terms maniple and cohort (when translated from the Greek), and that whilst his main account of the Roman army is based on the maniple, cohorts crop up in a number of places in his narrative, from as early as 206 BC onwards.446 Further uncertainty is added by both Livy and Sallust. In his histories, Livy consistently uses the term cohort from the Second Punic Wars onwards. This is naturally complicated by his works not being contemporaneous. Sallust in his account of the Battle of Muthul, where Metellus fought Jugurtha, uses the term
maniple.447 Thus we have total confusion in our few sources about what the major Roman tactical unit was.

  We have to raise the possibility that this ‘confusion’ was a reflection of the true situation. Even if the sources are completely accurate in their use of the correct terms for the correct period (which is a large debate in itself) there is nothing to say that the Romans rigidly used the same formation on each occasion and that at some fixed point they altered one for the other. This is the conclusion that Bell comes to, detailing the various occasions when a Roman commander would use one rather than the other. Again we must remember that during this period of Roman history, the Republic had no standing armies. Instead, they were raised as necessary for each campaign by each commander and trained and fought in the manner that their commander was most comfortable with.

  Thus we have to conclude that there is no evidence whatsoever that Marius was responsible for reorganizing the Roman legion based on the cohort as opposed to the maniple. In fact, the existing evidence suggests that this change had already taken place and that it was not a straight replacement of one with the other, once again being more a case of evolution rather than revolution.

  Summary – A New Roman Army?

  Thus we come down to the question of whether there was a ‘Marian’ programme of military reforms based on one man’s desire to reshape the Roman military system, or merely a series of ad-hoc innovations with no greater aim than to mould an army capable of defeating the northern tribes. Ultimately, it is up to every reader to decide for themselves, based on the evidence they have analysed.

  However, there are several aspects that need to be highlighted in this process. Firstly, there is a fundamental understanding needed of the nature of the Roman Republican army. Each army was raised as was needed for each campaign; Rome had no standing armies either before or immediately after Marius. In fact, so many of the domestic disputes of the first century BC revolved around the need for commanders to dismiss their armies. As such it makes it difficult for one commander’s innovations to automatically be copied by the commanders that followed, even if they served under him as junior officers, such as L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Sertorius. Certainly, word of mouth would have passed them on, but there was no necessity for a new commander to follow what had been done before, if he did not think it was necessary or helpful to him.

  Secondly, what were Marius’ aims? A wholesale reform of the Roman military system or the need for a well-manned and well-trained army to fight the tribes? Thirdly, even with his multiple consulships, did Marius have the authority to abandon the class-based recruitment system that underpinned Roman society? Lastly, do we believe that the evidence for wider-scale reforms of the Roman military once existed and is now lost to us? No source even mentions that there was a deliberate and consciousness reform of the maniple to the cohort. Or is this a modern invention?

  Ultimately, unless our sources for this period drastically improve, we can never know, but in the author’s opinion, the balance of evidence favours Marius making small-scale innovations to create the best force possible, one capable of defeating the tribal armies. Far more important than any individual innovations is the fact that the lull in fighting and his continuous command gave him two whole years to train his army for the coming battles. Veterans and raw recruits, whatever their class, were drilled and disciplined in the art of fighting a tribal enemy. Marius trained them to march and fight quickly, matching the speed of the tribal armies, and thus fight them on an equal footing. Therefore, the period 104–103 BC was probably one of the most crucial ones for Marius and Rome. The Cimbric invasion of Spain gave Marius the time he needed to forge his army as well as perfect his tactics and choose his ground. When the tribal forces did attack Italy, they found a Roman army that had been specifically prepared and trained to fight them, the one factor that had been missing from Rome’s effort in 113, 109 and 105. It was this careful preparation and meticulous planning that allowed the Roman military dominance to finally tell. Once again, we are left with the question of whether this represents military genius or a man who was clearly the most competent Roman commander of his day.

  Appendix I

  A Bloody Roman Peace: Marius and Rome in 100 BC

  No account of the period can be complete without examining the events of Marius’ sixth consulship (100 BC), which saw fighting, not on Rome’s borders, but on the streets of Rome itself. This year saw a number of issues come to head that had been brewing during the previous years but suppressed by the more pressing issues of the barbarian threat; with that threat removed they came to the fore. Here we must be especially careful as our sources paint a contradictory and somewhat simplistic picture of events.

  Marius the Victor

  Whilst we have a fairly clear narrative of the major events of the year 100 BC, understanding them is another matter. There are two clear schools of thought in our surviving sources, with some middle ground. On the one hand we have the version as best espoused by Plutarch, which has Marius as the arch manipulator and populist outsider, determined to cling to power in whatever way necessary.

  At any rate, while in war he had authority and power because his services were needed, yet in civil life, his leadership was more abridged, and he therefore had recourse to the goodwill and favour of the multitude, not caring to be the best man if only he could be the greatest. The consequence was that he came into collision with all the aristocrats.

  It was Metellus, however, whom he especially feared, a man who had experienced hisingratitude, and one whose genuine excellence made him into the natural enemy of those who tried to insinuate themselves by devious methods into popular favour and sought to control the masses by pleasing them.448

  Domestic politics are thus boiled down to the Senatorial (optimate) faction as championed by Metellus Numidicus and the populist (populares) faction championed by Marius. As we would expect, such a stark dichotomy is simplistic in the extreme. Roman politics in any period were shades of grey, but this is especially the case when looking at C. Marius. A number of points need to be made concerning Marius. Firstly, by birth he was an aristocrat (albeit an Italian not a Roman one), now married into the Iulii family, one of Rome’s oldest. Regardless of the methods used, he was widely acknowledged as the leading general of his day and the man responsible for saving Rome (see below), no matter how much Catulus’ memoirs attempted to steal the glory. He had been consul six times in total, and five in succession, unheard for centuries in Roman politics. Furthermore, fighting two successful wars had made him one of the richest men in Rome and added to this were the opportunities for patronage that six consulships had given him. It is always difficult to speak of or identify factions in Roman politics, yet by his prestige, patronage and wealth, Marius had considerable following amongst the Roman elite, both established Senatorial and rising stars. Added to this was his popularity amongst the people for his accomplishments and the equestrian order for his championing of their cause. It is clear that in 100 BC Marius was the most dominant figure in Rome. The question was how would he use this dominance?

  The most obvious manifestation was the sixth consulship and the celebrations of his victory. Here we can clearly see the two schools amongst our surviving sources. In the one strand we have Plutarch, who gives us the classic image of Marius the great general, but inept politician, scared of a Metellus (probably Numidicus) running for the consulate, and relying on outright bribery and the use of his soldiers in the elections to secure a sixth consulship for 100 BC.449 Representing the other strand, we have Velleius (far closer in time period to the events described):

  A sixth consulship was given him, in the light of a reward for his services.450

  Furthermore, he managed to secure the election of a friendly co-consul, in the form of L. Valerius Flaccus, who was such an adherent of Marius that Rutilius is reported to have termed him a servant rather than a colleague.451 Given the time elapse between Velleius and Plutarch and the latter’s known use of sources hostile to Ma
rius, we can assume that Marius was offered a sixth consulship, rather than bought one. Furthermore, the military situation cannot have been as clear cut as it looks with hindsight. The war in Sicily was still raging at the time of the consular elections (101 BC), nor can the Senate have been sure that the Tigurini, the remaining tribe of the grand alliance, were not still going to attack also. Thus a sixth consulship could be seen as being both a reward and a sound precaution.

  The reward element was also present during the celebration of Marius’ victories with a grand triumph, which also demonstrated Marius’ tact and diplomacy. The Periochae of Livy sums the situation up well:

  Marius was hailed with the unanimous applause of the whole state, but was satisfied with a single triumph instead of the two which were offered him at the time. The leading men of the state, who had for some time held a grudge against him as a man without family background who had been elevated to posts of such importance, now admitted that the state had been preserved by him.452

  Even Plutarch joins in with the following:

  Above all the people hailed him as the Third Founder of Rome,453 on the ground that the peril which had been averted from the city was not less than that of the Gallic invasion; and all of them, as they celebrated at home with their wives and children, would bring ceremonial offerings of food and libations of wine to Marius as well as to the gods, and they were insistent that he alone should celebrate both triumphs.454

  He made a show of celebrating the triumph along with his former colleague Q. Lutatius Catulus, though the latter ascribed this to guilt and fear of his soldiers.455 However, it is well known that as soon as a triumph is celebrated and a hero lauded, then the gloves are off and the normal cut and thrust of domestic politics resumes, and we can have expected nothing else in this case. This naturally left Marius with a problem. After reaching the pinnacle of his career, there was only one way he could go: downwards. Such a phenomenon has been common throughout the Republic. In an oligarchy based on a system of competing individuals, any one man who so obviously stood above the others was always going to be a target.