After this successful tour, Sulla returned to Rome, and in the summer of 91 welcomed a visit from old friend King Bocchus. Bocchus brought along some magnificent works of art, which he offered for display on the Capitoline Hill. One of the pieces depicted Bocchus handing Jugurtha to Sulla—the same scene depicted on Sulla’s seal. Furious at this insulting reminder that Sulla had really ended the Jugurthine War, Marius complained, and when rebuffed, led a party of friends up to tear the new installation out. The civil war between Marius and Sulla nearly broke out right then. But when the Social War erupted over the winter of 91–90, the two men set aside their differences. It would be the last time they fought on the same side.46
THE CAMPAIGNS OF 90 showed just how much more prepared the Italians were than the Romans. In the south, consul Lucius Caesar led an army thirty thousand strong into an ambush and was forced into a chaotic retreat. It wasn’t until he received reinforcements from Gaul and Numidia later in the year that he was able to recover. While his campaign stalled, a Cretan mercenary approached the consul and offered his services. The Cretan said, “If by my help you defeat your enemies, what reward will you give me?” Caesar replied, “I’ll make you a citizen of Rome.” The Cretan scoffed: “Citizenship is considered a nonsense amongst the Cretans. We aim at gain when we shoot our arrows… so I have come here in search of money. As for political rights, grant that to those who are fighting for it and who are buying this nonsense with their blood.” The consul laughed and said to the man, “Well, if we are successful, I will give a reward of a thousand drachmae.” A Cretan could be bought for a thousand drachmae, but the Italians demanded the Romans pay in blood.47
Though the war in the south did not start well, at least Lucius Caesar lived. In the north, his colleague Lupus would not be so lucky. Lupus seemed well positioned to succeed; he was Gaius Marius’s nephew and called his uncle to serve as a legate. But though he had an invaluable asset inside his command tent, Lupus did not use it. Marius advised his nephew to drill the new recruits before marching into battle, but Lupus was impatient and brushed off the recommendation. An entire detachment of his army was subsequently lost on patrol, and then when the Romans reached the Tolenus River, the Marsi ambushed Lupus’s main army. Marius was downriver when he noticed the bodies floating by and rushed up to help. He found his nephew dead and the army in shambles. Marius took charge of the situation, regrouped the survivors, and built a strong camp. For the first time in a more than a decade, Gaius Marius was in command of an army.48
But Marius had plenty of enemies in the Senate who did not want him back in command of an army. So they dispatched Quintus Caepio to share the command in the north. The son of the infamous Caepio who caused the catastrophe at Arausio, Caepio the Younger was himself a tempestuous and abrasive young man. He arrived in the north without any interest in listening to the advice of Gaius Marius. Like his father before him, this arrogant disdain led him to ruin.49
After Caepio joined the campaign, the Marsic leader Silo boldly approached the Roman camp and requested an audience. Silo told Caepio the war was hopeless and he was ready to defect back to the Romans. As a show of good faith he offered to personally lead Caepio to the location of the Marsic army. He also presented two babies he claimed were his children and bid them to Roman custody. Caepio and a small party followed Silo to reconnoiter the spot. But as soon as they were a suitable distance removed from the Roman camp, Silo’s men jumped Caepio in the darkness and killed him. The fate of the babies remains unknown.50
After assassinating Caepio, Silo tried to goad Marius into a fight just as the Teutones had taunted him at Aquae Sextiae. Silo said, “If you are a great general, Marius, come down and fight it out with us.” But as always, Marius was smart and did not take the bait. He said, “If you are a great general, force me to fight it out with you against my will.” Marius would later be accused of timidity in his old age, but from the arc of his career, we know Marius wouldn’t be caught dead fighting a battle not of his own making. Gaius Marius was never considered a brilliant general in the mold of Alexander, Hannibal, or Scipio Africanus, but he was so careful in his preparations and so steady in executing his plans that he won wars no one else could win. Near the end of the year he did it again—Marius scored Rome’s first victory against the Marsi.51
Meanwhile out in Asculum, where this had all started, the proconsul Sextus Caesar maneuvered his way toward the city. His principal legate was a rising novus homo who was attached to the command because his family estates were principally held in the region: Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. Rendered in English as Pompey Strabo, he was the father and precursor of Pompey the Great, though at the moment his son was just a teenager preparing for his first campaign. Eventually the legions began a siege of Asculum, but over the winter Sextus Caesar himself succumbed to a camp illness and died. His legate Pompey Strabo was suddenly in charge.52
All these defeats and deaths of commanders came as troubling news back in Rome. As the year 90 proceeded, “many were the slaughters, sieges, and sacking of towns on both sides, during this war, victory hovering sometimes here and sometimes there… giving no assurance to either party which of them she favored.” With casualties running high, the Senate passed a decree that all war dead would be buried where they fell rather than be brought back to Rome. They hoped to avoid scaring potential new conscripts. This was no time to discourage enlistment.53
HAVING NOW PROVOKED the Italians to war, the Senate suddenly woke up to the fact that they were about to lose control of the whole peninsula. The question of Italian citizenship had been floating around for fifty years, and was rejected every time it arose. But with the mortal necessity of making sure no other Italians went into revolt, the Romans finally relented. The Italians could have their citizenship.
After the consul Lucius Caesar returned to Rome to oversee the elections for the next year, he carried a bill through the Assembly: the Lex Julia. The Lex Julia offered full Roman citizenship to any Italian who had not yet taken up arms. The newly enrolled would enjoy the rights of full citizens, including protection from arbitrary abuse and the ability to vote in the Assembly. But even though it was pitched as full citizenship, the Senate could not resist a subtle catch. The entire population of Italy would be lumped into ten new tribes who would always vote last in the Assembly. With voting only proceeding until a majority of tribes agreed, the final tribes were rarely called on to vote. The Senate was willing to enfranchise the Italians, but not to let them take over the Republic. But that was for a later debate—for now the word spread that the Romans had caved and it was civitas for everyone.54
After Lucius Caesar promulgated the Lex Julia, he presided over the consular elections for 89 that saw Pompey Strabo elected. A severe and ambitious novus homo, Strabo was not particularly liked by his colleagues, but his military talent was undeniable. Strabo was cut from the same mold as Marius, an ambitious novus homo provincial who was raised to be a soldier, and disdained the pampered old men of the Senate. Strabo also had ancestral ties to Picenum, which would allow him to use his personal influence to end the war. But before he left, Strabo carried a bill through the Assembly that unilaterally conferred Latin Rights on all communities in Cisalpine Gaul north of the Po River. There had been heavy Italian migration to the region after the Cimbrian Wars, but most of the population lacked any formal rights at all. Not only would the Lex Pompeia prevent the war from spreading north, it gave Strabo himself a wide base of support to draw on, not only to prosecute the war against Asculum, but also to be ready for whatever happened next.55
Once Strabo returned to Asculum, a rising tribune named Gnaeus Papirius Carbo helped pass a further law called the Lex Plautia Papiria. Young Carbo was the son of the Carbo hounded to suicide by Antonius in 111, and the nephew of the Carbo hounded to suicide by Crassus in 119. It is not surprising that young Carbo bore a special hatred for such leisurely optimate scum. Just getting started in politics, Carbo passed the Lex Plautia Papiria, a law extending citizenship ev
en to Italian communities still under arms. The law said that “if any men had been enrolled as citizens of the confederate cities, and if, at the time that the law was passed, they had a residence in Italy, and if within sixty days they had made a return of themselves to the praetor,” then they would receive full citizenship. The Lex Julia and Lex Plautia Papiria combined to do the trick and prevent the Italian rebellion from spreading—but that did not mean there were not still plenty of Italian rebels.56
THOUGH 89 WENT better than 90 for the Romans, the year still began with another dead consul. Lucius Porcius Cato * arrived to take over the troops under Marius in early 89, and like Lupus and Caepio was dismissive of the old man. Cato forced Marius to resign his legateship by claiming Marius was in poor health. But Cato promptly led his men in disastrous attack on a Marsic camp and was swiftly killed in the fighting.57
But elsewhere things went better. A nascent rebellion in Umbria and Etruria fizzled out between the promise of citizenship and a sharp campaign from the new consul Pompey Strabo—aided now by both his teenage son Pompey and a young staff officer named Marcus Tullius Cicero. Strabo then returned to Asculum and continued the siege. The Italians mustered an army numbering in the tens of thousands to dislodge Strabo, but Strabo would not be dislodged. After the last relief effort failed, despair in the city led the Italian commander in charge to lose faith in his countrymen. He threw himself a great banquet and at the end drank a goblet full of wine and poison.58
Its capacity to resist exhausted, Asculum finally surrendered in November 89. Strabo was not forgiving in victory. When he entered the city he had “all the leading men beaten with rods and beheaded. He sold the slaves and all the booty at auction and ordered the remaining people to depart, free indeed, but stripped and destitute.” But though the sack of Asculum was expected to raise funds for the wider war, Strabo kept control of most and embezzled the rest, earning him the enmity of all sides. Everyone was soon calling Strabo the “Butcher of Asculum.”59
The remaining rebels had counted on a quick strike to bring the Romans to their knees, but instead now faced a prolonged war. The offer of citizenship was not coming after a clear defeat—which left many Italian leaders suspicious of Roman intentions. But with the legions pressing on all sides, the Italian government decamped Italia and moved deep into Samnite territory, a region of implacable ancestral hostility to Rome. They still had plenty of men and strategic strong points, but the rebellious crescent was collapsing. Of the remaining leaders, the old Marsic general Silo was put in overall command of what was left of the Italian armies. They still had fifty thousand men under arms but could expect no further help with the promise of enfranchisement now spreading across Italy.60
Down in the south, Sulla finally emerged with an independent command. He was ordered to march down the coast through Campania to return wayward towns to the fold. Sulla ended up outside the gates of insurgent Pompeii * and laid a siege. An Italian army rushed to the aid of Pompeii and defeated Sulla in their first encounter. But Sulla regrouped and sent the Italians running to the safety of nearby Nola. For his heroics during this campaign, Sulla’s men awarded him the prestigious grass crown for saving a legion in battle. Now brimming with confidence, Sulla led his forces back to Pompeii and captured it. Then he turned and plunged into the territory of the Hirpini. After using a massive bonfire to torch the principal city of Aeclanum, the rest of the Hirpini surrendered and Sulla moved into Samnium, where he took the city of Bovanium. It was a run of success that made Sulla hugely popular in Rome just in time for the consular elections.61
BY THE END of 89, the Social War was winding down, but the two years of conflict had devastated the population of Italy. Though ancient numbers are almost always inflated, allegedly three hundred thousand people died in the conflict, Romans and Italians being indistinguishable after funeral pyres turned their bodies to ash.62
Economically, the war was a disaster and crippled Italian productivity even more than the invasion of Hannibal. The lands of rich and poor alike were ruined by either plunder, neglect, or intentional destruction. Senators were cut off from their Italian estates—which would have been seized and ransacked by insurrectionary Italians. Every corner of Italy reported grain shortages and famine by the spring of 88, a famine compounded by the plebs urbana in Rome who, “like an insatiable stomach that consumes everything and yet remains always hungry… more wretched than all other cities that she was making wretched, left nothing untouched and yet had nothing.”63
The chaos of the Social War also triggered a monetary crisis. As the war progressed counterfeit coins flooded the market and led families to hoard coins they knew to be good, steadily reducing the amount of good money in circulation. With the monetary market tightening and their interests in Asia threatened, the publicani bankers called in debts. But creditors were unable to meet their debts because their estates had been ruined in the war. Even the Republic itself was short of cash and forced to auction off land known as the “treasures of Numa,” which had been set aside to fund the high priesthoods.64
In the midst of this crisis, a praetor named Asellio sought to ease the burden of debt for the dispossessed upper classes. He allowed debtors to sue creditors, and in the flurry of lawsuits, ruined debtors started securing exemptions from repayment. The publicani bankers, now facing ruin themselves, blamed Asellio for their misfortunes. One day, while he was offering a sacrifice in the Forum, a small gang started throwing rocks at him. Asellio fled into a nearby tavern but was cornered. An assassin slit his throat. Appian said of the incident: “Thus was Asellio, while serving as praetor, and pouring out libation, and wearing the sacred gilded vestments customary in such ceremonies… slain in the midst of the sacrifice.” Nothing was sacred anymore.65
AS ACTIVE HOSTILITIES became limited to a few remaining rebel strongholds, the rest of Italy began to see what the Lex Julia meant in practice. A censorship coincidentally arrived in 89 but there had not been enough time to think through the details of who would be enrolled and who would not. This was a huge decision, as the number of incoming Italians would potentially double the citizen population. If the Italian population was distributed evenly into the thirty-five tribes they would swamp Roman voices in the Assembly. The Senate already kept the plebs urbana and all freedmen buried in the four urban tribes, with the rural tribes easily dominated by rich citizens who could afford to travel to Rome for elections. It wouldn’t take much for the Italians to seize control of the Assembly if only a few motivated new citizens endured the expense of travel to Rome to participate in politics. So the censors “accidentally” broke a religious rite necessary to ratify the census. It had to be tossed out.66
The last remaining rebel armies remained intractably armed in Apulia and Samnium. With the deadline to register as a citizen long since passed, these remaining rebels could not expect the same generosity their cousins were now promised. And some among them like Silo had likely concluded that he was never going back to the Romans. The last remnants of Italia had fled south to Samnium, where they regrouped around Silo. With about thirty thousand men still under arms, Silo raised twenty thousand more. Far from preparing for a last stand, Silo reinforced Nola and recaptured Bovanium, entering the city in grand triumph to reassert Italian dignity. He still believed he could win.67
The Roman forces in the region were now led by Metellus Pius. The two armies finally ran into each other in Apulia in early 88, and though the ensuing battle killed only six thousand men, Silo was among them. After his death, a few Samnites and Lucanians would continue to resist, but the death of Silo marks the official end of the Social War. Down in Apulia the last remnants of the resistance cast about for aid to carry on their cause, and at least one faction looked to the aggressive power of King Mithridates of Pontus. But by then Mithridates of Pontus was already locked in his own mortal struggle with Rome.68
* It was on this visit that Silo infamously hung four-year-old Cato the Younger out the window in an attempt to convince litt
le Cato of the need for Italian citizenship. Cato the Toddler demurred. See Plut. Cato Min. 2.
* Uncle of THE Julius Caesar.
* Elder cousin of THE Julius Caesar.
* Uncle of Cato the Younger.
* Yes, THAT Pompeii.
CHAPTER 10
THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE
Envoys met him on the road and asked him why he was marching with armed forces against his country. “To deliver her from tyrants,” he replied.
APPIAN1
THE KINGDOM OF PONTUS STRETCHED ACROSS WHAT IS today the Black Sea coast of Turkey. In the 500s BC the Greeks had planted a ring of colonies around the Black Sea that were later absorbed into the Hellenic kingdoms that emerged after the death of Alexander the Great. The first King Mithridates of Pontus hailed from the mountainous interior of Anatolia, but in the 280s he expanded his domains north to the shores of the Black Sea. His successors continued this expansion, culminating with the capture of the Greek city of Sinope in 183. Hemmed in by east-west-running mountains, the new Kingdom of Pontus occupied the fertile and mineral-rich strip of land between the mountains to the south and the coast to the north. Mixing Greek and Persian elements, the Pontic kings took advantage of the soil, metal, and trade connections they now controlled. But in the mid-second century, Pontus remained a minor eastern kingdom in a world full of minor eastern kingdoms.2
The Storm Before the Storm Page 21
