REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
Since the defeat of Pyrrhus, the Roman supremacy in Italy had existed for nearly two hundred years without having been shaken even in times of utmost peril. Instead of contending with the too-powerful capital, the Italian nation with the blood of its youth had helped its masters to subdue three continents. Its own position meanwhile had deteriorated. From a material viewpoint it had, indeed, little to complain about. Though the small and medium-sized Italian landholders suffered from the injudicious Roman grain laws, the larger landlords and still more the merchants and capitalists flourished, for the Italians enjoyed substantially the same protection and the same opportunities for milking the provinces as Roman citizens, and thus shared in the material advantages of Roman political ascendancy. In general, Italian economic and social conditions did not depend primarily on political distinctions: in Italian districts such as Umbria and Etruria the free farmer class had largely disappeared, while in others, such as the Abruzzi valleys, it still maintained a respectable footing or was almost untouched.
On the other hand, the political inferiority of Italy was daily displayed more harshly and openly. True, there was no formal breach of important rights. The communal freedom granted by treaty to the Italian communities was on the whole respected by the Roman government; and the attack which the Roman reform party had made on the Roman domains guaranteed to the better situated Italian communities had not only been earnestly opposed both by the strictly conservative and the middle party in Rome, but had soon been abandoned by the opposition.
But the rights which devolved upon Rome as the leading community—the conduct of military affairs, and the supervision of the whole administration—were exercised in a way that was almost as bad as if the allies had been subjects devoid of rights. The modifications of the fearfully severe martial law introduced in the second century B.C. seem to have been limited to Roman citizens. This is clearly true as regards executions under military law; and we may easily conceive the impression produced when (as happened in the Jugurthan war) Latin officers of repute were beheaded by sentence of the Roman council of war, while the lowest citizen-soldier had the right of appeal to the Roman civil courts. The proportions of Roman citizens and Italian allies called up for military service were not defined by treaty. However, in earlier times the two had furnished roughly equal numbers of soldiers; now, although the population ratio had probably changed in favor of the citizens, the demands on the allies had increased until two allies were levied for one citizen.
In like manner the civil superintendence, which the Roman government had always reserved to itself over the dependent Italian communities, was extended until the Italians lived at the whim of any one of the numberless Roman magistrates. In the important allied town of Teanum Sidicinum, for example, a consul had ordered the town’s chief magistrate to be scourged in the marketplace because, when the consul’s wife expressed a desire to bathe in the men’s bath, the municipal officers had not cleared the bath quickly enough, and the place appeared to her not clean.1 Similar outrages without doubt frequently occurred, nor could any real satisfaction for such deeds be obtained. As a result the variance which the wise Roman rulers of old had carefully fostered between the Latin allies and the other Italian communities tended to disappear. Allies and subjects now lived under a common oppression; the Latin could remind the Picentine that both were in like manner “subject to the fasces”; the overseers and slaves of former days were now united in hatred of the common despot.
While the status of the Italian allies was thus transformed from a tolerable dependence into an oppressive bondage, they were at the same time deprived of the hope of betterment. With the subjugation of Italy the Roman electorate had closed its ranks; granting the franchise to whole communities was stopped altogether, and its bestowal upon individuals was greatly restricted. A further step was now taken: in response to the agitation to extend the Roman franchise to all Italy in the Gracchan period, the very right of migration to Rome was attacked, and all noncitizens living in the capital were ejected by decree of the people and of the Senate—a measure as dangerous (because of the private interests that it injured) as it was odious. In short, the Italian allies had partly been brothers under Roman tutelage, protected rather than ruled, and not condemned to perpetual minority, and partly slaves who were tolerably treated and not utterly deprived of the hope of freedom. Now they were all subject in nearly equal degree and with equal hopelessness to the rods and axes of their Roman masters; and the best they might hope was, like privileged slaves, to transmit the kicks received from their masters downward to the poor provincials.
It is the nature of such differences that, restrained by the sense of national unity and by the memory of common dangers, they make their first appearance moderately. Then the breach gradually widens; and the relation between the rulers, whose might is their sole right, and the ruled, whose obedience reaches no further than their fears, at length expresses itself as naked force. Down to the revolt and razing of Fregellae in 125 B.C., which seemed officially to attest the altered character of the Roman rule, the ferment among the Italians did not have a genuine revolutionary character. The longing for equal rights had gradually risen from a silent wish to a strident demand, only to be the more flatly rejected the more strongly it was urged. It was soon apparent that a voluntary concession was not to be hoped for, and the determination to extort what had previously been respectfully requested began to appear. But the position of Rome at that time hardly permitted any realistic hope of success. Although the proportion of citizens to noncitizens in Italy cannot be accurately ascertained, the number of citizens was surely not much less than that of the Italian allies: against nearly 400,000 citizens capable of bearing arms there were perhaps 500,000-600,000 allies. So long as the citizens were united and there was no foreign enemy worth mentioning, the Italian allies, split into numberless isolated communities and connected with Rome by a thousand relations public and private, could never achieve a common front; and with moderate prudence the Roman government could control its troublesome and indignant subjects partly by the compact mass of the citizens, partly by the considerable resources of the provinces, and partly by setting one community against another.
Accordingly the Italians kept quiet until the revolution began to shake Rome; as soon as it had broken out, they began to take part in the maneuvers of the Roman factions. They made common cause first with the popular and then with the senatorial party, and gained equally little from either. They were driven to the conviction that while the best men of both parties acknowledged the justice of their claims, both groups of leaders were equally powerless to gain acceptance of those claims by the mass of their followers. They also observed that the most gifted, energetic, and celebrated statesmen of Rome, when they came forward as advocates of the Italians, were deserted by their adherents and overthrown. In thirty years of installing and deposing revolutionary and restoration governments, however their programs might vary, a short-sighted and narrow-minded spirit always sat at the helm.
Above all, the recent occurrences clearly showed how vain was the Italians’ expectation that their claims would be attended to by Rome. As long as those demands were mixed up with those of the revolutionary party, and had been thwarted by the folly of the masses, the allies might comfort themselves with the belief that the oligarchy had been hostile to the proposers rather than to the proposals, and that it was still possible that the more intelligent Senate would accept a measure compatible with the interests of the oligarchy and salutary for the state. But the recent years, in which the Senate once more ruled almost absolutely, had shed a disagreeable light on the designs of the Roman oligarchy. Instead of the expected modifications, the Senate issued in 95 B.C. a consular law strictly prohibiting noncitizens from claiming the franchise, and threatening transgressors with trial and punishment—a law which repelled a large number of respectable persons from the ranks of Romans into those of Italians. In point of political folly this act completely parallels that famous act which led to the separation of North America from the mother-country; and it also became the immediate cause of a civil war.2
Amid the ferment which this law called forth throughout Italy, the star of hope once more seemed to rise in the person of Marcus Drusus. What had been deemed almost impossible—that a conservative should take up the ideas of the Gracchi, and become the champion of equal rights for the Italians—had occurred; a born aristocrat had resolved to reform the government and to emancipate the Italians at one and the same time, and to apply all his zeal and devotion to these generous plans. Whether he actually (as was reported) placed himself at the head of a secret league ramified through Italy, whose members were bound by oath to stand by each other for Drusus and the common cause, cannot be ascertained. But even if he avoided acts so dangerous and indefensible for a Roman official, it is certain that he did not stop with mere general promises, and that dangerous connections were formed in his name, although perhaps without his consent and against his will.
With joy the Italians heard that Drusus had carried his first proposals in the Senate by a great majority; with still greater joy they celebrated soon afterward his recovery from a severe illness. But as Drusus’ program was unveiled, a change took place: he could not venture to bring forward his chief law; he had to postpone; he had to delay; he had soon to retire. It was reported that the Senate was vacillating, and threatening to fall away from its leader; in rapid succession the tidings ran throughout Italy that the law already passed had been annulled, that the capitalists ruled more absolutely than ever, that Drusus himself had been struck down by an assassin, that he was dead (autumn, 91 B.C.).
The last Italian hope for achieving citizenship by agreement was buried with Drusus. A measure which so energetic and conservative a man had been unable to push through his own party under the most favorable circumstances was not to be gained at all by peaceful means. The Italians could only submit patiently or repeat once more, if possible with their united strength, the attempt which had been crushed at Fregellae a generation before, and thus by force of arms either destroy Rome and succeed to her heritage, or at least compel her to grant equality of rights. To take up the way of force was no doubt a counsel of despair. As matters stood, a revolt of the isolated Italian communities might appear still more hopeless than the revolt of the American colonies against the British empire; and with moderate prudence and energy the Roman government might crush this second insurrection like its predecessor.
But was it any less a counsel of despair to sit still and let things take their course? When the Italians recalled how the Romans had behaved in Italy without provocation, what could they expect now that the most considerable men in every Italian town were alleged to have had an understanding with Drusus directed against the party in power, and which might well be characterized as treasonable? All who had taken part in this secret league, and all who might be merely suspected of it, had no choice left save to take up arms or bow their necks for the axe of the executioner.
Moreover, the prospects were comparatively favorable for a general insurrection. We are not exactly informed how far the Romans had gone in dissolving the larger Italian confederacies; but it is not unlikely that the old Marsian, Paelignian, and perhaps even the Samnite and Lucanian leagues still existed, though without political significance and in some cases probably reduced to mere fellowships of festivals and sacrifices. An insurrection beginning now would still find a rallying point in these groups; but how soon would the Romans for this very reason abolish these also? Moreover, while the secret league allegedly headed by Drusus had lost in him its actual or expected chief, it continued to afford a nucleus for political organization of the revolt, whose military organization might be based on the armament and experienced soldiers in every allied town.
In Rome, on the other hand, no serious preparations had been made. To be sure, it was reported that all Italy was restless, and that the allied communities were maintaining a remarkable intercourse with each other. But instead of calling the citizens to arms the government contented itself with exhorting the magistrates and sending out spies to learn further details. The capital was so totally undefended that the resolute Marsian officer Quintus Pompaedius Silo, one of Drusus’ most intimate friends, is said to have proposed leading a band of trusty associates into the city carrying swords beneath their cloaks, and seizing it by a coup de main. Preparations accordingly went forward for revolt. Treaties were concluded and arming went on silently but actively, until at last the insurrection broke out accidentally somewhat earlier than its leaders had intended.
The Roman praetor Gaius Servilius was informed by his spies that the town of Asculum in the Abruzzi was sending hostages to the neighboring communities. He proceeded thither with his legate Fonteius and a small escort, and delivered a violent and menacing harangue to the multitude, which was just then assembled in the theater for the celebration of the great games. The sight of the hated axes, and the sound of threats only too seriously meant, sparked the fuel of bitter hatred that had been accumulating for centuries. The Roman officials were torn to pieces in the theater; and immediately, as if intending by a fearful outrage to burn every bridge of conciliation, the gates were closed at the order of the local magistrates, and all Romans residing in the town were put to death and their property seized. The revolt ran through the peninsula like wildfire, until all central and southern Italy was in arms against Rome.3
The Etruscans and Umbrians stood by Rome, as they had already opposed Drusus. It is significant that these regions had been dominated by the aristocracy and the capitalist class from early times, while the middle class had totally disappeared, whereas in and near the Abruzzi region of southern Italy the farmer class had preserved its purity and vigor better than anywhere else. Accordingly, it was the farmers and the middle class in general who supported the revolt, while the municipal aristocracy adhered to the government of the capital. This also readily explains why there were isolated communities in the insurgent districts and minorities in the insurgent towns which remained loyal to Rome.4 Early Roman policy had based its dominion over Italy on an aristocratic classification, skillfully adjusting the degrees of dependence to keep the less privileged communities in subjection by means of those with better rights, and the citizens within each community by means of the municipal aristocracy. Only now, under the wretched aristocratic government, was the solidity and strength of the structure built by the statesman of two and three centuries earlier put to the test; the edifice, though shaken, still held out against this storm. To say, however, that the more favored towns did not at the first shock abandon Rome is by no means to say that they would, as in the Hannibalic War, hold out after severe defeats without wavering in their allegiance. That fiery trial had yet to be endured.
The first blood was thus shed, and Italy was divided into two great military camps. It is true that the insurrection was still far from being an uprising of all the Italian allies; but it had already exceeded the reasonable hopes of the leaders themselves, and the insurgents might without arrogance think of offering the Roman government a fair accommodation. They sent envoys to Rome and bound themselves to lay down their arms in return for citizenship, but in vain. The public spirit that had been so long lacking at Rome seemed suddenly to return when the objective was to obstruct with stubborn narrowness a just demand that was now supported by impressive force. The immediate effect of the Italian insurrection was, as happened after the defeats in Africa and Gaul, the beginning of a series of prosecutions through which the capitalists took vengeance on those officials who were regarded (rightly or wrongly) as responsible for this mischief.
On the proposal of the tribune Quintus Varius, despite optimate resistance and tribunician interference, a special commission of high treason was appointed from the equestrian order (which supported the proposal with open violence) for the investigation of the “conspiracy” instigated by Drusus out of which the insurrection had sprung, and which now, with half of Italy in revolt, seemed palpably treasonable to the alarmed Romans. The commission’s sentences thinned the ranks of the senators favoring mediation: among other notable men Drusus’ intimate friend, the young and talented Gaius Cotta, was exiled, and the venerable Marcus Scaurus escaped the same fate with difficulty. Suspicion went so far against the partisans of Drusus that soon afterward the consul Lupus reported from the camp to the Senate regarding communications allegedly maintained between the optimates in his army and the enemy—a suspicion which, it is true, was soon shown to be unfounded by the arrest of Marsian spies. So far King Mithradates of Pontus might reasonably assert that the political hatreds aroused on the Roman side were more destructive to the state than the Social War 5 itself.
The outbreak of the insurrection and the terrorism of the commission of high treason produced at the outset at least a semblance of unity and vigor. Party feuds were silenced, and able officers of all shades—democrats like Gaius Marius, aristocrats like Lucius Sulla, friends of Drusus like Publius Sulpicius Rufus—placed themselves at the disposal of the government. The grain distributions were apparently slashed by a decree of the people to husband the financial resources of the state for war—a measure the more necessary since the hostile King Mithradates threatened at any moment to dry up one of the chief sources of Roman revenue by seizing the province of Asia. The courts, except for the commission of high treason, were suspended by decree of the Senate; and the only business attended to was the levying of soldiers and the manufacture of arms.
While Rome thus collected her energies for the impending war, the insurgents faced the more difficult task of political organization in the midst of the struggle. The territory of the Paeligni, situated in the center of the Marsian, Samnite, Marrucinian, and Vestinian cantons, was in the heart of the insurgent districts. There, in the beautiful plain of the river Pescara, the town of Corfinium was selected as the Anti-Rome, or city of Italia, whose citizenship was conferred on the citizens of all the insurgent communities. A forum and a senate house were staked off on a suitable scale. A senate of five hundred members was charged with drafting a constitution and prosecuting the war. At its direction the citizens chose from the municipal senatorial ranks two consuls and twelve praetors, who, like the two consuls and six praetors of Rome, were invested with the supreme authority in war and peace. Latin, even then the prevailing language among the Marsians and Picentines, continued in official use, but the Samnite language of southern Italy was given equal status, and the two languages were used alternately on the silver pieces which the state began to coin after Roman models, thus breaking the two-century-old Roman monopoly of the coinage.6
Thus in the winter of 91-90 B.C. began the struggle—as one of the insurgent coins represents it—of the Sabellian ox against the Roman she-wolf. Both sides made zealous preparations: in Italia great stores of arms, provisions, and money were accumulated; in Rome the necessary supplies were drawn from the provinces and particularly from Sicily, and the long-neglected walls were repaired against any eventuality. The forces were in some measure equally balanced. The Romans replaced their Italian contingents partly by increased levies of citizens and of the largely Romanized inhabitants of the Celtic districts south of the Alps (10,000 of the latter served in the Campanian army alone), and partly by the Numidian and other overseas contingents. A war fleet was assembled with the aid of the free cities of Greece and Asia Minor. On each side, without reckoning garrisons, as many as100,000 soldiers were brought into the field, and in ability, tactics, and armaments the Italians were in no way inferior to the Romans.
The conduct of the war was difficult for both the insurgents and the Romans. The territory in revolt was extensive, but many fortresses adhering to Rome were scattered through it. Thus the insurgents were compelled to combine a time-consuming siege warfare, which broke up their forces, with the protection of an extended frontier. The Romans could hardly do otherwise than combat the insurrection, which had no proper center, simultaneously in all the insurgent districts. Militarily, the insurgent country embraced two main districts: the northern, Latin-speaking district, reaching from Picenum and the Abruzzi to the border of Campania, where the chief Italian command was held by the Marsian Quintus Silo, and the chief Roman command by Publius Rutilius Lupus, both as consuls; and the southern district, including Campania, Samnium, and the Sabellian-speaking communities, with forces under the command of the insurgent consul Gaius Papius Mutilus against the Roman consul Lucius Julius Caesar. Cooperating with these consular armies were six lieutenant-commanders on the Italian side and five on the Roman, with separate forces assigned to definite districts, leaving the main armies to strike the decisive blow. The most noted Roman officers—Gaius Marius, Quintus Catulus, and the consulars Titus Didius and Publius Crassus, experienced in the Spanish war—offered themselves to the consuls for these subordinate posts. The Italians had no names so celebrated to oppose them, yet the result showed that their leaders were fully equal to the Roman.
The initiative in this desultory war was largely with the Romans, but was not decisively assumed by them. It is surprising that the Romans did not concentrate their troops to attack the insurgents with a superior force, and that the insurgents made no attempt to throw themselves upon the hostile capital. But we know too little of the circumstances to judge whether either side could have acted more effectively, or whether the remissness of the Roman government or the looseness of the insurgent federation contributed to lack of vigor in conducting the war. It is easy to see that such a pattern of war would lead to many victories and defeats, with final settlement long delayed; but it is no less plain that a detailed picture of such a war, with its simultaneous engagements by individual corps operating sometimes independently and sometimes in concert, cannot be prepared from the remarkably fragmentary accounts handed down to us.
Through the fog of history Mommsen nevertheless attempts in the original to piece together an account of the war’s first year, which began with the Italians laying siege to loyal cities, and continued with varying successes in three main areas. In the south the Italians were sufficiently successful to cause the revolt to spread, with such important towns as Nola, Salernum, Stabiae, Pompeii, and Herculaneum declaring for the insurgents. These southern setbacks for the Romans were balanced by northern successes, which so turned the tables in that region that the Italians began the year as besiegers and ended it as besieged. In central Italy the fighting was inconclusive, with Marius restoring the seriously threatened Roman position.
Thus the first year ended, leaving in both political and military spheres sorrowful memories and dubious prospects. Both the Marsian and the Campanian armies of Rome had been weakened and discouraged by severe defeats. The northern army had been largely pinned down to the protection of the capital; the communications of the southern army at Neapolis were seriously threatened, as the insurgents could easily break forth from Marsian or Samnite territory and establish themselves between Rome and Neapolis. It was accordingly deemed necessary to establish a chain of posts between Cumae and Rome. Politically the insurrection had gained ground on all sides; the secession of Nola, the rapid capitulation of the large Latin colony of Venusia, and the rumble of Umbro-Etruscan revolt were suspicious signs that the Roman system of control was crumbling, and would not endure the final trial. The government had already made the utmost demands on the citizenry; it had already, to man that chain of posts along the coast, incorporated nearly 6,000 freedmen in the militia; and it had already required the severest sacrifices from the allies that still remained faithful. The bowstring could not be drawn tighter without risking disaster.
The morale of the citizens was abysmally low. After the battle on the Tolenus, when the dead bodies of the consul and numerous other notables were brought back to the capital for burial, when the magistrates laid aside their purple and insignia in token of public mourning, when the government ordered the inhabitants of the capital to arm en masse, many had given up all as lost. True, the worst despondency was somewhat relieved after the victories achieved by Lucius Caesar at Acerrae and by Pompeius Strabo in Picenum: news of the former led the citizens in the capital to lay aside the saga, or war dress, and resume the usual togas, while news of the latter brought to an end the public mourning. But it was clear that the Romans had on the whole been worsted in the year’s fighting, and that both the Senate and the citizenry had lost that spirit which had carried them to victory through all the crises of the Hannibalic war. They still began war with the defiant arrogance of old, but they knew not how to end it: rigid obstinacy and tenacious persistence had been replaced by a slack and cowardly disposition. After the first year of the war their outlook had so changed that they began to think of compromise. This was the wisest thing that could have been done—not because the Romans were compelled by force of arms to acquiesce, but because the perpetuation of Roman political dominance over the Italians was injurious to the commonwealth. It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another; in this case cowardice partly repaired the mischief that obstinacy had incurred.
The year 90 B.C. had begun with abrupt rejection of the insurgent offer of compromise, and with the opening of a campaign of prosecutions in which those passionate defenders of patriotic selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those suspected of counseling moderation. On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered office on December 10 of that year, carried a law which took the treason commission out of the hands of the capitalist jurymen, and gave it to jurymen nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class qualification. The result was that the commission was converted from a scourge of the moderates into a scourge of the ultras, and exiled (among others) its own author Quintus Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst excesses of the capitalist triumph—the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.
More important than this candid political recantation was the change in policy toward the Italians. Exactly three hundred years had passed since Rome had been obliged to submit to a dictated peace; she was now worsted once more, and the peace she desired could be got only by yielding in some measure to her antagonists. With the communities which had risen in arms against Rome, the Romans could not bring themselves to make the required concessions; and even had they done so, the offer might well have been rejected. But if the bulk of the original demands were conceded to the communities that had remained faithful, the semblance of voluntary concession would be preserved, while the action might well prevent the otherwise inevitable consolidation of the insurgents, and thereby pave the way to victory.
Accordingly, the gates of Roman citizenship, so long closed against all entreaties, now suddenly opened at the knock of the sword. Even now, however, they were opened reluctantly and annoyingly even for those admitted. A law proposed by the consul Lucius Caesar conferred the Roman franchise on the citizens of all those allied communities not yet openly in arms against Rome; while a second law, introduced by the tribunes Plautius Silvanus and Gaius Papirius Carbo, designated a period of two months during which an allied citizen might acquire the Roman franchise by appearing personally before a Roman magistrate. But the voting rights of these new citizens were restricted as with freedmen: they could be enrolled in only eight (the freedmen in only four) of the thirty-five tribes. Whether the restriction was personal or hereditary cannot be determined with certainty.7
Considerable as were these concessions, if compared with the rigid exclusiveness of the previous hundred and fifty years, they were far from involving a capitulation to the actual insurgents. On the contrary, they were intended partly to retain the wavering communities, and partly to encourage desertions from the ranks of the enemy. To what extent these laws were applied cannot be accurately stated, as we can specify only in general terms the extent of the insurrection when they were issued. The main point was that the Latin communities—including the Latin colonies, except for the few that had passed over to the insurgents—were thereby admitted to Roman citizenship. The law also applied to the loyal allied cities in Etruria and southern Italy, such as Nuceria and Neapolis.
To be sure, some especially privileged individual communities hesitated to accept the franchise (Neapolis, for example, with its treaty guaranteeing its citizens exemption from land service, its Greek constitution, and possibly domanial advantages besides). It was probably because of such scruples that this city, as well as Rhegium and perhaps other Greek communities in Italy, retained their constitutions and their official Greek language. At any rate, these laws extraordinarily enlarged the circle of Roman citizenship by bringing within it numerous important urban communities scattered from the Sicilian straits to the Po; and further, the country between the Po and the Alps, upon which the rights of the allies were conferred, was given the legal expectancy of eventual full citizenship.
Buoyed by these concessions, the Romans resumed the conflict against the insurgent districts with fresh courage. They had demolished as much of the existing structure as seemed necessary to keep the conflagration from spreading; thereafter, at least, it spread no farther. In Etruria and Umbria, where it was just breaking out, it was subdued rapidly, probably more by means of the Julian law than by success at arms. Copious and now trustworthy sources of aid were opened in the former Latin colonies and in the thickly peopled Po region; and with these, plus its citizens’ own resources, Rome could proceed to quench the now isolated conflagration. The two former consular commanders returned to Rome, Caesar as censor elect, Marius because his conduct of the war was blamed as vacillating and slow (at sixty-six, he was declared to be in his dotage). This objection was probably groundless; Marius showed at least his bodily strength by appearing daily in the circus, and as commander-in-chief he seems on the whole to have displayed his old ability in the last campaign. But he had not achieved the brilliant success which alone could have rehabilitated him after his political failure, and thus the celebrated champion was to his chagrin unceremoniously put upon the shelf. His place in the Marsian army was taken by the consul for the new year, Lucius Porcius Cato, who had fought with distinction in Etruria, and that of Caesar in the Campanian army by his lieutenant, Lucius Sulla, to whom were due some of the major successes of the previous campaign. Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo retained, now as consul, the Picenian command he had held so successfully.
Thus began the second campaign in 89 B.C. The insurgents opened it before the winter was over by boldly attempting to send a Marsian army of 15,000 men to Etruria, to aid the insurrection brewing in northern Italy. But Strabo intercepted and so totally defeated it that only a few got back to their homes. When the season allowed the Roman armies to take the offensive, Cato entered Marsian territory and successfully encountered the enemy there, but he fell during an attack on the enemy’s camp near the Fucine Lake, so that the command of operations in central Italy devolved upon Strabo. The latter employed himself partly in pressing the siege of Asculum, and partly in subduing the Marsian, Sabellian, and Apulian districts. To relieve hard-pressed Asculum, his native town, the insurgent commander Iudacilius appeared with a Picentine army and attacked the besiegers, while at the same time the garrison sallied out and threw itself on the Roman lines. It is said that 75,000 Romans fought on this day with 60,000 Italians. Victory remained with the Romans, but Iudacilius succeeded in throwing himself and part of his relieving army into the town. The siege continued, protracted by the strength of the place and the desperate defense of the inhabitants, who recalled only too well the terrible declaration of war within its walls. When Iudacilius at length saw the day of capitulation approach, he ordered the leading Roman sympathizers put to death by torture, and then died by his own hand. So the gates were opened, and Roman executions replaced Italian; all officers and respectable citizens were executed, the rest were driven forth to beggary, and all property was confiscated.8
The Roman southern army under Lucius Sulla also took the offensive and penetrated into southern Campania, which was occupied by the enemy. Stabiae was taken and sacked by Sulla in person (April 30, 89 B.C.), and Herculaneum by Titus Didius, who himself apparently fell in the assault on the town. Pompeii resisted longer. The Samnite general Lucius Cluentius came to its relief, but was repulsed by Sulla; and when, with Celtic reinforcements, he renewed his attempt, he was so totally defeated (owing chiefly to the wavering of these untrustworthy auxiliaries) that his camp was taken and he himself was cut down with most of his troops in their flight toward Nola. The grateful Roman army conferred on its general the grass wreath—the homely decoration accorded to a soldier who had saved a division of his comrades. Without pausing to besiege Nola or the other Samnite-occupied Campanian towns, Sulla at once advanced into the interior, which was the heart of the insurrection. The advanced season alone put an end to the campaign there.9
The state of affairs had undergone a complete change. Powerful, victorious, aggressive at the start of the campaign, the insurgents emerged from it humbled, beaten, and hopeless. All northern Italy was pacified. In central Italy the Romans held both coasts and almost all of the Abruzzi; Apulia as far as Venusia, and Campania as far as Nola, were in their hands; and the occupation of the Hirpinian territory severed the communications between the only two regions still in open resistance, the Samnite and the Lucano-Bruttian. The insurrection resembled an immense conflagration dying out; ashes, ruins, and smoldering brands were everywhere; here and there flames still blazed up; but the fire was no longer dangerous.
It is regrettable that the causes of this sudden change cannot be clearly discerned from the superficial accounts available to us. While the dextrous leadership of Strabo and Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration and offensive use of the Roman forces doubtless contributed materially to that result, political causes may also have speeded the singularly rapid fall of the insurgents. The law of Silvanus and Carbo may have succeeded in carrying defection and treason into the ranks of the enemy; and misfortune, as so often happens, may have thrown an apple of discord among the loose insurgent federation.
We see only (and this fact implies the breaking up of Italia, which must have been attended by violent convulsions) that the Samnites—perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo, who had been the soul of the insurrection and who had gone as a fugitive to Samnium after the Marsian capitulation—now formed another organization confined to their own territory: after “Italia” was vanquished, they continued the struggle as “Safini” or Samnites. Aesernia was converted into the last fortress that sheltered Samnite freedom; an army reportedly consisting of 30,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry was strengthened by the freeing of 20,000 slaves; and five generals were placed at its head, with Silo the first and Mutilus next. With astonishment the Romans beheld the Samnite wars reviving after a lapse of two centuries, and saw that resolute nation of farmers making a fresh attempt to force the recognition of their country’s independence. But this resolution of despair could not change the main course of events. Although mountain warfare in Samnium and Lucania might take time and sacrifices, the insurrection was substantially at an end.
Meantime, however, a fresh complication appeared; it had become imperative to declare war against Mithradates, king of Pontus, and to send one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor in the following year (88 B.C.). Had this Asiatic war broken out a year earlier, the simultaneous revolt of half of Italy would have constituted an immense peril to the Roman state. Now that Rome’s incredible good fortune had once more been evinced in the rapid collapse of the Italian insurrection, this new Asiatic war was not really dangerous—the less so because Mithradates arrogantly refused the Italian bid for direct assistance. Still, it was highly inconvenient. The day was past when the Romans without hesitation carried on an Italian and a foreign war simultaneously; the formation of a new army seemed scarcely practicable, and the treasury was utterly exhausted. But the government resorted to what expedients it could. The sale of building sites on and near the citadel in Rome, which had remained unoccupied since ancient times, furnished the requisite pecuniary means in the form of 9,000 pounds of gold. No new army was formed, but Sulla’s forces in Campania were earmarked for departure as soon as affairs in southern Italy permitted—which would be soon, to judge from the progress of the northern army under Strabo. So the campaign of 88 B.C. began amidst favorable prospects for Rome,10 when the turn of events in the capital unexpectedly gave fresh life to the well-nigh extinguished insurrection.
Rome was in a fearful ferment. The attack of Drusus on the equestrian courts and his downfall at the hands of the equestrian party, followed by the two-edged Varian prosecutions, had sown the bitterest discord between aristocrats and capitalists as well as between moderates and ultras. Events had completely justified the party of concession; what it had proposed to grant, Rome had been compelled largely to concede; but the concession, like the earlier refusal, bore the stamp of obstinate and shortsighted envy. Instead of granting equal rights to all Italian communities, Rome continued the old inferiority in another form. A great number of Italian communities had received Roman citizenship, but with the offensive stigma that the new citizens were placed on nearly the same footing as freedmen occupied alongside of the freeborn. The Romans had irritated rather than pacified the communities between the Po and the Alps by the concession of Latin rights. They had withheld the franchise from a considerable portion of the Italians, namely, the insurgent communities which had again submitted. And finally, instead of legally re-establishing the former treaties annulled by the insurrection, they had at most merely renewed them, subject to revocation at pleasure.
The discrimination in voting rights was the more offensive for its political absurdity: the government’s hypocritical care for the unstained purity of the electorate appeared ridiculous to every unprejudiced person. But all these restrictions were dangerous, inviting every demagogue to advance his schemes by taking up the demands of the new citizens and the Italians excluded from the franchise. While the clearer-headed aristocrats accordingly found these partial and grudging concessions as inadequate as those discriminated against, they sorely missed from their ranks the numerous excellent men exiled by the Varian commission, whom it was the more difficult to recall because they had been condemned by a verdict not of the people but of the special jury commission; for while they would not hesitate to cancel one decree of the people by means of a second, the canceling of a jury verdict by the people appeared a very dangerous precedent.
Thus neither the ultras not the moderates were content with the outcome of the Italian crisis. But still deeper indignation swelled the heart of old Marius, who had left for the Italian war with fresh hopes and had returned reluctantly, conscious of having rendered new services in return for new mortifications, with the bitter feeling of being despised rather than dreaded by his enemies, and with that gnawing spirit of vengeance in his heart that feeds on its own poison. Politically he was excluded like the new citizens: incapable and awkward though he might be, his name was still a formidable weapon in the hand of a demagogue.
These political convulsions were combined with the rapid decay of military discipline. The seeds sown by enrolling the proletariat in the army sprouted with alarming rapidity during the demoralizing insurrectionary war, which compelled Rome to call up every man capable of bearing arms, and which above all carried political partisanship directly into the general’s headquarters and the soldier’s tent. The effects soon appeared in the slackening of all the bonds of discipline. During the siege of Pompeii the commander of the Sullan besieging corps, the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus, was killed with stones and bludgeons by his own soldiers, who thought themselves betrayed by their general to the enemy; and even Sulla, the commander-in-chief, contented himself with exhorting the troops to wipe out the memory of that occurrence by brave conduct in battle. The authors of that deed were the marines, long the least respectable of the troops, but a division of legionaries raised chiefly from the city populace soon followed their example. Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it laid hands on the consul Cato, who only by accident escaped death; Titius was arrested, but not punished. When Cato soon afterward perished in combat, his own officers, and particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were charged (we cannot tell whether justly or unjustly) with causing his death.
Perhaps still worse, this political and military crisis was compounded by an economic crisis among the Roman capitalists as a result of the Social War and the Asiatic troubles. The debtors, unable to raise even the interest due and yet inexorably pressed by their creditors, on the one hand requested from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions; while on the other they searched among the obsolete usury laws and, according to the ancient rule, sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of interest paid contrary to law. Asellio bent the actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and processed the desired actions for interest in the usual way; whereupon the offended creditors assembled in the Forum under the leadership of the tribune Lucius Cassius, and attacked and killed the praetor before the temple of Concord in his priestly robes just as he was presenting a sacrifice—an outrage which was not even made a subject of investigation. On the other hand, it was said in debtor circles that the suffering multitude could only be relieved by “new account-books”—that is, by canceling the claims of all creditors against all debtors.
Thus matters once again stood just as they had during the earlier class warfare. Once again the capitalists in league with the standpat aristocracy made war against the oppressed multitude and the middle class which sought to moderate the law’s severity; once again Rome stood on the brink of that abyss into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him. But since those former days the simple organization of a great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms of a world capital, and by that demoralization which prince and beggar share alike; now all the incongruities existed on a broader, sharper, fearfully grander scale. The Italian war brought all the disparate political and social elements among the citizens into collision, and laid the foundation for a new revolution.
An accident led to its outbreak. In 88 B.C. the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus proposed that every senator who owed more than 2,000 denarii should forfeit his seat in the Senate; that citizens sentenced by nonfree jury courts be free to return home; and that the new citizens, and freed-men as well, be allowed to vote in all the tribes. It was at least surprising to hear these proposals from the mouth of such a man. Born in 124 B.C., he owed his political importance not so much to his noble birth, important connections, and hereditary wealth as to an oratorical talent equaled by none of his contemporaries. His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering on the theatrical, and his luxuriant flow of words arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers. A strong Senate partisan from the outset, his first public appearance was in the impeachment of Norbanus, who was mortally hated by the government party. Among the conservatives he shared the sentiments of Crassus and Drusus. We do not know why he solicited the tribuneship for 88 B.C., thereby renouncing his patrician nobility; but his persecution (along with all the moderates) by the conservatives does not seem to have made him a revolutionist, and he certainly did not seek to overthrow the constitution in the manner of Gaius Gracchus. It would rather seem that, as the only moderate of note who had come unscathed through the Varian prosecutions, he felt called upon to complete Drusus’ work by setting aside the remaining discriminations against the new citizens—for which purpose he needed the tribunate.11
It was easy to foresee that his opposition would not be slight; that the equally narrow-minded aristocrats and capitalists would display the same stupid jealousy after the end of the insurrection as before its outbreak; that the great majority of all parties would secretly or openly characterize the partial concessions made in time of peril as unnecessary softness, and would passionately resist every attempt to extend them. The fate of Drusus had shown what came of relying solely on the majority of the Senate to carry conservative reforms; it was quite understandable that Drusus’ successor should attempt to carry out similar designs under a cloak of demagoguery. Sulpicius accordingly disdained to win over the Senate by using the bait of the jury courts, and found stouter support in the freedmen and above all in an armed retinue—consisting, by unfriendly reports, of 3,000 hired men and an “opposition-senate” of 600 young men of good families—which accompanied him in the streets and in the Forum.
His proposals accordingly met with determined resistance from most of the Senate, which first, to gain time, induced the consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus to decree extraordinary religious observances during which popular assemblies were suspended. Sulpicius replied by a violent tumult in which among others young Quintus Pompeius, son of one consul and son-in-law of the other, met his death and the lives of both consuls themselves were seriously threatened (Sulla is said to have escaped only because Marius opened his house to him). The conservatives were obliged to yield. Sulla agreed to countermand the announced solemnities, and the Sulpician proposals passed without further trouble.
But this was far from an end to the matter. Though the aristocracy in the capital might give up the fight, there was for the first time another power in Italy which could not be overlooked—the two strong and victorious armies of the proconsul Strabo and the consul Sulla. The political position of Strabo might be ambiguous; but Sulla, though he had submitted to open violence for the moment, was on the best terms with the Senate majority. Moreover he had, immediately after countermanding the solemnities, departed for Campania to join his army. To terrify the unarmed consul by bludgeon-men, or threaten the defenseless capital by the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end; and Sulpicius assumed that his opponent would now meet violence with violence, returning at the head of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue along with his laws. Perhaps he was mistaken. Sulla was just as keen for the war against Mithradates as he was probably repelled by the political odors of the capital. Considering his unrivaled spirit of indifference and political nonchalance, it is quite likely that, let alone, he would have embarked for Asia immediately upon capturing the long-besieged city of Nola.
But whatever Sulla’s intentions, Sulpicius sought to parry the expected blow by the scheme of taking the supreme command from him. For this purpose he joined with Marius, whose name was still sufficiently popular to make a proposal to give him the chief Asiatic command seem plausible to the multitude, and whose military position and ability might be useful in the event of a rupture with Sulla. Sulpicius probably overlooked neither the danger involved in placing that vengeful and ambitious old man at the head of the Campanian army, nor the scandalous irregularity of giving an extraordinary supreme command to a private citizen by decree of the people. But Marius’ proven incompetence as a statesman was a guarantee of sorts that he would not seriously endanger the constitution; and above all, Sulpicius’ personal position (if he had estimated Sulla’s designs correctly) was so perilous that he could hardly heed such considerations. That the worn-out hero Marius readily took the bid of anyone who would hire him was a matter of course; for years he had longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and also perhaps for a chance to settle accounts once and for all with the majority of the Senate. Accordingly, on the proposal of Sulpicius, Marius was by decree of the people invested with extraordinary supreme power, command of the Campanian army, and direction of the war against Mithradates; and two tribunes were sent to the camp at Nola to take over the army from Sulla.
Sulla was not the man to obey such orders. If anyone had a right to the chief command in the Asiatic war, it was he. A few years before he had commanded with great success in the same theater; he had contributed more than any other man to subduing the Italian insurrection; and as consul in the year when the Asiatic war broke out, he had been given the command in the customary way with the full consent of his friend and colleague, who was also related to him by marriage. It was expecting much to suppose that he would, bowing to a decree of the populace, give up his command to an old military and political antagonist who might involve the army in all manner of violent and preposterous proceedings. Sulla was neither easygoing enough to comply with such an order, nor dependent enough to be compelled. His army, as a result of Marius’ alterations of the military system, in addition to the moral laxity and the military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla, was little better than a band of mercenaries devoted to their leader and contemptuous of political affairs. Sulla himself was a hard, cool, clear-headed man, in whose eyes the sovereign citizenry was a rabble, Marius a bankrupt swindler, legality an empty phrase, and Rome herself an ungarrisoned and defenseless city that could be captured far more easily than Nola.
On these views he acted. He assembled his soldiers (six legions, or about 35,000 men) and announced the summons that had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander-in-chief would doubtless lead to Asia Minor not the present army, but another formed of fresh troops. The superior officers, still more citizens than soldiers, kept aloof, and only one of them followed the general toward the capital. But the soldiers, anticipating in Asia an easy war and endless booty, were furious; in a moment the two tribunes were torn to pieces, and from all sides the general was implored to lead a march on Rome. Without delay the consul started, formed a junction with his like-minded colleague along the way, and arrived by quick marches—little troubling himself about the deputies who hastened from the city to detain him—beneath the walls of the capital. Suddenly Rome beheld Sulla’s columns take their station at the bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; then two legions in battle array, their standards at their head, passed the sacred pomerium which they were forbidden by law to enter. Many a worse quarrel had been settled within those walls without a Roman army breaking the sacred peace of the city; now that step was taken primarily over the miserable question of what officer should command in Asia.
The legions advanced as far as the height of the Esquiline, where the showers of missiles and stones from the roofs made the soldiers waver. But Sulla himself brandished a blazing torch, and with threats of firing the houses the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market place. There the force hastily collected by Marius and Sulpicius repelled the first invading columns by superior numbers. But reinforcements came up from the gates; another division of Sullans prepared to flank the defenders by the street of the Subura: and the latter were obliged to retire. At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius once more attempted a stand; he exhorted the Senate and all the citizens to block the path of the legions. But he himself had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries, and his own work turned against him; they obeyed not their government, but their general. Even when the slaves were called to arms with the promise of freedom, no more than three appeared. Nothing remained for the leaders but to flee through the still unoccupied gates, and within a few hours Sulla was absolute master of Rome. That night the watchfires of the legions blazed in the great market place of the capital.
The first military intervention in civil quarrels made it clear that the political strife had reached the point where only naked force was decisive, and also that the bludgeon was of no avail against the sword. The conservative party drew the sword, and accordingly in due time experienced the truth of the Gospel’s ominous words regarding those who first employ it. For the moment it triumphed completely, and could consolidate the victory at its pleasure. As a matter of course the Sulpician laws were repealed, and their author and his twelve most notable adherents were proscribed for arrest and execution as enemies of their country. Sulpicius was seized and put to death at Laurentum, and his head was by Sulla’s orders exposed in the Forum at the very spot where but a few days before he had stood in the full vigor of youth and eloquence. The rest of the proscribed, even including old Marius, were pursued by their would-be assassins.
After hair-raising adventures by land and sea, Marius was finally captured in the salt-marshes near Minturnae and turned over to that town’s officials for execution. But the executioner, a German slave, “trembled before the eyes of his old conqueror and the axe fell from his hands, when the general in his powerful voice haughtily demanded whether he dared to kill Gaius Marius.” The town officials, “ashamed that the savior of Rome should meet greater respect from slaves he had sent into bondage than from fellow citizens to whom he had brought freedom,” gave him a ship in which to escape. After further astonishing adventures in Numidia, Marius and the other political fugitives found temporary refuge together on a small island of the Tunisian coast.
To remove existing evils and prevent future revolutions, Sulla proposed a new series of laws. Nothing seems to have been done for the hard-pressed debtors except that the rules as to maximum interest were enforced. Directions were also given for establishing a number of colonies, and the Senate, which had been greatly thinned by the battles and prosecutions of the Social War, was filled up by admitting 300 new senators (naturally selected in the interests of the aristocracy). And last, elective and legislative arrangements were materially altered. The old Servian voting system, under which those with estates of 100,000 sesterces and up possessed almost half of the votes, replaced the arrangements that had been introduced in 241 B.C. to reduce the dominance of the upper classes. Thus in electing the consuls, praetors, and censors, the nonwealthy were practically excluded from exercising the suffrage. The right of tribunes of the people to introduce legislation was restricted by requiring that every proposal be submitted first to the Senate; only after Senate approval could it come before the people.
These enactments called forth by the Sulpician attempt at revolution bear an altogether peculiar character. Sulla ventured without consulting the citizens or jurymen to condemn to death twelve distinguished men, including magistrates actually in office and the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these proscriptions—a violation of the laws of appeal which was severely censured even by such extreme conservatives as Quintus Scaevola. He ventured to overthrow a 150-year-old elective arrangement in favor of one long obsolete and proscribed. He ventured practically to withdraw the right of legislation from its two primary sources, the magistrates and the comitia, and to transfer it to a group that had never possessed any privilege other than that of being asked for advice. Never had any democrat dispensed justice so tyrannically, or remodeled the constitution with such reckless audacity, as this conservative reformer.
But a look at substance instead of form leads to very different conclusions. Revolutions have nowhere been crushed, least of all in Rome, without demanding a certain number of victims, who under forms more or less tinged with justice atone for the crime of being vanquished. Anyone who recalls the prosecutions by the victorious party after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus will be inclined to praise Sulla for his candor and comparative moderation, first in that he accepted war as war and placed the enemies whom he defeated beyond the pale of the law, and second in that he limited the number of victims by allowing no outbreak of fury against lesser persons.
A similar moderation appears in his political changes. His legislative innovation—the most important and apparently the most comprehensive—merely brought the letter of the constitution into harmony with its spirit. The ability of any consul, praetor, or tribune to propose any measure to the citizens, and bring it to a vote without debate, was irrational from the first and had daily become more so. It was tolerated only because in practice the Senate had exercised the right of prior deliberation and had regularly crushed any proposal, if put to premature vote, by means of the political or religious veto. The revolution had swept away these safeguards; and as a result the system had now developed to that absurd point where any petulant knave might overthrow the state with the law’s blessing. Under such circumstances what was more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative than to recognize formally the power which the Senate had hitherto exercised by a circuitous process?
Much the same might be said for the return to the old voting system. The earlier constitution was based on it, and even the reform of 241 B.C. had merely restricted the privileges of men of wealth. But since then a financial revolution had occurred, which might well justify a raising of the property requirement. The new timocracy 12 thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful to its spirit, while at the same time it at least mildly attempted to check the disgraceful purchase of votes. And lastly, the regulations in favor of debtors and the resumption of colonization gave express proof that Sulla, though disapproving the impetuous proposals of Sulpicius, was, like Sulpicius and Drusus (and all the more far-seeing aristocrats), favorable to economic reform—a conclusion supported by the circumstance that he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own free will.
Combining with such considerations the fact that Sulla disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the grain distribution, the opinion seems warranted that the Sullan arrangements of 88 B.C. substantially followed the outlines of the Gracchan constitution. On the one hand, he altered as times required the traditional rules that endangered the existing government; while on the other he sought to remedy the existing social evils, so far as either could be done without touching ills that lay still deeper. Contempt for constitutional formalism, together with clear perceptions, praiseworthy intentions, and a vivid appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrangements marks his legislation throughout. But it also bears a certain frivolous and superficial character; a great amount of good nature was required to believe that fixing a maximum rate of interest would remedy the confused relations of debtors and creditors, or that the right of prior discussion by the Senate would prove more resistant to future demagoguery than the right of veto and religion had once been.
In fact, new clouds had already begun to overcast the clear sky of the conservatives. The Asian problem was becoming more threatening daily. The state had already suffered grave injury from the delay of the army’s departure for Asia, which on no account could be postponed longer. Sulla hoped to leave guarantees against a new assault on the oligarchy in Italy, partly in the consuls to be elected under the new system, and especially in the armies engaged in suppressing the remnants of the Italian insurrection. The consular choice, however, did not go to Sulla’s candidates, but to Lucius Cornelius Cinna, one of the most determined oppositionists, and Gnaeus Octavius, a dyed-in-the-wool aristocrat. It may be presumed that the capitalist party by this choice retaliated on the author of the law regulating interest. Sulla accepted this unpleasant outcome with the declaration that he was glad to see the citizens exercising their constitutional right of choice, and contented himself with requiring both consuls to swear that they would faithfully observe the existing constitution.
Of the armies, the northern one would become crucial once the bulk of the Campanian army departed for Asia. Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and secured the recall of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a way as to spare his feelings—the more important because Strabo belonged to the equestrian party, and his hands-off attitude during the Sulpician troubles had caused the aristocracy no small anxiety. Rufus took over in Strabo’s stead, but within a few days he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo resumed the command he had hardly abdicated. He was popularly regarded as the instigator of the murder; it is certain that he was a man capable of such a deed, that he reaped the fruits of the crime, and that he punished the known perpetrators only with words.
The death of Rufus and the return of Strabo represented a new and serious danger, but Sulla did nothing to deprive the latter of his command. Soon afterward, when his consulship expired, he found himself urged by his successor Cinna to depart at once for Asia, where his presence was certainly urgently needed, while at the same time proceedings were begun against him by one of the new tribunes. The dullest eye could see that a new attack on him and his party was in preparation. Sulla’s only alternatives were either to break openly with Cinna (and perhaps with Strabo) and once more march on Rome, or depart for another continent and let Italy stew in its own juice. Sulla decided—whether more from patriotism or indifference will never be ascertained—on the latter. He handed command of the corps in Samnium to the trustworthy and experienced Quintus Metellus Pius, who received in Sulla’s stead the proconsular command over lower Italy; gave the conduct of the siege of Nola to the propraetor Appius Claudius; and early in 87 B.C. embarked with his legions for the East.
1. Several additional examples are recounted in the original.
2. The law was all the worse, Mommsen observes in the original, because it was sponsored by moderates.
3. In the original, Mommsen lists the principal revolted communities.
4. The original continues with examples of such loyal cities.
5. Or “War of the Allies,” as this Italian revolt came to be callea.
6. Mommsen further traces in the original how exact was the Italian copy of the Roman state, and how the Italians missed the opportunity to develop the modern institution of representative government.
7. Mommsen describes in the original the somewhat different treatment accorded to the Celtic communities south of the Alps.
8. How the fall of Asculum was followed by the subjugation of the nearby districts, including the insurgent capital of Italia, is told in a brief passage here omitted.
9. After several victories, including the capture of the Samnite capital Bovianum, which Mommsen describes in the original.
10. In the original, Mommsen goes on to describe the Roman clean-up campaigns of this year.
11. In a brief further passage omitted here, Mommsen further attests to Sulpicius’ moderate designs, and discusses his personal and political motives for advancing them.
12. In Aristotle, a state where political position depends on wealth.