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Chapter XXI

THE REVOLT OF ALL ITALY. 91-87 B.C.

UST as the failure of the previous attempt of Flaccus, in 125

B.C., to confer the citizenship on the Italians was followed by the revolt of Fregellae, so the despair of the subjects of Rome after the death of Drusus broke forth in a revolt of all Italy.

The Italian allies had two inducements to revolt; they wished to obtain the enjoyment of certain privileges; they wished also to free themselves from many disabilities and wrongs. The voting power was perhaps the chief, but by no means the only, privilege which they sought. There were others, such as immunity from taxation and flogging. On the other hand, they were subject to vexation and oppression in many forms from which Roman citizens were exempt. The rigor of martial law, largely modified for the burgess soldiers, remained unsoftened for them. Italian officers. of any rank might be condemned and executed by sentence of courtmartial, while the meanest burgess-soldier could appeal to the civil courts at Rome. The contingent furnished by the allies to the army was disproportionate to their number, and the disproportion was increasing. In civil matters the general superintendence of the Roman government over the dependent communities was extended till the allies were at the mercy of the caprice of any Roman magistrate. At Teanum Sidicinum the chief magistrate had been scourged by order of the Roman consul for supposed remissness in gratifying a whim of the consul's wife. In the Latin colony of Venusia a free peasant was whipped to death for a laugh at the passing litter of a young Roman holding no office. Incidents like these must have been frequent; and all non-citizens, from Latins downward, became united by the bond of a common oppression. Since the completion of the Roman conquests the Roman citizenship had become the one thing worth having; it alone would give protection from tyranny and a status in the world; for the Roman empire by this time embraced all civilization, and to be outside the Roman state was to be outside the world.

126-91 B.C.

The privilege was thus more valuable than it had ever been before; but it was also becoming more and more difficult to acquire. The tendency of the body of Roman citizens was to close their ranks. The practice of bestowing the franchise on whole communities had ceased; the right of individuals to acquire it by residence at Rome was curtailed; and in 126 B.C. all non-burgesses were expelled from the city by decree of the senate.

It might have been thought that the senate and the conservative party objected, not to the demands of the Italians, but to the revolutionary schemes of those by whom these demands were supported; but in 95 B.C. the deliberate policy of the oligarchy was made clear by a consular law which prohibited under penalties any non-burgess from laying claim to the franchise. With Drusus hope arose once more for the Italians; Drusus accomplished nothing but his own destruction, and now no resource was left but an appeal to arms.

The chief difficulty with which rebellions always have to contend is want of organization. They have to contend against an established government completely equipped and organized, and to create their own organization during the course of the struggle. The Italian peoples were not entirely unprepared in this respect. In the first place, a secret league had been formed in connection with the attempt of Drusus, with members of all the most important Italian towns, bound by oath to be faithful to each other and to the common cause. Again, each allied town furnished a contingent to the Roman army, and these trained troops formed a valuable nucleus for the allied army. Thirdly, there were the old Roman confederacies of the various Italian peoples of the Marsians, Paelignians, and others, which had of course lost all political significance after the conquest by Rome, but which still existed for purposes of common sacrifice.

The revolt broke out prematurely at Asculum in Picenum, where all the resident Romans were massacred. The flame spread rapidly through all central and southern Italy. The Marsians were the first to declare war, and round them gathered the Paeligni, the Marrucini, the Frentani, and the Vestini, while the Samnites were the center of the southern group of peoples, from the Liris to Apulia and Calabria.

On the other hand, the Romans had many adherents where the richer classes were influential. Thus the whole of Umbria and Etruria, where the middle class had entirely disappeared, remained

91-90 B.C.

faithful; so also many isolated communities in insurgent districts, such as Pinna in the Vestini. Lastly, many of the most favored of the allied communities, such as Nola, Nuceria, and Neapolis in Campania, and Rhegium; and Latin colonies, such as Alba and Aesernia, refused to rise. The strength of the revolt was in the middle classes and the small farmers; the moneyed and aristocratic classes held with Rome.

After the first blood had been shed at Asculum the insurgents still made an attempt at negotiation: they offered even now to lay down their arms if Rome would grant them the citizenship. Instead of complying, the Roman government instituted a commission, on the proposal of the tribune Varius, to investigate the conspiracy set on foot in connection with the agitation of Drusus. The result was the banishment of many members of the moderate senatorial party who were favorable to compromise. Great preparations were made for the struggle. Officers of all parties, including both Sulla and Marius, offered themselves to the government. The largesses of corn were curtailed in order to husband supplies; and all business, except military preparations, was at a standstill.

The Italians on their side were preparing not merely to secede from Rome, but to crush her and form a new state. Corfinium, a town on the Paeligni, was to be the head of the new government, under the new name of Italica. All burgesses of insurgent communities were declared citizens of Italica. A new forum and senatehouse were made, a senate, consuls, and pretors appointed. The Latin and Samnite languages were placed on an equality as the official tongues; and the imitation of the Roman constitution was carried out in the minutest details. The most important feature of the new organization is this-that Italica, like Rome, was to remain merely a governing city-state. The Italians, like Rome itself, were unable to rise above the conception of the Greek nós, or city-state. No idea occurred to them of any means, such as modern representative institutions, by which a vast population could be welded into a united nation.

Their plan of campaign was settled for the Romans by the character and extent of the revolt. They had to relieve the many fortresses which held out for them in various parts of the insurgent districts, and they had to combat a numerous enemy at widely distant points. Accordingly, two consular armies were formed to meet the forces of the two Italian consuls, the one acting in the

90-89 B.C.

northern group of insurgent states, the other in the southern. The operations of the first year of the war, 90 B.C., were distinctly unfavorable to Rome, especially in the south, where several important towns were lost, the Roman armies defeated, and most of the country occupied by the Italians. In central Italy the course of events was less disastrous, but many communities in Umbria and Etruria soon declared for the allies.

The change in popular feeling at Rome due to these reverses was shown by the repeal of the Varian commission which had sent into exile many prominent men of the party favorable to concession. About the same time a policy of compromise was adopted. The Lex Julia of the consul Lucius Julius Caesar at the end of 90 B.C. granted the citizenship to all Italian communities which had not declared against Rome. The Lex Plautia Papiria a short time later granted the citizenship to all allies who presented themselves before a Roman magistrate within sixty days.

At the same time the effect of these concessions was largely nullified by the restriction which allowed the new citizens to be enrolled in eight only of the thirty-five tribes. These laws applied to all Italy south of the Po, while the Celts between the Po and the Alps were invested with the inferior privileges which had hitherto belonged to Latin towns. The aim of these measures was to secure the loyalty of the allies who had hitherto remained faithful, and to draw over deserters from the enemy. But they by no means constituted a complete capitulation; only so much of the existing political institutions had been pulled down as seemed necessary to arrest the progress of the conflagration.

In the second year of the war the tide began to turn. The alliance of her enemies was gradually weakening before the Roman concessions, and by the end of the year the war was over, except in the southern part of the peninsula. There the last organized forces of the insurgents were being put down by Sulla, the only Roman general who had added conspicuously to his laurels in this Social War.

While events were progressing favorably to Rome during the second year, the internal condition of the city was becoming more and more critical. At the end of 89 B.C. it had become necessary to declare war against Mithradates, and Rome was by no means. prepared. The treasury was exhausted; no new army could be raised, but that of Sulla was destined to embark as soon as it could

89-88 B.C.

safely be spared; money was raised by the sale of unoccupied sites within the city. In Rome and in Italy all classes were seething with discontent. The Varian prosecutions had embittered the strife between the moderate and the extreme parties. The former was dissatisfied with the concessions already made to the Italians; the Italians themselves were dissatisfied with an enfranchisement which limited their influence to eight tribes-a limitation all the more galling that it found a precedent in the restriction of the freedmen to four tribes. The revolted communities who had been subdued were in the position of dediticii—that is, in the eye of the law they were prisoners of war, absolutely at the mercy of their conquerors; they were not yet admitted to the citizenship, and they had forfeited. their ancient treaties; where these treaties had been restored they had been made revocable at the will of the Roman people. It was desirable to recall the men exiled by the Varian commission, who included many of the best men of the senatorial order; but the canceling of a legal verdict by a decree of the people was seen to be a most undesirable precedent. Lastly, Marius was thirsting for fresh command to recover his lost influence, and was ready to go to any length to accomplish his purpose.

To all these elements of disorder must be added the decay of military discipline and an economic crisis. The social war had necessitated the enrollment of every available man in the army, and had carried party spirit into the ranks. The result was an appalling slackness of discipline, and more than one Roman division had put its commander to death and escaped all punishment.

At the same time the old cry of the oppression of capital was heard again. Debtors unable to pay the interest on their loans had applied to the urban pretor Asellio for time to realize on their property, and were trying to get the obsolete laws against usury enforced. Asellio sanctioned actions to recover interest under these laws, and was murdered by the offended creditors under the leadership of the tribune Lucius Cassius. The debtors now clamored for novae tabulae-the canceling of all existing debts.

At this critical point the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus came forward with three laws. He proposed that every senator that owed more than four hundred dollars should be expelled from the senate; that those who had been exiled by the Varian commission should be recalled; and that the new burgesses and the freedmen should be distributed among all the tribes.