The Gracchi Marius and Sulla Part 3

Caecilius Metellus, the consul, to be cast into prison for resisting his ballot-law, though, as the Senate yielded, the order was not carried into effect. In 115 he gained the praetors.h.i.+p, and an absurd charge of bribery trumped up against him indicated a rising disposition among the n.o.bles to snub the aspiring plebeian. He was propraetor in Spain the next year, and showed his usual vigour there in putting down brigandage. With the soldiers he was as popular as Ney was with Napoleon's armies, for he was one of them, rough-spoken as they were, fond of a cup of wine, and never scorning to share their toils. While he was with Metellus at Utica, a soothsayer prophesied that the G.o.ds had great things in store for him, and he asked Metellus for leave to go to Rome and stand for the consuls.h.i.+p. Metellus replied that when his own son stood for it it would be time enough for Marius.

The man at whom he sneered resented sneers. There is evidence that the simple nature of the rough soldier was becoming already spoiled by constant success. He was burning with ambition, and would ascribe the favours of heaven to his own merits. He at once set to work to undermine the credit of his commander with the army, the Roman merchants, and Gauda, saying that he himself would soon bring the war to an end if he were general. Metellus can hardly have been a popular man anywhere, and his strictness must have made him many enemies. Thus he scornfully refused Gauda a seat at his side, and an escort of Roman horse. Gauda and the rest wrote to Rome, urging that Marius should have the army. Metellus with the worst grace let him go just twelve days before the election. But the favourite of the G.o.ds had a fair wind, and travelled night and day. The artisans of the city and the country cla.s.s from which he sprang thronged to hear him abuse Metellus, and boast how soon he would capture or kill Jugurtha, and he was triumphantly elected consul for the year 107.

How his after achievements turned his head we shall see. Already there were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done by the former. The _coup de theatre_ which completed it revealed the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by these aristocrats; and when Bocchus dedicated on the Capitol a representation of Sulla receiving Jugurtha's surrender, he could not conceal his wrath. [Sidenote: L. Cornelius Sulla.] In Sulla he perhaps already recognised by instinct one who would outrival him in the end.

He was the very antipodes of Marius in everything except bravery and good generals.h.i.+p, and faith in his star. He was an aristocrat. He was dissolute. He was an admirer of h.e.l.lenic literature. War was not his all in all as a profession. If he had a lion's courage, the fox in him was even more to be feared. He, like Marius, owed his rise partly to a woman, but, characteristically, to a mistress, not a wife, who helped him as Charles II.'s sultana helped the young Churchill. If the boorish nature of the one degenerated with age into bloodthirsty brutality, the other was from the first cynically dest.i.tute of feeling. He would send men to death with a jest, and the cold-blooded, calculating, remorseless infamy of his entire career excites a repulsion which we feel for no other great figure in history, not even for the first Napoleon. Sulla's whole soul must have recoiled from the coa.r.s.e manners of the man under whom he first won distinction, and, while he scorned his motives, he must, as he saw him gradually floundering into villainy, have felt the serene superiority of a natural genius for vice. But at present it was not his game to show his animosity. Though Marius had given fresh umbrage to the optimates by coming from his triumph (Jan. 1, 104 B.C.) into the Senate wearing his triumphal robes, with the people he was the hero of the hour, and when the storm in the North broke, it was the safest course for Sulla to follow the fortunes of his old commander, who in his turn could not dispense with so able a subordinate.

[Sidenote: Frontier wars of Rome previous to the Cimbric invasion.]

The Romans were constantly at war on the frontiers. Besides the natural quarrels which would arise between them and lawless barbarians, it was the interest of their generals to make small wars in order to gain sounding names and triumphs. Such wars, however, by no means always ended in Roman victories; and while in the last thirty years of the second century before the Christian era there were many wars, there were also many defeats. [Sidenote: The Iapydes.]

Semp.r.o.nius Tudita.n.u.s had a triumph for victories over the Iapydes, an Illyrian nation; but he was first beaten by them. [Sidenote: The Salyes.] In 125 the Salyes, a Ligurian people, who stretched from Ma.r.s.eilles westwards to the Rhone and northwards to the Durance, attacked Ma.r.s.eilles. Flaccus went to its aid, and triumphed over the Salyes in 123. [Sidenote: The Balearic Islands.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus subdued the Balearic Islands in the same year, and relieved Spain from the descents of pirates, who either lived in those islands or used them as a rendezvous. The Salyes again gave trouble in 122, and Calvinus took their capital, which was most probably the modern Aix, establis.h.i.+ng there the colony of Aquae s.e.xtiae. This colony was the _point d'appui_ for further conquests. The most powerful nations of Gaul were the Aedui and Arverni, whose territory was separated by the Elaver, the modern Allier. The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same lat.i.tude, but on the east of the Rhone. The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and the proconsul Domitius Ahen.o.barbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the king of the Salyes. [Sidenote: The Allobroges.] The Allobroges were helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men. Fabius succeeded Domitius, and marched northwards across the Isara. [Sidenote: The Arverni.] Near its junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges. [Sidenote: Defeat of the Arverni, B.C. 121.] The number of the slain amounted, it is said, to 120,000 or 150,000. The king of the Arverni was caught and sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects. It was the year of the death of Caius Gracchus, of the famous vintage, and of a great eruption of Mount Etna. [Sidenote: The Staeni.] In 118 B.C. M.

Marcius Rex annihilated the Staeni, probably a Ligurian tribe of the Maritime Alps, who were in the line of the Roman approach to South Gaul, and for this success he gained a triumph. In the same year it was resolved, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, to colonise Narbo, which was the key to the valley of the Garonne, and was on the route to the province of Tarraconensis. Thus was established the province named from the time of Augustus the Narbonensis, embracing the country between the Cevennes and the Alps, as far north-east as Geneva; and a road, called Via Domitia, was laid down from the Rhone to the Pyrenees. [Sidenote: The Dalmatae.] In 117 B.C. L. Caecilius Metellus triumphed over the Illyrian Dalmatae whom he had attacked without cause, or never attacked at all, as it was said, for which he was surnamed Dalmaticus. [Sidenote: The Karni.] In 115 M. Aemilius Scaurus, whose name we have met with before, triumphed over the Karni, a tribe to the north of the Adriatic. C. Porcius Cato, consul in 114, was not so lucky. [Sidenote: The Scordisci.] He lost his army in defending the Macedonian frontier against a tribe of Gauls called Scordisci, who were in their turn defeated by M. Livius Drusus in 112, and M. Minucius Rufus in 109 B.C. The year between their first victory and first defeat was remarkable, not, indeed, because one Metellus triumphed for what he had done in Sardinia, and another for what he had done in Thrace; but in that year the Cimbri came in collision with Rome. [Sidenote: First collision with Cimbri.] Cn. Papirius Carbo, the consul, was sent against them as they had crossed or were expected to cross the Roman frontiers. Some were in Noric.u.m, and to them he sent to say that they were invading a people who were the friends of Rome.

They agreed to evacuate the country; but Carbo treacherously attacked them, and was disgracefully beaten at a place called Noreia.

[Sidenote: Defeat of Sila.n.u.s.] Four years later, in the year 109, M.

Junius Sila.n.u.s, colleague of Marius, met the same barbarians, who had now crossed the Rhine, in the new province of South Gaul, and was in his turn defeated.

[Sidenote: The Cimbri rouse the Helvetii.] The movements of the Cimbri made the Helvetii restless. [Sidenote: Defeat of Longinus.] One of their clans, the Tiguroni, which dwelt between the Jura, the Rhone, and the lake of Geneva, defeated and slew the consul Longinus in 107 B.C., and forced his lieutenant, Popillius Laenas, to go under the yoke. Tolosa thereupon rose against the Romans, and put the troops which garrisoned it in chains. By treachery Q. Servilius Caepio recovered the town, and sent off its treasures to Ma.r.s.eilles.

[Sidenote: The gold of Tolosa.] The ill-gotten gold, however, was seized on the way by robbers, whom Caepio himself was accused of employing. His name was destined, however, to be linked with a great disaster as well as a thievish trick. The Cimbri, who had hitherto pet.i.tioned the Romans for lands to settle on, were now meditating a raid into Italy. On the left bank of the Rhone, in 105, they overthrew M. Aurelius Scaurus, whom they took prisoner and put to death. Cnaeus Mallius Maximus commanded the main force on that side of the river, and he told Caepio, who as consul was in command on the right bank, to cross and effect a junction. But Caepio was as wilful as Minucius had shown himself towards another Maximus in the Second Punic War. When his superior began to negotiate with the Cimbri, he thought it was a device to rob him of the honour of conquering them, and in his irritation rashly provoked a battle, in which he was beaten and lost his camp. [Sidenote: Defeat of Caepio and Maximus.] The place of his defeat his camp is not known. Maximus was also defeated, and the Romans were reported to have lost 80,000 men and 20,000 camp followers. There was terrible dismay at Rome. The Gaul seemed again to be at its gates. [Sidenote: Consternation at Rome. Marius elected consul for 104.] The time of mourning for the dead was abridged. Every man fit for service had to swear not to leave Italy, and the captains in Italian ports took an oath not to receive any such man on board.

Marius also was elected consul for 104.

[Sidenote: The Cimbri move off towards Spain.] But fortune helped the Romans more than all these precautions. The Cimbri, after wilfully destroying every vestige of the spoils they had taken, in fulfilment, probably, of some vow, wandered westward on a plundering raid towards the Pyrenees, the road thither having been lately provided, as it were, for them by Domitius. [Sidenote: Beaten back by Celtiberi, they are joined by the Teutones in South Gaul.] In the Celtiberi they met with foes who sold too dearly the little they had to lose, and again they surged back into South Gaul, where they were joined by the Teutones, and once more threatened Italy. [Sidenote: How the Romans had been occupied meanwhile.] But meantime the generals of the Republic had not been idle. Rutilius Rufus, the old comrade of Marius, had been diligently drilling troops, having engaged gladiators to teach them fencing. Probably Marius was engaged in the same work at the beginning of 104, and then went to South Gaul, where, as we hear of Sulla capturing the king of the Tectosages, he was no doubt collecting supplies and men, and suppressing all disaffection in the province. He also cut a ca.n.a.l from the Rhone, about a mile above its mouth, to a lake supposed to be now the etang de l'Estouma; for alluvial deposits had made access to the river difficult, and he wanted the Rhone as a highway for his troops and commissariat.

[Sidenote: Marius consul in 103 and 102 B.C.] In 103 he was made consul for the third time, and again in 102. And now he was ready to meet the invaders.

[Sidenote: Nationality of the Cimbri.] Who these invaders were has been a matter of hot dispute. Were they Celts? Were they Teutons? Did they come from the Baltic sh.o.r.es, or the sh.o.r.es of the Sea of Azof; or were they the Homeric Cimmerii who dwelt between the Dnieper and the Don? Or did their name indicate their personal qualities, and not their previous habitation? The following seems the most probable conjecture. In the great plain which runs along the Atlantic and the southern sh.o.r.e of the Baltic, from the Pyrenees to the Volga, there had been in pre-historic times a movement constantly going on among the barbarous inhabitants like the ebb and flow of a great sea. The Celts had reached Spain and Italy on the south, and Germany and the Danube on the east. Then, making the Rhine their frontier, they had settled down into semi-civilised life. Now the Teutonic tribes were in their turn going through the same process of flux and reflux; and impelled probably at this time by some invasion of other tribes, or possibly, as Strabo says, by some great inundation of the sea, these invading nations, for they were not armies but whole nations, came roaming southwards in search of a new home. Celts there were among them, for the Helvetii had joined them, and therefore Helvetic chiefs.

But the names still exist in modern Denmark and near the Baltic.

Caesar did not think they were Celts. The light hair and blue eyes of the warriors, and the hair of old age on the heads of children, which excited the astonishment of the Romans, are not Celtic characteristics. We may therefore set them down as Teutonic by race.

The name Cimbri is probably derived from some word of their own, Kaemper, meaning champions or spoilers, and their last emigration was from the country between the Rhine, the Danube, and the Baltic. They were a tall, fierce race, who fought with great swords and narrow s.h.i.+elds, and wore copper helmets and mail. [Sidenote: Their mode of fighting, etc.] The men in their front ranks were often linked together so as to make retreat impossible. Their priestesses cheered them on in battle, and, when prisoners were taken, cut their throats over a great bowl, and then, ripping them up, drew auguries from their entrails.

[Sidenote: Plan of the invaders.] The plan of the invaders was that one body, consisting of the Teutones, Ambrones, and Tugeni, should descend into Italy on the west, the Cimbri on the east. Whence the Teutones had come to join the Cimbri we do not know. They joined them in South Gaul. [Sidenote: The Ambrones.] The Ambrones may have been a clan of the Helvetii, as the Tugeni were. [Sidenote: Plan of Marius.]

Marius waited for the western division at the confluence of the Isara and the Rhone, near the spot where Fabius had defeated the Arverni, his object being to command the two main roads into Italy, over the Little St. Bernard and along the coast. He did not follow the example of his old commander Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, in expelling soothsayers from his camp; for he had a Syrian woman, named Martha, with him to foretell the future. The soldiers had their own pet superst.i.tions.

They had caught two vultures, put rings on their necks and let them go, and so knew them again as they hovered over the army. When the barbarians reached the camp they tried to storm it. But they were beaten back, and then for six days they filed past with taunting questions, whether the Romans had any messages to send their wives.

Marius cautiously followed, fortifying his camp nightly. They were making for the coast-road; and as they could not have taken their wagons along it, they were marching, as Marius had seen, to their own destruction. His strategy was masterly, for he was winning without fighting; but accident brought on an engagement. [Sidenote: Scene of the battle of Aquae s.e.xtiae.] East of Aquae s.e.xtiae (the modern Aix) Marius had occupied a range of hills, one of which is to this day called Sainte Victoire. The Arc flowed below. The soldiers wanted water, and Marius told his men that they might get it there if they wanted it, for he wished to accustom them to the barbarians' mode of fighting. Some of the barbarians were bathing; and on their giving the alarm, others came up, and a battle began. The first shock was between the Ambrones and Ligurians. The Romans supported the latter, and the Ambrones fled across the Arc to the wagons, where the women, a.s.sailing both pursuers and pursued with yells and blows, were slain with the men. So ended the first day's fight.

All night and next day the barbarians prepared for a final struggle.

Marius planted an ambuscade of mounted camp-followers, headed by a few foot and horse in some ravines on the enemy's rear. [Sidenote: Circ.u.mstances of the battle.] He drew the legions up in front of the camp, and the cavalry went ahead to the plain. The barbarians charged up the hill, but were met by a shower of 'pila,' which the legionaries followed up by coming to close quarters with their swords. The enemy were rolled back down the hill, and at the same time with loud cries the ambuscade attacked them from behind. Then the battle became a butchery, in which, it was said, 200,000 men were slain, and among them Teutoboduus, their king. Others, however, say that he was taken prisoner, and became the chief ornament of Marius's triumph. Much of the spoil was gathered together to be burnt, and Marius, as the army stood round, was just lighting the heap, when men came riding at full speed and told him he was elected consul for the fifth time. The soldiers set up a joyful cheer, and his officers crowned him with a chaplet of bay. The name of the village of Pourrieres (Campus de Putridis) and the hill of Sainte Victoire commemorate this great fight to our day, and till the French Revolution a procession used to be made by the neighbouring villagers every year to the hill, where a bonfire was lit, round which they paraded, crowned with flowers, and shouting 'Victoire, Victoire!'

[Sidenote: The Cimbri.] Meanwhile Catulus was waiting for the Cimbri on the east. A son of M. Aemilius Scaurus fled before them in the pa.s.s of Tridentum, and in 102 B.C., about the time of the battle of Aquae s.e.xtiae, they poured down the valley on the east of the Athesis (Adige). [Sidenote: Catulus on the Adige.] Catulus was posted just below Verona on the west bank, with a bridge connecting him with a smaller force on the other side. When the foe appeared his men took to flight; but the detachment on the east side stood its ground, and kept the enemy from crossing the bridge in pursuit. The Cimbri admired their bravery, and when they had forced the bridge let its defenders go. Pursuing Catulus, they cut him off from a river for which he was making, probably the Ticinus, though according to some, the Po. He then pretended to encamp on a hill as if for a long stay. The Cimbri dispersed over the country, and Catulus immediately came down, a.s.saulted their camp and crossed the river, where he was joined by the victorious army of Gaul and by Marius, who had been to Rome.

[Sidenote: Battle with the Cimbri, July 30, 101 B.C.] The village festival on the hill of Sainte Victoire was held in May. The battle with the Cimbri was fought on July 30, 101. More than a year therefore had elapsed since the Teutones were defeated. But it was the barbarians' custom not to fight in winter, and they were in a rich country which had not been invaded for a century, where they were revelling in unwonted comforts. So they spread themselves over the land as far as the Sesia; and when Marius came, they sent, it is said, and asked for land for the Teutones whom they were awaiting.

[Sidenote: Story of the Cimbric emba.s.sy to Marius.] Marius replied that their brothers had all the land they wanted already. Upon which they requested him to name a field and a day for battle. Marius answered that Romans never consulted their foes on such points, but he would humour them, and named the Campi Raudii, near Vercellae. Such a story bears falsehood on the face of it. It is absurd to suppose that the Cimbri had not heard of the defeat of the Teutones, which had taken place more than a year before. Very likely they asked for land, and finding that they would only get hard blows, determined to bring matters to a crisis at once. Sulla's memoirs were Plutarch's authority for what followed, and Sulla hated Marius. [Sidenote: Story of Marius's jealousy of Catulus.] He said that Marius, expecting that the fighting would be on the wings, posted his own men there, that they might gain the glory, but that the brunt of the battle was borne by Catulus in the centre; and that such a dust rose that Marius was for a long time out of the battle, and knew not where he was. It seems that the barbarian cavalry feigned a flight, hoping to turn and take the Romans between themselves and their infantry. But the Romans drove back the cavalry on the infantry. [Sidenote: Circ.u.mstances of the battle.] However this may be, Marius had shown his usual good generals.h.i.+p. He had fed his men before the battle, and so manoeuvred that sun, wind, and dust were in the enemy's faces. His own men were in perfect training, and in the burning heat did not turn a hair. But the Northmen were fresh from high living, and could not bear up long.

When they gave way, the same scenes as at Aquae s.e.xtiae took place among the women. One hundred and twenty thousand men, it is said, were killed--among them the gallant Boiorix, their king--and 60,000 taken prisoners. Disputes rose as to who had really won the day. Marius generously insisted on Catulus sharing his triumph. But it was to him that the popular voice ascribed the victory, and there can be little doubt that the popular voice was right.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMAN ARMY.

While Rome was trembling for the issue of the war with the Cimbri, she was forced to send an army elsewhere. [Sidenote: Slave revolts.] There was at this time another general stir among the slave population.

There were risings at Nuceria, at Capua, in the silver mines of Attica, and at Thurii, and the last was headed by a Roman eques, named Minucius or Vettius. He wanted to buy a female slave; and, failing to raise the money which was her price, armed his own slaves, was joined by others, a.s.sumed the state and t.i.tle of king, and fortified a camp, being at the head of 3,500 men. Lucullus, the praetor, marched against him with 4,400 men; but though superior in numbers, he preferred Jugurthine tactics, and bribed a Greek to betray Vettius, who antic.i.p.ated a worse fate by suicide. [Sidenote: Second slave rebellion in Sicily.] But, as before, the fiercest outbreak was in Sicily.

Marius had applied for men for his levies to Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who replied that he had none to send, because the Roman publicani had carried off most of his subjects and sold them as slaves. Thereupon the Senate issued orders that no free member of an allied state should be kept as a slave in a Roman province. [Sidenote: Weakness of Licinius Nerva.] P. Licinius Nerva, governor of Sicily, in accordance with these orders, set free a number of Sicilian slaves; but, worked on by the indignation of the proprietors, he backed out of what he had begun to do, and, having raised the hopes of the slaves, caused an insurrection by disappointing them. He suppressed the first rebels by treachery. But he was a weak man, and delayed so long in attacking another body near Heraclea, that when he sent a lieutenant to attack them with 600 men they were strong enough to beat him.

[Sidenote: Salvius elected king.] By this success they supplied themselves with arms, and then elected Salvius as their king, who found himself at the head of 20,000 infantry and 2,000 horse. With these troops he attacked Morgantia, and, on the governor coming to relieve it, turned on him and routed him; and by proclaiming that anyone who threw down his arms should be spared, he got a fresh supply for his men. [Sidenote: Athenion heads the slaves in the west.] Then the slaves of the west rose near Lilybaeum, headed by Athenion, a Cilician robber-captain before he was a slave, and a man of great courage and capacity, who pretended to be a magician and was elected king. [Sidenote: Salvius takes the name of Tryphon.] Salvius took the name of Tryphon, a usurper of the Syrian throne in 149. Athenion, deferring to his authority, became his general, and Triocala, supposed to be near the modern Calata Bellotta, was their head-quarters. In some respects this second slave revolt was a repet.i.tion of the first.

As the Cilician Cleon submitted to the impostor Eunous, who called himself Antiochus, so now the Cilician Athenion submitted to the impostor Salvius, who called himself Tryphon. [Sidenote: Lucullus sent to Sicily, 103 B.C.] The outbreak had probably begun in 105, but it was not till 103 that Lucullus, who had put down Vettius, was sent to Sicily with 1,600 or 1,700 men. [Sidenote: Battle of Scirthaea.]

Tryphon, distrusting Athenion, had put him in prison. But he released him now, and at Scirthaea a great battle was fought, in which 20,000 slaves were slain, and Athenion was left for dead. Lucullus, however, delayed to attack Triocala, and did nothing more, unless he destroyed his own military stores in order to injure his successor C. Servilius.

To say that if he did so, such mean treason could only happen in a government where place depends on a popular vote, is a random criticism, for, though nominally open to all, the consuls.h.i.+p was virtually closed, except to a few families, which retained now, as they had always done, the high offices in their own hands, and, when Marius forced this close circle, Metellus is said to have acted much as Lucullus did.

Servilius was incapable. Athenion, who at Tryphon's death became king, surprised his camp, and nearly captured Messana. [Sidenote: M'.

Aquilius ends the war.] But, in 101, M'. Aquilius was sent out, and defeated Athenion and slew him with his own hand. A batch of 1,000 still remained under arms, but surrendered to Aquilius. He sent them to Rome to fight with wild beasts in the arena. They preferred to die by each other's swords there. Satyrus and one other were left last, and Satyrus after killing his comrade slew himself. The misery caused in Sicily by this long war, which ended in 100 B.C., may be estimated by the fact that, whereas Sicily usually supplied Rome with corn, it was now desolated by famine, and its towns had to be supplied with grain from Rome.

After this narration of the military events of the period to the beginning of the second century B.C., it is natural to consider the changes which Marius had effected in the army--the instrument of his late conquests. [Sidenote: Changes in the Roman army.] We cannot tell how many of the innovations now introduced were initiated by him, but they were introduced about this date. Before his time the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, ranked according to length of service, had superseded the Servian cla.s.ses. From his time this second cla.s.sification also ceased. [Sidenote: Arms of the legionary.] Every legionary was armed alike with the heavy pilum--an iron-headed javelin 6 feet 9 inches long, the light pilum, a sword, and a coat of armour.

Besides these he had to carry food and other burdens, which would vary according to the length and object of the march, such as stakes for encampment, tools, &c. [Sidenote: The 'Marian mules.'] Marius invented what were called 'Mariani muli' to ease the soldier--forked sticks, with a board at the end to bear the bundle, carried over the shoulders. Before his time the army had ceased to be recruited solely from Roman citizens. Not only had Italians been drafted into it, but foreign mercenaries were employed, such as Thracians, Africans, Ligurians, and Balearians. [Sidenote: The light troops auxiliaries.]

After his time the Velites are not mentioned, and all the light-armed troop were auxiliaries. [Sidenote: The cohort the tactical unit.]

Before his time the maniple had been the tactical unit. Now it was the cohort. [Sidenote: Composition of the legion.] A legion consisted of ten cohorts, each cohort containing three maniples, and each maniple two centuries. The legion's standard was the eagle, borne by the oldest centurion of the first cohort. Each cohort had its 'signum,'

or ensign. [Sidenote: Standards.] Each maniple had its 'vexillum,' or standard. [Sidenote: Officers.] There were two centurions for each maniple, one commanding the first and the other the second century, and taking rank according to the cohort to which they belonged, which might be from the first to the tenth. The youngest centurion officered the second century of the third maniple of the tenth cohort. The oldest officered the first century of the first maniple of the first cohort, and was called 'primus-pilus,' and the 'primi ordines,' or first cla.s.s of centurions, consisted of the six centurions of the first cohort. These corresponded to our non-commissioned officers, were taken from the lower cla.s.ses of society, and were seldom made tribunes. [Sidenote: The tribunes.] The tribunes were six to each legion, were taken from the upper cla.s.s, and after being attached to the general's suite, received the rank of tribune, if they were supposed to be qualified for it. The tribunes were originally appointed by the consuls. Afterwards they had been elected, partly by the people and partly by the consuls. Caesar superseded the tribunes by 'legati' of his own, to one of whom he would entrust a legion, and appointed some, but probably not all, of the tribunes, and Marius, it seems likely, did the same. [Sidenote: Numbers of the legion.] The normal number of a legion had been 4,200 men and 300 horse, but was often larger. [Sidenote: The pay.] The pay of a legionary was in the time of Polybius two obols a day for the private, four for a centurion, and six for a horse soldier, besides an allowance of corn.

But deductions were made for clothing, arms, and food. Hence the law of Caius Gracchus (cf. p. 51); but from the first book of the Annals of Tacitus we find that such deductions long continued to be the soldier's grievance. Auxiliary troops received an allowance of corn, but no pay from Rome. [Sidenote: The engineers.] The engineers of the army were called Fabri, under a 'praefectus,' the 'Fabri Lignarii'

having the woodwork, and the 'Fabri Ferrarii' the ironwork of the enginery under their special charge, [Sidenote: The staff.] and all were attached to the staff of the army, which consisted of the general and certain officers, such as the legati, or generals of division, and the quaestors, or managers of the commissariat. [Sidenote: The Cohors Praetoria.] One of the most significant changes that had sprung up of late years was one which was introduced by Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s at Numantia--the inst.i.tution of a body-guard, or Cohors Praetoria. It consisted of young men of rank, who went with the general to learn their profession, or as volunteers of troops specially enlisted for the post, who would often be veterans from his former armies. The term Evocati was applied to such veterans strictly, but also to any men specially enlisted for the purpose. [Sidenote: The equites.] It is probable that the equites no longer formed the cavalry of a legion, but only served in the general's body-guard, as tribunes and praefects, or on extraordinary commissions. The cavalry in Caesar's time appears to have consisted entirely of auxiliaries.

[Sidenote: Disinclination for service at Rome.] There had been for a long time among the wealthier cla.s.ses a growing disinclination for service, and as the middle cla.s.s was rapidly disappearing, there had been great difficulty in filling the ranks. The speeches of the Gracchi alluded to this, and it had been experienced in the wars with Viriathus, with Jugurtha, with Tryphon, and with the Cimbri. One device for avoiding it we have seen, by the orders issued to the captains of s.h.i.+ps in Italian ports. Among Roman citizens, if not among the allies, some property qualification had been required in a soldier. [Sidenote: Marius enrols the Capite Censi.] Marius tapped a lower stratum, and allowed the Capite Censi to volunteer. To such men the prospect of plunder would be an object, and they would be far more at the bidding of individual generals than soldiers of the old stamp.

Thus though obligation to service was not abolished, volunteering was allowed, and became the practice; and the army, with a new drill, and no longer consisting of Romans or even Italians, but of men of all nations, became as effective as of old, if not more so, and at the same time a body detached from the State. [Sidenote: The army ceases to be a citizen army.] The citizen was lost in the professional, and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favourite commander or their own selfishness. Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king.

CHAPTER VII.

SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.

[Sidenote: Att.i.tude of Marius.] With such a weapon in his hand Marius came back to Rome, intoxicated with success. He thought his marches in two continents worthy to be compared with the progresses of Bacchus, and had a cup made on the model of that of the G.o.d. He spoke badly; he was easily disconcerted by the disapproval of an audience; he had no insight into the evils, or any project for the reformation, of the State. But the scorn of men like Metellus had made him throw himself on the support of the people from whom he sprang; and they, idolising him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their natural leader, and the creator of a new era. Indeed it needed no stimulus from without to whet his ambitious cravings. That seventh consuls.h.i.+p which superst.i.tion whispered would be surely his he had yet to win; and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous insanity. But while he hoped to use all parties for his own advancement--a game in which he of all men was least qualified to succeed--other and abler politicians were bent on using him for the overthrow of the optimates.

[Sidenote: Saturninus.] The harangues of Memmius had shown that the spirit of the Gracchi was still alive in Rome; and now Lucius Apuleius Saturninus took up their revolutionary projects with a violence to which they had been averse, but for which the acts of their adversaries had become a fatal precedent. Of Saturninus himself we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement.

[Sidenote: Glaucia.] In something of the same relation in which Camille Desmoulins stood to Danton, Caius Servilius Glaucia, a wit and favourite of the people, stood towards the sombre and imperious Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their aims by the aid of Marius.

If they are to be judged by their acts alone we can hardly condemn them. [Sidenote: Defence of their policy.] They tried to do what the Gracchi had attempted before them, what Drusus attempted after them, and what, when they and Drusus had fallen, as the Gracchi had fallen, the Social War finally effected. No historian has given sufficient prominence to the fact that it was primarily a country movement of which each of these men was the leader; a movement of unbroken continuity, though each used his own means and had his own special temperament. If this is kept in view, we shall no longer consider with some modern historians that no event perhaps in Roman history is so sudden, so unconnected, and accordingly so obscure in its original causes as this revolt or conspiracy of Saturninus.

Like Caius Gracchus, Saturninus represented rural as opposed to urban interests, and the interests of the provinces as opposed to those of the capital. Like Caius, too, he endeavoured to conciliate the equites; but they had all the Roman prejudice against admitting Italians to a level with themselves, and the attempt to play off party against party utterly failed. In vain Saturninus tried to defy opposition by enlisting the support of the Marian veterans. The rich, the n.o.ble, and the city mob united against him; and when he seized the Capitol, it was to defend himself against all three. In the year 100 B.C. Marius was consul for the sixth time, Glaucia was praetor, and Saturninus was a second time tribune. A triumvirate so powerful might, if united, have overthrown the Const.i.tution. But the vanity and vacillation of Marius were the best allies of the optimates; and it was no grown man, but Caius Julius Caesar, a child born in that same year, who was destined to subvert their rule. [Sidenote: The Lex Servilia. The equites and the judicia.] Saturninus had been instrumental in securing the election of Marius to his fifth consuls.h.i.+p in 102, and it was about that time that the Lex Servilia was carried. This law defined the liability of Roman officials to trial for extortion in the provinces, and, by a process of elimination (for senators, workers for hire, and others were expressly declared ineligible), practically left to the equites the jurisdiction in such trials. Whether or no the law of Gracchus had been repealed by another Servilian law--that of Q. Servilius Caepio--we cannot say for certain.

If so, the second Servilian law repealed the first. But, whether it restored power to the equites or only confirmed them in it, in theory it left the office of judex open to all citizens, for, while it excluded so many citizens that in practice the judicia were closed to all but the equestrian cla.s.s, it did not a.s.sign the office to any one cla.s.s in particular. It also provided that anyone not a citizen who won his suit against an official should by virtue of doing so obtain the citizens.h.i.+p. [Sidenote: Threefold purpose of the Lex Servilia.] So that we may trace in this law a threefold policy--an attempt (1) to relieve the provincials, by making prosecutions for extortion easy, and even putting a premium on them; (2) to conciliate the equites; (3) to pave the way for the overthrow of cla.s.s jurisdiction by, nominally at least, leaving the judicia open to all who did not come under specified restrictions. Cicero inveighs against Glaucia as a demagogue of the Hyperbolus stamp. But there was more of the statesman than the demagogue in this law.

When Saturninus was a candidate for the tribunate, he and Glaucia are said to have set on men to murder Nonius, another candidate, who they feared might use his veto to thwart their projects. Marius had been previously elected consul, and supported Saturninus in his candidature, as Saturninus had supported him. [Sidenote: Personal reasons for Marius joining Saturninus.] Marius may have been induced to enter into this alliance by the desire to gratify a personal grudge, for the rival candidate had been the man he most detested, Q.

Metellus; and the first measure of Saturninus was a compliment to him and a direct blow aimed at Metellus. [Sidenote: Agrarian law of Saturninus.] This was an agrarian law which would benefit the Marian veterans; and as it contained a proviso that any senator refusing to swear to observe it within five days should be expelled from the Senate, it would be sure to drive Metellus from Rome. But if there was diplomacy in this measure of Saturninus, there was sagacity also. What discontent was seething in Italy the Social War soon proved, and this was an attempt to appease it. Saturninus had previously proposed allotments in Africa; now he proposed to allot lands in Transalpine Gaul, Sicily, Achaia, and Macedonia, and to supply the colonists with an outfit from the treasure taken from Tolosa. Marius was to have the allotment of the land. [Sidenote: Difficulty about this agrarian law.]

There is a difficulty as to these colonies which no history solves.

They were Roman colonies to which only Roman citizens were eligible, and yet the Roman populace opposed the law. The Italians, on the contrary, carried it by violence. Some have cut the knot by supposing that, though the colonies were Roman, Italians were to be admitted to them. But there is another possible explanation. It is certain that many Italians pa.s.sed as citizens at Rome. In 187 B.C. 12,000 Latins, pa.s.sing as Roman citizens, had been obliged to quit Rome. In 95 B.C.

there was another clearance of aliens, which was one of the immediate causes of the Social War. Fict.i.tious citizens might have found it easy to obtain allotments from a consul whose ears, if first made deaf by the din of arms, had never since recovered their hearing. However this may be, it was the rural party which by violence procured a preponderance of votes at the ballot-boxes, and it was the town populace which resisted what it felt to be an invasion of its prerogative by the men from the country. [Sidenote: Exile of Metellus.] Marius is said to have got rid of Metellus by a trick. He pretended that he would not take the oath which the law demanded, but, when Metellus had said the same thing, told the Senate that he would swear to obey the law as far as it was a law, in order to induce the rural voters to leave Rome, and Metellus, scorning such a subterfuge, went into exile.

[Sidenote: Corn-law of Saturninus.] Another law of Saturninus either renewed the corn-law of Caius Gracchus, or went farther and made the price of grain merely nominal. This law was no doubt meant to recover the favour of the city mob, which he had forfeited by his agrarian law. But Caepio, son, probably, of the hero of Tolosa, stopped the voting by force, and the law was not carried. [Sidenote: Law of treason.] The third law of Saturninus was a Lex de Majestate, a law by which anyone could be prosecuted for treason against the State, and which was not improbably aimed specially at Caepio, who was impeached under it. It seems at any rate certain that of these laws the agrarian was the chief, and the others subsidiary; in other words, that he and Glaucia were working together on an organized plan, and striving to admit the whole Roman world into a community of rights with Rome. They thought that with the Marian soldiers at their back they would be safer than Gracchus with his bands of reapers; and so they may have taken the initiative in violence from which, both by past events and the acts of men like Caepio, it was certain that the optimates would not shrink. It is difficult to apportion the blame in such cases.

[Sidenote: Civil strife. Saturninus seizes the Capitol.] But when Glaucia stood for the consuls.h.i.+p of 99, and his rival Memmius, a favourite with the people, was murdered, an attack was made on Saturninus, who hastily sent for aid to his rural supporters and seized the Capitol. He found then that in reckoning on Marius he had made a fatal blunder. That selfish intriguer had been alarmed by the popular favour shown to an impostor named Equitius, who gave out that he was the son of Tiberius Gracchus, and who, being imprisoned by Marius, was released by the people and elected tribune. He may have been jealous too of the popularity of Saturninus with his own veterans, and at the same time anxious to curry favour with the foes of Saturninus--the urban populace. [Sidenote: Marius turns on his friends.] So, instead of boldly joining his late ally, he became the general of the opposite party, drove Saturninus and his friends from the Forum, and, when they had surrendered, suffered them to be pelted to death in the Curia Hostilia where he had placed them. [Sidenote: Death of Saturninus and Glaucia.] Saturninus, it is said, had been proclaimed king before his death. If so he had at least struck for a crown consistently and boldly; and even if his attempt for the moment united the senatorial party and the equites, while the city mob stood wavering or hostile, he might nevertheless have forestalled the empire by a century had Marius only had half his enterprise or nerve. In an epoch of revolution it is idle to judge men by an ordinary standard.

How far personal ambition and how far a n.o.bler ideal animated Saturninus no man can say. Those who condemn him must condemn Cromwell too.