102-101 B.C.

winter, and thus gave the Romans time to prepare for the coming struggle. Marius, having refused a triumph for his first victory, returned in the spring and crossed the Po with his army. On the invitation of the Cimbri he named the Raudine plain as the place for battle. There, in a dense morning mist, the Celtic cavalry of the barbarians was driven back on to the infantry; and thus taken by surprise and thrown into disorder, the whole Cimbrian host fell an easy victim. Thus the battle of Vercellae, in 101 B.C., ended the dreaded invasion of these Germanic peoples. Marius was justly regarded as the conqueror of the Cimbri, although Catulus, a polished art-critic and member of the aristocracy, had overthrown the center of the Cimbrian hosts and captured thirty-one standards, while Marius took but two. But the victory of Vercellae was only rendered possible by that of Aquae Sextiae. With the victories of Marius were associated hopes of the overthrow of the detested government. Could it be that the rough farmer of Arpinum was destined to be the avenger of Gracchus, and to continue the revolution which he had begun?

S

Chapter XX

MARIUS AS REVOLUTIONIST AND DRUSUS AS

REFORMER.

100-91 B. C.

UCH were the fears and hopes that moved the people in the capital on the news of the final overthrow of the Germanic invaders. These hopes were raised afresh when the saviour of Rome himself returned, late in 101 B.C., by far the first man in Rome, and yet a mere tyro in politics. Born in 155 B. C., Gaius Marius had, as a poor day-laborer's son, schooled his frame to bear hunger and thirst, cold and heat. His early training had fitted him to rise rapidly from the ranks and to gain distinction, first as a mere soldier, and then as governor of Further Spain. His subsequent military career in Africa and Gaul has been already described. Success in speculation had given him wealth, and a union with a daughter of the ancient Julian gens had given him powerful connections. But he never rid himself of the taint of his plebeian origin. No one was ever so popular with the masses, either before or after, both on account of his thorough honesty and disinterestedness, and of his boorish uncouthness.

The time had now come to test the power of the rustic soldier to realize the expectations of the people, and to justify the extravagant joy manifested at his return. The newly organized army might prove a formidable weapon in his hand, though the day was hardly yet come for the sword to achieve what it afterwards did in the world of politics. His military revolution was as follows: Before his time the old Servian constitution had undergone considerable relaxation; and the minimum census, which bound a man to serve in the army, had been lowered from $215 to $85. The cavalry was still drawn from the wealthiest and the light-armed troops from the poorest citizens, but the arrangement of the infantry of the line in the three divisions of hastati, principes, and triarii was no longer determined by property, but by duration of service. Moreover, the Italian allies had long taken part in the military service. Still, the primitive organization was in the main the basis

107-105 B.C.

of the Roman military system, and it was no longer suited to the altered circumstances of the state. The better classes held aloof more and more from service, and the middle class of both Romans and Italians was fast disappearing; while the allies and subjects outside Italy, as well as the Italian proletariate, were available to fill up the gaps thus caused. The cavalry formed of the wealthiest burgesses had acted as a guard of honor in the Jugurthine war, and thenceforth it ceases to appear. In ordinary circumstances it was a very difficult task to fill up the legions with properly qualified persons; in times of emergency, as after the battle of Arausio, it was impossible. Already the cavalry, as a rule, came from Thrace and Africa, while the light Ligurian infantry and Balearic slingers were employed in daily increasing numbers. Moreover, owing to the dearth of properly qualified citizens, non-qualified and poorer men pressed into the service, nor could it be hard to find plenty of volunteers for so lucrative a profession. Thus it was a necessary result of the social and political changes that the old system of the burgess levy should give place to that of contingents and enlistments, that the cavalry and light troops should mainly consist of subject contingents, and that every free-born citizen should be admitted to the line service, as was, in fact, first allowed by Marius in 107 B.C.

Marius also abolished all the old aristocratic distinctions, whether of definite rank and place or of standards and equipments, which had hitherto obtained among the four divisions of the army. All were uniformly trained under the new method of drill devised by Publius Rufus, consul in 105 B.C., and borrowed from the gladiatorial schools; and thus the infantry of the line were reduced to a common level. The thirty maniples, or companies, of the legion were now replaced by ten cohorts, each cohort having its own standard and being formed of six or five sections of one hundred men apiece. The light infantry were suppressed, but the numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to 6000 men. Although the custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, yet the general could distribute his cohorts in the three lines as he thought fit. The old four standards of the wolf, the ox with a man's head, the horse, the boar, gave place to the new standard of the silver eagle, given by Marius to the legion as a whole. Thus all the old civic and aristocratic distinctions were abolished, and all future distinctions were purely military. The pretorian cohort, or bodyguard of the general, owed its existence to a pure accident. In the Numantine Hist. Nat. III

14

107-105 B.C.

war Scipio Aemilianus had been obliged, owing to the insufficiency, and unruly nature of the soldiers with which he was supplied, to form out of volunteers a band of five hundred men, into which he afterwards admitted his ablest soldiers. This cohort had the duty of serving at the pretorium, or headquarters, and was exempt from encamping and entrenching service, and enjoyed higher pay and greater prestige.

This revolution in the military system probably saved the state, in a military point of view, from destruction, but it involved a complete political revolution, the effects of which time alone could develop. The republican constitution was essentially based on the view that the citizen was also a soldier, and that the soldier was, above all, a citizen; it was at an end so soon as a soldier class was formed. Under the new system of drill, the military service became gradually a profession. The admission, though at first restricted, of the proletariate to the service speedily took effect, the more so as the general had a right to reward the successful soldier and give him a share in the spoil. To the burgess in old times the service had always been a burden and duty, but little alleviated by the rewards it might give him. To the proletarian this was far from the case. All his hopes, both of pay, rewards, and citizenship, lay in his success in war and in his general; thus the camp became his only home and hope. Marius defended his action in giving Roman citizenship to two Italian cohorts on the Raudine plain, by saying that amid the din of battle he could not distinguish the voice of the laws. So, if once the interest of the general and army concurred in producing unconstitutional demands, it was unlikely that any law would be of much avail amid the clashing of arms.

They had now the standing army, the soldier class, the bodyguard; as in the civil constitution, so also in the military, all the pillars of the future monarchy were already in existence; the monarch alone was wanting. When the twelve eagles circled round the Palatine hill, they ushered in the kings; the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed the advent of the emperors.

Marius, in the eyes of the populace, who still mourned the death of Gaius Gracchus, was the one man capable alike from his military and political position of averting the ruin of the state, and of substituting in the place of the effete oligarchy a new and vigorous administration. It remains for us to see how he realized.

105-100 B.C.

the expectations so confidently formed of him. Two methods of operation were apparently open to him: one, to overthrow the oligarchy by means of the army; the other, to follow the example of Gracchus and effect his object in a constitutional manner. The first plan, perhaps, he never entertained, relying on his immense popularity and on the support of his discharged soldiers, but still more on the weakness of his opponents, whose downfall he probably thought could be more easily compassed than proved to be the case. Moreover, the army was still in a state of transition, and as yet ill adapted for effecting a coup d'état, and at the beginning of this crisis the use of such an instrument might well have recoiled upon the user. Having therefore discharged his army, Marius depended for further action upon the leaders of the popular party, which now once more sprang into active existence. This party had much deteriorated during the interval between Gaius Gracchus and Marius; much of the enthusiasm, faith, and purity of aim had been rubbed off in the years of confusion and turmoil; and the popular leaders were, for the most part, either political novices, or men who had nothing to lose in respect of property, influence, or even honor, and who, from personal motives of malice or a wish to attract notice, busied themselves with inflicting annoyance and damage on the government. To the first class belonged Gaius Memmius and the noted orator, Lucius Crassus; to the second, and these were the most notable leaders, belonged Gaius Glaucia, the Roman Hyperbolus, as Cicero called him, and his better and abler colleague, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. The latter, owing to a personal slight at the senate's hands, had joined the ranks of the opposition. As tribune of the people in 103 B.C. he excited a popular indignation by his public speeches touching the briberies practiced in Rome by the envoys of Mithradates, and also by his invectives against Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 102 B.C. Moreover, he had carried the election of Marius as consul for 102 B.C. in the teeth of a fierce opposition. His violence and unscrupulousness marred his very considerable powers both as a politician and orator, but he was the most prominent and dreaded enemy of the senate. He and Glaucia now entered into partnership with Marius, and it was agreed that the latter should become a candidate for his sixth consulship, Saturninus for a second tribunate, and Glaucia for the pretorship, for the year 100 B.C., in order to carry out the intended revolution.