Part 6 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHEPHERDESS]
Jugurtha, the King of Numidia, threw off the Roman yoke and defied every Roman general sent against him until Caius Marius was sent out (107).
Marius, the son of humble parents, had been marked by Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, under whom he served in Africa, as a coming man: but though he had already shown great gifts as a leader the Senate did not want to give him the command against Jugurtha because of his low birth, rude manners, and the love in which he was held by the Roman mob. He was at last elected by a huge majority, and, thanks in part to the brilliant exploits of a cavalry officer, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, ended the campaign in triumph. Jugurtha was captured, marched in chains through the Roman streets and cast naked into an ice-cold dungeon to die of hunger and exposure.
In Marius's triumph there was a drop of bitterness. His glory was shared with Sulla. For it was Sulla who had actually captured Jugurtha. With a small body of men he had daringly entered the camp of Bocchus, King of Mauretania, with whom Jugurtha had taken refuge, and persuaded Bocchus to make friends with Rome by giving him up. He had a ring made with a picture of the scene, which annoyed Marius every time he saw it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TROPHY OF VICTORY Capitoline Museum]
But no one at the moment thought that Sulla could be a real rival to Marius. There was no question of naming any one else as general when the strife of parties in Rome was suddenly interrupted by terrible news--the Northern barbarians were on the march. This danger, from the Cimbri and the Teutones, had actually been threatening for a long time. In 113 a consular army had been routed by the Cimbri. For the next eight years, joined by other tribes, they remained on the North Italian frontier, a perpetual menace, defeating, one after another, the armies sent against them. In 105, when Marius was still in Africa, two Roman armies were annihilated at Arausio on the Rhone (105). More than 80,000 men perished in a single battle. Only a handful escaped to bring the terrible news home. Such a disaster had not happened since Cannae. The way to Rome stood open: there was no army to stop the victors had they marched on to Italy. They did not. They turned to Spain. Marius, who was called home, given chief command, and made consul in three successive years, had time to create a new army.
In doing this he tackled one of the most pressing problems of the time.
Gracchus had seen how great a danger the falling-off of the supply of men from the land might be: but no one had really grasped and dealt with the question from the army point of view until Marius took it in hand.
This was indeed his greatest and most lasting work. First he changed the whole basis of service. Every one was liable to be called on, not only the shrinking cla.s.s of holders of land. He took soldiers from the towns as well as from the country, from among freedmen and paupers as well as from among citizens. Second, he paid to every soldier a small daily wage. This was an immense change. It at once created a new cla.s.s: the professional soldier. Formerly men had done their time in the army and then returned to ordinary civil life. Now the soldier was a soldier for life. Next Marius reorganized the army from within, sweeping away the differences between the Roman legions and those made up of Italians and allies. He improved the equipment of all ranks. This done he set himself to training his new men, encamped in Transalpine Gaul, in readiness to meet the foe.
A soothsayer, in whose prophecy he placed great faith, had told Marius he should be consul seven times. As consul for the fourth time he finally attacked the Teutones with his new armies. At Aquae s.e.xtiae (to the north of Ma.r.s.eilles) 100,000 barbarians were slain (102). It was a terrible slaughter. For centuries after the fields were covered with blackening bones, and the people of Ma.s.silia used them to make fences for their vineyards. Next year Marius, consul for the fifth time, met the Cimbri, who had crossed the Alps and descended into the plains of Lombardy, at Vercellae (101). Before the battle messengers came from the Cimbri, demanding land for themselves and the Teutones. They had not heard of the rout of Aquae s.e.xtiae. Marius smiled grimly. 'Do not trouble yourselves about your brothers,' he replied. 'They have land enough which we have given them to keep for ever.' When battle was joined next day it was the height of summer; the blazing heat exhausted the Northerners. Boiorix, the Cimbrian king, the tallest and strongest man in the army, perished; round him there lay, at the day's end, 100,000 of his countrymen.
Marius returned home to be hailed as the saviour of his country, the peer of Camillus and Fabius. He was made consul for the sixth time.
Marius had won great victories; but the rejoicings in Rome over the terrible dangers that had been averted by his generals.h.i.+p were brief.
Men's minds were profoundly disturbed: many felt dimly that great and terrible events were coming without seeing what they were or how to deal with or prevent them. Marius certainly was not the man who had either the insight or the power to do this; he was a man of camps with no knowledge or understanding of politics. His victories and the great shows that followed them made him the idol of the mob: but the idol of the mob was the last man to deal wisely with the difficulties of Rome.
The men of wealth and birth detested him as a dangerous, rude, unlettered boor, who knew nothing of government or public business.
Marius could not even keep order. There were constant riots. People were set upon and murdered in the open streets. Alarming reports came from the provinces, especially from the East. But any one who had the courage to demand justice for the provincials was certain to be detested in Rome. Thus the honest Rutilius Rufus, who tried to defend the people of Asia against the greed of the Roman tax-collectors, was driven into exile. Nor did the Roman mob care a fig for the grievances of the Italians--or the senators either.
Drusus
There were, however, men in Rome who felt that dishonour was coming upon the Republic from these things as well as danger. These men--aristocrats of the old stamp--were, however, mostly rather inclined to turn aside from politics, which filled them with disgust. Their feelings were not keen enough to make them take action. But they saw that things were going from bad to worse; and when at last one of their order came forward who cared enough to take risks, they rallied round him. This was M. Livius Drusus, a young man of lofty family, who thought the men of his own order were partly to blame for what was happening. They held aloof and let vulgar and ignorant men like Marius and his a.s.sociates, Glaucia and Saturninus (men of very low character who led the crowd by promises and bribes), drag the good name of Rome down. Two things stirred Drusus to action: one the shocking unfairness of the law courts, the other the fact that the people of Italy were shut out of all share in their own government. Everything was settled in Rome: the Italians had no voice. The consuls and other magistrates who made and administered the laws were chosen by Roman votes only. Yet the Italians had to send men to the army and pay taxes.
Drusus got his Bill for the reform of the law courts through (91) in spite of the moneyed men, since he proposed that the judges should be partly chosen from the Senate, and a strong body of senators backed this up. But when his Bill giving votes to the Italians came up things were different. There he could count on very little support. It did not help him in Rome that, when he fell ill, prayers for his recovery were put up in every town in Italy. This was indeed used against him by his enemies in Rome, who said there was a conspiracy going on. The rich Italians, too, made common cause with the rich men in Rome. Some of the aristocrats stood by Drusus, but the majority in Rome was against him.
Throughout Italy the struggle round his Bill raised an intense and deep excitement. Then one night Drusus was murdered in the street as he was going home. The murderer vanished. No inquiry was made. Drusus's Bill was dropped; his party was crushed. His enemies at once rushed through a measure setting up a court before which every one suspected of sympathizing with votes for Italians was to be charged.
But the hopes of the Italians could not be crushed thus. The news of Drusus's murder ran like an earthquake shock through Italy. Feeling was at fever pitch. Rome refused to recognize Italian rights: the Italians would compel it to do so by the sword. All over the peninsula feverish preparations went on. A few months after Drusus's death fighting broke out at Asculum in the south and spread like lightning all over the north and centre.
This Social War, as it was called, was waged with dreadful bitterness on both sides, and the misery and ruin it brought on the country was terrible. In the first year (90) things went against Rome, though all their best generals, including Marius and his hated rival Sulla, took the field. In the second year (89) Marius did little or nothing, but in the south Sulla carried everything before him. But while the Romans were winning they were also beginning to see that the war need never have taken place: it was time to let the Italians take their share and make them Romans. A Bill giving them voting rights was drafted and pa.s.sed into law. This did more than anything in the actual campaign to bring the fighting to an end.
The war was still raging when news came that the East was ablaze.
Mithridates, King of Pontus, the richest king in Asia Minor, and far the ablest, had taken the field and was preparing to overrun the Roman provinces. Hard on the heels of this came worse. Mithridates had defeated a Roman general, destroyed his army, captured his fleet and was invading Asia. He came, he said, to free the people from the Roman tax-collectors who sucked their blood away. Slaves and prisoners were set free, those who killed Italians pardoned. On a certain day of the year 88 there was a ma.s.sacre of no less than 80,000 Italians in Asia.
The rebellion against Rome, thus begun, spread to Greece. Athens threw off the Roman yoke; Mithridates, who dreamed of ruling over the whole East, sent his general to help overthrow the Roman garrisons in Greece.
Thus while Romans were fighting one another the lands beyond the seas of which they were so proud, and which were the source of most of their wealth, were in rebellion. Men of their own race had been ma.s.sacred by Asiatics. Each day the news grew worse. In Rome there were riots in the streets. Sulla had been named commander against Mithridates. Marius could not bear this. He got his friends to bring in a Bill transferring the command to him. It was carried, but amid such disorder that senators and consuls fled from the city. Sulla had left the riots and disorders of Rome to go to his army at Nola. There he received the order to hand over the command to Marius. If Marius expected him to obey he had misread the character of the man he hated. Sulla's answer was to march upon Rome at the head of his legions. There he was welcomed by the remnant of the Senate as the restorer of law and order. Marius fled.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SULLA from a coin]
Of the sudden rise of Sulla, Plutarch gives the following account:
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