Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (33 page)

Page 158

the arts, was dear to the common people. The differences between the two soon led to bloodshed, because Marius wanted the command in a war against Mithridates, king of Pontus in Asia Minor, while the Senate had voted that Sulla, consul of that year (88), should receive the command.

Mithridates had taken advantage of Rome's involvement in the Italian Wars by conquering much of Asia Minor from the Romans and was busy now with the islands in the Aegean Sea. At the same time, one of his sons was reducing Thrace and Macedonia. From his base in Athens he was also inciting revolt in Greece; some Greeks and peoples in Asia Minor looked to him for liberation from Roman oppression. Worst, he had arranged a massacre of all Italians and Romans living in Asia Minor; at least eighty thousand Romans and Italians were killed on the appointed day.

To gain the much desired command against Mithridates, Marius sought and received help from the tribune Sulpicius. Sulpicius had no scruples about using force to get his legislation passed; he maintained a private army of three thousand swordsmen and used a gang of young knights, whom he called the Anti-Senate, to intimidate the assemblies. His Anti-Senate forced one assembly to change the command against Mithridates from Sulla to Marius, and in the ensuing riot the son of the consul Pompeius and many enemies of Marius were killed; Sulla, his family, and his friends were forced to flee for safety.

Sulpicius had sent his men to Campania, where the army was located, to bring it to Marius in Rome, but Sulla arrived first and brought the army back to Rome. This was the first time that Roman soldiers invaded Rome. Marius did not have time to organize effective opposition, but Sulla and his soldiers did have to engage in a few hours of street fighting to take the city. During the fighting, people on rooftops were throwing ceiling tiles down on Sulla and his troops below; Sulla ordered his soldiers to bum down the buildings, and even threw the first torch himself. Marius fled to Africa, where he started collecting a force of his veteran soldiers to fight against Sulla.

Sulla now held power in Rome. He had the Senate set a price on the heads of Sulpicius and Marius, and had Sulpicius hunted down and killed. One story says that one of Sulpicius' slaves killed his

Page 159

master; Sulla rewarded the slave with his freedom, and then had him thrown from the Tarpeian Rock for killing his master. Sulla made some changes in the Roman constitution: the Popular Assembly could no longer legislate, and legislation from the Comitia Centuriata would need the Senate's approval. Then he went east, to fight Mithridates.

Marius and Cinna Take Over Rome

During Sulla's absence from Rome, Marius returned to Rome with his veterans, where he joined the new consul, Cinna. They took over Rome and had a reign of terror in which they murdered many leading members of the aristocratic party as well as Sulla's supporters and family. Metella, Sulla's wife, fled with their children to Sulla (who was besieging Athens, which supported Mithridates) and brought him the news that their house in Rome and their villas had been burned down. Marius soon died, having drunk himself to death.

Sulla, meanwhile, was working to deprive Mithridates of his base in Greece. To do this he had to conquer Athens, which was obstinate in its support of Mithridates; Sulla captured Athens in 86
B.C
. and let his soldiers loot and kill in Athens as they wished, for during the siege the Athenian tyrant Aristion had shouted obscene jokes about Metella to him, complete with gestures. Sulla then joined forces with the governor of Macedonia, and together they defeated Mithridates' troops in Greece in two separate battles. Sulla and Mithridates met in the Troad, in the northwest corner of Asia Minor, and concluded a treaty, which was lenient to the Asian king. Sulla's soldiers were angry that Mithridates, after organizing the massacre of many thousands of Italians, should even retain his kingdom, but Sulla was too preoccupied with problems in Rome to spend much time bickering with Mithridates.

Sulla Retakes Rome

While Sulla was in Greece and the East, his enemies in Rome had solidified their opposition to him, so that Sulla had to fight to return to Italy in 83
B.C
. In this he was helped by his lieutenants

Page 160

Crassus and Pompey. Then only twenty-three years old, Pompey on his own initiative had raised a force of more than six thousand armed men and joined forces with Sulla. Sulla and his allies defeated the consul Norbanus and Marius' son in battle. The opposition that Sulla faced from the consul Scipio was easily removed when Scipio's troops deserted him for Sulla. Sulla again defeated the younger Marius, who committed suicide; he then almost lost his last battle outside of Rome, at the Colline Gate. Crassus saved the battle for Sulla, who had had to take refuge in his camp.

Having gained control over Rome, Sulla killed his enemies with a vengeance that was even more bloodthirsty than that of Marius; his victims were mostly
equites
and
populates
. When someone complained to him that people did not like living in uncertainty over whether or not executioners would be coming after them, Sulla responded by drawing up proscription lists: A reward of two talents was given to the person bringing Sulla the head of a person whose name was on the list. Sulla's victims in the proscriptions are estimated to have numbered around six thousand.

Sulla, although fierce in his revenge, nonetheless saw that Roman government needed to be reformed. He had himself appointed ''dictator for the sake of reestablishing the republic," with immunity for his past acts and the power of life and death over others. Then he began to reform the republic. To the Senate, which needed new men after all the recent executions and wars, and whose quality of leadership had, to say the least, stagnated, Sulla added three hundred new members, all from the equestrian class; he also hoped that the mix of the two orders, patricians and equestrians, would lessen future conflict between them. He probably also had in mind the unification of Italy, for many of the new members were non-Roman Italians. Another reform put certain restrictions in the
cursus honorum
: The minimum age for consuls was now forty-two; for praetors, thirty-nine; and for quaestors, thirty. He further passed the requirement that a man must wait ten years between his first and second consulship; the same applied to tribunes. Other changes voided the tribunes' unlimited ability to legislate in the Popular Assembly and put restrictions on the tribunate: A man becoming tribune was now

Page 161

barred from further political office. He restored the law courts to senatorial control. After making those reforms and others, L. Cornelius Sulla Felix (Lucky) retired in 79
B.C
., after having been dictator for three years. He died the next year.

Lepidus and Sertorius

Sulla's reforms and the restored senatorial rule were immediately challenged in the year after his retirement. The two consuls elected for 78 were Catulus, who was pro-Sulla and pro-Senate, and Lepidus (father of the future triumvir), who was opposed to Sulla and the Senate. Through their year in office, the two argued so frequently and vehementlyLepidus wanted to repeal Sulla's reforms, and Catulus did notthat the Senate compelled the two to swear that they would not resort to violence against each other.

Once Lepidus learned what province he would govern as a proconsul, he left Rome before supervising elections for the next year. He enlisted soldiers to take to the province he was to govern, but never actually left Italy; instead, he stayed in northern Italy with his soldiers. The Senate eventually called him back to Rome to oversee the elections; Lepidus returned, but he came leading his army against Rome and demanding a second consulship for himself and the restoration of the tribune's powers.

The Senate passed the
ultimum consultum
and called upon Pompey for extra help. Catulus defeated Lepidus outside Rome, while in Mutina Pompey defeated and (despite having given a promise of safety) killed Brutus, Lepidus' lieutenant (and father of Julius Caesar's murderer). Lepidus soon died, and his soldiers fled to Spain.

The challenge that Lepidus posed to senatorial authority in Rome was small, because he was inexperienced. All too soon the Senate learned what problems a brilliant opponent could cause. Their teacher was named Sertorius.

Sertorius, like Lepidus, was opposed to Sulla and oligarchic government. He had given his support to Cinna and Marius, but disagreed with them over the murders of their political enemies. When Sulla returned to Italy after conquering Mithridates, and

Page 162

was winning his battles against his Roman enemies, Sertorius went to Spain as governor, to hold out against Sulla and his supporters.

In Spain Sertorius found the local people bitterly resentful of Roman rule. He managed to make himself popular among the Spanish by ruling fairly and reducing taxes. Nonetheless, after becoming dictator, Sulla sent one of his supporters to govern Spain in Sertorius' place. Sertorius and the replacement governor fought a battle for control over Spain; Sertorius lost, and fled. After spending some time with pirates in Africa, he was invited by the natives of Lusitania (modern Portugal) to command their army. It did not take him long to win the hearts and minds of the people with his fair dealing and his magical fawn.

It happened that a hunter had scared a doe, which had just given birth to a milk-white fawn. The doe escaped from the hunter, but left the fawn alive for the hunter to capture. The hunter gave the fawn to Sertorius; soon he had the fawn so well trained and accustomed to him that it would follow him, show no fear of people and crowdseven in the middle of the campand come when he called. Sertorius convinced the local people that the fawn was a gift from the goddess Diana and that it told him secrets. For example, he would receive secret scouting reports and tell the people that the fawn had told him; with that divinely given information, he would then conquer the enemy. Or he would secretly hear of a victory by one of his lieutenants; he would then crown the fawn with garlands and tell the people that good news was on the waynews that eventually arrived. The people believed he was some kind of god and followed his every command.

Sertorius did not disappoint the people: His brilliant strategies and use of guerrilla warfare led him and his small army of fewer than ten thousand to win battles against overwhelming odds. He defeated many Roman commanders and inflicted many defeats on Metellus (son of the Metellus who had fought against Jugurtha), the latest Roman to be sent against him. Desperate, the Senate ordered Pompey (who, wanting another command, hesitated to disband his army after defeating Brutus) to go help Metellus against Sertorius.

About the same time that Pompey arrived in Spain to help Metellus, the remnants of Lepidus' army, twenty thousand soldiers

Page 163

led by one Perperna, arrived too and joined Sertorius' side; Sertorius now had a large army, and all the Spanish tribes from the Ebro River to the Pyrenees Mountains were on his side.

Sertorius greeted Pompey by inflicting a humiliating defeat. Pompey was supposed to protect an allied town, which Sertorius was besieging; Sertorius tricked Pompey, so that Pompey could neither attack Sertorius nor help the allied townhe could only watch as Sertorius besieged the town, let the inhabitants escape alive, and then burned down the town. In another battle, Pompey's forces were defeated, and Pompey himself narrowly escaped being captured by leaving his horsewith its golden ornaments and expensive equipmentto the enemy. The morning after another battle, as Pompey was wounded and his forces scattered, Sertorius readied his forces for the final blow to Pompey when he learned that Metellus had arrived to help Pompey. "If that old woman [Metellus] had not been there, I would have spanked that child [Pompey] before sending him off to Rome!" said Sertorius (Plutarch,
Sertorius
XIX).

Pompey, desperate, sent a letter to the Senate, demanding more money and soldiers; otherwise, he wrote, he would leave Spain. Rumors in Rome said that Sertorius would arrive in Italy before Pompey did. Metellus, also desperate, offered a reward of a hundred talents of silver and twenty thousand
iugera
(twelve thousand acres) of land to the person who killed Sertorius. Sertorius had even been invited by Mithridates to enter into an alliance against Rome, yet Sertorius did not like the provision that if victorious, Mithridates would gain the Roman province of Asia; Sertorius thought that would be dishonorable to himself.

Despite his success, Sertorius too was in trouble. His fawn disappeared, and he lost a few skirmishes; his hold on the people was slipping, even after the fawn had returned. When Pompey's reinforcementstwo legions and a large sum of moneyarrived from Rome, the morale of the Spanish plummeted. They had been fighting Rome for more than a century. Rome's resources seemed infinite. As their morale collapsed, Sertorius became more imperious, which caused more resentment among his followers. His very successes im military and political matters filled some of his officers with envy.

Other books

Domesticated by Jettie Woodruff

FUEL (DirtSlap Series Book 1) by Ashlynn Pearce

Bexley-Smythe Quintet 01 - Flight of Fancy by Catherine Gayle

Phantom by Jo Nesbø

What's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success by Jo Boaler

The Nautical Chart by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) by Angela Pepper

Secrets of a Perfect Night by Stephanie Laurens, Victoria Alexander, Rachel Gibson

The Indian Ring by Don Bendell

Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman