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 mine; 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 stayed 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
THE MAN AT the center of the latest crisis was Marcus Livius Drusus. Not unlike the Gracchi, Drusus was an ambitious young noble on the make. He was one of the most talented orators of a new generation that had grown up on the speeches of Crassus and Antonius. He carried himself with the arrogant confidence of a young man who expected the world to come to him. He loved being the center of attention, and when an architect once boasted that he could build a wonderfully secluded house that provided security and discretion, Drusus said, “If you possess the skill you must build my house in such a way that whatever I do shall be seen by all.”18
Drusus did not traffic in populare circles—he was a scion of the optimate and raised to be a talented, if arrogant, future leader of the nobility. His father, Drusus the Elder, had fully ingratiated himself with the optimates for his attacks on Gaius Gracchus, and later shared a censorship with Scaurus in 109. It is not surprising that Scaurus tapped the son of his old colleague to carry a package of bills to the Assembly to restore judicial power to the Senate.19
Knowing that transferring the jury pool back to the Senate would trigger Equestrian resistance, Drusus and the optimates planned to build the same coalition pioneered by Gaius Gracchus, except use its power this time to build the Senate up rather than tear it down. First, Drusus proposed enlarging the Senate from three hundred to six hundred men. That way even if “the Senate” controlled the courts, it would only be after it was augmented by three hundred prominent Equestrians. This was a provocative proposal, as existing senators might not like to see their prestige watered down—nor be happy about the arrival of uncouth commoners. But the senatorial prohibition on engaging in commerce meant if a potential new senator was a merchant, he would have to either give up his trade or decline admission. Either way, the new senators would all be landed gentry like the old senators, with only the men of business left out in the cold.20
As the Equestrians were quite capable of mobilizing public support for their interests, Drusus was ready with a slate of programs to feed the old Gracchan coalition. For the plebs urbana, Drusus proposed a new subsidized grain dole. For the rural poor, Drusus proposed an agrarian law that was modeled on the original Lex Agraria of Tiberius Gracchus. This was all very popular with the Roman voters, but put the Italians on alert. They had successfully deflected the Gracchan commission; now it appeared Drusus was coming back for another pass. This was the issue that led Silo to visit his friend Drusus, where each wound up pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of Italian citizenship.21
But though Drusus’s intention was to make everyone happy by promising everyone everything—he boasted that “he had left nothing for anyone else to distribute”—this time the people dwelt on the downsides. Neither rural farmers nor senatorial elites liked subsidizing grain for the plebs urbana. The old senators were wary of adding three hundred new members and diluting their own power. The Equestrians worried they were about to be shut out of power altogether. And of course, nearly all Romans from every class and occupation opposed Italian citizenship.22
DRUSUS AND HIS optimate backers also faced stiff opposition from one of the consuls for the year, Lucius Marcius Philippus. Philippus was an old rival of Scaurus and Crassus going back to the crisis years of 104–100. Philippus was the one who said there were only two thousand men who owned property in Italy while proposing a radical land redistribution bill of his own. In fine Roman fashion, now that a similar bill was being proposed by his enemies, Philippus opposed it vehemently. He was backed by the publicani, who rightly felt threatened by Drusus’s package of laws. On the day of the vote, Drusus had done his work well and it looked like everything was going to pass. But then, Philippus marched into the Forum and tried to shut down the Assembly. One of Drusus’s men “seized him by the throat and did not let go until blood poured into his mouth and eyes.” Philippus managed to get away but he was furious at the maltreatment of a consul.23
Given the state of the historical record, it is hard to know exactly which of his reforms Drusus managed to enact. We know he carried the land bill and grain bill, as well as the jury reform. But either because it never made it to the rostra or was voted down, the Italian citizenship bill never materialized. It appeared that the Italians were about to have their prize snatched away. Again. The Italian veterans who had served together under Marius got together with the disgruntled Equestrians who had been kicked out of Rome in 95. Their mutual grumbling turned awfully seditious.24
Even before the bill was dropped, a violent splinter faction of Italians formed a plot to assassinate the consul Philippus and his colleague Sextus Julius Caesar * at the Latin Festival. Drusus successfully warned the consuls in advance and they left the festival alive, but it raised the uncomfortable question of how Drusus had come to hold such dangerous knowledge in the first place—who was he in league with? But as late as September 91, it seemed like Drusus still had the support of most of the Senate; the steady hands of Scaurus and Crassus kept most of the senators with him.25
While they kept a firm hand on current events, a group of optimate grandees met at Crassus’s villa in September 91 to discuss loftier subjects. Among the small party were Crassus’s old friends Antonius and Scaevola along with two promising students: Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Old Scaurus was not present, but as fit his persona, he was known to be off at his own estate, “somewhere in the vicinity.”26
We know about this dinner party because it is the setting of one of Cicero’s most important dialogues, On the Orators. Cicero learned of the gathering years later from one of the participants and used it as the setting for a wide-ranging dialogue on the history, theory, and practice of oratory. Fascinating as the details of this discussion are, the more relevant point is why Cicero chose that time and place to set his dialogue. Cicero enjoyed placing characters at the moment of maximum experience and wisdom—the moment before death. And death hung over the men gathered at Crassus’s villa. Within a few years, nearly every one of them would be dead. Cicero did not just set On The Orators at the end of his heroes’ lives; he set it on the brink of a civil war that, unbeknownst to all of them, was just weeks from breaking out.27
The only one of the group not to die violently was the host, Lucius Crassus, who had the good sense to die before any of the fighting started. With Philippus once again raising hell in the Senate about annulling Drusus’s laws, Crassus rose in defense and delivered yet another long and eloquent address that returned the Senate to its senses. But likely already sick from some unspecified ailment, the exertion of the speech drove Crassus to bed, and a week later he died. He was not yet fifty. Cicero said of Crassus’s sudden death:
This was a melancholy occurrence to his friends, a grievous calamity to his country, and a heavy affliction to all the virtuous part of mankind; but such misfortunes afterwards fell upon the commonwealth, that life does not appear to me to have been taken away from Lucius Crassus by the immortal gods as a privation, but death to have been bestowed on him as a blessing. He did not live to behold Italy blazing with war, or the senate overwhelmed with popular odium, or the leading men of the state accused of the most heinous crime… or, finally, that republic in every way disgraced, in which, while it continued most flourishing, he had by far the preeminence over all other men in glory.28
With his rivals distracted by the death of their friend, Philippus pounced. He induced the Senate to nullify Drusus’s laws, either on a religious pretext or for the violence inflicted on Philippus personally at the Assembly. And though he is often cast along with the other radical tribunes in Roman history, Drusus was not ready to take the same plunge as his predecessors Saturninus and the Gracchi brothers. He accepted his fate and did nothing to veto the annulment. Though he did say: “Although I have the power to oppose the decrees of the senate, I will not do so, because I know that the guilty will soon receive their punishment.”29
It is difficult to tell when exactly the Italians reentered the picture, but with the final annulment of Drusus’s laws, word surely went out that the time had come for action. It did not take long for Quintus Poppaedius Silo to rally ten thousand men to join him in a demonstrative march on Rome. When they neared the city one of the praetors went out to meet the Italians and said: “Whither do you go, Poppaedius, with so great a company?” Silo responded, “To Rome, for I have been summoned by the tribunes of the plebs, to share in the citizenship.” The praetor responded, “You may obtain what you seek far more easily, and much more honorably, if you do not approach the Senate in a hostile manner; for the Senate will not be compelled, but entreated and petitioned, to bestow such a favor upon the Latins, who are their allies and confederates.” Silo turned around and went home, but this was the beginning, not the end.30
After the Italians went home, someone decided Marcus Livius Drusus was going to pay for the trouble he had caused. We don’t know who plotted his death, whether it was Italians believing he had betrayed them or someone nursing a personal grudge. But someone wanted Drusus dead. The tribune grew suspicious and started conducting business in his home, which he thought would protect him. But as he shooed out callers at the end of one evening, Drusus suddenly cried out in pain thanks to a knife lodged in either his hip or groin (depending on the visual you’d prefer). Still brimming with pride despite his failures, Drusus died saying, “O my relatives and friends, will my country ever have another citizen like me?” The killers were never found and no inquest was made into the murder. Everyone just wanted to forget about this whole nasty business and let things get back to normal. But things were a long way from normal.31
THE CITIZENS OF Rome did not know what they were getting into when they rejected the Italian citizenship bill. Given the surprise they all showed when the Social War erupted under their feet, they were clearly oblivious to the ramifications of dropping the bill. For the Romans, it was just another rejection in a long series of rejections of Italian citizenship. No big deal. But for the Italians it was the last straw.32
Ignorant of the hornet’s nest they had just bashed with a stick, it slowly dawned on the Romans that something might be wrong. At the very least, Silo and his march of ten thousand men was enough to put the Senate on notice that something was happening out there. So after Drusus’s murder, the Senate dispatched agents to various Italian cities to take the temperature of the Allies. Most of these agents reported no trouble at all—at least on the surface. But in the city of Asculum, located on the far side of the Apennines northeast of Rome, a report came in that Roman citizens had been seized as hostages. A praetor hurried to the city to investigate. With the residents of Asculum on the verge of revolt anyway, they attacked the praetor and murdered him. Then the insurrectionaries rampaged through the city killing any other Roman citizen they could find. These murders marked the beginning of the revolt of Asculum and the beginning of the Social War.33
The speed with which the revolt spread is a testament to how long the Italians had been planning. A wide crescent covering most of east-central Italy erupted in a massive coordinated insurrection involving at least a dozen Italian tribes. The Latins remained steadfast with Rome, and the Umbrians and Etruscans kept aloof, but east-central Italy departed the Roman confederation en masse. Two principal tribes led the revolt. First were the Samnites in the south, who had chafed under Roman domination for hundreds of years and who now took the opportunity to bloody a few noses. Joining them were the Marsi in the north, among whom Silo was a principal leader. Contemporary Romans considered the Marsi to be the main drivers of the revolt and often referred to the war as the Marsic War. It was not until later that it became known as the War Against the Allies, which is how socii, the Latin word for “Ally,” led to the Anglicized name for the conflict: the Social War.34
Rebel leaders from across this central Italian crescent of insurrection met in the city of Corfinium. They rechristened the city Italia and established a capital. Roman historians would describe the Italians forming a government modeled on the Roman structure of consuls, praetors, and a Senate. But in realty the structure was far more decentralized. Individual tribes operated under their own leaders, who communicated with each other via a collective war council in Italia. That council presented to Rome its central demand: Either we are equal citizens in the Republic or we are independent. The choice was civitas or libertas.35
With the Senate not realizing yet the scope of the crisis they were falling into, they rejected the ultimatum out of hand. So the Italian armies gathered under their local generals and launched a simultaneous uprising in late 91. Since all the Italian generals were intimately familiar with both Roman politics and war, they knew exactly what to hit first. Going all the way back to the tribal wars of the early Republic, the Romans planted Latin colonies in the backyards of defeated enemies. These communities remained outposts of Roman military authority. The first thing the Italians did was attack these Latin colonies, then seize control of the roads to cut off Rome’s ability to communicate outside their own sphere in Latium. It was a simple and effective strategy that caught the Romans with their togas down.36
THE POPULATION OF Rome was dumbfounded as each scrap of news from outside Rome revealed yet another city or tribe in revolt. The Senate scrambled to organize a response to the crisis. They ordered provisional governors to stay at their posts until further notice, and then assigned every consul and praetor for the year 90 to the province of Italy. It was a concentration of sovereign magistrates on the peninsula not seen since the Second Punic War.37
But before they could wage a war, the Roman leadership had to spend valuable time establishing which of them was to blame for the insurrection. A tribune named Quintus Varius Hybridia proposed a commission to purge those who had supported Italian citizenship and thus “incited the Italians” with false promises and selfish demagoguery.38 Tribunes loyal to the men who might be targeted by the commission tried to veto the bill, but as was now painfully routine, a violent mob menaced the tribunes into fleeing the Assembly. The bill passed, and it was time to go head-hunting.39
Staffed by an all-Equestrian jury and led by ex-consul Philippus, the Varian Commission attacked its enemies with reckless abandon. At least a half-dozen prominent senators were prosecuted, including Scaurus and Antonius. The old optimates avoided conviction because they were, after all, some of the most powerful men in Rome. But their less august friends did not fare so well. Among those exiled was Gaius Aurelius Cotta, one of the young men at Crassus’s house that fateful night in September 91. His exile is probably the reason he lived through the civil wars.40
But though Scaurus was not convicted by the Varian Commission, the princeps senatus had come to the end of the line. Now past his seventieth birthday, the old master of the Senate had lived long enough to see the Metellan faction he had led for nearly thirty years disintegrate around him. Metellus Numidicus was dead as were most of his brothers and cousins. Of the next generation, only Numidicus’s son Metellus Pius showed promise. With Crassus unexpectedly dead, and their shared protégés all targeted and exiled, the faction splintered. Other families sensed the weakness of the Metelli and closed in for the kill. As the historian Velleius Paterculus notes: “Thus it is clear that, as in the case of cities and empires, so the fortunes of families flourish, wane, and pass away.” While Scaurus lived, the Metellans remained a dominant power in Rome, but the old man followed his friend Crassus and died in early 89.41
WHILE THESE POLITICAL prosecutions unfolded, the campaign season arrived in the spring of 90, and the Romans were ready to start a counteroffensive in multiple theaters. Consul Lucius Julius Caesar* was assigned to the Samnites in the south, while Publius Rutilius Lupus operated in the north against the Marsi. Meanwhile, proconsul Sextus Caesar was dispatched across the Apennines to Asculum. Spread out beneath the senior magistrates were an array of legates and praetors who operated with an unusual amount of independence. Among them were the men who would define the next violent phase of Roman politics: Metellus Pius, Pompey Strabo, Cinna, Quintus Sertorius, even old Marius came out of retirement. But no one used his service in the Social War to better political advantage than Lucius Cornelius Sulla.42
Sulla had stayed on the sidelines during the explosive political battles of 104–100 that climaxed with Saturninus’s insurrection. When things started getting back to normal in 99, Sulla made a bid for praetor but was rebuffed by the voters, the story being that the voters were not happy Sulla was trying to skip out on being aedile. He was still old friends with King Bocchus of Mauretania and the people wanted Sulla to throw some fancy African-themed games. But wanting to get on with his career, Sulla promised to throw the desired games if he was elected praetor. Running again the next year, he was elected. The games were magnificent.43
After his year in Rome, the Senate ordered Sulla to Cilicia to keep an eye on the pirates preying on Mediterranean shipping. But while in the east, he was ordered on a delicate mission. For the last few years the kings of Pontus and Bithynia had fought over the border kingdom of Cappadocia. An interminable round of squabbling between the Pontic king Mithridates VI and the Bithynian king Nicomedes III led the Senate to throw up their hands and order both Nicomedes and Mithridates to confine themselves to their own kingdoms. Cappadocia would henceforth be free of foreign tribute and govern themselves. By “govern themselves” the Senate of course meant Cappadocia would be ruled by a pro-Roman puppet king. For this job they selected a pliant young noble named Ariobarzanes. Sulla was instructed to guarantee the new puppet king’s peaceful ascension to the throne.44
Sulla successfully installed Ariobarzanes and then traveled even farther east to settle a border dispute with the Armenians. The trip made Sulla the first Roman ambassador to formally sit down with envoys from the Parthian Empire, the heirs of the great Persian Empire in the far-off Iranian highlands. Rome and Parthia were destined for endless rounds of conflict in Syria and Mesopotamia once the Romans enveloped the Mediterranean, but at this point the Romans hadn’t even moved beyond the Aegean Sea. At this first summit, however, Sulla gave the Parthians a taste of Roman manners. He laid out the chairs with himself in the middle facing the other two, making Parthia the equal not of Rome but Cappadocia. When the Parthian king found out his ambassador took this inferior seat, he had him put to death.45
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 even 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 little 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.