citizens to the state lands, but on the expediency of purchasing other lands for distribution at the cost of the treasury.[1]
But, though the agrarian reform failed, the political conflict it had provoked continued, and the lines on which it was waged were in the main those laid down by Gaius Gracchus. The sovereignty of the assembly continued to be the watchword of the popular party, and a free use of the tribunician powers of interference and of legislation remained the most effective means of accomplishing their aims.
Ten years after the death of Gaius the populares once more summoned up courage to challenge the supremacy of the Marius, 118-100 = 636-54. 636. 642. 643. 645. senate; but it was on a question of foreign administration that the conflict was renewed. The course of affairs in the client state of Numidia since Micipsa's death in 118 had been such as to discredit a stronger government than that of the senate.[2] In defiance of Roman authority, and relying on the influence of his own well-spent gold, Jugurtha had murdered both his legitimate rivals, Hiempsal and Adherbal, and made himself master of Numidia. The declaration of war wrung from the senate (112) by popular indignation had been followed by the corruption of a consul[3] (111) and the crushing defeat of the proconsul Albinus.[4] On the news of this crowning disgrace the storm burst, and on the proposal of the tribunes a commission of inquiry was appointed into the conduct of the war.[5] But the popular leaders did not stop here. Q. Caecilius Metellus, who as consul (109) had succeeded to the command in Numidia, was an able soldier but a rigid aristocrat; and they now resolved to improve their success by entrusting the command instead to a genuine son of the people. Their choice fell on Gaius Marius (see Marius), an experienced officer and administrator, but a man of humble birth, wholly illiterate, and one who, though no politician, was by temperament and training a hater of the polished and effeminate nobles who filled the senate.[6] He was triumphantly elected, and, in spite of a decree of the senate continuing Metellus as proconsul, he was entrusted by a vote of the assembly with the charge of the war against Jugurtha (q.v.).[7]
Jugurtha was vanquished; and Marius, who had been a second time elected consul in his absence, arrived at Rome in 650. 652. 653. January 104, bringing the captive prince with him in chains.[8] But further triumphs awaited the popular hero. The Cimbri and Teutones were at the gates of Italy; they had four times defeated the senatorial generals, and Marius was called upon to save Rome from a second invasion of the barbarians.[9] After two years of suspense the victory at Aquae Sextiae (102), followed by that on the Raudine plain (101), put an end to the danger by the annihilation of the invading hordes; and Marius, now consul for the fifth time, returned to Rome in triumph. There the popular party welcomed him as a leader with all the prestige of a successful general. Once more, however, they were destined to a brief success followed by disastrous defeat. Marius became for the sixth time consul;[10] of the two popular leaders Glaucia became Saturninus and the Appuleian laws. praetor and Saturninus tribune. But Marius and his allies were not statesmen of the stamp of the Gracchi; and the laws proposed by Saturninus had evidently no serious aim in view other than that of harassing the senate. His corn law merely reduced the price fixed in 123 for the monthly dole of corn, and the main point of his agrarian law lay in the clause appended to it requiring all senators to swear to observe its provisions.[11] The laws were carried, but the triumph of the popular leaders was short-lived. Their recklessness and violence had alienated all classes in Rome; and their period of office was drawing to a close. At the elections fresh rioting took place, and Marius as consul was called upon by the senate to protect the state against his own partisans. Saturninus and Glaucia surrendered, but while the senate was discussing their fate they were surrounded and murdered by their opponents.
The popular party had been worsted once more in their struggle with the senate, but none the less their alliance with Marius, and the position in which their votes placed him, marked an epoch in the history of the revolution. The transference of the political leadership to a consul who was nothing if not a soldier was at once a confession of the insufficiency of the purely civil authority of the tribunate and a dangerous encouragement of military interference in political controversies. The consequences were already foreshadowed by the special provisions made by Saturninus for Marius's veterans, and in the active part taken by them in the passing of his laws. Indirectly, too, Marius, though no politician, played an Military reforms of Marius. important part in this new departure. His military reforms[12] at once democratized the army and attached it more closely to its leader for the time being. He swept away the last traces of civil distinctions of rank or wealth within the legion, admitted to its ranks all classes, and substituted voluntary enlistment under a popular general for the old-fashioned compulsory levy. The efficiency of the legion was increased at the cost of a complete severance of the ties which bound it to the civil community and to the civil authorities.
The next important crisis was due partly to the rivalry which had been growing more bitter each year between the senate and the commercial class, and partly to the long-impending question of the enfranchisement of the Italian allies. The publicani, negotiatores and others, who constituted what was now becoming known as the equestrian order (see Equites), had made unscrupulous use of their control of the courts and especially of the quaestio de repetundis against their natural rivals, the official class in the provinces. The threat of prosecution before a hostile jury was held over the head of every governor, legate and quaestor who ventured to interfere with their operations in the provinces. The average official preferred to connive at their exactions; the bolder ones paid with fines and even exile 662. Discontent of the Italian allies. for their courage. In 92 the necessity for a reform was proved beyond a doubt by the scandalous condemnation of P. Rutilius Rufus,[13] ostensibly on a charge of extortion, in reality as the reward of his efforts to check the extortions of the Roman equites in Asia. The difficulties of the Italian question were more serious. That the Italian allies were discontented was notorious. After nearly two centuries of close alliance, of common dangers and victories, they now eagerly coveted as a boon that complete amalgamation with Rome which they had at first resented as a dishonour. But, unfortunately, Rome had grown more exclusive in proportion as the value set upon Roman citizenship increased. During the last forty years feelings of hope and disappointment had rapidly succeeded each other; Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, Gaius Gracchus, Saturninus, had all held out promises of relief—and nothing had yet been done. On each occasion they had crowded to Rome, full of eager expectation, only to be harshly ejected from the city by the consul's orders.[14] The justice of their claims could hardly be denied, the danger of continuing to ignore them was obvious—yet the difficulties in the way of granting them were formidable in the extreme, and from a higher than a merely selfish point of view there was much
- ↑ Cic. Agr. ii. 25, 65.
- ↑ Sallust, Jug. 5 seq.; Livy, Epit. lxii., lxiv.
- ↑ L. Calpurnius Bestia, tribune 121; Sall. Jug. 28.
- ↑ Ibid. 38, 39.
- ↑ Ibid. 40.
- ↑ Sallust, Jug. 63; Plut. Marius, 2, 3. For the question as to the position of his parents, see Madvig, Verf. i. 170; Diod. xxxiv. 38.
- ↑ Sallust, Jug. 73.
- ↑ Ibid. 114. For the chronology of the Jugurthine war, see Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, iii. 398; Pelham, Journ. of Phil. vii. 91; Meinel, Zur Chronologie des jugurthinischen Kriegs (1883).
- ↑ Livy, Epit. lxvii.; Plut. Mar. 12; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, iii. 414 seq.
- ↑ Livy, Epit. lxix.; Appian, B.C. i. 28 seq.
- ↑ For the leges Appuleiae, see Saturninus, L. Appuleius, and authorities there quoted.
- ↑ Sallust, Jug. 86, “ipse interea milites scribere, non more majorum neque ex classibus, sed uti cujusque cupido erat, capite censos plerosque.” For details, cf. Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, iii. 456 seq.; Madvig, Verf. ii. 468, 493; Marquardt, Staatsv. iii. 430 seq.
- ↑ Livy, Epit. lxx.; Vell. ii. 13.
- ↑ Lex Junia, Cic. De Off. iii. 11, 47; lex Licinia Mucia, Cic. Pro Corn. fr. 10; Ascon. p. 60.
