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84-83 B.C.

ference, Fimbria gave up all for lost and fell upon his sword; the main body of the troops joined Sulla, while those who were most deeply compromised repaired to Mithradates.

The settlement of Asia was now proceeded with. Two legions. were left under command of Lucius Licinius Murena, and their interference was, in some cases, necessary to enforce the Sullan regulations. The most important of these were as follows: The revolutionary decrees of Mithradates were canceled; the most prominent adherents of the king and the authors of the massacre of the Italians were put to death; the arrears of tithes and customs for the last five years were exacted, together with a war indemnity of twenty thousand talents ($24,400,000); the few faithful communities-Rhodes, the province of Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander-were rewarded, and compensation was made to the Chians and to the people of Ilium for the exceptional cruelty with which they had been treated.

During the winter of 84-83 B.C. Sulla allowed his troops to enjoy luxurious winter quarters in Asia, and in the spring transferred them across the Aegean and the Adriatic to Brundisium.

Chapter XXIII

THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION AND ITS OVERTHROW BY SULLA. 87-82 B. C.

T

HE departure of Sulla left Italy full of the discontented elements from which revolution might be expected to arise. The Italian revolt still smoldered dangerously in many quarters, and the principal army was in the hands of a general whose loyalty to the senate was doubtful. The capitalists had suffered greatly through the severe financial crisis. The insurgents who had laid down their arms since the expiration of the sixty days appointed by the Lex Plautia Papiria were in the position of subjects entirely destitute of rights. The new citizens and the freedmen were exasperated by the canceling of the Sulpician laws; while the large class of those who adhered to the men outlawed by Sulla after the revolution of Sulpicius were bent on obtaining the recall of their banished friends.

So far as the malcontents had a common aim, they were united upon this last point of the recall of the exiles; but the movement was mainly one of pure discontent, and had no distinct political object. Its aimlessness is shown by the character of the person chosen to lead it-Lucius Cornelius Cinna. He was unknown except as an officer in the social war; he had no political aim but that of vulgar selfishness, and is said to have been bought over by the party of Marius merely because the restriction of the power of tribunes made it necessary for the conspirators to have a consul as their instrument. There were abler men in the second rank of the conspiracy -Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, a powerful popular orator, and Quintus Sertorius, a man of the highest ability and integrity.

Immediately on Sulla's departure in 87 B.c. the conspirators took action. Cinna, supported by the majority of the tribunes, proposed two laws: the reënactment of the Sulpician law permitting the enrollment of the freedmen and the new citizens in any of the tribes; and that the Sulpician exiles should be recalled and restored to their rights.

87 B.C.

The

On the day of voting both sides appeared in arms. senatorial tribunes vetoed the new law. When swords were drawn the bands of the other consul, Octavius, cleared the Forum, and committed the most frightful atrocities on the assembled multitude. Ten thousand persons are said to have been slain. There was no legal means of proceeding against the conspirators, but a prophet opportunely gave out that the banishment of Cinna and of six tribunes was necessary for the peace of the country, and a decree of outlawry was accordingly passed by the senate against these persons. Lucius Cornelius Merula was chosen consul in place of Cinna.

But the senate omitted to expel the new exiles from Italy, and they appeared in Tibur, in Praeneste, and in all the new burgess communities of Latium and Campania, asking money and arms for the common cause. The army besieging Nola, a city still held by the Italian insurgents, induced partly by their own democratic leanings, partly by the bribes of the exiles, made common cause with Cinna, and furnished a valuable nucleus for the recruits who soon flocked in. Cinna now moved towards Rome, and was soon joined by fresh forces from the north. Marius and the refugees of the previous year had landed in Etruria with a body of five hundred horse. He now ordered the ergastula, or prisons in which the slaves were confined at night, to be broken open; and soon gathered round him a force of six thousand men; he also contrived to collect a force of forty ships, with which he intercepted the corn supply of Rome. He placed himself at the disposal of Cinna, though the wiser leaders, like Sertorius, saw the imprudence of associating themselves with so dangerous a man.

The democratic forces gathered round the city, and the senate appealed to Strabo for protection. He pitched his camp at the Colline Gate, but refrained from battle, and allowed the insurgents to invest the city. A decree was now passed conferring the franchise on all the Italian allies who had forfeited their old treaties. This was meant to gratify one large and important class of malcontents, but the concession did not produce more than ten thousand men. Negotiations were opened with the Samnites, in order to make the troops of Metellus in that quarter available for the defense of the city; but the Samnite terms were too humiliating, and when Metellus marched to Rome, leaving behind him a small division, the latter was at once attacked and defeated. Moreover, Cinna and Marius

87 B.C.

granted all that the Samnites required and were reinforced by a Samnite contingent.

The insurgents were already in possession of the sea, and the land communications were soon cut off by the capture of Ariminum, which shut off the supplies of food and men expected from the region of the Po; they also held Antium, Lanuvium, and Aricia, which closed all approaches from the south. At the same time a terrible pestilence broke out among the troops of the city, by which seventeen thousand men perished. After the sudden death of Strabo his troops were incorporated with those of Octavius, but their temper was such that the consul dared not fight. The Optimates were at variance with each other: Octavius opposed all concession, while Metellus was in favor of compromise. The soldiers first besought Metellus to take over the command, then, on his refusal, deserted in large numbers. At length the government was compelled to think of surrender. Envoys were sent to Cinna, but, while the negotiations dragged on, Cinna moved close up to the city gates, and desertions became so common that the senate was reduced to unconditional surrender. Cinna promised, at the entreaty of the senate, to abstain from bloodshed; but Marius kept an ominous silence.

Marius scoffingly refused to set foot in the city until his sentence of exile had been revoked; and a hurried assembly was held in the Forum, and the necessary decree passed. The old man at length entered, and the work of bloodshed began. The gates were closed and the slaughter was uninterrupted for five days, but for months afterwards individuals who had escaped at first were put to death. Gnaeus Octavius was the first victim; others of the illustrious slain were Lucius Caesar, consul in 90 B.C., and the victor of Acerrae; Marcus Antonius, the first pleader of his time, Lucius Merula, Cinna's successor; and Quintus Catulus, Marius' colleague in the Cimbrian wars. The fury of Marius amounted to madness; he could scarce be restrained from hunting out the bitterest of his enemies and slaying them with his own hand; he forbade the burial of the bodies, and had the corpse of Gaius Caesar stabbed afresh at the tomb of Quintus Varius. The man who presented to him, as he sat at table, the head of Antonius was publicly embraced. His own associates were appalled at his frenzy, but none had the courage or the power to oppose him, and he was even elected consul with Cinna for the following year. He lived to enter upon his seventh

86 B.C.

consulship; the few remaining days of his life were passed in a delirium, which ended in a burning fever. He expired on January 13, 86 B.C. He died in full possession of what he called power and honor, and in his bed, but Nemesis assumes various shapes, and does not always requite blood with blood. Was there no sort of retaliation in the fact that Rome and Italy now breathed more freely on the news of the death of the famous deliverer of the people, than at the tidings of the battle on the Raudine plain?

With the death of Marius the massacre ceased, though there were individual instances of murder. Thus Fimbria attempted to kill the revered pontifex maximus, Quintus Scaevola, whom even Marius had spared; but Sertorius secured the public tranquillity by calling together the Marian slaves, to the number of four thousand, and having them cut down by his Celtic troops.

During the next three years Cinna enjoyed a power as absolute and despotic as any ever exercised by the tyrant of a Greek city. He was consul each year, and nominated himself and his colleague without going through the form of consulting the people. During this period he gave no sign of any definite political plan or aim; no attempt was made to reorganize the constitution and to place the new government on a firm basis. Only the reactionary measures of Sulla were annulled, and a few laws passed as the exigencies of the moment demanded.

The law of Sulpicius, granting to the new burgesses and to the freedmen equality with the old citizens, was revived and confirmed by the senate, and censors were appointed to distribute the Italians among the thirty-five tribes. It was at this time probably that the restrictions on the largesses of corn, introduced on the outbreak of the social war, were removed. The old design of Gracchus for the colonization of Capua was carried out. All debts were reduced to one-fourth of their nominal amount.

No steps were taken to secure the support of either senate or equites, or to regulate the position of the Samnites, who, though nominally Roman citizens, were really Rome's bitterest enemies, and whose one aim was still their country's independence. The real strength of the government lay in the new citizens, with whose privileges its existence appeared bound up; while many of the old citizens acquiesced, because they saw that a restoration of the Sullan constitution meant a fresh reign of terror under the opposite party.

Most of the provinces adhered to the oligarchy. Quintus

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