Aside from these rising young nobles, the Metelli also cultivated allies within the Equestrian class, the merchants and bankers who provided funding for the wars of foreign conquest that maintained domestic supremacy. With Metellans taking part in nearly every censorship between 131 and 102, they controlled the state publicani contracts for an entire generation. There is no evidence that the Metelli were abnormally corrupt, but in that era it was taken for granted that one would help his friends and stymie his enemies. These connections made the Metelli the most powerful single faction in Roman politics.
Gaius Marius was himself a rising Equestrian client of the Metelli. After ten years of service, Marius stood for election as a military tribune, a legionary staff officer elected by the soldiers themselves. He most likely spent his year as military tribune in the Balearic Islands helping one of the eldest Metelli cousins achieve the generation’s first triumph. He parlayed this service into a successful run for his first true magistracy, winning a quaestorship in 122. In office, Marius probably served in the legions that were by then advancing into southern Gaul. There he would see for the first time the hills and streams where twenty years later he would win one of the most spectacular victories in Roman history.10
WHEN ROME EXPANDED beyond the borders of Italy it moved in three directions: west to Spain, south to Africa, and east to the Aegean. But their northern border remained unchanged, partly because the Alps loomed as an enormous natural boundary. But after the great conquests of the mid-second century, Rome needed to maintain supply and communication lines with its far-flung territories in Spain and Macedonia. As a result, the legions crossed the Alps and became embroiled in a series of conflicts with the tribal powers beyond the new frontiers.11
Until the 120s, however, the swath of coastline between the Alps and Pyrenees was not under Roman jurisdiction. They instead left the protection of the region to the city of Massilia. A Greco-Phoenician colony founded in the 600s, Massilia had been a friend and trading partner of Rome going back to the early days of the Republic. In 125, Massilia was attacked by the Salluvii—a Gallic tribe that dominated the plains between the Alps and the Rhône river—and they requested aid from Rome. Happy to help a friend (and even happier to get the consul Flaccus out of town before he pushed through his bill for Italian citizenship), the Senate dispatched legions north. After several years of inconclusive fighting the Romans finally occupied a settlement about twenty miles inland from Massilia and organized it as a permanent military colony called Aquae Sextiae (modern Aix-en-Provence). After its founding in 122, Aquae Sextiae became the principal base of Roman operations in Gaul.12
Repulsed by the Romans, the king of the Salluvii took the remnants of his people and sought refuge with the Allobroges, another powerful tribe that controlled territory in the upper reaches of the Rhône. With the Allobroges lurking, the Senate dispatched the consul for 122 to guard the frontier. Late in the year, the legions won a huge battle against the Allobroges near modern-day Avignon, and followed that up a few months later with an even bigger victory—a victory that quaestor Gaius Marius likely participated in. The climax of these early Gallic wars came in the late summer of 121. The Romans met a coalition of Gauls eighty miles north of Aquae Sextiae on the banks of the Isère River. We have no details of the battle but with total Gallic losses estimated at 120,000, it must have been a huge affair. Only a lack of specifics in the record keeps the Battle of the Isère River from being one of the most famous battles in Roman history. The victory established Roman political and military hegemony over southern Gaul.13
With the Romans ascendant in Gaul, a faction of senators and Equestrian merchants pushed to found a permanent civilian colony in the region to facilitate supply lines in case of future emergencies. The Senate twisted itself into contortions resisting the proposal, but just as they were achieving terminal paralysis, the dazzling young orator Lucius Crassus delivered another impressive performance in the Assembly. He strongly advocated for the founding of the colony and carried the Assembly—and most of his senatorial colleagues—along with him. When the new city of Narbo (modern Narbonne) was finally founded in 118, the whole region of southern Gaul became known as Gallia Narbonensis. With permanent settlements in the area, the Romans then constructed the famous Via Domitia, the permanent road linking Italy to Spain that is still visible along the southern coast of France.14
AFTER PARTICIPATING IN wars in Spain in the 130s and Gaul in the 120s, Gaius Marius transitioned from military to civilian life and stood for the tribunate of 119. He secured election thanks to the patronage of the Metelli. But rather than use his year as tribune to win new friends and allies, Marius spent his time alienating nearly everyone.15
Despite the introduction of the secret ballot, there were still plenty of ways for a patron to make sure his clients voted the way they were supposed to. One common practice was to confront a voter after he had filled out his ballot, but before he deposited it in the ballot box. Over the objections of his Metelli patrons, Marius introduced a bill to redesign the voting stalls to prevent such confrontations. One of the consuls—who happened to be a Metelli—induced the Senate to condemn Marius’s bill and order Marius to present himself. Unintimidated, Marius threatened to toss the consul in prison if he stood in the way of the Assembly. The consul backed down, but the Metelli were furious their dog was biting the hand that fed him.16
Having angered his principal senatorial patrons, Marius then refused to cater to the plebs urbana, who had supported his voting reform efforts. Another tribune introduced a bill expanding a citizen’s allotment of Gracchan price-controlled grain. The bill was extremely popular in Rome, but Marius vetoed it on the grounds that it was a needless handout that ruined the moral fiber of the Republic. The plebs urbana had asked for cheap grain, not moral hectoring, and thus Marius managed to leave the tribunate as disliked in the Forum as he was on the Palatine Hill.17
But despite his shaky political instincts, Marius let his ambition propel him forward and he stood for an aedileship in either 118 or 117. Marius may have viewed a year as aedile as a good way to build back public goodwill, but elections for the aedileship were much more competitive than the lower offices. Rather than ten annual tribunates or ten annual quaestorships, there were just four aedileships available. Being a well-connected noble with money was not a guarantee to winning—there was certainly no guarantee for a novus homo Italian who had just angered both the optimates and populares.18
Marius entered his name first for the senior aedile seat, but as the voting proceeded his announced vote totals were alarmingly small. Seeing that he faced certain defeat, Marius withdrew his name and put it in for junior aedileship. It was an unconventional gamble, but not against the law. Not that it mattered. Marius promptly lost that election, too. Marius’s humiliating double defeat left his budding political career near death. But on the other side of the Mediterranean, events unfolded that would propel him to the inner circle of Roman power.19
THE KINGDOM OF Numidia lay on the north coast of Africa, corresponding roughly to modern-day Algeria. The kingdom was built on animal husbandry and maritime trade, but was famous for its expert horsemanship. The Numidians produced some of the finest cavalry in the Mediterranean. For generations, that cavalry had been at the disposal of the neighboring Carthaginians, but in the midst of the Second Punic War, the great Numidian king Masinissa defected to the Romans, and joined Scipio Africanus for the final battle against Hannibal in 202. Masinissa then ruled North Africa on Rome’s behalf for the next fifty years and did not die until 148, just as Rome was returning to destroy Carthage once and for all. As proconsul of Rome, and personal friend of the Numidian royal family, Scipio Aemilianus settled the late king’s estate between his three sons but by either luck or foul play one of the sons, Micipsa, emerged as the sole king of Numidia.20
King Micipsa was among those Aemilianus called in 133 to provide auxiliary units for the final conquest of Numantia. Not only was Micipsa happy to oblige, he had the
perfect man to lead the expedition—his illegitimate nephew Jugurtha. Though the product of an extramarital liaison, Jugurtha remained in the royal family’s orbit and was popular at court. Jugurtha was blessed with “physical strength, a handsome person, but above all with a vigorous intellect.” For a few years, Micipsa saw Jugurtha as a potential heir, but when the king had sons of his own, Jugurtha became a problem. Sending the dashing prince to war might get him killed, which would be a convenient solution to the problem. But it was a gamble with a clear risk—what if Jugurtha came back more popular than ever?21
Once at Numantia, Jugurtha impressed everyone. “The young Numidian failed neither in judgment nor in any enterprise. He had, besides, a generous nature and a ready wit, qualities by which he had bound many Romans to him in intimate friendship.” As he interacted with Romans, Jugurtha learned how Roman war and politics really worked. He learned their military tactics. He learned their political fault lines. Most especially he learned their vices. Aemilianus noticed the lessons Jugurtha was learning and took the young Numidian prince aside to caution him against relying too much on bribes and gifts to get his way. “It is dangerous,” Aemilianus said, “to buy from a few what belonged to the many.” This was not a lesson Jugurtha would learn.22
When the siege of Numantia concluded, Jugurtha returned home not only alive, but bearing a glowing letter from Scipio Aemilianus, who wrote, “The valor of your Jugurtha in the Numantine war was most conspicuous, as I am sure you will be glad to learn. To us he is dear because of his services, and we shall use our best efforts to make him beloved also by the Senate and People of Rome.” Micipsa now had a real dilemma on his hands—he could not get rid of Jugurtha now that Jugurtha had the Roman stamp of approval. The only thing to do now was embrace him. The king formally adopted Jugurtha as his son, making him one of now three legitimate heirs to the throne.23
In 117, old Micipsa died and Numidia fell into the hands of three men: Jugurtha and his younger “brothers” Adherbal and Hiempsal. The three agreed to partition the kingdom and treasury equally, but Jugurtha was not interested in sharing. His agents bribed their way into Hiempsal’s house, found the king cowering in a closet, and chopped his head off. Alerted to the assassination, Adherbal raised an army but Jugurtha’s years of leadership in the Numidian military gave him the allegiance of all the best men. Adherbal could only raise fresh conscripts who were neither loyal nor well trained. In their one engagement, Jugurtha’s army swept Adherbal’s force aside. Unsafe anywhere in Numidia, King Adherbal fled to the only place of refuge he could think of: Rome.24
The Senate was vexed by the unrest in Numidia and agreed to let Adherbal and envoys from Jugurtha explain themselves. Each side predictably blamed the other. Adherbal called his brother “the wickedest of all men on the face of the earth,” who had murdered his brother and provoked a war. Jugurtha’s envoys claimed Adherbal and Hiempsal were the real problem, that Jugurtha had only acted in self-defense. The envoy said Adherbal was only “complaining because he had been prevented from inflicting injury.” The Senate debated the matter and agreed to send a ten-man commission to Numidia to investigate further and render an informed judgment.25
The head of the commission was none other than Lucius Opimius, who was now an elder statesman after a career spent crushing Fregellae and the Gracchi. Jugurtha greeted Opimius’s commission with all due honor and respect, and swore that he would abide by their judgment. After interviewing participants and surveying maps, the commission decided to oust neither king and instead return to the principle of joint rule. They divided Numidia in half—the fertile interior went to Jugurtha and the coastal plains to Adherbal. Then the senators packed up and left and hoped to hear no more from squabbling Numidian kings.26
In the course of the debates over Numidia, some senators were more supportive of Jugurtha than others, and it was well known Jugurtha’s agents had come to Rome with “a great amount of gold and silver, directing them first to load his old friends with presents, and then to win new ones—in short, to make haste to accomplish by largess whatever they could.” The defense of Jugurtha offered by these new friends was a touch embarrassing as the Numidian bribery was “notorious and brazen.” It got to the point where Scaurus castigated his colleagues for their conduct. Scaurus was afraid “such gross corruption would arouse popular resentment.”27
But this tale of shameless bribery does not tell the whole story. Many men in the Senate would not have needed money to support Jugurtha. Many had served alongside him at Numantia and believed him to be brave, educated, and a worthy ally of Rome. It is not unreasonable to think that those old friends needed very few presents to believe their one-time comrade-in-arm’s side of the story. They did not know Adherbal. But they knew Jugurtha and liked him very much. As for the rest, money and gifts from a foreign delegation would have been accepted as the respectful price of admission to the atrium of any senator’s villa. That said, some men are always prepared to let their wallets rule their politics; Jugurtha exploited as many of these men as he could.
WHILE THESE EVENTS unfolded, Gaius Marius was climbing back on the horse. Undeterred by his failure to secure an aedileship, Marius aimed higher and ran for praetor in the elections of 116. Though the Metelli opposed their erstwhile client’s attempt to attain a praetorship, the novus homo Marius won the last spot.28
Stories swirled immediately that Marian partisans had snuck slaves into the voting lines to put their friend over the top. Shortly after the election, Marius was charged with electoral fraud. The trial lasted for days and witnesses for both sides testified, including Cassius Sabaco, one of Marius’s friends who had allegedly slipped noncitizens into the voting line. Also called was one of Marius’s other noble patrons, Gaius Herennius. But Herennius refused to appear, citing the long-established legal principle that a patron did not have to testify against a client. Marius himself released Herennius from that obligation, saying that the moment he became a praetor he stopped being any man’s client. The trial seemed to be going against Marius, but when the jury returned, there was a surprise verdict: they were tied. In Roman courts, a tie went to the defendant. Marius was now a praetor.29
Despite Marius’s victory, 115 was still a banner year for the Metellans. The shrewd Scaurus was elected consul alongside one of the Metelli cousins, while another Metelli secured a censorship. Proof of the power Scaurus wielded behind the scenes, the Metellan censor named Scaurus princeps senatus. Not only was this honor usually reserved for an older senator, it had never been given to a sitting consul. Still only in his mid-forties, Scaurus would remain princeps senatus for the next twenty-five years, influencing the course of Roman history from atop the senatorial rolls and speaking first in every debate. After putting Scaurus first on the rolls, the censors then purged the Senate of thirty-two men, most of whom we can assume were not friends of the family. Marius’s good friend Cassius Sabaco became a casualty and was expelled for his part in the previous year’s electoral fraud scandal.30
After an uneventful year minding his business in Rome, Marius was sent to Further Spain. Little is known of his time in Spain, but we do know he advanced Roman authority into areas that had become a hotbed of brigands. By 114, Marius had cleared the brigands out of the region, and publicani contractors moved in to open up new mining operations. Like most Roman administrators, Marius saw his time abroad as the time to build a fortune. We assume that he staked a lucrative claim to the unexploited mines, because when he returned to Rome in 113 he was a very rich man.31
Back in Rome, the now forty-five-year-old Marius parlayed his wealth and promising political prospects into a mutually advantageous alliance when he married sixteen-year-old Julia Caesaria. The Julii were an ancient patrician house with roots older than the Republic itself. But their influence had waned over the centuries, and though their name was noble, their purses were empty. Bringing Marius into the family injected both energy and cash into their house. Marius was still a novus homo, but the Julii connection len
t him the respectability he would need to attempt to make the leap from praetor to consul—a gap even the most well-connected men often found impossible to clear.32
AS MARIUS’S HUNT for the elusive consulship began, the Kingdom of Numidia exploded into chaos. Jugurtha and Adherbal maintained a tense coexistence for three years, but in 113, Jugurtha made a second bid to become sole ruler of Numidia. He sent raiding parties into his brother’s territory to try to provoke a response so he could portray himself as the victim. But Adherbal did not take the bait. Instead, he sent envoys back to Rome to complain about Jugurtha’s provocation. Tired of the bickering in Numidia and with far bigger concerns on their plate, the Senate wrote to Adherbal, essentially telling him to handle the problem himself.33
When Jugurtha realized the Senate was not coming to Adherbal’s aid, he mustered an army and marched into Adherbal’s half of Numidia. Adherbal raised an army to defend himself, but once again Jugurtha’s superior troops blew right through them. Adherbal fled to his capital of Cirta and closed the gates. The young king was probably pessimistic about his chances, but a group of Italian merchants who lived in Cirta convinced Adherbal to hold out—they told him they supported his claim and so would the Senate. So Adherbal sent a final letter to Rome begging for help while preparing to withstand a siege.34
The Senate’s second response wasn’t much better. They dispatched three junior senators who arrived in Numidia with instructions to order Adherbal and Jugurtha to resolve their quarrel peacefully. Jugurtha told these young senators his side of the story, spinning a tale that he had uncovered a nefarious plot by Adherbal and was only defending himself. But when the envoys requested they be allowed to enter Cirta and hear Adherbal’s side, Jugurtha refused. Flummoxed, the envoys returned to Rome to make their report. The Senate was not stupid, and given Jugurtha’s high-handed disdain for the envoys it was clear that he was most likely the aggressor in all this. But Jugurtha still had powerful friends in the Senate who killed any talk of sending legions to restore order.35
The Storm Before the Storm Page 11
