The Storm Before the Storm

by Michael Duncan

  The threat of Glaucia winning a consulship was obvious to all. If he combined consular power with Saturninus’s control of the Assembly, there was no telling what damage they could cause together. Luckily there was a solution. As a sitting praetor, Glaucia’s candidacy was tecÚically illegal, and as consul Marius had the right to disqualify him from the election. Continuing his pullback from his old allies, Marius declared Glaucia’s candidacy invalid. Marius’s move against Glaucia was rich in irony, as he himself had blown through all existing prohibitions during his streak of consulships. But as befitted the age, Glaucia ignored the disqualification and continued to canvass for votes, precipitating a crisis in Rome not seen since the days of the Gracchi.31

  When election day came, the voters filed through the stalls and dropped their ballots in the urns. As expected, the herald soon announced that Marcus Antonius had secured election to one of the consulships. Voting then continued to fill the second spot. The moment it looked like Memmius was going to win, Saturninus and Glaucia directed a gang of supporters to crash down on the stalls, smash the voting urns, and break up the election. In the ensuing riot, the unfortunate Memmius was cornered on the rostra and beaten to death with an “unshapely bludgeon.” After a life spent attacking the optimates, Memmius was finally done in by the populare he had always courted. The revolution was devouring her children.32

  With the election now thrown into bloody confusion, Marius called the Senate to an emergency session. After a quick debate, the Senate resolved to follow the precedent established a generation earlier. They instructed Marius to do what was necessary to preserve the state. This was the same senatus consultum ultimum they had issued to Opimius during the showdown with Gaius Gracchus. But this latest senatus consultum ultimum came with a troubling new twist. When Opimius marched on the Aventine in 121, neither Gaius Gracchus nor Fulvius Flaccus held a magistracy—they were private citizens being punished by a sovereign consul. But in 100, Saturninus was a sacrosanct tribune and Glaucia a praetor. Could they be dealt with as brutally as the Gracchans?33

  With Rome in chaos and the rule of law already breaking down, Marius did not much quibble over the legality of his orders. Calling on a mix of volunteers from the plebs urbana and his own veterans, Marius prepared to restore order by any means necessary. Now under serious attack, Saturninus, Glaucia, Saufeius, and the faux son of Tiberius Gracchus led a party of armed followers up the Capitoline Hill and occupied the principal citadel of Rome. But Marius did not follow Opimius’s reckless example. Instead, he deployed the same professional competence that had always served him so well. He systematically cut all the water pipes servicing the Capitoline and then told the renegades that they were surrounded, had no hope of escape, and now faced slow death by dehydration. He waited as the heat of the day did its work, and then promised to protect the rebels if they would surrender.34

  Saufeius apparently proposed rejecting the offer and burning down the capital and all its sacred temples. But Saturninus and Glaucia refused this last desperate act of destruction. They surrendered. Marius afforded the praetor Glaucia the dignity of being placed under house arrest, but led Saturninus and the rest of his gang into the Senate house and locked them up until he could figure out how best to process them. But the plebs urbana answered the question for him. Whether with Marius’s tacit approval or without (the former far more likely), a mob broke into the Senate house and dispensed exactly the kind of justice Saturninus himself had built a career on. Using roof tiles, the mob stoned the unarmed prisoners to death. Saturninus soon lay dead on the floor of the Senate. Glaucia didn’t fare much better. He was dragged from his home and murdered in the street. So, just like their more noble forbears, the Gracchi, the latest group of populare agitators ended as a bloody pile of bodies being pushed into the Tiber River.35

  WITH THE RADICALS safely dumped in the Tiber, the Senate set about picking up the pieces. They knew they could not repeal every piece of legislation that had been voted through during the populare swing of 104 to 100. The land and colonies for Marius’s veterans was left in place. The election of priests would remain, as would the jury pool drawing from the Equestrian class only. But other legislation—including probably the expanded grain dole—was never implemented.

  The fall of the populares also meant that the men they had exiled were now allowed to return. Chief among the exiles was Metellus Numidicus. As soon as Saturninus was dead, Metellus’s son began a tireless campaign to have his father recalled to Rome; so tireless were his efforts that he soon earned the cognomen “Pius” for his filial devotion. But though Saturninus and Glaucia were dead, Metellus still had enemies. One of the tribunes in 99 had been expelled from the Senate by Metellus and nursed a grudge. This tribune spent his entire year in office vetoing any attempt to bring Metellus back. But once his term expired, the Assembly voted to recall Metellus from exile. The tribune who had opposed the Metellans was made to pay a heavy price for his obstruction. After leaving office, he was jumped by an armed gang and murdered. Even though the storm had passed, a complete return to normalcy was out of the question.36

  Just as Metellus Numidicus returned, Marius himself decided it would be prudent to absent himself from Rome for a while. As the glow of his military victories faded, his fellow Romans were left with a general unease about the methods and tactics he had used to control events at home. So Marius found a pretext to travel east in the summer of 98 and made a long circuit of the Aegean. He returned to Rome a year later, bought a house near the Forum and a villa in the country. Between these two homes, Marius settled into retirement. Like many old war horses, Marius was uncomfortable being put out to pasture and soon found himself burning to get back in the game: “As excellent a general as he was, he was an evil influence in time of peace, a man of unbounded ambition, insatiable, without self-control, and always an element of unrest.” This insatiable craving for more glory led to Marius’s ruin, and in the years to come he would put “the ugliest possible crown upon a most illustrious career in field and Forum… driven by the blasts of passion, ill-timed ambition, and insatiable greed upon the shore of a most cruel and savage old age.” 37

  CHAPTER 9

  ITALIA

  Though we call this war a war against allies in order to lessen the odium of it, if we are to tell the truth it was a war against citizens.

  FLORUS1

  QUINTUS POPPAEDIUS SILO HAILED FROM THE MARSI tribe of central Italy. Long respected for their martial valor, it was said that no Roman consul had ever celebrated a triumph over the Marsi, or without the Marsi. Silo himself was a veteran of the legions, almost certainly fighting in the armies of Gaius Marius against the Cimbri. A leader of wealth and standing at home, Silo also had plenty of friends in Rome and spent a great deal of time in the city. But though Silo was thoroughly integrated into the Roman system and had shed blood defending the Republic, he was still not tecÚically an equal citizen—a fact that was becoming intolerable.2

  In the summer of 91 BC, Silo paid a call to his old friend Marcus Livius Drusus, the son of the man who had so thoroughly stymied Gaius Gracchus in 122. Drusus the Younger was now tribune and furiously stirring up a political storm of his own. Silo traveled to Rome to implore Drusus to rethink some of his proposals. Drusus planned to revive the old Gracchan-style land commission, which threatened Italian communities with arbitrary confiscation of property. Silo said the Italians would only accept land redistribution if a bill finally delivering equal citizenship came with it. * Drusus agreed that the time had come to finally settle the matter once and for all. He promised to take the Italian citizenship bill to the Assembly.3

  In return for this promise, Silo pledged to support Drusus without reservation. He said, “By Capitoline Jupiter, Vesta of Rome, Mars the patron of the city, Sol the origin of all the people, Terra the benefactress of animals and plants; by the demigods who founded Rome, and the heroes who have contributed to the increase of its power, I swear that the friend or the enemy of Drusus will also be mi
ne; I will not spare my life or my children or my parents, if the interests of Drusus and those who are bound by the same oath require it. If, by the law of Drusus, I become a citizen, I will regard Rome as my homeland, and Drusus as my greatest benefactor. I will communicate this oath to the largest possible number of my fellow citizens. If I keep my oath, may I obtain every blessing; and the opposite, if I violate my oath.” This was not an idle promise. In less than a year, Quintus Poppaedius Silo would be leading the Italians to armed insurrection.4

  UNTIL THE AGE of the Gracchi, the Italian Allies had prized their autonomy inside Rome’s Italian confederation. The complaints they lodged in the Senate usually had to do with the fact that too many of their citizens were migrating to Rome—often to avoid being conscripted into the legions. Meanwhile, the Senate and People of Rome were long concerned that waves of migrants would disrupt their own collective stranglehold on power. Elites in both Rome and the Italian cities often worked together to force the migrants to return to their original homes.5

  But there was one persistent complaint lodged by both rich and poor Italians alike: arbitrary abuse at the hands of Roman magistrates. Gaius Gracchus highlighted a case in which slaves carried a Roman magistrate in a litter. A local Italian peasant “asked in jest if they were carrying a corpse.” The insulted magistrate ordered the peasant beaten to death. In another case, the wife of a magistrate was angry some public baths had not been cleared for her solitary use. As punishment, “a stake was planted in the forum and… the most illustrious man of his city, was led to it. His clothing was stripped and he was beaten with rods.” The longstanding protection from arbitrary arrest, flogging, and execution enjoyed by even the poorest Roman citizen did not apply to the Italians. It was an indignity felt acutely by all classes.6

  After 146, the benefits of being an independent Ally started to pale in comparison to the benefits of being a citizen of Rome. The Italians voiced new complaints about the lack of equality in the late 130s, as the Gracchan land commission set to work divvying up ager publicus. The various Italian cities had to rely on the generous patronage of Scipio Aemilianus to protect them from the land commissioners. In 125, Fulvius Flaccus presented a bold solution to the problem: citizenship in exchange for land. This was a deal many Italians were ready to take—especially among the wealthy landowners who would be the ones able to take advantage of the benefits of citizenship. These wealthy Italians would have been happy to give up a few iugera of land in exchange for full access to Rome’s legal and political system.7

  After the failure of Flaccus’s controversial bill triggered the revolt of Fregellae, the Senate took the opportunity to introduce a practical compromise. Adept at the game of divide and conquer, the Romans introduced a new policy of civitas per magistratum. Under this new arrangement, Italians holding Latin Rights who were elected to local magistracies were individually awarded Roman citizenship. The elites loved the new arrangement and after one last push by Gaius Gracchus to enfranchise all the Italians in 122, the issue went dormant for a generation.8

  Gaius Marius reintroduced the Italian question during the Cimbrian Wars. Marius was long a champion of the Italian cause. He had fought alongside them his whole life. He himself hailed from a provincial Italian city. When the Italians complained about harassment by the tax farmers, Marius pushed the Senate to stop Italian enslavement. Out on campaign, Marius routinely exercised his power as consul to reward exemplary Italian soldiers with citizenship. Coming from all classes, these enfranchised soldiers returned to their home cities with extra rights and privileges. As they remingled with friends and family who did not enjoy the same rights, the seeds of discord took root.9

  The rest of the Italians were encouraged to think that broader rights might be on the way when the census of 97 came around. With the right of civitas per magistratum floating around, many affluent Italians residing in Rome passed themselves off as former magistrates and enrolled as citizens. The Marian censors were intentionally lax with checking credentials, and when the census was complete, many in the Senate were suspicious and wanted to take another look at it. As was now the established pattern, the Romans always dangled the possibility of citizenship only to snatch it away.10

  In 95, the great orator Lucius Licinius Crassus won the consulship. Upon taking office, he proposed forming a commission to clean up the citizenship rolls. In true optimate fashion the inquiry was premised on the unobjectionable argument that citizens should be counted in the census and noncitizens should not. This made perfect sense to the citizens of Rome who voted in favor of the inquiry. But as a necessary prelude to the work, Crassus and his consular colleague Mucius Scaevola carried a further bill expelling all Italians from the city. This recurring expedient was usually only deployed around elections, but this time it was meant to make sure only true Roman citizens were counted as Roman citizens.11

  All of this seemed perfectly reasonable to the Romans, but it put in motion the wheels of the Social War. The group hardest hit by the purge and expulsion were men of Equestrian rank—men with financial means and business connections in Rome who nonetheless had not yet found their own path to citizenship. It would be this class of disgruntled Equestrians who would be the iron backbone of Italian rebellion. They returned home to their native cities, mingled with the veterans of the northern wars, and began to plot revolution.12

  For the Senate, however, this was not simply a matter of keeping clean books. Maintaining a tight lock on citizenship meant keeping a tight lock on the Assembly. Above all, they feared that the Roman leader who finally delivered citizenship to the Italians would have client rolls that dwarfed his rivals, destabilizing the political balance in the Senate. This was the same threat once posed by the Gracchan land commission. The shortsighted obsession with the petty dynamic of electoral politics led to the most unnecessary war in Roman history.

  BECAUSE HISTORY HAS a sense of humor, a completely unrelated conflict in Asia triggered the final showdown over Italian citizenship. The province of Asia had been at the forefront of Roman politics in the 130s and 120s and then, much like the Italian question, had gone dormant. After Asia was incorporated into the empire, Rome’s attention diverted to Africa and Gaul for the next twenty years. Asia had been left to just hum along. And there was no reason not to let it hum: it was generating the massive profits funding those wars in Africa and Gaul. Cicero later said, “Asia is so rich and so productive… it is greatly superior to all other countries.” Taxes that had once been owed to King Attalus now formed a steady stream of wealth that poured directly into the Temple of Saturn.13

  But with just a handful of staff running the provincial government, the business of handling the Asian taxes fell into the unsupervised hands of the publicani, who routinely extorted more money than was owed. Since the men who owned the publicani companies sat in the jury pool of the Extortion Court, there was no one to complain to. Policing themselves, the publicani operated with impunity.

  But now that peace had returned to the Republic, the Senate wanted to go back to running their empire rather than just saving it from ruin. After helping clean up the citizenship rolls in 95, Mucius Scaevola led an old-style senatorial embassy to Asia to investigate how the province was running and make any appropriate reforms. It had been twenty-five years since anyone had really checked to see how things were going. Accompanying Scaevola was another ex-consul, Publius Rutilius Rufus, the consul for 105 who had introduced new training teÚniques for the soldiers. Considered the preeminent stoic intellectual of his generation, Rutilius was an optimate of the first order and above reproach.14

  When this embassy arrived, it turned out things were not going well at all. Everyone in Asia complained about publicani abuse, and the benevolent Scaevola doled out clemency left and right: “Whenever any who had been oppressed by those tax-gatherers appealed to him, he commissioned upright judges, by whom he condemned them in every case, and forced them to pay the penalty imposed upon them to the persons they had injured.” Scaevola s
tayed in the province about nine months arranging a revision of the provincial tax system. He then returned to Rome, leaving Rutilius in charge of settling the details. The reforms imposed in Asia were broadly popular, and it looked like Scaevola and Rutilius had settled Roman administration in Asia for a generation.15

  Back in Rome, the publicani companies were not happy about any of this. When Rutilius returned in 92, he was indicted in the Extortion Court. The charges were ludicrous. Rutilius was a model of stoic probity and would later be cited by Cicero as the perfect model of a Roman administrator. In the face of this farce, Rutilius refused to even offer a defense so as not to acknowledge its legitimacy. He refused requests by both Crassus and Antonius to let them defend him. With the angry publicani controlling the jury, the outcome was in little doubt. Convicted of extortion, Rutilius thumbed his nose on the way out the door. He settled in the Asian city of Smyrna, to sit among the people who allegedly hated him, but who actually loved him.16

  Optimates in the Senate like Scaurus, Crassus, and Scaevola were scandalized by all this. Their attempt to rein in the publicani had backfired and now one of the best men in Rome had been banished. The optimates concluded that taking back control of the Extortion Court was the only sure guard against future persecutions. This looming showdown over the courts would spiral out of control and make 91 another year marked by political violence—marks coming with predictable regularity. First 133, then 121, then 100, and now 91. Violence had become a routine part of the cycles of Republican politics.17