Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (10 page)

Just as the teeming wharves of Puteoli or the sophistication of the nearby pleasure-villas spoke of a shrinking world, then so too, in its own way, did the Italians’ revolt. The mass of their armies may have been fighting in defence of vaguely felt local loyalties, but their leaders certainly had no wish to return to the parochialisms of life before Rome. Far from trying to free their communities from the grip of a centralising super-state, they could think of no recourse other than to invent a new one of their own. At the start of the war, the rebel leaders had chosen Corfinium, in the heart of Italy, to be their new capital, ‘a city which all the Italians could share in as a replacement for Rome’.
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Just so that no one would
miss the symbolism of this measure, both Corfinium and the new state itself had then been given the name of ‘Italia’. Coins had been duly issued and an embryonic government set up. Not until the nineteenth century, and Garibaldi, would there be another such attempt to form an independent Italian state.

But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the establishment of Italia suggests that for the vast majority of the Italian leaders, at least, rebellion against Rome had been a gesture less of defiance than of frustrated admiration. From the constitution to the coinage, everything was copied from the Romans. All along, the rickety new state had never been anything more than second best to the Italians’ real ambition – enrolment as citizens of Rome. Even among the common soldiers, to whom Roman citizenship would have brought few benefits, there are signs that resentment of the Republic was sometimes balanced by a mood of fellow feeling. Early in the war, following the defeat of Rome’s main army in central Italy, the survivors found themselves engaged in a desperate holding action, against men at least as well trained and armed as themselves. All through the summer of 90
BC
they fought a painstaking trench warfare, gradually rolling back the rebels’ front until, as harvest-time drew near, and with it the end of the campaigning season, they prepared to engage the enemy one final time. But as the two armies lined up opposite each other soldiers on both sides began to recognise friends, calling out to one another, and then laying down their arms. ‘The threatening atmosphere was dissolved and instead became like that of a festival.’ As their troops fraternised the Roman commander and his opposite number also met, to discuss ‘peace and the Italian longing for citizenship’.
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The talks failed – naturally. How could a Roman ever grant concessions to an enemy in the field? All the same, the very fact that a parley had been possible suggested that there were regrets on both sides. Of particular significance was the identity of the Roman
general. Gaius Marius was the Republic’s most celebrated soldier. Even though by now he was in his sixties, and not as light in the saddle as he had once been, he still had star quality. The rebels knew and admired him, many having been commanded by him in battle. Marius’ imperious habit of awarding citizenship to entire cohorts of Italian allies as a reward for exceptional valour was gratefully remembered. So too was the fact that Marius was not even a native of the city of Rome: he had grown up in Arpinum, a small hill town a three-day journey from the capital, famous for its poverty and remoteness, and not much else. In primordial times it had been the stronghold of tribesmen who had themselves fought against the Romans, but defeat had been followed by assimilation, and – ultimately – by enfranchisement. This last step, however, had occurred less than a century before the other Italian allies had launched their own desperate bid for the citizenship, so that the career of a man such as Marius, who had risen from such unpromising beginnings to such extraordinary heights, could not help but serve the rebels as an inspiration.

And not only the rebels. There were plenty of Romans who sympathised with the Italians’ demands. After all, what had Rome been founded as if not a city of immigrants? The first Roman women had been the abducted Sabines, back in the time of Romulus, who had flung themselves between their fathers and their new husbands, begging them not to fight but to live in peace as the citizens of a single state. The appeal had succeeded, and Romans and Sabines had settled down together on the seven hills. The legend reflected the reality that there had never been a city so generous with her citizenship as Rome. Men of diverse backgrounds and origins had always been permitted to become Roman, and to share in Roman values and beliefs. In turn, of course, it was an irony, if not quite a paradox, that chief among these was an attitude towards non-Romans of invincible contempt.

Tragically, however, in the years leading up to the Italian revolt, the arguments for openness and exclusivism had begun to grow dangerously polarised. To many, there had seemed a world of difference between granting citizenship to the occasional individual or community and enfranchising the whole of Italy. Roman politicians had not needed to be motivated entirely by chauvinism or arrogance – although plenty were, to be sure – to fear that their city was in danger of being swamped. How were Rome’s ancient institutions to cope with the sudden enrolment of millions of new citizens, dotted throughout the length and breadth of Italy? To conservatives, the threat appeared so desperate that their efforts to combat it had grown desperate in turn. Bills had been passed expelling all non-citizens from Rome. More ominously, there had been increasing resort to violence against opponents bringing forward bills of their own. In 91
BC
a proposal to enfranchise the Italians had been abandoned amid rioting and violent demonstrations, and its proposer, retiring in dudgeon to his home, had been stabbed to death in the twilight gloom of his portico. The murderer was never found, but the Italian leaders had certainly known who to blame. Within days of the assassination they had begun massing their hillsmen for war.

As news had reached Rome of the massacres and scalpings at Asculum the rival factions whose squabblings had precipitated the crisis were shocked into a dazed unity. Even those most identified with the Italians’ cause had girded themselves for the fight. The grim doggedness of Marius’ campaigning had been matched wherever the legions met their erstwhile allies, in a long, bloody slog to reverse the disastrous series of defeats that had marked the start of Rome’s war. By the time Marius sat down to negotiate terms with his Italian adversary, the Roman cause had been stabilised throughout northern Italy; a few weeks later and the rebel cause began to crumble. The massacre at Asculum had heralded the revolt, and it
was news from Asculum again that enabled the Romans to celebrate their first decisive victory of the war. The triumphant general had been Gnaeus Pompeius ‘Strabo’, possibly the most loathed man in Rome, as notorious for the shadiness of his character as for the squint that had given him his nickname. Strabo owned vast swaths of territory in Picenum, on the eastern seaboard of Italy, and had been blockaded there since the start of the war. With the onset of autumn, however, and clearly unwilling to go hungry through the winter, Strabo had launched two sorties that successfully caught the enemy in a pincer attack. The remnants of the rebel army had fled to Asculum, which Strabo, completing the reversal of fortune, had settled down to starve into submission.

With victory now looking increasingly assured, the Senate launched a pincer movement of its own. One wing of the attack was continued military action beyond the campaigning season, harrying the insurgents throughout central Italy, forcing their increasingly bedraggled armies to retreat into the mountains where the winter snows lay thickest. The second wing of the pincer was led by those politicians who had always favoured granting citizenship to the Italians. Confident that military success now enabled Rome to be generous, they succeeded in persuading even the most die-hard conservatives that there was no alternative, in the long term, to enfranchising the allies. Accordingly, in October 90
BC
a bill was proposed and passed. By its provisions all the Italian communities that had stayed loyal were granted Roman citizenship immediately, and the rebels were promised it in due course if they would only lay down their arms. To many, the offer proved irresistible. By the summer of 89 most of northern and central Italy was back at peace.

In Samnium, however, where the struggle was rooted in ancient loathing, a resolution was not so easily obtained. And it was at this very moment, with the Republic exhausted and still preoccupied
with war in its back yard, that alarming news began to filter through from Asia. A chasm of difference might have seemed to separate the peak-hugging hamlets of the Samnites and the great cities of the Greek East, cosmopolitan as they were, adorned with monuments of marble and gold, but Roman rule had bridged it. There had certainly been no lack of Samnites among the hordes of Italian businessmen and tax-farmers who had battened on to Asia. There they had merrily contributed to the very resentment of Rome that back in Samnium had pushed their compatriots into revolt. Despite the war raging in Italy, the Romans and Italians of Asia had been far too busy screwing money out of the provincials to worry about fighting each other – or, indeed, anyone else.

Then came Mithridates. When, in 89, Roman rule in Asia collapsed, the shockwaves spread fast throughout the Mediterranean economy. Italy was plunged into a disastrous slump. Ironically, the rebel leaders had exploited their compatriots’ business ties in the East to beg Mithridates to join them in their revolt, but now that Mithridates had finally taken up their invitation they found that it was Italian businessmen who were the hardest hit. In Rome, by contrast, in senatorial circles the prospect of a war with Mithridates was greeted with open relish. Everyone knew that Orientals were soft and fought like women. Even more invitingly, everyone knew that the reason for this was because Orientals were obscenely rich. No wonder that there was an almost audible sound of aristocratic lips being smacked.

One man in particular regarded the command as his by right. Marius had long had his eye on a war with Mithridates. Ten years previously he had travelled to Asia and confronted the King face to face, telling him with the bluntness of a man spoiling for a fight either to be stronger than Rome or to obey her commands. On that occasion Mithridates had managed to swallow his pride and back down from war. All the same, it may have been no coincidence
that when at last he did rise to the bait the man who provoked him into doing so was a close ally of Marius. Manius Aquillius, the commissioner who incited Rome’s puppet king to invade Pontus, had previously served as Marius’ military deputy and consular colleague, and Marius in turn had helped secure Aquillius’ acquittal on a charge of extortion. The events and sources are murky, but it is possible that there is an explanation here for Aquillius’ otherwise seemingly cavalier attitude towards Rome’s security in the East, at a time when, back in Italy, she was fighting for her life. He had been aiming to provide his patron with a glorious Asian war.
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But the plot – if such indeed it were – was to have fatal consequences: for Aquillius himself, for Marius, and for the Republic as a whole. To the contagion of faction-fighting that had infected Rome for decades, racking first her own streets and then the whole of Italy, a new and deadly strain was about to be added. An Eastern command was a prize so rich that no one, not even Marius, could take it for granted. There were others, hungry and ambitious, who wanted it too. Just how badly would soon become clear.

That autumn of 89
BC
, looking to the future, the Roman people found themselves in the grip of a collective paranoia. A terrible war was drawing to a close, but despite the victory there was only a sense of foreboding. Once again, it seemed, the gods were speaking through strange signs of the Republic’s doom. Most ominous of all was a trumpet, heard ringing out from a clear, cloudless sky. So dismal was its note that all those who heard it were driven half mad with fear. The augurs nervously consulted their books. When they did so they found, to their horror, that the meaning of such a wonder left little room for doubt: a great convulsion in the order of things was approaching. One age would pass away, another would dawn, in a revolution fated to consume the world.

During the nineties Marius had gone shopping for real estate on the coast along from Naples. So had most of Rome’s super-rich, of course, but Marius’ investment in an area notorious for its indolence and effeminacy had raised particular eyebrows. Location, location, location: the great general had chosen a spot just south of the Lucrine Lake, where his villa would be conveniently situated not only for Orata’s oyster-beds, but also for the sulphur baths of the nearby spa town of Baiae. The perfect retirement home, in other words – and, as such, a public-relations disaster. Shellfish and health resorts were not what the Romans cared to associate with their war heroes. The satirists had a field day. The man of steel, they jeered, had grown soft and obese.

But this mockery was misdirected. Marius’ weight problems were only common gossip in the first place because, far from lounging by the side of his pool, the old general had chosen to remain in the public eye. Rome was the only conceivable theatre for a man of his fame, and Marius had never had the slightest intention of retiring. Ironically, this could be read in the architecture of the
notorious villa itself. Built on a natural promontory, it mimicked the layout as well as the situation of a legionary camp, and displayed an enthusiasm for entrenchment that had always been the hallmark of Marius’ generalship. In its blending of the military virtues with imposing splendour, it was in fact the perfect expression of how the great general liked to see himself.