The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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The Victory and the Parties
The political parties of Rome continued their pitiful quarrels over
the carcase, without troubling themselves about the great chapter in
the world's history the first page of which was thus opened, without
even giving way to the pure feeling that on this day Rome's aristocrats
as well as Rome's democrats had done their duty. The rivalry of
the two generals--who were not only political antagonists, but were
also set at variance in a military point of view by the so different
results of the two campaigns of the previous year--broke out immediately
after the battle in the most offensive form. Catulus might with
justice assert that the centre division which he commanded had
decided the victory, and that his troops had captured thirty-one
standards, while those of Marius had brought in only two, his
soldiers led even the deputies of the town of Parma through the heaps
of the dead to show to them that Marius had slain his thousand, but
Catulus his ten thousand. Nevertheless Marius was regarded as the real
conqueror of the Cimbri, and justly; not merely because by virtue of
his higher rank he had held the chief command on the decisive day,
and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to
his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae
had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae
Sextiae. But at that period it was considerations of political
partisanship rather than of military merit which attached the glory
of having saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones entirely to the name
of Marius. Catulus was a polished and clever man, so graceful a
speaker that his euphonious language sounded almost like eloquence,
a tolerable writer of memoirs and occasional poems, and an excellent
connoisseur and critic of art; but he was anything but a man of the
people, and his victory was a victory of the aristocracy. The battles
of the rough farmer on the other hand, who had been raised to honour
by the common people and had led the common people to victory, were
not merely defeats of the Cimbri and Teutones, but also defeats of the
government: there were associated with them hopes far different from
that of being able once more to carry on mercantile transactions on
the one side of the Alps or to cultivate the fields without molestation
on the other. Twenty years had elapsed since the bloody corpse of
Gaius Gracchus had been flung into the Tiber; for twenty years the
government of the restored oligarchy had been endured and cursed;
still there had risen no avenger for Gracchus, no second master to
prosecute the building which he had begun. There were many who
hated and hoped, many of the worst and many of the best citizens
of the state: was the man, who knew how to accomplish this vengeance
and these wishes, found at last in the son of the day-labourer of
Arpinum? Were they really on the threshold of the new much-dreaded
and much-desired second revolution?
Chapter VI
The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform
Marius
Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the
village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained
municipal rights as Cereatae Marianae and still at the present day bears
the name of "Marius' home" (Casamare). He was reared at the plough,
in circumstances so humble that they seemed to preclude him from access
even to the municipal offices of Arpinum: he learned early--what he
practised afterwards even when a general--to bear hunger and thirst,
the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and to sleep on the hard
ground. As soon as his age allowed him, he had entered the army and
through service in the severe school of the Spanish wars had rapidly
risen to be an officer. In Scipio's Numantine war he, at that time
twenty-three years of age, attracted the notice of the stern general
by the neatness with which he kept his horse and his accoutrements,
as well as by his bravery in combat and his decorous demeanour in camp.
He had returned home with honourable scars and warlike distinctions,
and with the ardent wish to make himself a name in the career on which
he had gloriously entered; but, as matters then stood, a man of even the
highest merit could not attain those political offices, which alone led
to the higher military posts, without wealth and without connections.
The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and
by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the Julii.
So by dint of great efforts and after various miscarriages he succeeded,
in 639, in attaining the praetorship, in which he found opportunity of
displaying afresh his military ability as governor of Further Spain.
How he thereafter in spite of the aristocracy received the consulship in
647 and, as proconsul (648, 649), terminated the African war; and how,
called after the calamitous day of Arausio to the superintendence of
the war against the Germans, he had his consulship renewed for four
successive years from 650 to 653 (a thing unexampled in the annals of
the republic) and vanquished and annihilated the Cimbri in Cisalpine,
and the Teutones in Transalpine, Gaul--has been already related. In his
military position he had shown himself a brave and upright man, who
administered justice impartially, disposed of the spoil with rare
honesty and disinterestedness, and was thoroughly incorruptible; a
skilful organizer, who had brought the somewhat rusty machinery of the
Roman military system once more into a state of efficiency; an able
general, who kept the soldier under discipline and withal in good humour
and at the same time won his affections in comrade-like intercourse, but
looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the
proper time. He was not, as far as we can judge, a man of eminent
military capacity; but the very respectable qualities which he possessed
were quite sufficient under the existing circumstances to procure for
him the reputation of such capacity, and by virtue of it he had taken
his place in a fashion of unparalleled honour among the consulars and
the triumphators. But he was none the better fitted on that account for
the brilliant circle. His voice remained harsh and loud, and his look
wild, as if he still saw before him Libyans or Cimbrians, and not well-
bred and perfumed colleagues. That he was superstitious like a genuine
soldier of fortune; that he was induced to become a candidate for his
first consulship, not by the impulse of his talents, but primarily by
the utterances of an Etruscan -haruspex-; and that in the campaign with
the Teutones a Syrian prophetess Martha lent the aid of her oracles
to the council of war,--these things were not, in the strict sense,
unaristocratic: in such matters, then as at all times, the highest and
lowest strata of society met. But the want of political culture was
unpardonable; it was commendable, no doubt, that he had the skill to
defeat the barbarians, but what was to be thought of a consul who was so
ignorant of constitutional etiquette as to appear in triumphal costume
in the senate! In other respects too the plebeian character clung to
him. He was not merely--according to aristocratic phraseology--a poor
man, but, what was worse, frugal and a declared enemy of all bribery and
corruption. After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond
of his cups, especially in his later years; he knew not the art of
giving feasts, and kept a bad cook. It was likewise awkward that the
consular understood nothing but Latin and had to decline conversing
in Greek; that he felt the Greek plays wearisome might pass--he was
presumably not the only one who did so--but to confess to the feeling of
weariness was naive. Thus he remained throughout life a countryman cast
adrift among aristocrats, and annoyed by the keenly-felt sarcasms and
still more keenly--felt commiseration of his colleagues, which he
had not the self-command to despise as he despised themselves.
Political Position of Marius
Marius stood aloof from the parties not much less than from society.
The measures which he carried in his tribunate of the people (635)--a
better control over the delivery of the voting-tablets with a view to
do away with the scandalous frauds that were therein practised, and the
prevention of extravagant proposals for largesses to the people(1)--do
not bear the stamp of a party, least of all that of the democratic, but
merely show that he hated what was unjust and irrational; and how could
a man like this, a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination, have
been from the first a revolutionist? The hostile attacks of the
aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of
the opponents of the government; and there he speedily found himself
elevated in the first instance to be general of the opposition, and
destined perhaps for still higher things hereafter. But this was far
more the effect of the stringent force of circumstances and of the
general need which the opposition had for a chief, than his own work;
he had at any rate since his departure for Africa in 647-8 hardly
tarried, in passing, for a brief period in the capital. It was not till
the latter half of 653 that he returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones
as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double
honours--decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the same time a
novice in politics. It was certain beyond dispute, not only that Marius
had saved Rome, but that he was the only man who could have saved it;
his name was on every one's lips; the men of quality acknowledged his
services; with the people he was more popular than any one before or
after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his
unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughness;
he was called by the multitude a third Romulus and a second Camillus;
libations were poured forth to him like the gods. It was no wonder that
the head of the peasant's son grew giddy at times with all this glory;
that he compared his march from Africa to Gaul to the victorious
processions of Dionysus from continent to continent, and had a cup--none
of the smallest--manufactured for his use after the model of that of
Bacchus. There was just as much of hope as of gratitude in this
delirious enthusiasm of the people, which might well have led astray
a man of colder blood and more mature political experience. The work
of Marius seemed to his admirers by no means finished. The wretched
government oppressed the land more heavily than did the barbarians: on
him, the first man of Rome, the favourite of the people, the head of the
opposition, devolved the task of once more delivering Rome. It is true
that to one who was a rustic and a soldier the political proceedings
of the capital were strange and incongruous: he spoke as ill as he
commanded well, and displayed a far firmer bearing in presence of
the lances and swords of the enemy than in presence of the applause
or hisses of the multitude; but his inclinations were of little moment.
The hopes of which he was the object constrained him. His military
and political position was such that, if he would not break with the
glorious past, if he would not deceive the expectations of his party and
in fact of the nation, if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of
duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs and put an
end to the government of the restoration; and if he only possessed the
internal qualities of a head of the people, he might certainly dispense
with those which he lacked as a popular leader.
The New Military Organization
He held in his hand a formidable weapon in the newly organized army.
Previously to his time the fundamental principle of the Servian
constitution--by which the levy was limited entirely to the burgesses
possessed of property, and the distinctions as to armour were regulated
solely by the property qualification(2)--had necessarily been in various
respects relaxed. The minimum census of 11,000 -asses- (43 pounds),
which bound its possessor to enter the burgess-army, had been lowered to
4000 (17 pounds;(3)). The older six property-classes, distinguished by
their respective kinds of armour, had been restricted to three; for,
while in accordance with the Servian organization they selected the
cavalry from the wealthiest, and the light-armed from the poorest,
of those liable to serve, they arranged the middle class, the proper
infantry of the line, no longer according to property but according to
age of service, in the three divisions of -hastati-, -principes-, and
-triarii-. They had, moreover, long ago brought in the Italian allies
to share to a very great extent in war-service; but in their case too,
just as among the Roman burgesses, military duty was chiefly imposed
on the propertied classes. Nevertheless the Roman military system down
to the time of Marius rested in the main on that primitive organization
of the burgess-militia. But it was no longer suited for the altered
circumstances. The better classes of society kept aloof more and more
from service in the army, and the Roman and Italic middle class in
general was disappearing; while on the other hand the considerable
military resources of the extra-Italian allies and subjects had become
available, and the Italian proletariate also, properly applied, afforded
at least a very useful material for military objects. The burgess-
cavalry,(4) which was meant to be formed from the class of the wealthy,
had practically ceased from service in the field even before the time of
Marius. It is last mentioned as an actual corps d'armee in the Spanish
campaign of 614, when it drove the general to despair by its insolent
arrogance and its insubordination, and a war broke out between
the troopers and the general, waged on both sides with equal
unscrupulousness. In the Jugurthine war it continues to appear merely
as a sort of guard of honour for the general and foreign princes;
thenceforth it wholly disappears. In like manner the filling up of the
complement of the legions with properly qualified persons bound to serve
proved in the ordinary course of things difficult; so that exertions,
such as were necessary after the battle of Arausio, would have been in
all probability really impracticable with the retention of the existing
rules as to the obligation of service. On the other hand even before
the time of Marius, especially in the cavalry and the light infantry,
extra-Italian subjects--the heavy mounted troopers of Thrace, the light
African cavalry, the excellent light infantry of the nimble Ligurians,
the slingers from the Baleares--were employed in ever-increasing numbers
even beyond their own provinces for the Roman armies; and at the same
time, while there was a want of qualified burgess-recruits, the non-
qualified poorer burgesses pressed forward unbidden to enter the army;
in fact, from the mass of the civic rabble without work or averse
to it, and from the considerable advantages which the Roman war-service
yielded, the enlistment of volunteers could not be difficult. It was
therefore simply a necessary consequence of the political and social
changes in the state, that its military arrangements should exhibit
a transition from the system of the burgess-levy to the system of
contingents and enlisting; that the cavalry and light troops should
be essentially formed out of the contingents of the subjects--in the
Cimbrian campaign, for instance, contingents were summoned from as far
as Bithynia; and that in the case of the infantry of the line, while
the former arrangement of obligation to service was not abolished,
every free-born burgess should at the same time be permitted voluntarily
to enter the army as was first done by Marius in 647.
To this was added the reducing the infantry of the line to a level,
which is likewise to be referred to Marius. The Roman method of
aristocratic classification had hitherto prevailed also within the
legion. Each of the four divisions of the -velites-, the -hastati-,
the -principes-, and the -triarii---or, as we may say, the vanguard,
the first, second, and third line--had hitherto possessed its special
qualification for service, as respected property or age, and in great
part also its distinctive equipment; each had its definite place once
for all assigned in the order of battle; each had its definite military
rank and its own standard. All these distinctions were now superseded.
Any one admitted as a legionary at all needed no further qualification
in order to serve in any division; the discretion of the officers alone
decided as to his place. All distinctions of armour were set aside, and
consequently all recruits were uniformly trained. Connected, doubtless,
with this change were the various improvements which Marius introduced
in the armament, the carrying of the baggage, and similar matters, and
which furnish an honourable evidence of his insight into the practical
details of the business of war and of his care for his soldiers; and
more especially the new method of drill devised by Publius Rutilius
Rufus (consul 649) the comrade of Marius in the African war. It is a
significant fact, that this method considerably increased the military
culture of the individual soldier, and was essentially based upon the
training of the future gladiators which was usual in the fighting-
schools of the time. The arrangement of the legion became totally
different. The thirty companies (-manipuli-) of heavy infantry, which--
each in two sections (-centuriae-) composed respectively of 60 men in
the first two, and of 30 men in the third, division--had hitherto formed
the tactical unit, were replaced by 10 cohorts (-cohortes-) each with
its own standard and each of 6, or often only of 5, sections of 100
men apiece; so that, although at the same time 1200 men were saved by
the suppression of the light infantry of the legion, yet the total
numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to from 5000 to 6000 men.
The custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, but, while
previously each division had formed a distinct corps, it was in future
left to the general to distribute the cohorts, of which he had the
disposal, in the three lines as he thought best. Military rank was
determined solely by the numerical order of the soldiers and of the
divisions. The four standards of the several parts of the legion--the
wolf, the ox with a man's head, the horse, the boar--which had hitherto
probably been carried before the cavalry and the three divisions of
heavy infantry, disappeared; there came instead the ensigns of the new
cohorts, and the new standard which Marius gave to the legion as a
whole--the silver eagle. While within the legion every trace of the
previous civic and aristocratic classification thus disappeared, and the
only distinctions henceforth occurring among the legionaries were purely
military, accidental circumstances had some decades earlier given
rise to a privileged division of the army alongside of the legions--
the bodyguard of the general. Hitherto selected men from the allied
contingents had formed the personal escort of the general; the
employment of Roman legionaries, or even men voluntarily offering
themselves, for personal service with him was at variance with the
stern disciplinary obligations of the mighty commonwealth. But when the
Numantine war had reared an army demoralized beyond parallel, and Scipio
Aemilianus, who was called to check the wild disorder, had not been able
to prevail on the government to call entirely new troops under arms, he
was at least allowed to form, in addition to a number of men whom the
dependent kings and free cities outside of the Roman bounds placed at
his disposal, a personal escort of 500 men composed of volunteer Roman
burgesses (p. 230). This cohort drawn partly from the better classes,
partly from the humbler personal clients of the general, and hence
called sometimes that of the friends, sometimes that of the headquarters
(-praetoriani-), had the duty of serving in the latter (-praetorium-)
in return for which it was exempt from camp and entrenching service
and enjoyed higher pay and greater repute.
Political Significance of the Marian Military Reform
This complete revolution in the constitution of the Roman army seems
certainly in substance to have originated from purely military motives;
and on the whole to have been not so much the work of an individual,
least of all of a man of calculating ambition, as the remodelling which
the force of circumstances enjoined in arrangements which had become
untenable. It is probable that the introduction of the system of inland
enlistment by Marius saved the state in a military point of view from
destruction, just as several centuries afterwards Arbogast and Stilicho
prolonged its existence for a time by the introduction of foreign
enlistment. Nevertheless, it involved a complete--although not yet
developed--political revolution. The republican constitution was
essentially based on the view that the citizen was at the same time
a soldier, and that the soldier was above all a citizen; there was an
end of it, so soon as a soldier-class was formed. To this issue the
new system of drill, with its routine borrowed from the professional
gladiator, could not but lead; the military service became gradually
a profession. Far more rapid was the effect of the admission--though
but limited--of the proletariate to participate in military service;
especially in connection with the primitive maxims, which conceded to
the general an arbitrary right of rewarding his soldiers compatible only
with very solid republican institutions, and gave to the capable and
successful soldier a sort of title to demand from the general a share
of the moveable spoil and from the stale a portion of the soil that had
been won. While the burgess or farmer called out under the levy saw in
military service nothing but a burden to be undertaken for the public
good, and in the gains of war nothing but a slight compensation for the
far more considerable loss brought upon him by serving, it was otherwise
with the enlisted proletarian. Not only was he for the moment solely
dependent upon his pay, but, as there was no Hotel des Invalides nor
even a poorhouse to receive him after his discharge, for the future
also he could not but wish to abide by his standard, and not to leave
it otherwise than with the establishment of his civic status, His only
home was the camp, his only science war, his only hope the general--what
this implied, is clear. When Marius after the engagement on the Raudine
plain unconstitutionally gave Roman citizenship on the very field
of battle to two cohorts of Italian allies en masse for their brave
conduct, he justified himself afterwards by saying that amidst the noise
of battle he had not been able to distinguish the voice of the laws.
If once in more important questions the interest of the army and that
of the general should concur to produce unconstitutional demands,
who could be security that then other laws also would not cease to
be heard amid the clashing of swords? 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 reign of the Kings;
the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed
the near advent of the Emperors.
Political Projects of Marius
There is hardly any doubt that Marius entered into the brilliant
prospects which his military and political position opened up to him.
It was a sad and troubled time. Men had peace, but they were not glad
of having it; the state of things was not now such as it had formerly
been after the first mighty onset of the men of the north on Rome, when,
so soon as the crisis was over, all energies were roused anew in the
fresh consciousness of recovered health, and had by their vigorous
development rapidly and amply made up for what was lost. Every one felt
that, though able generals might still once and again avert immediate
destruction, the commonwealth was only the more surely on the way to
ruin under the government of the restored oligarchy; but every one felt
also that the time was past when in such cases the burgess-body came to
its own help, and that there was no amendment so long as the place of
Gaius Gracchus remained empty. How deeply the multitude felt the blank
that was left after the disappearance of those two illustrious youths
who had opened the gates to revolution, and how childishly in fact it
grasped at any shadow of a substitute, was shown by the case of the
pretended son of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although the very sister of
the two Gracchi charged him with fraud in the open Forum, was yet chosen
by the people in 655 as tribune solely on account of his usurped name.
In the same spirit the multitude exulted in the presence of Gaius
Marius; how should it not? He, if any one, seemed the right man--he
was at any rate the first general and the most popular name of his time,
confessedly brave and upright, and recommended as regenerator of the
state by his very position aloof from the proceedings of party--how
should not the people, how should not he himself, have held that he was
so! Public opinion as decidedly as possible favoured the opposition.
It was a significant indication of this, that the proposal to have the
vacant stalls in the chief priestly colleges filled up by the burgesses
instead of the colleges themselves--which the government had frustrated
in the comitia in 609 by the suggestion of religious scruples--was
carried in 650 by Gnaeus Domitius without the senate having been able
even to venture a serious resistance. On the whole it seemed as if
nothing was wanted but a chief, who should give to the opposition a firm
rallying point and a practical aim; and this was now found in Marius.