The Storm Before the Storm
Page 18
The Gracchi are often pointed to as the arch-masterminds of mob tactics and unscrupulous populist politics. But their activities had mostly been driven by a genuine desire to reform the Republic. The violence that surrounded their lives came unexpectedly, without prior forethought, and was an unwelcome intrusion. Saturninus, on the other hand, was the first to show the demagogues of the future generations just how far cynically manipulated mob violence could push a man’s career forward. And Saturninus was only getting started—his powerful new political ally, Gaius Marius, was about to return home in complete triumph.
THE SITUATION IN the north following Catulus’s defeat was drastic but not dire. Marius had already wiped out the Teutones and Ambrones, and though the Cimbri now squatted in north Italy they showed no signs of continuing south. Marius entered his fourth consecutive consulship in January 101 and spent the winter transferring as many troops as possible from Gaul to Italy. Massing all available forces on the south bank of the Po River, Marius combined his Gallic army with Catulus’s remaining legions and assumed overall command. Marius kept both Catulus and Sulla in positions of leadership, but there would be no repeat of the fatal disunity at Arausio. Marius was in sole command. In the spring of 101, he led 50,000 men across the Po River to confront 200,000 Cimbri.9
When the legions appeared on the horizon, Cimbric ambassadors rode out to greet the Romans. The Cimbri were confident and demanded the Romans cede territory in Cisalpine Gaul. The ambassadors reminded Marius that the Teutones and Ambrones would be crossing over into Italy soon and the Romans couldn’t hope to withstand their combined might. At this, Marius burst out laughing and said, “Don’t trouble yourself about your brethren, for they have land, and they will have it forever—land which we have given them.” The Cimbri refused to believe Marius’s claim to have wiped out their allies, until Marius ordered the shackled kings of the Teutones paraded through the camp. Incensed, the Cimbric ambassadors withdrew. A few days later one of their principal chiefs rode to the Roman camp to settle a simple question with Marius: when and where the two armies would meet in battle.10
On the third day following this meeting, the Romans and Cimbri lined up for battle on the Raudian Plain. Marius led the left wing of the legions, with Catulus in the center and Sulla on the right. Across the plain the Cimbri arrayed a massive infantry that allegedly spanned more than three miles across, with a cavalry detachment alone numbering fifteen thousand. Though a fog in the morning covered everything with a hazy mist, Marius made sure his army faced west so that when the sun rose and burned off the fog, the Cimbri would be staring directly into the sun. This position also put the legions upwind from the enemy—both the sun and the wind would become key factors in the battle to come.11
In their memoirs, both Sulla and Catulus claimed that once the Battle of the Raudian Plain began, Marius became confused in the rising dust cloud, and when he advanced, he missed the Cimbri completely, leaving Catulus and Sulla to do the real fighting. But this is fairly obviously propaganda. Most likely Marius deployed the same strategy he used at Aquae Sextiae: pin down the main front line of the enemy and then deliver a deadly flanking shot. Catulus and Sulla did indeed fight a heated battle while Marius disappeared into the dust, but far from missing the enemy, he was off delivering the fatal blow to their exposed flank.12
For the Cimbri the battle turned into a rout. The blinding sun gave way to a huge cloud of dust that blinded them, and they found themselves under relentless attack from multiple sides. Their warriors began to flee but their own mothers and wives would not allow them to escape. Standing behind the front line, “the women, in black garments, stood at the wagons and slew the fugitives—their husbands or brothers or fathers, then strangled their little children and cast them beneath the wheels of the wagons or the feet of the cattle, and then cut their own throats.” The Battle of the Raudian Plain spelled the end of the Cimbri—they left 120,000 dead on the plain and the survivors were enslaved. As is so often the case in Roman history, repeated defeats in battle could be endured as long as the Romans won the war.13
When news of the victory reached Rome, no one could now deny the magnificent supremacy of Gaius Marius, Rome’s invincible general. At the pinnacle of his fame, power, and prestige, even “the first men in the state, who had until then envied the ‘new man’ who had reached so many important posts, now admitted that the state had been rescued by him.” Marius was hailed as “the Third Founder of Rome,” elevating him to a hyper-elite pantheon of heroes that included only Romulus himself and the legendary Marcus Furius Camillus, the man who had brought Rome back from the brink of extinction after the traumatic sack by the Gauls in the 380s. Not even Scipio Africanus, who had delivered Rome from Hannibal, earned such an honorific. But strangely Marius himself refused to assume the standard triumphant cognomen and he never became known as “Marius Gallicus” or “Marius Cimbricus.” Instead he retained the two simple names he had been born with: Gaius Marius.14
THE ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE news that Rome was free of the threat of the Cimbri was soon matched by good news from Sicily. Marius’s consular colleague in 101 was Manius Aquillius, one of his longtime protégés. Son of the disgraced organizer of Asia, the younger Aquillius had served as one of Marius’s chief lieutenants in Gaul. As consul in 101, he was tasked with finally ending the Second Servile War. Aquillius brought a professional bearing to the conflict and set about restoring order to the island.15
The job was not going to be easy. Following Lucullus’s unconscionable dismantling of the Roman forces in early 102, his replacement could do nothing to stop the slave armies for the whole next year. At some point during that year, however, “King Tryphon” died and Athenion took over as supreme leader of the slave forces. With the slaves ascendant, lawlessness again spread to the native Sicilians: “For since there was at this time complete anarchy… and no Roman magistrate exercised any jurisdiction, all ran wild and committed many great enormities with impunity, so that all places were full of violence and robbery, which pillaged the possessions of the rich.” Those who had once been “pre-eminent amongst their fellow citizens for their wealth and distinction, by a sudden change of fortune were… treated with the greatest contempt and scorn.”16
By the time Aquillius arrived in the spring of 101, Athenion had extended his dominions as far as Messana (modern-day Messina) on the northeast tip of the island. Aquillius arrived with cohorts of veterans from Marius’s Gallic army and was quick to challenge the slaves to a battle, during which he allegedly killed Athenion in single combat. This heroic embellishment probably traces back to Aquillius’s own reports of the war, but whether it was in dramatic single combat or a more routine clash of armies, Athenion died in the fighting and just ten thousand surviving rebels fell back to the fortress at Triocala.17
But unlike Lucullus, Aquillius pursued the survivors and captured the slave capital of Triocala. Rounding up the last of the rebels, Aquillius shipped them all to Rome, where he planned to make them fight against various wild beasts for the amusement of the Roman citizens. But once these final rebels arrived in Rome and learned their fate, they committed mass suicide rather than be used as human props in the arena. It was the final bloody act of the Second Servile War that left Sicily depopulated and despoiled.18
BACK IN ROME, jubilation reigned. With all their enemies finally dead or in chains, the Romans commenced with a nonstop victory party. The Assembly declared fifteen days of thanksgiving after news of Marius’s victory over the Cimbri and then prepared for his great triumphant return to the city. But Marius would not celebrate this triumph alone; he instead invited Catulus to share the stage with him. Joint triumphs were not unheard of, but they were incredibly rare—a triumph was a political expression of singular achievement. The point was to own the spotlight, not share it. Friendly sources paint this as an act of generous magnanimity. But hostile sources say Marius knew Catulus had really won the battle over the Cimbri and feared a revolt from Catulus’s legions if their command
er was left out.19
The sources also diverge on Marius’s subsequent campaign for a sixth consulship in 100. Friendly sources say the voters justly rewarded Marius for his service—a victory lap to enjoy. Hostile sources say that with the military crisis over, the voters were ready to end the run of consecutive consulships. These latter sources claim Marius spread lavish bribes in order to win reelection. But it’s doubtful such underhanded tactics were necessary. The Third Founder of Rome enjoyed unprecedented fame, wealth, and power. He won reelection easily. He would now be consul for a fifth consecutive year.20
While it appeared as though Marius only wanted to use his fifth consulship to ensure that his Gallic veterans would get the same land bonus as his Numidian veterans, he came to office in January 100 flanked by populare radicals who had a much more aggressive agenda. Saturninus won another term as tribune and artfully controlled the Assembly. His partner Glaucia was elected praetor, giving him wide jurisdiction over the courts. Another close ally named Gaius Saufeius was elected quaestor, giving this radical clique access to the state treasury. Marius’s consular partner Lucius Valerius Flaccus, meanwhile, could not be counted on to stand in their way and is described as “more a servant than a colleague.”21
Saturninus’s campaign for tribune had already set the tone for the coming year. With every indication that Saturninus planned to use his term to drive Metellus Numidicus into exile, the optimates backed a young ally named Nonius to run for tribune and stop him. When it appeared that Nonius might indeed win election, the radical populares did not even wait for the vote. An armed gang, most likely drawn from the more unscrupulous corners of Marius’s veterans, jumped the unfortunate Nonius and beat him to death. With the bonds of mos maiorum shredded, Saturninus paid no immediate price for this preemptive political assassination. After pushing Nonius’s body aside, Saturninus easily won election. All of this set the stage for the year 100—a year that very nearly saw the fall of the Republic.22
During this fateful year it becomes difficult to disentangle who was using whom—but it appears Saturninus was now pursuing a more overtly sinister version of Gaius Gracchus’s program. Saturninus, Glaucia, and their cronies—who still included the phony son of Tiberius Gracchus—tried to revive the old Gracchan coalition of plebs urbana, rural peasants, Equestrians, and populare nobles looking to stick it to their optimate rivals. But Saturninus’s coalition was also now joined by Marius’s veterans, who would provide much needed muscle. Where Gaius Gracchus had been pulled into violence against his will, Saturninus pursued it without compunction. Where Gaius sought to restore the balance of the Polybian constitution, Saturninus wanted to truly crush the Senate and use Marius’s veterans to rule the city with an iron fist.
ONCE SATURNINUS TOOK up the office of tribune, he pursued a dizzying slate of reforms aimed at overwhelming the power of the optimates in the Senate. The seeds of the new antisenatorial coalition had been sewn long before the fateful year of 100. At some point prior to taking up his praetorship—probably during an otherwise unrecorded term as tribune—Glaucia put forward a new law returning control of the Extortion Court to the Equestrians, reversing the temporary restoration of senatorial power engineered by the now exiled Caepio in 106. But Glaucia’s law not only returned the jury pool of the Extortion Court to the Equestrians, it also expanded the scope of the charges to include not just magistrates accused of extortion but also anyone who benefited from the crime, opening up literally any citizen to prosecution at the hands of the Equestrian jurors. Glaucia also curtailed an oft-used ploy of delaying trials with procedural tactics. Glaucia meant for the court to be a hammer against the nobility and he did not want the jurors to be able to avoid delivering a blow out of pity or empathy. This was no time for either.23
This pro-Equestrian measure already in place, Saturninus entered the tribunate of 100 and offered the plebs urbana an expanded grain dole. This was an especially provocative measure, since the Senate had recently decreed that given the chaos in Sicily, anyone proposing subsidized grain was acting against the public interest. Saturninus gleefully took up the challenge. One of his fellow tribunes vetoed the bill, but Saturninus simply ignored him. A veto had once been enough to grind the entire Republic to a halt; now it was simply wadded up and tossed aside. The provocative grain dole was especially offensive to young Quintus Caepio, whose father had been exiled by Saturninus’s gang three years earlier. As quaestor for 100, the younger Caepio had been the one to recommend to the Senate that the treasury could not afford further grain subsidies. With both his father’s honor and his own now spit upon by Saturninus, Caepio lost his temper and led a gang of his own to the Assembly. This mob destroyed the planks and urns used for voting, but the vandalism only delayed passage of the bill. The damage was repaired and the Assembly voted the unaffordable grain dole into law.24
With the Equestrians and plebs urbana placated, Saturninus moved on to the real meat of his program: an ambitious set of colonies and land grants for Marius’s Gallic veterans. Having already established land grants in Africa, Saturninus now proposed new plots elsewhere in the empire. He staked the people’s claim to all the territory the Cimbri had recently occupied and said the Assembly had the right to distribute it to the men who had fought for it. Saturninus also proposed land in southern Gaul and Sicily be distributed to Marius’s veterans. The rural poor—from whom Marius had recruited his soldiers—flooded into Rome to pass the bill overwhelmingly.25
Saturninus’s growing coalition also included the Italian Allies, because all of Marius’s veterans would qualify for the land grants, not just Roman citizens. Marius himself was a provincial Italian who hailed from a city that had only been fully enfranchised a generation before he was born. He was, and always remained, thoroughly pro-Italian in his politics. During the course of the wars he frequently doled out citizenship for acts of valor, even going so far as to enfranchise an entire cohort of Italians from Camerinum after the victory against the Cimbri. When his arbitrary—and possibly illegal—enfranchisement of his soldiers was challenged, Marius caustically retorted that “the clash of arms had prevented his hearing the voice of the law.”26
But while on the dusty plains of battle it was impossible to distinguish Roman from Italian, back in Rome the citizens knew the distinction well. As usual they grumbled at the land being offered to mere Allies. This cleavage in Saturninus’s coalition allowed the optimates to finally rally opposition. Tapping into the resentful pride of the plebs urbana, the optimates formed gangs of their own that disrupted Saturninus’s activities wherever they could. Violent street clashes became a routine matter of state.27
But despite these clashes, Saturninus pushed through the bill allotting land to Marius’s veterans. Aware that it might be repealed when he left office, Saturninus inserted a clause requiring every senator to swear an oath that they would never repeal the law upon pain of banishment. With this oath, Saturninus and Marius had laid another trap for the hated Metellus Numidicus. Marius personally addressed the Senate and registered his approval of the law, but expressed misgivings about the oath, providing cover for more conservative senators like Metellus who were aghast at the requirement. But just hours before the deadline to take the oath, Marius abruptly changed his mind. He told his fellow senators he was going to swear the oath and walked over to the Temple of Saturn for the ceremony. Without time to think, the other senators had only minutes to choose between taking the oath and going into exile. They all chose to swear the oath—even optimate stalwarts like Scaurus and Crassus. The only one who refused was Metellus Numidicus. Saturninus’s supporters menaced him to the point of riot, but announcing that he could not abide such violence on his own account, Metellus accepted exile. “For,” he said, “either matters will mend and the people will change their minds and I shall return at their invitation, or, if matters remain as they are, it is best that I should be away.” Saturninus duly carried a law prohibiting any Roman from offering Metellus fire, water, and shelter. Throngs of te
arful friends and clients accompanied Metellus Numidicus to the gates of Rome to watch him depart for exile.28
But as they celebrated finally nailing Metellus, Saturninus and Glaucia were about to discover that their marriage of convenience with Marius had come to an end. With land for his veterans secured, and his old nemesis Metellus finally dispensed with, Marius had nothing further to gain from backing the radicals. His labors complete, Marius could now move on to consolidate his own position inside the nobility and transition to life as a powerful elder statesman. But for Saturninus and Glaucia, all these laws were just the beginning. As they pushed forward, Marius drew back, and the stage was set for a final bloody confrontation.
WITH THE ELECTIONS for 99 approaching, Saturninus and Glaucia planned to push their agenda even further. Saturninus ran for reelection as tribune and was joined by the “son” of Tiberius Gracchus. In a shot across the bow, Marius ordered the fake Gracchus arrested for fraud and tossed in prison. The fake Gracchus was later sprung from jail and Saturninus won reelection; but it was obvious Marius was no longer on their side.29
This political break was confirmed when the consular election began. Three men emerged as frontrunners. The popular orator Marcus Antonius, recently returned in triumph from his suppression of Cilician pirates, had the full backing of the optimates; his election was nearly guaranteed. The leading contender for the other spot was Gaius Memmius. Having built his own career railing against the corrupt nobility during the Jugurthine War, Memmius was a powerful populare candidate who threatened to leave no space for the third man in the ring: Gaius Servilius Glaucia.30