Strong Men Fight It Out, 123–53 BCE
Sulla and Marius
Marius was now challenged for the informal position of Leading Citizen by Sulla, a patrician. Sulla had served with Marius in the Jugurthine War and was ultimately the one responsible for obtaining Jugurtha’s surrender.
Marius got the credit for this victory, but Sulla tormented him by wearing a ring featuring Jugurtha’s surrender to Sulla. The animosity between them increased steadily. Sulla wanted Marius’s command in the east against the wealthy pirates.
Although Sulla forced the Senate to take away Marius’s command and give it to him, in fact they vacillated between Sulla and Marius for years, declaring first one then the other a public outlaw and removing him from command.
In 86 BCE, Marius died, leaving the Senate to face the wrath of Sulla, then fighting pirates in the east.
Once his business in the east was complete, Sulla marched on Rome with Roman legions. As the Senate scrambled to defend itself, everyone knew it was a life-and-death choice, whether or not to side with Sulla.
Pompey, soon to be known as “the Great,” guessed right and joined Sulla. This was his chance to leap-frog over the barriers to higher office his young age presented.
Crassus, who had been in exile avoiding Marius, fought by Sulla’s side at the very gates of Rome.
Ultimately, the Senate capitulated and Sulla was in sole control of the Roman state, and he was then declared dictator by the Senate. Sulla took terrible vengeance via proscriptions. He then set about restoration of the Senate to its ancestral dignity and powers. Believing that he accomplished his mission, Sulla abdicated.
The following year (79 BCE), he died of the horrible disease phthiriasis. The power vacuum after Sulla’s death encouraged all kinds of ambitious politi- cians, like Pompey and Crassus.
Pompey and Crassus
Pompey, already nicknamed Magnus, or the Great, went east to fight pirates. In this way he would make money, gain a military reputation, and position himself as the prime candidate for First Citizen. He had tremendous success, defeating the pirates and making the eastern Mediterranean safe for travel and trade. He had also made a series of political arrangements with
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eastern territories like Syria, Cilicia, and Judaea. Now he needed the Senate to ratify these arrangements and pay his soldiers, and was horrified when the Senate refused.
Crassus was very wealthy, but from distasteful sources, dealing in slaves, operating an early form of fire department, and buying up proscribed property below market value. So he needed prestige, ideally from a military reputation. He thought he had achieved this when he defeated Spartacus and his slave army, only to be cheated when Pompey showed up just in time to share cred- it for the victory. He became the patron of the tax farmers, or publicans, only to lose what little prestige he had by failing to persuade the Senate to rene- gotiate the tax contracts.
Julius Caesar had kept a low profile during the Sulla years because of the fact that Marius had been a member of Caesar’s family, and hence Sulla hated Julius. At this time he had been elected Pontifex Maximus and served a military mission. He was now determined to pacify Gaul and make it a province. When the Senate awarded him the insulting post-consular province of “swamps and byways” of Gaul, instead of the province itself, he could not let the affront stand. He made common cause with Pompey and Crassus.
Caesar had tremendous popular support and veteran armies, but no money. Pompey had tremendous military support in the form of “client” armies, but no popular support, and Crassus had money. Their agreement to support one another is usually called the First Triumvirate. Together, they were able to cir- cumvent the Senate on any meaningful issue. Ultimately, the triumvirate fell apart as the individuals all pursued their own aims.
PROSCRIPTIONS
After Sulla was established as dictator, no one was prepared for his ruthless actions against his enemies.
He instituted a frightening procedure know as “proscriptions.” In this, a notice was posted giving an individual twenty-four hours to leave Rome or be executed by the state. Many Roman men took poison instead of facing execution as a criminal and hav- ing their families lose all property and title. Sulla issued hundreds of these edicts. More than three hundred senators alone were exterminated. During one meeting of what remained of the Senate, screams could be heard from a field next door. Sulla demand- ed the few senators in attendance to take no note of the noise, explaining that some criminals were being executed and it was being done at his order. Only afterwards did the senators learn that it was their compatriots who were being strangled, tortured, and killed only yards away from them.
These proscriptions were supposedly done for only a few different reasons. These reasons included revenge for the reign of terror, as a deterrant to others who may have been thinking of rebelling in the future, and the removal of certain people Sulla did not want in political positions, and land confiscated was given to Sulla’s supporters as rewards. According to Sulla, it was a citizen’s duty to arrest or even kill someone if he was on the list.
1. Why would the Senate tolerate Sulla’s executions? 2. What was the plebeian assembly doing about all this? 3. Why did Sulla abdicate?
Plutarch. The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives by Plutarch. Trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Penguin, 1978.
Baker, G.P. Sulla the Fortunate. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Greenhalgh, Peter. Pompey, the Roman Alexander. Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1981.
Iggulden, Conn. Emperor: The Gates of Rome, Vol. 1. New York: Dell, 2003. Langguth, A.J. Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for
Rome. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Seager, Robin. Pompey the Great. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Weinrib, Ernest Joseph. Spaniards in Rome from Marius to Domitian.
London: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1990.
Langguth, A.J. A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle
for Rome. Unabridged. Narrated by Ed Blake. Prince Frederick, MD:
Recorded Books, 1995. 9 cassettes/13.25 hours.
Questions
Suggested Reading
Other Books of Interest
Recorded Books
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
LECTURE
Brother Meeting Brother
Crassus was the first of the triumvirate to fall, when he was killed treacherously at Carrhae, invading Parthia.
Against the advice of his own officers, Crassus agreed to meet the king of Parthia to discuss terms. The
Parthians captured and killed Crassus, cutting off his head and using it as a theatrical prop.
Back in Rome, Pompey tried to play Caesar, a popular politician, against the Senate. The Senate in turn tried to use Pompey to get rid of Caesar, figuring that they would be rid of at least one, and pos- sibly both troublemakers.
Julius Caesar was still in Gaul and had been for some time fighting under difficult circumstances. The Senate asked Pompey to defend
the Republic against Caesar, after telling Caesar to lay down his command and return to Rome for trial regarding his illegal passage of legislation—a capital offense.
Civil war ensued when Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10, 49 BCE, thereby becoming a public outlaw and himself declaring war on Rome and forcing a military confrontation with the Senate.
Swiftly Caesar descended on Rome, almost as quickly as the messenger dis- patched to warn of his advance. After a meeting with the Senate, Caesar departed to fight Pompey in a civil war—brother meeting brother.
In 48 BCE, Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalus in Greece. Treacherously, Pompey abandoned his men and fled to Egypt. Caesar did not massacre Pompey’s men, but rather accepted them into his own army.
Pompey escaped to Egypt where he was assassinated by the Egyptians, anxious to curry favor (as they believed) with Caesar. When Caesar arrived, he wept at the sight of Pompey’s severed head. Later on this same trip, he met Cleopatra.
TheSuggested Readingfor this lecture is “Julius” in Suetonius’s The
Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves.