The Struggle for Roman Citizenship: Romans, Allies, and the Wars of 91–77 BCE 9781463225285

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The Struggle for Roman Citizenship

Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity

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Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity contains monographs and edited volumes on the Greco-Roman world and its transition into Late Antiquity, encompassing political and social structures, knowledge and educational ideals, art, architecture and literature.

The Struggle for Roman Citizenship

Romans, Allies, and the Wars of 91–77 BCE

Seth Kendall

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34 2013

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2013 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2013

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ISBN 978-1-61143-487-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kendall, Seth, 1975The struggle for Roman citizenship : Romans, allies, and the wars of 91-77 BCE / Seth Kendall. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61143-487-3 1. Rome--History, Military--265-30 B.C. 2. Rome--History--Social War, 90-88 B.C. 3. Citizenship--Rome. 4. Sulla, Lucius Cornelius. I. Title. DG256.2.K46 2013 937’.05--dc23 2013020623 Printed in the United States of America

To my beloved and beautiful wife Tiffany, and to my wonderful son, Isaac, whom she made for me: καί ποτέ τις εἴποι πατρός γ᾽ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ...................................................................................vii  Acknowledgements ................................................................................. xi  Introduction .............................................................................................. 1  Chapter 1: The Nature of the Evidence ............................................. 29  1. The turbulent years of 91–77 BCE ........................................ 29 2. The histories never composed ................................................ 33 3. The histories that are lost ......................................................... 36 4. The histories that are incomplete: Diodorus ........................ 40 5. The histories that are incomplete: Livy and what remains of him ............................................ 43  6. Appian of Alexandria................................................................ 55 7. Cassius Dio................................................................................. 61 8. Other sources: biography, exempla, geography ................... 62 9. The Sources: a summary .......................................................... 66 Chapter 2: Causes of Italian Desires for the Roman Citizenship ... 69  1. Allied desires for the civitas—the evidence .......................... 69 2. The nature of Italian alliances with Rome............................. 76 3. The Drawbacks of Allied foedera: costs of military service ....................................................... 88  4. The Drawbacks of Allied foedera: treatment of Allied soldiers ...............................................109  5. Merchants, contractors, and overseas ventures ..................119 6. Romans and Allies in Italy .....................................................126 7. Citizenship as redress of grievances .....................................134 8. Dissatisfaction with Rome and the Road to War ...............138 Chapter 3: The Sparks to Light the Flame .......................................139  1. The question of when: Why 91? ...........................................139 2. Tiberius Gracchus and the ager publicus ............................142 3. The year 125: Fulvius Flaccus, Fregellae, and the lessons learned ......................................................166  4. Caius Gracchus ........................................................................181 vii

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5. An uneasy quiet and the strange career of M. Livius Drusus ...........................................................200  6. War ............................................................................................220 Chapter 4: The Ignition of Hostilities ...............................................223  1. Secessio .....................................................................................223 2. The chronology of Allied actions .........................................233 3. Asculum and the end of 91....................................................241 4. The Winter of 91—Allied activity and its meaning ...........254 5. The Roman rejection and their decision for war ...............269 6. The Aims of the Allies before Asculum and the changes in tactics for the sping ..........................284  Chapter 5: War in Earnest, 90 BCE ..................................................287  1. The Allied army at the beginning of 90 BCE: Commanders and Strategies..............................................287  2. The Southern Theater ............................................................2 90 3. The Northern Theater ............................................................308 4. Fighting in other areas: the sea, Etruria, and Umbria .......328 5. Roman vulnerabilities and the steps taken to correct them ................................340  6. The downhill slope from the summit: the end of 90 and the beginning of 89 ............................352  Chapter 6: Imperfect Defeat and Incomplete Victory, 89–88 ......353  1. The lex Julia..............................................................................353 2. The battles of Asculum and the march down the coast ...366 3. The war on the other side of the Appenines ......................380 4. The developments of winter, and the spring of 88............397 5. The end of the war: what was reaped and what was sewn by the extension of the civitas .......417  Chapter 7: New Citizens: Marius, Sulpicius, Sulla, and the March on Rome.............................................................419  1. The “retirement” of C. Marius ..............................................419 2. The strange career of P. Sulpicius Rufus, the Allies, and the unlikely partnership..............................................431  3. The spectacular rise of L. Cornelius Sulla ...........................442 4. The leges Sulpiciae, Sulla, and the unthinkable act ............452 5. Sulla, the laws made, unmade, and proposed, and the end of 88 ................................................................466  6. The shadow of Sulla ...............................................................478

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Chapter 8: Progress and the Promises of Cinna ..............................479  1. Cinna, Sulla, and the Beginning of 88 ..................................479 2. Legislative proposals and their results .................................487 3. Preparations for the return ....................................................493 4. Bellum Octavianum and the real end of the Allied War ...501 5. The violent restoration of Cinna and Marius .....................522 6. The year 86 and the problem of unpaid balances ..............539 7. The year to come .....................................................................546 Chapter 9: The Return of Sulla and the Civil War ..........................547  1. An uneasy peace ......................................................................547 2. Dealing with Sulla in the East ...............................................551 3. A war of words and the raising of armies ...........................563 4. Civil War, 83 BCE...................................................................588 5. Civil War, 82 and 81 ...............................................................610 6. Sulla Victor ...............................................................................630 Chapter 10: The End of the Struggle— the Dictatorship of Sulla and its Consequences .....................633  1. Rome, Italy, and the Italians and the End of the Civil War ...........................................633  2. Proscriptions and their consequences..................................635 3. The leges Corneliae .................................................................646 4. The Italians and Sulla..............................................................666 5. The Persistence to the Sullan System...................................673 Epilogue: Romans Old and New .......................................................675  Appendices ............................................................................................681  Appendix A: The Allied Embassy of 91 ..................................683  Appendix B: The Debate over the inclusion of the Allies in the redistribution of the ager publicus by Tiberius Gracchus .........................................................694  Appendix C: The date and purpose of the expulsion law of M. Junius Pennus ...........................................................703  Appendix D: The ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum ..................................................................716  Appendix E: M. Livius Drusus and the outbreak of the Allied War .................................722  Appendix F: Some questions concerning the investigators sent by Rome into Allied territory, 91 BCE ...................730  Appendix G: The chronology of the Periochae of Livy .......738  Appendix H: The Italian commanders ....................................741 

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Appendix I: Appian and the ordering of events of the Allied War ................................................................750 Appendix J: Some notes on Sextus Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Paeligni in 90 BCE.......................................................756 Appendix K: Marius, Sulla, Messala, and the Battle of the Vineyards, 90 BCE .................................................764 Appendix L: The nature and timing of leges Calpurniae and the lex Julia....................................................................775 Appendix M: The battles in the neighborhood of Asculum, early 89 BCE.................................................785 Appendix N: Cinna, Caecilius Cornutus, and Metellus Pius ................................................................793 Appendix O: Some details about Sulla’s march through southern Italy, 89 BCE .......................................808 Appendix P: The acquisition of the civitas by the rest of the Allies and the lex Plautia Papiria ............................816 Appendix Q: The Unusual Consular Candidacy of C. Julius Caesar Vopiscus .............................................831 Appendix R: The military career of P. Sulpicius Rufus .........837 Appendix S: The chronology for the end of the trials conducted by Cinna and Marius .................841 Appendix T: Cinna and his unredeemed promise to the former Allies, 87–86 ...............................................845 Appendix U: Ancona and the sentiments of the novi cives .....848 Appendix V: Q. Sertorius and the affair of Suessa Aurunca ...................................................................853 Bibliography ..........................................................................................859 Maps and Figures..................................................................................867 Index .......................................................................................................875

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A common feature found in the acknowledgements of academic works is a disclaimer which usually follows hard upon a list of individuals by whom help has been given, advice offered, favors done, corrections rendered, and general inspiration provided. Such a disclaimer typically observes that, should there be any errors in the text to follow, they belong solely to the author, and in no way derive from the persons to whose succor allusion was just made. It is also customary for this qualification to come near the end of the acknowledgements, and not infrequently stand as the last words written, perhaps so that the readers may keep the proviso fresh in their minds as they proceed forward into the pages to follow. In this case of this essay, however, it seemed more fitting to me to offer this understanding as the very first words to be encountered by the reader. Therefore, let it be understood in no uncertain terms that, for the essay to follow, the ultimate responsibility is mine, which is especially true of whatever errors (factual or typographical) or infelicity of expressions may be found in it. This having been said, if the culpability for whatever blemishes that may be encountered rests with me, then credit for whatever there may be of quality herein must to some degree be shared first and foremost with my one-time graduate mentor, Dr. Daniel Gargola of the University of Kentucky. Professor Gargola has provided a great deal of guidance over the years in general, has suggested studies and interpretations which strengthened especially flimsy parts of this work, and indirectly suggested the level of excellence to which I could aspire by means of his own scholarship, which figures prominently in several chapters presented here. For all that he has done for me, I offer my most profound gratitude. It almost goes without saying that any study of the ancient world will require the aid of a legion of talented librarians, archivists, and other persons whose happy duty is to be around xi

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books and readers. Those whose help I have enlisted include those associated with the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, and Georgia Gwinnett College. A special mention also must be made of the Trustees of the British Museam, who have generously allowed me the use of images of Italian coins which are reproduced here. Without these fine people, and by extension those working in the various libraries across the world to whom my requests for materials were passed along and by whom, in turn, they were granted, this project would have come to naught. To all of them I extend my sincerest apperciation and thanks. It would be impossible to give appropriate credit to all of the many, many classical scholars with whom conversation has provided enlightenment, encouragement, and assistance. Nevertheless, the contributions of a few of them require specific identification. In the summer of 2010 the apparently indefatigable Dr. Saskia Roselaar organized a conference at the University of Manchester whose theme was “Integration and identity in Republican Italy”, at which I was fortunate enough to be allowed to offer a paper. At Roselaar’s insistence, the fruit of the excellent presentations there was ultimately gathered in the form of essays produced, edited, and published as Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic. Yet what could not be reproduced in this work is the genial atmosphere, spirit of collaboration, and— most importantly—brilliant commentary during the sessions themselves and amongst the participants afterwards. This event allowed me the privilege and genuine pleasure of dialogue with such luminaries as Roselaar herself, Tim Cornell, Altay Coşkun and Nate Rosenstein, all of them exceedingly warm and good-natured, the latter even in light of the fact that the presentation I gave there reached a conclusion at odds with one of his. Such conversations were directly influential on the analysis of some of the issues discussed here, although, again, responsibility for them is firmly lodged with me. Spread out over the years have been numerous conversations with Dr. Gaius Stern, a friend of long standing and frequent collaborator in conferences held over the last decade. His area of expertise is in the period of the Early Principate, slightly later than the period under survey here, but his mastery of all epochs of the Roman world has allowed him the ability to offer many insightful comments, and me the opportunity to collect them. Finally, of

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great utility have been exchanges with Dr. Richard Rawls, my great friend and colleague at Georgia Gwinnett College. All of my fellow Historians at this institution have been unceasingly supportive and amiable, but due to our similar interests in the ancient world, it has been Richard who has been most influential on this work, acting as a sounding board for the matters it discusses and occasionally offering his expertise in untangling particularly thorny expressions in Greek. A colleague in the true sense of the word, I am lucky to call him comes, amicus, and, perhaps appropriately given the theme of this work, socius. Likewise, to my students I owe a great debt. Four of them specifically were directly useful in the final stages of getting this book to press: Erin Corrigan-Smith, Christin Funderburk, Laura Valiani, and Kathryn Nikolich all spent much time poring over the text for the purpose of compiling an index; if that instrument proves useful, they are to largely thank for it, and I extend those thanks here. Additionally, Ms. Nikolich proved to be of great aid in the production of the maps to be found in this work. More generally, my students collectively have proved most inspirational over the years. It is one of the peculiarities of this profession that one can devote one’s entire life to the study of an event or person and yet only get to spend a few minutes of time discussing the significance of these in the classroom. Fortunately, during the one lecture of the year in which I get to discuss the Italian Allies and their quest for the Roman citizenship, my students always seem to respond to it with an enthusiasm that, in turn, motivated me to return to this project with renewed vigor. It is hoped that some of them will recognize that enthusiasm in this project, and understand that it is, in part, theirs. Finally, this essay rests to an enormous extent on the support that has been offered of a more personal nature by friends and family. The latter has been for me a veritable stone column bolstering my efforts, and time spent with them has inevitably resulted in rejuvenation and the redoubling of efforts. As to the former, priceless levity, companionship, and the occasionally much-needed respite from my labors has been offered by bosom companions past and present, a number which would most definitely include Robert Osborne, Kelly McKenzie, Christy Freadreacea, and Ashley Rousselle. Almost in a different category, however, are Wally and Shannon Edmondson. Their love and

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support of me and their unaffected interest in my work has manifested itself in ways too many to count, of which the most significant likely took the shape of a trip to Italy taken together in the summer of 2011. Ostensibly a research trip, at least in part, the two of them undertook a sojourn with me through the Mezzogiorno so as to allow me to follow the injunction of Polybius (12.25e) and actually see first-hand the lands about which I would presume to write. In their company I was able to visit the proud remains of Corfinium and Aesernia, with the two of them snapping photographs I could consult later amidst the bemused stares of the denizens of the pleasant Italian towns those ancient cities have become. With Wally expertly navigating the roads of the Appenines at breathtaking—and sometimes stomach-turning—speeds, I was allowed to travel across what were once the lands of the Marsi, Paeligni, Samnites (a region still called Sannio by some in the region) and Campani, beholding sights which would once have crossed the eyes of Q. Poppaedius Silo, C. Papius Mutilus, P. Vettius Scato, and Marcus Lamponius. The direct benefit of such sights may, it is hoped, be discerned in this essay, and for the two of them who made it possible, my love and gratitude knows no bounds. Also with us for part of that Italian excursion was my beloved wife Tiffany. About the debt she is owed words simply fail. Were there any which would be adequate to the task, they would find a way to quantify the just the depth of her love, understanding, and almost inexhaustible patience with which she has supported both me and this project over the long period it took to compose it. To be fair, she has also brought distractions, including a most welcome one which, unbeknownst to us at the time, she was in the process of creating during that summer drive in Italy. As it would turn out, it was more than just the four of us in the rented car that day; there was also a fifth, who would reveal himself fully in February of 2012. In addition to all the other things she has done for me, Tiffany has also borne me a splendid son, Isaac. He is at the moment perhaps too young to know how proud I am of him, how difficult it has sometimes been to tear myself away from him to put the finishing touches on this essay, and how very much I love both him and the woman who gave him to me. Yet someday, perhaps, he will read this work, and on that day, I hope he will find it worthy of him.

INTRODUCTION The decade of the 80s BCE was one whose importance to the history of the Roman Republic is difficult to overestimate. During this time Rome fought two enormously bloody wars and one smaller one within the Italian peninsula. It suffered the unprecedented calamity of being attacked by one of its own armies under the command of one of its own generals, and then witnessed this action repeated twice. It endured several massacres of its citizens by means of proscription lists, and finally was subjected to a radical alteration of its free institutions through the actions of a Dictator whose laws were eventually overturned but whose example, in the aphorism of Sir Ronald Syme, could never be abolished. Moreover, the very definition of what it was to be “Roman” was changing during this decade. Before 91, Italy had long been under the sway of the Romans and its inhabitants had effectively become Rome’s subjects, but it was during this decade following 91 that all of the Italians were finally enfolded into the Commonwealth as citizens. This incorporation was by no means a smooth, gentle, and easy one, having come as the response to force brought to bear by those very Italians against Rome, and it was conducted in such a way that reflected reluctance, mistrust, and even malfeasance. These created pressure points of lengthy duration, which would in time respond remarkably well to the touch of men who would later attempt to use the lingering tensions of this decade to their own advantage. The 80s had begun in the aftermath of the death of a tribune and would end with the neardestruction of the tribunate itself, had seen the end of Caius Marius and the spectacular rise of his detested one-time subordinate L. Cornelius Sulla, and had provided the stage for the introduction of M. Licinius Crassus, of Cn. Pompeius—soon to become “Magnus”—and, for the barest of seconds, of C. Julius Caesar, whose life was in danger due to his defiant refusal to divorce his 1

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wife and in the process showed some of the fire that would soon erupt into a conflagration that would consume the entire Roman world. For all of these reasons, then, it is not difficult to see how this decade—as well as the years leading up to and immediately following it—would readily attract the interest of modern students of Roman history. Nor, indeed, has scholarly attention to this decade been lacking. To the ground-breaking studies which had begun in earnest in the 1950s and 60s, the last fifty years have added significant contributions along a number of different avenues, of which one has been biography. Among the figures who have benefited from this scrutiny have been Lucius Cornelius Cinna, whose life and times—the oft-noted tempus Cinnanum—has been the subject of Michael Lovano’s The Age of Cinna, which was published in 2002. Another has been Caius Marius, who was elderly as the 80s opened and would not live for much longer, but managed nevertheless to make his impression felt in the brief time he had left. The brief and older (but still quite serviceable) A Biography of Caius Marius by Thomas Carney was supplemented in 1994 by Richard Evans, whose Gaius Marius: A Political Biography offers commentary on what the author considers the disproportionate recognition Marius receives as a general as opposed to that due to his skill as a politician. It was as a subordinate to Marius in the last years of the second century that Quintus Sertorius first began to make his real mark on the Roman world, a minor figure then, but one who would stride across the stage towards the end of the eighties. Phillip Spann’s Quintus Sertorius and the Legacy of Sulla is devoted to that commander, whose prominence only begins towards the end of the period but who still plays a sizeable part in the Civil War and the subsequent domination of Sulla. Spann’s text, too, shows some signs of age, but it remains the authoritative study of this complicated figure. Adding to it has been the more recent Plutarch’s Sertorius of Christoph Konrad, which adds a great deal of information about Sertorius and his world in its capacity as a historical commentary on the ancient biography that is its subject. Cinna, Marius, and Sertorius were all men who helped shape the decade of the eighties, but there can be little doubt that the Roman whose actions most defined it was L. Cornelius Sulla. He, too, has been the subject of biography during the last thirty years,

INTRODUCTION

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having been treated comprehensively in Arthur Keaveney’s Sulla: The Last Republican, of which a second edition has recently been produced.1 His life has also been explored more recently in Karl Christ’s Sulla: eine römische Karriere. Such, at least, are the most important of the book-length studies of Roman figures from this period, though they are supplemented by a number of smaller articles and monographs which focus on certain aspects of the careers of these men and their times which will be discussed below. As mentioned above, the 80s had begun with the Romans already engaged in warfare with their Italian Allies, a war known by a number of names even in classical times.2 This war and its causes In fact, Keaveney’s updates are less extensive than the production of a second edition would seem to indicate. Other than the addition of better maps and moving the supporting notes to the back of the text, rather than at the end of each chapter, very little of the actual text has been changed; about seven pages have been significantly altered, and these alterations almost always involve rearrangement of paragraphs. Nor has the apparatus been changed in a profound way; the notes and citations that existed before are supplemented by the addition of an article which came out after 1981, but with the exception of this addition, the notes themselves and the conclusions they draw remain essentially the same. For this reason, this essay will retain the use of Keaveney’s original text and its pagination when citing this work. 2 For a thorough discussion on the nomenclature of this war, see Domaszewski, p. 3–10. Haug also discusses at great length the various names by which the war was known, observing in the process that the preferred term for the conflict changed over time. In fact, Haug uses the name by which the war is identified in various ancient authors as a tool to determine the sources those authors used; her investigation along these lines begins on page 128 and continues for most of the rest of her article. Of all these various names, the two most prominent in the ancient sources were Bellum Italicum and Bellum Sociale. The second of these two has become the more popular in modern literature, usually given by the English semi-translation of “Social War”. Still, for a number of reasons “Social War” is not the most precise rendering of this epithet. What the term bellum sociale actually means is something along the lines of “Allied War”, since in essence the Romans were fighting with men who were once their Allies (socii), and were men who—for the purpose of the war 1

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have also been the subject of much historical assessment. Any understanding of why the war took place must first begin with the relationship between the Italian Allies and the Romans, and for this Ernst Badian’s Foreign Clientelae is perhaps the best introduction. Badian’s work was published in 1958, and in the decades since then many of his theories have been discarded, modified or more fully explored by other authors. For this reason Foreign Clientelae is perhaps cited less often in more recent works than the importance just attributed to it above might seem to demand. Even so, it continues to be a fact that Badian’s work remains a standard whose consultation is necessary for any understanding of the period, and especially on the climate which led to the war between the Romans and their Allies.3 As Badian notes in that work, the principal component of the ties between Rome and the Italians was the set of military alliances that existed between them. These almost always specified that the Allies would supply armed men for Roman use. If, then, an understanding about the cause of the war between the Romans and the Italians which led off this decade—henceforth the Allied War—is predicated on the nature of the relationship between the Romans and the Italians, and if that relationship is in turn based on the military alliances between them, and if at last a major component of those military alliances is the contribution of soldiers required of the Allies, then it becomes critical to explore this contribution of soldiers in greater depth to be able to understand the war. Such an exploration is made with great thoroughness in P.A. Brunt’s Italian Manpower. Yet that same author would also hasten to observe that, while the most important locus of connection between Romans and the Allies who would eventually fight them was that of their military ties, there was nevertheless more to that connection between Romans and their Allies, or socii, they were fighting—remained allied to each other. For this reason, this latter translation of the name is the one which will be used in this essay, and while “Italian” and “Italic” will occasionally be employed, “Allied” and “Allies” shall be the primary words which shall be used here to describe both the war and the men who fought in it against the Romans. 3 Nor is this his only important work; others will be discussed below.

INTRODUCTION

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than just the soldiers furnished by the latter. There were also economic, social, and cultural intersections, and Brunt has devoted a sizeable portion of his smaller volume Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic to the study of some of these, as well as to the overall conditions prevailing in Italy during the time leading up to the war, and their repercussions on that war. As Brunt makes clear, such conditions had an effect on the relationship between the Romans and Italians, and therefore proved influential on the war in particular and the entire decade as a whole. Brunt, however, is not the only author to direct his attention to them. A study of some of these conditions within Italy, and especially the economic climate of the agricultural countryside throughout the third and second centuries, takes up a substantial portion of Arnold Toynbee’s Hannibal’s Legacy. This work, as its name implies, narrates the long-term affects of the Second Punic War on subsequent Roman history. Edward T. Salmon, too, undertakes an investigation into the political, economic, and military landscape of Italy, as well as the actual landscape of Italy, as the backdrop to his more central themes in The Making of Roman Italy. One of these central themes is the way by which Roman culture spread throughout the peninsula and the ultimate result of this diffusion, which is that it culminated in an Italy that had become thoroughly “Romanized” by the beginning of the first century. This cultural diffusion also plays a noteworthy role in P.A. Brunt’s essay “Italian Aims at the Time of the Social War”, 4 about which more will be said directly. As has been mentioned earlier, the 80s BCE started with a war already in progress between the Romans and their Italian Allies. That war and the results of it set the tone for the entire decade, and understanding the causes of it contributes mightily to a fuller comprehension of the events of that period. It has been suggested that the causes of that war could in no small part be found in the 4 This article, found originally in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 55 (1965), 90–109, was revised—according to its author—for its appearance in his later Fall of the Roman Republic, where it appears on pages 93–130; citations made to it in this essay, which will not be infrequent, will use the latter version.

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ways Romans and Italians interacted with each other, creating a friction that would kindle armed conflict. Perspective on those interactions can also be gained through study of certain Italian populations and groups within those populations, and some of these, too, have been received scholarly attention over the last halfcentury. One of the most important of these studies is Salmon’s Samnium and the Samnites, a work which not only describes the land and people of its title, but also discusses Rome’s involvement with both. In the process, it takes note of some of the ways by which that involvement was unique by comparing the differences and similarities between the way the Romans engage with the Samnites as opposed to that engagement with other Allies.5 In the process, therefore, Salmon sheds light not just on relations between Romans and Samnites, but also on relations with Rome and other communities which he describes in making his comparisons. William Harris provides a similar comparison and contrast, and investigates another unique realtionship between the Romans and some of its Italian Allies, in his study of two of them found in his Rome in Etruria and Umbria. As part of his inquiry into these peoples and their interplay with Rome, Harris applies scrutiny to the closeness that arose between the élites of the communities which are his subject and the Romans; Salmon does likewise, but to a much lesser extent, owing to the difference in the level of regard that Rome had for the Samnites as opposed to the Etruscans. This theme, the intimacy between Roman aristocrats and their counterparts in the the Italian communities, also receives a fair amount of concentration in Timothy Wiseman’s New Men in the Roman Senate. All of these works describe some of the motivations, goals, and desires of the wealthiest members of these Italian communities, which was also one of the several subjects surveyed in Emilio Gabba’s “Origins of the Social War and Roman Politics

5 It also supplies a brief overview of the war itself, which is in many places little more than a sketch but occasionally offers some very valuable insights, of which many have been incorporated into this essay.

INTRODUCTION

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after 89 BC”.6 Of particular interest to Gabba are some of the economic motivations of the affluent within the Allied communities and the specific ways these motivations contributed to the war to come. This is also one of the several matters for review in Brunt’s aforementioned article “Italian Aims at the Time of the Social War”, in which an attempt is made to provide a broad overview of what the Allies hoped to gain from this war and fought.7 Almost all of the authors cited above, no matter what their specific topic happens to be, venture an opinion in their various works about the reason or reasons war broke out between the Romans and their Italian Allies. While several different things are mentioned among them as having had a part to play in causing the conflict, there is a consensus that borders on unanimity in these authors that the Allies went to war out of a frustrated desire for the Roman citizenship.8 This opinion is also held by Adrian SherwinWhite, who explores the value of that commodity in some detail in his The Roman Citizenship. This is also the opinion expressed by Arthur Keaveney in his Rome and the Unification Of Italy, which appeared in 1987 and incorporates a great deal of the theories of those authors mentioned above whose work dates from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Keaveney’s book takes as its topic the This article appears in the collection Republican Rome: The Army and the Allies, p. 70–130, and will be cited as part of that overall collection in the text to follow. 7 By whom the war was fought—in other words, the specific Allied peoples who took arms against Rome and their leaders—is explored in greater detail by E.T. Salmon in his “Notes on the Social War”, published in the Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 89 (1958), p. 159–184. The very important findings of this article will be cited frequently throughout this text. 8 This is not, however, to say that these scholars all agree that the war was fought to force the Romans to make this bequest. Indeed, many hold that while the frustrated hopes for it led the Allies to arms, once in battle they did not necessarily fight to secure what they had once wanted, but rather developed a new aim, which was independence. This is an important distinction, which will be explored much more extensively in the chapters to come. 6

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Allied War, on which it is the first major volume-length work in modern scholarship,9 and it treats not only its causes, but also the events of the war, those who fought in it, and its ultimate consequences. As implied above, Keaveney believes the war was brought about by the inability of the Allies to obtain the civitas, and he therefore treats the reasons why they wanted it in the first half of the book. He then proceeds to narrate the military operations of the war itself and its conclusion in the second half,10 ending with a brief survey of Roman politics thereafter. Keaveney builds on a scholarly tradition whose contributors all essentially work from the same basic premise concerning the origins of the war. This premise, again, is that the Allies were moved to war by Rome’s refusal to grant them the citizenship, something they wanted so badly as to fight for it. Such a premise has not been uncontested, however. The conclusions reached by it have recently been disputed by Henrik Mouritsen’s Italian Unification, a work which revisits the causes of the war with the aim of challenging the underlying notion about these causes that is

9 Keaveney’s work is aging rapidly, even if it is still of great worth for students of the period. As was the case with his Sulla, a recent “Second Edition” of this work which came out in 2000, but this “Second Edition” is far from being a substantial revision of the original. Instead, with the exception of a few pages in the introduction answering some criticism which has been directed at this book since its initial publication, and some addenda to the bibliography which directly follows this response, nothing of the actual body of the text has been altered. Therefore, when this work is cited in present essay—as will often be the case—it will reflect use of the original volume, and as such it is identified in the Bibliography. 10 In this Keaveney brings together the description of fighting provided by Alfred von Domaszewski, whose small Bellum Marsicum was, up to Keaveney, the only work of any size devoted exclusively to the war in modern scholarship. This earlier work was primarily concerned with the combat itself, and its insights can therefore be added to the discussion of it in Keaveney as well as the sketch of it provided in Salmon’s Samnium and the Samnites. An overview of the war is also provided in Fernando Wulff-Alonso’s Roma e Italia de la Guerra Social a la retirada de Sila (90–79 a.C.) in a thirty-page outline treating the events of the entire decade.

INTRODUCTION

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described above.11 Mouritsen argues that the abovementioned scholarly tradition is built upon interpretation of ancient sources such as Appian, whose description of the war and its causes is the longest and most complete of any of the extant classical accounts and has provided the principal support for most of the modern historical analysis of these events. In spite of the general consensus in the modern scholarship derived from them, however, Mouritsen contends that the ancient sources are not necessarily unanimous in what they have to say about the stimuli for the conflict. By highlighting what he holds to be evidence of other causes for it asserted by those sources, he offers a competing model for the understanding of the war. Mouritsen refutes the suggestion that the cause of the war was the the frustrated Italian desires for the citizenship, which was actually something he holds that the Italians who fought did not want. Instead, he argues that they fought with the aim of achieving independence from Rome and Roman domination. In this, Mouritsen acknowledges that none of the classical authorities explicit offer this as the cause for the war, nor in many cases offer it as even a cause for the war; all of them instead directly state that the Italians fought because they were denied the franchise. However, he believes that a closer look at these ancient sources reveals hidden meanings about the cause of the war, and thus and offers penetrating insight into the ancient accounts of the bloodshed. As can readily be inferred from the above, modern scholarship has done much within the last fifty years to aid in the acquisition of knowledge concerning of the war being fought at the opening of the crucial decade of the 80s. The causes of this war 11 Although of less importance to this essay than the above-mentioned work, Mouritsen had also contributed to the debate on the “democratic” nature of the Roman Republic and the influence wielded by the urban masses in his Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic, itself a response of sorts to the theories found in Fergus Millar’s The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. Mouritsen’s conclusions were themselves then challenged—or at least refined—by Robert Morstein-Marx’s Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic. None of these works specifically focus on the 80s BCE, but all provide insights into some of the things that happened in it, and why.

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have been extensively treated and observed from a variety of vantage points. Furthermore, the actual combat has also been investigated, as well as the results of it. If, then, the 80s BCE cannot really be appreciated without an understanding the fighting which took place at its opening, the last fifty years have been extremely fruitful in work that can provide such clarity. A proper appreciation of the war between the Allies and the Romans, the environment in Italy which helped lead to it, its causes and specifically the acquisition of the citizenship which is commonly held to be chif among these, are all of great importance to understanding the 80s BCE. So, too, are Roman statesmen who contributed laws and leadership to this decade, both during that initial war and beyond. As suggested earlier, L. Cornelius Sulla may have done more than any other of these statesmen to influence the course of the 80s BCE, making an awareness of his life and deeds paramount to comprehension of the time. Fortunately, Sulla and his actions have also been a source of scholarly concentration. As has been seen, his early life and role both in the Allied War and in the politics of Rome which transpired as that war was ending is treated in the abovementioned biography by Christ and in the works of Keaveney,12 both the biography devoted especially to Sulla as well as that treating the Allied war, in whose fighting Sulla was a prominent captain. Sulla also features prominently in the biographies of Marius, Cinna, and Sertorius, commensurate with the extent to which he was bound up in the lives and careers of their subjects.13 Moreover, at the end of the 80s, all of Italy was involved in a Civil War, of which Sulla, his legions, and his supporters formed one of the two contending sides. He is therefore by definition inextricably liked to that War and its 12 Sulla’s career is also examined in Ernst’s Badian’s Lucius Sulla, The Deadly Reformer, the small but worthwhile essay which preceded the major works cited above, and briefly by Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp in one of the essays found in his collection Vom Romulus zu Augustus, an essay which describes him as a “Revolutionary and Restorative Reformer”. 13 Furthermore, Sulla is also very much a part of the opening chapters of Peter Greenhalgh’s Pompey, The Roman Alexander, the first volume of that author’s excellent biography of Pompeius the Great (about which more below).

INTRODUCTION

11

aftermath. Part of that aftermath, and perhaps the most significant part of it, was the proscriptions. These, too, have been wellrepresented as subjects for study, both in Salmon’s study of the Samnites, in the biographies of Sulla, and in numerous books and articles about figures which either suffered from them, profited from them, fought against them, or evaded them, a list which would include Caius Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Lucius Licnius Lucullus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. All of these have seen books published about them in the last five decades (in some cases, several), and all of them treat the proscriptions in the context of their subjects’ involvement with them, or lack of it. Other works which focus on the proscriptions include such articles as Keaveney’s “Sulla and Italy”,14 which mostly concerns itself with Sulla’s colonial distributions in Italy but also discusses his attitude to the former Allies following the Civil War, as well as the punishments in the form of confiscations which he visited on his opponents and the rewards he gave to his partisans after its conclusion. Ernst Badian identifies some of these enemies and friends in his “Waiting for Sulla” which not only discusses the perception of Sulla in the primary sources but also describes the “Sullan party” who gained from the proscriptions.15 The aftermath of the Civil War is also important for Sulla’s assumption of the Dictatorship and the ways he used that office to remake the Roman state. These, too, are treated in the biographies of Sulla and in those of his various supporters which are cited above. Sulla’s arrangements and their effects on the Italians after the war is treated at length in Fernando Wulff-Alonso’s Roma e Italia de la Guerra Social a la retirada de Sila (90–79 a.C.). In addition, they are the subject of “M. Livius Drusus and Sulla’s Reforms” and Critica Storica, vol. 19 (1984), p. 499–544 This essay, found originally in Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 52 (1962), pp. 47–61, is also reprinted in the author’s collection of essays Studies in Greek and Roman History, which in addition includes the essay “Caepio and Norbanus” describing the intense partisan squabbling within Rome in the decade before the Allied War, as well as “Sulla’s Cilician Command”, describing some of Sulla’s activities before the war which would ultimately make his reputation. Future references to these articles will use their pagination from this collection. 14 15

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“The Equestrian Class and Sulla’s Senate”,16 two articles by Emilio Gabba which analyze the modifications to Rome’s political machinery which Sulla attempted to make in 88 and actually brought to pass in 82. The latter, as its title implies, specifically centers on the Sullan Senate, which is also treated in some detail by Ronald Syme in his “Caesar, the Senate, and Italy” (much of the fruits of whose research later making its way into his grand The Roman Revolution).17 The former also touches on Sulla’s redefinition of the powers of the tribunate and modifications to Roman officeholding, as does Alan Astin’s The Lex Annalis Before Sulla, which mentions Sulla’s changes as a way to illustrate what had come before. All of these changes to the government are likewise were discussed in a chapter introducing the ultimate dismantling of Sulla’s programme in Erich Gruen’s Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Because Sulla’s victory in it allowed him to become Dictator, proscribe his enemies, and reconstruct the Commonwealth as he saw fit, the Civil War was a conflict of almost boundless importance; it may not have destroyed the Republic (the Second and Third Civil Wars would do that), but it provided the impetus for that final destruction. Because of this, the ultimate consequences of the Civil War have certainly come under much scholarly inquiry, as has been seen above. Perhaps surprisingly, however, the Civil War as an independent subject has been left alone by the scholarship. There exists no broad monograph on it, and as a result, what can be discerned of it in modern studies (in terms of such matters as the battles fought in it and the generals who led them) is filtered through the prism of larger works in these issues sometimes find mention. Fortunately these disparate studies provide a wide variety of vantage points: Lovano approaches it from the point of view of the Cinnani (as, in a sense, does Spann in his description of the role of Sertorius), while Keaveney18 gives the perspective of Sulla and his supporters, as does Allen Ward in his Both found in Gabba, op. cit., p. 131–141 and 142–150. In Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 14 (1938), p. 1–31. 18 The treatment given to the war in Christ’s biography likewise proceeds from the perspective of Sulla. 16 17

INTRODUCTION

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biography of Crassus19 and Peter Greenhalgh in the first volume of his biography of Pompeius Magnus.20 Yet none of these treatments are extensive, taking up no more than sixteen pages in any of these texts,21 and usually hastening over the conflict so quickly that thorough tactical analysis is omitted, as is any snarls or conflicts in the sources. Much can be learned about the war from these sketches, but they collectively do not really form a comprehensive treatment of the subject. The brief and by no means exhaustive survey presented above demonstrates at the very least that the decade of the 80s BCE has not gone unnoticed by modern Roman historians, and has attempted to suggest that there is a not inconsequential body of scholarly literature which deals in some way with the period. Nevertheless, as a whole the decade and the years adjacent to it have decidedly not exhausted their potential for study, and indeed there are substantial lacunae in the scholarship which remain. In the first place, the Allied War itself has received only one extensive account in a major European language, that of Keaveney, and while that account is in many ways excellent, it is not without difficulties. It is, most importantly, extremely terse: in what appears to be a conscious effort to employ a economy of language, its author nevertheless drastically compresses his text and in the process weakens many of his arguments, or at the very least does not given them adequate strength. While this is evident in the first several chapters involving the causes of the war, it is especially noteworthy in the last few, in which the events of the years following 87 are narrated in great brevity. The eighteen pages in all which are given to these years are by no means sufficient to give anything but the barest outline of the results of a war whereby the Roman citizen body was practically doubled and its entire political structure was transformed. Keaveney ends his work with the assertion that ultimately the Italians ended up the winners of both the Allied and, later, the Civil Wars due to the fact that by the end of the latter Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic. Pompey, The Roman Alexander. 21 Similarly brief is Wulff-Alonso’s overview, consisting of about thirteen pages. 19 20

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their ultimate purpose was achieved.22 As Mouritsen would later demonstrate, however, what evidence that exists suggests that such a statement is a great overstatement of what actually occurred. In sum, Keaveney’s work provides a starting point for filling the gap in the scholarship on this period, but there is decidedly ample room for addition; his work does not therefore deserve to stand as the last word on the conflict. Keaveney himself recognizes that the “Italian Question” was not completely resolved by 88, the traditional date for the ending of the Allied War, nor even by 87, when the last embers were alleged to have been extinguished completely.23 In fact, the Allies would play a role in the political crises in the years to come, but since Keaveney’s piece was primarily concerned with the war and its causes, his treatment of the immediate consequences of that war is of necessity an epilogue. Nevertheless, few other modern studies step in to fill the gap. Like Keaveney, Mouritsen is also concerned with the Italians, but he too draws his work to a close with the end of major operations in the war and furnishes an account of merely six pages which describes the fate of the Allies thereafter. Thus, Mouritsen likewise leaves the “Italian Question” unsolved. The years between the departure of Sulla and his return are most notable for the rise and political dominance of L. Cornelius Cinna, a politician in whose career the Allies played no small part. Hence, it would seem suitable that while Lovano’s biography of Cinna is concerned with the life a Roman statesman and his actions within the Roman state, he would devote some attention to the Allies commensurate with the role they played in that statesman’s deeds. However, Lovano accords very little space to the socii (about four pages in all). His almost exclusive concentration on the political maneuvering and activities of his subject is thereby somewhat poorer for the lack of a slightly more wide-ranging treatment of the status of the Italians and of Italy during which these activities occurred. Keaveney’s biography of Sulla is similar to Lovano’s in this respect; the focus of that work follows Sulla to the east rather than dwell at any length on what was happening in Rome after his 22 23

Keaveney 1987, p. 187. Doing so on page 204 (op. cit.).

INTRODUCTION

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departure, and although upon Sulla’s return Keaveney acknowledges that most of Italy was against him, he does not delve extensively into why. Thus, neither Lovano nor Keaveney (in either of his full-length works mentioned so far) spends much more than a few paragraphs describing the status of the Allies during the 80s BCE. Brunt, by contrast, does offer some commentary on what the legal status of the Allies became in his Italian Manpower, but this mention is made far more with a view to explain census results than the influence this status had on of future events. WulffAlonso also treats some of these topics. However, his presentation is offered thematically, and because he has provided a (brief) summary of the entire decade in an early chapter, his later ones, dealing with the former Allies and their integration into the state, jumps around quite a bit without providing a chronological framework for the developments he describes. A true and comprehensive narrative which begins with the status of the Italians after the last skirmishes of the war are ended in 87, and then follows the changes of that status throught the remainder of the decade, cannot therefore be gotten from Wulff-Alonso’s work. Finally, Harris and Salmon, in works directly concerned with individual Italian peoples that have been encountered above, do discuss the conditions encountered by their subjects after the conflict ends and likewise furnishes an analysis for what they would subsequently do, but in both cases this analysis is restricted specifically to the individual peoples under survey. Therefore, the overall role of the Allies after 87 is under-studied, even though actions undertaken by them or ostensibly on their behalf did much to shape the history of the 80s BCE. A full and extensive description of the final resolution of the Allied War and the “Italian Question” in the years leading up to the Civil War, one discussing specific events presented in a linear narrative, is not to be found in the works cited above. Nor, indeed, do these works pay a great deal of attention to the Allied position in the latter disturbance, though again some of this slack is taken up Wulff-Alonso in a very brief section on the Civil War, and some by Harris and Salmon, who provide the point of view of at least some of the Allies. The aftermath of the Civil for for the (by now, former-) Allies and what became of them has received somewhat greater notice, particularly in the form of the penalties exacted

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from them by Sulla’s proscriptions. Likewise, the changes in the governments of former Allied communities have been examined by Sherwin-White, Wulff-Alonso, and Edward Bispham in his From Asculum to Actium: The Municipalization of Italy from the Social War to Augustus. However, it cannot be denied that, if there are not holes in the modern scholarship, it is certainly very thin in terms of the Allies for most of this decade. The limited details supplied result in a an unsatisfying and incomplete picture of this span: much is written of the Allies and there role in its early years and they reappear in its final years, though what happens in between and, therefore, why they do what they end up doing is not extensively examined. In fact, this difficulty underscores another, more considerable gap which exists in modern scholarship in the decade: there has of yet been no large work in any important scholarly language (and certainly nothing of the kind in English) which attempts to provide a comprehensive narrative history of the entire decade as a whole beyond such surveys of it as are found in textbooks or reference works like the Cambridge Ancient History. All of the works mentioned above deal with certain episodes from the decade (or, in some cases, with the period of time leading up to it) or important aspects thereof, but an all-inclusive evaluation of the period is absent.24 This is puzzling, all the more so because many of these events and aspects are interrelated, and some indissolubly so: Sulla’s ability to effect his march on Rome, for example, only completely makes sense in the context of the changed political climate in Rome brought about by the extension of the franchise to former Allies. The ferocity of the fighting he encountered towards the end of the Civil War is likewise only fully explicable by his actions during the Allied War and after that march on Rome. Indeed, the connectedness of the decade is underscored by Syme, whose Roman Revolution goes so far as to refer to the actions of these years 24 Similarly cursory is Karl Christ’s treatment of the decade in his Krise und Untergand der Römischen Republik, in which the entire period is given sixty pages (of a total of 466) of which close to a third is occupied with the Mithridatic War; the rest is told from a Roman perspective, in which the Italians figure very little.

INTRODUCTION

17

collectively as the “Ten Years’ War”.25 As a consequence, the lack of an overarching portrait of the Italians in the decade of the 80s is partly the result of the fact that there exists no overarching portrait of the 80s BCE of any kind whatsoever. Clearly there is room in the historical structure for a work which would gather together the strands of research done on the period and present it as a cohesive whole, yet at present none such exists. It is the intention of this essay to bridge such a span. It will not, however, probe every facet of the Roman and Italian world of the period, a project for which many tomes would be required. Rather, it will instead focus on one element which simultaneously binds the decade and nevertheless presents the opportunity for a different angle on many of the inquiries already made into the period. The element in question is the Italians and their quest to obtain the rights of Roman citizenship, to secure those rights in full after their acquisition in diluted form, and to maintain the enjoyment of those rights against potential threats, a process which persisted throughout the 80s BCE. That quest, the circumstances which led the Italians to undertake it, the various events and persons they encountered along the way (helpful and harmful), and its ultimate outcome will be the subject of this project. Moreover, the essay will adopt, whenever the sources make this possible, the perspective of the Italians themselves, though on occasion the Roman slant towards their endeavors must be taken.26 Of course, objections to this chosen approach immediately present themselves. First of all, it has been alluded to in several places above that the Italian aspiration for the citizenship has been widely recognized as the central stimulus for the fighting which erupted in 91, a recognition which has become the standard explanatory model for the outbreak of hostilities. As such, this aspiration has featured prominently in the previously cited works Page 17; he gives the war the same appellation in his Tacitus, p. 139. Likewise, Ernst Badian states that “The war that began in 91 … lasted, in some form, until about 80” in his Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic (p. 60). 26 This is particularly true of chapter 3, for example, and from chapter 7–10 on, though by this point the Italians had received the citizenship and therir perspective was, in a manner of speaking, the Roman one. 25

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of Brunt, Gabba, and Salmon, who disagree among themselves on why exactly the Italians wished to obtain the franchise but are in accord that the wish was nevertheless paramount. It also looms large in the studies made by Keaveney, who devotes much of the first half of his work specifically devoted to the war to that desire and its expression. However, it is likewise a feature of these works that the Italian aims are held to have been fulfilled for some in 89 BCE, when laws were passed to give many of them the citizenship, and for all the others by the middle of the decade. It was at that point, it is broadly agreed, that the “somewhat later” (οἵδε τυχεῖν, ὧν ἔχρῃζον, ὕστερον), described by the Appian as the time when the rest obtained the franchise, had come (1.6.53). Therefore, the question could easily be raised as to why the Allies would continue to be motivated by the acquisition of citizenship rights after the middle of the decade, since by that time the civitas was theirs, and how this could therefore be a suitable axis running through the decade as a whole. As an answer to such a question, it should be observed that form of the citizenship which the Allies were given was one which had been divested of a great many of its political rights from the outset. It was additionally weakened by purposeful tampering with the operations of the apparatus of enrollment thereafter. Even in this watered-down form, the civitas which had been given was by no means guaranteed, and could have been revoked. The ancient sources make all of these things clear, and they likewise make clear that the Allies-turned-citizens were aware of these facts and were unhappy about them, as this essay will show. The passage of laws granting the citizenship in 89 and 88 BCE had led some of the Italians to lay down their arms, and had quite probably gone far to convince those who had been defeated in the field but not yet broken completely to accept that they were overcome and surrender, rather than make more desperate last stands of which the Allied War had already seen several. The fact that the Italians had been defeated but not destroyed (and, it should be observed, many of them had not even been weakened even to that extent at the traditional stopping point of the war) means that their willingness to give up had in a sense only been provisional on the basis of receiving the franchise. When it was discovered by them that the concession had been incomplete, they proved willing and able to fight on under the banner of those who had promised to

INTRODUCTION

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them their rights in full. From this recognition and effective desire to obtain in full what had been promised to them comes the Italian support of L. Cornelius Cinna, C. Marius, and their successors in the tense years following 88. Moreover, the Italians would later prove to be equally willing to defend what they had been given, or had at last finally taken, from those who they had reason to suspect would attempt to wrest it away from them again. Such a person was L. Cornelius Sulla, for whom there seems to have existed a robust loathing amongst the Allies which was apparently enthusiastically returned. Many Allies therefore resumed their weapons against Sulla upon his return from the East, and as events would turn out, the suspicions which led them to do so were amply justified: despite the assertion that Sulla actually made good on his promise to “respect all the concessions the Italians had won”, as one scholar puts it, the facts bear out that Sulla intentionally and actively re-engineered the Roman political structure to make sure many Italians—save those he handpicked—would never attain equal political rights with the cives veteres. Futhermore, this treatment was what was meted out to the Italians who had not fought against him; those who had were treated worse still. In creating a phantom citizenship which he eventually compelled some of the Italians to accept, Sulla was still more generous than to those many others whose citizenship he removed entirely, or to those whose property he confiscated, or to those whom he had slaughtered in the Campus Martius. The upshot of all of this is that “Italian Question” persisted after the end of the Allied War because its fundamental cause had not been resolved. The Allies had not been interested in a nominal citizenship in Rome but in an actual one, and the sources demonstrate that only complete destruction of their ability to fight on would cause them to accept anything less. Less was all they had been given by 88, when they had been battered but not broken; thus they followed the banner of those who promised them more in 87, and remained true to those banners when another came to take back what they had at long last gotten in 83 and fought him until they were completely broken in 82. Because the Allied struggle persisted throughout the decade, a study of the decade with that struggle as its focal point seems appropriate. Another and indeed more significant objection can be raised from the very beginning concerning the fundamental assumption

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upon which this essay is based, which is that it was in fact the desire for citizenship and the rights thereunto which had motivated Italian activities throughout the 80s BCE and for years after. Such an assumption, which is common to most modern scholarly works on the period, seems to preclude another possibility, which is that the Allied War was never actually spurred on by the desire for the citizenship at all, but rather from a wish amongst the Italians to separate from and overthrow the Romans. This latter possibility has occasionally been raised and indeed was notably propounded by no less magisterial a voice than that of Sir Ronald Syme, who had explicitly proclaimed that the Allied War had been a war of independence.27 Syme does not give grounds for his assertion, and about the closest he comes to doing so is when he cites a passage from Ovid as evidence of a tradition kept alive by the Paeligni that they had fought for libertas.28 Nevertheless, but the possibility inherent in this argument has recently been the subject of a study in great detail by Henrik Mouritsen, which has been briefly described above. Mouritsen, like the other scholars with whose propositions he disagrees, argues that the Allies elected to go to war in response to discontent with their association with the Romans. But, as has been seen, it is his belief that this discontent and the specific grievances which had led to it had make it unlikely that the Italians would choose redress through seeking to become closer to the Romans through the civitas. Instead, he argues, they sought satisfaction by dissolving ties and fighting for their “freedom”, and this motivation was once widely recognized in ancient times as the reason for the war. Evidence for this conception of the conflict as On more than one occasion, in fact. In his “Caesar, the Senate, and Italy” Syme’s exact comments were: “The peoples of central Italy from Picenum through the Apennine lands down, to Samnium and Lucania rose in arms against Rome in 91 B.C., for liberty and justice. Crushed or submitting, they were by no means satisfied, still less reconciled. They had not been fighting for the Roman franchise” (emphasis added); a decade later Syme had apparently not changed his opinion, referring to the struggle of the Allies as one for “freedom and justice” in The Roman Revolution. Thus he does specifically on page 16, and says the same thing on page 86, where he uses almost the same exact phrasing as the earlier article. 28 Syme 1951, p. 86. 27

INTRODUCTION

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one fought for independence can be discerned, according to Mouritsen, in passing references found in most of the ancient sources. These references represent for Mouritsen an “alternative tradition” which had once been the common explanatory model for the war but which has since become buried, both in the ancient sources and the modern authors who draw from them. In its place is the current model emphasizing the need for the citizenship. As far as the ancient sources were concerned, this burial was due to a number of factors: to deliberate distortions attached to statesmen of the period due to the fractious Varian trials of 91 and shortly after; by later conciliatory authors whose aim was to convince their audiences that the Italians, who at the time of their writing had actually become part of the fabric of Roman society, had nobly fought to achieve equality and had not committed the less pardonable sin of trying to destroy the Commonwealth, a threat implicit in their fight to sever ties; by sympathy on the part of authors like Appian who had retrojected his own desire for the franchise into Rome’s past and employed the propaganda of conciliation to do so;29 and by writers of an even later time who were unable to recognize the distortion and thus accepted what they read in earlier sources as accurate. The attempt to disguise the truth was not entirely successful, Mouritsen argues, because scattered references exist in the extant authors to the real reason for the war, which was fought for “liberty”, id est independence. Yet the burial was successful enough that that almost all of the sources which contain the traces of “alternative tradition” which he describes also contain direct references—and more frequent ones at that—to the cause of the war being, not about independence, but about citizenship. Mouritsen’s interpretation would have it that when words like “liberty” or “freedom” appear in the ancient sources as a cause for which the Allies fought, it was not mere rhetorical flourish. Instead, it was the dimly remembered true reckoning for why the war broke out, which was so that the Allies could become independent from Rome. If his assertion is is correct, then the struggle for the citizenship did not exist amongst the Italians, as they were 29

Mouritsen 1998, p. 5–22.

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struggling in fact for something else. It therefore cannot explain Italian movements in the early part of the 80s BCE. Even if the Allies later did in fact support Cinna, Marius, and the Mariani against Sulla over citizenship rights, this was due to their attempting to make the most out of what was left to them after the failure of their bid for separation. The modern tradition which uses the civitas to explain why the war broke out is therefore flawed, having been deceived by the cosmetics which overlay—but does not completely cover—the real motivations for the Italians, which was independence. Mouritsen’s arguments are cunning, certainly, but they ultimately founder on one point which he readily concedes, which is that he is rewriting “a story-line against the sources”.30 If what he suggests about independence to be true, nearly all of these sources must be flawed—either by design or accident—in their explanation for the basis of the hostilities. For this in turn to be so, the sources would have had to have been completely deceived about this pivotal event, or to have themselves engaged in such deception. Among those who would have had to have taken part in the mendacity would have been men like Cicero and the anonymous auctor ad Herennium, both of whose writing dates from the period immediately following the 80s and who thus could not have been led astray by later interpretations of events with which they were contemporaries. Indeed, if Mouritsen’s conjecture is to be believed, these authors would have been involved an attempt to deceive audiences whose members might very well have fought in the war, as Cicero himself did. Since Cicero takes note of a meeting he himself witnessed between Pompeius Strabo and Vettius Scato in which he records that Scato declared in no uncertain terms that he fought for the franchise (Phil. 12.27), according to Mouritsen this record would have had to have been a lie, and indeed was exactly that. The reason given for why Cicero would want to perpetrate such a falsehood was that he “had an obvious political interest in portraying the Italian élite, whose descendants were now domi nobiles,

30

Mouritsen, op. cit., p. 4.

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as worthy members of Roman society”.31 Yet even if Cicero would have been able to accomplish this trick, which is unlikely (it is difficult to see how even as artful an orator as Cicero would have been able to convince an audience of the truth of something they might well have known for certain to have been false), he would not have been the only contemporary Roman whose complicity would have been required for the deception to work. The lie would also have had to have included Sulla, whose memoirs were widely used by later authors, and Sisenna, who almost certainly took part in the war, as Sulla did, and from whose now-lost histories many later authors drew. Yet neither of these men would have had the “obvious political interest portraying the Italian élite ... as worthy members of Roman society” that Mouritsen claims Cicero did. Indeed, Sulla would certainly have had very little desire to massage the feelings of the Italian domi nobiles, for whom the Dictator’s actions suggest nothing but loathing, as events will show. Mouritsen does not consider this necessity, although it is difficult to see how an invented “desire for the citizenship” could replace the true “desire for independence” so thoroughly in the later sources if Sulla and Sisenna had told the truth and identified independence as Allied goal. These two are known to have been widely-consulted authors, and even though their works are lost, it is probable that those who drew on them later would likewise almost certainly have identified independence as the goal of the Allies if Sulla and Sisenna had done so, even if later authors may have attempted to lead them astray. The fact that none who drew on them did identify independence as the casus belli makes it reasonably clear that Sulla and Sisenna had not mentioned it as such, and that they, like Cicero, attributed the war’s cause to the desire for the citizenship. Since neither man was trying to flatter an electorate like, it is presumed, Cicero was, and thus had no cause to lie, it is reasonable to assume that their accounts about what led the socii into arms was a truthful one. As a consequence, Cicero’s testimony, 31 Or, alternatively, that even if this encounter took place as mentioned, it took place late in the war after the tide had already turned against the Allies and thus did not represent why they had fought in the first place; Mouritsen, 1998, p. 164–165.

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which agrees with theirs, can reasonably be assumed to be accurate as well. Therefore, if independence had actually been the real cause of the fighting, the preponderance of the need for the civitas in later works as the explanation for it, supplanting independence, could only have come about under a series of increasingly unlikely circumstances. For example, it may have been that the Allies really had fought for independence, and the later authors who claimed the war had been fought for the citizenship did so because both Sulla and Sisenna avoided any mention at all as to why the war was fought. It stretches the imagination to the breaking point that both men would write about the war and yet elide any statement about why it came about, but had they made such an omission, it would allow later authors to draw their own (wrong) conclusions, ones perhaps based on Cicero. Alternatively, it may have been that the Allies really had fought for independence, but Sulla and Sisenna, who knew this full well, still falsely suggested the cause of the war was the citizenship. Of course, neither man seems to have had a reason for concocting this lie, but if Sulla had had such a reason to deceive, it might be easier to explain why no one would question it; as dictator, it can be presumed that Sulla could reinvent history as easiliy as he had reinvented the institutions of the Republic, and the proscription lists could always make room for those who gainsaid him. Sisenna, his friend and lieutenant, would likely be quick to perpetuate it to maintain Sulla’s favor. Sulla, therefore, might have had the clout to change history without anyone daring to question him. However, it remains difficult to see why he Sulla would want the desire for the citizenship to replace independence as the reason for hostilities, and indeed it might have served his propaganda interests much better for the reverse to be the case.32 In the face of 32 It does not seem likely that Sulla would have wanted to disguise a war fought to overthrow Rome, since a war fought for such a purpose would make his later bloody revenge on the Allies during the Civil War much more palatable. It therefore seems that Sulla would be far more interested in a like which would argue that the Allies did indeed fight for independence instead of the civitas, as opposed to one stating the exavt opposite. This point seems to have eluded Mouritsen, and in fact he himself punctures an episode that might have been another indicator of

INTRODUCTION

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such difficulties, the idea that this would have been a desired, much less a successful, aim of Sulla’s fails to convince. In the final analysis, then, Mouritsen’s argument will not overturn the overwhelming edifice presented by the sources. These are almost uniform in their claim that the Italians went to war because most, if not all of them, thirsted for the franchise and had continually been frustrated in their attempts to get it. This thirst, more specifically, was for the citizenship in its complete form and for all the rights that citizenship entailed, and it was not fully slaked by what was offered to the Allies in 88. The need to obtain complete satisfaction persisted throughout the decade of the 80s the Allied desire for independence. An anecdote from the Civil War of 83–82 involves Pontius Telesinus, who led an army of Samnites against Sulla at the battle of the Colline Gate. According to Velleius Paterculus, Telesinus had attempted to rally his men during a critical moment in the battle by urging them to rid themselves of the wolf by destroying the forest which harbored them, id est push forward into Rome itself and destroy it (2.27.2; see also chapter 10). Mouritsen might have used this tale to suggest that it reflected Samnite feelings towards Rome, not just during the Civil War, but also during the Allied War. Doing so would add more corroboration to his hypothesis that the earlier war was fought to break free from Rome and topple Roman power, yet according to Mouritsen, the entire tale was based on a fiction from Sulla’s memoirs, invented as an excuse to turn the war into an anti-Samnite crusade (1998, p. 10). If Sulla had indeed been forced to invent this tale to amplify the Samnite enmity against the Romans so as to justify his massacre of them, then it hardly follows that it was common knowledge that the Samnites had been out to destroy Rome from the beginning; the tale suggests that there was no such popular reasoning, and Sulla’s that atrocities required that in be invented. In sum, Sulla would have been far more likely to gain profit from promoting or even manufacturing a tale of the Allies attempting to free themselves from Rome rather than from suppressing it. A lie to the effect that the Allies were only fighting for the citizenship might have made them even more sympathetic. Yet the accounts of later authors which used Sulla as a source do not contain the interpretation Sulla would have favored, but all alike ascribe the war to a need for citizenship. This strongly implies that Sulla recorded the same thing, even if ultimately he would have been better served to have his contemporaries and posterity believe he quite literally spearheaded an effort to wipe out those Allies who attempted to break free from, then destroy, Rome.

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BCE. It was a factor, almost certainly the principal one, in the participation of the socii in first the Allied War, when they fought Rome to gain the franchise, and then in the Civil War, when they supported the Mariani against Sulla out of fear that Sulla would take away the rights they had gained. Therefore, the aim of the present essay is to describe this struggle for the Roman citizenship undertaken by the Allies, how and why it came into being, and its impact on the 80s. In sum, it will attempt to explain why the Allies came to covet the civitas so badly, what they did about it, and the results of their actions. However, it will be seen that this struggle did not begin with the decade of the 80s, nor, properly speaking, did it end then; as a result, this study must similarly assess events and forces which arose over several years prior to this time, and trace the ultimate resolution of the quest which did not come to pass until several years later, if even then. Such, then, will be the chronological parameters of the present work. It will furthermore attempt to take the perspective of the Italians on the way they and the Romans related to each other, on the characteristics of their relationship with Rome which made the citizenship so important, and on the manner whereby the Romans reacted to the Italians in their petition for that citizenship. Although such an attempt will be made, its successful execution will not always be possible, for reasons which will be described below. Sometimes it will be necessary to present the Roman outlook on certain circumstances, and in truth it will sometimes be desirable to do so to present as complete an image of these circumstances as possible. In the end, it must not be forgotten that ultimately the activities of the Allies in this period gain most of their importance from the effect these activities had on the history of the Roman civilization, a civilization and thus a history into which ultimately the Italians would become inseparably linked. Nevertheless, by assuming the Italian vista when it is possible, many facets of Rome’s history from this period will be illuminated, providing some exterior light on things which are often only examined as internal matters of the Roman people. The analysis to follow will be drawn in part from numismatic, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence. Most of it, however, will come from literary sources. It is an unfortunate fact that the literary sources available for this period are not ideal; many of them are fragmentary, most were composed centuries after the events they

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describe, and several of them were written in Greek by authors whose Latin may not have been superlative. A more extensive analysis of these literary sources will be the first order business for this essay, and it will be provided in chapter 1. Based on what will be drawn from these texts, chapter 2 will argue that a great desire for the Roman citizenship emerged amongst a great many of Rome’s Italian Allies, and that this desire became so strong that it ultimately led to a war. The testimony of the literary sources makes this demonstration fairly easy, as, again, almost all of them indicate that there was such a wish for the citizenship. As it would turn out, that wish became so great that when it was imperfectly granted at that war’s conclusion, further blood was shed by the socii in the effort to gain what they lacked and, upon its acquisition, to secure it from those who sought to have it taken away from them. It will therefore be necessary to try to identify what precisely it was which made the civitas such a fervently desired commodity. This will be slightly more difficult, because while almost all of the sources indicate that the citizenship was sought to alleviate dissatisfaction over the relationship between the Allies and the Romans, they do not explain in detail why that attitude of dissatisfaction came into being. It will, therefore, also be the task of chapter 2 to offer some conjectures as to the reasons for this discontent, and to describe how redress for it could best be gained by the civitas. While chapter 2 will show that some of ways by which the Romans made themselves disagreeable to the Italians were of long standing, others were of more recent occurrence and almost certainly played a role in determining, not only that there would be war, but also when it would come. These latter, the specific greivances with Rome that not only impelled war, but impelled it to occur when it did as opposed to earlier or later, will be the subject of chapter 3. The outbreak of the war itself, as well as the preparations made by the Allies for it, will be narrated in chapter 4. That chapter will also venture an attempt to ascertain what the Allied strategy for fighting the Romans might have been. Chapters 5 and 6 will describe the Allied commanders, the battles which they fought, and the general progress of the conflict up to the laying down of arms by most but not all of the combatants. These chapters will also describe the Roman response, both on an off the battlefield, including their enactment of several laws between 89

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and 88, which are usually known as the lex Julia and the subsequent lex Plautia Papiria, which gave the citizenship to those allies who had not yet committed to battle or who quickly withdrew from the conflict. By means of these and other measures, the Allies were finally given the franchise, and this process will also be described, both as the laws were promulgated and enacted, and in period to follow when they were executed. As will be seen, these laws and their implementation did not occur in a vacuum, as this very period saw the election of Sulla as consul and his march on Rome. This event and its consequences— and especially those for the Italians—will be discussed in chapters 6 and 7. Among the specific consequences of the march on Rome to which chapter 6 and 7 will be devoted will be the exile of Marius and Cinna, their return and installation as the official government of the Republic, and to the affect this had on the former allies, by this point become citizens. Chapters 8 and 9 will deal with the return of Sulla and the Civil War, while the final chapter will describe the consequences of that War and the Dictatorship which followed. This too had an impact on the novi cives, and that impact will be given especial emphasis. The final chapter will also serve as is an epilogue to the decade and will inquire into the ways by which the death of Sulla and the erosion of many of his laws influenced the possibilities for how the Allies might participate in the running of the state of which they were now members, and how this participation played a role in the beginning of the Last Generation of the Roman Republic and in the rise of Caesar and the Principate.

CHAPTER 1: THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 1. THE TURBULENT YEARS OF 91–77 BCE The period between 91 and 77 BCE was one of the most important expanses of time in the history of the Republic, one which saw changes to the Roman society of greater magnitude than any which had occurred since Hannibal, and may have surpassed even those. By its end, the city may, perhaps, have looked little different than it always had, and no changes may have appeared visible and on the surface. Its government was still firmly ensconced in the hands of the ruling class that had watched over it for centuries, and from that ruling class the people chose magistrates in the time-honored way. The people who elected these men could look forward to a year of their service as lawmakers, generals, and judges, and when their term of office expired, could perhaps expect their continued efforts as governors of the empire’s provinces. At the very least, the people would know that the men they had chosen would lend their wisdom and experience to the Senate, the great council upon whose advice all magistrates depended and into whose membership all former magistrates were installed. Different worthy men would then be elevated to replace those who moved from office into the provinces or the Curia. Indeed, the Senate had recently attained a level of authority by 77 which it had not enjoyed in centuries, the magistrates they advised had recently seen their powers clarified, and candidates ran under qualifications for holding elected positions which had lately been strictly defined in a manner conforming to the most ancient customs, ending some irregularities which had until very recently been troublesome. All was, at first glance, as it should be, and, more importantly, as it had always been, and the apparatus of the state functioned which suggested a renewed dedication to its hallowed traditions. Below the surface, however, was a Rome that in many ways was nothing like the one that Appius Claudius Caecus or Publius 29

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Decius Mus had known centuries earlier. During the decade— more-or-less—of the 80s BCE, Rome, and what it had meant to be Roman, had changed in substantial ways. In the first place, there were thousands upon thousands of people who could now claim that status who could not have just a little while before. Such men had been, until just recently, Rome’s Italian socii; the word meant “Allies”, though in many ways what these had been were Rome’s subjects. For centuries, these Italians had been obligated to send soldiers that had been gathered, armed, supplied and paid from their own resources to the Romans, ones who would serve in Rome’s armies, fight in Rome’s wars, and build Rome’s empire under Rome’s generals in numbers that exceeded Rome’s contributions of its citizens to its own military. To the Romans they also had owed respect and deference, which was not often returned, and while the Allies came from nominally independent, self-governing communities, they were also occasionally expected to obey some of Rome’s laws and sometimes cater to the whims of its magistrates. Such men were now Roman citizens, something which might have been incredible to previous generations, and they were made so because in the early part of the 80s BCE they had risen against the Commonwealth and had battered it into what was very close to defeat. Ultimately these Allies had been beaten, but they had held on so stubbornly and exacted such a dreadful cost that in the end they were given the citizenship so as to spare the Romans the further losses that that would seem to be necessary either to get them to surrender, or to wipe them out completely. These former Allies had, in fact, fought so ferociously towards that very end, even if the citizenship into which they had been admitted was one which, at first, had been deprived of certain political rights. They had not been satisfied with this, however, and on several occasions during this important decade they had taken arms again and fought some of their now-fellow citizens to secure these missing rights. As the decade ended, they had taken to battle one more time to defend these privileges from what they perceived to be a danger to them, again fighting men who had been their enemy from 90 to 87 and who were ostensibly their countrymen in 83 and 82. Over these ten years it may have become difficult to find a time when men who had not been born Romans were not in arms against those who had been, and while there were such lulls, it may have seemed at the time like Rome and its one-time Allies were in

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the grip, not of several wars, but of one, bloody, decade-long conflict. Perhaps most remarkable still was that, for many of those ten years under arms, the former Italians had been fighting against their putative Roman brethren alongside other Romans engaged in the same enterprise, all under the leadership of Roman magistrates and generals. For the first time in its history Rome had fallen to civil war, and while the Commonwealth would not see the first one of these until past its four-hundredth year, it would see its second within months of its first, and its third within three years of that. The first of these had, admittedly, been small in terms of its duration and numbers slain. For all that, its implications had been seismic, having been started by a Roman magistrate who felt his government had fallen short of what it had owed him and who had determined to use his army to seize what he felt was his due. Astonishingly, he had obtained the willing cooperation of his army in this enterprise, in the process ringing a bell which could not be unrung: after 88, what was once something no Roman could even contemplate had became something which was rather easily achieved. Six years later, the same man who had put into motion Rome’s first, small civil war would put into motion a third, far more devastating one, whose ultimate result—and perhaps its very purpose—had been his takeover of the entire government. In a sense, all the blood he had spilt both before and after his war may have been less destructive than the precedent he had set, and no matter how he had tried to remake the state to prevent it, there would ever after be the possibility that others might imitate him. The man who had first marched on Rome with the intent to use its own soldiers against it had done so for his own reasons, but in a very real way, the Italian Allies had been involved at every step. That he had been able to lead an army at all was due to his experience fighting against those very Allies in the war they had launched to get the citizenship, in which the success he had won as a subordinate commander had persuaded the people to deem him worthy of his own major command as consul. His term in office coincided with the ending of that war, one brought about in part by Rome’s extension of a defective version of the citizenship to the beaten Allies in the hope that it would persuade their former socii to accept defeat and not keep in arms until their annihilation. The Italians had accepted this offer, but not happily, and they therefore

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rejoiced when a Roman tribune proposed a law which would supply them with the rights that had been withheld. But a political bargain designed to ensure the passing of that law had deprived the consul of the military command that had been promised to him, and it had been to get it back that he had led his march. Because doing so would involve erasing the law which gave the new citizens their full privileges, these new citizens had fought against the man who was now technically their chief magistrate, only to be overpowered by him. Later, another Roman politician, this one a consul, also promised the former Italians their missing rights, but was thrown out of the city for doing so. His call for their aid in his own bid to get back by force what he felt was rightfully his was enthusiastically answered, and with Italian help he made his own march on Rome, defeating in the process a large Roman army attempting to stop him. The Italians contributed their weapons to his endeavor, and by doing so had brought him to victory; having fought against one Roman waging civil war against his state, they would follow and fight for another doing likewise, this time with greater success. Once they had helped their champion take Rome and assume the reins of its government, the man who had been responsible for the second civil war declared the man for who had been responsible for the first an enemy of the state, and although he would not live to redeem his pledge to the Italians, his successor and right-hand man in that second civil war would do so. The outlawed Roman vowed to unmake the laws of men who had declared him an enemy, laws which may have included that which gave the Italians their long-awaited rights, and the end of the decade saw these two men, both leaders of a successful civil war against Rome, fight each other in the third. For fear that their rights would evaporate if they did otherwise, the Italians stayed firm in their support of the one and remained enemies with the other, only to be beaten by him a second time. And so it was that Lucius Cornelius Sulla, primum mobile and victor of two civil wars against Rome’s government, had his career in no small part shaped by his opposition to the Italians and their efforts to gain and keep the full unabridged enjoyment of the Roman citizenship. In a very real sense, this struggle of theirs was a cord which ran through the entire decade, and was connected in some way to practically important event in it. If the years between 91 and 77 had brought about some enormous changes to the

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Roman state, ones that revealed a new meaning to what it was to be Roman and a new understanding of what a Roman would now be capable, the Italians and their quest provided the opportunity for, instruments of, and participants in such changes. For these reasons, their struggle, the men who led it, the men who fought against it, and the events that occurred along the way, seem inherently worthy of investigation. It will be to this investigation that the essay to follow will be devoted. Any endeavor to narrate the Allied quest for the Roman citizenship, its origins, and its outcome, will perforce need to draw upon the body of evidence left behind by the Romans and the Italians, and by those outsiders who were interested in the developments between them. It so happens, however, that the quantity and quality of evidence that has been passed down is far less profound than the importance of the epoch might seem to suggest. The caprices of transmission have been most unkind to this period, falling as it does between two eras which are fairly welllit in comparison. Literary sources are there, of course, and with the aid of material and archaeological remains, they do manage to reveal a great deal about this age. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the ancient sources which provide such a survey are far from perfect, and present a not inconsiderable challenge to the crafting of a historical reconstruction to be built upon them.

2. THE HISTORIES NEVER COMPOSED Indicative of the nature of this difficulty with the sources is the vast amount that simply was not written. Specifically, there remains no evidence to suggest that any of the Italians who participated in or were at least contemporaries of the events by which they ultimately became Romans ever composed a history of this period, eyewitness or otherwise. Exactly why this is so is unknown, especially since there is evidence to suggest that at least some of the Italians who would participate in the struggle were known to have kept historical records which would have, or at least could have, aided in such a composition.1 For whatever the reason, the voices which 1 Salmon (1982, p. 157–158) specifically cites the Samnites and the Etruscans as peoples who did so.

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eventually do describe the Italians and their pursuit of the civitas are ultimately not their own but are rather almost wholly those of their Roman adversaries, of their descendants,2 or of Greeks, many of whom were writing much later. The result of this in terms of factual distortion and bias of sympathy can only be imagined. Almost as unfortunate as the lack of a history of the war composed by the Italians themselves is another work which was suggested by its potential author and even earnestly petitioned from him by his friends but, finally, was never actually composed. This refers to a proposed history from Marcus Tullius Cicero, one described by one scholar as “the most important (historical work in Latin) that was not written”.3 It must be admitted that because Cicero never wrote his history, there is no guarantee that he would have chosen the period currently under survey as his subject if he had he done so. Other periods were available for his pen, as can be seen from one of Cicero’s philosophical writings in which he records a suggestion made to him for his potential topic, one which came from his brother, that he focus his efforts on Rome’s beginnings. In this, Quintus Cicero opposed the proposal of Atticus, who is made to ask that M. Cicero narrate the events of his own lifetime.4 Yet had he chosen this time as his subject, he would have been able to contribute more than just the eloquentia of an orator which Cicero himself insisted was needed for a proper

An objection may be raised that an exception to this statement may be found in the person of Velleius Paterculus, who proudly notes his descent from an Italian who was given the franchise for his loyalty to Rome during the war. However, as in the case with L. Cornelius Sisenna, himself held to be of Etruscan origin and to have been sympathetic to the Allies because of such a heritage (Rawson 1979, p. 328–329; more below), there is no question that Velleius was anything but thoroughly Roman in his perspective. Therefore, for all intents and purposes Velleius ought to count less as an “Italian” and more as the Roman that he most certainly was, which is doubly true of Sisenna, who was himself. 3 Rawson (1979, p. 372) 4 See Wiseman 1979, p. 18–19, citing De Legibus 1.8. 2

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historian.5 He would have also been able to contribute his own eyewitness testimony as an actual participant in the war.6 Furthermore, in several of his extant dialogues Cicero propounds certain standards for historians, of which eloquentia, as was just seem, was one.7 If he had adhered to these principles in his own work, Cicero would have included the causes and origins of the conflict, would have given the character and spirit of the participants, would have taken pains to describe things in proper chronological order, and finally would have done so without bias or anger: sine gratia et simultate, in his own words, generations before Tacitus would make a similar vow for his own composition. As it ultimately transpired, however, Cicero was never able, or perhaps never willing, to devote himself to this task. As a result, his historical value for this period lies solely in the comments he made about it in speeches, letters, and treatises. These remarks, despire having not been intended to conform to his historical precepts, are still of definite worth. Nevertheless, their value is diminished by the fact that in many cases they are introduced without background or context, which is especially true of those which are found in letters to friends who did not need an explanation for Cicero’s references. Likewise, those which occur in speeches are especially susceptible to accusations of exaggeration or whatever other kinds of factmanipulation a declamation in court might require, or at least allow.8 5 De Oratore 15 (2.62–64). It should be observed here that whenever possible the Loeb version of ancient texts will be cited, mainly for ease of access and for consistency in pagination. 6 Phil.12.27, where he describes the meeting between Pompeius Strabo and the Marsic commander Vettius Scato which occurred during his service on Strabo’s general staff first-hand; see chapter 6 for this conference. 7 Most importantly, in De Orat., loc. cit. For an additional discussion of Cicero’s historical ideals, see Walsh (1961, p. 32–33), and Syme (1958, p. 133–134). 8 For some of Cicero’s occasional tinkering with historical facts, see Morstein-Marx, p. 199. Elsewhere, Morstein-Marx notes that—especially in speeches before the people—Cicero’s public claims do not necessarily always match what he says in letters, essays, or in speeches in the Senate

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An Italian account of the war was apparently never composed, nor certainly was a history from a contemporary Roman as trustworthy as Cicero seems like he would have been. These would have been ideal sources, and the fact that they never came into being is a fact which the modern historian must regard with considerable disappointment. Almost as frustrating, however, are the notices which reveal that several accounts were written—sources not as optimal as those just mentioned might have been but which doubtless would have been incredibly beneficial for acquiring knowledge of the decade—but have since become lost. Some of these are gone completely, to which number may be added the history of the Etruscans which Suetonius claims had been written by the emperor Claudius (Div. Claud. 42). It may well have been that the twenty books of that composition had included an account of their participation in the war, as it is known from other works that they were indeed belligerents on the war. Others remain only in fragmentary form, with the quotations of them in extant writers providing tantalizing glimpses of what could once have been known, and throwing into stark relief the limitations on what is known based on still-extant texts.

3. THE HISTORIES THAT ARE LOST Among the texts known to have existed once due to quotations of it by later writers, one of the most important seems to have been the Histories of L. Cornelius Sisenna, whose significance is attested by the breadth of its certain use by extant sources and and its apparent use by others. This work seems to have covered the period of 91–77 exactly: it is known that the Allied War was Sisenna’s topic, but that it ranged as far ahead as to have been able (an example is held to be found in his alleged support of the Gracchi and agrarian laws asserted while addressing the crowd, p. 194–195; 207–212), although this is not the same as outright lying, since an outright lie—id est, the claim of something which was either known to be false by, or could be revealed to be false to, the crowd—presented the danger of ruining the very credibility upon which Cicero depended. In sum, according to Morstein-Marx Cicero could certainly distort the truth, but apparently never directly contradicted it.

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to record the dictatorship of Sulla; the suggestion of Syme that Sulla’s funeral would have made a suitably dramatic point of conclusion seems plausible enough.9 For the excellence of Sisenna’s work there is the testimony of Cicero, who has Atticus declare in the de legibus that Sisenna outstripped any history yet written at that time in style (1.7). Similarly, there is Sallust’s declaration that Sisenna’s work on the life and times of Sulla was of such surpassing quality that Sallust himself would eschew writing a competing account of these events of his own (BJ 95.2),10 and Velleius Paterculus accords him pride of place in his list of the historians of the period (2.9.5). Sisenna was thus certainly known to Velleius, and was probably also familiar to Valerius Maximus and perhaps even Appian.11 There is likewise a broad consensus that he was a main source for this period for Livy,12 alongside Posidonius 9 Rawson (1979, p. 327), quoting Syme’s Sallust, p. 180 n. 10. On Sisenna’s flair for the dramatic, see Rawson, op. cit., p. 339. 10 Neither Cicero nor Sallust are unqualified in their praise, however. In the places cited above, Cicero holds that Sisenna’s work is the best but still too filled with “puerility” to attain the heights of the ideal historian (omnis adhuc nostros scriptores ... facile superauit. Is tamen ... in historia puerile quiddam consectatur), while Sallust believes that he did not speak of Sulla with sufficient frankness (Neque enim alio loco de Sullae rebus dicturi sumus et L. Sisenna, optime et diligentissime omnium, qui eas res dixere, persecutus, parum mihi libero ore locutus videtur). 11 So Rawson (1979 p. 335 and 338). 12 So Rawson (1979, p. 327) and Walsh (1961, p. 135–136; 1974, p. 16). Badian (1962, p. 50) notes that Claudius Quadrigarius also had some material which covered this period, but while Livy certainly used Claudius for earlier centuries, given the availability of Sisenna it is unlikely that Livy would have chosen Claudius over him. Indeed, if—as is sometimes asserted—Livy did in fact only follow one source at a time as per the so-called “Nissen’s Law”, Sisenna seems to be the more obvious candidate, since certainly Livy did use him (Badian, loc. cit.). Therefore, if Claudius was used by Livy for the Allied War at all, it was probably as a check-source, which Livy did use (Walsh 1961, p. 139–141), to Sisenna. On the other hand, see Haug p. 215–217, who notes the differences in arrangement—geographical in Sisenna, chronological in Livy—which she avers makes use of Sisenna by Livy “impossible”, or at least impossible without rearrangement; at best Livy used facts from Sisenna but not his

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and the Memoirs of Sulla (more below). Of the Allied War itself Sisenna probably knew a great deal, as he had almost certainly fought in it, perhaps under the command of Sulla.13 Furthermore, Sisenna seems to have treated the Italians with a certain degree of sympathy, perhaps due to what may have been his own Etruscan origins.14 If so, than he might well have provided the “pro-Italian” sentiment found in Appian, assuming Sisenna was actually used by that author.15 Whatever his sentiment or bias may have been, the fact remains that nothing exists of his work beyond a few fragments. Even so, the nature of his work and its attested excellence, and thus by extension its accuracy and trustworthiness, is important to note, due to the fact that occasionally use can be made of some of the few fragments that remain. More importantly, probable or actual use of Sisenna may add to the merit of those later authorities who did make such use, of which a few have been mentioned above. Also important for the extent to which they were used by later authors are two other lost sources known once to have existed and to have dealt with this period. One of these was the Memoirs of Sulla, directly mentioned in the work of Plutarch and very likely

structure, at least for the Allied War. See also Appendix A for further discussion of Livy and his sources for 91–77. 13 For the near-certainty of his military servce against the socii, see Rawson (1979, p. 333–334). His friendship with L. Lucullus and Q. Hortensius, the fact that he was elected praetor with Sulla still alive, and his subsequent favor with Pompeius Magnus (who had chosen him as legate during the Pirate War, on which expedition the author died), strongly suggest close ties with the Optimate party (Rawson, op. cit., p. 327–330, 333–335; Badian 1962, p. 50–51). It is perhaps to this that Sallust alludes when he suggests that Sisenna was not completely forthcoming about Sulla’s actions, for which see earlier note. However, given Sallust’s own loathing of Sulla (one apparent in the reading of his Catiline and Jugurthine War) this may be a bit of an overstatement. 14 Rawson (op. cit., p. 328–329; 334–338). 15 Rawson (op. cit., p. 339). Emilio Gabba, however, takes a different view in his work on Appian and the Civil War (1956, p. 80–88), and Haug does as well (p. 231–232).

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one of his main sources for the life of Marius,16 as it almost certainly was for those of Sulla himself and of Lucullus,17 to the latter of whom the Memoirs were apparently dedicated (Plutarch, Sull. 6). Based on what Plutarch chooses to cite from these Memoirs it is reasonably certain that what Sulla recounts of himself is heavily shaded by self-promotion and the desire to blacken his opponents, but even accounting for such a bias it is possible that there would have been no small amount of serviceable material in them if only due to his eyewitness testimony.18 Of what may have been greater merit were the Histories of Posidonius, alleged to have begun where Polybius left off and continued in fifty-two books until 88 BCE. This work was a source for both Livy and Diodorus Siculus,19 though exactly how much of what they report has been derived from Posidonius is difficult to determine given the nature of what survives from their own works. What is known about the work of Posidonius is that he apparently departed from the strictness of Polybius and allowed himself to affix the cause of moral degeneracy and decay to the misfortunes of the Romans.20 How much this tendency affected his objectivity can only be conjectured, but as someone actually in Rome during the period in question (he found himself there as a diplomat in 87) 16 Evans speculates that Marius himself might also have written such a memoir, though no trace of it is found in the sources (p. 7–8), and such is not entirely in keeping with the image of the gruff soldier Marius deliberately cultivated. At any rate, given the overall timbre of Plutarch’s commentary in his Marius, it is fairly certain that far much of his material came from the work of the general’s rival and rather little from sources sympathetic to his subject. 17 See, for example, Sulla 6; 14; 17; and 23; also, Lucullus 1; 14. 18 Indeed, Badian 1962 (p. 57–59) holds that Appian used Sulla’s memoirs frequently, and in fact used them directly, without the intermediary of Sisenna or Livy (but see Gabba, op. cit., 80–99). For further discussion about the extent to which Sulla’s memoirs influenced later portrayals of him, see Behr (p. 9–113). 19 For Livy’s use of Posidonius see Walsh (1961, p. 135–136), but see also Haug p. 118–119 (about which more later); for that of Diodorus, see Sacks (p. 12, 41–47, 121). 20 Sacks, loc. cit. This was a favorite topic of Livy’s, as well, for which see Walsh (1961, p. 65–55).

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he would have had a chance to observe much and perhaps directly question those involved in the Allied War. This might have made his insights all the more penetrating, especially when combined with the freedom bias due to lack of attachment to either side which his status as an outsider would have accorded him. Nothing remains of the work of Sisenna, Sulla, and Posidonius, save for scattered quotations form them in later authors. All of these would have been primary sources in the most literal sense of the term: they wrote about what they had seen directly, and may have done so with a wealth of detail that only autopsy can provide. Admittedly, these works were, according to descriptions of them, not without faults. Sulla’s, it seems, was guided by his own impulse to show himself in the right and his opponents in the wrong, and Sisenna’s, by the desire not to offend Sulla. Posidonius apparently had an axe to grind, as well, and it can be wondered how his need to show that a depraved Rome was suffering due to its own decadence might have tinctured his reports. Still, what was lost might well have been better than what remains, and since they are deprived by the vagaries of transmission of these primary sources, modern historians are compelled to rely on the work of later authors for an account of the period under investigation. Frustratingly, time has also been unkind to a number of these later authors, and especially to two who also happen to have been writing fairly close to the period they describe.

4. THE HISTORIES THAT ARE INCOMPLETE: DIODORUS One of the more important authors whose work has suffered from the ravages of the millenia was Diodoros of Agyrium, a Sicilian Greek known more commonly as Diodorus Siculus. His ι λιο κ , or Library of History, was a general world history from the Trojan War until at least 60 BCE and was one which definitely included an account of the conflicts between the Romans and the Italians during the 90s. This work was composed between the decades of 60 to 30 BCE.21 Since this time of composition was not thirty years removed from the Allied War of which Diodorus 21

Sacks, p. 6, 161–168.

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himself may have witnessed certain events, there is the possibility that the books covering this period might have included details drawn from personal testimony or from conversations with those who had participated in the fighting.22 The collection of these details would have been aided by the fact that Diodorus was a speaker of Latin, which he claimed to have learned from Romans living in Sicily, and that he actually resided for many years in Rome, where he claims to have had had access to Roman documents.23 Additionally, Diodorus drew heavily on Posidonius, whose potential value has been noted above. What Diodorus could conceivably have offered from this period there can be only speculation, since very little of his vast project has been passed down in its entirety. Only books 1–5 and 10–20 have been preserved in toto, and those remaining books have led scholars to take a dim view on the quality of Diodorus as a historian. To him has been affixed a reputation for being a mindless copyist whose insertion of his sources verbatim is often so flagrant that he seems to make cross-references to matters which do not themselves appear in his work, having literally copied even the references from his sources. In the author’s defense, it has been argued in counter that these “broken citations” were due less to stupidity on the part of Diodorus and more to the fact that his work was published before it had been completely revised, to the author’s occasional carelessness, and to errors in transmission.24 22 Diodorus himself put great store in eyewitness accounts; for the importance he attaches to these, see Sacks, p. 110–116. 23 Diodorus 1.4.3–44, quoted by Sacks, p. 161 (for his residence in Rome), and p. 119, 164–165 (for his knowledge of Latin, though page 164 suggests that Diodorus’s “complete mastery of the language has been questioned”, a comment explained in note 21 of that page). In the latter two pages Sacks notes that Diodorus does not claim to have had any personal contact with high-ranking Roman politicians and would likely have spoken of it if he had had such contact. Based on this assessment, which there seems to be no reason to question, it seems unlikely that Diodorus would have consulted any noble Roman participant about the affairs of the 90s, though his speaking with witnesses from a lower social order cannot be ruled to have been completely impossible. 24 so Sacks, p. 83–91, 164.

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Either way, in addition to whatever errors this tendency may have caused, there is also the matter of what has been perceived as an “Anti-Roman” sentiment on the part of the Diodorus. On some occasions this appears to have taken the form of passing along the belief of Posidonius that the Romans were falling victim to profligacy and were becoming soft due to the luxury of empire (for which see above). On others, it seems to have manifested itself in what was apparently the author’s own belief that the Romans were falling on troubled times because of their deteriorating relationship with their subjects and allies, which had degenerated from moderation to terrorizing despotism.25 All of these characteristics are evident in the complete books and may very well have affected the remainder of it, including those parts covering the Allied War. However, those books are not among those which are preserved in complete form, even though some of the extant fragments from them are fairly extensive and detailed. These, derived largely from what were apparently chapters 37 and 38 of the Library, do preserve some enormously valuable material, the most notable of which being the discussion of the form of confederacy the Italians organized, how their commanders were selected, and what theaters of warfare were chosen (37.2. 6–9).26 On the other hand, many of these fragments are also rather anecdotal in nature (serving to illustrate the “decay of morality” theme mentioned earlier)27 and almost always lacking the context in

25 On Posidonius’s charge of moral decay in Rome, see, again, Sacks (p. 46–48) and above. On Diodorus’s preference for the abuse of hegemony, see the same author, p. 51–52, 117. In fact, Sacks goes further still: Diodorus was mildly critical of Rome, he claims, but hints that the criticism would have been more severe had Diodorus not enjoyed patronage and protection in Rome during his stay there from 46–30, a period of great instability in the city. Apparently his work was popular enough to warrant circumspection in the opinions he voiced, as he himself complained that it was circulated in unfinished form without his permission (op. cit., p. 126, 164). 26 See chapter four for an extensive discussion of these. 27 And, in fact, were preserved for that very reason: the majority of the fragments which remain come from Photius and an author once assumed

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which they may have been found in the original. Even through this filter, what does remain are pieces of a story which quite often takes the Italian outlook. This is apparent in such episodes as the march of Poppaedius (37.13), the trials of the Allies during various sieges (37.19–22), and in the attribution of the cause of the war (37.18, where the offer of the franchise to a Cretan in return for aid given to the Romans is met with laughter and the suggestion that cash would be a better recompense, citizenship being best offered to the Allies, “who do battle for that very thing”).28 Whether Diodorus acquired these facts through Posidonius, through his own eyewitness observations, through interviews with participants in Rome, or through another source, his account sheds a great deal of light on the period in spite of its fragmentary nature and is thus an important source for the war, its causes, and effects; that it might have shed a great deal more illumination in its complete form cannot be doubted.

5. THE HISTORIES THAT ARE INCOMPLETE: LIVY AND WHAT REMAINS OF HIM Of even greater import than the missing books of Diodorus are those which the centuries have taken from the narrative of Livy. The value of Livy’s extant work speaks for itself, and the likelihood that the lost books were of similar quality is high. Lamentably, it so happens that among these are the books treating the years between 91 and 77, a loss whose depth for students of the period is incalculable. Of course, it must be averred that Livy was not a flawless historian, and modern studies on the composition of his history to be the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos, both of whom writing their works with a heavily moralistic tone. 28

τὰ δὲ τῆς πολιτείας τίμια τοῖς περὶ ταύτ ς νῦν διαφερομένοις διαφερομένοις, οἵτινες αἵματος ἀγοράζουσι λῆρον περιμάχ τον. Diodorus

would later go further even than this, declaring (in 37.2) that the war was a result of citizenship which had specifically been promised to the Allies, on whom the Senate had called for assistance against the plebs after Senatorial indolence and love of luxury had put them at odds with the lower class; the breach of this promise had led to the war.

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and his tendencies as a scholar have revealed deficiencies which have made his extant books far from perfect accounts of the events they describe. In the first place, his history was composed under certain limitations which in some instance were due to circumstance, others to inclination. From among the latter, the most telling is Livy’s use of sources. His relationship with primary sources is particularly unfortunate: like many other Greek and Roman historians,29 Livy rarely made use of artifacts, preserved copies of treaties, magistrate lists, and the annales maximi, even when these were readily available for his consultation.30 As a result, he is dependent on his secondary sources, and even these he apparently did not always use in the best possible manner: he often seems to have tended to follow one of them at a time, even if frequently consulting others, and rarely attempted to reconcile conflicting information, contenting himself instead to note that “others relate” contradictory assertions which he places at the end of an episode. This sometimes leads to a great deal of confusion, See Wiseman, p. 16–17, 44 for a discussion of this characteristic of ancient historical writing. 30 This was observed most notably by Patrick Walsh (1961, p. 14–15, 110–114; 1974, p. 13–14), who by way of example relates an episode in 4.20.7, where Livy describes the alleged dedication of spolia opima by Cornelius Cossus even though as military tribune Cossus would not have been allowed to do any such thing. According to this passage, Augustus himself claimed to have found the spolia while renovating the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. These included a linen corslet bearing an inscription stating that Cossus was in fact consul at that time and not tribune, and was therefore eligible for the spolia. Livy thereupon dutifully reports the spolia, but never mentions venturing himself to the temple so as to verify the evidence. Obviously there might very well have been compelling reasons not to question the ruler of the world in this instance, for which see Appendix A. Nevertheless, there are several other examples where such danger would not have been present, in which documents and materials were not only extant but even fairly convenient and yet were not employed by the author, even under circumstances in which, by Livy’s own admission, what these materials contained might be at variance with the (secondary) sources from which he drew instead. Indeed, it is often only by his direct testimony of what he does not use that it is known that such sources existed in the first place. 29

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such as repetition of occurrences in his text generated as he passed from one source to another. Moreover, examples of mistranslation and unwillingness to part from a favored interpretation of an event in the face of superior evidence are all noteworthy in his extant books.31 Ameliorating this somewhat is the fact that Livy did seem to have selected the sources he used with a fair degree of discernment: his use of Polybius for eastern affairs until the end of the latter’s material and, probably, of Posidonius thereafter, were probably the best choices to have been made, as was his use of Sisenna and possibly Rutilius for internal matters.32 Allowing for this, it is still the case that his unwillingness to consult primary material almost certainly impaired the quality of the evidence he provides, as is not infrequently hinted, albeit unintentionally, by Livy himself. Additionally, the circumstances of Livy’s own life made at least one deficiency in his writing inevitable: namely, his difficulties with military matters. Of these, one modern scholar has gently suggested that “(t)he battle pieces of that admirable man of letters do not reveal just what we want to know.”33 Another is more direct, reckoning that Livy “certainly had no military experience; he is so ignorant of the practical aspects of soldiering that he can never have thrown a pilum in anger”, a weapon which Livy at one point claims was thrust as well as thrown, further illustrating his ignorance.34 Furthermore, Livy often elides important tactical details for sake of clarity of expression, masks strategic operations due to his desire to avoid mention of ill-considered battlefield decisions made by commanders he wishes to praise, and even disguises Roman losses, which are transformed into draws or even 31 See Luce (1977, p. vii, xix) and Walsh (1961, p. 130, 133, 139–146, 150, 153; 1974, p. 14, 19. 32 So Haug, p. 118–119, who postulates that Livy only used Posidonius for eastern matters and employed Rutilius for domestic ones, which explains the occasional favorable description of Drusus found in some of Livy’s descendants like Florus and Cassius Dio. As far as use of Sisenna, see Haug p. 215–217, as discussed above. 33 So Adcock, p. 8–9. 34 The words are those of Walsh (1961, p. 4); the note about the mistaken nature of the pilum is, as well (p. 157).

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victories.35 Alongside this lack of military experience is his lack of involvement in politics, which perhaps deprived him of insight into the intricate game of maneuvers and factions amongst the Roman aristocracy36 and, perhaps, led to credulity in character assessments of such men as Gracchus and Drusus (more below). This would also have kept him from the clearest possible understanding of the conduct of Roman diplomacy and perhaps of the economic forces which shaped events.37 Finally, Livy is notoriously weak in his knowledge of geography, not only of lands overseas but even of those in Italy, and he apparently took no steps to correct this weakness by travel.38 In this regard, as in others, Livy seems to have disregarded the maxims of Polybius (12.25e) that a competent historian make an “industrious study of memoirs and other documents and a comparison of their contents, then a survey of cities, places, rivers, lakes, and in general all the peculiar features of land and sea and the distances of one place from another”.39 Finally, Livy was limited by his own personal perspective and bias. A comparison between his text and that of Polybius covering the same events, for example, shows that just as Livy is often willing to reshape the outcome of battles (as noted above), so too is he willing to recast, downplay, or even omit unsavory actions undertaken by statesmen whom he admires. Livy was known even in his own day for his strict devotion to the old-fashioned Republicanism which marked Padua and Patavians, and it was very likely this which was meant by the description of his “Patavinitas” 35 See Walsh (1961, p. ix, 4, 98–99, 105, 157–159, 162, 166, 197–201, 204; 1974, p. 19). 36 So Syme (1958, p. 136–137) and Walsh (1961, p. 20–21). 37 So Walsh (1961, p. 34–35, 98–99, 101–102, 166–167). 38 Syme, loc. cit.; Walsh 1961, p. 9, 153–157. There, however, the latter author does note that Livy should be given credit for his efforts to describe topography, even if those efforts consisted solely in referring to sources which could make these features clearer rather than expeditions to see the lay of the land itself. 39 τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ τρόπον καὶ τῆς πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας ὑπαρχούσ ς τριμεροῦς, τῶν δὲ μερῶν ... ἑτέρου δὲ τοῦ περὶ τὴν έαν τῶν πόλεων καὶ τῶν τόπων περί τε ποταμῶν καὶ λιμένων καὶ κα όλου τῶν κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ άλατταν ἰδιωμάτων καὶ διαστ μάτων (12.25e).

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by the somewhat more worldly Asinius Pollio. It is doubtless this way of thinking which led him frequently to adopt a strictly “Optimate” outlook and thus take the dim view of popularlyelected consuls,40 of the tribunate in general, and specifically of such notorious tribunes as the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Drusus, which emerges in the characterizations of all of these men found in the authors who drew from Livy.41 It may well be wondered if his opinions on these matters clouded his objectivity, or led him to depict events in such a way as to emphasize unsavory elements of events involving figures whom he found distasteful, in the same way that he disguised such elements involving men he admired. All of these weaknesses notwithstanding, it is nevertheless nothing short of a calamity that only outlines and fragments remain of the books dealing with the period under survey in this essay. Even with the difficulties cited above (and it very well have been that many of these may have been substantially diminished in later books approaching the period in which the author lived), Livy’s tendency towards thoroughness would doubtless have supplied a great deal of illumination on years and even decades on which practically no information currently survives. It seems this would have been especially true of the 80s BCE, as it is fairly apparent that the period beginning with the rise of Drusus was of interest to Livy, and certainly by contrast to the decade prior: if the Periochae (more directly) are accurate, the year 91 alone is the subject of books 71 and 72, whereas 98 through 92 are all encompassed in the single book 70.42 In fact, most of the years between the 91 and 86 get all or most of one book, and many extend over two. This provides a hint as to the wealth of detail which once existed in Livy’s composition but has now mostly evaporated. What remains of Livy’s direct work on this period is very little: apart from scattered fragments quoting him, there are left the Id est those whose office was due more to the outcry of the masses than of the more considered opinion of the Senate and the élite, especially as a result of episodes when electoral irregularities such as improper age or inappropriate iteration were involved. 41 So Haug (p. 103–112) and Walsh (1961 p. 37; 1974, p. 10). 42 See also Luce 1977, p. 18. 40

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Prodigies of Julius Obsequens, which are not of great utility for a historian, as well as the Summaries of most of the missing books, which are usually referred to by the translated Greek title of Periochae.43 “Summary” is a very generous assessment of what are often eight-line descriptions of entire lost books, whose brevity has been the subject of much frustration among the modern historians compelled to use them;44 as one of them puts it, the Periochae are really nothing more than “a stylistically revised table of contents”.45 These are better than nothing, however, and in spite of their drastic truncation the Periochae do provide many details whose accuracy is generally held to be fairly high. Moreover, they also use language which, when compared to other authors known or strongly suspected to have used Livy whose phrasing is similar, seems to have given some sense of the words actually used by the author, and thus can convey some sense of his judgment, as well. It was once fashionable to assume that the Periochae were themselves not based on Livy’s own original text but instead drew from an intermediate Epitome, and that this indeed provided the source for most of the authors who were asserted to have used Livy. The improbability of this theory has been demonstrated rather convincingly, and it has since fallen by the boards.46 There have also been speculations as to the existence of several collections of exempla which were also taken from Livy and used by later authors instead of him, although no proof of these exists, and one of the scholars behind this speculation concludes that even if there were collection of exempla, it was still probably the complete text of Livy was what was used by later authors, which seems most

43

essay.

And will be referred to in this way throughout the remainder of this

44 Indicative is the commentary offered by J. P. V. D. Balsdon in his “Review of Ernst Badian’s Studies in Greek and Roman History”, Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 55 (1965), p. 229–232. That author makes reference to the Periochae and includes mention of their “bungling author can never have been more flattered than in being treated with the seriousness with which B(adian) treats him”. 45 Haug, citing Alfred Klotz (p. 102). 46 By Haug (p. 101–102) and Begbie (p. 337–338).

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likely.47 Those later authors are numerous, and as a result the influence of Livy on the picture that is drawn of this period is profound even in the absence of his text: of the writers who convey an overall description of this period—namely, Florus, Velleius, Eutropius, Orosius and Appian—Livy was probably a source for all of them, and may have been the main source for all but Appian.48 Of these, the earliest in terms of the date of its composition was the work of Velleius Paterculus, which is believed to have been finished by 30 CE.49 His was a short book written as a very brief universal history, perhaps either for employment as a textbook, or as a summary useful for those circumstances in which the larger, fuller history of Livy would have been too cumbersome.50 Not Haug, p. 102, 109. The assertion made above departs somewhat from Haug (p. 120– 125), who argues that Livy could not have been the source for Velleius, or, at least, not for his discussion of the career of Drusus, due to the great differences between the representations of that tribune as he is depicted in Velleius as opposed to the assessment of him in Orosius and Florus (whose dependence on Livy is certain). This does not seem to allow much agency to Velleius, who is assumed simply to be an automaton copying out his source without the ability both to cull the facts and assign to them a valuation of his own choosing. It is, as a result, not terribly convincing. As for Appian, both Haug (p. 224–231) and Gabba (1956, p. 89–101) offer fairly persuasive evidence that Livy was used by him, though probably that use only really began around his treatment of events beginning in the year 88; prior to that, another unknown source was used. 49 As to when it was begun, Woodman (p. 275–282) has demonstrated that the once-popular assumption that the text was written in a white heat in the year immediately preceding the elevation of to the consulate of M. Vinicius, to whom the work was dedicated, is quite probably flawed. Vinicius and presumably Velleius himself might have known about the plans of Tiberius to elevate Vinicius years earlier, and thus the oftmentioned brevity of the work may have been less from necessity than by design. 50 So Starr (p. 162–164, 172–174), following the suggestion of Sumner, p. 282. In this assessment, Starr is somewhat more charitably disposed to the author than Frederick Shipley, the editor and translator of the Loeb edition of the work, whose introduction to the text notes that “Velleius 47 48

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much of the first volume of Velleius, whose remnants deal with Greek matters, is extant, but the second volume, which primarily treats Roman affairs (among which those occurring in the years between 91–77), is fairly complete. The worth of Velleius’s history tends to be quite low in the estimation of many modern historians, who note with dismay his adulation of Tiberius in the latter half of the second book which, they believe, compromises his integrity; “sleazy toady” is the way one scholar suggests he is sometimes regarded.51 More damning still is the brevity of his account, which in parts is quite stark. By way of illustration, his account of the tribunate of Drusus and the hostilities of 91–88 together take up but four short chapters, the equivalent of about four pages of Loeb text. In fact, his entire account of Roman affairs from the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus to the death of Sulla amounts to something like forty pages of Loeb text in toto, of which the greatest amount is given to the deeds of Sulla. Even so, his prose is not without the occasional adornment, and reveals a proclivity towards the inclusion of exempla, an inclination he shares with his contemporary Valerius Maximus.52 In fact, it is this propensity for anecdote and his sharp disagreements with Livy in terms of his assessment of men like Ti. Gracchus and Drusus which have led to some debate as to whether or not Velleius used Livy at all,53 though it has demonstrated fairly convincingly that at least the parts in the work of Velleius dealing with the outbreak and operations of the Allied War must derive from the earlier author.54 Nevertheless, it is fairly clear that Velleius Paterculus does not rank among the great Olympians of classical literature either as stylist or as historian” and later suggests that the author is not to be reckoned as belonging amidst the great classics, in part due to the great terseness and difficult language of the book (p. viii); see below. 51 Sumner, p. 257. 52 Starr, op. cit., p. 163, in addition to Haug (see earlier note). 53 So Shipley, p. xiv note 1. 54 So Haug (p. 223–225); earlier (123–125) she suggested that the variations in the lives of Gracchus and Drusus must have meant that Velleius used as his source an exempla-collection dating back to the days of the Republic, from which Valerius Maximus and even Cicero had occasionally drawn.

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used sources other than Livy in at least parts of his account, and by virtue of this use, he contributes additional facts than those found in the remains—and in the other descendants—of the more expansive historian. A divergence from Livy seems to be present in those elements in the narration of Velleius which seem to denote a great deal of sympathy for the Allies. It is tempting to attempt to locate the origin of this sympathy in his other sources, although caution must be employed here. After all, Velleius had a somewhat unique perspective due to his lineage: as he takes pains to observe, one of his ancestors fought in the war at the head of his own legion drawn from the Hirpini. While that ancestor himself did not take part on the Allied side (his loyalty to the Romans is noted with pride by Velleius), it seems that the scion may have recognized the justice of the cause.55 On the other hand, it might very well be that the other source he followed alongside Livy was one with Italian sympathies. Additional departure from Livy is discerned in the small amount of space he devotes to the Allied War and the years to follow, hardly reflective of the fascination this period seems to have held for Livy. What the above seems to indicate is either a different source used by Velleius alongside Livy, a willingness to depart from Livy from time to time, or both. At the very least, Velleius adds a different perspective and sometimes different, additional details, and this makes him valuable even in the face of his deficiencies. This all the more true in light of the fact that his account, condensed though it may be, is yet larger than any other existing historical source besides Appian. Another follower of Livy, one writing later and with an even greater economy in his treatment of this epoch than Velleius, is Florus. His work was written somewhere in the neighborhood of the mid-second century CE, possibly during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian: the latter was friends with a poet named P. 55 For a different interpretation, however, see Mouritsen (1998, p. 10), who holds that Velleius projected this sympathy with the Allies trying to win citizenship because Velleius was himself aware that the war had been about independence, making his ancestor’s unwillingness to take part tantamount to treason to his own people and thus embarrassing.

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Annius Florus, and it is sometimes argued that this poet is the same man as the historian.56 Whether or not he is to be identified with this intimate of Hadrian, Florus the historian composed a piece that is best described as a short summary of all the major military conflicts of the Empire up to the Pax Romana of Augustus, and was designed to be thus. Given that this was the purpose of his work, Florus does not necessarily present a complete picture of the decade and its aftermath, but chooses to focus instead on internal and external disputes and particularly those which brought violence with them. His summary of the decades leading up to 91 is contained in a few short passages representing no more than four Loeb pages in length, while the remaining period up to Catiline is covered in no more than ten, exclusive of a brief discursus on the Servile Wars. Moreover, his presentation is episodic and by no means adheres to a strict chronology. By way of example, between his chapters on the “Bellum adversus socios” and the “Bellum civile Marianum” (the titles Florus himself gives to these episodes), there comes an account of the Servile War in Sicily which was actually put down, according to the Periochae, shortly after the downfall of Saturninus. In other words, Florus places an event occurring well before two later episodes between those two later episodes, and these three—the two later ones bookending one from much earlier—are immediately followed by an account of the Servile War under Spartacus, which was suppressed many decades later than all three of them. Although opinion of him was once much higher,57 Florus is rarely regarded by modern scholars as a first—or even second-rate historian for a number of reasons. The first and most significant of this is his aforementioned extreme brevity. Another is the fact that 56 A possibility mentioned in Edward Forster’s Introduction to the Loeb text (p. vii–viii), and in den Boer, p. 6. 57 Den Boer, p. 2, where the popularity of Florus in the Middle Ages receives comment. Also p. 5, where the popularity of Florus in the centuries leading to Augustine led the latter to draw from Florus almost extensively, since he could be certain that his own audience would have been far more likely to have read the “pious and ecstatic” work of Florus (the words are those of Syme 1958, p. 503) than the more august and less accessible histories of Livy, Sallust, or Tacitus.

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he is prone to moralizing and digressing on the invincibility of Rome, although this might have been appropriate if, as one scholar hypothesizes, his work was written to be a textbook, just as was the case with Velleius.58 The current low opinion of him notwithstanding, Florus does provide a fair deal of detail which can usually be attributed to Livy. His connection to that author was so great that the title of the work, according to the Bambergensus manuscript which is considered to be the best, is Epitome ... de Tito Livio Bellorum Omnium Annorum DCC,59 even though it is fairly certain that Florus used other sources on occasion.60 Much later descendants of Livy are the brief narratives of Eutropius and Paulus Orosius. The former, composed sometime towards the end of the fourth century of the Common Era,61 is a very brief history of Rome from its foundation to the end of the brief reign of the emperor Jovian. Along the way, he gives a very short account of the war between the Allies and that fought between the factions of Marius and Sulla, amounting to no more than three pages of the same dimensions as those used in this essay. Most of the information in it is drastically truncated and incomplete, but similarities between it and the accounts given in the Periochae and Florus make it fairly certain that Livy was his primary source for this period, as indeed does his use of ab urbe condita dating (in fact, the title of his work is Breviarium AUC).62 Orosius began writing a few decades later, producing a work which was primarily designed as a catalogue of horrors from pagan

Den Boer, p. 2. Ibid. It is by no means certain that this was the original title, a fact noted by Haug, p. 106. 60 Forster, p. viii–ix, mentions Caesar and Sallust as having been used by Florus for certain, while Haug (loc. cit.) mentions a “Varronian expression” which found its way into the discussion of Drusus in Florus. 61 Confusions over the author and his life abound, with his identity generally supposed to be an official in the service of the government under Gratian, known to be active around the year 381; see den Boer, p. 114–115. 62 See Haug, p. 213–214; den Boer also speculates that perhaps Eutropius might have made use of Florus, as well (p. 138). 58 59

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antiquity, amiong them the “burdens of war”.63 Its purpose was to show that such recent calamaties as the Sack of Rome in 410 was not the result of the empire’s conversion to Christianity, and was designed to supplement Augustine The City of God, which was written for the same purpose, by its author’s own request (1.1). Like Eutropius, whose work Orosius was believed to have consulted, Orosius uses a.u.c. datings, and similarities between his accounts and those of Florus show that both drew directly from Livy.64 In fact, in parts of his work—especially in his discussion of the events of 91–88—Orosius presents a much more detailed and full account than Florus does. As does Velleius, Orosius provides information not found in or in the Periochae, but the tone of language used in these details and the type of facts provided, such as casualty lists, makes it likely that this information was drawn directly from Livy as opposed to some other source. In this way, Orosius contributes to an understanding of the period which in some small way offsets the loss of the earlier historian. Such, then, are the remnants of the missing books of Livy. All of them are brief, especially in their coverage of the 80s BCE, collapsing into a few pages or even paragraphs what had once been given many times that amount. The sad contrast between what once was and what now is having been noted, it remains true that Livy’s summaries and descendants do provide a not unsubstantial amount of useful information, supplying names, events, and, importanty, enough dates that a rough chronology of the decade 63 praeceperas ergo, ut ex omnibus qui haberi ad praesens possunt historiarum atque annalium fastis, quaecumque aut bellis grauia aut corrupta morbis aut fame tristia aut terrarum motibus terribilia aut inundationibus aquarum insolita aut eruptionibus ignium metuenda aut ictibus fulminum plagisque grandinum saeua uel etiam parricidiis flagitiisque misera per transacta retro saecula repperissem, ordinato breuiter uoluminis textu explicarem; Orosius, 1.10 64 So Haug, p. 111, 207–212. The wealth of detail given by Orosius in what he writes of the 80s BCE, which in some parts exceeds that of Florus (as is mentioned above), shows that Florus could not have been the only source of these reports and that Livy was used directly, though there is nothing to preclude the fact that Florus and Eutropius might have been used for other periods than that surrounding the Allied War; so Deferrari asserts in the Introduction to his translation (p. xx).

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can be constructed. This allows for some measure of a check to be provided for the main existing source for the decade, that of Appian of Alexandria.

6. APPIAN OF ALEXANDRIA Appian, a contemporary of Florus,65 provides what is in terms of sheer space the largest amount of narration on the period of the 80s BCE as part of his Civil Wars. This, in turn, is a component of his much larger history of Rome’s expansion, encompassing many volumes.66 Partly due to the size and completeness of his account, his has been the most influential study of the age. So dominant is his text that, it has been argued by by one modern scholar, Appian’s explanation for the cause of the Allied War—that it was grounded in the Italian desire for the citizenship, and eventually erupted after a series of events steadily multiplied that desire until the Italians were so desperate for the franchise that they resorted to arms—has blinded modern students to the presence of an Alternative Tradition, causing them to accept Appian’s aetiology without putting its veracity to a rigorous test.67 Appian’s interpretation, this argument continues, rests on the idea that the citizenship was a commodity of great value, a concept to which Appian clearly gave credence, since he himself had been born a non-citizen and acquired the franchise through service to Rome. Holding this belief himself, Appian is alleged to have applied it to the Allies when he wrote of thie 80s BCE, which he did in a section which amounted to a lengthy introduction to the real subject of his work, the great Roman civil wars. The Allied War thereby became for Appian a stepping stone leading towards those Den Boer, p. 11. Although on occasion some of the other works will be used, particularly the Mithridatic Wars (from which a good many of the details found in chapter 9 are drawn), for the purposes of this essay the things cited as having come from Appian ought to be assumed as having been drawn from the Civil War work unless it is stated otherwise in the citation. 67 This is the argiment of Henrik Mouritsen, one made throughout his Italian Unification but especially on pages 5–22 of that work; see also the Introduction for a lengthier discussion of Mouritsen’s theory. 65 66

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wars, it is held, and it is therefore presented as something like a civil war itself. For Appian, the desire for the citizenship, which he certainly held, had made a similar aspiration amongst the Italians the logical explanation for the outbreak of the hostilities in 91. Because of this, it is argued, Appian does not dwell on the particulars of why that citizenship was so desired, summarizing the origin of this craving in the wish on the part of the Allies to “share in [Rome’s] power and not be subjected to it”, which could only be granted by being made citizens.68 Other than the fact that desire for the citizenship always seemed to rise in connection with agrarian reformers,69 the specific 68 τοὺς Ἰταλιώτας ἐπι υμεῖν τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας ὡς κοινωνοὺς τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἀντὶ ὑπ κόων ἐσομένους (1.5.34); a similar phrase is found later

on in the same passage, as well as in a later place (1.5.35) 69 It is in part this peculiarity that led Emilio Gabba (1956; note 1, p. 81–82) to determine that Appian derived much of his early account from a source which was used up to the end of the Allied War, a source which was Roman but was not Livy, although the latter was in turn followed by Appian for the time of Sulla and the subsequent Civil Wars. Gabba’s reasoning for this speculation is that, while perhaps Appian might have already selected the desire for the citizenship as that which drove the Italians to war before he set about writing his text and found a source friendly to this point of view, it is not necessarily a foregone conclusion that he did so; it may have been instead that he got this explanation from his source. After all, Gabba continues, by the time of the Antonines distinction between citizens and non-citizens had sufficiently blurred to the point that the franchise would not have been seen as the only way to participate in the Roman ἡγεμονία. Thus, Romans—and non-Romans—living in a later age may not have equated the wish to be equals with the Romans as tantamount to wishing to be made Roman citizens, as there were other avenues to achieve that end. Appian’s attribution of the citizenship as the means to gain equality is therefore somewhat unique, Gabba argues. Furthermore, he continues, there is the fact that agrarian legislation always seems to attend the debate over citizenship in Appian, and the passage of these laws seemed to sharpen the wish for the citizenship (see chapter 4). This, Gabba argues, was not something which would have been seen as an obvious factor influencing the urge for the civitas from the perspective of a Greek writing centuries after the fact, unless it just so happened that agrarian legislation was of particular interest to Appian, which Gabba held to be unlikely.

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circumstances which created or exacerbated this desire are mostly absent in Appian. Nevertheless, this recent theory continues, Appian’s explanation proved quite compelling to Theodor Mommsen, in no small part—according to this scholar—because Mommsen was living through the period in which an integrated Germany was being built, and indeed took part in the building of it. Mommsen therefore understood the need for being a part of a greater nation and the struggle for full rights against an oligarchy out to deny them. Because the reasoning of Appian had resonance with his own particular sensibilities, Mommsen enfolded Appian’s aetiology of the war into his account, fleshing it out with discussion of the growing exploitation of the Italians by the Romans which was made all the more piquant by the fact that the Italians had in many ways already become throroughly Romanized. It was onto this foundation that later scholars contributed, by means of the addition of further economic and politial details.70 The suggestion that Appian selected and arranged his facts to show the desire for the franchise as the motivating influence behind the Italians and their involvement in the events of the period under review, and did so due to his own empathy for that desire, does not seem too far-fetched. What is slightly less plausible is a concomitant assertion, which is that Appian chose a source Therefore, Gabba concludes, while it might have been the case that Appian chose his source because he already thought that the desire for the franchise had led to the war, it was more probable that the reverse was true: Appian had this conception because it was in the source he was using. This source, Gabba later argues, was one that had to be Roman, due to its attention to such particulars as the land laws, but also had to be friendly to the Allies. Gabba has a candidate in mind: he believed Appian’s source followed to the end of the Allied War to be Asinius Pollio (p. 79–88; see below). 70 Mouritsen 1998, p. 11–14 (where he diverges sharply from Gabba by suggesting that Appian’s unique arrangement of facts regarding the war and its causes, his nuanced chronology, and his understanding of the laws were the result, not of following a source superior to or at least different from Livy, but because of his own peculiar desire to have the Allied War blend into his long chain of events lead directly to the Civil Wars) and p. 23–28.

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based on this empathy and following it while willfully ignoring and thus suppressing—perhaps deliberately—an “alternative tradition”. This lack of plausibility is in no small part due to the fact that little compelling evidence for this “alternative tradition” can be adduced. Moreover, it may have been difficult for Appian to have found sources which did not attribute the cause of the war to the Italian desire for the franchise, since the evidence of Cicero, the auctor ad Herennium, Posidonius (by means of Diodorus), and Livy (as derived from the Periochae and his abovementioned descendants), all state that the need for civitas was what inspired the Allies. This implies that such an explanation was the common one in thesources from which Appian could have drawn. Finally, it assumes that Appian used the reasoning for the war as a selection criterion for his source from the outset, and even that he himself always had this opinion and did not derive it from the source he ended up choosing, as others have suggested he might have done.71 It therefore seems reasonable to acquit Appian of burying some sort of “Alternative Tradition” involving the cause of the war. Of greater purchase is the assessment that Appian presented his discussion of the Allied War as part of a greater narrative, and shaped the events he presented so as to make it fit more easily into that larger framework. It is to be noted that Appian’s narrative of the years leading up to the Allied War, and his narrative of the war itself, is to found in that part of his history specifically devoted to Rome’s Civil War. That narrative clearly follows a central thesis, which is that the activities of Gracchi led directly to the Allied War, which was itself something of a “civil war”,72 and that the aftermath of that confilict in turn led to the greater Civil War fought by Sulla. That this theme would influence what Appian Gabba, as discussed in earlier note. Appian does not, in fact, ever explicitly refer to the Allied War as kind of a “Civil War”, though interestingly his contemporary Florus does (2.6.5); perhaps this was a belief then in vogue amongst the historians of the Antonines. On the other hand, there is Velleius, whose reference to the Allies as “men of the same race and the same blood” as the Romans they were fighting could also suggest that the idea of the Bellum Sociale as a civil war existed even earlier (homines eiusdem et gentis et sanguinis, 2.15.2); this at least is the thought of Mouritsen (1998, p. 10 and note 18). 71 72

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chooses to present and what he chooses to omit is patent: years and sometimes entire decades are left out of his accunt completely, so as better to illustrate the direct connection between the Gracchi and the Civil War of Sulla. Perhaps the best example of Appian’s shading may be found in the rapidity with which his account of the activities of Saturninus are followed by those of Drusus, completely passing over the nine years between them in the process (1.4.33– 1.5.35). People and events which are described in other sources and which seem like they would be important to the Allies and their cause, such as the revolt of Fragellae (described in Periocha of book 60) and the involvement of the Allies in the Jugurthine massacres at Cirta (described in Sallust B.J. 26), are left out, while some events which are included and emphasized by him have, in many instances, only the nebulous connection of land distribution, the involvement of the Allies, and some sort of domestic rioting to justify their mention. Appian apparently feels bound to include the affair of Saturninus, for instance, but treats it like a digression, and in his reprise of events leading up to Drusus the connection of the latter to Fulvius Flaccus and C. Gracchus is given additional emphasis, while the episode of Saturninus is swiftly forgotten. Appian is thus interested primarily in illustrating the straight road between the Gracchi and Sulla. His account would have it that popular tribunes attempting to redistribute Roman public land and enlisting the aid of the Allies by promising them the citizenship brought about war when that promise was not fulfilled, allowing Sulla to build on his victories as a commander in it such that eventually he was able to wage a successful war against his own people that brought him mastery of Rome. This single-mindedness, for lack of a better word, limits the information which can be drawn from Appian’s text. Furthermore, the facts he presents are not proof against doubt, as he also demonstrates a pronounced tendency towards mistake: his constant confusion of Lucius Julius Caesar with Sextus Julius Caesar in his battle-narrative of the year 90 is but one example. Nevertheless, Appian is valuable due to the fullness of his account and to the fact that his source for a good portion of the events leading up to the 80s and for much of the war itself was apparently not Livy. Evidence for this has been discerned in the fact that Appian seems to entertain a much different opinion of the career and merits of men like Gracchus and Drusus than is found in the assessment of

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the Periochae, Florus, and Orosius.73 Furthermore, in terms of his arrangement of events and especially in the chronology of the Allied War, Appian’s account has substantial differences from that of Livy and his descendants. Rather than assume that Appian used Livy but rearranged his facts, these differences which appear in his work are very probably due to the influence from a differnt source.74 Exactly who this source of Appian’s was remains inscrutable. One scholar argues that Appian did use Livy even for the Allied War, but that Livy was used in tandem with a a “geographical source” which was perhaps Posidonius,75 since the latter’s employment of geographical arrangement is proven via his use by Strabo. Another believes that chapters 7–53 of the Bellum Civile present a unified account, derived from an author who had the perspective of an Italian, but whose knowledge of Roman politics and laws make it clear that he was a Roman citizen of some standing. This author may have been Asinius Pollio: he was known to have written a work on the Civil War between Caesar and Pompeius, and his descent from Italian leader Herius Asinius may have given him the sort of pro-Italian sympathy that is found in Appian.76 Yet this latter theory is only valid first and foremost if Pollio wrote an extensive introduction to his subject, which was the events of almost two generations later than the 80s BCE, and packed into that introduction the relative wealth of detail that Appian would take from it. Furthermore, if Pollio was indeed the unknown source, then Appian would follow him for the 80s. Yet it is fairly clear that Appian abandons the source he follows up to this point after chapter 53, and used a different one for the Civil War of Caesar. Thus, Appian apparently does not use Pollio (if such was indeed his source) for the very period which was Pollio’s actual subject, a curious fact for which no sufficient explanation is Haug, p. 131–133; Gabba 1956, 13–25. For Appian’s chronology, see Appendix I. For arguments against the interpretation that Appian’s source was Livy all along, from whom he drew facts but disdained the sequence of events in favor of one of his own choosing, see Haug (p. 227). 75 Haug, p. 227. 76 Gabba (1956, p. 79–88); see also earlier note. 73 74

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given.77 In the end, use of Pollio or Posidonius by Appian has not been, and likely cannot be, determined conclusively. No matter what his source actually was, however, Appian’s is a complete account of much greater amplitude than the other surviving ancient authorities. In addition, Appian not only provides more information than these other authorites, but often provides different information than they supply. For these reasons, any survey of the 80s BCE must rest on this author, and relegate to lsser importance the descendants of Livy, as well as the other, less robust texts covering this period.

7. CASSIUS DIO To judge from the lengthy fragments concerning the Allied War and its aftermath which are all that remain of them, the coverage of the 80s BCE in the missing books of Diodorus Siculus was apparently fairly extensive. So, too, seems to have been the case with the work of Cassius Dio. The remnants of his books 20 through 35 include snippets of information about the period from the Gracchi to the death of Sulla of such length and detail that the loss of this source, even though it was composed at a fairly great distance from the events they describe, can be met with some dismay. As to the excerpts that still exist, many of them are anecdotal and tend to be concerned either with the personal conflicts of major Romans (Ti. Gracchus vs. Octavius and Scipio, Drusus vs. Caepio, Lupus vs. Marius) or the grisly (as in the example of the atrocities committed by the Picentines). Regardless of these limitations, Dio’s fragments are certainly useful, especially as many almost certainly descend from Livy. Dio was probably quite familiar with the earlier historian as part of the extensive programme of reading he claimed to have made in preparation for his own work, and while this claim does not necessarily prove use (as it turns out, Livy is never directly quoted),78 the similarity of facts found in fragments of Dio to those found in the Periochae,

This was pointed out by Cuff, p. 186. So Millar (1963, p. 34–38) in a rather cranky section expressing exasperation with Quellenforschung and exposing its limits. 77 78

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Orosius, and Florus, as well as the similar tones espousing the Optimate mindset, accords well with such employment.79

8. OTHER SOURCES: BIOGRAPHY, EXEMPLA, GEOGRAPHY Apart from the extant works of narrative history and the remnants of those which have since become lost,80 facts from this period can also be drawn from a variety of alternative literary sources. Chief among these are works of biography, of which the best are the Lives of Plutarch of Chaeronea.81 Among the men about whom Plutarch has written, his portraits of the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, Lucullus, Pompeius, Crassus, and Cato the Younger are the most important for the decade of the 80s and the events leading up to it, though some references are also made in his Life of Caesar. While Plutarch was not writing history in and of itself, the fact that his subjects were involved in the pivotal actions of this era led him to include a great deal of historical information in his biographies. Much of this is of great utility to the modern scholar, especially as Plutarch often mentions episodes which were either left out of the extant historical works or were included in sections which have since become lost. Nevertheless, there are certain parameters governing the utility of the material supplied by this author. One of these is the fact that Plutarch was not a historian but a biographer, and while he seems to have made use of excellent sources (Livy is certainly one of these and is cited often, as are the Memoirs of Sulla) the use to which he put the facts he drew from them was not necessarily historical: events were only included to the extent that they had a significant impact on the subject, or Haug, p. 133–134, 250–252. Mention here might also be made of Granius Licinianus, a historian of the second century CE among whose remnants are some concerning the years 87–78, which were apparently derived from Livy, and Julius Exsuperantius, a fourth century author of what is most generously called an “Opusculum” (it amounts to eleven Teubner pages) derived primarily from Sallust and containing references which are so general and in many cases wrong that they are of scant value for the modern historian. 81 Plutarch also supplies the occasional important fact from other works, such as his Moralia, but the Lives are the more important fountains of information for this era. 79 80

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illustrated some important characteristic of his to which Plutarch wished to give emphasis. Plutarch himself takes note of this fact in his Alexander: “[I]t is not histories that I am writing, but lives; and while in the most significant deeds there is not always the appearance of excellence or wickendess, often some small action or little joke gives greater insight into the character of a man than his leadership in battles where thousands fall, or the greatest of campaigns, or the sieges of cities”.82 Therefore, often things which the historian, ancient or modern, finds extraneous appears in the Lives, while that which might otherwise be considered vital is omitted. Furthermore, Plutarch is often only as good as his sources, and when these sources were biased, an echo of that bias is often found in Plutarch. His biography of Marius, for example, seems rife with a concerted effort to rob its subject, a seven-time consul renowned for his military prowess, of any ability in the field whatsoever. There can be little doubt that this effort descends from Sulla’s attempts to arrogate the accomplishments of his former superior to himself in his Memoirs, which Plutarch uses almost as extensively for his Marius as he does for his Sulla.83 These idiosyncracies notwithstanding, Plutarch is often an excellent source, and certainly of far greater worth than the collection known as the de Viris Illustribus, which was once attributed to Aurelius Victor but is now widely held to be of uncertain authorship and written at an uncertain time.84 This work mostly consists of the briefest of summaries, very rarely of longer than a page in length, of the lives of famous men. These are arranged thematically rather than chronologically (though there is some chronological order): chapters 64–66 deal with “famous 82 οὔτε γὰρ ἱστορίας γράφομεν, ἀλλὰ ίους, οὔτε ταῖς ἐπιφανεστάταις πράξεσι πάντως ἔνεστι δ λωσις ἀρετῆς ἢ κακίας, ἀλλὰ πρᾶγμα ραχὺ πολλάκις καὶ ῥῆμα καὶ παιδιά τις ἔμφασιν ἤ ους ἐποί σε μᾶλλον ἢ μάχαι μυριόνεκροι καὶ παρατάξεις αἱ μέγισται καὶ πολιορκίαι πόλεων, 1.2. See also Konrad, p.

xxviii–xxi, for the way in which this shading determined what was presented in the Lives. 83 For a more extensive discussion on the anti-Marian bias in Plutarch, see Carney (1960, p. 24–31; 1970, p. 2–7). 84 So Walter Sherwin on the first page of the introduction to the translation he made of most of the text.

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tribunes” (to which the chapter on Saturninus, 73, seems clearly to have belonged, unless his biography was a later addition), chapters 67–70 on Marius, his son, Cinna, and Fimbria (thus the “Mariani”), and chapters 74–77 on Sulla and men associated with him either in friendship (Lucullus and Pompeius) or enmity (Mithridates). As to the contents, they are often a hodge-podge of anecdotes and not a few of them somewhat lurid, such as those dealing with the final destinations of the heads of Saturninus and that of Pompeius. These are mixed in with epigrams, and fairly naked character assessments,85 of which the former and perhaps the latter too may all possibly derive from Livy.86 Despite this provenance, if indeed it exists, much of what is found in the de Viris Illustribus is fairly useless for the historian, though some facts are of interest (the alleged suicide of Marius, for example). Nevertheless, even these must be approached with suspicion, as often the slipshod nature of the composition lends the strong suspicion of error. Finally, facts pertinent to the decade of the 80s and the events before and after can also be found in references made in sources which are neither historical nor biographical in nature. Some of these are speeches or political treatises, such as those of Cicero. Cicero includes allusions to all periods of history in his declamations and writings, and is therefore hardly surprising that he would make references to the recent past. The value of these references has been discussed above, and of similar value are those make by another writer long thought to be Cicero,87 the nowanonymous author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium.88 This book, a manual describing the proper techniques of oratory, was composed sometime before the advent of Sulla but following the end of 85 See, for example, the first sentence of the life of Cinna: “Lucius Cornelius Cina flagitiosissimus rempublicam summa crudelitate vastavit”. 86 So Haug, who notes the similarities in the life of Drusus in the de viris illustribus to the presentation of that figure in the Periochae, Florus, Orosius, and Dio Cassius; p. 103–125. 87 Cicero makes a number of historical references in his philosophical treatises, as well. 88 However, see Harry Caplan’s introduction to the Loeb volume, where evidence for reassigning authorship to one “Cornuficius” is presented on pages ix–x.

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major hostilities in the Italic War, and in the process of raising points about the methods of crafting and delivering successful declamations, it quotes many speeches which have bearing on the period. The references are scattered and lack background, and they tend to betray a certain popularis sympathy, but they provide detail found nowhere else and often confirm facts of an improbable nature found in the greater historical works. As the Rhetorica ad Herennium is in large part a collection of excerpts of speeches, so the Strategems of Frontinus is a book illustrating noteworthy military tactics, some of which also pertain to this period. Almost all of those which describe events after the year 100 BCE are drawn from Livy, as seen by the fact that most of them correspond closely with similar reports (albeit less detailed) either in the Periochae or other sources derived from that author. Frontinus therefore occasionally provides some additional battlefield illustration to supplement the accounts of the major narratives. Another source of information about this period can be found in the exempla provided in the Memorable Deeds and Sayings of Valerius Maximus, which was composed during the reign of Tiberius and drawn primarily from Cicero and Livy. His work was not designed to be a work of history but rather simply as collections of anecdotes illustrating common philosophical or rhetorical themes, and as a result the items found in them are disjointed and often lack contexts at the very least, and are prone to errors and inaccuracies at the very worst.89 Though he is to be used with appropriate caution, Valerius Maximus occasionally brings a personal anecdote to add to the fabric woven by the major historians. Additional anecdotal material is supplied by Aulus Gellius, and when this author records events which are also mentioned in the Periochae, he employs language so similar to that used by the Epitomator that it can be assumed that, at least for these episodes, Livy was the source for his Attic Nights. Livy is assumed also to be thus for Pliny, whose coverage of topics in his 89 See, for example, the footnotes in Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb translation of Valerius, where such mistakes and the tendency of the author to make them are noted with great frequency.

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Natural History often touches on historical matters and in so doing not infrequently quotes Livy directly. Furthermore, the geographer Strabo often cites historical anecdotes in the course of his work, which often covers the same material as Diodorus Siculus such that the common source of Posidonius can be assumed for both. Finally, there are occasional references in such disparate works as the poetry of Lucan and Ovid and the philosophical dialogue of Macrobius. As can be seen, none of these are works of history per se, but in the course of their exposition they make the occasional historical reference that provides confirmation of matters covered in these histories, provides additional insight into those whose details are sparse, and even offers the occasional sliver of fact not found elsewhere.

9. THE SOURCES: A SUMMARY If the time were to be taken to gather together all the written material in the strictly historical works which treat the years between 91–77 BCE, it is probable that they would take up fewer pages of the same dimensions than the chapter of this essay describing them has thus far taken. This paucity of material can be supplemented by works which are not strictly historical, such as those just described, but the result would probably not add more than fifty additional pages.90 This does not provide the wealth of evidence for which any modern historian of the period might wish. Archaeology adds more, but not much: there are coins, whose value is often pictographic, and the occasional sling-bullet, but that is about the extent of what artifacts can reveal about the Allies and their struggle for the citizenship. The picture that results from the consultation of these sources must therefore be sketchy at points, and sometimes even the outline is so faded that the canvas is nearly blank. Yet there is enough there to produce at least a foreground and the main scene, 90 Greenidge and Clay’s collection of this material runs to about 120 or so pages of this size, although a great deal of that is padded by narrations of matters outside of Italy, and thus not all of it pertains to the topic of this essay.

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and for reasons cited above, it is a picture that is worthy of being painted. An attempt to produce such a picture will be provided in the text to follow. From time to time—and perhaps too often for comfort—conjecture must be employed to fill in the empty areas, and sometimes it msy appear to have been daubed on as if with a knife rather than a fine brush. Even so, it is hoped that the result will be comparatively life-like, enough to show that the subject is as noble as any other even if the painter’s technique is sometimes faulty.

CHAPTER 2: CAUSES OF ITALIAN DESIRES FOR THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP 1. ALLIED DESIRES FOR THE CIVITAS—THE EVIDENCE In 91 BCE the Italian alles of Rome set into motion a series of events which brought about warfare with the Romans, and while the war which began in earnest in 91 had largely died down by 88, armed violence between Italians and Romans would persist in some form for the remainder of the decade. As mentioned in the previous chapter, it is the fundamental argument of this essay that the actions of the Italians during this period were primarily driven by their desire, first to become Roman citizens, then to gain full political and social equality as Roman citizens, and finally to protect the rights they had won from those who would modify or remove them. Such an assertion clearly gives rise to some questions, of which perhaps the most obvious is “Why was the citizenship sought with such urgency that the Allies went to war to get it and then keep it?” Unfortunately, the answer to such an inquiry is not easy to come by. The task is made especially difficult by the fact that (as mentioned in chapter 1) the sources which are preserved do not include any which were written by the Allies themselves. As a consequence, their own justification for the measures they would ultimately take is absent. Indeed, perhaps a single account encapsulating the reasons behind the actions of the socii could not have been written at all, as it might very well have been that not all of the Allies wanted the same things or wanted them for the same reasons. It is not beyond reason to suspect that some of the communities who became members of the Alliance may have had

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different desires than others, and some of these communities may have had differences amongst themselves.1 Similarly, the wealthy amongst the Allied peoples may have had different desires than the middle class and poor, et cetera. Finally, it may very well have been that some Allies—either individuals or entire communities—may in fact have desired complete separation from Rome, and simply made common cause with the others. Admittedly, there is little evidence in the sources to confirm their existence, but it perhaps goes too far to claim that there were not at least some socii who fit this description.2 Nevertheless, the fact that the franchise was desired by the Allies is something which almost all the major sources explicitly state. Pronouncements to this effect are found in the Periochae and, probably due to their connections with Livy, also in Florus and in Velleius. Yet they also appear in sections of the narrative of Appian in which it is not entirely clear that Livy was the source, in Strabo by whom use of Livy was unlikely, and in Cicero and in Diodorus Siculus by whom use of Livy was impossible.3 That the civitas was wanted by the Allies is therefore well attested. On the other hand, why it was wanted is not so well explained in these sources, and many of them do not venture an explanation for that desire of any kind. Others, however, do provide something by way of a reason And in fact this was certainly the case, given the notices that some cities within an area that mostly went to the Alliance refused to fight against the Romans, and vice versa (see Chapters 4–5). 2 Contra Henrik Mouritsen (1998, especially pages 5, 5–22), who claims that the very lack of mention of an Allied independence movement in the ancient authors is itself evidence that such a motivation did exist, and was in fact the principal cause for the war, an explanation which has since been buried (see also previous chapter). In so doing Mouritsen goes in the opposite direction in terms of the Allies and separation vs. enfranchisement: according to his account, the socii who made war on Rome only wanted independence and not the citizenship. For some of his theories, additional analysis will be provided later on in this chapter. 3 Specifically, Per. 71; Flor. 2.6.18; Cicero, Phil. 12.27; Diodorus 37.18 (see also the related anecdote in 37.13), and in the passages of Velleius, Appian, and Strabo which are about to be cited in the text above. For the unlikelihood of Strabo having used Livy, see Haug, p. 133. 1

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for it, which is this: the Allies wanted to be partners in the Empire which was largely built on their military contributions, rather than its subjects. This justification is found in Appian4 (1.5.34, 1.5.35), and a very similar sentiment5 is found in Velleius Paterculus (2.15.2), while Strabo likewise suggests that “begging for freedom and political rights without getting them, [the Allies] revolted and … persisted in the war for two years, until they achieved the partnership for which they went to war”.6 The implication of these passages seems to be that dissatisfaction had developed amongst the Italians concerning the nature of the relationship which governed their interaction with the Romans, and that they sought the citizenship as a way to redress this dissatisfaction. What the origins of that dissastisfaction were— Appian mentioned that the Allies οὔτε γὰρ ἠξίουν ἐν ὑπηκόων ἀντὶ (1.5.34; emphasis added); in the very next section (1.5.35), he describes how the proposal of Drusus to grant the civitas to the Allies appealed to them τούτου γὰρ δὴ μάλιστα ἐπε ύμουν ὡς ἑνὶ τῷδε αὐτίκα ἡγεμόνες ἀντὶ ὑπηκόων ἐσόμενοι (again, emphasis added). 5 To prevent confusion later on, at this point it should be pointed out that while Appian often mentions the citizenship in relation to proposed land distribution (such as those carried out by the Gracchi and planned by M. Livius Drusus), he never actually refers to this as a reason for why the Allies wanted the citizenship. Indeed, this desire apparently predated these distributions of the ager publicus, as seen by the fact that some of the Allies wanted the citizenship to such an extent that they are mentioned as willing to trade whatever they used of that land which held in exchange for it. Nor, indeed, does that author provide any other reason more concrete than he nebulous wish to exchange “subject” for “partner” status as described above. Certainly Appian does state that the socii wanted the citizenship, and he also quite clearly notes that the land redistribution was a matter of concern to them, but there is never an explicit comment or even an implicit hint that the land distribution impelled the Italian urges for the franchise. To be sure, there very probably was a connection between the land laws and the heightened need for the citizenship, even if Appian does not indicate this fact it himself; more on this relationship will be discussed in the following chapter. 4

κοινωνῶν εἶναι μέρει

6 δεόμενοι τυχεῖν ἐλευ ερίας καὶ πολιτείας μὴ τυγχάνοντες ἀπέστ σαν καὶ … δύο δ᾽ ἔτ συνέμειναν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ μέχρι διεπράξαντο τὴν κοινωνίαν περὶ ἧς ἐπολέμουν; Strabo, 5.4.2 (emphasis added).

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what, in other words, made the Allies feel like “subjects” instead of “partners”—is never explicitly stated by the sources just cited, nor indeed by any others. Even so, what seems clear is that, whatever their grievances were, many of the Italians located amelioration for them in the acquisition of the citizenship rather than by some other method, such as separation.7 Why this last would be the case is 7 In his discussion of the “Ancient Tradition on the Social War”, Mouritsen (1998, p. 5–22) argues that there is ample evidence that the Allies did want separation rather than integration. In support of this assertion, he cites several passages of Didodorus in which the Allies are mentioned as trying to shake off Roman ἡγεμονία in favor of their own, and to fight for ἐλευ έρια (freedom); 37.2, 37.22, and 37.14 are specifically noted. Likewise, Mouritsen observes, the very passage of Strabo cited above (5.4.2) also mentions ἐλευ έρια. Eutropius (5.3) mentions that the Italian libertatem sibi aequam asserere coeperunt, and Orosius 5.18.2 mentions that the socii were agitated into arms spe libertatis. Finally, Plutarch in the Marius states that the Allies 32.3 “came within a little of destroying the Roman domination” (τὰ γὰρ μαχιμώτατα τῶν Ἰταλικῶν ἐ νῶν καὶ

πολυαν ρωπότατα κατὰ τῆς Ῥώμ ς συνέστ σαν καὶ μικρὸν ἐδέ σαν συγχέαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν).

In spite of what Mouritsen claims, however, none of these passages actually really suggest that separation was sought. Nor do they suggest that the alliances between Romans and Italians be recast through some elaborate scheme whereby the Italians would provide half the senate and one of the consuls in a manner similar to the proposal of the Latins in 340 that is described in Livy 8.4. Mouritsen asserts (op. cit., p. 138–139) that this passage was not really indicative of the situation in 340, but instead more actually reflected the desires of the Italians in 91 retrojected into the past. These claims will be treated more extensively in Appendix A; for the present, it will suffice that the passages of Diodorus, Strabo, Eutropius, Orosius, and Plutarch referenced by Mouritsen can be squared completely and easily with the demand for the citizenship. In the first place, while Roman ἡγεμονία, which was tantamount to their exploitation of the Italians, could indeed be broken by total loosening of ties, it could also easily be broken if the Allies and Romans became equals as citizens. By attaining equality (libertatem sibi aequam asserere coeperunt, as Eutropius would have it), the socii could shake off Roman exploitation and therefore be “free”. It is to be noted that amongst the many connotations for the word libertas as employed by Roman authors, one of them was certainly a state of not living under ἡγεμονία (for such interpretations of libertas, see

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equally left unexplicated in the sources. It might have been, perhaps, that there were some injuries which could be better mended through the franchise rather than by a parting of the ways. The again, it might also have been that separation would have satisfied some of the Italians just as well as citizenship would, but that they believed the Romans would be far more inclined to incorporate them and thus still have access to their manpower (more below), albeit under different circumstances, than allow for complete independence which would deny the Romans that access. Indeed, several episodes which occurred in the decades before the outbreak of the war would have illustrated to most of the Italians that attempts to break away from the association with Rome would stand little chance of success,8 and that by default more luck could logically be expected from attempting to join themselves to the Romans than from attempting to part from them. Too, it might also have been that the citizenship was desired for more than just a salving of perceived abrasions. In other words, the Italians may have wished to become amalgamated with the Romans, not just to redress greivances, but also because they inherently desired to become part the Roman culture, or to acquire certain benefits (or keep those which they had) which could be obtained only through becoming Romans and would not accrue to the socii through breaking away from the latter. All of these things might have been reasons for why the Italians wanted the civitas instead of, or at the very least more than, they seemed to have wanted separation. It is likely there were others, ones which will never be learned for

Morstein-Marx, p. 216–222). It was the hope of this—the spes libertatis of Orosius—that motivated their desire for the citizenship, allowing them to be partners and not subjects (as per the places in Appian quoted above), and it was to attain this κοινωνία (partnership) and the ἐλευ έρια it would bring that the Italians fought (see, again, the quotation of Strabo above). Therefore, all the passages in the ancient authors just cited easily fit into the model adopted by this essay, one of the Allies wanting the citizenship and taking up weapons to demonstrate their displeasure when the hope of acquiring it was taken from them one time too many; for more on these refusals, see next chapter. 8 More below; see also Chapter 3.

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certain due to what the sources say and, more importantly, what they do not. The fact of the matter is that those sources only directly assert that the Italians wanted the franchise because they felt entitled to it due to their extensive role in the construction of an empire in which they were not “partners”. Having often voiced this aspiration, they ultimately fell to the casting of pila when that citizenship was denied to them repeatedly and in such a manner that it became obvious that Rome was never going to acquiesce to their petition voluntarily. In sum, why specifically the citizenship was desired by the Allies—if to eliminate distress, than what the cause of that distress might be; if to gain or keep benefits particular to the franchise, what those benefits were—has not been preserved in the accounts which remain. The lack of the exact reasons which impelled the desire for the franchise therefore represents a lacuna in the sources. Another lacuna is why that desire became so acute that it led to bloodshed at the particular time that it did, as opposed to earlier or later. These grievances, benefits, or both—were they of such a nature that they had sprung into being or become overwhelmingly important around the year 91? If so, why? If they were not, and if, for example, they were of long duration, why did they lead to a conflagration (as the sources clearly state that they did) specifically in 91 as opposed to a hundred, fifty, or even ten years earlier, or the corresponding amount of time later? The next two chapters will attempt to find answers to the questions discussed above. These answers will be conjectural,9 to On page 12 of his monumental work Italian Manpower, which is critical to any understanding of Roman and Allied relations during the Republic, P. A. Brunt feels the need to apologize for the fact that throughout his work he will have to keep reminding the reader that many of his theories are just that: theories, and ones which lead to conclusions which—due to the evidence from his sources which is occasionally unreliable and sometimes actually even missing—are far from certain. In this apology, he notes how a philosopher chided him for such reminders that by observing that, in stating something may have been the case, he is invariably setting up the possibility that the exact opposite may be true. Nevertheless, Brunt apparently felt that this was the only way he could 9

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be sure: again, none of the sources were written by the Allies themselves, making their exact motivations impossible to determine with certainty. Nor, indeed, do the extant Greek and Roman sources bring even a biased attempt to provide this knowledge, let alone an impartial one. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence in both literary and non-literary sources to make a fair amount of speculation possible. Based on these speculations the pages to follow in the current chapter will attempt to bridge the first of these gaps in understanding, id est the possible reasons for wanting the citizenship. Some of these conjectured reasons will have been of a longstanding nature, dating back to the circumstances which dictated the creation of the treaties which bound the Allies to Rome in the first place. Others will have come into being after those foedera were cast—some gradually over the centuries, some rather more suddenly—as the result of a variety of political, social, and economic changes which occurred within Italy and amongst the Italians. Because many of these progressed over an extended period, they resist incorporation into a larger, more chronologically delineated narrative, and require a separate chapter for their justify many of his conclusions, and while “(r)eiterations of uncertainty make for tedious reading”, these reiterations would ultimately serve the interests of candor and truth. As much as this was true for his project, so much—and perhaps more so—is it true for this one. As mentioned above and in the previous chapter, the Allies apparently never wrote their own history and therefore never passed down their own reasons for going to war. If they did indeed want the citizenship, as the Greek and Romans who wrote about them almost unanimously assert, they gave no reasons why they wanted it, and these extant sources (as seen above) do not provide even suggestions of their own for why that might be beyond noting their need to be “partners instead of subjects”. Therefore, “conjecture”, “probable”, “possible”, and “perhaps” (along with many synonyms) will appear frequently in this chapter and throughout this essay, even though such words run the risk of weakening the force of the argument. It is a risk which must be taken, however, since to those who attempt to explain an occurrence in the absence of concrete facts, plausibility is all that remains. Following the reasoning of Brunt, this fact must be acknowledged ab initio and perpetually throughout the explanation.

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analysis lest overly frequent asides interrupt later chapters. Such an analysis will be presented here. This analysis will in turn form the basis of an argument, one stating that the reasons it will conjecture for why the Allies wanted the civitas were also ones which led to an increasingly overwhelming urge to obtain it. This urge then created or contributed to a rising tension between Rome and the Italians, tension that was from time to time exacerbated by specific persons, laws, and episodes which began to occur more frequently from the time of Tiberius Gracchus and culminated at last in the events at Asculum. Those specific events lend do themselves to a larger, more chronologically delineated narrative, and will therefore be the topic of the chapter after this one. To conclude: the function of this chapter will be to attempt provide an understanding of the ways by which the Romans and the Allies were connected to each other, and why that connection eventually became unbearable to the point of explosion. It will thus provide the scenery and the prologue, as it were, to the more dramatic episodes to follow in the next chapter.

2. THE NATURE OF ITALIAN ALLIANCES WITH ROME An element crucial to the survival, success, and growth of the Roman commonwealth was the series of alliances it contracted with other powers and communities it encountered as it expanded through Italy. Because Roman foreign policy in all aspects evolved gradually over the course of time, and because Rome came into contact with its neighbors under a variety of different circumstances, it is impossible to give a precise, standard set of procedures which governed the way these alliances were struck.10 10 That the nature of Roman alliances changed over time is argued convincingly by Sherwin-White, who postulates that Rome, having discovered that the early alliance it made with the Latins did not entirely serve its later manpower purposes, first attempted different kinds of Alliance based on the civitas sine suffragio (about which more below) before settling into the foedus arrangements which it made with states like those of the Samnites and others (p. 26–33, 56). Nor does the assertion that the Romans often adjusted and altered their foreign policy initiatives—and occasionally changed the instruments by which that foreign policy was conducted—rest entirely on the development of the foedus; it can also be

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Over the centuries Rome entered into alliances with states with whom there had been no antipathy or rivalry of any kind, had made alliances with potentially hostile powers to forestall a threatened war, had used alliances to end wars in progress but not yet decided, and had constructed alliances with enemies it had thoroughly defeated, ones into which the beaten party would be compelled as part of the terms by which peace would be declared. The specific terms of the each treaty (foedus) creating the alliance would be peculiar to the situation which dictated its creation,11 although some commonalities definitely existed. For example, defeated peoples compelled by loss in battle to enter a foedus would typically be subjected to certain kinds of penalties—such as confiscation of territory—which would generally not attach to others who had

seen in the evolution of the use and meaning of the term provincia (as discussed by Richardson 1986, p. 5–10). Nevertheless, while the results of Sherwin-White’s analysis are persuasive as far as its claim that the nature of treaties changed over time, that analysis still proceeds from the assumption that Rome was gradually working through trial models which eventually led to a fixed policy represented by the so-called foedus iniquum. This latter assumption will be rejected in this essay due to the compelling arguments against such a thing made by Badian and Gruen (see below). 11 This difficulty of defining a set pattern to Roman treaties of alliance has not deterred a number of scholars in the early part of the twentieth century from attempting to provide just such a pattern. Following a few short passages in Cicero and Livy, there was for long a tendency to identify two types of Roman alliance. Those between Rome and another Italian community entered into as equals which were the results of a type of treaty called a foedus aequum. By contrast, those made between those states which Rome had either compelled through defeat or intimidated into an agreement with Rome, one which clearly recognized as the superior power, were made by a so-called foedus inequum. This dichotomy was shown to be suspect by Badian (1958, p. 25–29, citing the ancient authorities on which they were based) by means of arguments neatly summarized and expanded by Gruen (1984, p. 14–15). It has thankfully now largely been abandoned in favor of the approach which holds that the wide variety of treaties Rome made suggests that foedera were each independent entities, not the result of an aequum/iniquum pattern (Lomas, p. 39; but see Hantos 1983, p. 150–183).

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readily entered the arrangement with Rome.12 Thus, despite the many variations in the foedera enacted between the Romans and the Italians, it is possible to speak of a few elements which they all shared. An understanding of these is vital for an appreciation of the ties between the Romans and the Italians before the outbreak of the long war they were about to wage, a war fought ultimately for the purpose of altering the nature of those ties. The first of these common features of the foedus is the patent assumption on both sides that it was to be permanent. Evidence for this can be drawn in the first place by one of the earliest treaties13 which Livy records as being made by the Republic (2.32.4), one drawn up between the Latins and the Romans during the consulate of Spurius Cassius in 493 BCE and thus just a few years after the expulsion of the Tarquins. The terms of this treaty, the so-called foedus Cassianum, are also recorded by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (6.95). Among these provisions is one stipulating that, once made, its terms were expected to be followed “as long as the heavens and the earth occupy their current position” (μέχρις ἂν οὐρανός τε καὶ γῆ τὴν αὐτὴν στάσιν ἔχωσι), a fair indication of its intended perpetuity. Because specifics on other treaties are often lacking,14 it cannot be claimed with absolute certainty that this treaty is paradigmatic of others. That said, the existing evidence strongly suggests that this perpetuity was a feature of all foedera. For one 12 So Lomas, loc. cit.. Moreover, in his study of Roman treaties with the Greek East, Gruen (op. cit., p. 16–25) states that—some differences caused by the specifics of the events which created them notwithstanding— foedera conducted with foreigners outside of Italy often differed from the ones established with the Italians due to a more “bilateral” nature of the former, patterned on the sort of compacts the Hellenic states had used between themselves. 13 It was also apparently a fairly important one; Cicero (Pro Balbo 23.54) could speak of its having been engraved on a bronze column standing at the back of the Rostra until his own time. 14 While Livy will mention what properties were confiscated to end wars, his notices about the language of the treaties themselves tend to be brief, usually restricted to “a treaty was made”; see, for example, 7.11.15, 9.45.16, 10.3.2, and 10.12.2.

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thing, those states which entered into a covenant with Rome and then broke it would be forcibly returned into the alliance, as happened at the conclusion of both the Second and Third Samnite Wars, when Livy reports “the old treaty was restored to them” (foedus antiquum Samnitibus redditum; 9.45) and the Periocha of his book 11 reports that “the treaty was renewed for the fourth time” (Pacem petentibus Samnitibus foedus quarto renovatum est). Moreover, the idea that these foedera were expected to be eternal rather than temporary is further reinforced by the existence of the indutiae, a series of temporary non-aggression pacts often employed by Romans in the third century which were patently distinguished from foedera by their temporary nature. Indeed, on several occasions Italian communities asked for foedera with Rome to secure a permanent alliance and were turned down in favor of indutiae of varying lengths.15 On occasion foedera could be renegotiated, and sometimes substantially: for example, Dionysius notes a provision in the foedus Cassianum that allowed for alterations to be made by mutual consent.16 In fact, Livy records that this very treaty was altered after the Latins broke it and had to be defeated in a large war in 339 (8.13–16), and the same author notes that Ardea successfully petitioned to have a slight modification in their foedus (4.7.10). What never appears, however, is a complete dissolution of an alliance with any Italian people once it had been made. The attitude which Rome manifestly took about the adamantine nature of the foedera— as revealed by what happened when the Italians attempted to break them, by the contrast between foedera and indutiae, and by the terms recorded in the foedus Cassianum—provide the clear signal that alliances once made were designed by the Romans to last forever. In addition to their unending nature, another aspect of the foedus was the obligation of the signatories—both Romans and those who, by means of the treaty, were now known as socii or “Allies” of Rome—to support each other in warfare, specifically by means of providing soldiers for each other in future wars. Alliances 15 16

Lomas, p. 39; Harris 1971, p. 48–57

ταῖς δὲ συν καις ταύταις μ δὲν ἐξέστω προσ εῖναι μ δ᾽ ἀφελεῖν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν, ὅ τι ἂν μὴ Ῥωμαίοις τε καὶ Λατίνοις ἅπασι δοκῇ; loc. cit.

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with these terms are encountered from the most ancient history of the city,17 and were certainly a standard component of Roman policy from the earliest days of the Republic. This can readilty be seen in the aforementioned foedus Cassianum, among whose terms is that the Romans and the Latins would “assist each other when warred upon with all their forces” ( ο είτωσάν τε τοῖς πολεμουμένοις ἁπάσῃ δυνάμει; Dion. Hall., loc. cit.). Clearly mutual military aid of some magnitude was expected from each party, although it is quite probable that the “all the forces” part was an exaggeration. As it happened, this initial treaty with the Latins actually allowed them considerable freedom to contribute troops to Rome on a basis short of complete commitment of all of their available manpower. These freedoms included the right to refuse to supply troops if the security of the Latiar was not threatened, such that it allowed them not to take part in Rome’s adventures in the southern Italy. Furthermore, the Latins retained the liberty to make war independently of the Romans, and to do so without Roman approval or consent.18 So flexible were the terms of the foedus Cassianum, it seems, that Rome presently grew to find them problematic for their eventual military aims. Hence, the Commonwealth did not incorporate them into its future Alliances, and indeed removed them from the alliance with the Latins in

17 According to Livy (1.27), as far back as the monarchy: following the fabled victory of the Horatii over the Curiatii, an alliance was made between Rome and Alba Longa which involved the Albans pledging to provide soldiers for future Roman campaigns. The terms of this agreement were violated in a most treacherous way by Mettius Fufetius, with the result that Alba Longa was absorbed into the Roman state after his gruesome end (for which see also Dion. Hal. 3.28–30). 18 So Livy 2.53.5; 3.6.5–6; 4.45.4; 8.2–4. These passages are all cited by Sherwin-White (p. 22–25), who has a great deal to say about the initial Roman-Latin compact and the extent to which Rome eventually found its terms “inconvenient”; having subsequently come to recognize their mistake in making a treaty with a League, in the future the Romans would only make treaties with individual towns, thus allowing them better to assert their manpower demands with the other signatory.

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338.19 The modifications made to subsequent foedera gradually brought it to pass that the military association between Rome and her Allies evolved to the point where the decision to make war rested entirely with the Romans, the socii having become limited only to providing troops when these were demanded. The role the Allies eventually came to play is described in a passage of Livy describing the Rome’s preparations for war against the Ligurians, in which the Allies are recorded as playing no other role than furnishing men for the Commonwealth (34.56). It is more explicitly laid out in the exposition of Polybius on the Roman “constitution”, in which that author states that the Romans could command a great deal from the Italians: when war was declared, the consul “could ask whatever he wanted from the Italians by way of soldiers” (καὶ γὰρ ἐπιτάττειν τοῖς συμμαχικοῖς τὸ δοκοῦν), and they were expected to comply.20 In practice, how many soldiers each Allied community furnished probably varied, but by the second century BCE the total numbers of socii serving with the Roman army very probably excelled those of actual Roman citizens in the legions, and by a wide margin: modern scholarship has estimated that Romans contributed a little more than a third of their own army, with the rest supplied by the Allies.21 In addition to their permanent nature and the manpower contributions which they required, there was another common element in the Roman treaties. This was the implicit understanding that they were struck between Rome and the other parties which were to be regarded as separate communities, ones which remained for the most part free and independent after the treaty was made. This likewise seems to have been true from the beginning: while in Rome’s earliest history there is occasionally a notice that the Livy 8.13–16; see also Sherwin-White, loc. cit. Polybius 6.12; 6.21. That author’s implication that Roman demands for soldiers was unbounded is apparently somewhat inaccurate, as most modern scholars believe that the expected contribution was set by each individual foedus per a formula whose specifications were apparently outlined between the Romans and representatives from the Allies as each war arose, as per (Nicolet 1988, p. 34). 21 So Brunt (1971, p. 677–668); Mouritsen (1998, p. 43–44) agrees, although see Rich (p. 321–323) for some disputes with this figure. 19 20

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Romans gave their citizenship to certain Italian allies,22 those Allies to whom such an offer was not made, or who received an offer but did not accept it,23 retained their nominal independence from Rome and continued their existence as individual, unconnected states. In other words, while the socii were bound by certain obligations to Rome, their people were not made Roman by the Alliance, something which all understood. That the foedera did draw some socii close to the Romans cannot be denied, to the extent that some of them were accorded a status known as civitas sine suffragio. Recipients of this were made Roman in almost every aspect, lacking only the vote.24 As such they were entitled to certain wartime considerations not available to other socii. One of the most important of these was that cives sine suffragio were apparently numbered on the Roman census and were chosen for service in Rome’s armies by means of the dilectus (the process by which Roman citizens were mustered into service) instead of supplying contingents by means of the formula togatorum (that by which the Allies supplied their required numbers).25 This would be especially meaningful under those circumstances in which a dilectus was cancelled (about which more below). Moreover, cives sine suffragio were grouped with the Romans in the field and treated

Tusculum, Antium, Lanuvium, and Satricum, for example; see Livy 8.14.2, 9.15.7 23 As was the case with the Hernici in 305, according to Livy 9.45 24 Sherwin-White (p. 40–46), however, argues convincingly that the civitas sine suffragio was more even than that: it was, by his argument, originally a grant of the citizenship in all respects, including the vote, provided that the recipient relocated to Rome. This is plausible enough, especially for the early Republic. 25 So Sherwin-White (p. 58). Brunt, however, is not entirely in agreement with this assessment, and expresses some doubt about the mechanism by which cives sine suffragio raised their men (1971, p. 16–21). Due to the testimony of Polybius and Livy stating that the dilectus was conducted by tribe (to which the cives sine suffragio did not belong), Brunt suggests that instead the cives sine suffragio drew up their contingents locally (p. 631), in a manner similar to the way in which the Allies had done ex formula togatorum. 22

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as Romans in camp.26 Despite these and various other wartime benefits (about which more later), there is some indication that the bequest of the civitas sine suffragio was not at first entirely appreciated by those to whom it was given. Indeed, it was apparently resented early on, having been seen as a punishment by the Italians on whom it was visited since it meant giving up their own local laws, institutions, and magistrates in favor of those of the Romans, which they had had no part—and would have no part—in making.27 Over time, however, it would come to be highly prized. At any rate, whether it was welcomed or not, the civitas sine suffragio was not bestowed often. On the other hand, slightly more common was another type of association with Rome known as the nomen Latinum. Originally an association made, as its name implies, between the Romans and the Latins, those with whom this arrangement was installed enjoyed, like the cives sine suffragio certain 26 So Brunt (op. cit., p. 19), adding that, if this was not from the beginning, it was at least true by the Hannibalic war. The consequence for this in terms of military discipline will be explored below. 27 Lomas, p. 31; Nicolet 1988, p. 26. It is important to remember that until after the Allied War there existed no concept of “dual citizenship” in the Roman community. Before the 80s BCE, one was either a Roman citizen or a citizen of another community, and becoming one necessarily meant abandoning the status of the other, for which see also Gabba (1976, p. 100–103) and Sherwin-White (p. 111). The latter also argues that the civitas sine sufragio had initially been bestowed as an intermediate step to allow those who received it to become Roman if they wished but, should they elect to continue to reside in their own communities, would not forfeit the Roman privileges accorded to them (p. 40–46). Salmon (1982, p. 162–163) believes that there was in addition an “honorary citizenship” with which the civitas sine suffragio was sometimes confused, due to the fact that it, too, did not bring the vote but did rid those to whom it was given of other responsibilities such as military service (such recipients included Caere, Fundi, and Formiae, as reported in Aulus Gellius 16.13.7 and Livy 8.14.10). The basis for his argument is that this “honorary citizenship”, one which was apparently not called civitas honoraria but may have been referred to as hospitum publicum, was apparently always welcomed, whereas the civitas sine suffragio was not (see text above). This argument is not terribly persuasive, and seems to multiply the issue needlessly; hence, it plays no role in the analysis presented here.

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additional privileges over and above those spelled out in their foedera. These included the right of legally recognized marriages with Roman citizens (conubium), that of drawing up legally binding contracts with Romans (commercium), and the ability to become a Roman citizen by taking up residence in Rome (ius migrationis), though this last was subject to certain provisions.28 It also appears that any Latins happening to be in the city when voting was to be done could cast a ballot, albeit in one tribe determined randomly by lot.29 While this status, as mentioned above, was originally drawn up between Rome and the Latins through their treaties, “Latin privileges” were occasionally extended to Italians of other ethnicities (the Oscans of Southern Italy, for example) who had not been granted them in their initial Alliance, usually as a reward for some extraordinary service done for the Republic.30 The nomen Latinum also came to govern the manner by which many of the colonies Rome founded were associated with the parent city, with that rank accruing not only to those Allies who joined the venture but also to those Romans who took part. Since the change in residence meant a change in citizenship, those Romans who joined the colony would be Roman no longer, but as members of the 28 On the nomen Latinum see Nicolet (1988, p. 31–37) and Stockton, p. 108–109. See also Sherwin-White (loc. cit.), who postualtes that the nomen Latinum came from the original foedus Cassianum and that the civitas sine suffragio (whose privileges are substantially much the same as the nomen Latinum) in turn derived from it. Both allowed the Allies to become Roman citizens merely by changing domicile but extended certain privileges to those who elected to remain where they were, and, in the case of the nomen Latinum, to remain there under their own laws and institutions. 29 So Sherwin-White (p. 91) and Nicolet (1988, p. 231). 30 So Sherwin-White (loc. cit.), who argues that both the civitas sine suffragio and the nomen Latinum—whose regular appearance in foedera represented steps in the evolution of Rome’s policy of alliance which would lead to the foedus iniquum model—had brought certain difficulties to the Romans, such that they eventually stopped offering them as part of their foedera. It has been suggested by some scholars that this alteration in policy represented a change in Rome’s willingness to offer the citizenship to the Italians from their earlier, more generous attitude; these are cited by Badian (197l, p. 385–387), who argues against this position

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nomen Latinum they could always return to Rome and resume their former civitas.31 Furthermore, as members of the nomen Latinum colonists became Rome’s socii, which meant that they would be expected to furnish troops for the Roman army. In this way, colonization posed no diminishment to Roman military manpower.32 As can be seen, then, some Italian Allies were more intimately bound to the Romans than others. These notwithstanding, a good many were formally connected to Rome only on a military basis. In a number of ways informal connections brought even these latter Italians closer to the Romans than their treaty-status would indicate, but legally speaking such Italian communities remained what they had been before the foedus had been made: separate states, whose connection to Rome was military and for whom there was no question that they would be integrated into the Roman citizen body. It bears repeating that, the relative degree of affinity of some the Italian Allies to the Romans notwithstanding, Rome and Rome’s socii were mainly connected through treaties which formed alliances primarily of a military nature. It may therefore be argued that the most important provision of these treaties was that which gradually became standard in the foedera, one which called for the placing of Italian soldiery at Rome’s disposal, to fight in wars declared by Rome and for purposes devised by Rome, for which 31 Either through the ius migrationis or through another privilege of the nomen Latinum, that of postliminium, whereby Romans or Latins who voluntarily renounced their citizenship in their hometown by moving to the city of the other people might get it back if they returned; see Sherwin-White, p. 292–293. 32 In fact, Rome very likely increased her manpower through this process. Nicolet (loc. cit.) argues that—based on the assumption that only the poorest of Romans would voluntarily renounce their home and citizenship in exchange for the grant of land in a Roman colony—most of the Roman colonists were the so-called capite censi. Their lack of property meant that they would not have been eligible for military service while still citizens of Rome. However, once enriched by the land grant in the colony, they now could be called on to fill out the contingents sent by the colony to Rome through its duty as a Roman socius.

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Allied permission was unnecessary and their advice not infrequently unsolicited. It is not difficult to perceive the advantages these arrangements brought to one side of the equation, id est the Roman side: after concluding the foedus, the Romans could ever after call upon its socii to aid them in battle at practically no cost to themselves (in terms either of liquid assets or political capital).33 Rome could thereby employ mammoth numbers, which were all the more valuable in an age when simplicity of tactics not infrequently meant that numerical superiority could win battles and even wars for armies despite the occasional strategic deficiencies of their commanders.34 The socii were clearly less well-treated by these arrangements, though their connections with Rome certainly did have some benefits. First among these would be the simple fact that through these foedera the Allies no longer had to worry about Rome as a potential enemy (in the case of those who had made a foedus in the absence of hostilities), or a present one (in the case of those who made a foedus to stave off an imminent war or conclude one already underway). In the latter case, a treaty with Rome would likewise have presented the considerable advantage of preventing the complete destruction of the city by Roman hands. Moreover, affiliation with the Commonwealth meant that the safety and security of Allied communities would be guaranteed by Rome, which could come to their aid in times of trouble with an immense army drawn from its own large pool of military manpower supplemented by that of all of its other allies. Furthermore, by 293 Rome’s stature in the peninsula and the network of alliances it For more on these costs, see below. For such deficiencies see Adcock, who ventures so far as to assert that, while Rome must have had excellent generals during the early Republic, the first Roman in whom real strategic brilliance may be discerned is Scipio Africanus (p. 105–109). This assessment is probably excessive, but it is worthwhile to remember that Pyrrhus of Epirus lost his war, not through poor planning and execution, but through realization that the Romans would always have more men than he would: he was not outgeneralled, but outmanned. Badian also comments on Roman practice of always outnumbering their enemies, or of trying to do so if they could not (1968, p. 5–6). 33 34

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maintained with the other communities in it virtually guaranteed that no state in Italy would attack another.35 It was therefore with some justification that Rome could claim—as it frequently did— that it had brought peace to a land not entirely known for it,36 whose benefits to the Italians are obvious. Additionally, Rome played a substantial role in safeguarding Italy from outside threats, and had done so as recently as the year 100, just ten years before the outbreak of war between Rome and her Allies.37 Likewise, as associates—albeit not equal partners—in Rome’s victories and, 35 Except, again, when Rome was the state undertaking the offensive to punish those breaking the terms of the foedera; for more on this internal peace, see below. 36 As observed by Brunt (1988, p. 111–117) and Salmon (1967, p. 293–294; p. 312–313; 1982 p. 72, p. 82–83). Doubtless this peacemaking was appreciated by some of the Allies but, as will be seen below, it was not always seen as an advantage by all of them, a perception for which in some instances there was good reason. 37 By way of repelling the Germanic invasions of the Teutones and Cimbri. Indeed, Brunt (1988, p. 129–130) and Salmon (1967, p. 335) suggest that this conflict posed a turning point in Roman-Allied relations, about which more below. Mouritsen also comments on the role of Rome as guardian of Italy (1998, p. 42–44). His commentary makes the point that the Romans may deserve less credit than they claimed for this role, observing that, in the first place, the large percentage of Italians in the Roman army meant that the Italians were more or less defending their own peninsula as much as Rome was defending it for them, and in the second, that Rome was hardly motivated to fight for the safety of Italy by anything but self-interest. However, these arguments do not entirely diminish the stature of the Romans as protectors of Italy. On the one hand, the fact that the Commonwealth was helping to protect Italy out of self-interest does not negate the fact that it was nevertheless still so doing. Furthermore, even if his estimation (or, rather, that of V. Ilari, whom he cites on page 42 n. 17 and page 44 n. 22) of the numbers involved is correct and the non-Latin allies contributed as much as forty percent of the Roman army alongside the twenty-seven percent contributed by the Latins, then the remainder would still have been sent by Rome, and the numbers of its contingents would have far outnumbered those from any one single Allied state. The Allies may thus have played a large role in defending their own land, but Rome played a larger one by far, in whose absence such a defense might very well have failed.

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later, in her hegemony, the Allies could likewise find a number of avenues for economic advancement; these and other certain benefits will be discussed later. It has been observed thus far that from the very beginning of the Republic, and indeed almost from the very foundation of the city, Rome had forged bonds between itself and the Italian communities it had come across by means of treaties of alliance. By the first century BCE these treaty connections extended to almost every community throughout the whole of Italy. Such treaties were to be perpetual, and while they did not absorb the Italians with whom they were made into Rome, they did allow the Romans to make use of a fairly colossal host of soldiers to accomplish its military objectives. These objectives were ones that the Italians came to play no part in framing, and were ones about which they were frequently not even consulted. Yet in spite of the unequal standing in their relationship, the Allies stood to gain a great deal from Rome; some of these benefits have been described above, and others will be described below. The fact that alliance with Rome did have its rewards had been true from the beginning and would continue to be true until the very brink of the cataclysm that erupted in 91. Nevertheless, these gains at all times came at the price of shouldering burdens even beyond that imposed by the underlying inequality of the affiliation with the Romans. Such burdens must always have been inconvenient at their very least; at their very worst, however, they could become so intolerably oppressive that eventually a change was demanded. What those additional burdens were will be described below.

3. THE DRAWBACKS OF ALLIED FOEDERA: COSTS OF MILITARY SERVICE38

As the Romans became more and more powerful, their obvious utility as allies and the terror they inspired as enemies seems to have done much to discourage their socii from attempting to break away from their compacts with the Republic by force. While these attempts had happened on occasion in the fourth century, they had 38 Much of the analysis to follow was presented, albeit in a greatly truncated form, in Kendall, p. 105–123.

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almost completely ended (with one notable exception to be discussed in the next chapter) after the Second Punic War, in which Rome had suffered a savage beating but had emerged, if not stronger than before, than certainly stronger than any other major power in the Western Mediterranean by dint of being the only such power left. By the year 91, the realities of post-Hannibalic War Italy were such that it was almost certainly understood by any aggrieved ally that to make war on the Romans and stand any chance of success would require help: no one Italian community could ever stand alone against the Romans. If such a war was attempted to be and help were sought, the obvious source for such aid would be other Italians. These would have the advantages of being close at hand, familiar to their would-be partners, and have the additional effect of reducing Roman numbers by denying them their own soldiers. In fact, when the Allied War came this is exactly what occurred: twelve peoples, all Italian socii,39 combined to wage war on the Romans. That this combination could come into being at all meant that all twelve peoples in it had been persuaded to fight a war whose victory was by no means a foregone conclusion. Studies of the specific peoples who engaged in it reveal that such a motivation was not based on ties of tribal affinity; in other words, common cultural, ethnic, and linguistic elements among the Allies were either absent, or not strong enough to guarantee that the communities would risk annihilation at Rome’s hands merely based on the urge to support each other on the basis on consanguinity.40 See chapter 4 for a list of these and the sources for that list. As Salmon’s studies have shown (and as he explicitly states: 1967, p. 341–344), all of the peoples who formed the initial Alliance against the Romans were either Oscan-speaking Sabellians or had spoken a related dialect in the past; in fact, he even goes so far as to venture that Roman malfeasance towards them (see below) was at least in part due to their non-Latin origins (1958, p. 168 n. 38). However, while some of these communities were doubtless close to each other and had had a history of cooperation (as can be seen, for example, in their cooperation in running their port of Pescara; Salmon, op. cit., p. 161; also 1982, p. 24), others were not particularly intimate with their eventual partners. By way of example, see Salmon’s discussion of the reaction of the Frentani to the expansionist 39 40

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This in turn means that all of the members of the confederacy must have been convinced to join it, not by kinship, but by the prospect of what a successful war would bring: it would either result in their acquisition of something they wanted, or would lead to an end of something they did not want. According to almost all of the ancient sources, the Roman citizenship would essentially represent both of these possibilities. As mentioned before, these sources state that the Allies wanted the civitas, and that this desire was motivated to a great degree by a need to be treated as partners in an empire they had helped to build rather than as subjects to it.41 In other words, the foundation of the desire for the franchise amongst the Allies—a commodity they wanted—was to be found primarily in their discontent with the way they were treated relative to the way they felt they ought to have been, a disparity in treatment they wished to end. The acquisition of the citizenship, they believed, would accomplish this aim, simultaneously making them partners in and raising them from the condition of being subjects of the empire. If the sources are correct and the war was in fact fought to gain the franchise, then the need for it—one created in no small part by the fact that it would end an intolerable state of affairs— tendencies of the Samnites (1982, p. 21–22). Common Oscan ancestry had not impelled these groups to get along with each other, and it almost certainly would not have been sufficient in and of itself to guarantee mutual cooperation against a dangerous opponent like Rome. Furthermore, the Etruscans and Umbrians later briefly joined the uprising, and these were culturally greatly dissimilar from other participants. It therefore cannot be claimed that the war to come was a battle between Oscans and Latins, as a list of the participants might imply at first glance. 41 As will be seen below, for some Allies the civitas doubtless not only represented an end to their hardships with Rome, but also certainly offered things which were actively agreeable (as opposed to merely an end to those which were disagreeable). The sources are fairly silent on what these congenial facets of the civitas were, although it is certainly possible, based on what these sources do reveal to present speculation as to what they may have been. Such presentations will soon be encountered in the pages to follow.

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must have been one which was first and foremost keenly felt. After all, it was enough to cause the Italians to fight the Romans to get what they wanted and in the process risk destruction, which was always a potential outcome of armed conflict with Rome. This may perhaps be even more graphically illustrated by the fact that the war had not erupted, as had the revolts that had been attempted by various Allies during the Second Punic War, under circumstances whereby the Romans would be distracted by other difficulties. Rather, it ignited during one of the rare periods when Rome was not fighting any major enemy external or internal,42 and therefore was one to which the Romans could give their undivided attention.43 That the Allies chose—more or less—the particular moment that they did, as opposed to an hour in which the Romans might have been weaker, additionally insinuates that their dissatisfaction had reached the point where it could be borne no longer, even although a delay until the Romans did become preoccupied might have provided a more opportune time to achieve their ends. Moreover, since the coalition encompassed so many separate communities, it is clear that the dissatisfaction of the participants for which the civitas was sought as the remedy was not a phenomenon local to merely any one of them. Instead, it must have been shared at least in some measure by many communities all over the peninsula, and very probably even by those who for whatever reason did not join the effort. Because this dissatisfaction motivated peoples separated from each other by distance and to some extent by language and custom, it is difficult to resist the inference that its source was in something which all the Italians had in common. That common link was that they were all Rome’s Allies, and thus the implication emerges that this far-ranging dissatisfaction had its origins in the nature of the alliance itself. What was the reason behind this dissatisfaction? Or, to put it another way, what had made the Allies feel like subjects to the very 42 With the exception of the Thracians fought by Sentius as reported in Per. 70, which did not seem to merit a major expedition. 43 Although this Roman inactivity was actually used by the Allies to their advantage, for which see chapters 4–5.

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imperium whose architecture had been based in no small part on their efforts? Again, the Allies themselves do not say, nor do the Roman and Greek sources who describe the conflict. To explain it, then, the modern scholar must attempt to hazard a guess, or several of them. It does not seem inappropriate to base these guesses on the testimony of the sources describing the way Romans and Allies interacted. If such guesswork is the only option, then it might very well begin at the most obvious point of interaction between Rome and the Italians, which was in the army. More specifically, it might begin with the military service the socii were obligated to render to Rome. That this military service would be the principal font of dissatisfaction for the socii does not seem far-fetched, and in fact there are indications that such was indeed the case. According to Livy, during the Second Punic War the Campanians demanded as one of the terms under which they would break their alliance with Rome and join Hannibal that no Campanian ever again be forced to perform military service against his will.44 If this was, in fact, a condition for the accord made with Hannibal,45 compulsory military service must therefore have been onerous indeed for the Campanians, since they were at this point cives sine suffragio and thus the demands made upon them would have been far less severe in terms of compensation rendered than those visited on other allies (about which more below). Thus, if the Campanians could be seduced away from Rome based on the promise of an end to military service,46 very likely the other Allies would have resented Legati ad Hannibalem uenerunt pacemque cum eo condicionibus fecerunt ne quis imperator magistratusue Poenorum ius ullum in ciuem Campanum haberet neue ciuis Campanus inuitus militaret munusue faceret; Livy, 23.7 (emphasis added). 45 Livy cites no source directly for the terms which went into the forging of this compact, although there seems to be no reason to believe that he had simply invented the tale that aggravation with military service was one of them. 46 On the other hand, at the point at which this negotiation was made with Hannibal, the Roman requests for men were weighty indeed. According to the words Livy puts in the mouth of consul M. Terentius Varro, the Campanians were asked “not to help (the Romans) in the war 44

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such service equally, if not more so. What it was exactly about this service that the Campanians, and by extension the rest of the Allies, found so exasperating is not known, though it is not hard to speculate on what a few of the particulars may have been. In the first place, service in the Roman army would have been fairly expensive for the Italians. This cost was exacted in a number of ways, the most basic of which being the value of the men themselves: each man who was gone on campaign with the Romans would simply not be at his home doing anything else, depriving his family and his community of any contribution he might otherwise have made (more below). Such a value resists precise measurement, but a more concrete price would have been that which the Allies paid to equip and provide provisions for their soldiers. As was the case amongst the Hellenic states, in Rome soldiers were drawn from the class of citizens who could afford to furnish their own arms (men whom the Romans called assidui), and—at least in the earliest period—it seems that the Roman soldier was expected to do exactly that: at the beginning of the Republic, a soldier provided his own weapons and his own supplies for the campaigns in which he participated. For neither these nor the time he spent in the army was he compensated, as service was considered the munus—“duty”—of a citizen.47 As time went on the but almost to undertake the war for us” (itaque non iuvetis nos in bello oportet, Campani, sed paene bellum pro nobis suscipiatis) and to furnish 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry (23.5). Indeed, in light of this fact, and in light of that fact that the consul was making these requests in part to men who had been given a form of the Roman citizenship and thus to people who “have suffered this defeat as much as we have, and to feel that we have a common country to defend” (itaque communem vos hanc cladem quae accepta est credere, Campani, oportet, communem patriam tuendam arbitrari esse), the Campanians emboldened to reply with an ultimatum: to prevent their defection to Hannibal, the Romans would have to agree that henceforth one of the consuls and half of the Senate would should therefore be Campanian. However, in relating this report Livy notes that he believes it to be specious, since it sounded way too much like a similar request made by the Latins in the past (specifically, the incident related by Livy at 8.4; see also Appendix A). 47 Gabba (1976, p. 2).

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Romans soon found that the chaos presented by armies composed of men with different types of equipment, varying according to what each man could afford, untenable. It therefore eventually came to set standards for what weapons were to be borne, and supplied them to those who were lacking, with the expectation that this equipment was to be returned at the end of the campaign. It also deducted from the pay of the assidui, which was introduced at about the same time as the issuance of weapons (about which directly), a sum for what amounted to the “rental” of the needed gear.48 If this state of affairs obtained amongst the Italians as well as the Romans (and there is nothing in the sources to suggest otherwise), then before their foedera with the Romans, the Italians likewise fielded soldiers for their military actions who served at their own expense. It is almost certain that they continued to do so as Allies when these men were raised for the Roman army, since it beggars the imagination that the Romans would not equip their own soldiers free of charge but would do so for their Allies.49 Hence, one sum for which the Italians were liable from the outsetwas that of providing weapons for their soldiers. As discussed above, the circumstances of war led Rome to provide weapons for their soldiers, albeit not without some cost to the latter. These circumstances of war also led to other changes in military policy. As campaigns grew longer, the Romans realized the impossibility of soldiers being able to supply their own provender. This came to be collected for by the Commonwealth and, like the weapons it bore, was distributed to the army, with the cost of his victuals likewise deducted from the soldier’s pay. This pay itself was yet another modification in Roman procedure, one similarly caused So Gabba (op. cit, p. 9), who cites Polybius 6.39.15. Contra Nicolet (1978, p. 3), who argues that the initial set of weapons given to soldiers were free of charge, and that the milites only paid for the cost of replacements. The Greek reads τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις τοῦ τε σίτου καὶ τῆς 48

ἐσ ῆτος, κἄν τινος ὅπλου προσδε ῶσι, πάντων τούτων ὁ ταμίας τὴν τεταγμέν ν τιμὴν ἐκ τῶν ὀψωνίων ὑπολογίζετα. Gabba seems to render τινος ὅπλου προσδε ῶσι as “any needed equipment”, as opposed to the “any

equipment that needs replacing” of Nicolet, a reading which seems most unlikely. Gabba’s reasoning, therefore, is followed above. 49 Additional evidence to this effect will be provided below.

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by the lengthening of Roman expeditions. These eventually extended beyond the agricultural off-season, and as a result money was disbursed to the milites to compensate them for the financial loss that such prolonged absences from their farms would cause. To raise the sufficient funds for the supply of food, salary (stipendium), and arms for its soldiery, the Commonwealth levied on those its people who met certain property requirements a tax known as the tributum.50 Numerous references in Livy, others in Polybius, and epigraphical evidence all make it a practical certainty that the Allies did likewise,51 and at least in one case, did so by direct Roman compulsion.52 In addition, then, to supplying weapons for their men, the socii also furnished their food and payment, presumably by means of taxing its citizens for the required funds. In this, the Romans and Allies were at one point both alike encumbered financially by the requisites of military service, each by their own respective governments. However, this state of affairs would change as a result of the battle of Pydna in 168. After the great victory of L. Aemilius Paullus there, such astronomical sums were brought back to Rome in the form of both spoil and taxes—ones which had formerly been paid to the defeated Perseus but were now paid to Rome—that until the very end of the Republic the tributum was no longer levied on the Roman people.53 There is no indication 50 Nicolet (1976, p. 20–21) seems to indicate that the tributum was levied only for the payment of soldiers, although in a later article (1978, p. 2) he makes clear his belief that this tax furnished for food, clothing, raiment, and replacement weapons (see earlier note). 51 These are all collected and analysed by Nicolet (1978, p. 1–11). 52 During the Hannibalic War twelve Latin colonies had pleaded inability to provide the troops asked for by the Romans as grounds for their refusal to do so. When the imminent danger had passed, Rome visited these colonies with a number of punishments for their shortfall which included the institution of a census conducted on the Roman model and a payment of tributum to be deposited in the treasury on Rome for the payment of soldiers supplied by those colonies in future wars; so Toynbee, p. 17–20, 115–116, citing Livy 29.15. See also Nicolet (loc. cit.). 53 So Nicolet (1976, p. 1–12). This is not, as that author hastens to remind the reader, that Romans no longer paid taxes of any kind (they

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that the Romans used these Eastern funds to supply and feed the Italians who served with them, and in fact there is compelling evidence to the contrary.54 See, for example, Appian (1.1.7), who continued to pay port duties, for example), nor that the Romans were no longer liable for the tributum, just that it never needed to be collected from them between 167 and 43. See also Nicolet (1978, p. 7–8) and Brunt (1971, p. 21 and note 5, p. 21–22). 54 So Keaveney (1987, p. 15 and note 27, p. 20). Salmon (1982 p. 84 and note 198, p. 318) refutes the assertion that the Romans supplied the Allies on active duty with rations made by Tenney Frank (and, by extension, by Rosenstein, who makes the same claim himself on page 30 with supporting note 16 on p. 204, and repeats it on pages 49 and 64). Salmon argues that this assertion is based on a misinterpretation of Polybius 6.39.13–15, whose Greek text reads σιτομετροῦνται δ᾽ οἱ μὲν πεζοὶ πυρῶν Ἀττικοῦ μεδίμνου δύο μέρ μάλιστά πως, οἱ δ᾽ ἱππεῖς κρι ῶν μὲν ἑπτὰ

μεδίμνους εἰς τὸν μῆνα, πυρῶν δὲ δύο, τῶν δὲ συμμάχων οἱ μὲν πεζοὶ τὸ ἴσον, οἱ δ᾽ ἱππεῖς πυρῶν μὲν μέδιμνον ἕνα καὶ τρίτον μέρος, κρι ῶν δὲ πέντε. δίδοται δὲ τοῖς μὲν συμμάχοις τοῦτ᾽ ἐν δωρεᾷ.

This passage often translated to suggest that these victuals were given to the Allies by the Romans for free; it is rendered by the Loeb translation of W.R. Paton, for example, as “the allowance of corn to a foot-soldier is about two-thirds of an Attic medimnus a month, a cavalry-soldier receives seven medimni of barley and two of wheat. Of the allies the infantry receive the same, the cavalry one and one-third medimnus of wheat and five of barley, these rations being a free gift to the allies” (emphasis added). However, the very next sentence states that the Roman soldiers themselves had their rations deducted from their pay by the questors ( τοῖς

δὲ Ῥωμαίοις τοῦ τε σίτου καὶ τῆς ἐσ ῆτος, κἄν τινος ὅπλου προσδε ῶσι, πάντων τούτων ὁ ταμίας τὴν τεταγμέν ν τιμὴν ἐκ τῶν ὀψωνίων ὑπολογίζεται).

It is very difficult to see how the Romans would provide free food to the Allies while charging their own soldiery for their corn. Furthermore, the Greek could be translated in such way as to state that the Allies did not deduct the cost of rations from the pay they issued to their own soldiers, as the Romans did with theirs, and hence the grain by which the Allied soldiers were fed was “a gratuity to the Allies” (in the sense that these themselves did not pay for it as much as their taxpayers at home did). Based on the passage of Appian cited, it seems far more likely that the Allies adopted a more enlightened policy towards providing food for their men than that the Romans paid for this food on their behalf, and thus the arguments of Salmon (and Nicolet, who argues the same points; 1978, p. 7) are more convincing. For this reason, they are followed here.

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notes that “the Italians became few and lacking in manpower, having been wasted by poverty, taxes, and military service” in the time before the Gracchi (τοὺς δ᾽ Ἰταλιώτας ὀλιγότ ς καὶ δυσανδρία κατελάμ ανε, τρυχομένους πενίᾳ τε καὶ ἐσφοραῖς καὶ στρατείαις; emphasis added). In this passage, Appian uses a word—εἰσφορά— which carries the specific connotation of property tax paid for military support, implying that the Allies still paid this at the time of the Gracchi and therefore after Pydna.55 It is reasonable to assume that the continued to do so later still, probably right up to 91. Thus, it seems to be the case that the Italians not only furnished vast numbers of men for Rome’s armies, but did so entirely at the expense of their own taxpayers, a cost which was not exacted from Roman citizens in support of their own contingents. As has been seen, after some early experimentation with the foedera they had made with their Italian Allies which had given the latter some room for maneuver in terms of what had been expected of them, the Romans eventually struck agreements with their socii whereby the Italians provided soldiers for Rome’s use whenever these were demanded. These soldiers were fully equipped and fully supplied at the expense of their native communities, expenses almost certainly met through taxation. The Romans were therefore able to use these men without having to pay for them, and indeed while the Romans themselves were relieved of the hindrance of taxation for the purpose of supplying their own soldiers after 167, the Allies still shouldered this onus. However, the price of this service in the economic sense was not measured only in the amount paid in taxes. There were others, ones which increased as the nature of Rome’s warmaking changed over time. Before the beginning of the second century BCE, the military activities of the Romans and the Allies were largely confined to Italy. These campaigns were not always of brief duration, but the comparatively short distance travelled from home by both Romans and Italians meant that soldiers could remain engaged with their This was noted by Nicolet (op. cit., p. 7–12), who likewise takes note of the use of εἰσφορά. Moreover, he provides additional evidence for the continued assessment of stipendia amongst the Allies after 167 even in the absence of an express statement to that effect in the sources. 55

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communities, with their families, and—importantly—with their farms, such that the deleterious effects of their absence from these on campaign could be managed before things got utterly out of hand. By the late 200s, however, Roman involvement throughout the ancient Mediterranean had brought with it increasingly lengthier terms of service for its armies. Among other assignmens, such service regularly involved deployment for extended peacekeeping purposes in the east, as well as interminable pacification efforts in Spain, whose unfriendly climate, hostile and warlike natives, and small opportunity for easy victory led to an especial dread of being dispatched there.56 Horror stories of legions kept abroad for sixteen years at a stretch were apparently somewhat embellished, though six-year continuous tours of duty did not seem to be uncommon. The psychological effects of such prolonged absences can only be guessed,57 but the economic impact on small farms can be more readily appreciated, especially in the aftermath of the Hannibalic War during which devastation of fields was a common occurrence. Moreover, there was at this time a great increase in pastoralism and transhumance farming, which required great tracts of land for pasturage and led the owners of the flocks to attempt to acquire such land by means of buying or seizing whatever was available.58 Increasingly fields were obtained for this purpose by the purchase of the farmlands of debtors, and this practice led, in time, to a decline in the numbers of yeoman farmers, on whose manpower the Roman army had always Toynbee, p. 53–55. Toynbee speculates on some of them, particularly those generated by travel to such faraway places as the Greek Middle East, quite literally on the other side of the known world; see p. 61–63. 58 For a discussion of the importance of flocks to large-scale farmers (id est, to those who used land to make money as opposed to subsistence farmers), see Morley (p. 67–68, 151–158). That author cites the low transportation costs of animals, the relative lack of labor intensity for caring for them, and the Roman demand for meat, cheese, and wool, all of which combining to convince wealthy agriculturalists to devote land to flocks, and, eventually, to seek more for them. In addition, Brunt (1972, p. 32–38) provides a more detailed description of the decline of small farming in the face of transhumance. 56 57

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depended. In turn, the diminution of the numbers of these farmers led to increased burdens of service on those who remained. Thus, a vicious cycle ensued: yeomen farmers would be called to service of long duration; their lands would suffer in their absence, leading to debt; their farms would in time be lost to debts; with the loss of their property the former farmers were no longer eligible for service; and finally Rome’s pool of potential soldiers decreased all the more.59 If this was true for the Romans, it cannot be doubted This is the picture painted by Stockton of the situation in Italy by the 130s (p. 6–21). It is, however, important not to overestimate the impact of this trend, as has been pointed out by a number of other scholars. In the first place, Rich has observed that the changes in agricultural practice certainly had not affected enough Roman small farmers that the Commonwealth simply could not find enough adsidui to staff its legions due to lack of numbers; if there were occasionally difficulties in recruiting men, he asserts, it was due to the unpopularity of the commanders or the perceived unprofitability of service, not to a lack of men eligible to bear arms (p. 287–305). Rich is in turn cited by Rosenstein, who goes further and suggests that lengthy service and even the death in battle of the men taken from farms to fight would not automatically result in impoverishment or the decline of those farm (especially doing so in chapters two through four of Rome at War, p. 26– 141). This having been acknowledged, it can be offered in response that neither scholar claims that the decline of Roman small farms and their seizure by wealthy landowners did not ever happen. Both instead claim that it did not happen often enough to bring about a “manpower crisis”. Hence, the sequence of events described by Stockton did probably occur and probably frequently, even if the consequences may not have been quite as dire for the Romans as he implies. Additionally, matters might very well have been different for the Italians, and probably were. In the first place, as has been seen, their communities suffered the hardships imposed by taxation, as the Romans did not, at least after 167. In the second, Roman small farmers were aided in their ability to gather enough food both to support themselves and to sell for cash to defray their debts (and Rosenstein does not take sufficient account of debt in his portrait of the small farm enduring in the long absence of its menfolk) through their use of the ager publicus. Rosenstein is certainly aware of this, and repeatedly stresses the importance of the public lands for the Roman small farmer. Allied small farmers, however, 59

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that it was as true for the Allies, and was perhaps even more acute for them. It would be especially so if, as many scholars speculate, the Romans kept the Allies in the field long after they allowed their own units to return home.60 This situation is given emphasis in the sources due to the fact that it was said to have been observed by Tiberius Gracchus during his travels through the countryside of Etruria en route to military service in Spain (Plutarch, Ti. Gracc. 8; Appian, 1.1.9). Such may not have had legal access to Roman public land. Even if the Allies did use it illegally (for which see chapter 3), they could always be pushed off of it, either legitimately by those entitled to its legal use, or by force by those who were not but were more powerful. These latter could have been either Roman or Italian (for seizure of the ager publicus see also Morley, p. 79–81), but the result would be the same: deprivation for these small farmers from land which might otherwise have been of great assistance to them. Nor would an Allied soldier’s pay have necessarily have made the difference, as Rosenstein asserts. The indication from the sources seems to be that in the Roman army pay was distributed at the end of the campaign (or, later on, at the end of the year), not at its beginning. Those who had died in the meantime could not collect it, and there is no evidence that this money was ever sent to the families of the deceased. If the Allies adopted the Roman model, as they almost certainly had, then their small farms and the families on them would be in the same position as those of the Romans upon the deaths of soldiers. Rosenstein’s argues that “by drawing off a large number of young men from a population suddenly deprived of much of the land that had formerly enabled it to feed itself, Rome brought its victims’ agricultural resources more into balance with the demands placed upon them. In this way, Rome palliated at least somewhat the impact of conquest upon the agrarian economies of its victims” (p. 79). Even so, the changes in use of land coupled with long tenures in the army may in fact have been quite deleterious to the Italians (and more so than to the Romans), even if not catastrophically so, for the reasons cited above. 60 So Adcock (p. 19), Toynbee (p. 130–135) and Salmon (1982, p. 119–120 and note 353, p. 200). The latter cites a fragment of Lucilius as evidence that Allied soldiers served in Spain for up to eighteen straight years, though this evidence is flimsy at best. Rosenstein (p. 44) also cites evidence for Allies being kept in the field when the Romans were allowed to go home taken from Livy (43.9.3; 45.12.10–12).

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observations would eventually lead him, by his own admission, to attempt to provide a remedy for the Roman victims of it by means of his agrarian legislation, about which more will be discussed in the next chapter. It is not unlikely that the sources themselves may have exaggerated this state of affairs somewhat, especially if they were influenced by the speeches of the Gracchi, or by propaganda spread by them. As it happens, there are indeed some indications that matters do not seem to have been as dismal as Gracchus himself made them out to be,61 and since it seems to be the case that the Gracchi had designed these laws at least in part to serve their own political ambitions, it would be in their interest to magnify the danger such laws were supposed to diminish so as to get them passed. Even so, it is almost certain that, if the inopia bonorum was not yet as overwhelming as it was made out to be by the Gracchi, it was very close to being thus. Nor was the problem apparently solved by the subsequent Sempronian legislation, due to the various barriers put up against its successful enactment. In fact, since the measures of these laws seem to have been aimed at helping Roman citizens alone—or, if that was not the aim, that was at least the result62—but at the same time involved reclaiming the ager publicus from all its illegal occupants whose numbers seem to have included quite a few Italians, it might even have exacerbated this situation for the Allies. More on this will be discussed in the next chapter. Therefore, in addition to those deriving from the costs of fielding soldiers, the Italians were further subject to the economic pressures created by the absence of those soldiers on protracted campaigns and the resulting lack of men to manage farms. This could and likely did lead to the failure of these farms, and as a consequence to a reduction in the numbers of men eligible to contribute to Rome. Worse, this was also occurring at the very time when Roman demands on Italian manpower were at their greatest. 61 So Nagle 1973 (p. 386–372), who points out that archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture was actually in far better shape in Etruria and elsewhere in this very period than Gracchus lets on, about which more below. 62 See Appendix B.

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Of course, precisely how exacting these demands were is difficult to quantify, since it is not certain just how many men Rome demanded from any of its individual socii at any one time. In theory the Allies must have been liable to offer Rome all of its men who were suitable for service, but it does not seem likely that Rome would often demand so much. Instead, the Romans seemed to have given the Allies a certain number of men they were to contribute, the so-called formula togatorum, which called for men from Allied peoples in numbers which varied from community to community.63 How the Romans arrived at this number is unknown. It may very well have been one that was fixed for each community at the installation of its foedus, or, as is perhaps more probable, it may have risen or fallen based on information derived from a census conducted by Allied districts.64 Based on available annalistic data it can be guessed how many total soldiers the Allies collectively provided, and approximately the amount each people provided as an aggregate, but with rare exceptions it cannot in turn be discerned how many came from each individual oppidum and what percentage of the overall available Allied manpower this contribution represented, either to the population in question as a whole or to its individual settlements. It is not difficult to conjecture that it was probably a considerable number of the ablebodied men of each community.65

As claimed by Salmon (1982, p. 169–170). The latter is advocated by Brunt (1971, p. 40–41, 57, 545–548) and Salmon (loc. cit. and page 206 note 498), who is vehement in his belief that a fixed number would not have been feasible. For the opposing view, both cite Toynbee 1.424–427 (Brunt also cites Beloch, but notes that he later changed his mind, p. 546 note 1). For such a census amongst the socii, see Nicolet (1978, 4–7). 65 This data is provided in the first hundred pages of Brunt (1971) which are grounded in census figures from 225; based on the Hannibalic War and the effects of that war on the economy, agriculture, and eventual birth-rate in Italy and Rome, Brunt therefore argues that what the Romans and Allies could muster in 91 was very close to the numbers that had been available in 225. 63 64

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If the Allies did conduct a census, as it seems that they did,66 then the contribution they would make to the Roman army was probably similar to the manner in which the Romans assessed their own contribution to their armies. This was done based on census ratings and property qualifications, with those Romans selected to comprise a legion who theoretically could have supplied his own arms and provisions, even though the actual need to do so no longer applied. For the Roman citizen, military duty was a munus, which could not be evaded without stiff penalties. Similarly, for the Allies, supplying men was also a duty (in this case imposed by treaty), and the Romans were inclined to be just as harsh to those Italians perceived as attempting to shirk it as to their own citizens who attempted to do so.67 Yet there were ways whereby Romans could avoid military service if they so desired, options which were not available to the Allies. At Rome, if the unpopularity of conscription was made manifest enough, the consuls could have the levies cancelled, something which seems to have happened in the year 140 (as related by the Oxyrynchus Epitome of book 54 of Livy). If no consul did so, the tribunes could act directly to stop the dilectus, which they did in 151 and again in 138 by imprisoning the consuls (Per. 48, 55). They could also forbid the consul to leave with his army, as the tribune Ti. Claudius Asellus unsuccessfully attempted to do in 140—it was apparently an eventful year—until the consul Q. Servilius Caepio drove off the tribune’s lictor at sword-point (Caepio cos. intellegens Ti. Claudium Assellum trib. pl. interpellantem profectionem suam lictorem stringens ensem deterruit; Oxyrynchus Epitome of book 54).68 Citizens could be spared duty in this manner. Nor, apparently, did their ability to do so end with magisterial action. A closer look at the imprisonment of the consuls in 151 and 138 show that the tribunes acted, less because they wished to impede the dilectus itself, See, again, Nicolet (loc. cit.). See, for example, the by-now well-known incident of the twelve Latin cities during the Hannibalic War which pleaded inability to provide their required number of men and the Roman response to it, discussed above and in Toynbee (p. 17–21) and Nicolet (loc. cit.). 68 Discussed in Brunt (1972, p. 397–398) and Salmon (1967, p. 306– 307). 66 67

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and more because the consuls did not allow exemptions from it for certain cives. The steps taken by the tribunes imply that such strictness was unusual, and that other consuls had been more lenient. It is known that at least one of them, Q. Fabius Maximus, took very special care in his raising of supplementa from those who had not already served in the Carthage and Greek wars just recently concluded, restricting himself to those who had not done service up to this point (φειδοῖ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τῶν ἐκεῖ εν ἐλ λυ ότων κατέλεγε πρω ας, πεπειραμένους; Appian, Hisp. 1.11.65).69 The

οὐ

πρὶν

πολέμου

counterparts to these men amongst Allies could not necessarily be so spared even had their local mustering officers been inclined to exempt them, since Italian numbers were not raised by the dilectus but by a predetermined number; if that number demanded that some veterans of lengthy serviced be called back into it, the Italians would be compelled to comply. Nor, apparently, did cancellation of the dilectus at Rome relieve Allies from contributing their quota: it is to be observed that for all of the years just mentioned—151, 145, 140, and 138—one of that year’s consuls would be seen later leading men into their provinces. These supplementa almost certainly included Allies, something directly stated about those of Fabius in 145. All of this was true even though it can be inferred that military service was even more unpopular amongst the Allies than the Romans, given that they were still subjected to taxation to supply their men. Possibly as a consequence of this inability of the socii to avoid service, the Romans increasingly made greater and greater use of Allied numbers: Velleius Paterculus claimed that a principal complaint of the Italians was that their numbers defended the imperium of the Commonwealth in which they desired the citizenship, furnishing twice as many men as Rome did (2.15.2). Modern scholarship seems to confirm that, by the year 91, this claim was not far from the truth.70

As noted by Brunt, loc. cit. So Brunt (1971, p. 686); Salmon (1982 p. 80) suggests that this may have been an overstatement for the Hannibalic War but implies that it was probably true for the beginning of the second century (1967 p. 306). 69 70

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The above examples show that military service was on occasion a much resented assignment amongst the Romans, and that this resentment increased towards the end of the second century. It may have been more onerous if the conditions which Gracchus described in the process of seeking to pass laws to remedy them were indeed reflective of what conditions in Italy actually were, since these conditions would mean that, as the pool of manpower diminished, so would the burden required of each Roman soldier who remained in it increase exponentially (as noted above). The Allies have no voice for this period, but it can hardly be doubted that their irritation was equally acute. As far as the Romans were concerned, the difficulty of raising soldiers from the Roman citizen body came to a head in the year 107, when something of a solution was found due to the actions of Gaius Marius. While more will be said of him in chapters 3 and 7, of import at the present is the solution which he found. The election of Marius to the office of consul in the aformementioned year brought with it the (deliberately sought) commission to conclude the war with Jugurtha in Numidia. Upon accepting his new command, Marius sought reinforcements for the army then in being in Africa, and was given the right to hold a supplementary draft. This was conceded by his political enemies in the hopes that his demands for soldiery from a citizen body, one already tired of war and ill-disposed for further service, would lead to his unpopularity unpopular and put a check on his political success (Sallust, BJ 84).71 Marius, however, side-stepped this pitfall by means of an innovation: instead of conscription, the new consul In reference to the unpopularity of service in 107, see Brunt (1971, p. 401 and note 4, p. 407), who describes how, just two years earlier, the consul M. Junius Silanus repealed an unknown series of laws which Asconius (68.C) describes as “reducing the amount of military service required” (leges … quibus militiae stipendia minuebantur; Cicero himself apparently suggested that they rem militarem impedirent in the passage under commentary). Perhaps Silanus blamed a dearth of men for his lack of success against the Cimbri (Per. 65, Velleius 2.12.2). At any rate, such a repeal would likely have been wildly disliked, but the fact that it nevertheless passed suggests that the shortage of men must have been acute. 71

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instead called for volunteers, and included in his call even those Romans who had hitherto not had sufficient property qualifications to be accepted into the legions (the so called proletarii or capite censi). The numbers Marius intended to raise were probably not large, as he only needed reinforcements and not an entirely new expeditionary force,72 but the numbers he actually got were apparently even more than he has sought (aliquanto maiore numero quam decretum; Sallust, op. cit. 86). The possibilities presented for the future use to which men raised in such fashion could be put were fairly staggering. For this reason, while the recruitment of proletarii was vilified at the time and for some time to come (as seen in the language of Plutarch’s description of it and in a brief notice in Valerius Maximus,73 both written centuries after this step was first taken), the Senate made no move to put a stop to it nor to abolish it as an option in the future. From 107 on, then, Roman citizens were less and less likely to be drafted into service (though they would always remain eligible for it),74 and instead saw their legions manned by volunteers who

So Brunt, op. cit., p. 407, and Evans, p. 74–75. Marius. 8; Val. Max. 2.3.1. 74 Brunt (1971, p. 407–408, reiterated in 1972, p. 15) argues that the real significance of the reforms of Marius is not that conscription was ended, but rather that it was extended even to the hitherto ineligible proletarii, and that the idea that legions consisted of volunteers was “an illusion”. Of the former proposition there can be no doubt: certainly conscription did continue at intervals throughout the remaining years of the Republic, and just as in the case of the laying of the tributum after 167, so did the Romans remain susceptible to conscription even after 107. However, the idea that conscription now fell primarily on the capite censi is not persuasive: the examples Brunt cites are all drawn from accounts of times of the most dire emergencies, but in times of dire need the proletarii had always been liable for service, as Emilio Gabba has conclusively demonstrated (1976, p. 5–12). That fact did not change after the reforms of Marius. Instead, Gabba is far more convincing in his assertion that after 107 more and more of the proletariii looked to military service as a profession deliberately entered into, and that after Marius, the legions of the standing armies were drawn from those volunteering for such a career. These, of course, could be supplemented by conscripts as need be, and 72 73

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somewhat more enthusiastically accepted the call for military duty as an opportunity for employment and advancement.75 This, again, meant that for Roman citizens, undesired military service could increasingly be avoided after 107. With the legionary quotas filled by poor men looking for a career under the colors, it does not stretch the imagination to suggest that members of the upper and middle economic class in Rome could, and doubtless did, elect not to serve at all (with the exception of those who wanted a political career, as military service remained a prerequisite for eligibility to run for office). If this was true for the Romans, there is no concrete evidence that it was thus for the socii: there are no indications in the sources that the Allies adopted this innovation of Marius and accepted volunteers for their quota to Rome from their own lower economic classes76. If they did not, the responsibility for raising, and serving when combined with the contributions of the socii, such numbers would almost be adequate for Rome’s need for manpower. 75 On the other hand, see Rich (p. 327), who argues that the volunteers would have been few after Marius. This, he argues, is because “(f)ew commanders would have been as ready as Marius to brave the senate’s (sic) disapproval or could have offered attractions comparable to those which had made men flock to serve under him”. However, this assertion is unconvincing, and Rich supplies nothing by way of evidence which would support his claim. 76 Gabba (op. cit., p. 16) argues that they did not do so, though the evidence he cites is comparatively flimsy, coting for this purpose merely one line of Sallust. That line (BJ. 95.1) describes the arrival of Sulla to the camp of Marius in Africa with some Allied cavalry he had gathered: Ceterum dum ea res geritur, L. Sulla quaestor cum magno equitatu in castra venit, quos uti ex Latio et a sociis cogeret, Romae relictus erat. Gabba seems to impute to the verb cogerat in this passage the sense of “compelled”. However, as this verb is not infrequently used to mean “collect” without a connotation of coercion, Gabba’s assertion is hardly impregnable. Badian, for his part, responds to Gabba’s assumption (made in its original form, as an article published in 1949), or, more appropriately, raises the question— unanswered by Gabba—as to why the Allies would not have recruited in a similar manner (1958, p. 197 note 5). It should be noted that Badian does not himself attempt to provide answers to it, however. Nicolet, for his part, is content to leave the matter as an unknown quantity (1978, p. 11).

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as, soldiers for Rome would have remained squarely on the shoulders of those of the socii eligible for conscription, the equivalent of the Roman adsidui who would have been drawn from the wealthy and the middle class. Since these were, in addition, the very people on whom taxation would most likely have been levied, the entire onus for the military obligations of the socii would have fallen upon these men, who would therefore have paid far more for the cost of Rome’s wars than any Roman citizen would have after 167.77 It is easy to see how the Italians might have felt ill-used financially by the military demands of the Romans, whose own citizens were progressively liberated from the loads their leaders imposed on the socii. The men whom they sent to the legions were paid, equipped, and fed from the taxes they extracted from their own communities, an affliction from which the Romans had been able to extricate themselves. Their men were gone for lengthy periods, longer than the Romans alongside whom they fought, and in their absence the farms of all but the wealthiest undoubtably suffered,78 some of which—and perhaps many of them—beyond recovery. Assuming that the Allies adopted the same property qualifications for their soldiery as the Romans did, the failure of 77 Even if they had raised recruits in the Marian manner, the upper classes from amongst the Italians would probably have found it far more difficult to raise volunteers than the Romans did. The Roman commanders could always entice recruits with the promise of land, for example, which the Allies did not have at their disposal. A Roman volunteer could expect to retire to the relative comfort of a farm after his service, while an Italian volunteer had no such assurance. Furthermore, even if, by use of the equivalent of capite censi, the wealthest Italians could evade direct service, they would still have had to come up with the funds for their pay, nourishment, and arms from taxation, as has been seen. A “proletarianization” of the Allied contingents may therefore have lessened the weight on their upper classes, but only to a slight degree. 78 Even Rosenstein does not go so far as to suggest that small farms did not have to absorb some sort a financial debility, as has been seen. Without the labor of the men who were away fighting, less land could be cultivated, and in turn less of its produce could be sold, a fact which he does not try to deny. Instead, he merely argues that this damage did not necessarily have to be irreparable (p. 63–106).

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these farms meant that the men who occupied them would no longer be qualified for service; this would mean a correspondingly greater imposition on those who were still eligible for it.79 Nor could this imposition be escaped, as it could be by Roman citizens. In fact, the very ability the Romans possessed for eluding the standards seems to have forced the Commonwealth to make up for the shortfall by beckoning even more Allied soldiers. For all these reasons, the Allies paid substantial sums to fulfill the manpower stipulations of their foedera, more indeed than the Romans did. However, this inequality was not only limited to the fiscal expenditures; as difficult as these were, almost as difficult was the considerable differences in the ways that the Allied soldier was treated once he presented himself in arms. Though he fought at Rome’s behest, the Italian miles was not a Roman soldier, and profound distinctions existed between the two in terms of their experiences in the camp, on the field, and at war’s end, distinctions which were almost never beneficent in their operation on the socii. These distinctions and the sentiments they almost certainly engendered will be explored more extensively below.

4. THE DRAWBACKS OF ALLIED FOEDERA: TREATMENT OF ALLIED SOLDIERS When the Roman army took to the field, it was manifest to both the Roman and Allied milites in it that, even though they bore the same equipment,80 fought in the same fashion, engaged in the same maneuvers, and in many cases spoke the same language (see According to Rich, however, loss of property may not have mean disqualification from military service. His speculation is that many censors may have been reluctant to believe that the erstwhile adsidui had really lost sufficient wherewithal, and cites passages in Appian (1.1.7, which does not entirely support his assertion) and Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 8.3, which is more persuasive) to support his claim. Even is this was the case (and it is by no means certain that it is), it does not alter the fact that the law still claimed that a loss of sufficient property meant a corresponding loss of liability for service, and the fact that occasionally the censors might not have chosen to believe that some men were too poor to fight does not imply that they never recognized the restriction. 80 So Keppie, p. 22. 79

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below), there were nevertheless significant differences between them. These differences were reflected in the diversity in the way they were treated. Some of these disparities were innocuous enough. For example, at one point Allied units were placed exclusively on the wings of the army during combat, though this seems to have changed over time. Presumably as an echo of this ancient deployment, when encamped, the Allied soldiers—in groups known as alae, “wings”—placed their tents on either side of the Roman legions, from whom they were thus kept apart.81 Additionally, individual Allied units or turmae were commanded by officers from their own people, who were usually magistrates from their home towns. These variations were minor and were almost certainly not met with acrimony, even if they subtly illustrated the separations between Romans and the Italians who served with them. Other differences in treatment were greater, and not improbably more annoying. These might have included the fact that, while the command of smaller Allied units were held by Allied officers (as mentioned above), command of larger ones—cohortes— were almost always commanded exclusively by Roman officers known as praefecti sociorum, as were their cavalry by Roman praefecti equitum. These officers were drawn from the Roman equestrian class and may often have been quite young, with the result that seasoned veterans and senior magistrates who happened to be Italians could have found themselves under the direct command of Roman youths. The reverse—Allied officers commanding native Roman soldiers—never occurred, and it is not difficult to conjecture that this fact gave rise to pique from time to time.82 Furthermore, it went without saying that the overall command of the united army was under a Roman general, and according to Livy umbrage at this was voiced at least once.83 Keppie, p. 22–23; 36–37. So Hill (1952, p. 29), Keppie (p. 22–23), and Salmon (1982, p. 170). 83 Implied in the Campanians terms offered to Hannibal in 216, of which one was that no Catrthaginian general ever hold command over them (ne quis imperator magistratusve Poenorum ius ullum in civem Campanum haberet; Livy 23.7) See also the discussion above. 81 82

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Yet even these distinctions were, in the grand scheme of things, not of overly great import, even if the slight on Allied command abilities may have been vexatious. In many ways it was probably comparatively easier to bear than the actual danger which Roman commanders posed to the Allied soldiers—and in many ways, disproportionately to the Allied soldiers—under them, which was a much larger issue. Part of this danger came from Roman discipline, which was notoriously harsh and often involved the meting out of humiliation and even death for even the slightest of infractions. Both socii and Romans were subjected to it, but the Roman citizen was in a sense protected on the field from excesses of severity in a number of ways. In the first place, a citizen’s commander was either a former or a current magistrate who needed the vote to continue in office, to secure future honors such as a triumph (which by custom needed the approval of both the Senate and the people),84 and to maintain the popularity of his name in front of the Roman people for the sake of his descendants. Anything which would bring about odium would be avoided by a sensible politician,85 and since a reputation as a martinet would almost certainly provide such an odium, a general would probably be inclined to be more lenient to his own men in light of the fact that their votes and their voices might someday be important to him. Moreover, by probably as early as 191 the two most feared punishments—the flogger’s rod and the death penalty—could no longer be visited upon Roman citizens following the passage of the leges Porciae.86 Non-Roman citizens, however, lacked both Payne, p. 41 (though see Chapters 3 and 6 and the supporting notes). 85 For the importance of fame and name-recognition see Flower, p. 60–90. 86 For limits on scourging specifically, see Cicero (In Verr. 2.5.163, Pro Rab. Perd. 12), Sallust (Cat. 51.20); Livy (10.9.4). The latter source also mentions that the leges Porciae forbade the death penalty for military infractions (as does Cicero’s Pro Rab. Perd. 8 and Sallust Cat. 51.40), although it is implied by that author that this protection extended from civilian execution without right of appeal. This did not necessarily prevent soldiers from being executed for military infractions per se, but rather kept them from being summarily killed on the spot. Cicero suggests the same 84

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protections, and this is borne out by evidence of several occasions on which Roman commanders visited fairly brutal penalties on Allied soldiers for battlefield errors. The Periochae of Livy’s book reports that, during the Numantine War in 134, P. Scipio Aemilianus, in the successful attempt to restore order to the army, commanded that Roman soldiers found out of ranks be beaten with vines—they could not be scourged—while socii were to be beaten with rods. Worse, according to the same source (Per. 51) that commander also ordered deserters be thrown to the wild beasts during gladiatorial shows he put on after the overthrow of Carthage in 146; Valerius Maximus also took note of this but adds, significantly, that it was only extararum gentium transfugas (“Allied deserters”) who were so treated (2.7.13). The Epitomator suggests thing (De Repub. 2.54). Even so, Nicolet (1988, p. 109) notes that there were examples of decimation after the passage of the leges Porciae, though a passage in Plutarch mentions that the practice had been of long desuetude when it was revived by Crassus (Crass. 10). Furthermore, the majority of ancient passages which mention decimation date from the Caesarian civil wars and beyond (see entry in Smith, p. 327), which seems to confirm that by 91, at least, decimation had not been visited upon cives for some time. Nicolet himself is willing to concede that the leges Porciae protected citizens from execution on the orders of the consilium without appeal, and therefore comes into alignment of opinion with the assertion made by Salmon (1967 p. 307) and Keaveney (1987, p. 14–15) that the leges Porciae removed the threat of the death penalty and essentially eliminated the danger of execution on the spot. As to the date of these enactments, Nicolet places there enactment to the early second century (p. 321). A passage in Festus (266–268) mentions that an M. Cato spoke about shoulders and the injuries of flogging, and likewise had cross words with an M. Caelius (pro scapulis cum dicit Cato, significat pro injuria verberum. Nam complures leges erant in cives rogatae, quibus sanciebatur poena verberum. his significat prohibuisse multos suos cives in ea oratione quae est contra M. Caelius). Since Aulus Gellius reports that M. Porcius Cato (cos. 195) had crossed words with an M. Caelius (M. Cato ... in oratione, quae inscripta est si se Caelius tribunus plebis appellasset, 1.15.9; Idem Cato in eadem oratione eidem M. Caelio tribuno plebi vilitatem obprobrans non loquendi tantum, verum etiam tacendi; 1.15.10), it seems probable that a law against scourging dates to Cato’s officeholding, either to his praetorate in 198 or his consulate in 195. For this see also Oakley, p. 132.

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that in this Scipio had taken as his model the behavior of L. Aemilius Paullus, his biological father and commanding general at Pydna, who according to Valerius (2.7.14) had similarly ordered Allied deserters to be placed before wild elephants and trampled in 168. Even as late as 107, a Latin is seen being to death by scourging for dereliction of duty, as the affair of Turpilius during the Jurgurthine War indicates (Sallust BJ, 66–69); Plutarch suggests that Marius was responsible for it so that it would prove distressing to his then-superior Metellus, due to that general’s guest-friendship with the condemned man (Marius 8). A Roman commander who wished to inspire fear as a disciplinarian could therefore demonstrate such tendencies on the Allies, on whom an example could be made without fear of potential political repercussion.87 The differences in treatment between Roman soldiers and their Italian socii may have carried even more perils than those offered by Roman rods and axes. There is evidence that the difference between the Roman soldier and his Italian ally extended even to their battlefield use. Roman commanders, after all, desired the gloria which came with victory,88 and sometimes victory required maneuvers which would claim a high rate of casualties even for the most masterful of tacticians. Furthermore, sometimes brute force could carry the day when strategic brilliance was lacking, which it seems that it occasionally was.89 If victory could be purchased with high casualties, then often commanders would have found this a bargain worth making. On the other hand, a general who acquired a reputation as a butcher would also very likely find himself extremely unpopular amongst his men. This led The extraordinarily limited voting rights of whatever Latins happened to be in the city (see above), dependant as they were on being allowed to stay there and not be expelled ahead of time (more below), and casting all ballots in one randomly determined tribe, must have been so negligible as to have been ignored in these contexts. 88 For the importance of warfare and, more importantly, victory to the Roman governing class, see Harris (1979, p. 17–41). 89 Adcock suggests that a lack of strategic brilliance in Roman commanders might have been the case for much of the Commonwealth’s history, when good soldiers and simple tactics did more to win battles than genius (p. 16–17, 105–108). 87

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to a difficulty: as was just mentioned, it was in an imperator’s interest to remain popular with those of his men who mattered, and these would be the citizens, since they could express their displeasure by means of the vote. For these reasons, a commander would likely have been inclined to be sparing in the hazards to which he exposed citizens through overly risky tactical decisions. If such decisions could not be avoided, then they would logically have to be shifted to the Allies, whose voice did not matter. At least one scholar has noted that it seemed to be the case that Roman commanders assigned particularly dangerous objectives to Allied units in just such a way; in his particularly eloquent phrase, the Romans were frequently prepared to fight to the last Italian.90 Furthermore, particularly unpleasant types of service, in addition to the deadliest ones, could also have been dealt to the Allies for the same reasons, and it appears such duties were thus assigned (see the aforementioned extended service in Spain). Hence, both the treasuries and the actual persons of the Italians were taxed far more severely for the purpose of fighting Rome’s wars than were the Roman citizens whose forces they augmented. The obligations of their foedera with Rome as far as the commitment of soldiers were not entirely to the detriment of the socii, however. As mentioned above, the Romans kept the peace in the peninsula and played a significant role in its defense from foreign invaders. There were, in addition, more tactile benefits to service alongside the legions, in the form of the spoils of conquest. Roman victories almost always involved praeda (loot), at whose collection the methodical thoroughness of the legions guaranteed the extraction of everything of value to be gotten and drew the commentary, if not the admiration, of Polybius (6.10). Of this, everything which was not specifically designated as manubiae (more 90 Credit for this splendid maxim belongs to Salmon (1967, p. 307), who cites the high casualty rates suffered by Italians as reported in the sources; Badian also mentions the high casualty rates of socii and likewise attributes them to Roman tactics and the use those tactics made of Allied soldiers (1958, p. 149). Toynbee (p. 133–135), too, makes such an observation, drawing conclusions from a telling passage in Livy (40.40) listing enormous numbers of Allied losses compared to those suffered by Romans in the same engagement.

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below) was, by Roman custom, to be divided equally among all the soldiers, a partition which included the Italians. In fact, this right was specifically included in at least one foedus, the ancient foedus Cassianum,91 although it does not seemt to have been amongst the terms of most foedera. An Allied soldier could, then, find opportunities for enrichment by fighting in the Allied cohortes, especially if his tour of duty took him to places where wealth was in abundance and the fighting was frequent but not particularly difficult, like the Greek East. Even these benefits could occasionally turn sour, however. In the first place, the socius might draw service in Spain, where the fierceness of the natives as well as the lack of established, ancient towns led to few opportunities for sack and despoliation. Furthermore, even when victory did bring ample supplies of plunder, there was no guarantee that the Italians would see any of it: cities which were not sacked but surrendered apparently had their spoil designated as manubiae, whose ultimate destination lay at the hands of the commander of the army. Manubiae, a category into which fell land, objets d’art, and certain large articles taken even from 91 So Sherwin-White (p. 22). Theoretically this applied only to the Latins, but there is no evidence to suggest otherwise than that all Italians were given equal shares. Mouritsen (1998, p. 43) supports the hypothesis that the Allies received an equal amount, at least of the moveable goods, as do Keaveney (1987, p. 15) and Badian (1958, p. 150–151). Salmon, on the other hand, disagrees, arguing that the Romans always got a larger share of the praeda (p. 126), and that by 177 the Allies got only half as much (1967, p. 309). However, the evidence cited for this claim consists of a contrast between two passages of Livy, specifically 41.13 (where the Allies are given only half as much of the spoil as the Romans in 177; more below) and 45.40 and 43 (where they are given equal shares in 167). Salmon seems to be arguing that the unbridled joy with which the latter act was met indicates that the disparity of 177 had become the rule and that 167 was thus the exception. However, the evidence can point in exactly the opposite direction: the joy shown by the soldiers (and it is not specified that only the Allies were jubilant) could have been at the large amount they were given in 167, and the sullenness of the Allies in 177 could—and most often is—interpreted to mean that their treatment in this episode was exceptional.

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cities which were sacked,92 was apparently public property earmarked for being put to use to benefit the Republic. It was within the prerogative of the general to liquidate this property and distribute the money to the soldiers, but he could alternatively decide to hand all of it over to the aerarium or devote it to public projects such as temples or aqueducts.93 Spoil used in this fashion would thus render no benefits to those Italian soldiers94 whose own homes or communities were not thus adorned.95 Admittedly, this sort of allocation did not happen often, since Roman soldiers grew to expect their share of loot directly, as opposed to enjoying the indirect benefits of tax relief, more ample water, or more splendid temples. Commanders therefore did not often devote all of their campaign’s loot to such public benefits, lest they risk the displeasure of their men which could, again, express itself at the

For this definition of manubiae see Churchill (p. 91–93). That manubiae was public property in the care of the general with certain acceptible uses is the argument of Churchill’s article (loc. cit.). In this he opposes the earlier assertion of Israel Shatzman (p. 177–205), who claimed that commanders could do with the manubiae whatever they liked, including keep all of it for their own use. 94 In fact, the aqueducts might actually have been positively harmful to the Allies. Morley (p. 104–105) reports that Roman use of water was sometimes a source of great inconvenience to the areas which depended on the rivers for agriculture. More on this point will be found in some of the notes supporting the text to follow. 95 So Nicolet (1988, p. 119) and Flower (p. 70). There are indications that from time to time Roman commanders would send gifts to Allied communities: Scipio Aemilianus made a restoration of the treasures plundered by Carthage, both to Sicily (Cicero makes many allusions to this in his speeches against Verres; notice of it is also found in Valerius Maximus 5.1.6, Per. 51, and Appian’s Punic Wars 133) and perhaps also to Italian towns (Eutropius 4.12.1). Similarly, Lucius Mummius is alleged to have distributed statues and paintings amongst the Italian towns following his triumph (Oxyrynchus Epitome of Livy’s book 53; Cicero, In Verr. 2.155, de Off. 2.22.76; Strabo 8.6.23; and several references in Pliny’s Natural History). These appear to have been the exceptions rather than the rule, however. 92 93

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polls.96 Because generals were also allowed to split the proceeds of the manubiae between the treasury and the men (the portion which went to the latter was then divided equally), and since apparently the Senate also grew to expect that the aerarium receive some share of the spoil,97 the commanders would most frequently elect to exercise this option. Still, the fact that it was always a possibility that the aerarium would get all of the loot and the soldiers none of it must not have been lost on the Italians, who would have been further aware that their opinion of the matter would not have had a jot of influence on the decision of the Imperator. Worse still, while mos dictated loot was to be distributed evenly when it was distributed, lex apparently did not so dictate.98 Equal apportionment of the spoil could, it seems, be denied to the Allies, as it was in 177, when Livy records that C. Claudius Pulcher gave only half as much to the Italian allies as to the Roman citizens in his army and that the fury of the former was displayed by their silence in following the commander’s triumphal car.99 While this seems to have been an isolated incident, the fact remains that it was not an illegal one: Claudius was apparently perfectly within his rights to give the Italians less. Perhaps more importantly, the Romans seemed to have kept the land they won, as opposed to the moveable property, mostly to themselves. There is only one recorded episode in which Allies received any land seized by Rome after a victory, and in that episode each Roman soldier received ten

Shatzman (p. 188–198) provides examples of the anger of the troops when commanders did exercise the option of not distributing directly, as does Nicolet (loc. cit., whose note 9 cites Shatzman’s article). 97 Shatzman (loc. cit.) also provides examples of the Senate’s anger when this was not done. 98 Save, again, in the case of the foedus Cassianum cited above. 99 C. Claudius consul ... tulit in eo triumpho denarium trecenta septem milia et victoriatum octoginta quinque milia septingentos duos. militibus in singulos quini deni denarii dati, duplex centurioni, triplex equiti. sociis dimidio minus quam ciuibus datum. itaque taciti, ut iratos esse sentires, secuti sunt currum; 41.13 (emphasis added). 96

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iugera of land apiece, while the Latins (who are the only Allies mentioned as taking part) got only three.100 The message must have been clear to all the non-Romans serving in the Roman army that they were always liable to receive less of a reward for their actions than the full citizens. To be sure, sometimes they were given an equal share of loot as the rest of the soldiery. Yet if the commander followed the custom and gave part of it to the aerarium or to the city in the form of a public work, then some percentage of what they might have been able to collect from plunder, after battles in which they had fought just as hard and had risked just as much as the Romans (if not more; see above), would go to Rome and to the benefit of the Romans alone. Perhaps all of it might be so disposed, leaving Allies with nothing. Allied soldiers marched alongside Romans, fought alongside Romans, and carried arms and armor which rendered them indistinguishable to the outside observer from the Romans. Presumably they also fought just as hard and just as well, especially in light of what could happen to them—but not their Roman counterparts—as a penalty for poor performance. Nevertheless, the Romans certainly knew the difference between themselves and their Allies, and they acted accordingly. Kept apart from the Romans in camp, at all but the smallest of levels socii were never commanded by one of their own, as the Romans were. Rather, all of their officers were Romans, who punished Italian infractions more ruthlessly than they did those committed by Roman citizens. In combat they were often sent into the most perilous of situations to win victories for Romans without the shedding of an undue amount of Roman blood. On some occasions they would reap the same rewards as Roman soldiers, but in many cases they would not: some or all of the spoils their fighting had won belonged to the Roman commander, who could at his discretion use that spoil in such a way that the Italians would see less of it than his Roman counterpart, or indeed none at all. The Roman imperium could 100 Eodem anno, cum agri Ligustini et Gallici, quod bello captum erat, aliquantum vacaret, senatus consultum factum, ut is ager viritim divideretur ... diviserunt dena iugera in singulos, sociis nominis Latini terna; Livy 42.4 (emphasis added). But see Badian (1958, p. 149, note 5).

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indeed be quite profitable to the warriors whose steel contributed to the campaigns fought to add to it, and the Italians must have recognized this. However, they must also have been compelled to recognize that, as non-Romans, their own profit would be small indeed in comparison. Nor was this only true of soldiering. The empire the Romans and Italians had won also brought many other opportunities for enrichment than simply praeda. However, here again the Italians found themselves increasingly more limited in the wealth that could be gained and protected than were those Romans engaged in the same enterprises. These enterprises, and the impediments which were encounted by the socii (but not the Romans) who were taking part in them, will be described below.

5. MERCHANTS, CONTRACTORS, AND OVERSEAS VENTURES

Italians serving in the alae sociorum with Rome’s legions may, from time to time, have met with some wealth by means of their share of spoils that were taken from defeated enemies (if, of course, that spoil was to be shared at all). In addition, some of them may also have come across other chances to win fortunes by means of the Empire, namely through trade abroad. Italians became increasingly more prominent overseas as merchants and traders in the period following the Hannibalic War. While it seems that there had existed activity of this sort amongst the Italians earlier, it increased dramatically in the second century, establishing a greater foothold in areas where Roman influence had become paramount alongside the Roman merchants (negotiatores) also engaged in the same undertakings there.101 It is likely that many of these merchants had at some point served in the cohortes which had been sent into these Hill (1952, p. 79), and Gabba (1976, p. 76–77) both observe that, while doubtless some Italians had always ventured abroad for trading purposes, their trade began in earnest after 202. This line of reasoning is also followed by Keaveney (1987, p. 4–5). For a discussion of some of the agricultural goods which the Italians were known to have exported, see Morley (p. 147–150); doubtless a great deal of these goods were destined for lands exterior to Italy. 101

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areas, had seen first-hand the possibilities to be found there, and had came into contact with locals in the process.102 Indeed, the fact that—like the Romans—they came from Italy, were engaged in trade in the same fashion as Roman negotiators,103 and in many cases had initially come to the area first as soldiers or sailors serving with the Roman armies and navies, had led to their identification with the Romans. In the Greek East the terms Ῥωμαῖοι and Ἰταλιώται became synonymous,104 both used interchangeably to describe Romans or Italians no matter what the latters’ actual community of origin. Such an identification would obviously be useful on certain occasions. As representatives of the conquering peoples, Italian So Badian (1968, p. 17–18, 96 n. 4), who observed that the free port of Delos eventually drew a large number of merchants who had once been in Rome’s Allied contingents, and specifically from Oscan-speaking regions. This echoes the findings of Frank (1913, p. 242), who notes the overwhelming presence of Oscan names in inscriptions on that island and attributes this to the fact that it had been socii from Southern Italy who had served in the fleet as Rome’s “naval allies”. Gabba (loc. cit.) also observes the connections between the military and the merchants in Italy, noting that many Italian businessmen trading in lands brought under Rome’s sway were connected to the upper classes in their home communities, and would thus have likely served as officers in the Allied contingents supplied to the Romans (see also notes 55 and 56, p. 222– 223). 103 That they often worked closely together has been demonstrated by excavations at Delos, which shows a number of inscriptions containing non-Roman Italian names in the Roman merchant colony there; so Frank and Gabba in the places already cited. As far as Roman negotiatores in the East, it was once commonly supposed that the interests of Roman businessmen were confined to tax-farming and that that their involvement in other trade was light (see, for example, Badian 1958 p. 152, and Hill 1952, p. 49). This has recently been shown to be in error, as Gabba himself admits as much in his chapter in the Cambridge Ancient History (p. 106–108), where he explicitly contradicts his own earlier statement that the Roman businessmen confined their interests to the West and Spain rather than the Greek East (1976, p. 229 in notes 111–112). 104 As pointed out by Badian (1958, p. 149 note 3) and Gabba (loc. cit.), among many others. 102

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merchants would have been accorded the same measure of respect as would the Romans. This perhaps accorded them some protection from time to time from disgruntled natives who, for fear of the might of the legions, might otherwise have been tempted to offer violence to them. The Romans themselves must often have had similar difficulties differentiating Romans from socii, especially if those socii were Latins and thus indistinguishable in language and custom from the Romans themselves, and as a result the Roman governors and the legions they commanded probably did provide a measure of protections to the Italians under their purview.105 Moreover, to the extent that their interests coincided, the Italian merchants enjoyed the results of whatever influence Roman negotiatores had on Roman foreign policy. These advantages notwithstanding, the Italian merchant would have faced difficulties abroad which would not have confronted his Roman counterpart. In the first place, incomprehensible sums of potential wealth in the form of Roman contracting were automatically closed to him because they were reserved for Roman citizens. The Romans hired contractors to furnish weapons, clothing, and supplies for the army, which, given the broad extent of Roman military involvement at this time, would likely have been lucrative enough in and of itself. However, they also probably employed contractors for the sale of captured

So Badian (1958, p. 152), who cites the fact that the Senate interceded to protect Italians who ran blockades set up by Carthage in the third century and refused Achaean requests to put a stop to such activity in 149 (as reported in Polybius) even though the Commonwealth had no interest in the wars into which the Italians had thereby inserted themselves. Elsewhere, he notes the campaign of M. Antonius to suppress the Cilician pirates (1968, p. 52), which Sherwin-White suggested was an indirect action on Rome’s part to help the Italian negotiatores, since control of piracy would benefit them as well as the Romans (p. 142). As events at Cirta would show, however, Rome’s active role in protecting Italian merchants of any citizenship, Roman or Allied, was apparently somewhat limited, a point made by Hill (1952, p. 95). 105

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spoil,106 definitely availed themselves of the services of contractors for the operation of state-owned works, and—most significantly— employed them as collectors of taxes (publicani) in the provinces.107 All of these were apparently awarded only to Roman citizens,108 a fact which, if not unfair on its own, must have been lamented by the socii. Additionally, because Italians were not Roman citizens, they could have no vote in those elections which determined what consuls would be elected and thus which men would ultimately be sent to serve as governors of the provinces.109 In fact, they would have no voice in foreign policy whatsoever, which would not only affect them as soldiers and taxpayers, but might also affect their business interests. Unlike their counterparts amongst the Roman commercial class, the negotiatores from the Allied communities had no input as to where or when Rome would commit soldiers, how long they would stay there, or how the relationship with overseas communities and Rome would be decided.110 Of course, in some ways they could count on the Roman commercial class to work on their behalf to the extent that they 106 Hill (op. cit., p. 49) describes the entrepreneurs who accompanied the Roman armies and essentially liquidated the praeda for cash; the opportunities for enrichment thereby are manifest. 107 A summary of contracting opportunities are found in Hill (op. cit., p. 52–59). They include: the manufacture of weapons; operations of stateowned mines, fisheries, and forests; collection of rents from ager publicus (scriptura), harbor duties (portoria), and all other taxes owed to the Roman treasury, either from its citizens or from its overseas subjects; and responsibility for transport of food. Morley (p. 6) and Brunt (1980, p. 85) also comment on this last. 108 So Brunt (1988, p. 127). 109 Save, again, the very restricted voting rights of Latins who happened to be present in the city when voting was done. 110 The relationship between the Roman ruling class and Rome’s overseas entrepreneurs is difficult to define precisely. They were certainly close (see Hill, op. cit., 50–51; Wiseman 1971, p. 78–79), and the merchants could thereby possibly command a great deal of indirect influence on Rome’s foreign policy. Harris (1979, p. 93–102), in fact, gives several convincing arguments for why their influence in that realm might be considerable, and the extent to which it affected the Roman state.

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and the Italians had a common interest. This sort of things happened during the 120s, when laws were passed to help them by the Gracchi and their associates: as a check on the more flagrant abuses of power by their magistrates, the Romans did grant to the Italians the right to bring charges of repetundae (extortion) against Roman governors in Roman courts. Likewise, C. Gracchus had passed laws which determined that the courts for hearing such cases be made up of the Roman equites111 as opposed to Senators. On the surface that seemed as if it would be beneficial, since it was argued that the former—defined as such by their lack of elected office—would be more inclined to prosecute Roman governors than the peers of these governors in the Senate would (as the latter were themselves ex-magistrates and Senators). Since extortion, either of merchants or provincials, would be bound to create a hostile climate and indeed create a situation where less money could be spent on goods, restraining it must have been seen as good for business. Nevertheless, it apparently did not take long before the courts were turned to far different purposes than intended: those negotiatores from the Roman equestrian class whose negotia was the collection of taxes now had an instrument whereby, due to their influence over friends and relatives who sat on the courts, they could compel the promagisterial governors to allow them to collect as much as they could squeeze out of the provinces through threat of prosecution of any governors who attempted to restrain this. From fear of this outcome, many promagistrates were now kept from interfering in the collection methods of the publicani, could not put a curb on the interest rates that financiers charged, and could even be forced to use the armies at their disposal to collect outstanding debts.112 By means of their rapacity, the Roman 111 Stockton, p. 139; for a more detailed discussion of the Gracchan extortion laws, see next chapter. 112 So Harris 1979, p. 96. For examples of the abuses of the courts of repetundae, see Hill (1952, p. 101–113, 128–131), all culminating in the infamous case of P. Rutilius Rufus, who was prosecuted for extorting a province which then welcomed him in exile, effectively demonstrating the illusory nature of the charge. About this case more will be discussed in the next chapter.

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publicani often themselves impoverished the provinces,113 making it even more difficult for the Italians to conduct trade there. Furthermore, their greed not infrequently led to hatred against all Italians. This would, on occasion, explode into violence, with the innocent negotiatores and guilty publicani slaughtered alike, as happened at Cirta during the Jugurthine War in 112.114 The sequel to Cirta is illustrative of a final point: after a desultory invasion by a Roman army, Jugurtha was able to use his wealth and contacts in Rome to negotiate a peace (although that would end messily). Without the vote, the Italians could play no part in any future declarations of war to punish him and avenge their slain compatriots, even though that war would eventually be fought anyway. The rise of Roman influence in the Mediterranean had in part been accomplished through warfare, and the Italian who fought in those wars might find himself with some extra coin through spoil. Service under the eagles also introduced those Italians to areas of the world that they had not seen before and to the opportunities for commerce there, and those eagles similarly accorded protection to whatever Italian and Roman negotiatores could be found in the regions to which they were sent. Since the locals had a difficult time discriminating between socius and Roman, the Allies were also endowed with what the respect the nomen Romanum could conjure. But the Italians were also apparently subjected to whatever animosity was levelled at all Ῥωμαῖοι, in whose number the Greeks were far more inclined to place the Italians than the Romans were. At the same time, they were confronted with the certain knowledge that their discomfiture would not necessarily result in action on Rome’s part; if they sometimes enjoyed the protection of Rome’s legionary umbrella, they were also well aware that this umbrella could not be moved though their appeals alone. What was perhaps more galling still was that such antipathy towards all Ἰταλιώται was probably engendered by Romans taking advantage of a way of accumulating riches which was closed to the socii, namely by the Hill, op. cit., p. 68–69. In fact, according to Sallust (BJ 25), most of the inhabitants of that city were Italians, not Romans. 113 114

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collection of taxes as contractors. Such employment, as well as the providing of transport, food, weapons, and clothing for Rome’s armies, were reserved for citizens. While the Italians engaged in foreign commerce were eventually protected from the rapacity of Roman administrators, they could not always be protected from fallout from the rapacity of Roman taxmen, which sometimes put their lives in danger. Just as in the army, Italians engaged in moneymaking ventures essentially took greater risks but reaped smaller rewards than the Roman citizens alongside whom they worked. It can hardly be doubted that these facts were a source of choler for the Italians, but initially it seemed quite likely that they would not be antagonized by their treatment at Roman hands all that often. For a citizen of a state considered a socius of Rome, the military alliance which bound the two together might mean that he would be called to serve in the Roman army from time to time, and would mean that he would pay taxes whether he served or not. Beyond that service, his contact with the Romans may—if he so desired—have been limited. Quite probably the wealthy and the powerful from the two respective communities would have had stronger ties, since the ruling class of the Allies would be the ones directly dealing with the Romans. The élite would likely also have deliberately sought out that contact or been sought out for it by means of the cultivation of guest-friendships.115 This was probably especially true if the member of the élite had chosen to go into overseas trading. For the non-élite, that closeness need not have existed; non-merchant small farmers could have kept to themselves and lived under the reasonable expectation that the Romans would leave them alone when not in the ranks, an expectation that seems to have been realized for a time.

Mentioned in Badian (1958, p. 154–155) and elaborated upon by Wiseman (1971, p. 28–29, 33–38, 47–64), who describes the process by which bands of hospitium might have come into being and the advantages which could be expected as a consequence from both sides. The Marsi seem to have enjoyed a particular closeness with the Romans, which is of great significance for the events of 91–88 (see chapters 3–6). 115

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Such a state of affairs also began to change over the course of the second century, as Rome began to play a more active role in the affairs of the peninsula. Its role in keeping the peninsula safe from internal military conflict has already been described, but in stages the Romans were more and more often either asked to intervene in other matters, or took such intervention upon themselves. Such interventions will be described in the pages to follow.

6. ROMANS AND ALLIES IN ITALY As described above, the foedera which united Rome and the various Italian communities with which they were concluded left the latter as independent, sovereign states. Generally speaking, it seems that the Romans did not have much of a desire to impinge upon that independence beyond the military demands it made, leaving to the Allies the tasks of running their own domestic affairs. However, on some occasions the Romans did involve themselves more intimately with the non-military lives of the Italians. Many of these episodes took the shape of Rome responding to a request for help, as it did by coming to the aid of the Etruscans and Umbrians when they were wracked by serf uprisings in 196 (Livy 33.36), by helping to end the civil war in Venetia amongst the Patavians in 174 (41.27), by ridding Apulia of highwaymen and brigands in 185 (39.29.8), and by giving relief to those same Apulians when they were suffering from a plague of locusts in 172 (42.10). Similarly, the Romans were called in by Pisa and Luna to settle a boundary dispute in 168 (Livy 45.13), as they had seventeen years earlier when they were invited to settle the disputed boundaries between Nola and Neapolis, though according to Valerius Maximus there apparently had been some chicanery in the settlement of that earlier dispute.116 Roman activity amongst the Allies under such The episode is worth reporting in full, using D. R. ShackletonBailey’s Loeb translation: “Q. Fabius Labeo was appointed by the senate as arbiter to fix boundaries between Nola and Neapolis. Arriving at the scene, he advised both separately not to be greedy but to go backwards from the nodal point of the dispute rather than forwards. Both sides did accordingly, swayed by his authority, leaving a tract of unclaimed land in the middle. Then having fixed the boundaries as the parties themselves 116

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circumstances was probably much appreciated by those who were helped by it.117 Likewise, the building of Roman roads through Allied territory—another intrusion of sorts—was probably also appreciated, if not perhaps always at first.118 Nevertheless, on other occasions Roman involvement was more intrusive, as in the case of their suppression of the Bacchic had determined them, he awarded whatever ground remained to the Roman people.”(Val. Max. 7.3.4a). Ths anecdote is clearly derived from Cicero’s de officiis 1.33, who notes that this was not arbitration, but swindling (Decipere hoc quidem est, non iudicare). 117 Activity of this kind is discussed by Badian (1958, p. 146–147, discussing arbitration) and Sherwin-White (p. 128), who attributes it to a “growing sense of responsibilities towards the Italian allies” amongst the Romans. On the other hand, Mouritsen holds that Rome’s arbitration was merely the result of no one left to arbitrate, and when the Italians could settle their matters amongst themselves, did so (1998, p. 143 and note 20), while Salmon (1982, p. 93) argues that “energetic measures to minimize the effects of floods, fires, famines, earthquakes and other natural disasters of a wide-ranging kind” sapped the Italian tendency towards selfreliance, and elsewhere suggests such sapping had been purposeful: Rome wanted the Allies to be dependent on them (1967, p. 311–313). 118 Potter (p. 132–133) suggests that there was a “huge impact that the vast works of engineering must have made upon the local populations”, which may not have always been positive. For example, there was the fact that the roads going through Allied land would require those socii to give up the territory upon which those roads would be built, and they would also have to endure disruption caused by construction and by the army of workmen—which was sometimes the army itself—engaged in that building. Nevertheless, the resulting improvement of infrastructure would more than compensate for the land involved and the inconvenience of the presence of the workmen, especially since the aerarium paid for these improvements; so Wiseman (1970, p. 125, 144–146). Indeed, Wiseman additionally observes that by means of his road-building initiatives C. Gracchus had made himself very popular with “a multitude of contractors and artisans” (ὁ δὲ Γράκχος καὶ ὁδοὺς ἔτεμνεν ἀνὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν

μακράς, πλῆ ος ἐργολά ων καὶ χειροτεχνῶν ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτῷ ποιούμενος, ἑτοίμων ἐς ὅ τι κελεύοι, καὶ ἀποικίας ἐσ γεῖτο πολλάς; Appian 1.3.23), with the

implication that these were possibly Italian workmen and artisans hired to build the roads by the Romans who had acquired the contracts. (1971, p. 44; also note 3, p. 139)

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cult in 186. There were also apparently other laws passed from time to time at Rome which demanded certain kinds of behavior from the Allies, even if the laws were not necessarily binding on the whole of Italy (which would be inconsistent with Italian independence as guaranteed by their foedera).119 These occurrences illustrate that the Romans were on occasion willing to take a more active position in the domestic lives of their allies, whether invited or otherwise. Such domineering behavior soon led to abuse, a term which might well be used to characterize Rome’s occasional use of Allied cities either as safe havens for those it wished to protect or as prisons for those whom they wished incarcerated.120 It almost So Keaveney (1987, p. 29–30). Into this category may fall Rome’s laws forbidding use of rivers for agriculture in ways which might diminish Rome’s water supply or make rivers like the Tiber more difficult to navigate; for these see also Morley (p. 104–105). Harris (1971, p. 108–113) discusses others of these statutes and their possible ramifications on the Italians. It is his opinion that these were exceptional, and that Roman need for Italian manpower would preclude their over-involvement in the internal affairs of Allied communities, which would violate their sovereignty. Mouritsen (1998, p. 39–58) agrees, and even goes so far as to suggest that even the Bacchanalian suppression was not extended to the Italian communities, an argument which is, however, not very persuasive. 120 Instances of this type of quartering are noted in several passages in the ancient sources; they include Livy 32.26, where it is narrated that conspirators of a foiled slave revolt were stationed in Latin towns; 45.42, which describes how noble prisoners from the Macedonian War were established at Carseoli and Alba; 45.43, where the responsibility for the exiled Gentius king of the Illyrians was placed on Iguvium; Pausanias 7.10.11, which describes how Etruria became the holding cell for 1000 Achaeans in 167; Diodorus Siculus 37.16, where it is told that in 91 the Cilician pirate Agamemnon was freed from prison in Asculum, where the Romans might well have kept him since 100, the year after Antonius celebrated his triumph over the pirates; and Appian 1.5.42, where Venusia is shown to have looked after Oxynta son of Jugurtha (these latter two instances would be the cause of Roman headaches in the Allied War, as will be seen). Some of these instances are noted by Harris (1971, p. 110– 111), and others by Mouritsen (1998, p. 43 note 16, although additional examples provided there all date from the Hannibalic War and thus may have been temporary wartime measures). 119

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certainly applied to the affair of L. Postumnius Albinus. This man, as consul in 173, went on a trip through Praeneste and sent ahead his demands for lodgings, pack animals, meals, and an honor guard from the city, even though according to Livy (42.1.8, where this anecdote is narrated), pack animals, food, and tents were customarily furnished by the Republic to consuls that they not be burdensome to the Allies. This incident had actually been motivated by a petty personal grudge, as it seems that Postumius had once gone to Praeneste as a private citizen to attend a religious service and had not received any form of recognition from the city, which infuriated him (Livy, loc. cit.). Still, by acquiescing to his demands the Praenestines opened the door for future consuls to behave as Postumius had done, and presently Livy asserts that the example was indeed followed. This would seem to be corroborated by a speech of Gaius Gracchus preserved in Aulus Gellius, which recounts how a consul ordered a local magistrate at Teanum Sidicinium to be flogged for not having the public baths cleaned and available for his use on arrival and how a praetor had done likewise at Ferentinum (10.3.1–3). Since Gellius avers that he had gotten the anecdote from a published speech of Gracchus made while the latter was promulgating some of his laws, so it may be wondered whether the tribune may have been exaggerating somewhat. Yet that he was not can be inferred from a similar episode recounted in a speech made by Cato preserved in the same author (10.3.17–19). This one involved the consul Quintus Thermus, who had had local magistrates in what was probably Etruria, where he had been stationed for his war against the Lugurians (Livy 34.56), out to the lash for not having attended properly to his supplies.121 Moreover, during the same year as the incident at Praeneste, the censor Q. Fulvius Flaccus practically destroyed a temple of Juno in Bruttium to gain access to its roof tiles, which he wished to use on a temple of his own which he had

121 Gellius also cites an episode quoted by Gracchus in which a young man who was not yet a magistrate had a Venusian flogged to death for a jest made about his litter (10.3.5).

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vowed in Rome (Livy 42.3).122 This behavior was apparently disapproved of by traditional moralists, but nevertheless the very fact that it occurred at all suggests that Roman magistrates had progressively become more and more comfortable with the idea of treating their Italian allies with contempt, in the manner of a subject people. Such incidents, had they been perpetrated by Roman magistrates upon Roman citizens, would have been met with outrage that could have cost the offender his office, his property, and possibly even his life, but the Allies had no recourse, and in many of the above episodes they do not even register a protest. Finally, the ultimate intrusion into Allied sovereignty came with the Gracchi. A more complete discussion of these men and their associates, the laws they passed, and the events around them will take place in the next chapter. For this one, it will suffice to note briefly that the Gracchi concerned themselves extensiverly with the ager publicus, the tracts of lands owned by the entire Commonwealth as a whole, which they wised to apportion and divide amongst the Roman poor. This process, as will be seen, involved reclaiming enormous amounts from those who had used it illegally, Roman or otherwise. The passage of the leges Semproniae involved the confiscation of quite a bit of land held by Italians; some of this was held illegally held ager publicus, but some of it doubtless was their own legitimate property lying near Roman lands, a fact which the Roman assessors do not seem to have regarded with much compassion. This confiscation no doubt represented for many Italians the final alarm as to what their status relative to the Romans actually was: the Romans would now directly affect the everyday lives of many Allies with laws that could cost them enormous amounts of their property, laws which they had had no voice in making or approving and from which (barring The passages above are cited by Toynbee (p. 114–115), Badian (1958, p. 148), Mouritsen (loc. cit.), and Salmon (1982, p. 198 note 326, as well as more extensively in 1967, p. 323–326, where he suggests that since many of these episodes occurred in southern Italy, perhaps Sabellic ancestry of the people on whom they were visited encouraged such misbehavior). 122

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the intercession of a friendly magistrate) they could have no protection. It has been shown that in the second century BCE, Rome’s Italian allies were increasingly subjected to maltreatment at the hands of the Romans in a manner which more than suggested that the former were regarded as substantially less than equals by their ostensible partner in alliance. This occurred whenever Romans and the Italians came into contact, both under the vexilla, in the provinces, and increasingly in the peninsula itself. It is fairly easy to imagine that this attitude inspired a great deal of indignation, and this indignation was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that, through close contact with the Romans, the socii were drawing closer to them socially and culturally in a number of ways. As mentioned above, in the field socii and Romans fought the same enemies, used the same equipment, participated in the same maneuvers, were trained by the same drills, and were subjected to the same brutal discipline. As comrades in arms, the Italians faced the same hardships, suffered the same reverses, and gloried in the same victories, and they were doubtless proud and most certainly aware of their importance to the success of the ever-invincible Roman war machine. An illustration of this may be found in a report of Appian, who notes that, during the war between the Allies and the Romans the Marsi reminded themselves and their adversaries of that fact that no Roman had ever triumphed over the Marsi or without the Marsi (λεγόμενον πρότερον οὔτε κατὰ Μάρσων οὔτε ἄνευ Μάρσων γενέσ αι ρίαμ ον; 1.6.46). Adorned in battle array a socius must have been practically indistinguishable from a Roman whose identical arms and armor he wore, and indeed to his enemy no difference may have appeared at all. The equation made between the two by the Greeks would have been understandable, as only the most astute would have noticed that the Romans may have spoken a different language than their Allies. And this, of course, proceeds along the assumption that there was a difference in language, which by the end of the second century was by no means always the case. In addition to the Latins themselves, to whom it had always belonged, many of the Italians had picked up the Latin tongue through long acquaintance with the Romans. Latin would have been the language used by their commanding officers in the field, for instance, as well as the only language spoken by visiting Roman magistrates, assuming an anecdote provided by Valerius Maximus

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to the effect Romans on official business only spoke Latin that holds true for all foreign people and not just the Greeks (2.2.2)).123 This use, not to mention its employment in barracks, inns, and other places where Italians and Romans would gather together, caused the language to spread throughout progressively Italy, as inscriptional evidence shows.124 Likewise, in Italy itself Roman coins were the only ones used,125 Roman titles gradually supplanted Italian ones for the names of magistrates in Italian communities, Roman weights and measures became the standards employed, and in some areas even Roman dress began to be worn.126 In short, in almost every way the Roman and the Italian who had mastered his arms, language, and customs could not be told apart by outside observers, and even by themselves. 123 The full text is as follows: Magistratus vero prisci quantopere suam populique Romani maiestatem retinentes se gesserint hinc cognosci potest, quod inter cetera obtinendae gravitatis indicia illud quoque magna cum perseverantia custodiebant, ne Graecis umquam nisi latine responsa darent. quin etiam ipsos linguae volubilitate, qua plurimum ualent, excussa per interpretem loqui cogebant. Greeks are the only ones mentioned here, and that this was indeed the policy towards the Greeks seems to be corroborated by the testimony of Cicero. In that orator’s second speech against Verres (4.147), he relates how he once was visiting Sicily and addressed the Syracusan Senate in Greek. Despite the fact that he was not at that time a magistrate, he was criticized for doing so. Valerius suggests that one of the reasons Romans behaved in this way is to deprive the Greeks of their ability to weave a mist of words around the Romans, but he continues that the practice was followed scilicet Latinae vocis honos per omnes gentes venerabilior diffunderetur. This suggests that they acted in the same manner towards more succinct peoples, such as the Italians. 124 So Brunt (1988, p. 112–120), Salmon (1982, p. 21–23, 88–89, 122– 124, 154–156), and Harris (1971, p. 169–181). However, see Mouritsen (1998, p. 79–83), who argues that this “Latinisation” of the Allies is an overstatement. 125 Salmon (op. cit., p. 70, 86–87, 98). This was not, Salmon argues, by compulsion, but apparently out of willingness to let the Romans take the lead and assume the expense of coining money. Likewise, Morley (p. 78) suggests that it was a stimulus to trade, since conversion rates could thereby be avoided. 126 Brunt, loc. cit.

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Nevertheless, in almost every theater in which there existed the potential for a difference in treatment between the two by those very Romans, the Italians came off the worse for it. On several occasions this was drastically underscored in Rome itself, when even freedom of the city was sometimes denied to Italians, who were bade to quit the metropolis by means of laws designed to expel them. To be certain, on some occasions these expulsions were executed at the requests of the Allies themselves—such was the case in 187 and 177—though no such request is given for the expulsions which took place in 173, 126, 122, or 95. While it is commonly accepted that these last were done because matters directly affecting the Allies themselves were being voted on, and thus there was a need to prevent illegal voting,127 it nevertheless must have been disruptive and insulting for the socii who were in the vicinity of Rome to have to depart from it, and sometimes even depart from it permanently. Just how badly the Italians took some of these laws may be derived from a passage in Diodorus, which describes a band of 10,000 men who were even tempted to take arms against the capital in the aftermath of an expulsion law of 95, men whose numbers were probably derived mainly from traders and merchants thrust out of the city (ὁ τῶν Μαρσῶν ἡγούμενος Πομπαίδιος ... μυρίος γάρ ἀναλα ών ... ἔχοντας ὑπό τοῖς ἱματίοις ξίφ , προῆγεν ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥώμ ς; 37.13, about which more will be

discussed in the next chapter). As long as they were not cives, such men could be forced to quit the capital at any time in a manner that never would befall a Roman citizen.128 But see Appendix C for one of these; see also Tweedie for another, as well as a more extensive discussion in chapter four. 128 Husband (p. 320–321) argues that the law of 126 was possibly, and that of 121 was definitely, only temporary and designed to prevent fraudulent voting. Baldson (p. 100) agrees (however, in the case of the law of Pennus his determination has difficulties; see Appendix C). These laws were applied to all non-Roman citizens, and the fact that the laws of 187 and 177 were requested by the Latins did not mean that all Allies were not subjected to it. Husband attempts to argue that only the second affected both Latins and Allies, but is not convincing. If anything, his examination of the vocabulary used shows that, if only one of the two laws affected the Allies as well as the Latins, it would have been the first of the two. More 127

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7. CITIZENSHIP AS REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES It cannot be denied that the Roman government demanded a great deal from the Allies, and in the pages above many of these demands have been described. An attempt has also been made to illustrate some of the benefits that accrued to the Allies through this association. Pains have also been taken to show that in spite of these, the Allies suffered far greater hardships due to their involvement with the construction of Rome’s empire than the Romans themselves did: both endured harsh Roman discipline, but it was visited on the Italians with much greater severity; both fought in the same battles, but it was often the Italians who drew the most difficult assignments and suffered the heaviest casualties; both were subjected to being called up for lengthy periods in faraway places, with a similar toll taken on farms and families in their absence, but the Romans could sometimes avoid unpleasant service in a way that the Italians could not, and—importantly— after 167 the Romans did not pay taxes, but Italian communities did. It has also been seen that even the rewards the socii could claim from Rome’s imperium were such that Romans nearly always received a far greater portion of them: Roman generals, not Italians, earned gloria, rank, and titles; spoil from looting which did not get divided amongst the troops would often be used to provide Rome, and not the Italian cities, with temples, aqueducts, and roads, and even if it was shared with the soldiers, the Italians could and sometimes did receive less; the taxes which flowed from provinces conquered by both Romans and Italians would wind up in the Roman treasury, not in those of the Italians, with the collection of such taxes reserved for Roman contractors; and while Italians could benefit from any Roman foreign policy which favored overseas commerce, they would have no voice in the making of that policy. Indeed, the Romans often extended their reach even beyond what was allowed to them by foedera and tampered with Italians in their own communities. All of this must have been extremely bitter for the Allies, especially since many of likely still, however, is that fact that both laws did so. Another expulsion of some foreigners took place in 115, but this only pertained to practitioners of the theatrical arts; see Noy, p. 45.

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them were so culturally similar to the Romans that outsiders could not tell them apart: alike in arms, armor, fighting ability, appearance, clothing, custom, and language, many of the Italians were so similar to the Romans that the Romans themselves could not tell them apart, let alone the Greeks. A way to resolve all of these difficulties for the Italians would be to become Roman citizens. On the one hand, the Roman civitas would certainly have been very valuable to the élite of a great many of the Italian communities, and the fact that it was they who were responsible for the ultimate decision to go to war in 91 is usually not disputed: as one scholar put it, “It was they who determined, in unison or by the will of a dominant faction, the course their communities were to take. Their ambitions and interests were decisive, and it is their motives in seeking the citizenship that we must try to discover, not those of Italian peasants who would for the most part be willing to follow the lead they gave”.129 On the other hand, while the assertion about the lower classes in that quotation might very well have been true, it seems difficult to imagine that loyalty to local potentates alone would motivate over 100,000 Italians (Appian 1.5.39) to venture in arms against a people whose battlefield ability had played a dominant role in subjugating a good deal of the known world, even if they knew that on the field they would be equals to their opponents in combat ability. In other words, while it seems fairly patent what the citizenship could offer the upper classes, these were of only a small percentage of the armies which fought against the Romans. The remainder would probably have needed some convincing to engage in such an endeavor beyond deference to their social and economic superiors. That they eventually were so convinced suggests that the citizenship was valuable to them, also. Of course, it is not difficult to imagine that the Italians of the lower and middle classes could easily have been persuaded to fight to bring an end to the many ways by which the Romans had exploited and oppressed them, which the citizenship would have 129 This remarkable phrasing belongs to Brunt (1988, p. 100), and is echoed by Keaveney (1987, p. 13): “Their role is almost always subordinate and supportive of those who were their lords”.

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done. As most of these would have come into contact with the Romans only in the camps, for the lower and middle classes of the Italians the citizenship would at the very least have meant a less strenuous military service. As citizens, the ways they had been used as soldiers would have to be altered due in part to their abilities to use their vote to protest maltreatment, and in part to the protection they would gain through the laws forbidding deadlier punishments. Additionally, citizenship would have guaranteed the quondam Italian soldier equal shares of distributed praeda, or freedom to come to the city to enjoy public works built with undistributed manubiae without fear of expulsion. As cives, Italians could also make use of the city for any other purpose to which they might put that access, such as the search for employment or markets for the sale of goods.130 It might also have meant the end of taxes or a great reduction in them,131 and an end to the brazen misdeeds of visiting Roman magistrates. For the upper middle classes (the equivalent of the Roman equites), civitas would offer more besides: the chance to compete for public contracts, to frame policy affecting commerce (and elect the men by which such policy was conducted) or at least vote on it, to halt future agrarian laws which might affect their holdings, and perhaps even barter their vote through direct bribery or for other commodities and enrich themselves that way,132 would all be acquired through the franchise. The citizenship would also mean public equality with the Romans, to complement the private 130 For the importance of the city itself as a marketplace and source of employment, see Morley (p. 51, 167–170). 131 As will be discussed in chapter 4, the result of extending the citizenship to the Allies would mean at the minimum that the Romans would have to pay their stipendia and furnish their equipment from the Republic’s funds, which might well have been so drained by the additional expenditure that the tributum would need to be reinstated. This might very well have played a part in Rome’s reluctance to grant the franchise, as will be discussed below. However, even if taxation were visited upon them as citizens, it would be diffused amongst all of the Roman citizens, whose numbers would be much greater by the inclusion of the socii. The result would be that the amount paid would almost certainly be smaller than what the Italians paid as non-citizens to furnish contingents to Rome. 132 So Brunt, op. cit., p. 127.

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equality that many of the upper classes enjoyed already.133 It might even present the possibility of joining Rome’s loftiest heights by means of officeholding, which would bring the concomitant ability to lead armies and win fama. Such considerations would almost certainly have led the Allies to come to want the citizenship, and then persuade them to seek it even if by arms. Independence, by contrast, would not have brought the same opportunities, although certainly it would have presented an end to many of the Allied causes for distress with the Romans: if cleft from them successfully, the Romans would be out of Allied lives forever, but that would also mean that the empire which the Romans had built would be denied to them. After all, the foreign nations within which the Italian merchants had done their trading had signed their treaties with the Romans. As long as the Italians were more-or-less joined to them, the easterners need not know the difference between Ῥωμαῖοι and Ἰταλιώται, but when parted they might have to learn with possible consequences not to Italian liking. Domestically, too, the use of the city would not be guaranteed to them, as it would be if they had acquired the franchise. An additional economic drawback would present itself for Italian communities which became independent in every way, in that they would still need to defend themselves; to do that they would need to have armies and, probably, would probably pay the same taxes to maintain them. Italian armies would also have to fight to protect themselves without Roman help, a military loss of some magnitude which may not have been balanced by the fact that all the rewards of victory, if achieved, would be entirely theirs. Independence was by this point probably something which could never be achieved anyway, as the more farsighted Italians probably would have recognized. The Italians would have to unite to defeat the Romans, who would—if past history was any indication—not let them go without a fight, and unless Rome was 133 For which see Wiseman (1971, p. 63). That this equality was not complete may be observed from the fact that all of the magisterial misdeeds described above, the ones quoted in Livy and Gellius, were directed by Roman aristocrats against Italian domi nobiles, their ostensible compeers.

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destroyed completely, the newly independent Italians would have to stay united if anything just to ward off future Roman attack and, if not that, to ensure the safety of the peninsula to which they would have gotten accustomed for the previous century. Thus, while some of the military debilities might be counterbalanced by a new nation-state (which some have argued was the principal goal of the Allies during the war) it would still in a sense not give the Allies full independence, as necessity would then compel the Allies to remain joined to each other. It is not unlikely that some Italians desired independence for all that, but the others would likely have seen that citizenship would mean not only liberation from the inequality, but full use of the benefits of Rome’s power and status. In other words, citizenship would be the only way whereby they could be partners in Rome’s empire and not be subjects to it, which is the very thing for which the sources state they went to war in the first place.

8. DISSATISFACTION WITH ROME AND THE ROAD TO WAR In the pages above it has been argued that the citizenship was a thing to be desired by the Allies due to the fact that on the one hand it would remove the unpleasant facets of their alliances with Rome, while on the other it would leave them with access to all the positive aspects and, indeed, to enjoy those advantages to their fullest degree. Such a desire eventually emerged amongst the socii, and it eventually led them to fight the Romans in 91. Nevertheless, it is one thing to ask and seek the answers to the question of why the Italians wanted the citizenship at all. It is another to ascertain why it is that this desire led to action, and why it led to that action when it did. The latter inquiry will be pursued in the following chapter, where it will be shown that events in the last half of the second century sharpened the desire of the Italians to gain the franchise until it reached an acuity too great to be resisted, and that the ultimate result was war.

CHAPTER 3: THE SPARKS TO LIGHT THE FLAME 1. THE QUESTION OF WHEN: WHY 91? In the previous chapter an exploration was made of the possible grounds for which dissatisfaction with Rome arose or drastically increased amongst Rome’s Italian Allies. This dissatisfaction was, it was speculated, directly attributable to the nature of the Allied connections with the Romans, and all which those connections implied. It should be reiterated that the possible grounds for dissatisfaction are in fact the only ones which can be described: the exact nature of Allied dissatisfaction remains uncertain, due to the fact that—for reasons observed in Chapter 1—the guidance as to their reasoning which can be gained from the primary sources has been severely limited. As a result, the investigation which was attempted into the cause(s) of Italian displeasure above was largely hypothetical. In the absence of reasons explicitly cited for their discontent, such reasons have been sought in part in the wellattested features of the treaties which bound the Italians to the Romans, ones which could reasonably be assumed to be irritants, and also in part from Rome’s documented behavior towards their socii. What specifically bothered the Allied has not been, and indeed cannot be, positively identified. Nevertheless, what is fairly certain is that the socii went to war due to a disjunction which they believed had come to existe between the way they felt they ought to be treated by Rome and they way they actually were so treated. In the oft-repeated phrase which stands as the only thing resembling justification for their mood to be found in the ancient authors, the Allies wanted to be “partners in Roman power, rather than its subjects.” If that was truly the case (and this essay holds that it is), the question thus far considered has been “What made the Allies feel like subjects?”. The series of conjectures and theories—which 139

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is, once more, essentially the best that can be done—have been offered in the previous chapter to try to answer that question. However, it is one thing to ask what in essence amounts to “Why did the Allies go to war?”. A somewhat separate line of inquiry is “Why did the Allies finally go to war when they did?”. As has been seen, while some of the (speculated) grievances may have arisen or become more acute over the course of decades or even centuries, others must have existed from the beginning of the striking of the foedera. If even a few of these latter did indeed exist (and almost certainly more than a few of them did), the tension caused by them might have rendered matters in Italy volatile for hundreds of years. Violence therefore might well have been detonated at earlier points, and if that is so, why did the conflagration occur in 91, as opposed to earlier than that? Alternatively, why did it not occur later? It will be the purpose of this chapter to find possible answers to this second line of inquiry; to seek, in sum, the answer to the question “Why did the Allies finally go to war when they did?”. The supposition of the previous chapter has been that matters in Italy were made inflammable due to the way the Allies were treated by the Romans, and that all that would be needed to set the peninsula ablaze in warfare would be a spark. The specific circumstances which aggravated the tensions mentioned above into actual combat—the spark, as it were—will be sought below. Pursuant to this aim, the first logical step would be to attempt to locate the moment at which the wheels of violence had begun to turn. Velleius Paterculus locates it in the tribunate of M. Livius Drusus, at whose death the “long smouldering fires of an Italian war were now fanned into flame” (2.15).1 In this—either by coincidence or by design—he follows what was apparently in the missing text of Livy,2 as seen by the fact that works known to be Credit for this turn of phrase must go to Velleius’s translator Frederick Shipley (Loeb, 1924), whose English is somewhat more elegant than the rather prosaic iam pridem tumescens bellum excitavit Italicum of the original. 2 See Haug (p. 120–125) on the use of Livy by Velleius, which is considered by her to be improbable for this section. 1

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descendents of the latter also attribute the war to events surrounding the life and death of Drusus. These include the Periochae of the lost book 71, Florus (2.5–6), and Orosius (5.18). The remnants of the text of Diodorus Siculus covering this period are a mess, but one excerpt notes that the war began when the Senate at some point called on the Italians for aid against a popular uprising and promised them the citizenship by law in exchange for it, a promise which was broken (37.2).3 This episode, too, seems to refer to events from the life of Drusus. Finally, Appian directly notes that the war was triggered by the death of Drusus (in 1.4.38). All of these sources name Drusus as the flashpoint for the war. All are similar in one other aspect, as well: almost all of them agree that the reason why Drusus was responsible for the war was that either he himself, or his political enemies in opposition to him, promised the civitas to the Allies but did not, or could not, deliver it, a failure which pushed the socii to arms.4 This harmony of sources would seem to make the tribunate of Drusus the obvious starting point for the war. However, beginning with Drusus gives rise to difficulties to which the sources themselves make allusions. In the first place, there is the aforementioned reference in Velleius which indicates that the war had been on the verge of erupting for some time when the final shove came (iam pridem tumescens bellum). Likewise, there is a notice in Plutarch (Sull. 6.2) which does not itself identify the cause of the war but does mention that it had been simmering for awhile before it boiled over into bloodshed (ὁ συμμαχικὸς πόλεμος πάλαι τυφόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀναλάμψας). If, therefore, the object is to find when “the wheels of violence had begun to turn”, these 3 ἐκ γὰρ τῆς διαφ ορᾶς ταύτ ς στασιάσαντος τοῦ δ μοτικοῦ πρὸς τὴν σύγκλ τον, εἶτα ἐκείν ς ἐπικαλεσαμέν ς τοὺς ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐπικουρῆσαι καὶ ὑποσχομέν ς τῆς πολυεράστου Ῥωμαϊκῆς πολιτείας μεταδοῦναι καὶ νόμῳ κυρῶσαι, ἐπεὶ οὐδὲν τῶν ὑπεσχ μένων τοῖς Ἰταλιώταις ἐγένετο, ὁ ἐξ αὐτῶν πόλεμος πρὸς Ῥωμαίους ἐξεκαύ . 4 The exception is Orosius, who merely mentions that the Latins were stirred up by “hope of liberty” (spe libertatis), a fact of which Mouritsen (1998, p. 5–22) makes much in his attempt to attribute the cause of the war to the urge for independence. His arguments are not terribly persuasive, however, for reasons mentioned in the previous two chapters.

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passages of Velleius and Plutarch suggest that it was at a point earlier than the tribunate of Drusus. Finding that earlier point may well explain why it is that the deeds and death Drusus proved to be the final straw, and thus may be a more suitable point to locate the answer as to why the war broke out in 91.5 As it happens, a number of sources suggest this more proper time in which to discover the acceleration towards war. One of these is Florus, who places Drusus as the last link in a chain which ultimately begins with Tiberius Gracchus (1.47; 2.1–6). Tacitus, too, indicates that the Allied War ultimately began due to the actions of the Gracchi which continued on through their spiritual successor Drusus, men whose efforts resulted in Allies “ruined by hopes” (corrupti spe … socii; Ann. 3.27). Finally, Appian very clearly indicates that the Allies turned to war after the many episodes in which the possibility of acquiring the citizenship was extended to them and then snatched away again, episodes which ended with Drusus but which began with the Gracchi (loc. cit.). All of these sources make explicit the connections between the tribunates of the Gracchi, that of Drusus, their promises of citizenship implicitly or explicitly extended to the Allies, the breaking of those promises, and war. For this reason, it seems appropriate here to begin the search for why the war broke out in 91 with the events of forty years previously, just as the abovementioned ancient authorities all did.6 Accordingly, this essay will do so, starting with Tiberius Gracchus and winding its way ultimately to Drusus, identifying along the way additional happenings which contributed to the strain before the murder of Drusus furnished the occasion at which the cords would snap.

2. TIBERIUS GRACCHUS AND THE AGER PUBLICUS The career of Tiberius Gracchus has been ably narrated elsewhere,7 so the briefest of a summary will be needed here. Descended from See also Appendix E. Such an approach is also used by Thomsen (p. 13–47) and Keaveney (1987, p. 47–115). 7 The definitive work is still David Stockton’s The Gracchi, from which much will be cited in the following pages. 5 6

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the highest levels of nobility through both parents, Gracchus had enjoyed a distinguished early military career that was eventually marred by the misfortune of serving as quaestor under the consul C. Hostilius Mancinus in Spain, who was not only defeated there in battle by the Numantines in 137 BCE but also prevented from returning to his camp afterwards (Florus 1. 34; Per. 55–56; Plut. Ti. Gracc. 5–6; Vell. 2.1–2). Thereupon surrounded and in dire straits, Mancinus was able to negotiate his way out of danger by means of a truce which all accounts suggest was a disgrace to the commonwealth8. Gracchus had played a major role in these negotiations, since according to Plutarch he was not only the quaestor of Mancinus but was also trusted by the Numantines due to his reputation for honesty and to his father’s connections to the area. Accordingly, when the Senate refused to ratify the terms of the treaty Gracchus was much discomfitted, both because his name had been sullied and because there was the possibility that he himself could have met the same fate as Mancinus, who was bound and sent naked to the Numantines.9 Such a fate Gracchus avoided, though from this point on it is observed that Gracchus found himself at odds with the dominant party in the Senate.10 This newfound antagonism undoubtably played a significant role in the series of events which happened next: once some time had passed after the Mancinus incident, Gracchus proceeded to run for the office of tribune, and in 133 was elected to it. Not long after his election he came forward with a series of laws of enormous import. It is with these laws that Gracchus had his Plutarch (loc. cit., supra) mentions merely that the Numantines retained all property from the camp as plunder; Florus adds that, in addition to this, the legionaries were also stripped of their arms. 9 Per. 56, Florus 2.2, Plut. Ti. Gracc. 7, Vell. 2.2; the latter three of which note that there really had been some danger to Gracchus. 10 Stockton (p. 29–31) notes that this enmity found additional expression in the association of Gracchus with Appius Claudius Pulcher and P. Licinius Crassus, political antagonists of both Scipio Aemilianus and of the established party Scipio represented. This ill-will of Gracchus (Stockton maintains) was especially pronounced towards the general, who had apparently been at the forefront of the opposition to the treaty with Numantia, perhaps for the purpose of being sent to fight them himself. 8

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primary effect upon the Allies, and thus influenced the eventual war. Because of this, a digression describing the context under which these leges Semproniae were presented and passed (both in terms of the situation to be address by them and the method by which they were enacted), as well as their operation and the consequences, may be justified. As is well known, the Roman commonwealth owned a certain amount of land which it had acquired by various means, usually through conquest. This land was held by the entire state and thus belonged to the people as a whole, hence its name: ager publicus. This ager publicus was put to various uses: on some of it colonies were founded; some of it was given to individual Romans for their own private use; some of it was sold; and some of it was let out to Romans for use on terms of payment of rent. There was also part of the ager publicus for which no official use had been designated, and this land the government of Rome allowed its citizens to use, albeit under certain restrictions. Some of these restrictions formed the basis of a lex de modo agrorum,11 under whose terms a citizen could not legally hold more than 500 iugera (about 333 acres) of this land for his own use, nor to give pasture on it to more than 100 large or 500 small beasts (Appian 1.1.8).12 Violation of this law was 11 According to Livy (6.35) this law dates back to a plebiscitum carried by the tribunes C. Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius in 367. Plutarch also mentions this in his Camillus (39) in a passage possibly drawn from Livy, where it is added that Licinius was later ironically convicted of violating his own law. It may be for this reason that the law is often referred to as the “Licinian Law”. Appian (1.1.8) merely mentions that the law was the work of “the tribunes” but does not specify by which ones, when, or why it was enacted. 12 The exact nature of this law has given rise to a scholarly dispute of some duration, as Forsén has chronicled (p. 13–28). Some aspects of this debate has involves such matters as whether or not this law could ever have been passed in 367, whether references to it actually reflect a later law pushed back in time by chroniclers (of whom Licinius Macer is the usual culprit, although Forsén suggests L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi as the one responsible; p. 79–81), whether the tradition suggests not one but two separate laws, whether it was a complete fabrication and that no such law ever existed at all, et cetera. Forsén’s own conclusion is that there likely was a law from 367 which in some way limited the holding of ager publicus,

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punishable by what Appian describes as “fixed penalties” (ζ μίαν ὥρισαν, 1.1.8), which are perhaps the same as those alluded to in a speech of Cato the Elder in 167 BCE (cited by Aulus Gellius, 6.3.37), which was a fine of a thousand sesterces.13 In the passage based in part on a passage of Livy (10.23) which states that there were prosecutions for violating it as early as 298. This evidence is also cited by Gargola on pages 136–138 and the supporting endnotes on pages 234– 235. However, Forsén continues, due to Rome’s lack of mastery of surveying techniques in the fourth century—knowledge which only came to them later on—a precise limit was not specified in this law. Instead, the 500 iugera limit is a detail derived from a later piece of legislation of unknown authorship enacted sometime before 167, when it was mentioned by Cato the Elder in a speech (see below). This is fairly persuasive, although Forsén’s speculation as to the enactment of this later in the neighborhood of 180–167 rests on rather flimsy reasoning and does not rule out the likelihood that it was carried earlier (p. 66). Either way, there is broad agreement in the argument that, older laws notwithstanding, the 500 limit was at the very least the current law in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, which can be supported by evidence in Appian (1.1.9) and Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 8). 13 The passage is a tricky one because it involves a debate over the penalizing of the island of Rhodes, which had wished to make war on the Romans but had not actually done so. Cato then argues that it is not a crime to “wish” to do something, citing how laws would be ridiculous if they contained terms such that if someone “wished to do a thing, let his fine be a thousand sesterces if this is less than half his estate; if someone wished to have more than five hundred iugera, let his fine be so much; if someone wished to have a greater number of animals, let his penalty be so much” (si quis illud facere voluerit, mille minus dimidium familiae multa esto; si quis plus quingenta iugera habere voluerit, tanta poena esto; si quis maiorem pecuum numerum habere voluerit, tantum damnas esto). It is not certain is if the tanta and the tantum refers to the thousand referred to in the previous clause ( and thus, “let his fine be just as much (as the thousand)”) or to is simply some indefinite sum (“let his fine be some unspecified amount”; “let his fine be thus-and-so”). J. C. Rolfe, who produced the Loeb translation of the Noctes Atticae, gave it the latter interpretation in his translation of the passage. On the other hand, such a fine would accord well with a passage in Livy (33.42.10) which records that in 195 three violators of land laws were prosecuted by the plebeian aediles Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and C. Scribonius Curio. Upon conviction, the guilty parties paid fines

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of Gellius in which the speech is quoted, Cato mentions the provisions of the law in such a way as to make it apparent that he was expecting his audience—the Senate—to recognize them. This would be an unlikely expectation if the law was of long disuse. Therefore, it can be inferred that the law or its penalties were known to the Senate in the generation before Gracchus. However, as Appian and Plutarch make clear (Appian, 1.1.8; Plut. Ti. Gracc. 8), by the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus these penalties were no longer being paid and the laws themselves were practically ignored, or at the very least they could not stop vast amounts of public land from falling into the hands of the wealthy).14 It was to remedy this state of affairs that Gracchus put forward his first piece of legislation. Unfortunately, no text of the law remains, and the sources are not completely consistent as to its terms. However, the crux of the legislation was that it required that all who were holding public land in excess of the legal amount established earlier (500 iugera) be required to vacate it. No further punishment—such as a fine— would be levied on those with illegal holdings, as had happened in the past, and according to both Plutarch and Appian, transgressors between the three of them to provide sufficients funds for the building of a temple to Faunus on the Tiber Island directed by the aediles, suggesting pretty substantial sums. However, see Forsén (p. 75–76), who suggests a connection between this prosecution to the lex de modo agrorum is not necessarily airtight. 14 According to Stockton (p. 47–48), the gradual cessation of prosecutions for violating this law and its subsequent abuse had become noticeable by the time of Laelius, who contemplated his own land law to rectify this situation but by not promulgating it earned the cognomen of Sapiens (so Plutarch, loc. cit). However, it seems that offenders were never really prosecuted in great numbers nor, perhaps, all that often (Gargola 130–136). It might be for this reason that Appian states that the law never accomplished its aims (loc. cit). On the other hand, Plutarch (in the passage above) does indicate that there was once a time when the law was effective. Perhaps, then, the situation was such that the severity of the punishment—even if rarely exacted—provided a deterrent sufficient to discourage breaking the law early on, but by the time of Gracchus the small number of those convicted and the fine they were levied might no longer have done so.

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would be given a further an incentive to comply with its terms. The latter authority states that not only were possessores15 allowed to keep the legally-held 500 iugera of land outright as inalienable private property,16 but they would also be given a parcel of half that amount for each child the possessor may have had (1.1.11).17 Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 9) does not mention either of these provisions, but states that those quitting the illegally-held land would be given compensation (ἐκαρποῦντο χώραν). This is not necessarily contradictory to Appian’s account, as it could very well have been that the compensation in question was being allowed to keep legally a part of what they had taken possession of unlawfully. The Periochae of Livy’s book 58 also seems to add detail about the incentives in the law, stating baldly that the maximum amount of ager publicus which could be claimed by one-time possessores under this lex Sempronia was 1000 iugera, not 500. The de viris illustribus does likewise (64). Yet these, too, do not necessarily contradict Appian’s account, as it may well be that possesores could only claim the 250 iugera for two children total. Like Plutarch, neither of these latter sources mentions the offer of secure title, although none of them contradict it, either. 15 Possessor is used here to mean those holding the ager publicus as occupants but not in actual ownership of it, since they could not legally have owned this land. This is because it belonged to the commonwealth, from which land could not be alienated by long use (as was the case with privately-owned land); for more on this, see Gargola, p. 130–131. 16 By which it was apparently meant that this land would become ager privatus under ownership of those to whom it was given; so Keaveney (1987, p. 48), Richardson (1980, p. 6–8), and Gargola (p. 149). As ager privatus the Roman state would no longer have ownership of this land nor assess the vectigalia which apparently had always been supposed to have been collected from possessores, a sum whose collection Appian suggests had also long been in abeyance in the place cited above; see also Stockton, p. 215–216. 17 Appian’s text uses the term παῖς rather than υἱός, which Stockton (p. 41) argues is proof that “child” was meant; Gargola also renders the term as “child” (p. 149). Both also believe it unlikely that a two-child limit was imposed, as some scholars do in the attempt to reconcile Appian with figures cited in the Periochae and the de viris illustribus (for which more directly in the text above).

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At any rate, Gracchus clearly hoped that these concessions would help quell objections to his laws (see below).18 But it was clearly not only for the purpose of ending the abuse of the ager publicus that Gracchus proposed his lex agraria, for this law was to have both positive and negative provisions. Unlike the previous lex (or leges) de modo agrorum, which fined lawbreakers but still left the land itself without an official use, Gracchus instead proposed to assign the ager publicus thus reclaimed, granting it to the “poor” (πέν τες; Appian, 1.1.9).19 Tiberius Gracchus was a Roman aristocrat, one who was elected to a Roman office, and who proposed a law which was aimed to halt abuse of Roman land. Nevertheless, the consequences of this law (as will be seen) would spread beyond Rome and Roman citizens and touch upon the Italian allies, and indeed it may well be that an effect on the Italians had been the aim of Gracchus from the very beginning. Certainty on this point is impossible, since any attempt to discern the motivations Gracchus may have had when he put forward his law is clouded by the fact that there is no uniformity in the ancient authors as to what those motivations were. Authors who are less charitable to him suggest that the reason for the lex was simple spite or a seditious spirit; these include Velleius Paterculus, who hints that Gracchus did what he did so as to set the Roman world “upside-down” (summa imis miscuit, 2.2). Others who are more kindly disposed to the tribune suggest that he may have been motivated by pure “goodness and justice” (aequo et bono ductus; Florus 2.2.14). This is However, see Stockton (p. 210–212), who mentions the possibility that this douceur was slightly sharper than meets the eye in that it did not include title to land for pasturage. Nevertheless, Stockton himself is not entirely convinced of this possibility, observing that pasturage would mostly have taken place on marginal land of little use for farming, and that the Gracchan redistribution was far more concerned with cultivable land. Thus, it seems to him more likely that Gracchus included in his offer the right of pasturage above the 500 iugera allotment of cultivable land, moving only that the numbers of animals would now be more rigidly enforced. This seems probable, even if it is not overpowering in its persuasiveness. 19 More on the specific identify of these “poor” will be discussed later. 18

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similar to the attribution of his being impelled by feelings of altruism that is offered by Cicero, who indicated that the people felt the law would bolster the fortunes of the indigent (fortunae constitui tenuiorum videbantur; Pro. Sest. 103).20 Assuming any of these alleged impulses actually drove Gracchus, the two main sources, Appian and Plutarch, state that in addition to them or whatever others might have existed Gracchus had a specific goal in mind with his lex:21 he sought to rectify the abuse of the public land because he hoped that he could redistribute this land and give it to the landless for the specific purpose of increasing Rome’s supply of military manpower (Appian 1.1.11; Plutarch, Ti. Gracc. 8–9). This had, in fact, been the land’s original purpose, both sources explain: in the distant past the ager publicus had been used to help support the yeoman farmers. Its gradual absorption by the wealthy drove off the free tillers of the soil and left in their place gangs of slaves, who not only multiplied to abundance in the countryside but were exempt from military service, making them preferable to free labor due to their ability to stay at work, which increased the profits to be made by their use.22 Plutarch states that this trend was first made manifest to Gracchus in graphic fashion as he was traveling through Etruria and observed no free man to be found in the Although see Morstein-Marx (p. 194–195) for the context in which this was uttered. Cicero’s attribution of this noble cause to Gracchus likely stemmed from his need to flatter a popular hero in public. Elsewhere, his opinions on the Gracchi which were not expressed before the people are rather less generous to them. See also Appendix B. 21 Though it should be noticed that even Plutarch listed reports stating that Gracchus was also impelled into this course by his very personal desire to outstrip one Spurius Postumius, a rival whose political influence had grown greater than that of Gracchus during the latter’s absence on campaign. He also mentions the influence of the philosophers Diophanes of Mitylene and Blossius of Cumae, as well as prodding from Cornelia that Gracchus should make a name for himself lest she always be known more as the mother-in-law of Scipio than as the mother of the Gracchi. 22 Plutarch, loc. cit.; Appian 1.1.7–9, specifically mentioning the attractiveness of slave labor due to their profitability, specifically their unfettered ability to multiply due to exemption from military service ( πολὺ κέρδος ἐκ πολυπαιδίας εραπόντων ἀκινδύνως αὐξομένων διὰ τὰς ἀστρατείας). 20

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fields, as reported by his brother Caius in a pamphlet cited by that author (Ti. Gracc. 8). Appian has it Gracchus was not only sensitive to the lack of free small farmers men in the countryside, but was also disturbed by the proliferation of slaves there, due in part to the Servile War which had recently been fought in Sicily (1.1.9–11). He would also know doubt have been aware of the recent problems the Romans had been having filling its levies: as mentioned in the last chapter, not five years earlier in 138 tensions over sparing men from service had led the tribunes to imprison the consuls (Per. 55). Furthermore, it will be recalled that in the year 140 Appius Claudius—perhaps uncoincidentally, the father-in-law of Gracchus—seems to have advised the consuls to cancel a second levy due to its massive unpopularity, and the consuls apparently complied (Oxyrynchus Epitome of Livy’s book 54).23 It is not difficult to see how such events would have made an impression on the tribune.24 These and other episodes of resistance to the dilectus occurring his own lifetime are noted in the previous chapter; see also Toynbee (p. 95– 97). 24 Of course, it is probably necessary to evaluate this “epiphany” of Gracchus with a certain degree of skepticism in light of some modern scholarship on the conditions under which he proposed his bill. Some of this was done by Rosenstein (p. 8–17), who disputes the idea that a dramatic increase in the number of slave-run estates was ruining free farms. He also argues against the idea that Italy was becoming depopulated as a result, and concludes that there was no “manpower crisis” caused by lack of men (see previous chapter). If Rosenstein is correct, it would seem to be the case that things were not quite as bad as the ancient sources claim Gracchus made them out to be. Still, Rosenstein’s evidence does not completely contradict either Appian or Plutarch. In the first place, Rosenstein does not venture to deny that the ager publicus was being illegally appropriated by the wealthy (for the land-hunger of the Roman élite, see also Stockton, p. 6–22, and Heaton, p. 10–11; see also Brunt 1972, p. 26–38). Moreover, Rosenstein postulates a post-Hannibalic War “baby boom” that was causing an increase in the population of small-holders. This, in turn, led to an everincreasing division of farmland amidst their heirs (p. 154–157), making dependence on the ager publicus more and more acute amongst the yeomen farmers at a very time when Rosenstein concedes it was being illegally 23

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As hinted at above, Appian’s report suggests that Gracchus was concerned with more than just the difficulties of the Roman small-farmer, but was moved by the condition of the Italian farmer as well, insofar as the latter also contributed soldiers to Rome’s armies. This suggestion has given rise to a fairly active debate amongst modern scholars as to whether or not the tribune had intended to include the socii in his division of the ager publicus and, if so, to what extent. From this debate no consensus has yet been reached,25 although it does not seem impossible that, if the Allies appropriated by the owners of latifundia (p. 77–79, 94, and 145; see also Brunt, loc. cit.). This misappropriation had the effect of denying the smaller farmers use of it, and further denied them the chance to supplement their incomes by seasonal employment on the estates of the wealthy, because— as he does not dispute—these were indeed resorting more and more often to servile labor (p. 165; see also Brunt 1971, p. 107, 131; Heaton, loc. cit.). Rosenstein himself speculates that the consequence was that smaller farmers were compelled to sell their meager free-holdings and migrate to Rome to search for employment. Hence, while the difficulties in the levy which have been mentioned above and detailed more fully in chapter 2 were more likely caused simply by an unwillingness to serve, Rosenstien asserts, there probably was a non-negligible drop in the numbers of men who held a sufficient property rating to be eligible for military service (assidui). This drop continued even after the rating had been lowered to practically nothing (Gabba 1976, p. 5–13). Such a decline in assidui might very well have contributed to, even if it did not cause, difficulties in recruiting, as the effect was to increase the burden of military service to which the remaining assidui were liable. What can therefore be concluded from Rosenstein is that the conditions described by Appian and Plutarch—of smaller farmers being discomfited by misallocation of ager publicus by those who used it to create slave-run latifundia—did exist, even if a countryside completely denuded by small farmers did not. Moreover, this discomfiture did cause a drop in assidui, although that may not have been the main cause of recruiting problems. It is therefore not beyond reason to state that the dire conditions Gracchus claimed to have seen in the Italian countryside may at least have appeared to exist to Gracchus himself, and he in turn probably would not have found the simultaneous phenomena of conscription problems, a countryside bereft of small farmers but filled with slaves, and a crowd of landless rustics in Rome entirely coincidental. 25 For some of the arguments made in this debate, see Appendix B.

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were not the primary concern of Gracchus, they nevertheless did in some way figure into his overall scheme as recipients of reclaimed land.26 Still, whether or not Gracchus planned to grant land to the Italians, it is certain that there were to be some—and likely not a few in number—who would in some manner or another be affected by his laws, if by no other way than through the very act of repossession and redistribution. The reason for this had to do with some important features of the new law. As discussed above, the lex Sempronia was in a sense a supplement to an earlier law or laws which put a limit on the amount of public land any Roman could hold. Where it apparently differed from the earlier legislation was in the diligence with which, and manner by which, that limit was enforced. Rather than leave punishment for its breach up to the aediles, who had apparently exacted the punishment called for by the older law(s) by means of a fine and had done so infrequently, the law of Gracchus proposed to seize lands held in excess of the legal limit directly and immediately, and then turn them over to the proletarii. This meant that the lands once taken would be completely removed from the possessor. This removal was made even more permanent by another element of the law mentioned in Appian: Gracchus sought to make the grant of land which would be given to its new owner inalienable by means of sale (1.1.10). This would prevent the wealthy from regaining it by “purchase under persuasion” (ὠνούμενοι πει οῖ) in a manner similar to the way by which Appian had stated these men had increased their holdings in the past. As far as the Allies were concerned, what this meant first and foremost was that if there any among them who had continued to hold onto their lands after the Roman conquest of their regions and the confiscations which followed—if, in other words, there were some Allies which continued to use lands that had once been theirs, but were now clearly and without doubt part of the Roman ager publicus—they could now expect to be ejected summarily from it. That there were some these is practically certain: it was common for Rome to deprive their many former enemies of some of their 26 Even if, in the end, they actually received none; see below and Appendix B.

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agricultural lands upon defeating them in war,27 but while these lands as a consequence legally belonged to Rome, the Commonwealth lacked the state-sponsored apparatus to monitor all of its holdings (see below). This inability almost certainly allowed many of the communities to continue to work the fields that had always been theirs with the (perhaps tacit) understanding that they would only be free to do so until the Roman commonwealth devised an official use for these lands. Moreover, it is not implausible that the landholding élites of the Allied communities had made especial extralegal use of Roman agri. After all, the economic advantages which could be derived from latifundia were just as manifest to the socii as to the Romans, and these advantages would in all likelihood have led them to commit some of the same behaviors—buying up parcels of land from the poor, sweeping them off whatever part of the Roman ager publicus they had gotten away with using, and arrogating that ager publicus for themselves—as their Roman counterparts had done. Admittedly, in so doing the wealthy socii must have needed to reach some accommodation with Roman magnates whose own holdings were in the area, but this need not have been too difficult. In fact, it is quite probable that many of these Roman magnates would have quite willing to enter into such compacts with the Italian principes, since it was in the best interest of the Roman latifundists that too close attention not be paid by authorities in the capital to use of the ager publicus by Italians, lest their own abuse of it be discovered and fines assessed accordingly. If this was the state of affairs (and it seems incredible that something like it did not obtain), then these comfortable arrangements were to be disrupted by Gracchus. Thus, it may or may not have well be that poorer Italians would be given 27 According to Brunt 1972 (p. 4), the Romans regularly exacted as much as a third of this land, and Toynbee (p. 552–554) cites some cases where the Romans took almost all of it. The same author discusses examples of Allies who nevertheless continued to use these fields, especially at Atina amongst the Lucani, where the presence of Gracchan cippi—indicating reclamation—shows that the Lucani had apparently continued to use much of the territory which by treaty they had ceded to Rome until the enactment of the leges Semproniae, at which point these fields were redistributed.

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land, but it is reasonable to assume some of the wealthier ones would have some of it taken. Therefore, any Italians who continued to use land which had once been theirs but had become Roman by right of conquest, Italians allowed to do so by lack of Roman supervision and a concerted effort not to see that rectified, were presented with the sudden and permanent deprivation of that use by the Gracchan scheme. In this they faced a similar outcome to that which confronted Roman abusers of the ager publicus. However, there was one critical distinction between them and their Roman counterparts. As mentioned above, when the lex Sempronia was being proposed, its author had apparently tried to take the sting out of the repossession measures by offering to Roman citizens the secured title and additional lands or some other compensation. Plutarch and Appian both infer that Gracchus added these provisions in the attempt to smooth over the protests he was certain would come at the measure: the confiscation of the land was in and of itself just, but the added consolation would in theory appeal both to a sense of fairness28 and to a sense of economy, as the possesores would in essence be getting something for nothing. It is highly doubtful that the Allies were shown the same courtesy. As would have been apparent, the objections of Roman possesores could pose a threat to the ability of Gracchus to pass his law,29 and it would therefore have been expedient for Gracchus to extend such concilatory gestures to them. Because the Allies had no political rights, and therefore no political pull, in Rome, it seems unlikely that their feelings were taken into consideration, since they could not translate their feelings into the same actions that Roman citizens could. Thus, the Gracchan law and its commissioners 28 So Gargola (p. 154), who suggests that Gracchus was aware that many of the Roman possessores had held onto these lands illegally for generations, and that the compensation he offered would mitigate any feelings of unfairness at the loss of something which was theirs by long practice, even if in theory they were not entitled to it. Whether or not Gracchus exercised himself about the law’s fairness to the Allies is unknown, but he probably did not (as hinted above). 29 And did, as the well-known episode with Octavius (described in Appian 1.1.12, among other narratives) demonstrates.

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theoretically could, and very probably did, remove whatever amount of land that was known to be ager publicus from Allied hands without anything resembling recompense, resulting in annoyed socii for whose irritation many Romans were unlikely to have held much sympathy. From the perspective of at least some Italians, removal of what was patently Roman land from the hands from those indulging in its extralegal use would no doubt have been vexatious enough even if the Gracchan legal programme (and, ultimately, the commission it established) had merely exerted sway over lands which were indisputably owned by the Republic. It became all the vexatious when, as events would turn out, the law and the commission came to involve itself, if unwillingly, with rather more than just these lands of unquestionable ownership. According to the Periochae of Livy (68), Gracchus passed an additional law soon after his first one, a law which not only allowed the Triumvirate that had been created by the first law to distribute the ager publicus to continue to do so, but also enabled it to evaluate for itself what was public land and distinguish between that and what which was privately held. This was in all likelihood not a power which Gracchus had initially intended to seek for his commission; it probably was the case that he had hoped the possessores would have come forward voluntarily with lists of all of their extra-legal holdings—perhaps on the condition that only by so doing they could receive the holding of their 500 (or 1000) iugera—and that the commission would be able to use these lists to identify the lands to be reclaimed.30 Nevertheless, a somewhat chronologicallysuspect passage of Appian (1.3.18)31 reveals that the commission had begun to encounter difficulties which were due in part to the fact that such lists had apparently not been forthcoming. As a consequence, the second law was passed, informers were called in, and the commission went to work carefully measuring and So Gargola, p. 149–151 Suspect, in that it suggests that the commission had not been formed until after the deaths of Tiberius Gracchus and Appius Claudius, in spite of the contrary evidence offered by the Periochae (58), Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 13), and Velleius Paterculus (2.2), among others. 30 31

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reassessing exactly what lands belonged to Rome and what did not. This evaluation soon led to problems of its own, of which Appian details some: “Wherever a new field had been bought adjoining an old one, or wherever a division of land had been made with Allies, the whole district had to be carefully inquired into on account of the measurement of this one field, to discover how it had been sold and how divided. Not all owners had preserved their contracts, or their allotment titles, and even those that were found were often ambiguous. When the land was resurveyed some owners were obliged to give up their fruit-trees and farm-buildings in exchange for naked ground. Others were transferred from cultivated to uncultivated lands, or to swamps, or pools. In fact, the land having originally been so much loot, the survey had never been carefully done.” (Appian, 1.3.18; Horace White, trans.).

Moreover, Appian continues, since Rome had apparently allowed any citizen to use that part of the ager publicus which had not been immediately been designated for an official use, and since some of that land had not been given an official use for a long time, many had felt the urge to merge pieces of public land to their own estates which lay nearby, “until the line of demarcation between [ager publicus and ager privatus] had faded from view” (loc. cit.). Although it is tempting to locate hyperbole in this description of the problems faced by the triumviri, it must not be forgotten that the structure of the Roman government was such that the Commonwealth had given itself very few instruments by which its lands could be surveyed and maintained. During the period of the mid-Republic, Rome had very few elected officials and no real bureaucracy, and indeed one scholar estimates that by the first century the regularly elected magistracies were filled by as few as fifty men, though these numbers could occasionally be augmented by temporary expedients.32 This would have left the Romans unequal both to the task of maintaining regular observation of public land which by the 130s had become vast, and of preventing 32

Gargola, p. 13–19.

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its abuse.33 Even though periodically attempts were made to investigate such practices as tampering with boundaries and overemployment of the ager publicus,34 these must have been infrequent and were in all likelihood not terribly effective.35 In the absence of adequate policing, then, the limits of the ager publicus and 33 As seen above, aediles did occasionally prosecute Romans for abusus modi agrorum but did so infrequently; indeed, they could hardly have done otherwise, if for no other reason than they had so many other responsibilities. For other factors inhibiting their vigilance into illegal encroachment upon the ager publicus, see below. 34 In 173, when the consul L. Postumius Albinus made his infamous visit into Campania (see chapter 2), he was dispatched there to assess the limits of the Roman ager publicus and to investigate reported malfeasance. The undertaking was apparently a gigantic one, occupying his entire term in office (although he apparently did find time to expel the Allies from Rome; see below). For additional discussion of these attempts at investigation, see Gargola, p. 123–126. 35 As has been noted, discovery of such law-breaking could result in prosecution by the aediles and fines under the earlier lex de modo agrorum. Nevertheless (as noted by Gargola, p. 130–136), the powers for making such discoveries were limited by the fact that, again, the aediles do not seem to have been given a staff sufficient to watch for transgressions, and could not do so themselves if for no other reason that their office tended to keep them in Rome. For this reason, the aediles who conducted those trials usually had instead to wait for a complaint, and though some evidence suggests that informants were encouraged, these were probably not always easy to find, for reasons that can be guessed. Even when grounds for it were at hand, evidence suggests that the aediles fell to prosecution infrequently, and it is not difficult to discern at least two reasons why that would be so. In the first place, the Roman calendar left very few days of the year on which such prosecutions could take place. In the second, trials of the men most likely to have broken the law—almost certainly belonging to the Senatorial class, whose wealth was by necessity drawn from land—could potentially have resulted in enmity. This was something the aediles could ill-afford, as they would themselves have come from the same social and political class as the offenders, and would need them for support in the climb up the cursus honorum. Therefore, aediles rarely had both the abilty and the inclination to pursue action against transgressors of the earlier agrarian laws, and consequently seem not to have done so often.

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its divisions from whatever ager privatus lay adjacent to it—especially on lands that lay at a greater distance from Rome and thus from more watchful eyes—could be and apparently were blurred, either by deliberate action (“injustices done by the rich”—πλουσίων ἀδίκ μα—to use Appian’s words in a later part of the passage cited above) or by accident. All of this meant that, due to the powers of adjudication given by the second lex Sempronia to the triumvirate set up by the first, landholders throughout Italy were soon subjected to investigations by the Gracchan commission, whose task it was to reclaim and repossess Roman land whose boundaries had either never been officially delimited, or whose limits had since been obliterated through the involvement of either natural or human agents. Possesores were subsequently faced with seizure of land that was part of or near to the ager publicus, land which either did belong to them, was truthfully thought to have belonged to them, or which was at the very least claimed to have belonged to them. The result of faded divisions of land and the commission’s attempt to redefine them was a series of “irksome lawsuits” (δικῶν χαλεπῶν; Appian, loc. cit.) in which the Triumvirate soon became embroiled. As Appian makes clear (1.3.19), the Allies just as much as the Romans seemed to have been involved in such suits, since lack of Roman oversight would have allowed for just as much perplexity as to the status of Allied lands as to those held by Romans. For the socii, then, the leges Semproniae very quickly came to mean that the Roman government sent deputations not only to claim territory which clearly belonged to Rome, but also to take that for which a title was unclear, and perhaps even to take what was legitimately the property of Allied communities. As can be seen, repossession of the ager publicus affected both the Romans and the Italians. It would almost certainly affect the wealthiest of the latter, since, as mentioned above, it is very probable that amongst the socii the richer elements of their communities extensively impinged upon the Roman ager publicus, just as was the case with the Romans. Like their Roman counterparts, the richest Italians probably drove their less affluent members off of this land, and purchased fields next to it so that through manipulation of boundaries (especially those boundaries which had never been permanently fixed by stone termini, which Appian suggests were many) they could augment their legitimate

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holdings with Roman plots which did not belong to them. Additionally, repossession might very well have also touched some Italians from the lower classes. Just as with the case of the upper classes, some of these might have held a legal title to land nearby that belonging to Rome, but through accidental obliteration of natural landmarks—trees, steams, an the like—they simply did not know where their land ended and where the Commonwealth’s began, just as the Commonwealth itself did not. It must often have been the case that, when the commissioners came and made a judgement on this land, that which had never belonged to the Romans was nevertheless taken by them. Others might have worked unoccupied ager publicus illegally from sheer necessity, needing it for subsistence.36 All of these now faced potential confiscation at the hands of a triumvirate charged with reinterpretation or restitution of the original limites, whose decision on what land belonged to Rome and what did not was apparently one which had the force of law. To be sure, there is evidence which suggests that the Triumvirate’s decision was not final, since the aforementioned trials noted by Appian hints that the arbitration could be appealed, modified, or overturned (1.3.18–19). Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the socii could gain much relief in Roman courts, if for no other reason than logistical ones. In the first place, these trials would almost certainly have taken place in Rome, to which few beyond the wealthiest of the Allied communities could afford to travel conveniently.37 In the second, if the suits were as numerous as Appian suggests, the diminutive Roman judicial system would have been clogged completely by complaints and overwhelmed, resulting in aggrieved Allies never actually getting to voice their 36 See, for example, Rosenstein’s observations (cited above) on how vital the ager publicus had been for Roman small-farmers. Presumably, if some Roman land had been available to Allied communities, Allied small farmers would have been impelled to make use of it in a similar fashion, whether entitled to do so or not. 37 Mouritsen raises the point of the prohibitive nature of travel to Rome, although in a different context (that of Roman citizens living far away from the capital being kept by these distances from participating in lawmaking and elections; 2001, p. 94–95).

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appeal. As a result, the agrarian commission and the land division in which they were engaged caused headaches for at least the landowning class of the Allies and possibly many others, representing in irruption into their lives about which they had not been consulted, which they did not want, and which for some may have threatened their very survival. The commission which at the very least victimized some Italians continued to due its work throughout the tribunate of Gracchus, in spite of the stiff opposition it had encountered in thr Senate. One of its chief opponents was one Scipio Nasica, whose antipathy had been aroused, according to Plutarch, by his own status as a holder of large tracts of ager publicus (Ti. Gracc. 13).38 Shortly after the laws were passed, this man had been the prime mover for an initiative to strip the commission of its funding, and as a result of this effort Gracchus had been forced to use the revenues from Pergamum to supply his commission39. This maneuver of Gracchus was novel approach, and had drawn even more Senatorial opposition. Nasica had in turn taken advantage of the enmity of the patres to try and put a stop to Gracchus in another way towards the end of 133, using the chaos surrounding a riot on the Capitoline as an excuse to summon the enemies of Gracchus in the Senate to slay the tribune. Even the death of its leader had not halted the activities of the Triumvirate, which shuffled members around but was still at work in 129.40 Yet as powerless as the Allies may have been to halt the land reclamation, it would finally be their protests which brought about its end in that year through the somewhat unlikely advocacy of Scipio Aemilianus,41 who appears to have interceded on their behalf upon 38 Nasica was probably also an enemy of the tribunate in general, as he was one of the consuls to be imprisoned by the tribunes over the dilectus in 138 (for which see above and chapter 2). 39 So Plutarch, Ti. Gracc. 14. For more in this action and its consequences, see below, as well as Appendix B. 40 For the events of the years leading up to the intervention of Scipio, see Stockton, p. 87–94. 41 An unusual choice, given that Aemilianus had proven himself a harsh disciplinarian of the Allies in his various campaigns (see chapter 2). Nevertheless, Appian holds that he was willing to act on their behalf in

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his return from Spain. Aemilianus, in his bluntness, had hardly been the most astute of politicians and was certainly not one with a tender regard for the opinion of the populus in general,42 but even he could likely see that any move to stop the distribution of what had already been reclaimed might cause an uproar amongst the urban poor.43 As a consequence of this recognition, Aemilianus seems to have found it impolitic to attempt to have the lex Sempronia overturned or the commission abolished, no matter what urging he may have gotten from the optimates or the socii. However, what apparently was more acceptable to the people was to move to have the commission denuded of its powers to arbitrate what land belonged to Rome and what did not, something which, as it involved foreign nations, usurped the power of the consuls and the Senate. This he arranged to happen, transferring those powers instead to the consul C. Sempronius Tuditanus (Appian 1.3.19).44 part because he depended on the zeal of the Allies to furnish men for his wars. Moreover, there was certainly there was no love lost between Aemilianus and Gracchus due to the Numantine affair (see above), during which Scipio spoke out against the settlement of Mancinus because, it was speculated, he wanted a command in Spain himself. As it happened, Scipio was in Numantia holding precisely such a command when he heard of the death of Gracchus, and the line from the Odyssey which he let slip on the occasion—“thus may anyone fall who would do such deeds” ( ὣς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος ὅτις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι, Od. 1.47) testifies to the lack of affection between the two (Plutarch, Ti. Gracch. 21). Keaveney (1987 p. 59) also comments on the odd selection of Scipio, but explains that Scipio would have played his part, not only form an interest in securing Allied military cooperation, but that also from his sense of Roman justice would lead him to ensure that treaty obligations would be fulfilled. 42 For example, Polybius describes his disdain for seeking popularity in the forum, choosing instead to occupy his time with hunting (31.29.8–9); see also below. 43 Appian (1.3.19) even speaks of his unwillingness to speak against the laws for the sake of the people (τὸν μὲν Γράκχου νόμον οὐκ ἔψεγε διὰ τὸν δῆμον σαφῶς). 44 So Stockton (p. 92), who argues that the issue at stake was essentially one of foreign policy. Earlier, he had charmingly noted that Gracchus had “set the cat among the pigeons” with his requisition of the revenues from Pergamum (Orosius suggests that one Pompeius had

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Tuditanus, for his part, would have none of it, and promptly marched away to fight a war in Illyria. According to Appian, his absence forced the commission into a paralysis in which it languished, although Cassius Dio (24.84) and the Periochae (59) suggests that the commission regained its strength soon thereafter, occasioned by the death of Scipio in late 129.45 What is more likely threatened to prosecute him on his return to private status over this issue; 5.8.4), so Scipio’s receptivity for a policy leading to the restoration of Senatorial powers in this regard might be understandable. Gargola, on the other hand (p. 151–152) argues that that Scipio’s objection may have been based on the fact that the decision of determining what belonged to Rome and what did not was one that custom had invested in the censors, consuls, and praetors as part of setting out the official uses of public places, a competence which the commission had illegally usurped. These are not necessarily incompatible views: Scipio might well have argued both points, and was at any rate successful, as seen above. 45 Murdered because of his earlier opposition to Gracchus, according to hints dropped by Appian, Cassius Dio, the Periochae (in the places cites above), as well as by Cicero (De Orat. 2.40.170, where it is suggested that anyone who aided the laws of Gracchus was complicit in the murder of Aemilianus). Certainly Scipio had had an unfortunate habit of speaking badly of his brother-in-law, to whose “just murder” he had apparently alluded more than once. Indeed, he seemed to have had a habit of coining aphorisms at inappropriate times, as can be seen in an episode from Velleius Paterculus in which he derided a crowd furious at one of his pronouncements as one to whom “Italy is but a step-mother” (qui possum vestro moveri, quorum noverca est Italia?; 2.4). Indeed, according to that author the crowd was stirred against him because he has voiced after another “justly slain” remark about Tiberius Gracchus to a tribune named Carbo; Plutarch’s Moralia (201) also mentions this episode, but in the latter’s telling, the opponent is C. Gracchus. For more on this latter episode see Morstein-Marx, however, who attributes it not to Scipio’s lack of subtlety but more as a pointed effort to suggest that the crowd which had begun to roar its disapproval at his opinion—an opinion which, Morstein-Marx points out, was essentially extracted from him against his will by the tribune who “produced” him at a contio and demanded he make his thoughts known—was not Roman, and thus not one whose displeasure should move him (p. 149–150). This, again, was an interesting attitude for a man selected to carry the banner of the Italians against the Gracchan commission.

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is that the transfer of adjudication to Tuditanus and his speedy egress meant that, for the moment, there was no longer an effort to define Roman public land beyond what the commission had already accomplished, which is likely what Scipio’s intention had been all along.46 This did not necessarily end the commission or leave it idle, as there might have been much land already delimited that had yet to be distributed, and the commission could have concerned itself with that.47 At any rate, for the time being it looked like there was a suspension in the reclamation of public land, which caused the Allies some relief in the sense that, while what they had lost was now gone forever, at least for a time no more would be taken away. For both Romans and Italians the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus had been momentous. The effects on the former have been extensively discussed elsewhere and thus need not receive an additional rehearsal here. As to the latter, there are difficulties in assessing exactly what they felt about it and how important what had occurred as a result actually was to them, due again to the fact that no source written by one of the Italians discusses these events. Nevertheless, it is possible to surmise what his activities those of the commission he established had probably meant to some of them. In the first place, the land commission signified a more direct involvement of Rome into the daily lives and dealings of the Italians than had come before, and it was an involvement which affected great numbers of them. Up to this point the Romans had certainly interacted with the Italians in a variety of ways, many of which exasperating (see the previous chapter), but on the whole that involvement had been limited and fairly infrequent. Beyond 46 A curious notice in Appian (loc. cit.) raises the possibility that Scipio committed suicide due to his failure to deliver his promises to the Allies, though this is highly improbable. 47 But see Gargola (p. 162–163), who suggests that the removal of the power to determine what land belonged to Rome or not from the commission and its placement in the hands of Tuditanus may have vacated when Tuditanus went on campaign. The commission then got this power back, but given the uproar caused by the Allies, its members might have voluntarily refrained from its use from 129 on. This would, in effect, produce the same result as described above.

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the military service, the occasional visiting magistrate, roadbuilding, and unusual crises like the Baccahanlian one, the Italians could, if they so desired, live as if they remained what their treaties had suggested they were: independent people who paid taxes to their governments as they always had done, elected and obeyed their own magistrates as they always had done, and tilled their lands as they always had done without molestation. Even those farming lands near the ager publicus need not have ever seen Romans beyond the slaves and bailiffs representing faraway landlords, nor have had to concern themselves with the Roman government looking too closely at washed-out boundaries of that public land which that government had itself seen fit to neglect. Upon the advent of Gracchus and his commission, however, the Italians were now treated to Romans coming into their towns and visiting their farms to survey their lands, to set up new boundaries, and, in the course of so doing, quite often to take away some of the land that Italians had come—whether legally or not—to call their own. Soon after, different Romans would appear when those who had been given land came to claim it, and their stay was to be permanent, or so it would have seemed at the time. Long accustomed to being compelled to follow Rome’s dictates in matters foreign, the Allies were now met with direct interference into their everyday, domestic affairs. In the second place, the lex Sempronia and the apparatus whereby its provisions were executed probably represented a blow, and perhaps a not slight one, to the financial affairs of many of the Italians. Again, connection to the Romans had always exacted a cost of some kind, if only in the form of whatever taxation was required to feed and supply the men Rome needed for its armies. However, as irritating as that must have been, in all likelihood it was not entirely novel: the Allies had probably always paid taxes to support their soldiers even before those soldiers were put at the service of the Romans. Moreover, even after the foedera were made the Allies probably paid these taxes infrequently. Rome’s sudden reinterest in its lands—and theirs—was something else entirely: it was sudden, it was new, and unlike taxes, it was not restricted to appear but once in a while only to go away until the next year, but instead represented a permanent loss. Further, the land commission would also have affected Italians at all economic levels, in a way that military service may not have if, like the

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Romans, Italian soldiers were drawn from those meeting a certain property rating (akin to the Roman assidui). If the wealthiest of the Italians had behaved as the Roman upper classes had, they would have had the most taken away from them in terms of iugera, but their loss could also be more easily absorbed than that facing the small farmers. Some of these latter may have used the ager publicus, and probably did, to supplement their holdings; without such use these men might be ruined completely. This ruination would in turn bar them from military duties. Therefore, a chain reaction might very well have been set off by the Gracchan commission: all those who suffered loss by the reclamation would have become instantly poorer, with some sliding into complete poverty. This would have augmented the burdens of soldiering and taxation on those left who could still afford to do both (and this is to say nothing of the very poor, who may have encroached on the ager publicus to guarantee their subsistence). Thus, two additional sources of frustration with the Romans which already existed would simultaneously have been enlarged. Finally, the Gracchan commission and its aftermath would have thrown into sharp relief the exact nature of the association between the Romans and the Allies. Whether or not the Roman governing class supported his plans, the fact remained that an elected magistrate of the Roman Republic had passed a measure which directly affected the quotidian, non-military lives of the socii, who had not given their permission to that measure nor, indeed, had been asked for it. The Allies had never had a voice in the Roman state, even though that state regularly made decisions, such as those which led to war, which directly involved some of them. Now the Romans made laws which affected civilians, which was something comparatively new. In fact, at least one scholar has suggested that, since the Romans who held areas of the ager publicus were voters and thus could make their displeasure felt through the ballot, that the commission specifically selected the lands held by the Allies (who could not) as their first targets48. As it turned out, 48 Toynbee, p. 554. Gabba (1956, p. 51–53), on the other hand, holds that this does not seem to have happened while Gracchus lived. He seems to have seen to it that the initial confiscations were restricted to citizens,

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the Allies were ultimately able to find a sympathetic Roman to aid them in their difficulties with Gracchus, but doubtless Scipio had been willing to help as much for the discomfiture of Gracchus and his circle as for the aid of the Italians. Had the measure not been as unpopular as it turned out to be in Rome, there would have been no guarantee that such powerful help could have been found, and without it the objections of the Allies would have amounted to nothing. Nor—as it would no doubt have been made very clear— could anything be done by the Italians should some future measure be proposed which would affect them if that measure but proved more agreeable to the ruling élite in Rome. If they had not been aware of it before, the Italians would now have come squarely to face the fact that they and the Romans were most unequal partners: the description of Appian and Pompeius Trogus, to the effect that the Allies did not share power with Rome but were rather subjected to that power, would (after the passage of the lex Sempronia) have become more obvious to the Allies then ever it had been.

3. THE YEAR 125: FULVIUS FLACCUS, FREGELLAE, AND THE LESSONS LEARNED

The turbulence caused by the Gracchan land commission had likely proven most unsettling to the Allies, so much so that even if it was the case that the relocation of the power of deciding what constituted the ager publicus had indeed reverted back to the commission at some point after 129, that commission decided on its own to suspend use of that power until the difficulties the socii were eased.49 At the very least, no disturbance caused by the commission in 129 and afterwards is recorded, but then again very little from the years 129 to 126 has been. For example, the Periocha of Livy’s book 59 ends with the war waged by Tuditanus against the Illyrians in Spain. That of book 60 begins with a war being although the commission moved on to the socii after he had died. Either way, if Gracchus was not doing it himself, it was his law which was responsible for this treatment of the Allies, which probably happened eventually if not initially. 49 So, again, Gargola; see earlier note.

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waged in with the consulate of Aurelius Orestes in 126, with no record of anything in between. It is to this same year 126 that Appian likewise jumps after his account of the death of Scipio (or, rather, Appian resumes his narrative some time before or during the consulate of Flaccus, which was in 125). Orosius, too, moves directly from the death of Scipio to an eruption of Aetna in the consulate of Orestes (and thus 126; 5.10.11). Velleius, after a brief digression on wars taking place before the fall of Numantia, picks up after the death of Scipio well into the career of C. Gracchus in 126 (2.6.), and Florus proceeds directly from the death of Tiberius Gracchus to the career of Caius, which he states happened “immediately after” (statim et mortis et legum fratris sui vindex non minore impetu incaluit C. Gracchus; 2.3). Even Plutarch’s Life of Caius Gracchus says nothing of its subject’s activities before he was sent as Quaestor to Sardinia in 126, and by extension says nothing about anything that may have been happening in Rome, beyond mention of the defense Gracchus had made of one Vettius in a trial at some time prior to his quaestorate.50 The years 128 and 127, then, seem to have been quiet. Events of interest begin to recur in 126, however, and a description of one of these events is recounted by Cicero. According to the De Officiis, one M. Junius Pennus, a tribune for that year,51 proposed a law that “would prevent strangers from using the city and expel them” (peregrinos urbibus uti prohibent eosque exterminant, ut Pennus apud patres nostros; 3.47). Very little is known about this law, such as why the tribune had been impelled to promulgate it, but what does seem likely is that it differed from previous expulsion laws in that it was not requested by the Allies themselves.52 Of course, as long as the the Italians remained socii—that is, as long as they continued as Allies and not Roman citizens—they would never have had secure, inviolable rights of access to the city, so while later generations For an illustration on how little is said about events in Italy from this period, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 24. 51 Based on additional evidence supplied by Cicero in the Brutus 28, who mentions the tribunate of Pennus as having occurred during the consulate of Orestes, id est 126. 52 For more about what can be known about the law, and for additional speculation on it, see Appendix C. 50

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would remember this law of Pennus as ungenerous and unkind,53 the Romans could hardly be accused of trampling on privileges which the Allies could claim as theirs. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the lex Junia caused inconvenience and hardship to any Italians who dwelt in Rome or did business there, an inconvenience which they would simply have had to endure as long as they had no secure tenure in the city, of the sort the citizenship would bring. Here again, then, was another example of a Roman magistrate making laws which would affect some of the Allies and doing so without having sought, or been concerned by, the wishes of those Allies themselves. In the following year 125 M. Fulvius Flaccus was consul. He was also a member of the Gracchan land commission, as is known from Appian (1.3.18), and as such it is difficult to doubt that he was a staunch supporter of agrarian reform. As such, in addition to whatever significance the acquisition of the consulate may have had for Flaccus personally, election to that office might also have been important to him because it placed him in the best possible position to further the cause of the Triumvirate, because as consul Flaccus could see to the resumption of assessing what land belonged to Rome and what belonged in Allied or private hands. Such a resumption would provide the means by which more land could be potentially amassed for redistribution, and as consul, any actions taken by Flaccus in this regard could raise no questions of impropriety in the Senate on grounds of foreign policy, since he, as the chief magistrate, was the executive of that policy. Even so, Flaccus must have been aware that the main reason why the commission had been impeded in this process—or, perhaps more accurately, had forborne to continue it after having been impeded—had been the complaints which had arisen from the Allies when the commission had begun to determine and reclaim Rome’s holdings. These complaints, as has been seen, had furnished the excuse employed by the Senate to obstruct the Triumvirate. Presumably the Senate could make use of the same excuse to find other avenues to block the Triumvirate if, once the 53 Among them Cicero, in the place cited above; see, again, Appendix C.

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commission resumed its adjudication, the Allies were also to resume their protest. Therefore, it almost certainly occurred to Flaccus that he would need to find a way to eliminate that excuse, or at the very least would want to do so. It was apparently to effect this end that Flaccus seems to have set upon a unique course of action: according to Appian, Flaccus decided that he would offer to the Allies the citizenship in exchange for their cooperation with reclamation of the ager publicus (1.3.21). Why it is that the new consul chose this route is not mentioned by Appian, but the passage of the law of Pennus mentioned above may have inspired his decision. As Flaccus and everyone else in Rome must have been aware, there were numbers of the Allies who had wanted to become citizens, some of whom frequenting the city and even going so far as to pass themselves off as cives. The expulsion laws of 187 and 177 would have illustrated this amply to the previous generation, and there may have been a similarly large number of these who were expelled by Pennus; there were doubtless many others who were not necessarily in Rome to usurp the privileges of civitas but who still wanted it just the same. Even were there no other indicators, from the mass of Italians who found their way to Rome alone it would have been easy to conclude that the citizenship would be a commodity much desired by many of the Allies. Armed with this knowledge, it apparently came to be wondered by Flaccus if the civitas was desireable enough to induce the socii to trade their lands for it. For obvious reasons, this would probably be a question of greater significance for the wealthiest Italians on their latifunfia in the countryside rather than those crowding the urbs, since the former would suffer the greatest potential repercussion from what Flaccus and the Triumvirate would do after such a bargain was struck. Unlike, perhaps, a great many of those who had recently come to Rome and been expelled, people who were probably poor and landless and therefore had been attracted to the metropolis by the opportunities for employment,54 the more affluent would likely be landowners whose 54 See Morley (p. 51) for just a hint at some of the work that was to be found in the capital.

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property might be affected by the resumption of land assessment. By extending the offer of the citizenship, it appears that Flaccus contemplated providing these men of property amongst the Allies with a choice. On the one hand, by trading the rights of the citizenship for their silence, their lack of protest of new land adjudication would deprive the Senate of an instrument by which that adjudication could be halted. Accordingly, this would mean that they would risk the loss of whatever land, if any, they used from the ager publicus, and might possibly even lose some of their own legitimate holdings, should the commission resume adjudicating and determine that what they had thought was theirs actually belonged to Rome. On the other, as compensation they would get protection from magisterial misbehavior; the possibility of winning public contracts; freedom, if not from conscription (they would still be liable for service in the new all-Roman army), then at least from taxation of a sort not paid by the Romans, an absence of tax which would continue as long as the aerarium remained full; the possibility of running for public office and by this a shot at real power; and a myriad of other privileges which they did not have but which would come to them as Roman citizens (about which see the previous chapter). Through unspecified mechanisms Flaccus seems to have found a way to inquire whether this arrangement would be acceptable, and the answer was apparently in the affirmative. According to Appian, the Italians “preferred the franchise to the use of fields” (καὶ ἐδέχοντο ἄσμενοι τοῦ ᾽ οἱ Ἰταλιῶται, προτι έντες τῶν χωρίων τὴν πολιτείαν; 1.3.21) and were ready to accept the bargain. So, at least, Appian alleges, although there is a curious divergence from this account appearing in Valerius Maximus which demands comment. According to this latter, there were some communities who did not want to change their citizenship status, and that the ius provocationis—the right to appeal magisterial and military punishments—was offered to them by Flaccus instead (M. Fulvius Flaccus consul M. Plautii Hypsaei collega, cum perniciosissimas rei publicae leges introduceret de civitate [Italiae] danda et de provocatione ad populum eorum, qui civitatem mutare noluissent; (9.5.1). Such an offer is difficult to explain. It does not seem logical that, when given the choice, a community would prefer to part with their lands and obtain merely this right and not the full complement of them which would attach to the civitas, especially since such a right of

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prosecution would be enveloped into the citizenship anyway.55 Yet perhaps there is more underlying what that author is attempting to communicate. Valerius does not mention the circumstances behind the offer of Flaccus, merely noting that such an offer was made. Appian, however, seems to do so. In that author’s account, Flaccus was apparently inspired to make his offer at the suggestion of an anonymous “some people” who advised the franchise as a means to quiet Italian protests to the land distribution, obviously under the impression the Allies would be pleased with the trade. The question is whether these “some people” advised Flaccus to extend the franchise to all the Italians, or just the ones who were the most vocal about the adjudication. The text of the critical sentence in the original Greek text runs as follows: καί τινες εἰσ γοῦντο τοὺς συμμάχους ἁπαντας, οἱ δὴ περὶ τῆς γῆς μάλιστα ἀντέλεγον, εἰς τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν ἀναγράψαι, ὡς μείζονι χάριτι περὶ τῆς γῆς οὐ διοισομένους.56 Appian leaves it ambiguous as to whether τοὺς συμμάχους ἁπαντας specifically refers to “all the Allies”, or “all the Allies who were especially speaking out on account of the land (οἱ δὴ περὶ τῆς γῆς μάλιστα ἀντέλεγον)”?

If the latter, then a possible solution for the troublesome notice in Valerius presents itself. If the triumviri began to focus its attention especially on the lands held by the Latins, as has been speculated fairly convincingly by some modern scholars, then perhaps it had been they specifically who would have had sufficient cause to protest the most vigorously.57 It had also been the Latins who had also manifested the greatest visible desire for the citizenship, as has been seen; without doubt other Allies had Sherwin-White seems to think that this would have been an attractive enough alternative to the citizenship (p. 135), as does Keaveney (1987 p. 61–63), who attributes this preference to Italian shortsightedness. Neither assertion is convincing, nor is Badian’s attempt to show that Flaccus intended that these rights would be extended only to individuals as opposed to entire peoples (1971, p. 388–391). 56 “And some people suggested that all those Allies who strenuously voiced opposition about the land be brought into the citizen-registry of the Romans, so that in gratitude for the greater (favor) they not persist (in their protests over the land)”. 57 So Keaveney (op. cit., p. 64). 55

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harbored such a desire, but it had been the Latins who had sent embassies asking for their men back in 187 and 177, suggesting it had been their people who had most translated their desires for enfranchisement into action by moving to Rome to attempt to steal into it. If these desires had been held by all levels of the Latin society, then perhaps that desire would have been strong enough to make the fulfillment of it soothing enough to to assuage the discomfort caused by the loss of fields. The one could thereupon be required from the Latins in exchange for the other.58 As for the other Allied communities, perhaps Flaccus had let it be known that the commission only intended to adjudicate land in Latin areas, and so to them alone would the civitas be offered. Those not involved in this deal would would lose nothing in terms of the ager publicus, and as a pledge of good faith for this promise, he might have extended the ius provocationis. In so doing, he would be giving this privilege to those who did not wish to change their citizenship by means of surrendering their lands to do so, if for no other reason than that were not asked.59 This would square with the alternative proposal found in Valerius Maximus, who was aware that Flaccus had offered one or the other—that is, civitas or ius provocationis—but but may have been unclear as to the specifics as to whom and why.60 Such an interpretation of Valerius is a novel one, to be sure, but it is not beyond the pale of possibility. By means of a proposal of this type, the Triumvirate would gain the unfettered ability to resume judgment of lands in Latin areas, the Latins would be compensated for their loss, and the other Allies would not lose their lands at all and at the same time would gain for free a right whereby they could potentially diminish Roman magisterial abuse. 58 Arguments similar to this one, suggesting that Flaccus, Gracchus, and later Drusus aimed only at enfranchising the Latins, can be found in Mouritsen (1998, p. 109–122). 59 It might also have been a salve to those who would have felt ill-used by being left out of the offer made to the Latins which they might equally have been willing to accept. 60 And indeed, Valerius was prone to mistakes and confusions; see chapter 1.

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If this was what actually occurred, then Flaccus seems to have made it clear to the Allies that he had plans to have the Triumvirate resume the adjudication of some of the ager publicus, but intended to have it do so in a way designed to be less sharp and painful to those living near where he intended to do so than had been done in the past. He also seems to have alerted the Senate to his plan, and Appian lists the reaction of the patres to it as anger at the possibility of having their subjects equal to themselves (ἡ ουλὴ δ᾽ ἐχαλέπαινε, τοὺς ὑπ κόους σφῶν ἰσοπολίτας εἰ ποι σονται; 1.3.21). That very well may have been the source of their discomfiture, although it is also extremely likely that there were also other and quite probably more compelling causes for it. Most importantly, resumption of the land division and reallocation by the commission would doubtless continue to affect the illegal holdings of those Senators who encroached on the ager publicus in Latin areas. Furthermore, if the gambit of Flaccus were to pay off as well as Appian suggests it was going to, the Senate would lose the powerful weapon of Allied protest to stifle the commission, as those who might otherwise have complained would have held their tongues in exchange for the civitas. Flaccus was almost certainly aware of the Senate’s opinion, and as a result seems deliberately to have avoided attending the curia. When he finally did go under summons (Valerius Maximus— loc. cit.—reports that Flaccus aegre conpulsus est ut in curiam ueniret), he apparently met their harangue against what he was intending with silence (ibid.). Tensions were apparently building over the designs of Flaccus, but at that moment foreign policy providentially intervened, just as it had done in 129. In this case, Massilia, being pressed by the Salluvii, appealed to Rome for military aid (Flor. 1.37). Flaccus was then dispatched to deal with the situation (Per. 60; Appian 1.5.34). It seems that the consul never got the chance to bring his proposal to the vote while he was in Rome, and during his tenure in Gaul his term expired, although he was apparently successful enough there (or dangerous enough back at home) that the Senate was willing to keep him in the field until 123 and even to vote him a triumph when he returned (Fast. Triump.; Plutarch C. Gracc. 17, 18). Appian remarks that Fulvius Flaccus was the first to rouse the Italians to set their hearts upon the citizenship (Φούλ ιος Φλάκκος ὑπατεύων μάλιστα δὴ πρῶτος ὅδε ἐς τὸ φανερώτατον ἠρέ ιζε τοὺς

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Ἰταλιώτας ἐπι υμεῖν τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας ὡς κοινωνοὺς;

1.5.34). Clearly this was not true, if what is meant is that that Flaccus installed into the Italians a desire for the citizenship that had not been there earlier. If nothing else, the expulsion laws of 187 and 177 (and possibly those of 173 and 126), and the reasons given for their enactment, volubly attest that large numbers of Italians had already had such a desire, and had it for some time.61 What Appian probably meant instead was that Flaccus was the first Roman politician whose activities indicated to the Allies that their enfranchisement was something that might be won by means of applying pressure upon, or lending support to, the right politicians. Before 125, the attainment of the civitas may have been an empty wish, but after Flaccus it might have appeared to them that it was something they could actually achieve with enough determination. There is, of course, no evidence that Flaccus himself ever stated this to the Allies, explicitly or otherwise, and indeed it was an erroneous assumption (as events will show). Nor is there any indication that Flaccus attempted to persuade the Allies to agitate for a citizenship they did not already want. Rather, it is more likely that all he was doing was merely responding to an urge whose existence was already present, in the effort to accomplish a

Keaveney (1987, p. 53–55) also wishes to use as evidence for the Italian desire for the citizenship the episode of M. Perperna, cos. 130, who according to Valerius Maximus was not even a citizen (3.4.5); his father had assumed the citizenship illegally, and was expelled when the “Sabellians” claimed him back under the “Papian law”. However, the many problems with the passage itself (among which its claims that Perperna was allegedly a triumphator, that his father was a Sabellian and not an Etruscan, and that he would have fallen victim to a law that was not passed for another 65 years, claims which were all patently untrue) are more than enough to lead to the conclusion that this anecdote should be thrown out of consideration for being relevant to this period. Also compelling are objections raised by Matthias Gelzer and William Harris, which are cited by Keaveney in his extensive endnote 35, found on p. 72. Their arguments are convincing enough that, while it seems appropriate to recognize the existence of the anecdote, it will not be used as evidence here as it is in Keaveney. 61

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particular political goal.62 From this the Allies drew their own conclusions. But if Flaccus inadvertently disclosed or seemed to disclose the path to the franchise to the Allies, he also demonstrated something else to Rome and Roman politicians: he revealed that the civitas was apparently valuable enough for the Allies, or at least some of them, to be willing to part with ager publicus—which might have been worth a great deal to them—to get it. Therefore, the franchise itself was worth even more to these Italians than the land was, and that knowledge could potentially be used by those Roman statesmen who might need something from the Allies in the future. Such a person would now have the means to purchase the favor of the socii, to get them to fight with enthusiasm on the battlefield or in the streets of Rome, to reward such service after it had been done, and perhaps to acquire their gratitude for a lifetime. Indeed, this would have been apparent both to those who might contemplate such possibilities, and to those for whom such policies would be unthinkable. It is therefore probably not much of an exaggeration to suggest that the law Flaccus had been considering, and what it seemed to imply both to Romans and to Allies, had the potential for profound consequences, some of them undoubtedly quite beyond the wildest imaginings of Flaccus himself. One scholar has suggested that his proposal was merely an attempt by the consul to send up a “weather balloon” to ascertain the way the winds were blowing for both Allies and Romans.63 The breeze, as Flaccus soon ascertained, was apparently strong enough to propel the measure he had had in mind almost to the point of execution, even if he was dispatched to Gaul before he could actually launch it. It would not be long, however, before those particular gusts would be employed again.

62 Keaveney (op. cit., p. 63) comes to the same conclusions, and likewise believes that neither the agrarian laws nor their commissioners instilled in the Italians a desire for the citizenship, but instead used that desire as a means to barter co-operation with the land scheme. 63 Yet another bon mot of Stockton (p. 96).

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Shortly after Flaccus had departed to Gaul, the colony of Fregellae broke into revolt.64 The timing of this event was probably more than coincidence,65 even if amongst the many sources which describe or make reference to the event no reasoning of any kind is provided for why it took place. (Per. 60, Plutarch, C. Gracc. 3, and de vir. ill. 65 are but a few of them) Indeed, most of these sources limit their notices to the revolt’s outcome, which is that it was crushed by the praetor L. Opimius,66 who had been sent to contain the uprising. Having broken this uprising, Opimius proceeded to destroy the town. Fregellae’s insurrection had apparently been doomed from the start, since it was not aided by any other city (the notice in the de viris illustribus that Asculum had also risen is usually explained away as an error by modern scholars).67 As a result, it represents a rather odd episode in Roman history, and gives rise to several unanswered questions. Chief among them is why Fregellae had revolted at all. Additionally, how could its inhabitants possibly have believed that they would meet any fate other than the one it ultimately encountered as one small city against the vastness of Rome? Some answers to these questions are occasionally sought in the fact that in 177 Fregellae had attracted a large number of Before the year had finished according to the Periochae, which also places it after Flaccus had left. 65 So Mouritsen (1998, p. 118) and Keaveney (1987, p. 64–68); it is also implied by Gabba (1976, p. 217 note 11). See also below. 66 With the aid, it seems, of the treachery of a Fregellanus named Q. Numitorius Pullus; so Cicero, de inv. 2.34.105, Phil. 3.17, de fin. 5.62. 67 For example, Keaveney (loc. cit.) mentions that since Asculum was not completely destroyed as Fregellae had been, it must have been that Asculum had not risen, since its destruction would certainly have occurred had it done so. Asculum may have considered taking part but ultimately did not do so, which would explain the reference in the de viris illustribus. Since Asculum was later the site of the uproar in 91, the combination of that event—which would demonstrate a proclivity to revolt—and the reports that Asculum might have entertained ideas of joining Fregellae led the anonymous author of that work to transpose the later event of 91 into his life of Gracchus in the de viris illustribus, in which work mistakes are frequent. This theory is fairly convincing, and is therefore followed here. 64

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Samnite and Paelignian settlers (Livy 41.8). These, it is argued, had decided on independence, and had taken over an otherwise loyal colony and attempted to tear it away from Rome.68 Further evidence for this is discerned in the sequel, which is that a new colony was founded from those of its occupants who were spared. This has been taken to mean that once the Oscan elements had been dispensed with, the more loyal (Latin) segments were repatriated.69 Such an explanation is not entirely convincing, but allowing for the moment that independence was the motive, this projection nevertheless does not take into account the other unknown, which is how Fregellae could possibly have hoped to challenge Rome. Surely its people must have understood that they would be defeated if war in earnest is what they had had in mind. Why, then, would they risk certain destruction in an enterprise conducted in this manner? Such a question is, again, not answered in the sources. Nevertheless, it is possible to derive from those sources a different perspective on Fregellae in light of the proposal of Flaccus, one which simultaneously answers the question of why the city rose in the first place and why it rose in the peculiar way that it did. A few modern scholars have made just such a derivation. As has been suggested above, the prospect of gaining the citizenship through the potential lex Fulvia, even at the cost of the use of ager publicus or of their own lands lying adjacent to it, had proven very attractive to those to whom it was offered, id est the Latins. According to this theory, when that possibility was shelved, the fact that potential redistribution was also shelved did not assuage those Latins at Fregellae. These then resorted to a violent demonstration to voice their displeasure at the situation. Yet a serious armed effort against So Stockton, p. 96–97, and Salmon 1967, p. 326, 334. Salmon (loc. cit.) goes further still, arguing that the destruction of the city was calculated by Rome to send a message to the Latins, but without actually having to slaughter Latins, for whom the Romans had a deeper affection than other Italians. Instead, the less desirable Samnites were subjected to Roman brutality; in this manner, the Romans acted as they did with the Allied soldiers in the army, displaying their harsh discipline but studiously avoiding its application to people whose injuries suffered in the process might cause difficulties. 68 69

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the Romans by that city alone would have had no chance at all, and the suicidal nature of such an enterprise would have been obvious to everyone. As a result, it is sometimes maintained that the Fregellani must have believed that they would have help, either from fellow Latins who would be persuaded to join them, or those already been so persuaded but had not yet finished preparations when Fregellae made its move.70 In response to this, it should be noted that in the former case it would seem that this would be a wild gamble to take in the absence of guaranteed assistance, and in the latter case, that there is no evidence of any other cities even taking part in the planning for an uprising, other than the notice that Asculum played some undefined role. Finally, if there had been some sort of a coniuratio of this kind it is therefore curious as to why none of the sources would remember it. Thus, the postulated missing help on which Fregellae is claimed to have counted does not really unravel this particular mystery. Moreover, it is to be observed that both of these suppositions, and in fact all of the explanations offered thus far for what happened at Fregellae, depend upon the assumption that Fregellani had really determined to revolt. However, it is possible that there is another way to explain what transpired. It may be that Fregellae had not actually contemplated a full-scale revolt at all, but instead may have had something else entirely in mind. As encountered above, it has been suggested that Flaccus initially only floated his proposal to enfranchise the Latins to see if they would be willing to accept the civitas as compensation, of sorts, for not causing difficulties should the commission resume its reclamation of ager publicus. Upon the apparent discovery that such a trade was amenable, he then seems to have decided to move forward with it until sent away to his eventual victories in Gaul. Perhaps Fregellae was then responding to the ballon d’essai of Flaccus with one of their These are the theories of Keaveney and Mouritsen, respectively, in the passages mentioned above. Neither believes that Fregellae had been left to their own devices by the Latins either from the irritation which had allegedly attached to them from 177, when they had poached so many men from the surrounding areas, or due to the fact that it was an allOscan affair, as implied by Badian (1971 p. 390), Salmon, and Stockton (also in the places cited earlier). 70

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own. If, in fact, they had intuited that at least one segment of the Roman ruling class had come to regard the citizenship as something they might be willing to concede to avoid one form of disturbance, maybe they would trade it to end another kind. If so, they might have launched their demonstration to see what the Roman response would be, perhaps in the hope that the Romans would grant the franchise rather than commit to the hassle of an armed expedition. As events turned out, however, Fregellae had seriously miscalculated the temper of the Roman government. Possibly out of recognition of the message that such a concession might send, the Republic instead replied in a more sanquinary manner, and the result was the brutal suppression of the “revolt” and the sack of the city. Such a theory for what happened at Fregellae is, of couse, only that: a theory. However, nothing in the sources suggest things could not have occurred in this way, and indeed it might very well explain why Fregellae decided to engage in what appears to have been a hopeless endeavor, why that endeavor failed so spectacularly, and why Rome reacted to it as it did. Whether that was what happened at Fregellae or not, however, what is almost certain is that the year 125 was of monumental importance for the Allies, and from the events in it two lessons might have been learned. The first of these was that there were members of the Roman ruling class for whom support of the grant of the citizenship was not inconceivable, if by means of this grant the Allies could give the men from that class something they wanted in return. It is not impossible that Fregellae might have caused some doubt about this receptivity on the part of the Romans, but the later activities of Caius Gracchus and others (see below) would have reaffirmed the assumption. Of course, what this apparent willingness did not necessarily guarantee was that support of enfranchisement amongst these Roman statesmen would lead to laws to that effect. This fact the Allies would gradually have to discover, to their considerable frustration. Still, it seems the willingness to consider enfranchisement was there for the right price. Beyond that, 125 had showed something else to the Allies: it had made clear that whether or not some part of the Roman governing order could be persuaded to grant the civitas, it would certainly not be so persuaded by forced extortion in the weak

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manner that Fregellae had attempted. It may very well be that the success of force was not out of the realm of possibility, but Fregellae had not had sufficient muscle to accomplish it and had in essence been treated like an irritating nuisance:71 it had been easier 71 Signs of this contempt might be observed from a passage in Valerius Maximus 2.8.4 about the sequel to Fregellae. According to that authority, the praetor who had destroyed the city, L. Opimius, had asked for a triumph for his action and had been refused. The reason given by Valerius Maximus for the denial had been that Rome did not grant triumphs for recovering territory which had been lost, and he couples the discomfiture of Opimius with that of Q. Fulvius Flaccus (cos. 237 and grandfather of the Marcus Fulvius Flaccus mentioned above), likewise not given a triumph for suppressing a revolt in Capua in 211. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions this policy also (25.9.10). The comments of both Valerius and Ammianus following their reports suggests a firm custom amongst the Romans; namely, that no triumph had ever been awarded for regaining what was Roman, but only for increasing Rome’s territory. This does not, however, accord well with the well-attested triumph later given to Pompeius Strabo for his exploits against the Picentes, one mentioned in the Fasti Triumphales as well as Velleius 2.65.3, Pliny NH 7.43.135, Gellius 15.4.3, Dio 43.51 and 49.21, and Valerius himself in 6.9.9, to name just a few sources (usually in the context of an episode in the life and remarkable career of P. Ventidius, about which more later). Of course, triumphs could be celebrated without the consent of the Senate— C. Marcius Rutilius had gotten one by the consent of the people in 356— or even that of the people, assuming the triumphator opted to hold it at his own expense (Payne, p. 41). Hence, it could have been that Pompeius held his in just such a fashion. On the other hand, the fact that the triumph of Pompeius is included on the Fasti speaks against it having been celebrated under either of these latter conditions. Alternatively, it could also well be that Opimius was denied a triumph but Pompeius granted one because of some distinction was observed between the Latins/Campani and the Picentes which escaped commentary in the sources. Finally, it may have been that the later triumph was was allowed, contrary to custom, to brighten the spirits of the Romans after a strenuous war which, as will be seen, had definitely sapped morale. Barring these eventualities, it might also simply be that the triumph of Pompeius was allowed because his campaign had been greater than that of Opimius; perhaps the Senate saw nothing in what Opimius had done as worth rewarding, indicative of contempt for the operation.

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for the Romans to eradicate the community in its relative weakness than to accede to its demands, which could have set a dangerous precedent for the other Allies to follow. Through its answer to Fregellae, Rome had treated the town as if it had wished to make an example of the city and to send a message. It certainly did that, though that message might not have been the intended one: henceforth the Allies would have understood that if they were ever to attempt compulsion to get what they wanted from Rome, they would have to be stronger than Fregellae had been. To acquire this strength, they would have to unite.

4. CAIUS GRACCHUS To Rome and Roman politics, as mentioned above, the issue of mass enfranchisement for Allied communities—or, at least, for some of them—had been introduced for the first time by M. Fulvius Flaccus.72 That man had declared his intention to propose a law granting the civitas, or at the very least some important political rights, to the Allies during his tenure as consul. He had done this to win Italian co-operation and to quell potential Italian complaints with his scheme to resume assessment of what land belonged to Rome through the commission established by the earlier leges Semproniae. If Appian is to be believed, Flaccus would have been successful both in passing the law and in achieving the goal for which the law would have been passed (id est acquiescence in the resumption of land adjudication) had not military responsibilities kept him from doing so.73 Whether it was his intention or not, Flaccus had in the process uncovered the truth that the citizenship was worth so much to some of the socii that they would be willing to trade land of potentially great value for it. The possible ends to which this enthusiasm might be put were endless, but one of them was certain: the grant of the citizenship would buy the silence of the Italians over having their lands assessed, and thus remove from So Badian (1971, p. 389). In fact, that authority specifically states that Flaccus had been sent to war in order to kill his franchise bill, indicating that the Senate had had some grounds for concern that the law might otherwise have passed (loc. cit.). 72 73

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the Senate one method by which they could obstruct redistribution of the ager publicus. It can never be known how things would have turned out if the would-be lex Fulvia had passed and the Triumvirate had gone back to defining the public land, because, as has been seen, Flaccus was sent off to glory in Gaul before it could be voted. Even so, a tool which had not been available before now presented itself for use by Roman statesmen, especially those devoted to the cause of land reform. That Caius Gracchus, younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, was devoted to such a cause is beyond doubt. He, too, served on the Triumvirate, and Tiberius had been so often on his mind since his murder that he even visited Caius his dreams.74 It seems that it had been the shade of Tiberius which had prompted Caius Gracchus to run for quaestor, and he had in turn done so in 127, serving his year of office fighting under the consul L. Orestes in Sardinia and then continuing as proquaestor for 125. In 124, however, Gracchus returned to Rome. It seemed fairly clear to everyone that he had done so with the intention of running for the tribunate of 123, and that he would in fact be elected if the thunderous popular ovation which he encountered on his return was any indication of what the voting public thought of him (καὶ καταπλέοντι ἐκ τῆς Σαρδόνος συν ντα, καὶ ἐκ άντα μετ᾽ εὐφ μίας καὶ κρότων ἐδέχετο. τοσαύτ πρὸς αὐτόν ἦν εὐνοίας ὀχλικῆς ὑπερ ολ ,

Diodorus Siculus, 37.24). The Senate was apparently quite troubled by this possibility and attempted to forestall it in a number of ways. First it attempted to extend his promagistracy by continuing that of Orestes, and since it was apparently irregular that a (pro)quaestor should return before the commander,75 the prorogation would in 74 As stated by Plutarch (C. Gracc. 1). Cicero (de div. 1.26.56) states that he publicly related the occurrence, and Valerius Maximus (1.7.6), who almost certainly took the anecdote from Cicero, observes the same thing. 75 Plutarch’s narrative makes it clear that the Senate was determined to keep Caius Gracchus from following the steps of Tiberius into the tribunate, which is almost certainly true. It should be pointed out, however, that Gracchus (by Plutarch’s own admission) had been an extremely capable officer. His aplomb at gaining clothing for the army from the Sardinians in spite of their petition to the Senate to be relieved of such a requisition, and the grain later delivered from Africa by the

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theory compel Gracchus to remain in Sardinia until the return of Orestes (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 2). When Gracchus returned in spite of this, the Senate charged him with dereliction of duty before the censors. It did not take him long to extricate himself from that accusation; having been allowed to speak on his own behalf, Gracchus was able to demonstrate that by the law he had done his requisite service and had done so with scrupulous honesty, intimating that the same could not be said of those with whom he served (Plutarch, loc. cit., Gellius, 15.12). He was then promptly accused of complicity in the revolt at Fregellae, charged specifically with having stirred up the Allies to revolt, as well as of knowing, but not disclosing, what their intentions were. It was presumably just as is difficult to see then, as it is now, how Gracchus would have had the ability to work this mischief from farway Sardinia, and Plutarch speaks of the ease with which these charges were also defeated (C. Gracc. 3).76 No sooner were they dismissed, Plutarch relates, then Gracchus at last stood for the tribunate, and there are indications that the Senate continued to do all that was in their power to stop his election once his candidacy could no longer be

Numidian King Micipsa due to his personal admiration for Gracchus, makes his military qualities manifest. These would have made Gracchus a soldier of great use to any commander, who for legitimate military reasons may have been unwilling to lose those to politics. Thus, the Senate may have had more reasons for keeping Gracchus in Sardinia than simply keeping him out of the tribunate. 76 The absurdity of this arraignment may explain the curious notice in Appian that Gracchus was held “in contempt” by the majority of the Senate (πολλῶν δ᾽ αὐτοῦ καταφρονούντων ἐν τῷ ουλευτ ρίῳ; Appian 1.3.21). Given that the patres were well aware of his popularity and may have gotten a sense of his skill as an orator during debates surrounding the expulsion law of Pennus (although see Appendix C), its struggle to prevent his candidacy is more indicative of great respect and anxiety as to the means to which he could turn his marvelous abilities. In all likelihood, therefore, Appian’s words refer to the indictments levelled at him in the effort to keep him from office, charges which were so ridiculous as almost to convey contempt for their intended target and recognized as such by everyone.

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blocked. It is probably for this reason that he was returned fourth rather than first when the votes were returned.77 Upon assuming office in December of 124, C. Gracchus was now tribune, and with that office found himself in the position to be able to propose laws. It was therefore now within his power to reintroduce the proposal of Flaccus to enfranchise the Allies (or, at least, some of them) and, having carried it, to resume the land assessment towards the ultimate aim of continuing the redistribution of the ager publicus. However, Gracchus would likely have been highly cognizant of the extent to which he would be opposed by the Senate, as his labors to be cleared of the alleged misdemeanors brought against him to prevent his candidacy would have made that manifest. Such opposition would raise serious difficulties in getting his laws passed against their objections. In the first place, in order to pass any laws which he may have contemplated bringing forward, he would need votes. Traditionally lawmakers who were in alignment with the Senate and the wealthier elements of Roman society had not encountered great impediments in enacting their measures, provided that such measures did not directly harm the lower classes. In fact, it is one of the oddities of Republican Rome that, as far as the evidence from the sources can show, the legislative assemblies almost never rejected a bill that had been put to it unless, again, that bill had been immediately and drastically harmful to the poor.78 However, So Stockton, p. 163. Mouritsen raises this point (2001, p. 64–67, citing also a number of other scholars in note 2, p. 65), which he explains by his belief that, before the year 133, the lower classes tended to stay away from lawmaking assemblies unless the bill in question specifically concerned them. Furthermore, what he has to say about electoral assemblies (op. cit., 91– 101) applies to lawmaking ones, which is that the lower classes rarely participated in them unless they lived within the boundaries of the urbs. This lack of participation was partly due to distance, which was prohibitive to those who did not live in the city itself. It was also partly due to the amount of time voting would take, which would be prohibitive for those who had to make a living and thus could not spare that time. Finally, it was possibly due to a feeling if uselessness: measures put to the assembly would pass (and candidates would be elected) once they had 77 78

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passing a law which had the approval of the wealthy and Senate was one thing; passing one over their opposition was another, since that process would involve finding enough voters to overcome the bill’s opponents. In this case, Gracchus would have to draw votes from large numbers of the lower classes, since the upper classes would probably oppose such a measure strenuously in light of the fact that Latin citizenship would lead to renewed attention in the ager publicus, which stood to cost them much. The lower classes, for their part, would need to be persuaded to commit to the sacrifice reached a majority of tribal votes, at which point voting ceased. There was therefore never the guarantee that a citizen could actually get to cast his vote even if he were to go to the balloting. For a thorough discussion of the Roman voting procedure see Nicolet (1988, p. 224–289), and below, chapter 6. Thus, unless the vote in question involved a law which directly stood to harm or help them, the lower classes stayed away. This left the upper classes and especially those from the non-urban tribes to be the ones primarily responsible for enacting proposals into law, as they could afford to take the time to vote and therefore did so more often. As voters they would generally be inclined to pass whatever laws were proposed by magistrates, since for most of the history of the Republic, these had Senatorial approval and would therefore likely be helpful—or at least not damaging—to their interests. The only time a bill which had the support of the Senate and the wealthy stood in danger of failing was if it contained provisions which would cause the lower classes to turn out in force to oppose it, as noted above. Bills therefore could be, but rarely were, rejected even if they were supported by the wealthy and the Senate. As for bills being passed without the consent of the patres and the wealthy who shared their views, these faced the significant roadblocks of finding someone to propose them, which the typical Roman lawmaker either would not have the inclination to do, or could be persuaded not to do. Additionally, there was the challenge of getting enough voters together to outnumber well-to-do opponents, and from the majority of tribes, as opposed to the four into which urban voters were registered. This, as can be imagined, would have been no an easy task. For these reasons, Mouritsen claims, the Gracchi (and specifically Caius) became the first Romans to be able to do this on a consistent basis in the long history of the Republic, and while this may be overstating the issue somewhat, the basic premise of his argument is not at all far-fetched.

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of time and the hassle of going to vote, something they tended to do only when infused with sufficient motivation that was usually self-interest.79 Still, Gracchus probably had every confidence that he could persuade the people to vote for an enfranchisement bill if it were to be put to them in language that would make it patent that the law’s enactment it would lead to further land reclamation and redistribution. After all, Flaccus seemed to have been very close to doing that very thing a few years earlier. Still, the Senate had other means to defeat legislative proposals other than simply having them voted down. In fact, the patres almost never attempted to have a popular law which it opposed defeated either through the gathering of enough contrary votes to overwhelm it, or by attempting to persuade the people who gathered at the traditional pre-vote contio, where debate was allowed, not to support it.80 Instead, the Senate typically employed 79 So Mouritsen (op. cit., p. 85–88); it appears that gratitude could also secure a turnout, but less reliably. 80 Mouritsen (op. cit., p. 68–76) takes note of this fact, which he attributes to the fact that mobilizing large crowds to enact—or defeat—a law had not been necessary until around the time of Tiberius Gracchus and that the Senators had thus never learned the techniques such mobilization required. Up to that point, he argues, the well-to-do had primarily been the ones involved in voting (see above) and since legislators had tended to put forth laws which were in their interests and had obtained Senatorial approval ahead of time, they were almost certain to pass in the assembly in which the non-urban tribes were primarily represented by the wealthy, id est the people who lived outside Rome but could afford the expense of traveling to vote. Once the so-called populares had found ways to summon large crowds whose numbers consisted of representatives from all the tribes (the latter most likely supplied by migrants to Rome from the countryside who now lived in the city but were still registered in the “rustic” tribes), the Senate was simply outnumbered, its members lacking either the knowledge or the will to take appropriate countermeasures amongst the voters. Morstein-Marx, for his part, adds that attempts to sway the voters by oratory during the final assembly before a measure was put to the vote—an assembly at which custom dictated that opponents could speak against a bill—were almost always doomed to failure. Such meetings were under the effective control of the magistrate who called them, who were alomost always those

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a variety other obstructive methods by means of which a law could be kept from being put to a vote at all. A glance at the Senate’s response to Tiberius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus reveals a few of these. In the case of Flaccus, it had dispatched Fulvius Flaccus to war before he could put his law to the vote (as has been seen). Tribunes could not be disposed of in such a manner, of course, but Gracchus could look to his brother’s term for examples of other tactics the Senate might employ: in 133 the Senate had attempted to use M. Octavius, a colleague of Ti. Gracchus in the tribunate, to veto the reading of the law in the final assembly before a vote was taken.81 More drastically, it had resorted to his murder of Gracchus when the use of their pocket “counter-tribune” had failed, an action which may not have been authorized by that body but without doubt approved of by many of its members. The brother of Tiberius Gracchus, therefore, had probably wanted to neutralize these kinds of obstruction as much as possible before the franchise bill could be brought forward. Yet the measures he intended to enact against Senatorial opposition ran the risk of not being able draw enough voters from the lower classes to get them to come to officials about to promulgate the bill, and it was they who could decide who could or could not speak. Furthemore, in cases of popular enactments, raucous crowds could shout down those trying to speak in opposition (p. 160–203). The result, both scholars note, was that the Senate resorted to—or were forced into—use of obstruction instead, employing tactics of which a few are to be narrated above. 81 Of the many accounts of this, the most extensive are found in Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 10) and Appian (1.1.12). According to Morstein-Marx, the timing of this veto contributed to the ultimate deposition of Octavius, since tradition demanded that the law had to be heard and debate entertained before the veto could be interposed. As Appian notes, Octavius twice interrupted the clerk and forbade him from completing his reading of the law (ἐκέλευε τὸν γραμματέα σιγᾶν ... [and on the next day, the γραμματεύς] ἀνεγίνωσκε καὶ Ὀκταουίου κωλύοντος ἐσιώπα). By violating this custom, Octavius left himself open to the accusation of trampling the rights of the people to hear the law and be informed of its positive and negative elements so as to guarantee an educated decision. Because of this, Octavius was not acting in the best interests of the plebs as per his charge when elected. This gave Gracchus the grounds to remove him (p. 173–175).

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the polls, and indeed it is hard to imagine anyone being able to inspire the lower classes to come to vote for some of those which Gracchus ended up proposing. Because of their apathy, Gracchus would also need some voters from outside the poor and the working class. Obviously the majority of the upper classes— concerned as they logically would be about their lands—would be against him, but eventually Gracchus seems to have found some support from the negotiatores, overseas merchants, entrepreneurs, and contractors employed by Rome (see previous chapter). These men were wealthy, but in many cases their wealth did not derive solely from their land, and less steadfastly opposed to reclaiming the ager publicus. At the very least, they did not depend upon that land to such a degree that they could not be tempted to go along with Gracchus in return for other concessions, even if their landholdings suffered. Thus, in exchange for laws which suited their concerns (ones for which they themselves could be relied upon to vote, having both the inclination and wherewithal to do so), the negotiatores could be used by Gracchus to help pass other measures which would either gratify the people or circumscribe the ability of the Senate. Once he had earned their favor and then mobilized it to clear Senatorial impediments, the path to a final enfranchisement bill seemed open to Gracchus. When in turn that law passed, the agrarian commission could resume its adjudication without Allied protests, and the redistribution of land could continue. These things, it seems, were on the mind of Gracchus as he began his tribunate in 123, one in which he would pass a broad range of laws.82 The exact measures passed by Gracchus have been

82 Not, of course, that this was necessarily the only impetus for the laws Gracchus passed. Indeed, most of them have a certain aesthetic appeal in that they served a variety of functions. Of those which fenced in the Senate, for example, several addressed what were likely longstanding abuses perpetrated by members of that body both at home and abroad (the law concerning extortion is a good example). Likewise, others must have been designed both to pre-empt the obstructionism of the patres as well as exact revenge for the death of Tiberius. Thus, almost all of them were worthwhile bills for their own sake in addition to the part they

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discussed elsewhere and therefore do not need to be repeated in any detail here.83 It will suffice to mention that almost all of them had the effect either of pleasing the people, of gratifying the contractors and merchants, or of warding off the Senate. The first of these aims seem to have been achieved by a law which made it impossible for youths under the age of seventeen to be recruited for service; that same law also made the cost of the equipment, clothing, and presumably food supplied to the soldiers the responsibility of the aerarium, and thus no longer to be deducted from soldier’s pay. The people were also served by another bill which called for the foundation of colonies on already-determined ager publicus outside of Italy, as well as another still, which provided that grain be purchased by the state and made available to the people at fixed, low prices. This last also probably provided the additional benefit of providing employment to dockworkers and laborers, as would the construction of warehouses and storage units.84 Such construction was, in turn, given to the contractors, which thereby accomplishing the second of his goals, that of earning the favor of the negotiatores. Contractors would also be helped in by the many roads his laws intended to build. To pay for these projects, Gracchus proposed to raise new taxes, which others from the merchant class, the publicani, would collect. These imposts included new harbor duties, as well as the collection of tribute from Asia. Gracchus also engineered it that tax contracts were to be awarded by the censor in Rome as opposed to the previous practice, by which the governor had assigned them in the province itself. Finally, overseas businessmen—publicani or otherwise— would be aided by a series of laws which provided for harsher penalties for Senatorial governors convicted of extortion. They played towards furthering Italian enfranchisement and the agrarian commission. 83 See, for example, the detailed treatment in Stockton, which also details the various ancient sources which make reference to these laws (p. 114–161 and 228–239); they are compiled in tabular form by Williamson (p. 459–460). 84 See, again, Stockton and Williamson for the ancient sources for these laws in the places cited directly above.

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were also helped by a reform of the courts, which rendered Senators and their families ineligible from serving on the juries which decided extortion cases, and thus making these juries theoretically more independent and likely to convict. These laws were probably not designed to overpower Senatorial obstruction, although others seem to have been. For example, a law which prevented any man who had ever been deprived of his office by the people from holding any future offices would serve as warning to any tribunes who tried to do as Octavius had done in standing in the way of the vote on the agrarian law of Tiberius. Octavius had been deprived of the tribunate by Tiberius to override his veto, and now Caius made it clear that, if such a procedure needed to occur again, it would also result in the end of the obstructionist’s political career. In the end, Gracchus withdrew this law (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 4; Diodorus 35.25.2), but it apparently served its function as a warning well enough. In a similar vein, a law was proposed which made it a capital offense to execute any Roman citizen without trial. Moreover, this law was to be applied retroactively; the same was also true of the lex de abactis just mentioned, but unlike that law, the penalties were not rescinded for this additional legislation, and the result was that the murderers of Tiberius now had to go into exile. Revenge may have been the motive, but so too a deterrent, lest the Senate decide that Caius should be killed as Tiberius had been. Another law made it mandatory for the Senate to announce what province a consul would govern before the elections, which may have been designed to take from the Senate the power to buy the cooperation of consuls with a plum promagisterial command or to make use of a convenient emergency in the empire to have one sent away, as had been done with Tuditanus and Flaccus, respectively (as has been seen). Finally, a law which made it a capital offense for any Senator found guilty of using bribes to secure an unwarranted acquittal or conviction in a trial would, Gracchus doubtless hoped, prevent any jury tampering in the attempt to enforce all of the laws just cited.85

85 For the sources of which see, again, Stockton and Willamson in the places cited in the notes above.

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In fairness, no ancient source explicitly says that Gracchus had this sort of master plan which guided his tribunate. Instead, the sources, a great many of them hostile, suggest that he was fueled by wide range of desires, some more likely that others. The more probable attribute his actions to a thirst for vengeance, either for the death of his brother or his own maltreatment;86 among the frankly incredible, an impulse to overthrow the Senate and substitute either monarchy or democracy.87 Nevertheless, one priority which his actions suggested was a high one for him was a need to finish what his brother had started with agrarian reform. The consulate of Flaccus had suggested to Graccus that a powerful new implement which could be used to accomplish this existed, in the form of quelling Allied opposition to additional adjudication by means of the grant of the citizenship.88 Towards the end of using 86 So Appian (1.3.21), suggesting he was driven to enact retribution for the “contempt” directed at him by the Senate, and Velleius Paterculus, offering his apparent need to avenge his brother (vindicandae fraternae mortis gratia ... tribunatum ingressus; 2.6.1). 87 So Velleius, loc. cit., whose full text presents both the need for revenge and the urge to sieze royal power: vel vindicandae fraternae mortis gratia vel praemuniendae regalis potentiae eiusdem exempli tribunatum ingressus). Likewise Diodorus Siculus, who states that Gracchus had actually spoken in public to that effect (ὅτι ὁ Γράκχος δ μ γορ σας περὶ τοῦ καταλῦσαι ἀριστοκρατίαν, δ μοκρατίαν δὲ συστῆσαι; 35.25.1). 88 Indeed, the citizenship may have been made even more attractive by the laws Gracchus had passed. For the poorer, the grain law (lex frumentatia) would now mean there was cheap grain to be had and probably at prices far less that what Allies were paying in their communities. This point is made—albeit for slightly different purposes than those to which it is being turned here—by Brunt (1972, p. 26–27). Brunt argues against Toynbee’s suggestion that the vine had supplanted wheat in Italy, and says “The city of Rome was fed at the expense of the subjects; imperial revenues were not available for other Italian towns. The costs of transportation made it inevitable that the inhabitants of the interior should grow their own food.” By implication, the grain imported to Rome by foreign providers like Sicily was not available to the Allies at the inexpensive rates at which they were made available by Gracchus, and probably not even at the cheapness of the rates even before his lex frumentaria. These prices would be available to them as citizens.

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this implement, Gracchus passed a series of measures which seem to fit so easily into a pattern that it is difficult to believe it was a coincidence. Rather, it seems that it was his design to use his legislation to win enough votes amongst the lower classes and the mercantile elements that they would be able to pass a citizenship bill over the opposition of the landed wealthy, and a series of others which limited the extent to which the Senate could resort to some of the obstructive tactics they had employed in the past to thwart his designs. Having managed therefore to legislate his way through the reefs barring him from a law to grant the citizenship to the Allies, one which would enable the further acquisition of ager publicus and its subsequent distribution, all that would now be needed was to promulgate it. Yet for reasons which cannot be known for certain, Gracchus had apparently decided that he was not going to propose the law himself. Perhaps he had come to believe that the law might have more authority if a friendly consul proposed it, and as luck would have it, one was at hand in the form of Caius Fannius. According to Plutarch, that consul’s election to office was largely won through the aid of Gracchus (C. Gracc. 8), suggesting that his cooperation would be forthcoming. Alternatively, he may have decided that the introduction of a law which for all intents and purposes was the same one that Fulvius Flaccus had contemplated in 125 should be introduced by its creator. The latter, having returned in triumph in 123, had lent whatever support he could to Gracchus and the leges Semproniae that tribune had passed. Flaccus now came forward and was himself elected tribune for 122. With the election of a friendly consul and tribune, Gracchus may well have decided that his work was done; his tribunate was set to expire in December of 123, and he may well have been content to leave office at that time. Instead, Gracchus found himself elected again for 122. Sources which are obviously biased against him claim that he had Furthermore, as citizens the former Allies could potentially take part in the land redistribution itself, while for the wealthy (who would likely be giving up whatever land was to be sequestered) there was the prospect of being eligible for the contracts which Gracchus had made available alongside the negotiatores of original Roman extraction.

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wished for this to happen, but both Plutarch (C. Gracc. 8) and Appian (1.3.21–22) state that he had not looked for iteration, but had rather had it thrust on him. Indeed, that fact that he had evidently been planning a trip to Africa to oversee the foundation of the colony at Carthage proposed by Rubrius (a trip he ultimately made) seems to confirm this (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 10; Appian, 1.3.24).89 Nevertheless, the people desired it so, and elected him sua sponte. A statesman who had passed many measures which centered on the rights of the people—ones which helped prevent them from executed without trial, for example, or which reaffirmed their rights to make and unmake magistrates—would be hard-pressed to refuse an office which the people had spontaneously given him. Therefore he accepted the tribunate, but he was apparently determined to go ahead with his African visit anyway (a special dispensation for the people was needed for that, but apparently it was obtained easily enough).90 After carrying bills to found colonies in Tarentum and Capua and perhaps lending his support to the franchise proposal beginning to be promulgated by Flaccus (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 8), Gracchus departed and left the latter to complete the process of 89 In Stockton’s attempt to ascertain the motives of Gracchus in his re-election (p. 169–175) the fact that it actually was thrust upon him unbidden is never seriously considered. He allows that Gracchus may not have actually run—a calculated move designed to show just how popular he was by being elected without running for office—and even that he did not want it until very late, but he never postulates that Gracchus never wanted it at all and had to accept it when given. However, this latter circumstance would explain why it is that Appian notes that the election only came about when less than ten qualified candidates emerged (1.3.21). If the Senate had thought that Gracchus was going to run again, its members doubtless would have found someone to run in his place. But the Senate had not made such precautions (although it did have plans for ways to take care of Flaccus, as will be seen), and presumably it would have been on the lookout for Gracchus as a candidate. The patres therefore must have been convinced that no re-election was imminent. Moreover, the fact that Tiberius had ultimately come to grief in a reelection bid also argues against the desire of Caius to make the same mistake. 90 Stockton, p. 172; Plutarch (C. Gracc. 8) notes that the people would have been willing to do practically anything he asked.

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enacting the measure.91 In his anxiety to go, Gracchus may not have noticed that there were signs that something was amiss, in that Fannius seems to have changed his demeanor towards Gracchus after the election (Plutarch, loc. cit.). The reasons for this tergiversation and ingratia are not recorded. It may be that the consul had been disturbed by the iteration of the Gracchus; Plutarch mentions that the popularity of Gracchus had been so great that at in 123 he could even have been elected to the consulate (loc. cit.), so a fear of a tyranny may have thus been aroused. Alternatively, Fannius may have had an enmity with Flaccus, or was simply opposed either to adjudicating the ager publicus or to extending the citizenship. A speech made by him quoted by Julius Victor certainly indicates a strong antipathy to the latter (more below). Perhaps he was hostile to both outcomes. 91 Plutarch mentions that Gracchus himself had attempted to carry this measure before he departed for Africa, but he also mentions similar proposals earlier (5) and later (9). Surely Gracchus did not attempt to pass the same law three times, so Plutarch must be somewhat out of chronological order. How is it to be arranged, then? Possibly a key is found in 12, when throngs of supporters from all of Italy came into the city to support the bills he officially promulgated after his return from Carthage. It is at this juncture that Fannius had them expelled (more directly). Possibly Plutarch is merely foreshadowing in 5, 8, and 9 what was actually voted in section 12, which came after the return of Gracchus from Carthage. The earlier mentions were possibly in connection with the bill that Flaccus had proposed and was to attempting to carry, but was one which Gracchus had let the people know that it had his support. Confident that the people were so firmly in his camp that Flaccus could get the law passed through such an endorsement—and indeed Gracchus had just been elected to the tribunate unbidden, indicating that this confidence in his own popularity was not misplaced—he departed to Africa. This interpretation of Plutarch is similar to the one offered by Stockton (p. 177–178), and is to be preferred to that of Appian (1.3.24), who states that the franchise bill was both proposed and rejected before the departure to Africa. According to that authority, Flaccus had joined him on the expedition, which is clearly in contradiction to Plutarch’s narrative, which places him in Rome doing battle against the Senate’s method to foil the Gracchani (see below). As such, it is followed by Badian (1988, p. 301), and is also followed here.

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Either way, if there were these dark clouds on the horizon, Gracchus did not seem to have been troubled overmuch by them, and left the city anyway. It soon became patent that the personality of Gracchus had played a large role in getting his measures passed, because in his absence the cause for which he seems to have been working began to founder.92 The franchise proposal was the last piece of the puzzle to be fit before adjudication could be resumed, but it soon ran into some significant obstacles. Part of that seems to have been due to Flaccus, who is presented as having been a difficult person: blunt, outspoken, and apparently rather artless,93 he seems to have been prone to shortness of temper,94 and for these reasons he apparently came to be loathed by the Senate (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 10). This loathing was compounded by his obvious continued support of policies which that body had found disagreeable, and his behavior towards that body as consul had hardly increased their affection (see above). Indeed, a sense of betrayal might also have played a role: if a triumph had been granted by the patres to Flaccus as a way to buy his support (as perhaps Gracchus had considered his electoral aid would be such for Fannius), he must have disappointed them with his persistent adherence to Gracchus and by his election to the tribunate.95 Flaccus was therefore not the ideal spokesman for the citizenship bill in 122 despite the success he had had with a similar proposition earlier.

For the crucial role leadership played in passing popular legislation, see Mouritsen (2001, p. 85–88). 93 Cicero’s characterization of his oratory was “workmanlike” (M. Fulvius Flaccus et C. Cato Africani sororis filius, mediocres oratores; Brut. 108). 94 Traits he seemed to have shared with his enemy Scipio Aemilianus, in whose murder Flaccus was apparently suspected; Plutarch, C. Gracc. 10. 95 Then again, the fact that he had been elected both consul and tribune seems to suggest that, if he was unpopular with the nobiles, he was less with the populus as he is sometimes made out to be. The rumors of his involvement with the death of Aemilianus (see previous note), for example, do not seem to have hindered his career, as he was elected consul subsequent to this event. 92

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Nor were the particular shortcomings of Flaccus the only source of the law’s problems. Adding to them was the fact that the Senate had now discovered a new weapon at their disposal in the form of a tribune of their own, M. Livius Drusus. It was the aim of Drusus to serve the Senate, as it would be that of his son years later, and he seems to have been one of the few Romans of his time to realize that the only way the people could be detached from those men who had courted them personally and promised them benefits would be for a competitor to take similar steps. In other words, the only way the people could be mobilized against Gracchus (or, rather, against his plans as being put forward by Flaccus) would be to use the same mobilization techniques which had been used by Gracchus himself, and it seems that Drusus did not disdain to do this very thing. Helping in this endeavor was the fact that Gracchus himself was away and could not provide an adequate response to what Drusus would be attempting. Armed with such a combination of insight and opportunity, Drusus went to work: through oratory and what seems to have been a not inconsiderable personal magnetism, Drusus began to draw crowds and discuss the possibility of founding colonies of his own. The difference would be that he offered more of these than Gracchus had done (Appian 1.3.23), had proposed to free those given land in them of the vectigal they paid on that land. To remove even the suspicion of embezzlement or impropriety from himself, Drusus also moved that he himself not administer the founding of his proposed colonies. This had been a sticking point for the Gracchi, who had both served on the commissions established by their laws. There was, of course, no discussion by Drusus of either reevaluation of ager publicus nor of citizenship for the Latins to buy their acceptance of it, but as a particularly magnanimous gesture to the latter, Drusus did promise an end to their susceptibility to scourging on the battlefield (Plutarch, C. Gracch. 9–10). In all of these promises he not only had the support of the Senate96 but 96 It is debated whether or not the Senate actually favored any of these measures, or if indeed Drusus did himself. On the one hand, nothing ultimately came of his laws, but he was able to enjoy a career crowned by a consulate and, later, a censorate; this suggests that the he had been

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advertised that fact. Up to this point, the Senate, in the words of one scholar, had “allowed itself to be increasingly separated from the masses”97 in its apparent opposition to the laws which would help them. Drusus doubtless hoped that his conspicuous display of Senatorial support would illustrate that it was not the benefits of the Gracchan programme to which the patres had been opposed, but that what appeared to be aims at tyranny which Gracchus harbored had drawn their ire instead. The lack of flair on the part of Flaccus and the newfound popularity of Drusus both alike meant trouble for the franchise bill, but part of its lack of success may have been in the nature of the bill itself. For a variety of reasons, the mass enfranchisement of the Latins would have been opposed by the Senate and the wealthy (see chapter 4). Now reservations amongst the lower classes were being cultivated, with the consul Fannius apparently played to their fears of being frozen out of the voting places, games, and during holiday celebrations by throngs of new citizens of Latin extraction (quoted in Julius Victor 6.4.).98 Such harangues by Fannius on the one hand and the promises of Drusus on the other, as well as the latter’s personal attacks on Flaccus himself (Plytarch, C. Gracch. 10), finally led to the failure the franchise plan. Flaccus was outmatched, and the momentum which the franchise proposal had generated had begun to wane (Appian, loc. cit.; Plutarch, C. Gracch. 11). Had he stayed in Rome, Gracchus may have been able to have overcome the opposition of the Senate, the reluctance of the people, and the counterproposals of Drusus, but this feat had proved quite beyond the capacity of Flaccus. Flaccus himself seems to have been aware of that fact, and he thus sent to Gracchus for help. The latter returned to Rome in haste, for a new complication had arisen in the fact that the consular elections were approaching. rewarded for his services by a grateful curia. On the other hand, both of these measures would have been far less objectionable than what Gracchus offered, so perhaps the Senate acquiesced to them (or made the show of doing so) as the lesser of two evils. 97 Mouitsen 2001, p. 141 98 See Morstein-Marx p. 126–127 for a discussion of the significance of what Fannius seemed to be suggesting.

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In these, the candidacy of L. Opimius—who was denied the office for 122 in part by the support Gracchus had given to Fannius— was now being backed extensively by the Senate (Plutarch, C. Gracc. 11). This was the same Opimius who as praetor had razed Fregellae to the ground (see above), and as such his opinions about the franchise for the Latins were probably obvious. Plutarch he was a man of “oligarchical sympathies” (ἀνὴρ ὀλιγαρχικὸς; loc. cit.), and such a man could be a powerful obstacle in the way of Italian enfranchisement. Because of this, Gracchus must have figured that if the franchise was ever to be won for the Latins, it would have to be won in a hurry. He apparently decided that he would propose the law himself this time, but before he could do so he would need to regain some of the popularity lost through of his absence, his association with Flaccus, and his competition in the form of Drusus. To that end, Gracchus moved from his opulent dwelling on the Palatine into the poorer section of town and published the laws that he intended to have enacted in what remained of the year (C. Gracc. 11–12). One of these was apparently the franchise law, which resurrected the initial proposal of Flaccus from three years before: it would offer the complete citizenship to the Latins99 and Latin rights to the Allies. This apparently drew a crowd of Latins into the city,100 and either from fear of voting fraud or from fear of violence, the consul Fannius was persuaded to pass an enactment 99 This runs counter to the statement of Velleius Paterculus in 2.6 that Gracchus was for giving the citizenship to all the allies and extending it as far as the Alps (dabat civitatem omnibus Italicis, extendebat eam paene usque Alpis). The same thing is said by that author of Tiberius Gracchus, although no evidence for a law to this effect seems to exist (see above). This fact, along with the fact that two of the three references to the law in Plutarch and that in Appian specifically mention the Latins, leads to the conclusion that perhaps Velleius was exaggerating here; so also Mouritsen, (1998, p. 119 note 32). 100 As discussed in chapter 2, it was apparently a law of long standing that Latins who happened to be in the city on the days when laws were to be voted could cast their ballots in one of the tribes, randomly chosen by lot. Very likely they also came to provide physical support for Gracchus, as well.

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ejecting all non-citizens from Rome while voting was to be done. Based on his reaction as described by Plutarch, Gracchus seems to have been surprised by this move and vowed to use his intercessio to protect any who stayed in defiance of the measure. However, when one of his supporters actually began to be taken away he ultimately did nothing. Reasons for his inactivity are not explicitly stated, but are not difficult to conjecture. Gracchus was doubtless aware that his list of enemies was growing (he had alienated a few of his other fellow-tribunes over a dispute involving a gladiatorial show; Plutarch, loc. cit.), and it is possible he feared a tumult which would give the Senate cause to move against him as they had done his brother irregardless of the laws he had passed to protect himself against that very thing. Hence, when his franchise law finally came to the vote, the actions of Fannius and what was apparently some inspired oratory from Drusus against the bill (so Cicero, Brut. 99) finally led to its defeat.101 When elections came shortly thereafter, L. Opimius was voted in as consul and Gracchus was not returned as tribune, if indeed he had run for that office a third time.102 The new consul and tribunes then set apart taking down his laws, and a dispute over one of them involving the planting of the colony at

101 According to Plutarch, the theat of a veto by Drusus was what doomed the measure; as Morstein-Marx would have it, the veto must have come in the pre-vote contio which prevented a vote from being taken, and it was not actually voted down (p. 190 note 123). The result is, of course, the same for either possibility. 102 Plutarch states that through some chicanery of his fellow tribunes involving the aforementioned gladiatorial seats, Gracchus was not elected in spite of having the most votes (see above). However, Appian does not mention a defeat for a third tribunate, nor does Velleius, who was so scandalized by a second tribunate that a third seems like something he would have mentioned. In addition, neither the Periochae, Orosius, Florus, Eutropius, nor Cicero mention such a third attempt, and this lack of mention gives cause for doubt as to the reliablility of the anecdote in Plutarch. Doubt, but not proof; it may very well be that he did run and Plutarch just happens to be the only source to mention it.

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Carthage was attended by violence which soon led to the death of both Gracchus and Flaccus.103 For the Allies the death of Caius Gracchus had probably been sobering. He, like his friend Flaccus who was also slain, had not only been friendly to enfranchisement, but had even introduced a law which would grant the franchise to some of them. Gracchus had even taken the step of including in his extortion law the ability for all Allies to bring suit against Roman magistrates in Rome for this offense, an ability which further allowed those who succeeded in gaining conviction the right to become citizens.104 His murder could hardly be seen by the socii who followed Roman affairs as anything but a stark indication of the extent to which the citizenship as a tool towards agrarian reform was despised. Indeed, the rhetoric of Fannius and his expulsion law may have indicated a hostility against citizenship for the Allies which may not have been expected. The defeat of Gracchus had been so spectacular that the proposals of citizenship in exchange for land reclamation would be tabled for decades after his death, but it would turn out that the issue would not die completely; almost a half-century later it would be raised again. However, things had gotten much more volatile in the meantime due to the politics of Rome on the one hand and the ways it treated the Allies on the other. The death of Gracchus had made it such that violence had attended the last citizenship proposal, but that violence had been confined to the city itself. It would attend the next proposal as well, but by that time the violence no longer be contained to Rome and would eventually engulf the entire peninsula.

5. AN UNEASY QUIET AND THE STRANGE CAREER OF M. LIVIUS DRUSUS Shortly after the death of Caius Gracchus, the laws that both he and his brother had enacted began to be stricken. The colonial laws 103 Among the many sources dealing with the end of Grachus are Appian, 1.3.24–26; Plutarch, C. Gracc. 13–19; Florus 2.3, Velleius Paterculus 2.6–7; and the Periocha of Livy’s book 61. 104 Stockton, p. 139.

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had already begun to be overthrown while he was alive; the legislation on grain subsidies, the adjudication and distribution of ager publicus, the inalienability of land already distributed from it to the poor, and the vectigal charged for it are all mentioned specifically as being overturned later (Cicero, de off. 2.72; de orat. 2.70.284; Brut. 36.136, 62.222; Appian 1.4.27).105 Very few of the leges Semproniae survived the decades following 121, although the law concerning the composition of the courts was one of them. This law would ultimately become a matter of some significance in both Rome and, based on an attempt that was made to repeal it, ultimately in Italy as well. With Gracchus also died his advocacy of citizenship for the Allies, or at least for some of them. As for the vows of Drusus made in part to weaken popular support for that advocacy, it uncertain whether or not that made by him to end flogging for the Latin soldiers went the way of his colonial legislation and thus failed to be enacted. Still, in spite of the deaths of Flaccus and Gracchus and of their legislative initiatives, the Allies perhaps could take consolation in the fact that the land commission had apparently stopped. Some of them might have gotten even more than that to console them: at some point prior to 89, the ius Latii was apparently broadened to allow magistrates amongst the Latin communities to seek and claim Roman citizenship causa honoris. When precisely this right was given is unclear, although it might well have come from the period after the death of Caius Gracchus.106 Why it was given is also unclear, but it is not hard to imagine some potential reasons. In orderto prevent another Fregellae from occurring, or to blunt the effectiveness of other, later offers of citizenship to the Latins made in exchange for their silence over adjudication of the ager publicus, the Romans might well have sought to pacify the governing élite of Latin cities by means of this concession. The Latins might find it hard to launch similar revolts without such men. Furthermore, if the Romans found 105 The exact chronology of these latter measures is not known; for a more complete discussion of them see Gabba (1956, p. 59–64), D’Arms (p. 232–245), and Badian (1964, p. 235–242). 106 For a more through discussion of this right see Appendix D.

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enfranchising all of the Latins too much to bear,107 they might have looked less harshly on giving the civitas to a few of these every year. Assuming the Latins elected the same sort of men the Romans did (id est the landed wealthy of distinguished lineage), such men, who would thus be enfranchised, would very likely be the sort of people who would be most agreeable to the Roman ruling class for the citizenship. It is likely that many of these Italians were already likely hospes of the Roman nobility whose ranks they would be joining (see earlier chapter). At any rate, the Allies do not rate mention in almost any of the historical or literary accounts of the next twenty years. If they were as disappointed with the death of Gracchus and the doom of his plans to give them rights—and it is difficult to see how they would not have been—they nevertheless did not translate that disappointment into any action worthy of note. Even so, it is clear that the Gracchi had brought about a change in the way the Italians and Romans would relate to each other. As mentioned above, the Gracchani are claimed to have been the first Roman politicians to have introduced citizenship for the Allies into Roman politics.108 If that was so, then the Gracchani must also have introduced Roman politics to the Italians in a way that they had not been accustomed to seeing it before 133. Doubtless some of the Italians had long kept abreast of Roman affairs. If they were to fight the wars, many socii must have listened for news which could affect their deployment, and in a similar manner, those with commercial interests overseas likely kept their eye on Roman policy. After 133, however, all Allies could potentially be affected by Roman policy, since at any point some new would-be Gracchus could follow the example of the earlier ones and come along to tamper with Allied land holdings, offer them the citizenship or increased privileges, or both. The activities of men like Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi and his cultivation of friendships with Roman politicians for the purpose of winning their support for the franchise reflect that increased interest (see below). Moreover, 107 For Roman objections to mass enfranchisement, see chapter four (building on arguments found in Kendall, 105–122). 108 So Badian (1971 p. 389), specifically referring to Flaccus.

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there is nothing to indicate that desire for the citizenship became less for the Allies during the quiet years following the death of Gracchi,109 even if grants of the civitas to former Latin magistrates may have sated a few of them. The rest would still have wanted it, and wanted it badly enough to exchange land or other commodities to those Romans willing to make a deal and give them what they wanted for in exchange for what the Allies could provide. One of these men seemed to have been C. Marius, the politician and general whose meteoric rise to the top of the Roman power pyramid coincided almost exactly with the fifteen years following the death of C. Gracchus in which most of the laws of the latter were undone. Marius and his conflicts with the Roman political establishment are well known: the consummate self-made man who had won his fame through military service, he was, in spite of his battlefield prowess, despised by the traditional nobilitas who are painted as having done all in their power to keep him from the prestige and prominence that were rightfully his.110 There is a temptation to draw from this depiction and from his own later actions that Marius had a certain sympathy for the Allies, who like himself were, or at least perceived themselves to be, men of quality 109 The fact that Fregellae, the proposal of Flaccus, and the later one of Gracchus had all only concerned the Latins need not mean that it was only they who wanted the franchise or who would have traded land for it, as Mouritsen holds (1998, especially p. 118–119). It may very well have been that, as asserted above, they were only ones who were asked, and were by consequence moved to revolt from disappointment when the offer was revoked. 110 The classic portrait of Marius as the gruff soldier, unpolished by aristocratic ways but at the same time uncorrupted by aristocratic vice, is given by Velleius Paterculus (2.11) and Sallust (BJ 63). Marius himself deliberately cultivated sich an image—or, rather, the lack of an imago—in his speeches to get himself elected consul; see, for example, Sallust (op. cit., 85) and Plutarch (Marius 9). However, modern scholars dispute much of this assessment. Den Boer (p. 4) refers to Marius as a “respectable burgher”, and much of the work of Evans (especially pages 68–70; 76– 81), which debates the conclusions of Carney that Marius had always been frozen out due to his novitas (1970, p. 25–44). For more on Marius, see chapter 7.

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rarely given their due. To borrow a phrase from Suetonius, perhaps Marius saw in his sociis multos Marios inesse. Of course, it is important not to overstate the extent to which Marius may have been a champion for the Allies. Certainly the sources show that there were limits to his friendliness to the Allies: for example, to suit his ends he had seen to the execution of a Latin, one Turpilius, during the Jugurthine War (Sallust BJ, 66–69, Marius 8; see previous chapter). He would also apparently have had no qualms at all about killing thousands of them in battle when war finally came (see chapter 5). These things having been acknowledged, Marius certainly offered the citizenship to more than a few socii during the course of his career. In an episode from the Cimbric Wars which has become well-publicized in the sources due to the epigram that was coined as a result of it, Marius had spontaneously offered the civitas to 1000 soldiers from Camerinum. When it was protested that this was illegal, either because it violated the foedus with Camerinum or because he had done this without consulting the people, Marius curtly replied that the clash of arms had drowned out the voice of the law (Valerius Maximus 5.2.8; Plutarch Marius 28, Moral. 202C; Cicero, Pro Balb. 46–50). Later, when Saturninus111 put forth his laws founding colonies on behalf of Marius for his men, the general is said to have gotten an enabling law passed which allowed him to make citizens out of

111 The connection of Saturninus himself to the Allies is practically negligible, as is noted (almost certainly correctly) by Keaveney (1987, p. 76), Gabba (1956, p. 73–79), and Crawford (p. 37–38), the latter refuting—in a rather nasty scholarly exchange in Classical Philology—the numismatic evidence offered by Richard Rowland suggesting otherwise (1967, p. 185–189; 1969, p. 38–40). The notices in both Appian and Cicero involving Saturninus and the Italians (cited presently in the text above) all have to do with his proposals of land for the veterans of Marius, with the provisions about land for the Allies apparently included at the request of the latter. Saturninus, it is therefore argued, was primarily interested in the wishes of Marius in this regard; the enfranchisement law was made at his behest, indicating that the concern for the socii was his own, not that of Saturninus. Such is the interpretation followed above.

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three Allies in every colony.112 In so doing Marius apparently exposed himsef to opposition from the urban populace and, later, from the upper classes in the law courts (Appian 1.4.29; Cicero, loc. cit.). In sum, it is likely that the Allies would probably have had cause to be well-disposed to Marius. It had been he who had promised a swift resolution to the Jugurthine War and fulfilled that promise, in so doing bringing vengeance upon a man who had massacred so many Italian traders at Cirta (Sallust, BJ 26) and clearing up danger to commerce in the area. It had likewise been Marius who had ended the last major external threat to the 112 On the other hand, see Evans (p. 122–123), who follows a suggestion in Brunt (1988, p. 131, a suggestion which the latter himself mentions only to claim immediately afterwards that he believes it unlikely) that the word ternos in Pro Balbo 48 might be amended to trecenos, meaning that Marius would be enable to enfranchise, not three men, but three hundred. This would square with Appian’s report—about which directly—that the people were not pleased with the share given to the Allies, but Evans would have it that the amount was not the problem, which was instead fact that by this law one man alone, and not the entire populus Romanus, could enfranchise so many. Therefore, according to Evans, the opposition was not to what Marius intended, but the way by which he went about executing his aims, a theme to which Evans returns on many occasions in his work. As Evans would have it, Marius, far from being the nobilitati semper inimicus as described by Florus, found himself being opposed rather consistently less for who he was and his novitas, nor even for what he wanted to accomplish, but due to the fact that he constantly resorted to the tribunate to achieve these ends. Thus, the subsequent opposition in the courts to Titus Matrinius, enfranchised due to the part he was going to play in one of the colonies of Saturninus which was never founded (as described in Cicero) was less a sign of Senatorial spite or a desire to disparage Marius than a need to register a challenge to the law itself and its tribunicial origins. There is much in this argument and in others along these lines made by Evans which seem plausible, amidst a great deal which is not, but for present purposes it matters little whether Marius wanted three or three hundred men, and whether the Senate opposed him because he was a novus homo or because he employed the tribunate. The effect was still that Marius proposed to benefit some of the Allies, and that the Senate stood against that benefit.

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peninsula by his victories in the Cimbric and Teutonic Wars.113 Yet it is unlikely that Marius was ever viewed by them as a propugnator sociorum, or nor as a role model and pattern of the success to which they themselves might rise upon enfranchisement. Nor did Marius himself seem to have any interest in the Italian citizenship save as a reward for valor: his willingness to enfranchise men came less from compassion for their plight and more from his remarkable ability to understand what would motivate his men, and in the case of some of the Allies, that apparently was the citizenship. His defense of his right to extend the civitas and later to defend those to whom it had been extended had almostr certainly stemmed from his need to preserve his prerogatives as imperator and to maintain his own dignitas, not from pro-Allied sentiment.114 It may very well be that Marius was not opposed to enfranchisement en masse for the Allies, but it is unlikely that his empathy went much further than this, something likely understood by the socii themselves. No matter what their opinion of the general may have been, it may nevertheless have been the case that Marius represented a 113 Brunt (op. cit., p. 129) notes that this war was pivotal moment in the chain of events which led to war with the Allies because it taught them how valuable their battlefield contribution was to Rome (Badian 1971, p. 406 agrees). Moreover, Brunt adds that the socii they could look to the career of Marius as one which closely resembled what members of their élite could enjoy, as his status as a Volscian from a recently-enfranchised community meant that, in a sense, he was one of them. Mouritsen can be seen to agree in the first of these propositions, but rather in a negative sense. As he asserts, Rome may have claimed to have defended the peninsula, but the Allies knew better, since their growing awareness of the size of their contributions and their battlefield skill relative to their Roman counterparts led them to come to believe they were defending the peninsula themselves anyway (1998, p. 41–43; 68–69). As far as the second proposition, this stretches credibiliy: Marius himself was—in spite of his treatment by the Senatorial order—thoroughly Roman, and hardly an “Italian” success story. It is unlikely that the Allies saw him as “one of theirs”, and it is almost certain that he did not consider himself such. Thus, Marius ought not be treated as a pro-Italian paradigm, and is not so treated in this essay, as will be seen. 114 So Keaveney (1987, p. 80), who is almost certainly correct in this opinion.

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hopeful sign to the Allies to the effect that at least some Roman politicians might be willing to grant them the citizenship, either in recognition of their value to the Commonwealth, or in exchange for their land or other services rendered. Along those lines, there is mention of one Sex. Titius offering an agrarian law in the year 99 which was opposed by the consul Antonius and, apparently, omens (Valerius Maximus 8.1.damn.3; Obsequens 46; Cicero, de orat. 2.11.48, Brut. 62.225, de leg. 2.14, 2.31). None of the sources directly say so, but it is at least possible that this Titius also considering dividing the Italian ager publicus, for which he might have needed Allied help and sought to acquire it in the same manner that Flacccus and Graccus.115 In the years between 123 and 91, then, Marius and perhaps others might have led the Allies to believe that the old equation dating from Flaccus still applied, even if Flaccus himself had been treated so violently. It might also be that the Allies allowed themselves to believe that there emerged a softening on the Roman stance on giving them the franchise in the intervening decades. On the other hand, what any agrarian law might also mean is that Allied lands might be affected, so any Roman proposing one would likely have been watched carefully by the Allies: this vigilance may have been hopeful to see if signs for proposing an enfranchisement bill were also to accompany agrarian reform, or fearful to see if such reforms might affect their holdings without such a compensation, but either way it was probably close. Agrarian activity therefore kept the citizenship alive in the minds of the Italians on the occasion in which it was introduced in the years following the death of Gracchus,116 since each time it was proposed However, both Cicero and Valerius Maximus mention him alongside Saturninus (according to the latter and to the pro Rab. Perd. 9.25, Titius was condemned for having a portrait of Saturninus in his house), whose unpassed laws called for colonies to be planted overseas. Thus, perhaps Titius would not have needed the Allies after all, having all the support he minght need amongst the populus. On the other hand, since Saturninian colonies were designed to give the citizenship to at least three Allies (as was seen above), perhaps the laws Titius had in mind would do the same thing. 116 There was at least one more agrarian law between 122 and 91, namely that of one Saufeius which established a board of which M. Livius 115

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or even debated there represented a reminder to them that what Romans may do to affect their lands might very well be done without their permission, or even consultation. It seems not unreasonable to conclude that, while there is no hard evidence that granting the citizenship was much on the minds of the Romans in the years following the death of C. Gracchus, it nevertheless seems to have continued to be a matter of vital importance for the Italians. This desire for the franchise as a means to have a say in how the empire they had helped build would be governed, or even to have a say in what went on in their own territory—in other words, to guarantee that they not simply be at the mercy of Rome’s dictates abroad and, increasingly, at home as well—must have been sharpened even further by an enactment which was passed in 95. In that year, the consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola passed yet another law concerning Italians in the city of Rome. Just what this law entailed is difficult to ascertain completely. Cicero suggests that it had an expulsive element, making reference to the orator Lysias, a resident alien in Athens who suffered and attempt to be cast back to Syracuse quasi Licinia et Mucia lege (Brut. 16.63). However, Cicero elsewhere contrasts this law of Licinius and Mucius with the earlier law of Pennus, which had apparently thrust foreigners out of the city simply to get them out (de off. 3.47).117 The point of difference seems to have had to do with the fact that the law of Pennus presumably operated only on those known to be foreigners, while lex Mucia Licinia did not. Instead, the latter was designed to expel, not all foreigners, but foreigners who had assumed the citizenship illegally (others, who has apparently made no pretence of being Romans, were presumably allowed to stay). It also set up special courts of inquiry to make this determination as to who was making this assumption and who was not.118 Drusus (more below) was a member (see Greenidge and Clay, p. 128– 129). Beond this, nothing at all is known about this law or the man who enacted it; as this is the case, it is passed over for consideration here. 117 See above as well as Appendix C. 118 For the sources for the lex Licinia Mucia, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 119–120. That the law was not a general expulsion act as in the case of previous laws was first determined by Husband, p. 321–323; see also

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Why it was that a need was felt to pass this law is not known,119 nor is it known for certain what its penalties were. At least one scholar, drawing an analogy between the prospective victims of the lex Licinia Mucia and the later case Cornelius Balbus, suggests it might have been capital. Others argue with greater plausibility that flogging, or expulsion and debarment from the city, was what befell the condemned;120 perhaps both obtained. What is sure, however, is that even this relatively softer punishment would have been more than enough to cause dismay for men who lived in Rome and perhaps conducted business there, men who could by means of the law be abruptly expelled and perhaps also severely discomfitted on charges of “usurping the franchise”. Diodorus reports that Poppaedius Silo could later collect ten thousand such men who feared judicial investigation (ὁ τῶν Μαρσῶν ἡγούμενος Πομπαίδιος ... μυρίος γάρ ἀναλα ών ἐκ τῶν τἀς εὐ ύνας φο ουμένων;

37.13).121

Badian 1958 (p. 213–214, and note R, p. 247), Sherwin-White (p. 140, following Badian 1958), Badian 1971 (p. 406–407), Keaveney (1987, p. 81–83), Mouritsen (1998, p. 121), and most recently Tweedie (p. 123– 128) for its importance. 119 It has been suggested, although not terribly convincingly, that the need arose due to laxity on the part of the censors of 97 which had allowed many non-citizens to register. Since, according to this same argument, these inappropriately-registered citizens were supporters of Marius, the law was thus designed in some way or another to embarrass the general. So, at least, Badian (1964, p. 47–49, as well as in the works cited in the previous note). See also Tweedie (p. 128–132), who does not fully subscribe that the alleged laxity on the part of the censors was necessarily to help Marius, and law in response to it was not in turn necessarily aimed at the general. 120 For the potential death sentence, see Badian (1971, p. 406–407); for the latter, comparatively milder punishments, see Baldson (p. 100–101) and Tweedie (p. 134–137). 121 It was probably as much these men, who did not claim the franchise but faced prosecution as if they had, as it was men who had been registered in 97—who legitimately felt that they were already citizens and thus faced “disenfranchisement”, as Sherwin-White (loc. cit.) holds— who formed Silo’s band.

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No matter what the cause of the law or its terms, however, one thing seems clear: Rome was sending a message to the Allies that they still very much observed the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, and that even though the latter could still make use of the capital and even live beside the Romans, they were not to make the mistake of believing that this would translate into admission into the Roman state. The implied corollary—that the socii remained unworthy of the franchise, and that it was not going to be forthcoming anytime soon—very likely led to the animadversion caused by this legislation which is mentioned in Asconius 67C. According to that authority, the frustration produced by this law was a main cause for the coming war, and it is by no means unlikely that, if indeed the signal was received that Rome was still unwilling to give the franchise anytime soon, alternative methods of getting it may have begun being contemplated at this time (see next chapter). One of the authors of the lex Licinia Mucia was the consul Q. Mucius Scaevola, and it is he who seems to have introduced the final straw which broke the patience of the Allies, albeit in a most indirect manner. Following his consulate, Scaevola was apparently dispatched as proconsul to oversee the province of Asia,122 where he conducted affairs there with such a scrupulous honesty that he later became a model of correct conduct for future provincial governors.123 Scaevola had as his legate P. Rutilius Rufus, a former consul and man of apparent high-minded Stoic ideals whose reform of the army had already shown his devotion to discipline.124 Such a man, it seems, would be well-disposed towards executing other needed reforms no matter what the potential political cost (Cicero, Brut. 30.114). Scaevola and Rutilius worked together to enact some progressive improvements in the government of Asia, 122 Contra Broughton (vol. 2, p. 7), who argues that this had occurred earlier; the chronology and interpretation of events above owes much to Hill (1952, p. 130–131). 123 Cicero, for one, claims to have followed the pattern of Scaevola in his own proconsulate; so ad Att. 6.1. See also Valerius Maximus (8.15.6) and Diodorus Siculus (37.5–6) for Scaevola as a paradigm. 124 It had impressed Marius, certainly; see Frontinus (4.2.2) and Valerius Maximus (2.3.2).

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and since part of these had included taming the depredations of the publicani there (Diodorus, 37.5–6), the latter vowed their revenge. For some reason they ended up taking it, not on Scaevola,125 but on Rutilius, whom they caused to be brought up on charges of extortion and actually to be convicted of it in a case that has become well-represented in the sources as a travesty of justice.126 It is perhaps no small sign of how misguided the verdict was that Rutilius was welcomed back into the Asia he was convicted of extorting as his place of exile (Dio Cassius frg. 97). The publicani had been able to accomplish this because one of the laws of C. Gracchus which the Senate had been unable to undo permanently127 had been his judiciary law, and as a result, the Senators still lacked control of the extortion court. Instead, it remained in the hands of non-Senators who held property rating sufficient to rate service in the cavalry (the so-called equites), one connected in various ways to the negotiatores and publicani. It seems these men were more apt to convict thouse accused of repetundae and, it appears, were more susceptible to bribery.128 To at least one Roman, and very probably to many others, the case of Rutilius seems to signalled an urgent need to change to this state of affairs: if the equestrian jurors could commit an injustice of this magnitude, their powers clearly could not be limited by decency or According to Badian (1958, p. 214; 1964, p. 39–44; 1968, p. 42), he was an adfinis of Marius and thus too powerful. 126 For the many, many authors to comment on this trial, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 125–127. Maddeningly, none of these give a precise date for the trial, though it is generally accepted to have occurred in 92. 127 A law was apparently passed in 106 by the unfortunate Q. Servilius Caepio to restore Senatorial control, as is evident from the many references in Cicero to speeches made by L. Crassus in support of it (most notably in de orat. 1.52.225; see also Morstein-Marx, p. 235–236). This control did not last long, and was soon taken from the Senate and put into the hands of the wealthiest non-Senators via a law passed by Servilius Glaucia (Asconius 21 B). 128 The lex Sempronia forbidding bribery had, it appeared, only operated against Senators accused of the offense; so Cicero in several passages of the pro Cluentio. 125

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restraint. Something, therefore, would need to be done to curb that power, or so it seems was the thinking of one M. Livius Drusus, who resolved to accomplish this curtailment of equestrian judicial abilities on behalf of the Senate and, perhaps, at their suggestion (Per. 70).129 Drusus was perhaps an ideal candidate to have been deputed to this task, or, alternatively, would easily have been the sort to have taken it on himself. He was the son and namesake of the Drusus mentioned above, the tribune who had managed to seduce the people away from Gracchi. As such he had an impeccable pedigree and a family tradition of saving the Senate from its enemies, and it is most likely that he thought of himself as the Senatus propugnator by which he is referred to in Cicero (pro Milo. 7.16) and Diodorus (μόνος ἔδοξεν ἔσεσ αι προστάτ ς τῆς συγκλ του 37.10). Thoroughly aligned with the nobility, he also had other personal reasons for removing the courts from the domination of the equites: Rutilius had apparently been his uncle,130 and Caepio, a former friend and brother-in-law who had become his enemy, was supporting the equestian side.131 Drusus had history and possibly a sense of familial obligation, along with other enmities, as stimulus to act, and he also seems to have believed he had the means. He was, first of all, supported by the Senate, and secondly, he was also apparently well-liked by the people, an affection which sprung both from his name and from the sumptuous games he had held as aedile (de vir. ill. 66.). For these reasons he had every cause to believe that he might become tribune, enabling him to use the powers of that office for his project, and was soon confirmed in his belief. Once in office, Drusus could turn to the plan he had apparently formed, one which was apparently rather complex. One aspect of it was to double the number of the Senate by means of For additional sources, see Haug, p. 101–139. So Badian (1964, loc. cit.); see also Haug (p. 105–118). 131 See Florus (2.5.4–6), de vir. ill. (66), and Cassius Dio (frg. 96.1–3). Pliny (NH 33.6.20) mentions the quarrel arose out of a ring sold at an auction. See also Badian (op. cit., 34–71) for further discussion of this inimicitia. 129 130

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adding 300 members to it from the equites. Having done so, the courts would then be transferred to this amplified Senate, with juries composed equally of old Senators and new (so Appian 1.5.35; Per. 71).132 He would also now make equites susceptible to accusations of bribery and of all other offenses by means which unjust acquittals or convictions could be secured, and perhaps would even make this penalty retroactive and thus strike at those who had condemned Rutilius.133 Drusus was probably under no illusions as to the extent of the potential opposition to this plan, which would almost certainly face the antagonism of the equites and the publicani. For them this alteration in the courts was bad for business; after all, the courts had likely been stripped from the Senate due to the willingness of fellow Senators to overlook extortion coming from their own, especially since the penalty for it was so sharp (fines, and exile from Rome). The equites had no such reluctance to prosecute, and this was very useful to the publicani and other merchants whose business would suffer in the face of gubernatorial excess. Perhaps less legitimately, it would also remove from the latter a friendly judicial system which could be used to frighten overzealous provincial governors who would attempt to curb their own rapacity, and from the former the chance for gain derived from massive bribery. Drusus apparently had hoped to quiet the protests of equites through promotion of some of them to the Senate,134 but this 132 This is the interpretation accepted by Seymour (p. 417–425) and Gabba (1976, p. 131); it also has the effect of confirming the statement of Velleius, which states that the courts went back under the purview of the (now-enlarged) Senate. However, see also Hardy (1912, p. 218–220) for contrary considerations. 133 See Hands, p. 268–274. 134 Almost certainly not those members of the equites involved in negotia or public contracts, since unless those men were prepared to give up this enterprise they could not sit in the Senate anyway. Moreover, since this was the very class of people against whom Drusus had set his sights, it is unlikely that he would have had them in mind for his augmented curia. More plausibly, the men he wanted instead were landowners who made their living by means other than commercial ones, the sort of men who might have been eligible for the Senate but for some reason or another

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would not mollify all of them.135 Those who could not be brought over would simply have to be overpowered. Overpowering the equites would, however, not be an easy task. For one thing, these were men whose property qualifications guaranteed that they were by and large men of leisure, the sort who could and did take part in politics and lawmaking in Rome.136 In fact, it has been argued that they were the class primarily responsible for the passage of laws, since the poorer people could only be stirred to take part in the political process when a law being proposed contained an obvious benefit to them (as has been noted). The equites would therefore have enough votes to defeat whatever Drusus was intending unless he could find a way to mobilize the rest of the populus in large enough numbers to have them enact his laws over equestrian resistance. A way to win over the people in such numbers need not have been too difficult to find, and would indeed have been suggested to him by his own family history. The populace could be brought over in the same way Gracchus had done, by promises of cheap grain and distribution of public land, and Drusus promtply proposed these (Florus 2.5 even refers to the laws which were eventually carried by Drusus to that effect as leges Gracchanae). At these measures the Senate might well grumble, but, Drusus seemed to have reasoned, they would surely see the greater advantage of having the threat of the equestrian courts removed. Drusus would therefore go the Gracchan route, just as his father had, but he would do even better than Caius Gracchus had done. The latter had attempted to bring the laws of his brother to fruition by winning the support of the urban populace, the equites, and the Allies such that the objections had either never chosen to run for office, or had run and been defeated. These would have far more in common with the Senators into whose ranks they would be adlected than with the overseas tax collectors with whom they currently sat on juries, but having never been in the Senate, they would have made no connections and thus could be impartial. 135 Appian mentions that tension was fomented amongst them when this proposal first emerged, due to the fact that comparatively few of their numbers would acquire the honor of Senatorial membership. 136 So Mouritsen 2001, p. 41–45; 64–68 (although see Morstein-Marx, p. 41–42, for some important qualifications to Mouritsen’s arguments).

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of the Senate could be disregarded. Drusus would include something for all of them—people, equites (or some of them), and Senate alike—and at the same time restore the power of the Senate to the heights it had enjoyed before the Gracchi. This entire elaborate scheme, however, would depend to a large degree on the land laws to gratify the people, and for these Drusus would need available ager publicus. Some of this might still have existed from Gracchan days (it would have lain, without official use but clearly demarcated), but clearly more would come to be needed. To get it, he would eventually have to reclaim some from the possessores, just as the Gracchi had. However, if the aim was to build up as much popularity as could be had, Drusus would likely have avoided taking it from Roman citizens. This left the possessors amongst the Allies. Yet without doubt some of these would likely vigorously protest and possibly raise an objection in the Senate, where members likely to be displeased with even the idea of adjudication might take up their cause, as had happened in the past. Drusus would therefore have to find a way to win the Allies over to his plans, to prevent their protest and the use of it as an excuse to stifle distribution. To this end, too, the route he ultimately took was the familiar Gracchan one: he would offer them the citizenship, as a way to buy their acquiescence to adjudication of the ager publicus near their lands. The irony of the son taking the path that the father had apparently eloquently opposed must not have been lost on anyone. Nevertheless, it was what the overall strategy demanded. Very likely Drusus only intended to go as far as Flaccus and Gracchus had gone and offered the complete franchise to the Latins alone, which would be consistent with the notices in Orosius and the de viris illustribus,137 although it may be he considered giving the Latin rights to the rest. But at some later point Drusus seems to have

137 Orosius 5.18.2: Livius Drusus, tribunus plebi, Latinos omnes spe libertatis inlectos cum placito explere non posset (emphasis added); de viris illustribus 66.4: unde Livius anxius, ut Latinorum postulata differret, qui promissam civitatem flagitabant (again, emphasis added).

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changed his mind and offered citizenship to the whole of Italy.138 Why he did this cannot be ascertained; perhaps he was persuaded by the eloquence of Q. Poppaedius Silo, a prominent Marsian noble who was at one point a guest in the house of Drusus and whose persistence in obtaining the franchise had even caused him to make threats (probably playfully) to a very young M. Porcius Cato, the nephew of Drusus (Plutarch, Cato min. 2; Valerius Maximus 3.1.2 and de vir. ill. 80.1).139 Alternatively, perhaps he would need more land than Gracchus and Flaccus had needed, and had to go into more Italian communities to get it. The number of colonies Drusus had proposed to found is not known, but a bon mot recorded in Florus (2.5) suggests that after his laws had been executed nothing would be left to distribute save caenum …aut caelum,140 so a need for a larger amount is a possibility. Either way, 138 For the initial restriction of the franchise to the Latins see Mouritsen (1998, p. 118–124), though his reasoning concerning the possibility of a later broadening of the offer is not followed here. 139 According to the story, Silo demanded that Cato speak to his uncle Drusus on behalf of the Allied cause and, when Cato refused, threatened to hurl him from the roof of his uncle’s house. It seems highly unlikely that Silo would have ever actually threatened real harm to the relative of the man in whose house he was staying and whose goodwill he was trying to court for his cause, especially since the boy whose cooperation he was trying to get at the moment was four years old (at his death in 46 Cato was forty-eight years old, according Periochae 114, while during Sulla’s occupation of Rome he was fourteen, according to Plutarch Cat. Min. 3.5, making him four in 91). Rather, this was almost certainly horseplay with the child, as the reaction of his half-brother Caepio in the episode strongly suggests. Cato’s gravity in the face of the game elicited comment from Silo, much as Cato’s later threat to murder Sulla would from his tutor some time later. However, see Mouritsen (1998, p. 124) for this anecdote, who questions its veracity and the implied closeness in it between Drusus and Silo, which he argues is a distortion based on later propaganda. 140 But see also de vir. ill. 66.4, where this quotation is taken to refer to the personal extravagance of Drusus and not to his agrarian law. Haug (p. 108–109) suggests a reason for the variance between the de viris illustribus and Florus rests in the fact that this quotation was once in Livy and eventually made its way into a collection of exempla from which the de viris illustribus took it. The anonymous author of that collection reported it

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the bargain was apparently struck:141 in exchange for Italian cooperation with Drusus and, perhaps, their physical presence in Rome around election time, the citizenship would at last be theirs (Appian 1.5.35–36; Per. 71; Velleius 2.14, amongst others). Unfortunately, things did not go to plan: while it seems the people were well-pleased with the agrarian and colonial laws,142 his legislative program met with more opposition in the Senate than apparently Drusus had been led to expect. Various reasons have been given for why the Senate disapproved. According to Appian it did not wish to admit equites into its membership (1.5.35–36), while Cicero finds Senatorial objections in the neglect of procedure in the circumstance of the passage of the laws (de domo 16.42),143 or even in out-and-out fraud alleged to have occurred in the voting. The patres might also have feared violence involved in their passage, of which Florus (2.5), the Periochae (71), and de vir. ill. (66) all provide testimony. Finally, Velleius identifies jealousy at the no doubt huge in its proper context, while Florus, who took it from Livy directly, kept the epigram but moved it so that it applied to the laws, and not the private life, of Drusus. This is not impossible, but there is nothing which prevents the reverse from being true: the proper context for the epigram may have been in the events surrounding the agrarian laws and it was reported there accurately by Florus, while the de viris illustribus moved it, perhaps as it had with details about the revolt of Asculum (see below). This latter possibility, as is seen, is followed here. 141 However, the “Oath” which Diodorus Siculus reports the Allies had to take to that effect (37.11) is almost certainly a piece of fiction, as is argued convincingly by Haug (p. 119). 142 So Appian (in the passage cited below); there seems to be no evidence of the unpopularity of the law suggested by Mouritsen 2001, p. 66, 85. 143 Among the procedural rules which were bent, according to Cicero in the passage cited above, was that found in the lex Caecilia Didia, forbidding laws to be carried per saturam, or admixed with other laws on different subjects. It is possible that the judiciary law of Drusus was specifically targeted on these grounds, especially if the legislation covering the composition of the Senate, the composition of juries, and the extension of bribery charges were contained in the same omnibus bill. This might have given the passageway needed by the patres to effect their revocation, and perhaps all the other would-be leges Liviae as well.

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clientelae which Drusus would win from the people as the source of the opposition (2.13). All of these might have played a role, but what is more certain is the result, which is that the laws which had been passed were soon declared invalid in the Senate. Drusus seems to have taken this decree with a fair degree of resignation. According to Diodorus, he refused to use his powers as tribune to disrupt the Senate meeting which were unmaking his laws (37.10), and Florus (loc. cit.) also suggests that he had become exhausted with the whole business and probably a little disgusted at the Senate, which Sallust also seems to observe (Ep. Caes. 6.3–5). Even the Allies seem at this point to have let him down: Etruscans and Umbrians had been brought to Rome for the specific purpose of complaining about the possibility of redistribution, and other Allies might have joined them if Appian is to be believed (1.5.36). Then again, these specific Italians would have been particularly susceptible to opposing the laws of Drusus, since they, or at least their upper classes, seem mainly to have wanted the citizenship precisely to avoid having Rome look to reclaiming its ager publicus,144 the very price that Drusus was asking in exchange for the citizenship. As will be seen, other Allies were far more wiling to conduct such a transaction, and so Drusus had apparently felt himself honor-bound to fulfill his bargain to these latter. Even though the failure of the main components of his programme had probably made manifest what

144 Badian (1958, p. 218–219), Harris (1971, p. 218–229), and Keaveney (1987, p. 90) all believe that the laws at which these were coming to ditrect protest were the colonial laws, although the franchise law may also have been a possible subject if it was suspected that by means of it Drusus would begin reclaiming land. Either way, the purpose behind the protests was ultimately a fear of land reallocation, and not necessarily a reluctance for the citizenship itself, especially one based on the idea which states that the equality it would bring would somehow ruin their societies (Harris is particularly effective in his refutation of this idea). The Etruscans and Umbrians, these scholars suggest and almost certainly correctly, would have welcomed the citizenship if given without a price, but the cost of their lands made such an offer unappealing, at least to the magnates (see also chapter 5).

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the fate of the citizenship law would be, he seems to have persisted in his determination to raise it regardless. Violence was apparently in the air. According to the de viris illustribus, a plot to kill the consuls at the Latin festival of the Alban mount was discovered to Drusus and foiled once the tribune reported it to the authorities, although suspicion now redounded to him as a result (loc. cit.; Florus 2.6 also reports a similar plot). This plot was not, apparently, the only one, as Drusus himself also seems to have been a target of another, a fact of which—according to Appian (1.5.36)—he was aware. Nevertheless, knowledge of that plot does not seem to have prevented its execution. One night in the fall145 as Drusus was accompanied into his atrium by a crowd of followers he was stabbed, and soon died. The law for the franchise seems to have perished with him; it was probably never voted.146 In the thirty years following the death of Fulvius Flaccus and Caius Gracchus it seems probable that the Italians would have kept their eyes fixed on Roman political developments, since these were now more and more likely to have a bearing not only merely on when and where these socii were to be sent to war, but also on their lands and property at home. It is not hard to imagine how this monitoring would have led to increasing anxiety each time an agrarian bill arose and was defeated, and how this anxiety would likely have contributed to a sense of helplessness based on the ironclad knowledge that the Romans could make such a law at any time without even a glance in the direction of what the Allies thought about it. The Romans were, it must have seemed, quite cavalier about their superiority to the Italians, a superiority which was reinforced by three separate expulsion laws—all quite unbidden—which unceremoniously drove the Allies out of Rome. At several points during these intervening decades the Allies were 145 That this occurred in the autumn is inferred by Cicero, whose de oratore (3.1.1–2) states that Drusus was still alive on the Ides of September, when he called a meeting of the Senate at which L. Crassus delivered a blistering speech against the consul L. Philippus (mane Idibus Septembribus et ille et senatus frequens vocatu Drusi in curiam venit; ibi cum Drusus multa de Philippo questus esset, rettulit ad senatum de illo ipso, quod in eum ordinem consul tam graviter in contione esset invectus; emphasis added). 146 Badian, loc. cit.

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therefore denied the use of Roman markets, its warehouses and docks where employment might be found, its temples, bathhouses, and fountains, and may have been beaten for having attempted such a use, treatment which they simply had to endure. More and more often the Romans manifested this imperious attitude towards the socii, which must have been hard to bear in light of the fact that imperium which had helped create the markets, warehouses, docks, temples, bathhouses, and fountains had all been built with Allied help. At the end of this decade there emerged one final chance for the Allies to bargain their lands (in a sense) for the franchise, a deal they were—for the most part—very willing to make. What is more, it seems that the people were also willing to make this deal, but, just as before, the prize was snatched from the socii in the last moment before it could be won, with the final champion of the Allies dead in a pool of his own blood. The death of Drusus and his franchise proposal was, however, finally more than the Italians could bear: having seen the Romans murder all who voiced support of giving them the franchise, they apparently decided to fall to slaying some Romans of their own until their wishes were granted.

6. WAR With the death of Drusus, the last hope of Rome granting the citizenship to the allies peacefully had perished with violence. It would be to violence that the Allies would now resort. As has been seen, the events of the previous forty years leading up to the autumn of 91 had been trying for the Allies: the abrupt interest the Romans now took in their own public property must have evoked shock and distress, especially to those who had used that property since time immemorial and now faced its immediate sequestration. The Allies must have known that this always could have happened, but now suddenly it was happening. This probably led to no small amount of turmoil, and the less-than-surgical precision with which ager publicus was severed from lands in private ownership would have increased it exponentially. A stop was soon put to this, but the specter of its return never seemed to go away, and as long as the Allies were not citizens they had to depend upon the whims of the Roman people as to whether or not it would come back. So rapid a development was matched by the appearance an even greater thunderbolt, which was the possibility of attaining the citizenship for at least some of the Allies (and of gaining rights by which

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Romans abuse could be curtailed for others). The Allies do not seem to have been prepared for either stroke, but they apparently jumped at the latter offer only to have it taken away again almost as immediately as it had been presented. For the next several decades the Romans offered the Allies mixed messages, or so it must have seemed: an offer of the franchise would be followed by its revocation; the apparent warming of the Romans to the prospect of extending the civitas would be followed by an insulting and humiliating expulsion law and, often, of the murder of those Romans who seemed to have Italian interests in mind; and all the while, agrarian legislation lurked in the background. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Allies felt that the Romans were toying with them, and progressively their patience for it came to an end. Rather than act as suppliants to the superior power which in no small part had been constructed with their help, they would presently stand up and demand to be treated with the respect they deserved: they would be partners in that imperium, not cringing subjects. However, Fregellae had once determined to put vigor in their demands, and had been annihilated; the Allies would not make the mistakes that that city had. When the time had finally come to stand, they would stand together.

CHAPTER 4: THE IGNITION OF HOSTILITIES 1. SECESSIO The previous two chapters have attempted to show that Rome’s Italian Allies had become dissatisfied with their standing in the relationship they had with the Romans due to the exploitative nature of that relationship. This, at least, can be derived from what the sources explicitly state, and although these are not specific as to the exact injuries which led to the unhappiness, reasonable conjectures can be—and have been—made to arrive at what they might have been. The upshot of these speculations can be condensed into a simple and well-nigh irrefutable truth, which is that what the Romans demanded of the Allies proved to be far more valuable ultimately that what the Allies were getting from Rome in return, to the extent that the Romans clearly reaped the lion’s share of the benefits from the association. It cannot be determined for certain whether the Romans were aware of this imbalance and the unhappiness in created, although it seems rather likely that they were. What seems more obvious, and more signficant, is that it did not particularly concern them. As can be seen in numerous examples, the Romans consistently treated the Allies in a way far different than the worth of their contributions seemed to merit, and did so without apology and, often, without tact or finesse. Yet whether or not the Romans were aware of and concerned by this discrepancy in treatment, the Italians certainly were. While it cannot be doubted that they did derive advantages from the continued connection, they got far less than was possible and certainly far less than what they felt they deserved, and they knew it. It has likewise been suggested that this exploitation was the prime reason—although there were others—for why the Italians desired to alter that relationship. However, because of the profits 223

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that they did obtain, and the potential ones that they could obtain, from it, the socii seemed to prefer to effect this modification by means other than that of severing the affiliation, even though this latter course of action would certainly have removed the mistreatment. Instead, they sought to become part of the Roman state, which would in theory not only alleviate the inequalities, but would also allow the Allies to continue to enjoy—and, indeed, enjoy to the fullest possible extent—the rewards of the union. This desire amongst the socii to become Roman citizens seems to have increased between the years 132 and 91 BCE, during which time the Italians were made aware for the first time that the grant of citizenship was not necessarily merely an idle wish, but could actually be a proposition that at least some Romans from the ruling class were prepared to consider in exchange for certain things those Romans wanted from the socii. The Allies in turn expressed their enthusiasm each time that consideration seemed imminent, and their disappointment each time the prospect inevitable evaporated. The distress and anxiety caused by such occasions was frequently heightened by the fact that very often promises of the civitas accompanied proposals of laws calling for things like land redistribution, laws which would directly affect the Italians and usually in negative ways. It should be noted that, while, offers of citizenship were usually extended at the same time as laws to redistribute land were being contemplated, such redistribution measures were not inextricably linked to granting the franchise. This was graphically demonstrated by Tiberius Gracchus, or, more probably, the Triumvirate in its operations after his death, whose activities illustrated that the Romans could enact such reforms even without giving the civitas to the Allies. In other words, while the some Romans may have wished to ease the passage of such painful laws by extending this much-desired commodity, they did not have to do so. Romans could therefore do Allies harm without having to compensate them, and could do so at any time that they wished. This possibility would exist for as long as the Allied feelings could be safely disregarded, as they more or less could be while the Allies lacked the vote. The result was that the tensions which may very well have existed for centuries were drastically increased in the years following the Gracchi.

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As the second century drew to a close, the Romans seemed to give the Allies many occasions to believe that the possibility of better treatment might be available to them, only to remove that possibility with a vehemence that seemed designed to broadcast the message that the Romans were never going to give them this better treatment willingly, no matter what a few of their statesman might say. While they were doing so, the Romans also continued to behave in such a way as to remind the socii that they were in fact not Romans, and that this distinction was one of which those who were Romans were certainly aware. In their abuse of their Allies the Romans gave constant memoranda as to why the citizenship that presented the key to the end of the abuse was something very much to be desired, while at the same time persisted in refusing to satisfy that desire. Eventually, this behavior led to such frustration that war was declared. What the Allies had wanted before the war seems, therefore, to be clear, as do the reasons why the war eventually broke out, and when. What those Allies hoped to accomplish by that war is another matter, and one of much less clarity. Indeed, this last question often serves as a reef on which the attempts by several modern historians to explain the origin and unfolding of the event that would come to be the Bellum Sociale tend to founder. On the one hand, these scholars tend to recognize that there is ample support in the sources for the claim that the Allies wanted the citizenship, and most of them agree that the constant withholding of it is what drove the Allies to bloodshed. On the other, any of these modern accounts imply or directly state that, once the Allies once taken to arms, their objective seems to have been the acquisition citizenship no longer. Instead, once swords were in hand, the Allies used them towards the aim of gaining independence.1 In such constructions, the Allies, having been pushed past their endurance by Roman refusals to grant their wishes, decided to wash their hands of Rome entirely and construct 1 Such arguments are put forward in the pages of Brunt, SherwinWhite, Keaveney, and Salmon, for example (see below), as opposed to Mouritsen, who states that independence was the motivating factor all along.

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their own state built on freedom and an end to Roman military parasitism. In part such conjectures are based on the description of Allied wartime measures found in sources like Diodorus Siculus (37.2.4) and Strabo (5.4.2). Alongside the evidence from these sources, scholars take note of the clear presence of a fairly sophisticated command structure and tightly-orchestrated joint military maneuvers that the Alliance would demonstrate, such as those detailed in the battle narratives such as those of Appian. Furthermore, there is the iconography of the coins the Alliance used, and indeed, even the very existence of these coins. All of these are read as hinting at extensive planning beyond what would be demanded by the allegedly simple requirements of a war to force the citizenship. They can only be justified, it is held, as signs of something different and more extensive, id est that the Allies had brought them into being as part of an initiative to create a separate country of their own. In the words of one author, an “attempt to explain away the … organization set up by the allies as merely an arrangement for managing the war, rather than an indication of their objectives [id est, independence], is inept”.2 Moreover, it is alleged that further support for the theory of independence can be gathered from scattered references in the literary sources, ones which—it is claimed—suggest that the Allies wanted to part ways with the Romans completely. These include a remark of Eutropius that the Allies were fighting for aequa libertas (5.3.2), and one of Orosius that these allies were stirred to arms by Drusus instilling in them an unfulfilled spe libertatis (5.18.2). These passages bear similarities to a notice in Diodorus which stated that the Allies were fighting for their “freedom” (ἐλευ έρια; 37.14). Additionally, Appian (1.5.38), Strabo (loc. cit.), and Diodorus (37.2.1) all elect to describe what the Allies were doing by means of use of some variation of the verb ἀφίστ μι, which typically means “break away”.3 For all these reasons and for others, it has proven

So Sherwin-White (p. 147). These passages are discussed by Sherwin-White (p. 145), who argues that the Allies turned to independence after the continued opposition to their citizenship in Rome led to their despair of ever acquiring it; they also 2 3

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difficult for many modern scholars4 to resist the conclusion that eventually the Allies did indeed decide that, when violence was to be employed, it was to be employed to detach from the Romans and strike out on their own. Along these lines, the Allies had taken mighty strides by means of the ways that they “had so ably disposed their affairs and had organized a government” (οὕτω πάντα δεξιῶς καὶ ... τὴν ἀρχὴν δια έμενοι; Diodorus 37.2.4).5 Nevertheless, a rather large obstacle to this theory exists, which is that if such a push were successful, it would lead to results quite at variance with what a great many of the Allies have been shown to have wanted before the war. This was to become one with the Romans, not disengage totally from them, and this desire to merge rather than separate was one that—per many other passages in the sources— the Allies wanted still at the time of the war. It is puzzling that the Allies would change their minds so thoroughly and commence to fight and kill for a cause that would, in a sense, take them in the exact opposite direction of where they had seemed to have wanted to go.6 This is a quandary that has not figure largely in the arguments of Mouritsen, whose theories on this subject have been encountered earlier. 4 For example, Keaveney (1987, p. 125) notes that a decision for complete cleavage from the Romans reached by the Allies would be the natural reaction of men forced to endure Roman arrogance and exclusivity, especially in light of a nascent loyalty to a concept of an “Italy” and local pride. 5 Specific scholars who describe the aims of the socii at the time of the Allied War thus include Keaveney (1987, p. 120–127), Brunt (1988, p. 111–112), Salmon (1967, p. 339), Nicolet (1988, p. 42, 232). SherwinWhite (p. 148) is critical of the work of Brunt and Salmon in their insistence that the franchise was the sole motivator for all of the Allies, but not of their conclusion that it was a motivating factor for many of them. Like the others, he, too ultimately holds that those Allies who had wanted the franchise joined the cause for independence when they could not get it. 6 Of course, these scholars could have explained this sudden shift in a number of ways, even though they fail to do so. For example, they may have argued that there was a division amongst the Allied communities as to what they ultimately desired to happen concerning their association with Rome, with some communities desiring independence instead of the

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yet been resolved satisfactorily by any modern scholar who takes the simultaneous position that the Allies had wanted the citizenship up to the war, but would subsequently go to battle for independence (and quite ferociously at that) when that war erupted. Nevertheless, no other explanation for Italian aims has been offered save by those who jettison the well-documented desire for citizenship and argue it was independence that was wanted all along. Faute de mieux, this curious line of reasoning discussed above is the one which is adopted in most of the modern scholarly accounts of the Allied War. In light of this puzzling explanation, the question can be raised as to whether or not another, better answer can be found for what the Allies hoped to realize by the fighting. Such an answer would have to reconcile what appear to be steps taken towards citizenship. These latter, it could be argued, had then seduced the others over to their side during the heated moments after the death of Drusus. Again, none of these scholars make such an argument, and in fact most of them are adamant that all the Allies had the same aim. As these modern scholars would have it, none of the Allies were ever shown to have a variation in goal from those of the others, and especially not the Samnites, who were variously held to want the citizenship just as much as the others (so Brunt and Salmon in the places cited above, and also Walbank, p. 153) or to have been just as fervent for independence as the others (Mouritsen 1998, p. 7). There is some justification for these opinions in that, indeed, there is no evidence to suggest such a division, although it is not unlikely that some individuals or even whole towns might have favored independence over the citizenship for all that (see below). Another argument that it was independence that was sought by the war might have made along the lines that this became the goal, not because it was what was most desired, but because the Allies may have considered it to have been more achievable through military action. However, for some of the reasons detailed in chapter 2 (see also below), it is hard to surmise how the Allies might have thought that it would be easier to wrest independence from Rome than the civitas. Either way, even such an argument as difficult to prove as this last might have been made by these modern scholars, but was not. Instead, nearly all of them insist that the Allies had wnated the civitas before 91, wanted independence afterwards, and provide no explanation of any kind as to why this shift occurs in their accounts.

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creating an independent state with what the sources say the Allies had actually wanted, which was to be come Roman. Ultimately, one extremely hypothetical possibility does suggest itself: it might perhaps have been what the Allies had actually been preparing was not a bid for independence, but more along the lines of a secessio. This last, in spite of the modern connotations attached to the derivative “secession” due to its significance in the American Civil War, is not the same thing as a bid to go separate ways. In essence, a secessio was a physical self-removal of a people from a larger group to which it had belonged upon the emergence of dissatisfaction with that larger group. Such a removal was attempted towards the end that the original group would attempt to heal the breach through concessions. There had been several of these throughout Roman history, and this maneuver may well have been fresh on the minds of Romans—and possibly the Allies—due to the turbulence of the Jugurthine War. According to Sallust, that war was almost brought to a premature conclusion in 111 due to bribery of the consul L. Calpurnius Bestia by the Numidian, which bought Jugurtha peace on fairly ridiculously light terms (BJ 29). Upon hearing of the peace, the tribune C. Memmius gave a rousing speech to the populace, in which he reminded the plebs that they had twice seceded from the Commonwealth in the face of similar injustice (BJ 30–31), even if he was quick to point out that he was not advising they do so in this instance (BJ 31.6). Perhaps the Allies were inspired bu the episode to do something comparable, and if that was the case, such a procedure would go far to span the apparent gulf between what the Allies seemed to have wanted and the means by which they went about trying to get it. It might also explain whatever confusion exists in the sources: just as the distinction between secessio and “secession” is difficult to distinguish by modern scholars, so too might it have been to Greeks attempting to interpret Allied actions, or even to Romans engaged in the same endeavor but far removed by time from the events in question. From a distance of time or across the gulf of a language barrier, both independence and secessio would have equally presented the appearance that what the Allies were attempting to do was to split off from the Romans. Indeed, during the secessio of

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494 the plebs had (as one modern historian has observed)7 “created their own organization … formed their own assembly … and elected their own officials”, which are exactly the sorts of things which people striving for independence would do. Nevertheless, as events were to show in that case (as well as in thyat of the secessio of 449 and 287), what the plebs had actually wanted was not to leave and dissolve their association with Rome as a whole, but rather to return and arrive at a settlement whereby they could manage an integration into the Roman state on a more equitable basis. This wish happens to fit precisely with the pattern of what the sources cite as the aspirations of the Allies as well, and it is probably not a coincidence that a great many of the measures the plebs are described as having undertaken are the very things which the Allies would subsequently do as reported in Diodorus. There is, of course, almost nothing in the sources which proves that this was what the Allies had in mind, but there is likewise nothing in those sources which rules it out, either. It is therefore at least possible that this was what the Allies were considering. If it was, what could not have been known by them was what the Roman reaction to their enterprise would be, although it could probably have been guessed. When faced four centuries earlier with the secessio of the plebs, negotiation and yielding by the Senate had taken the day, and doubtless this was what the Allies wished to occur in this instance as well. However, while the Plebeian secession had been peaceful (as it is described by Livy 2.32), the Allies apparently had decided to use a more forceful form of persuasion if necessary. Force against the Romans, as recent history would certainly have taught them, would not be undertaken lightly. Therefore, the endeavor upon which they had made up their minds would be one of enormous gravity, and the Allies would need to treat it as such. Adding to the seriousness of what they may have been considering would be the fact that not only would the manner of the Roman response remain a mystery, but the magnitude of it would be as well. On the one hand, there was the chance that the Commonwealth could be brought to terms quickly, for reasons 7

Cornell, p. 255.

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which will also be described below, and it cannot be questioned this would have been the ideal resolution for the Italians. Alternatively, their response could turn into a full-scale bellum which had the potential to be both lengthy and grim, an eventuality which the Allies would need to face both intellectually and materially. Finally, even a long war fought and won by the Allies might not necessarily guarantee them citizenship. The Romans might decide to let them go and strike down the foedera, granting them independence whether that were sought or not. It may be remembered, and may have been by the Allies, that Appius Claudius advised the Patricians simply to bid farewell to the secessionist plebs in 494 (τοὺς ... χαίρειν ἐᾶν; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.68). Such an ending was not, again, what the sources say the Italians had wanted, but it had already become clear that if things remained as they were, they were not going to get what they had wanted anyway. Being granted an unsought independence would cost the Allies the advantages that did accrue and could accrue from the association with Rome, but if that also meant losing the burdens of that association, of which the latter had become manifestly greater for more of the Allies than the former, it would doubtless be better than their present conditions. Those who wanted citizenship, in other words, might have accepted independence if that were the only alternative to the state of things as they were in 91. Of course, this last possibility—that of simply being let go by Rome—was infinitesimally small at best, but the Allies would have needed to have taken steps to allow for it should it have occurred. What would have been far more likely, and indeed would have been a near-certainty, was that the Romans would attempt to break up the Alliance by granting the franchise to some of its members and then crushing the rest. To protect against this circumstance, the Allies would have to combine and to combine fully, so that the Romans could not following their usual policy of divide et impera. By presenting a united front, the Romans would be compelled to have to deal with the Allies all together. If indeed they contemplated something like a secessio, then, the Allies would have to prepare for all of these contingencies and more besides: they would have to make ready for a fight which might be of some duration and of great bitterness; they would have to make ready for Roman

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attempts to lure them away from each other and then destroy them piecemeal; and would have to make ready for the sliver of possibility that the Romans would simply let them loose, by having machinery in place for how they would handle themselves if this should happen. Great care, therefore, would have to be taken, and such care is fully consistent with the extensive preparations such as those seen in Diodorus and Strabo (about which more directly): the Allies would have to fortify themselves for all outcomes, and it is not improbable that that is exactly what they were doing. As has been mentioned earlier on several occasions, a great many of the sources directly and clearly indicate that the Italians wanted the citizenship. By contrast, none give unambiguous evidence that they desired independence. This does, however, not necessarily mean that there were no socii who desired separation, and it may very well be that some of them desired precisely that. Indeed, in spite of the fact that a total dissolution of bonds tying them to Rome would also cost these Italians all the opportunities which could still be obtained from such bonds, there may have been many individuals and perhaps entire communities in Italy who were willing to sacrifice such opportunities for independence. Still, these would have found common enough cause with those trying to wrest the citizenship from the Romans, since at least one of fundamental aim—an end to the Roman ill-use of them—would have been desired by both. Additionally, in is not difficult to conjecture that, just as those Allies who wanted the citizenship would have accepted independence as preferable to their current state of subjection, so too those who preferred independence would have accepted the franchise as an alternative to the state of things as they were. To effect either outcome, however, they would need to unite, as the sad affair of Fregellae had illustrated. As is the case with so much concerning the Italians during this period, the sources fail to give specifics as to what the Italians were thinking and what motivated their actions when they finally decided upon war. However, the rather nebulous details which do exist will at the minimum permit the possibility that what they had intended to do was akin to the secessio attempted by Rome’s own plebs centuries earlier. The parallel is, perhaps, not exact: the Allied secessio, as events were to show, was going to be a good deal more violent than that of the Plebeians, and had probably been designed to be such from the outset. Nevertheless, by forcefully tearing

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themselves away from Rome the Allies could have used their absence to compel Rome to grant their wish for the citizenship, the thing which most of them seem to have wanted and which was quite probably a thing which even those who desired independence (assuming that there were such) would have accepted as better than leaving things as they were. That the Romans might need a great deal of convincing would have been faced squarely by the Allies, and if such convincing needed to be forceful, the mobilization of men, material, and other resources would be required, which is what several sources attest the Allies undertook. They also would have had to brace themselves for the outside possibility that Rome would simply let them go, an outcome which would have pleased whatever independence-minded Allies there were and which, again, the others might have been willing to accept as better than their current situation. Preparations towards that end would require the mobilization of all sorts of men and material, and the sources say the Allies also gathered these. At the very least a secessio makes sense of what the sources say, and by employing it, the question of what the Allies hoped to do with the war soon to erupt and why they made the extensive preparations that the sources (both literary and numismatic) show that they had is given at least a tentative answer. There does, however, remain one final question. The raising of armies and the acquisition of all the other necessities for war takes time, and given the amounts of these resources that would later be displayed by the Allies (more below), that amount of time must have been great. However, the sources also strongly imply that the fighting broke out hard upon the death of Drusus. If that is right, and the Allies had only resolved for war on his murder in the autumn of 91, they could never have gathered together the vast resources they would be revealed in their possession by as early as the spring of 90. The inescapable conclusion is, then, that the socii must have started planning years in advance of 91. If that is so, then when did they begin? And what connection is there between that beginning, the start of the war, and Drusus?

2. THE CHRONOLOGY OF ALLIED ACTIONS As has been argued above, while there is nothing in the sources which unequivocally points to the fact that a secessio of sorts was the road which the Allies had chosen, there is likewise nothing in those sources which conclusively renders it such a decision impossible.

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But if the socii had in fact determined upon this route, they would have had to have recognized the risks involved, and accordingly to have taken the necessary precautions against them. Fregellae had illustrated that no single community could stand against Rome, and that those who would stand against them would have to have the help of others in such a way that the Romans could not separate them with bribes and blandishments. Simply put, the Allies would need to combine so completely that the partnership could be safe from the dangers of seduction, as well as those of force. That, in turn, would involve a series of negotiations and delicate diplomatic maneuvers amongst Italians who often differed sharply one from another in language, customs, and outlook, and to do so in secrecy lest the Romans catch on and stamp out the endeavor before it could even begin. These actions would take time, but they were only the beginning of the process. After that initial stage, the Allies would then have to proceed to logistics: since it was likely beyond question that the Romans would need to be compelled by violence to reach an accommodation of any type with the Allies, armies would need to be created. Men therefore would have to be found, gathered, equipped, supplied, paid, and furnished with the apparatus of leadership, and all of this, too, would also have to be done in secret. All of these measures would have taken months and possibly years to execute. However, a great many of the sources explicitly state or strongly infer that war became inevitable upon the blocking of the attempts of Drusus to grant the citizenship he had promised the socii and his subsequent murder,8 which occurred in the fall of 91.9 Based on the high level of readiness the Allies would show as early as the spring of 90, it cannot have been that planning for war started with the death of Drusus. How, then, can the fairly clear evidence of lengthy planning be reconciled with the perfectly clear testimony of the sources connecting the war to the slain tribune?

8 These sources include Appian I1.5.38), the Periocha of Book 71 of Livy, Florus (2.6.3–4), Orosius (5.18.1–2), and Velleius (2.15.1–2). 9 As discussed in the notes for the previous chapter, Drusus was still alive on the Ides of September (Cicero, de orat. 3.1.1–2).

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Assuming that this connection should not simply be scrapped,10 the proper relationship between of the death of Drusus, the Allied war preparations, and the actual flareup might be found in the evidence provided on the one hand by Asconius and on the other by Velleius Paterculus. The first of these has to do with a comment made by Asconius concerning the lex Mucia Licinia (67C). This law, as discussed in the previous chapter, had been one of many which had put restrictions on how the Italians were to make use of the city of Rome. However, this one was special. Earlier expulsion laws in the early second century had been passed at the behest of the ruling classes of Allied communities to force their citizens to go home so that those communities might meet their military obligations to Rome. The lex Mucia Licinia was not like these, nor was it like the law of Pennus, which, it has been argued, removed the Italians because they were making a nuisance of themselves and contributing to an increased agitation for land redistribution.11 Nor was it even like the lex Fannia, which simply excluded non-citizens from the city while voting was taking place. All of those laws had involved mass expulsion from Rome, which the lex Mucia Licinia did not; indeed, the lex Mucia Licinia seems to have allowed most non-citizens to stay in the city as before. Those who were to be expelled were specifically those Italians who were found to be acting like citizens but who did not in fact have this status; after a trial to determine what their status actually was, those found guilty of pretending to be citizens were expelled at the very least, and maybe even worse.12 Amongst the many implications of this law were the clear messages it seemed to be sending to the Allies, which were that Romans were now to be quite jealous of their citizenship, still rigidly observed the difference between citizens and non-citizens, and were to be watchful for any socius who attempted to claim rights which were not his. Such a law does not indicate that a friendliness to the grant of citizenship was widespread, and indeed suggests that the Romans were even more uncompromising in their For additional reasons why it should be retained, see Appendix E. See also Appendix C for the lex Junia. 12 See, again, chapter 3. 10 11

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antipathy to enfranchisement than ever. This attitude seems to have impelled the Allies into motion: according to Asconius, by means of this law the sentiments of the magnates of the Italians were set against Rome, and it became the greatest cause of the war three years later (Verum ea lege ita alienati animi sunt principum Italicorum populorum ut ea vel maxima causa belli Italici quod post triennium exortum est fuerit; 67.C). It may be, then, that the first stages of planning for the confrontation with Rome might reasonably be postulated to have begun here.13 If in fact this law made it clear that the Romans would never grant the franchise sua sponte, then the Allies must have decided to attempt to employ a more forceful means of persuasion and may have begun slowly to make ready for such aggressive negotiations soon after 95. This would accord well with the assertion of Velleius that the war had been brewing for some time before the draught was ready to drink in 91 (iam pridem tumescens bellum excitavit Italicum; Velleius 2.15). It may, then, not be too far-fetched to assume that, beginning shortly after the passage of the lex Mucia Licinia, the Allies progressively started to formulate ideas as to what move they would make, and to discuss those with each other. The discussions might have taken a great deal of time to establish, as the Italians were not known for their co-operative tendencies,14 and once it was determined what was to be done, it quite probably took a substantial amount of convincing to draw in all the eventual partners. After all, the example set by Fragellae not quite two generations earlier might well have given some communities pause about challenging the Romans.15 Moreover, the utmost secrecy would have to be maintained lest the Allies forfeit the advantage on which they were counting (which will be discussed below), as well Salmon (1967, p. 335) and Keaveney (1987, p. 91) hold likewise. So Brunt (1988, p. 115) and Salmon (1967, p. 293–294). Both suggest that the only reason peace had existed in Italy at all was because it had been imposed on it by Rome. Indeed, even during the war the Italians were far from united, as revealed by the many communities which stayed loyal to Rome even amongst the Italian peoples who decided on war; more of these will be discussed below. 15 For more on this see Brunt (1988, p. 100–101) and Mouritsen (1998, p. 130). 13 14

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as for safety’s sake. Nevertheless, while the results of these designs would eventually become known, little else about the initial stages of the revolt being contemplated is. It seems clear, however, that a major participant in them was the Marsic nobleman Q. Poppaedius Silo,16 due to the position of command he would subsequently play in the hostilities.17 Silo more than anyone is held to be responsible for the creation of the Alliance, and he would later become a principal commander of its army in war. Even so, as successful as he was in that conflict, it seems he also had apparently worked as hard as he could to prevent it by means gaining the bequest of the citizenship before action was to be taken. Silo may, in fact, provide the link to why the war ended up occurring when it did relative to Drusus. These two men had apparently been friends, as has been seen, and to such an extent that at one point Silo seems to have been the house-guest of the tribune while in the city to discuss the franchise. To gain this, Silo had been so anxious to enlist the aid of Drusus that he even recruited the help of the latter’s nephew Caepio to plead the case of the Allies, an endeavor which met with greater success than that directed at that man’s other nephew, Cato the Younger.18 It was perhaps on the urging of Poppaedius that any For the proper spelling of the nomen, see Appendix H. Of the importance of Poppaedius, see for example Florus 2.6.10, Strabo 5.4.2, Plutarch Moralia 321F, and Plutarch Marius 33. 18 See previous chapter. Mouritsen (op. cit., p. 125 note 51) nevertheless suggests that the intimacy between Silo and Drusus reflected in this anecdote had been invented or at the very overblown by the Varian trials (see Appendix E). On the other hand, if Haug (p. 136–137) is correct, the story ultimately derives from Cicero’s biography of Cato, and having lived through the events in question, Cicero might very well have been able to discern any maiupulation in the record due to the Varian trials which was patently contrary to fact. Salmon (1967, p. 336 note 2) draws the additional conclusion that Poppaedius was also an intimate of Marius based on the warmth displayed during an encounter between their armies which is reported in Diodorus Siculus (37.15), though in Plutarch’s Marius the exchange between the two is somewhat more terse; see next chapter (loc. cit., where Silo is called “Publius Silo”, almost certainly in error). 16 17

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move the Alliance would make would be delayed until the close of the year 91, to give Drusus every chance to put forward a plebiscitum in favor of the citizenship. It may also have been by Poppaedius and his connections that Drusus was informed about the plot to murder the consuls (see previous chapter), a plot which seems to have been Latin in origin and thus not connected with the future insurgents.19 Silo could therefore reveal it because this plot was be unconnected to the activities of the Alliance and could be foiled without compromising Allied plans, and at the same time it might in the process obtain the goodwill of the Senate. It may also be that the march of Poppaedius related in Diodorus 37.13 (see previous chapter) had taken place while Drusus was still living. According to the story, Poppaedius led ten thousand men, those most injured by the lex Licinia Mucia, towards Rome, carrying with them concealed weapons. When encountered by one Caius Domitius and questioned as to his intent, replied that he was headed to Rome to get the citizenship at the summons of the tribunes (κεκλ μένος ὑπὸ τῶν δ μάρχων). This passage is riddled with questionable notices, as for one thing it states that Silo intended to use the ten thousand to force the Senate to extend the franchise, or to ravage the capital if they proved unwilling to do so. It is exceedingly doubtful at a mere ten thousand would have been able to accomplish any such thing. Furthermore, the Caius Domitius mentioned occupies no other role in all of recorded Roman history. In this, the sole even in which he appears, he dissuaded Silo from his aims by pointing out that the Senate would in fact be wiling to grant the citizenship if it were approached with a petition rather than a division (ταύτ ν γὰρ ούλεσ αι τὴν χάριν δοῦναι τοῖς συμμάχοις μὴ ιασ εῖσαν ἀλλ᾽ ὑπομν σ εῖσαν), even though all the other sources indicate nothing even resembling such a willingness. Leave may be granted to suspect that no such episode occurred.20 Still, if it did actually take place, the fact that 19 Florus (2.6.8) mentions that the assassinations were to take place on the Alban Mount at the Latin festival, while de viris illustribus 66.12 adds that it was foiled by Drusus. 20 Mouritsen (1998, p. 125 note 51) doubts it happened, stating that “the Marsic march on Rome is clearly too fantastic to be accepted at face

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this Domitius took it upon himself to talk Silo out of this action, and the fact that Silo would allow himself to be persuaded, suggests that this episode occurred before the war had started rather than afterwards, even though the latter is where most scholarly assessments assign it.21 If, thus, the war had not yet started when Silo’s march was took place, then it must have transpired at some point prior to the autumn of 91. Drusus would have been alive then, and Poppaedius may have been leading his band to support Drusus or to protect him. Either way, an explanation for the evidence that connects the murder of Drusus to the outbreak of the war can thus now be value”. Skepticism about this maneuver is shared by Haug (p. 239), who believes the entire passage is suspect. Most modern authorities part company from this, and accept the story. 21 Mouritsen (1998, p. 130), however, also notes the possibility that the march of Silo took place before the death of Drusus, assuming it had taken place at all; as for his thoughts on the latter possibility it did not, see earlier note. The more common approach, though, has been accept the tale and to place it chronogically either after the death of Drusus and perhaps even after the flare-up at Asculum or very shortly before; by this reading, the “Domitius” in question was one of the men sent to investigate the rumors of coniuratio amongst the allies. However, it is difficult to see what purpose could have been accomplished by Silo in leading a band of men towards Rome after the uprising at Asculum had taken place. Under such circumstances, the Romans would likely have been less inclined to send one man to drive off thousands by reasoning with them (indeed, Roman unwillingness to negotiate will be described presently) and more inclined to send a legion to annihilate them. If this event took place, it therefore probably happened before Asculum. As to the identity of the otherwise unknown “Caius” Domitius: Francis Walton, the translator of the Loeb edition of Diodorus Siculus (p. 219 note 1), states that the praenomen “Caius” was not used by the Domitii and thus the text should be corrected to “Gnaeus”, perhaps the consul of 96. Domaszewski (p. 17), on the other hand, believes that Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul 94) is meant, while Keaveney (1987, p. 118) states that perhaps the Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus is either that proposed by Walton or another man later killed by Pompeius in Africa (Broughton vol. 2, p. 69). In light of this confusion, the present essay is content to let the question of nomenclature remained a vexed one and present the name in a Latinised form of the way it is found in the text of Diodorus.

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postulated. As events began to multiply in the years following 95 and the passage of the detested lex Licinia Mucia, the Allies gradually perfected their plans for the coming altercation with the Romans and drew together the means by which it could be attempted. These designs were nearing completion as Drusus entered his tribunate, during which time he showed an early inclination to grant the citizenship to the Latins. Due, perhaps, to a need for even more land than could be gotten from the ager publicus held by the latter, or to the persuasion of his friend Silo, or to both, Drusus widened his offer to all of the Allies. Because Silo was a prime mover for the Alliance, it is likely that he could persuade the others to hold off action until after the end of 91, to allow Drusus to accomplish all that he could. After all, if unpleasantness could be avoided, that policy would make simple good sense. Moreover, as events would show, perfect readiness had not yet been achieved by the Allies, and they could therefore make use of the remaining time to finish what was left to be done. Drusus therefore represented the one last chance the Allies would extend to the Romans to grant the citizenship without violence, and the obstruction of his laws and his subsequent assassination was therefore taken as the signal that secessio would move forward.22 It has thus far been argued that once the Allies had become convinced that the Romans would never willingly enfold them into the Commonwealth as citizens, they plotted to take more forceful action to see if the civitas could be wrung from Rome. This plan 22 That the Allies held off to see what Drusus could do is also interpretation of Keaveney (1987, p. 82–83, p. 94 note 34; p. 91–92), Salmon (1967, p. 338), and Brunt (loc. cit.). For rather different reasons, Mouritsen also subscribes to the idea that the Allies had been in long preparation for the coming war (1998, p. 131), and that Drusus had provided the impetus for the revolt (p. 143–151). In his view, the laws of Drusus proposing land distribution had been the final straw to jolt the Allies into independence, while the death of Drusus (which caused an uproar amongst the Latins who had been promised the franchise) meant that the Allies could take advantage of Latin disaffection and alienation from the Romans in order to obtain a military advantage. Some of Mouritsen’s assertions will be discussed in greater length in the following chapter.

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involved the enaction of something like a secessio, whereby they would forcibly withdraw from Rome and use violence to negotiate the civitas. Employing arms against Rome was a dangerous proposition, as Fregellae had graphically illustrated, and not one to be undertaken without every possible precaution. The Allies would therefore need to make sure they would be as ready as possible for whatever repercussions their decision might unleash. Such arrangements would take time, however, and the fact that they had managed their affairs to the extent that they had by 91 suggests they had been at it for a while. A logical starting point for their undertaking might be identified with the passage of the lex Licinia Mucia, which probably underlined the reality that any other way to obtain the civitas than bloodshed would not be met with success. But one last chance to avert war came with the legislative activity of M. Livius Drusus, which may itself have been influenced by its author’s amity with Q. Poppaedius Silo, one of the principal architects of the Alliance. Silo may have persuaded the Allies to hold off acting prematurely by allowing the laws of Drusus a chance, and in the meantime to use the year 91 to make sure everything was set for what was to come. As events would turn out, however, the laws of Drusus and the tribune himself would be struck down before the end of the year, and in the meantime rumors of a coniuratio amongst the Allies began to reach the Senate. This would lead to an unexpected occurrence which may have done much to prolong the coming war and indeed to shape its outcome.

3. ASCULUM AND THE END OF 91 It may very well have been that in the opening months of 91, the Allies, who were possibly persuaded by Poppaedius Silo to restrain their movements until the outcome of the proposed leges Liviae could be seen, had nevertheless been able to predict their failure which was soon to follow. They could probably have also predicted the murder of Drusus, as the fates of Flaccus and C. Gracchus may have given them some insight as to what would become of tribunes associated with enfranchisement for the Italians. Even so, with a guarded optimism they seem to have planned to let 91 unfurl as it would while planning their movement for the next year. But as autumn arrived, events suddenly seem to have taken a direction that had not been anticipated. According to Appian, the Romans

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had gradually become aware that the socii might have been planning something, and sent men into the various Allied territories to discover what it might be (1.5.38). How it is they had come by this awareness is uncertain; perhaps the plot to murder the consuls (described above and in chapter 3) had set into motion an investigation that had turned up something to this effect, launching a separate investigation into Allied doings.23 At any rate, discretion had apparently been what was ordered to these investigators, as may seen from the fact that Appian notes that those who men were sent into Allied areas were ones who knew these areas best, and who thus could conduct their enquiries without arousing suspicion (περιέπεμπον ἐς τὰς πόλεις ἀπὸ σφῶν τοὺς ἑκάστοις μάλιστα ἐπιτ δείους, ἀφανῶς τὰ γιγόμενα ἐξετάζειν; loc. cit.). This command was apparently lost on a praetor named Servilius,24 who was in the neighborhood of Asculum and was informed by one of Rome’s agents that a young man had been observed there being sent as hostage to another town. Servilius apparently took it upon himself to threaten the Asculani into submission, and interrupted a religious festival to deliver a harangue to that effect. Diodorus takes note of the same action, and also notes that the tone employed by Servilius was not one used between free men and allies, but was that usually directed to slaves promising dire punishments (ἐκεῖνος γὰρ οὐκ ὡς ἐλευ έροις καὶ ὁμιλῶν ἀλλ᾽ ὡς δουλοῖς ἐνυ ρίζων; 37.13). It would prove to be a most unfortunate miscalculation on his part: whether from fear of discovery or from fury at the tone being used, the Asculani soon fell upon the praetor and killed him, and then proceeded then to do his legate Fonteius likewise (Cicero, Pro Font. 41 and Velleius 2.15.1, in addition to Appian, loc. cit.). This, in turn, was followed So Keaveney (1987, p. 117). Praetor, according to Appian and Velleius Paterculus (2.15.1); proconsul, according to Periochae (72, where his praenomen is given as Quintus); praetor sent as legate, according to Orosius, who refers to him as “C. Servius” (5.18.8). Domaszweski (p. 17) names him “C. Servilius” and states that he was a praetor proconsule; Haug likewise refers to him as Caius (p. 207, 239). Keaveney (1987, p. 117–118) prefers Q. Servilius, as does Salmon (1967, p. 339, though his note 7 takes account of the difficulties in assigning him a proper name and title). 23 24

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up by indulging in a general slaughter of all the other Romans in the city (Per. 72, Florus 2.6.9, and Orosius 5.18.8, in addition to the sources already named). Appian speaks of the massacre at Asculum as occurring because the language of Servilius was not only overly haughty, but also suggested to the Asculani that the plot had been discovered. This indicates that the Alliance as a whole had not yet been ready to strike when, in essence, the initiative was taken out of their hands in this regard. It has been theorized above that the war itself had been the result of deliberate planning on the part of the Allies, who had been forging their partnership and staging their intended motion since the aftermath of the passage of the Lex Licinia Mucia. In order to give Drusus space in which to bring forward what he promised them, the Allies probably agreed on what was perhaps the urging of Silo to delay their action until after 91. If this is true, then while death of Drusus would have sent the signal that the plan was to be executed, it likely did not signal that it was to be executed immediately. It seems more probable that at this point—namely, autumn of 91—it had already been decided to put off the demonstration until the following year. Indeed, the lateness of the season would likely have made it unwise to have proceeded immediately with the secessio for strategic purposes, and that the next year would be better. It seems manifest that the Allies had a plan for what they were going to do when the appropriate time came, and while for reasons that are by now familiar the sources do not specify exactly what that plan might have been, one can be surmised given the few basic facts which are known. Most importany of these is that the Italians were to face extremely long odds in a struggle with Rome, whose military resources were vast even without Allied contribution, and certainly sufficient to keep up with the Italians if the struggle were to be of extended duration. Furtheremore, in a protracted contest the Romans might be able to overwhelm them if in addition they could bring to bear the men and material they could obtain from overseas. The Italians were almost certainly aware of these facts, and any hope of victory would likely have hinged on their finiding a way to diminish these Roman advantages. One possible way to do this would be to catch the Romans off guard. If taken by surprise, the Romans might be deprived of the assistance they could expect from outside and might have to fight on their own while that aid

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was being gathered and sent. Indeed, if the surprise was fairly total, the Romans might even find themselves having to act even before they could completely mobilize their own forces. Under such circumstances, the odds would perhaps be far more level: cut off from their remaining socii and left only with their own men, the Romans still might perhaps be able to field slightly more soldiers than could the Italians, but not overwhelmingly many more.25 Moreover, the quality of the men the Romans had at hand might have been suspect. After all, part of the reason for why it is speculated the Allies had had grounds for complaint in the first place was that the Romans had become increasingly accustomed to the over-use of Allied soldiery, due in part to the unwillingness of the Romans themselves to serve as conscripts (see chapter 2). Friendly tribunes could save citizens from this service, and eventually the Romans could evade military duty altogether due to the Marian reforms. The Italians, however, apparently could not, so the chances that a Roman soldier had less experience that his Italian foe was high. Additionally, by a rare coincidence there had been a fortuitous lull in external wars fought by Rome during this period, or so the (admittedly very fragmentary) sources suggest: the last major campaign described is that of T. Didius in Spain in the year 97 (Per. 70, Appian, Bell. Hisp. 99–100, and Frontinus 1.8.5, where, it should be noted, Didius was said to have been concerned due to the small size of his forces). The consul of 94, L. Crassus, was so discomfitted by this lack of action that is described by Cicero as “triumph hunting”, tramping all over Gaul looking for enemies worth fighting, and without success (de invent. 2.37.111; in Pis. 62). With the exception of what is apparently some desultory fighting in Thrace conducted by propraetor C. Sentius in 92 (Per. 70)26 and some maneuvers of uncertain date27 in the East by Sulla 25 In fact, Appian suggests that the numbers were more-or-less equal at the start of the first full year of the war, and this after a season in which the Romans had time to prepare themselves for the campaign (1.5.39). 26 See also Broughton (op. cit.), p. 49. 27 Greenidge and Clay state 92, but they cite Badian (1964, p. 157–162, 168–170), who fairly persuasively argues that Sulla had been sent on this expedition in 96 after his year as Praetor; contra Broughton, vol. 2, p. 14, 18.

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as praetor (apparently accomplished with forces raised from Eastern Allies; Plutarch, Sull. 5), the Roman world had for some time been largely at peace (Eutropius 5.3.1).28 What this meant is 28 Brunt (1971, p. 435) asserts that as many as six legions were in the field at various locations throughout the empire upon the outbreak of the war, but it is difficult to see how he arrives at this number. Three of these legions were held to be in Spain, but earlier (p. 431) he notes how consular armies were present in Further Spain only until 94 and in Hither Spain until either 92 or 90; if the former of these two years was the correct one, then no record of consular armies in Spain exist at all from 92 forwards. In the absence of evidence, it cannot be stated positively that there were any legions in Spain, let alone three. Brunt also mentions (on p. 664) his belief that a P. Servilius Vatia mentioned by the Fasti as celebrating a triumph in 88 won it from actions in Spain. Broughton, however, disagrees (vol. 2, p. 28 and page 30 note 5); since all men awarded triumphs from Spain listed on the Fasti were noted as proconsule, and Vatia was listed as propraetor, Broughton believes that Vatia actually served in Sardinia and may not have even been sent there until 89 (see also Appendix F). Another of these six was said to have been with Sentius in the East. While Brunt allows that Sentius might have relied extensively on local levies, just as Sulla had been forced to do in Cilicia, he finds it incredible that he did not have at least one legion under him. This is plausible enough. The remaining two legions are are stated to have been commanded in Gaul by a man who won a victory over the Salluvii in 90 (Per. 73; see also chapter 5), who Brunt believes to be C. Coelius Caldus, the consul of 94. For victory to have been won in 90, Coelius would have had these men since sometime earlier point, perhaps 93. However, the text of the Periochae identifies this general as “Caecilius”; Broughton believes his actual name was C. Caecilius Caelius, that he was not the same person as the consul (vol. 2, p. 25, 27, and note 1, p. 30), and that he might have been sent there in 90 as Praetor. Brunt is probably correct in his assertion that the man in question is in fact Caldus, but there is at least the possibility that these legions were not there since 93, or at least that only one of them was, as opposed to two. Therefore, none of the six legions attested by Brunt as serving abroad in 91 can actually be placed anywhere with certainty; it is almost certain that a few of them were in such service, but it may very well be that far fewer than six were actually serving. On the other hand, such service does give rise to another question: since these legions would presumably have

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that the Allies would have most of its available manpower accessible for the cause, and that this manpower would almost certainly include a larger number of trained soldiers than Rome could muster by itself. In other words, the Allies had the potential to raise a larger and better Roman army than the Romans could, and if they could catch the Romans out of balance with it, their chance of beating the untried armies which Rome could send,29 and thus ultimately to force concessions, seemed good.30 had a complement of Allies with them, what became of these when the war erupted? Were they disbanded, or were forced to stay in the field? If the latter, did any of them desert, and if so how many? Alternatively, did any of them stay with the legions, and if so, how in what numbers? It is at least possible that the legions were not in fact discharged, and that some Allies in them chose to stay with the signa. It may have been for them that a law referred to in a fragment of Sisenna, the lex Calpurnia, was passed. This law is referred to as giving soldiers the civitas, and it might either have rewarded those who chose to stay with the foreign legions or persuaded them to do so; see chapter 6 and Appendix L for further discussion on this point. 29 If this represented Allied thinking, then their confidence in their own soldiers and negative assessment of the skill of the men Rome would field seems to have been pretty accurate. While, perhaps, Rome had superior commanders (the men listed as commanding the armies include no less than three former Triumphators), the milites themselves were suspect: Marius, who knew a thing or two about the training of soldiers (Keppie, p. 64–69; Carney 1970, p. 31–34), had grave doubts about the abilities of the men he commanded under Rutilius Lupus in 90 and argued that they be given more training before being sent into action (Dio, frg. 98, and Orosius, 5.18.11). Rutilius ignored the advice of Marius to his cost (see next chapter). Even after some engagements under Marius had seasoned them, these men apparently still proved difficult to bring to full fighting form, as Plutarch seems to attest (Mar. 33). Presumably the other Roman commanders had similar experiences with their men which are not recorded, though various other infractions of discipline that certainly are passed on may have come from newness to the service; for these lapses, see chapter 6. 30 Much of the arguments above are made by Salmon (1967, p. 346). They are disputed, but not very well, by Mouritsen (1998, p. 157–159), who seems to have taken objection both to Salmon’s suggestion that the Allies might even have outnumbered the Romans at first (which is not

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If this approach had been what the Allies had had in mind, the events at Asculum would have been an unfortunate disruption. This would explain Appian’s comment, mentioned above, on the panic that seems to have occurred amongst the Asculani at having it appear that they had been found out: the Allies, thinking they would have a few more months remaining before they would act, were themselves caught out of position at the apparent Roman awareness of their intentions, and they reacted somewhat thoughtlessly. Indeed, another indication that Asculum had been contrary to design is the lateness of the season. Assuming that the sources are correct in that the slaughter took place following the death of Drusus, it cannot have happened before late September of 91,31 and may have transpired as late as mid-October. If Allied military planning had been as was put forward above, then a key element to that planning would have been to go on the move and press the Romans without break. The regular campaigning season would have been much better suited for this operation than late autumn, since such a date would mean that winter would soon put a stop to whatever military exercise could be launched and thus give the Romans some breathing room, as indeed it ultimately did. Finally, that the Allies had not yet been completely ready for combat can be derived from a further passage in Appian, narrating that an embassy was sent to Rome which attempted to forestall further violence by negotiation (1.5.39). No doubt this embassy represented the sincere hopes of the Allies that they could reach their desires without additional fighting, though it is not difficult to

entirely what Salmon is suggesting; his argument is rather than the Allies had a larger pool of trained manpower from which to draw than the Romans did) and that they were caught off guard. Mouritsen himself believes that the Romans had begun to muster forces even before Asculum, due to events which took place in Nola (p. 130–132, about which more below). As to the difference in quality of men, Mouritsen dismisses these as “negligible” in spite of the evidence that amply attests that the Roman legions in 90 and even 89 consisted of poor stuff indeed; see above and chapters five and six below for further discussion of these soldiers and their (lack of) quality. 31 See earlier note.

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suppose that some attempt at delay was also taking place.32 As it happens, the passage in Appian in which it is described is not filled with specific details, and since the legation that is mentioned there is described nowhere else, there is much that remains obscure about it. It cannot, for example, be determined when exactly it took place, since the only temporal clue provided is that it was deputed some time after Asculum. That it was sent before the end of 91 is probably to be assumed from the additional statement made by Appian at the end of the episode, to the effect that the Allies continued in their mobilization after the failure of the ambassadors. Since all mobilization seems to have been finished by the start of 90, the end of the previous year seems to be proper time for the dispatch embassy. Neither is it revealed who was sent to Rome, nor the exact nature of the message they conveyed.33 This last may be due to the fact that ultimately the deputation was not received: according to Appian, the emissaries made their initial complaint about how the Allies had helped build the empire but had not been given the citizenship, whereupon the Romans dismissed them with the admonishment that they would only hear from Allies who had repented of Asculum and presumably were ready to accept Roman punishment. There was, then, to be no diplomatic way out. Rome had made it clear that they would only respond to action, and action was now to be prosecuted to the fullest possible extent. The Allies, therefore, fell to it with vigor. If the chronology of the Periocha of Livy’s Book 72 is to be trusted, shortly after Asculum a Roman named Servius Galba was soon captured by the Lucani, but was freed by a woman with whom he had been lodging somewhere in Lucania. He is never explicitly stated as such in the Periochae, but the fact that this person had been important enough to be mentioned in this work but not stated to be in command of 32 Admittedly, such a delay would in theory help the Romans as much as the Allies, but in this instance the latter had the edge of having already known that conflict was coming; theirs was the task of putting into hasty execution the plans already they had already laid, as opposed to having to react to situation about which they had not been warned. 33 This has not, however, prevented some scholars from using these envoys as evidence of what the Allies wanted from the war; for their thoughts, see Appendix A.

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an army has led to a scholarly consensus that he, like Servilius, had also been one of the men sent prior to Asculum to investigate goings-on amongst the socii.34 When the violence erupted, Galba seems to have found himself in a very tight spot indeed before his timely liberation. Perhaps the city from which he fled was Grumentum, which seems to have been a divided town that changed sides several times over the course of the war (see next two chapters). The same passage of the Periochae notes that Alba Fucens, just north of Marsic territory, and Aesernia, in the land of the Samnites, were both attacked by the Allies but apparently could not be taken, and both were thereupon put under siege. This notice gives rise to the question as to who it was who resisted the Allies at these two cities. Were these loyalists alone, or were they stiffened with Roman soldiers? Of the former town, the effusion of praise for the Albans in the Rhetorica ad Herennium (2.45) implies that it had done some signal service to Rome which may have taken the shape of withstanding a large siege without Roman help. Likewise, the fact that the Epitome of Book 72 mentions only that stories of aid rendered to the Romans by auxilia could be found in that original book, but gives no indication that specific actions that the Romans themselves undertook were described therein, may be interpreted to mean that there were none. This would mean that Alba was on its own and without aid from the capital, though as a Roman colony the city likely would have had in it some men who had once seen service in the legions.35 As to the other, Aesernia was likewise a Roman colony and likewise may also have been the home of some former soldiers, who would help resist the Allies. These may possibly have been helped by a small force of Romans under the command of L. Scipio and L. Acilius. Appian states that these two men were “in command there” (αὐτὴν οἱ μὲν συντάττοντες, Λεύκιός τε Σκιπίων καὶ Λεύκιος Ἀκίλιος; 1.5.41). This intimates that they had men to command, although nothing further is said of soldiers. Since this same source describes how both of these men would eventually escape the city (somewhat ignominiously, for which see 34 35

See Appendix F. This interpretation is favored by Haug (p. 202).

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next chapter), they would need to have gotten into it in the first place, and it seems more likely that they had been in Aesernia when it was invested than that they broke or stole in only to have to steal back out again in the next year. In fact, these two men may also have been contributing to the detection of the rumblings in Italy, as some scholars believe. Finally, there is the siege of Nola, an event which is mentioned in the Periochae as having come to an end in early 90 (73; the conclusion of the investment is also mentioned in Appian, 1.5.42). Thus, it probably had begun in late 91. The defense of the city had devolved upon Lucius Postumius, testified as being Praetor and in command of a garrison of some 2000 soldiers when the city fell. It may be that this man, too, was involved with the investigation, unless he had marched there with these troops for the specific purpose of defending the city at some later time, or happened to be in the area with men under his command for some other unspecified purpose.36 These are the only specific operations mentioned in the Periochae as undertaken by either Romans or Allies before the notice of “L. Iulius Caesar cos.” with which Per. 73 begins, which gives the signal of events which can certainly be dated to the year 90. On the other hand, between mention of Aesernia and Alba in the Periochae there is noted that book 72 had told of the various expeditiones invicem expugnationesque urbium which are not named in the summary. Conventional wisdom states that such actions also took place in the year 91, and that among these expugnationes urbium besieged might have been Nola and very likely also Pinna, a city whose investment gave rise to accounts of all sorts of horrors, as will be seen directly.37 Certainty cannot be had on this account due See also Appendix F. Domaszewski (p. 19) and Haug (p. 211–213) propose that there were other cities which may have also seen action at this time that are included in this line from the Periochae, and that some of these are described in a rather corrupt passage of Florus (2.6.11). This passage mentions Ocriculum, Grumentum, Faesulae, Carseoli, Nuceria, and Picentia—and in this order—as ferro et igni vastantur. In between Carseoli and Nuceria a word is clearly there, but the text is corrupt. Aesernia, Sora, and Reate are all conjectured as having filled this spot. If either of the 36 37

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to the peculiarities of chronology in the Periochae,38 but it nevertheless might be reasonably asserted that winter set in very soon after the investment of Aesernia. The Allies, thus, had probably managed to set up siege lines around Nola and Pinna just in time to suspend operations for the rest of the year. As has been mentioned above, Appian recounts how the Allies made one last overture of peace to the Romans after what seems certain to have been the unplanned eruption at Asculum. The actions just mentioned were probably launched after this embassy failed in its task, a failure brought about when it was rejected out of hand, and, it seems, unheard, by the Romans, for reasons which will be speculated later. Nevertheless, for the moment it is sufficient to note that the lordly demeanor of the Romans revealed in this anecdote was apparently at great odds with their state of military readiness in 91. After the rejection of their envoys, the Allies proceeded to launch a number of strikes at latter two are correct (Forster’s Loeb text substitutes Aesernia, while Haug and Domaszewski both prefer Sora), then with the exception of Grumentum these cities are arranged geographically from north to south. It probably does not reflect a chronological ordering of events, in spite of what Haug and Domaszewski maintain. Haug’s reasons for thinking thus is that the passage presents a “confused patchwork” if ordered geographically. However, the confusion of the geography is only created by the displacement of Grumentum, and that city might well have been placed outside of where it ought to be following the north-south arrangement due to a copyist’s error (the text is far from certain in this spot, making such a mistake likely). Furthermore, several of the ancient sources state that Umbria and Etruria, where Ocriculum is to be found, did not see fighting until late in the year 90, well after the fighting recorded near Carseoli in the summer of that year. Thus would tend to make a chronological arrangement a far better candidate for the assessment of bunt durcheinander bringt. In fact, action is recorded at having taken place in the vicinity of all of these cities over the course of the war, but in a different time than 91. It may well be that some of these cities were those besieged during the invicem expugnationesque urbium of late, but it almost certainly oversteps to locate details as to what is contained in the abovementioned line in the Periochae in the statement of Florus, and Haug and Domaszewski do. 38 See Appendix G.

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various locations throughout Italy. The Romans were chased away from some of these, and shut in to others, but in many there is no record of any Roman presence at all, and in none of them are the Romans found defeating the Allied assault. The surprise achieved by the Allies was, it seemed, fairly total: no named actions are recorded as having been launched by the Romans in answer to the insurgents in what remains of year,39 and other than swift advances to safe locations undertaken by whatever men they had in the field, the only type of response to the Allies which is attributed to the Romans collectively seems to have been sartorial. After the death of Servilius the Romans donned the saga, or war cloak, temporarily putting aside what one source refers to as the “classic elegance of the toga” (Per. 72, Orosius 5.18.15). It should be acknowledged here that one of the reasons for Roman lassitude had probably been the chaos surrounding the death of Drusus from which the city had not fully recovered. This turmoil is reported by Appian, even though he is probably incorrect in stating that the tumult was due to the Varian trials, which seem to be more properly placed in the following year (1.5.38).40 These trials, according to Asconius (22) and Appian (1.5.37–38), were in theory aimed at prosecuting those accused of stirring the socii to rebel, a charge which possibly was cast as a specific form of maiestas. In application, it seems that what they actually were is what Appian represents them to be: a way by which the opponents of Drusus went about settling scores with his supporters.41 Yet whether they occurred in 91 or 90, they were Almost all the sources are firm in their assertion that 91—or, rather, the year in which Julius and Marcius were consuls—was thus the year in which the war started. The only notable exception is in Velleius, but his statement that “All Italy took up arms against the Romans” only in the next year (id est 90, L. Caesare et P. Rutilio consulibus) may be justified by the fact that it would not be until that year that the war would start in earnest; so Salmon (1958, p. 171). 40 For a discussion of these, including Appian’s incorrect chronology involving them, see Haug (p. 243–247), Keaveney (1987, p. 165–169); Mouritsen (1998, p. 133–137), and Gruen (1965), p. 59–73. 41 For the lex Varia as a law on maiestas which superseded a law of Saturninus on the same charge, see Gruen (op. cit., especially p. 59–61). 39

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soon suspended, and when they resumed a reaction had set in such that upon their resumption the very men who had pushed the Along the way he convincingly explains how first the friends of Drusus could be accused under the law, then later his enemies could, and then finally Varius himself could fall victim to it. In so doing, Gruen provides a way to unknot a curious comment in Asconius 22C, which said that the people had voted for the Varian trials due to the unpopularity into which the ruling class had fallen which attached because of their refusal to grant citizenship to the Allies (cum ob sociis negatam civitatem nobilitas in invidia esset). The implication would seem to be that the trials would in some way punish the nobilitas for that which had brought about the invidia, which was the denial of the citizenship. Yet Asconius himself says this was not the case, and that Varius sought to try those who firnished consilia and opes to the Allies. Appian confirms this, noting that the Varian trials sought to prosecute those who encourage the Allies to hoped for the citizenship ( οἱ

ἱππεῖς ... Κόιντον Οὐράιον δ μαρχον ἔπεισαν εἰσ γ σασ αι κρίσεις εἶναι κατὰ τῶν τοῖς Ἰταλιώταις ἐπὶ τὰ κοινὰ φανερῶς ἢ κρύφα ο ούντων), and likewise

to be internally inconsistent, as Asconius state the Varian trials. It is difficult to see how the people would use the hatred engendered by the refusal to give the franchise to the Allies to set up courts to try those who sought to grant the Italians this very thing, or who at least stirred up the Allies from hope of it. Yet if the lex Varia was a general law against maiestas, as Gruen proposes, then a solution might be be found to this quandary. In response to Asculum, the populus would be called upon to fight a war with a very determined Alliance, a war which soon proved so unpopular that at least one man maimed himself to avoid service (Valerius Maximus 6.3.3). The populus may have equated Senatorial obstinacy with the cause for the fighting, and were thus susceptible to the promises of a tribune who vowed to punish those responsible for driving the Allies to arms. The people might have thought that his intention was to go after those whose refusal proved to be the final straw. Instead, he prosecuted those who gave the Allies reason to believe that the citizenship could be theirs and thus instilled in them the passion that led to the war, men who conveniently were among the enemies of his supporters. Since both those who persuaded the Allies that citizenship could be theirs and those who denied it both contributed to the rising of the Italians, both injured the commonwealth and thus committed laesa maiestas, and both could be prosecuted. Later, the tumult caused by this very law could also been seen as having stirred sedition, so Varius fell victim to it, too.

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quaestiones found themselves tried by them, including Varius himself (Cicero, de nat. deor. 381; Valerius Maximus 8.6.4). Even apart from these, Rome was still likely diverted by other internal difficulties in the weeks before Asculum, especially if Plutarch is to be believed about the conflict between C. Marius and L. Cornelius Sulla, which that author says would have erupted into a war of its own had not the Allies risen (Plutarch, Sull. 6; Mar. 32; see also chapter 7). Whatever the reasons for it may ahve been, in spite of the inklings that something was amiss amongst the socii, the Romans seem to have been stunned by the massacre at Asculum and caught entirely off balance in the operations to follow. Their lackluster response to the conflict shows that they were completely unprepared for a rigorous prosecution of it, suggesting that the original Allied strategy in that regard had been sound. It is tantalizing to speculate on what the Allies could have accomplished had they been able to implement those plans with more time left in the year, taking full advantage of surprise and the momentum they soon gathered without having to give the Romans an apparently much-needed breathing spell for the winter. Nevertheless, such was what the circumstances demanded, and when the spring came, matters would be somewhat different.

4. THE WINTER OF 91—ALLIED ACTIVITY AND ITS MEANING

With operations in late 91 either adjourned entirely during the cold or confined to siege operations, the Romans were given a respite in which they could shake off the initial surprise which seems to have left them completely paralyzed. They would use that interval to some effect and proceeded to organize their war effort, meeting the Allies at the start of the campaigning season of 90 with 100,000 men, if Appian is to be believed (1.5.39). Yet even this response indicates that the Romans had not been able to take the threat that was being posed to them seriously even as late as 90: according to that authority, more men and generals were sent into the field by Rome only “when it became clear the war was labyrinthine and and complicated” (τότε ποικίλον τοῦ πολέμου καὶ πολυμερὲς ἐν υμούμενοι; Appian 1.5.40). The inference can be drawn that the Romans may have thought at first that they effort they faced would be a simple and light one. This would turn out to be a significant mistake, but their underestimation of what

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confronted them in 90 may have helped play a role in their rejection of the Allied embassy a year earlier 91. There might have been a variety of factors which went in to why the Romans refused negotiations; indeed, it will be argued later that the Romans may have felt that they had had no choice but to dismiss them. Still, there is nevertheless the sense that the Romans simply could not see the enormity of the threat being posed to them, an attitude which persisted through the winter of 91 even after they had been roughed up as they were in the last months of that year. If, however, they not come to the realization of the gravity of what they faced by the beginning of the year 90, it would soon be made clear to them, as will be seen in the next chapter. Regardless of their apparent inability to shore up weaknesses in their thinking about their opponents, the Romans had taken the winter of 91/90 to put themselves in order for the coming year of fighting. The Allies, for their part, likewise took the occasion to complete the implementation the plans they had already made. By the end of the fighting in 91 the only people who had demonstrably risen had been the Picentes,42 the Marsi, the Lucani, and presumably the Samnites.43 When it would resume in the spring of 90, the remaining members of the Alliance had declared their colors and contributed their soldiery and material to the effort. Membership in the Alliance was likely somewhat fluid, with some who are recognized as having been major participants only joining later, but it is not unreasonable to assume that by when the campaign season of spring 90 had begun twelve main peoples had joined: in addition to the Picentes at the very northernmost, there were their neighbors the Vestini, the Marrucini, the Frentani, the 42 For the correct spelling of the ethnic see Salmon (1958, p. 160 n. 4). The list presented above is in something of a contrast to Appian, who states that the more central states of the Marsi, Peligni, Vestini, and Marrucini rose first, to be followed by the others. However, it is difficult to see how the Picentes could not be claimed to have risen, since Asculum was the first action, and that the Lucani had not, based on the affair with Galba (see above). 43 Domaszewski’s theory that the Samnites did not engage in 91, and may not even have been ready until far into 90 (p. 19), is rather fanciful based on the evidence he provides.

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Paeligni, and the aforementioned Marsi. Alongside these were the Samnites and Lucani (mentioned above), as well as the Hirpini, the Venusini, the Apuli, and the Campani.44 Nevertheless, while these were the main members of the Alliance, they were not the only ones who would take up arms against the Romans: various sources note that other peoples, like the Etruscans and Umbrians, also joined in the fighting, although the lateness of their decision to do so meant that the aid that was sent to them by the others did not reach them in time, and their participation was rather brief (see chapters 5 and 6). It is also important to observe that many of the peoples who did join were not undivided in their decision to secede, in a manner of speaking, from the Romans. Amongst the Campanians, for example, Nola either did not or could not take part in the confederacy at the beginning. Velleius Paterculus records a “legion” raised by his great-grandfather Minatius Magius from his fellow Hirpini who fought for Rome, taking part in the capture of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Compsa (2.6.4).45 Additionally, Picenum supplied a number of men to Pompeius Strabo,46 bespeaking of a divided loyalty which is probably reflected in the nastiness reported there by Cassius Dio (fragment 98). Finally, Pinna also stubbornly remained in favor of Rome, or, more appropriately, a segment of its population did: Diodorus records that those holding out were threatened with the murder of their children unless they were to surrender (37.19.3–37.21), and Valerius Maximus suggests a young man was also threatened with the murder of his father there (5.4.7). How it is that an outside enemy managed to get their hands on these children and elderly is unexplained and inexplicable, unless those doing the threatening were fellow townspeople who had managed to capture them as hostages.47 Division of feeling in some of their communities See Salmon (1958, p. 159–169) and Keaveney (1987, p. 119). Velleius is, however, silent as to whether or not Magius took part in Sulla’s looting of Aeclanum—his hometown—after its surrender, as described by Appian 1.6.51 (see chapter 6). 46 See Salmon (1967, p. 344 n. 5). 47 So theorized Francis Walton in a note attached to his translation of this section in the Loeb volume; p. 227. 44 45

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notwithstanding, these peoples—Hirpini, Vestini, Picentes, and Campani—would play a more prominent role against Rome as some of their people did for the Commonwealth in the war now underway. Having not been able to begin this war at the time of their choosing, the Allies were probably aware, as the winter of 91 closed, in that a swift conclusion to the fighting would not now be possible. This was likely disappointing but probably not too demoralizing, since—for reasons stated above—they had likely been prepared to face that eventuality anyway. If they could not bring Rome to negotiations by means of the lightning strikes that had apparently been contemplated, they would now have to grind it out, doubtless in the hope that they could inflict so many casualties that the Roman people would call for peace. This hope might not have been too far-fetched, as it will be remembered that protracted warfare fought primarily by Romans had been something to which the Romans themlseves had by this point grown long unaccustomed. Since it is doubtful that the Commonwealth further taxed the patience of those socii who remained on their side by asking them to contribute enough extra men to offset the missing third of the “Roman” army which the Allies in arms against them had usually provided, the legions that they fielded were likely composed primarily of Romans, and in amounts which they had not had to raise in a long time. Even so, to fight this kind of a war, whose necessity the Allies had hoped to avoid but for which they had almost certainly taken precautions, organization would be needed. In the first place, a base of operations would have to be found in which the men and their supplies could be concentrated. Selected for this base was Corfinium, a city well-chosen based on its proximity to the northern areas of the Alliance as well as its command of the Via Valeria, giving it a pathway to points east, and its ease of access to the south by way of Sulmo. It is described as the “metropolis of the Paeligni” by Strabo (τὴν τῶν Πελίγνων μ τρόπολιν, 5.4.2) and as having recently been completed by Diodorus (ἄρτι συντετελεσμέν 37.2.4). What this last likely meant is not that it had been newly built, but rather that it had apparently undergone a major

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renovation,48 and since it had probably already been decided that the city was to serve as the new center for the Alliance, it had been given a new forum and assembly hall. In addition to the new space and new building it was also given a new name, reported by Strabo (loc. cit.) and Velleius Paterculus (2.16.4) as “Italica” but in Diodorus as “Italia”, the latter being the term which epigraphical and numismatic evidence suggests was the preferred appellation.49 This numismatic evidence is taken from coins adorned with the new name of the city to symbolize the solidarity of the Alliance, ones that were being minted to pay the soldiers who Strabo reports were being gathered in the city alongside the weapons to arm them and the victuals with which they were to be fed, a collection Diodorus also relates. Diodorus further tells that with the soldiers apparently there were also dispatched to Corfinium a body of representatives from each of the people who had joined the Alliance, and these in turn selected a council of war. This latter body then decreed that two “consuls” (ὑπάτοι) were to be chosen annually, as well as twelve “praetors” (στρατ γοί), whose creation Strabo also mentions. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, a great deal has been made of the two passages just cited, both pertaining to the extent of their accuracy and, ultimately, to their significance. The developments they narrate, along with existence of coins and the symbols on them, have been taken as fairly insuperable evidence that the Allies were ultimately fighting for independence, either because that independence had always been their desire, or because they had been pushed to this extreme by the final straw that was the rejection of the laws of Drusus. These developments are, however, hardly irrefutable confirmation of such an objective, either as the culmination of a long-standing wish or as a more recent measure, and much of what is taken as conclusive in favor of such an end readily admits to other interpretations. For this reason, a closer look at these activities and precisely what they do and do not reveal about Allied intentions seems warranted. 48 See “Corfinium”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (William Smith, ed.). Walton and Maberly: London, 1854. 49 See Domaszewski (p. 16) for further discussion of the name.

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In the first place, focus is turned on the comment of Strabo in which the Allies “proclaim[ed] Corfinium, the metropolis of the Paeligni, as the common city for all the Italians instead of Rome” (Κορφίνιον, τὴν τῶν Πελίγνων μ τρόπολιν, κοινὴν ἅπασι τοῖς Ἰταλιώταις ἀποδείξαντες πόλιν ἀντὶ τῆς Ῥώμ ς). It has been determined in some modern accounts that what is meant by this remark is that the Italians intended that Rome was to be replaced or possibly destroyed by the Allies,50 following which their new city was to occupy Rome’s former position and prominence. Support for this theory that ‘Italia’ was intended to supplant Rome is found in the new forum and assembly-hall which Diodorus mentioned had been built there, to be taken as a symbol of the (eventual) might of the city. These facts can easily point in other directions, however. In the first place, a city would be needed as a place where supplies and men could be gathered and co-ordinated for the war effort, something which military sense reasily suggests is to be preferred to an an attempt to have the war directed from more than one point. As has been seen, this was the very use to which Corfinium had been put, such that Strabo even refers to Corfinium as a war base (ὁρμ τ ριον τοῦ πολέμου; loc. cit.). Its relative convenience to all the Allies meant that it could be used by all them as a base of operations, and thus be a “common city” (κοιν πόλις) to those Italians united in war. Its new name would reflect that status as center of the effort. In addition, it may have attempted to assume some commercial function for the insurgency, in place of a Rome which was now very likely hard to reach with goods and may have even been closed to southern commerce, and for this reason a forum of the sort described by Diodorus would have been useful indeed. As far as the assembly hall, there is certainly the possibility that it was never actually built.51 Even if it had been, if the secessio 50 So Salmon (1967, p. 350), Brunt (1988, p. 111–112), and Keaveney (1987, p. 125) 51 So Brunt (loc. cit.) and Keaveney (1987, p. 122), both suggesting that the time between the passage of the lex Licinia Mucia and the outbreak at Asculum would have been insufficient for the erection of these structures; by extension, this would seems to speak against the confederacy coming into being at the death of Drusus, since the time from that point would be woefully inadequate for such construction.

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had been planned for some time, as it seems that it was, a warcouncil would certainly have been recognized as necessary. A place for it to meet would need to be provided, and this the Paeligni of Corfinium seemed to do, perhaps with a hall which had been started simply to serve a local purpose but had been enlarged and adorned when it became known what the role of the cty would be. Finally, it is not improbable that the structure itself was not quite as monumental as Diodorus has been read to suggest: after all, the building of an assembly hall on a scale much more massive than necessary for local use might have attracted the attention of the Romans as it was being built, which would have been undesirable. Thus, perhaps this assembly hall was new but not necessarily grand, with its novelty suggesting more of a magnificence than may actually have been there, as novelty so often does. In that case, both it and the city in which it was built may well not have been designed to rival that of the Romans in opulence and majesty, but to serve specific functions in a military setting. The selection, enlargement, and function of Corfinium, then, can be seen to have been directed by nothing more than military exigencies. So, too, may have been the establishment of that group of men which Didodorus describes as a “Senate” (σύγκλ τον κοιν ν). Clouding the issue as to the purpose of this assembly is a comment made by Diodorus which asserts that the Italians had for the most part imitated the Romans in the steps that they took to arrange their affairs (οὕτω πάντα δεξιῶς καὶ κατὰ μίμ σιν, τὸ σύνολον φάναι, τῆς Ῥωμαϊκῆς καὶ ἐκ παλαιοῦ τάξεως τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀρχὴν δια έμενοι; 37.2.6). Many scholars have accordingly taken

Diodorus at his word and assumed that the Allies created a new state with a Roman-style government. Yet this parallel claimed by Diodorus is at best an enormously strained one, since many of these enactments which are held to mirror similar features of the Roman state are hardly exact counterparts. More examples will follow directly, but for the moment it will suffice to show that hyperbole has certainly played a role in the “Senate” described by Didodorus. In the first place, its numbers were different, with that at Corfinium numbering 500 as reported by Diodorus, as opposed to the 300 that had apparently been the number on which the Senate had settled in 91 (Per. 60). Different, too, as was its composition, as its members could not have been drawn in Roman

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fashion from the putative new state’s ex-magistrates, since, indeed, there were none.52 Of what may be greater importance than this inexact parallel of its numbers and selection of its members is the fact that there is nothing in Diodorus or Strabo—not indeed in any other source— of of what the powers and functions of this “Senate” might have been.53 There is certainly no record of it ever debating laws, nor of it offering advice to leaders. Lack of such activity has been explained away by some scholars with the suggestion that the Italian “state” was one in which local autonomy was jealously guarded. Of course, no evidence for this assertion has been or indeed can be presented,54 but even if it were true, it would only underscore the assertion that this “Senate” was nothing like that of Rome. In fact, there is no evidence of this “Senate” ever doing anything, except for “promoting men capable of making decisions and providing for public safety” (ἐξ ὦν οἵ τε τῆς πατρίδος ἄρχειν ἄξιοι προαχ σεσ αι ἔμελλον καὶ οἱ προ ουλεύεσ αι δυνάμενοι περὶ τῆς κοινῆς σωτ ρίας; Diodorus, loc. cit.) In other words, the only

recorded action of this “Senate” was to name a war council,55 the latter a group of presumably of much smaller size (though Diodorus is silent on this matter), which would see to the prosecution of the hostilities. It is not unlikely that this was the only function it had ever been intended to perform, and if that was the case, then the “Senate” of the Allies as such it was hardly So Brunt (ibid.). Contra Keaveney 1987, p. 122–123, where the (alleged) broad powers of the “Senate” are also described. 54 See Sherwin-White, p. 147. 55 Sherwin-White (ibid.) forcefully argues against this. In his view, the Senate was given sole responsibility for wartime measures. The “men selected from their body” were, in fact, the “consuls” and “praetors”, to whom the conduct of the war was entrusted while the Senators retained full powers. However, this interpretation of Diodorus does not explain the very next sentence in that author’s text, which proceeds to discuss the very naming of consuls and praetors which—according to SherwinWhite—had already been described; the separate mention implies that the “men selected” was a war-council, and this council in turn named the generals and officers. 52 53

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anything like Rome’s Senate. Instead, it appears simply to have been a delegation designed to establish a Directory to be chosen from its own membership. To this Directory consisting of “Senators” the conduct of the fighting would be entrusted. Furthermore, just as there is no evidence of a real “Senate” for the Italians, nor is there any evidence of an additional “voting assembly” which elected magistrates, although the passage of Strabo mentioned above (5.4.2) has sometimes been invoked to suggest such a thing.56 The reason for this is that that it mentions Corfinium as a common city to the Allies where they could choose their leaders (Κορφίνιον ... ὁρμ τ ριον τοῦ πολέμου, ... καὶ ἐνταῦ α δὴ τοὺς συνεπομένους ἀ ροίσαντες καὶ χειροτον σαντες ὑπάτους καὶ στρατ γούς). Strabo’s use of the verb χειροτονέω makes it

reasonably clear that these leaders were elected, although that author does not specify who precisely was doing the electing, merely mentioning that it was done by the “assembled confederates” (συνεπομένους ἀ ροίσαντες). This description is ambiguous enough to allow for the conjecture that these were all the Allies in some form of voting assembly, perhaps meeting in the new forum with which Corfinium was equipped. Indeed, this would seem to be demanded by the statement of Diodorus describing how the Allies adopted similar mechanisms of government to the Romans. Yet Strabo’s statement also allows for the interpretation that these men were “elected”, not by all the Allies as a whole, but by a select few,57 which is the very thing Diodorus suggests was done (ἐξ ὦν [συγκλ του κοινοῦ πεντακοσίων ἁνδρῶν] οἵ τε τῆς πατρίδος ἄρχειν ἄξιοι προαχ σεσ αι ἔμελλον καὶ οἱ προ ουλεύεσ αι δυνάμενοι περὶ τῆς κοινῆς σωτ ρίας ... οὗτοι δ᾽ ἐνομο έτ σαν δύο μὲν ὑπάτους κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν αἱρεῖσ αι, δώδεκα δὲ στρατ γούς; loc. cit.). Strabo’s comment is therefore by no means

irresistable proof that all the Allies gathered in Corfinium for the purpose of choosing their leaders by election. Other than the large forum mentioned by Diodorus which is held to have been its meeting place, one whose other potential uses have been described 56 For assemblies see Salmon 1967, p. 350–351; contra, Sherwin-White, p. 147, and Keaveney 1987, p. 122–123. 57 This is, in fact, the interpretation favored by Jones in his Loeb translation of Strabo.

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above, there is as little evidence for a popular assembly in the manner of Roman assemblies as there is for a Senate in the manner of the Roman Senate. This, again, leads to the distinct impression that Diodorus attempted to draw an analogy between Allied measures and Roman forms of government based on parallels which did not really exist. For all these reasons, it does not seem unreasonable to dispense with the “voting assemblies”. Instead, it seems that Allied leaders were elected either by the “Senate” or by the war-council which that “Senate” selected. Since it seems the sole purpose of that “Senate” had been to name the Directory (which is certainly the only thing it is ever recorded as actually doing), it appears a stretch to suggest that there was an Allied “Senate” at all. It is even more of a stretch to extend further to the idea that the Allies had signalled their intention for permanent independence from Rome by such a Senate. In fact, that smaller Directory itself is somewhat idle in the sources, as there is little evidence of it doing much of anything, either. It is tempting to suggest that the only purpose of this war-council was to name leaders, yet this may go too far. For one thing, there is some scant literary evidence that such a council remained in being after the leaders were chosen, which seems like a waste of time once it had made its selections. Such evidence can be drawn from a a notice in Appian that the Allies decided to follow the Roman decision to bury the dead on the spot to prevent discouragement at the numbers of the casualties and enacted a like measure for themselves (Appian 1.5.43). Furthermore, there is the statement of Diodorus that the consuls (and possibly the praetors) were chosen annually. If the war council had chosen these men, as had been argued, than they would have had to exist in the following year to select them again.58 Beyond these references, however, the only real evidence for the continued activities of the war-council comes from the coins that were minted, over which

58 Annual re-election of consuls and especially of praetors, and the role this may have played in the wide variety of men named in the various sources as being leaders of the Allies, is discussed by Salmon (1958, p. 164, 169–179). See also Appendix H.

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they may have had supervision, but even those may have been under the direct purview of the “consuls”.59 There is, then, very little in what has been described by Strabo and Diodorus that, on closer inspection, actually suggests a government of a free state designed to supplant Rome, nor much testimony of any kind of government at all. What appears to be being described by them instead, in spite of the best efforts of Diodorus to make it into a government, is a Directory overseeing a war in tandem with the generals it selected. Nor can there be any doubt that this is exactly (and solely) what the ὑπάτοι and στρατ γοί described by Diodorus and Strabo actually were. The fact that these terms were the ones that were used by the Greeks who describe the war and its leaders need not suggest that these men had anything like the lawmaking or juridical powers of the Romans given these titles, nor does such use, in their Latin equivalents, by those Allies themselves amongst the Latin-speaking section of their population.60 The number of the στρατ γοί alone shows the inexactness of the correspondence, as during this period the Romans only elected six praetors, while the Allies chose twelve.61 Rather, the evidence more persuasively points to the fact that the men so named were actually generals of the line (στρατ γοί) under the direction of “marshals” or theater-commanders (ὑπάτοι). Because this would have been the function of the Romans referred to as consuls and praetors on the battlefield, their titles—in the absence of any better official terms to describe what they were doing—were chosen to designate the Italian officers with similar duties. It would, of course, have been immediately necessary for the socii to name generals for the war that was then underway. Their 59 Domaszewski, p. 16. However, this assertion is based on his statement that only the two “consuls” had the right to have their names appear on coins, which ignores a coin found in the British Museum which bears the legend of Ni Lukvi Mr (see image X). This “Lukvi” is not named by any of the sources as one of the “consuls”, so unless he became one at some unrecorded point, Domaszewski would seem to be in error. For more on this coin, see Gruebner, p. 333–334 and notes. 60 See Salmon (1958, p. 164); see also previous chapter on the spread of the use of Latin, including nomenclature. 61 So Salmon (1967, p. 350).

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elevation most definitely served a military purpose, and their selection is a very thin indicator of any Allied desire for independence under magistrates of the Roman type, which it appears that these “consuls” and “praetors” were not. Finally, the coins which the Allies minted are sometimes seen as clear signs that the Italians were aiming for their own nation. In the first place, the coins themselves were taken as symbolic of defiance by the socii, taking upon themselves “the right which Rome had hitherto guarded jealously (viz.: the right to mint silver)”.62 It is therefore argued that the very existence of the coins had a propagandistic purpose, designed to show an independent Italia assuming her natural rights. Amplifying this message are the designs of the coins themselves: bearing the name of Italia, both in Latin and in Oscan, some show a few of the ancient gods of the Italians, such the Dioscuri, Heracles, and Bacchus, who are presumably blessing the Allied enterprise.63 Others show a personification of the cause crowned by Victory, occasionally sitting on shields, and others still show her riding in a triumphal car.64 Several show soldiers, either making oaths over a sacrificial pig raising their weapons,65 clasping their hands in friendship near the prow of a ship,66 or astride a fallen Roman standard (sometimes Salmon (1958, p. 164). However, a later assessment of that same author states that earlier Rome “began to strike coins … [and t]hese issues were clearly intended for circulation throughout Italy. One consequence was that a number of Italian states now ceased minting, probably not because of any positive order from Rome to do so [emphasis added], but out of a prudent desire to avoid the appearance, and the expense, of competing with her” (Salmon 1982, p. 70). By this later reckoning, the Allies had abstained from minting voluntarily, content to let the Romans go to the trouble of striking the coins they would use until such times as they were forced by necessity to begin coining again. 63 Sydenham, n. 617, 625, 628, 631, 636. For an example, see also image 1, depicting the Dioscuri. 64 Sydenham, n. 618, 622, 623, 624, 633. See also images 2 and 3 65 The numbers of these soldiers—2,4,6, 8—have been used to suggest the numbers of peoples in in the Alliance at various points in the war; see Salmon 1958, 162–164. See also images 4, 5, and 6. 66 Sydenham n. 632. See image 7 62

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amidst scattered weapons), with the bull who was apparently the symbol of Italy nearby.67 The bull itself also appears in the most dramatic of the coins issued by the Allies: it is depicted there goring a wolf, the ancient symbol of the Romans.68 The images on these coins, it is believed, clearly show how the Italians were advertising that they would overcome Rome and perhaps even destroy her; hence, the coins are (according to this theory) a tactile declaration of Italian intent. However, in the first place it must be noted that while the coins almost certainly do convey a propagandistic intent, first and foremost they were struck out of necessity: men needed to be paid and supplies requisitioned, for which tasks dependence on Roman money might be dangerous. Hence, while one of the purposes of coins may indeed have been to shake a fist at the repression of the Romans, their main purpose would have been to be used as money with which to conduct a war, as most modern scholars readily concede. If the Allies were compelled to strike coins, it seems logical that these coins would be emblazoned with images conveying optimism. Hence, the gods themselves would appear speeding the Italian cause, and ultimately the cause would be depicted as successful and Allied arms triumphant. In all of these images the implication is that the Romans would have to be defeated, but from the moment that force was decided upon that necessity became patent, and the Romans confirmed this decision by their rejection of the Italian envoys mentioned in Appian (as described above). “Success”, therefore, is the message found on these coins, a message not at all inconsistent with a war fought to force the Romans to give in to the demands of the socii for the citizenship; in fact, it would exactly align with such aims. Hence the soldier trampling the Roman standards amidst scattered arms:69 this depiction would be exactly the sort which For use of the symbol see Salmon (1967, p. 339 n. 9), as well as image 8. 68 Sydenham 628, 641. Also Keaveney (1987, p. 123), who also mentions the utterance of Telesinus before the Colline Gate in Velleius 2.27.2; but see (Brunt 1988, p. 110). More on this episode will be discussed in chapter 9. See also image 9. 69 See image 8. 67

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would convey the accomplishment of an Italian goal of beating the Roman army until the Senate and the people were willing to negotiate. This coin, therefore, does unassailably prove that the Allies were fighting for independence. Neither is it proved by those coins showing the Allies vowing an oath. The design on these is need not be indicative of anything other than Allied mutual cooperation in combat, illustrative of the same spirit as that which motivated the renaming of Corfinium. This cooperation would be both by land and by sea (hence the men greeting each other by a ship).70 Even the coin with the bull and the wolf71 does not compel an interpretation that the Romans were to be overthrown, but merely defeated and ultimately brought to heel. The coins are indeed purveyors of propagandistic messages, but only of that demonstrating the certainty of victory. They provide little indication on how victory would be defined in terms of long-range objectives, but only convey that it would have to come by means of the military. Coins, captains, council of war, and Corfinium: all of these were reported by Diodorus and Strabo as having been prepared by the Allies, and all of them have been shown to have filled some definite requirements for the conduct of a war. There is nothing in these measures which make it certain that had any additional purpose beyond the obvious military ones. There may very well have been propaganda intended by some or all of these measures, but that need not have been a cry of determination for independence. Rather, the message may have been sent to the Romans that by such actions the Italians would prove a formidable foe, capable of organizing armies and pursuing their desires with great resolve. Such men would be terrible enemies but valuable fellow citizens; as one of them would himself say later on, he was by compulsion one, but by inclination the other.72 The Allies, it seems, wanted to become Roman but on equal standing with other Romans, and if the latter doubted if the Allies See images 4, 5, 6, and 7. See image 9. 72 Cicero, Phil. 12.27 (for more on this passage and its context, see chapter 6). 70 71

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were worthy of such a right, the socii would prove that worth through arms. Measures were therefore taken by the Allies to ensure that those arms would be as successful as possible. These measures might in the process also demonstrate Italian ability to survive without the Romans, if indeed it came to that, and thereby conceivably assure some members of the Alliance themselves who might very well have doubted it that such was possible. If, in other words, the Romans resorted to letting them go, then the instruments by which soldiers were summoned, fed, equipped and paid, as well as those by which plans for their use were drawn up and commanders to lead them were named, could then be employed to design new arrangements after the war if an unexpected and (largely) undesired independence was to be thrust upon them. The Allies therefore set out to win the citizenship or accept independence, and made themselves ready for any amount of fighting that would lead to either result. As the winter of 91 gave way to the spring of 90, the Allies found themselves confronted with a war that was now to be fought using a strategy which was not the one it seems they had initially wished to employ. Instead of overwhelming the Romans through rapid strikes before the latter had had a chance to bring the weight of their resources to bear, the Italians would instead have to set themselves squarely against an adversary with all the strength remaining to it fully online and available. Nevertheless, it seems that the Allies had always envisioned that this outcome would have been a possibility, so they steadied themselves for it; they assembled men, struck the silver to pay them, determined their leaders, and established a a supervisory council for the coming struggle. During the early collection of these, the Allies may in their opimish have hoped that they would not be needed, but for the sake of prudence they were gathered regardless. These may not have been in perfect readiness when Asculum erupted, but when the war that the Romans had essentially declared inevitable through their rejection of the final embassy finally came, the Allies had all the appropriate apparatus to meet it. The episodes of that war will be the subject of the chapter to follow, but before it will be explored a final subject needs examination. That subject is this: why had the Romans sent away the deputation and chosen to settle affairs, not with plenipotentiaries, but with pila? After all, it is known now that the

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war that the Romans had chosen was well-nigh ruinous. Their arrogant dismissal of the embassy and their somewhat lackadaisical approach to raising men suggests one answer, which is that they were deceived (or deceived themselves) about the destructive power that the Allies had at their disposal. Yet was it more than this? Could it be that they were fully cognizant of what lay ahead of them but believed it to be a better alternative that acquiescing to Allied demands? Some attempts to find answers to some of these questions will be essayed below.

5. THE ROMAN REJECTION AND THEIR DECISION FOR WAR73

According to an account found only in Appian, the Italians gave the Romans a final chance to prevent the clash of arms in 91 when, shortly after Asculum, they sent a delegation to the Romans. This delegation was promptly dismissed, as has been mentioned briefly above. With the perfect hindsight that the knowledge of subsequent events bestows, it would seem that the Romans made a grievous error in electing to follow this course of action: here was a chance to avoid a war that would prove to be devastating, and the Romans arrogantly rejected it. Interestingly, this episode does not receive a great deal of analysis in modern accounts in general, and very little indeed is offered by these modern works towards the end of specifically explaining why Rome acted as it did. This may, in fact, have to do with the fact that so little is known about what the ambassadors presented to the Romans, a lack of knowledge which makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that the embassy included stipulations so outrageous that the Romans could not help but refuse them.74 Yet part of the reason for why this is the case—

Much of the analysis presented in the following section of this chapter builds on the findings presented in a different and shorter form in Kendall, p. 105–123. 74 So Mouritsen (1998, p. 138–139), who asserts that the Allied ambassadors demanded from the Romans that for one of the consuls and half of the Senators to be drawn from their number. Hence, Mouritsen implies somewhat later (p. 141), it is unsurprising that the Romans 73

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id est, part of the reason why Appian neglects to provide the specifics as to what the negotiators were to demand of Rome—is that it seems the embassy was never actually heard. Appian’s account seems to imply that the Romans allowed the envoys to make some initial comments but dismissed them before they could make their full petition. Therefore, whether the Allies had intended for their negotiators to make the fairly modest request for the citizenship as a way halt the hostilities, or had instead sent them to ask for extravagant concessions, seems to be a moot point: according to what the only ancient source to mentions this episode appears to indicate, the embassy was not even allowed to deliver its message, and this in turn means that the Romans based their dismissal of the embassy not on what it offered but rather for reasons of their own.75 In the end, the limits of what is known about this embassy prevent any certainty as to the extent to which it influenced Rome’s decision for war, and it may be wondered if speculation on that end is a worthwhile aim. But if it was not the terms offered by the Italian delegation which led the Romans to resort to war, then the question remains as to why they in fact made that choice. To put it another way: the Romans seem to have made the choice to fight the socii in the absence of knowing what the Allied envoys might have said, which means that that such a course of action would be preferable to the Romans than even to hearing, much less to acquiescing to, Allied demands. Save for Appian, whose account is (again) the only one to mention a delegation, the impression gained from all the other sources is that Rome commenced to battle immediately after the attack on their citizens at Asculum. Thus, all these sources give no hint as to why the Romans opted to take up arms, but rather frame rejected these stipulations. The basis for Mouritsen’s claim, however, is exceedingly shaky, for which see Appendix A. 75 So Keaveney (1987, p. 126 and 130 note 58), who does not bother to speculate on why the negotiators were not heard, having enumerated earlier (p. 99–113) the reasons why he believes the Romans were set against granting the civitas on any occasion, much less one which followed hard upon the murder of one of its magistrates and many of its citizens. His theories will be explored more fully in the pages to follow.

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their narrative in such a way as to imply that the only reason needed was the slaughter of their people. None of these other texts show the Romans pondering the issue as to whether or not to go to war, nor any occasion—such as a delegation to the city from an Allied embassy—in which such consideration might take place. Because of their silence, it is at least possible to infer that no such occasion actually existed, and that the notice in Appian may be in error.76 On the other hand, that silence does not make it impossible that things did not transpire just as Appian said they did, and for that reason, it does not seem extravagant to retain his account. If Appian’s evidence is to be kept, then the Romans really did face an alternative to combat which they rejected, and no source can provide explicit reasons why they did so. Even Appian is silent on the matter, providing only a circumstance in which the Romans might have voiced their reasons for going to war but, in the end, not actually supplying those reasons. Still, when the sources have neglected to furnish the opinions of the socii during this period, it has seemed worthwhile to employ conjecture to try and figure out what these might have been. It seems that attempting to do something similar to attempt to discern the reasons which might have driven the Romans to act as they had might likewise be a profitable endeavor. If, therefore, it is to be accepted that the Romans had a chance to select some response to Asculum other than full-scale war as per Appian, then conjecture to seek out what that author does not supply, which is the logic behind why they believed that war was to be preferred to avoiding it through concessions, appears suitable. Such will be attempted in the pages to follow. First and foremost, it may have been that the Romans chose bellum in ignorance as to the extent of the Allied willingness and capacity to wage such a war. Such has been hinted at above, and it is not hard to see from where that lack of understanding may have come. After all, the language in Appian states that the Romans were only beginning to catch wind of what the Allies had been doing in secret when Servilius barged into Asculum (1.5.38). If this 76

See, again, Appendix A.

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is so, it may well have fallen out that the Romans had an incomplete understanding of the size of the coniuratio against them and of the material which the coniurati at their disposal. If the Romans had cause to believe that Asculum was merely a repetition of Fregellae, then they would have had no cause for undue alarm; they could simply go and extinguish it with the same relative lack of difficulty with which that earlier unpleasantness had been met. Indeed, this would very likely have seemed to be a path than undertaking intricate negotiations with the Allies, especially in light of the message these discussions might send to others of Rome’s subjects. If the application of a little violence could remove their difficulties with the Italians efficiently and swiftly, as the Romans may have had reason to believe to be the case if they did in fact lack a full comprehension of the magnitude of what was to be arrayed against them, then it seems well within their character to resort to this violence.77 Therefore, it is not completely unthinkable that lack of perfect intelligence may have helped cause the Romans to reject the delegation, treating it with a certain amount of indifference that might have come from the absence of clarity as to the gravity of the situation. However, the fact that the Romans had sent investigators at all (see above) must have allowed for at least some recognition of the chance that the conspiracy was larger in scope than that of Fregellae had been. If such were the case, then by extension quashing it would be a less easy matter than Fregellae had been. It is therefore difficult to believe that it had not occurred to at least some members of the Senate that a major revolt might be in store for them if things continued on their present course. As would have been recognized by those who has discerned this possibility, such a major revolt carried with it implications as to what would be required to suppress it. For one thing, it would require fighting, and fighting would in turn call for a great deal of men. Just how many men for which the fighting might call may not have been known, although even the most conservative estimate would have 77 The words of Polybius are perhaps instructive here: “Generally, the Romans tend to rely on force in all their enterprises” (κα όλου δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸς πάντα χρώμενοι τῇ ίᾳ; 1.37.7)

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suggested a few legions’ worth at minimum. Yet summoning even a few legions would pose difficulties in light of the fact that, in essence, Rome’s own soldiers, or soldiers they had come to treat as theirs, would be rising against them. There would perforce be fewer men available for the army, and depending on the extent of the uprising (which may not yet have been revealed), perhaps fewer by a considerable amount. Worse still, the army which would be raised in the absence of the contributions of the refractory Allies would by necessity have to include a greater percentage of Roman citizens than the Commonwealth’s armies had for some time typically enlisted. Very likely bringing these forth would involve conscription, at least to some extent.78 This would in turn have involved all the problems which conscription brought (as described in chapter 2). This larger proportion of Roman soldiers might not only pose problems to the mustering officer. It might also make things far more complicated for the generals who would be commanding them. In the absence of the Italian contributions, such captains would lack the large numbers of disposable bodies with which victories had customarily been be purchased by brute force without consideration for casualties, and this would compel commanders to plan their battles knowing that all the deaths and wounds that would happen in them would now be borne by Roman soldiers, with all the potential political consequences that that outcome would entail. Nor would the much greater number of Roman casualties have been the only source of worry for the men tasked to put down the Allies. They would also have to take into account the fact that this war would be taking place on Italian soil, near or even on Roman property. The millions of sesterces to be lost through burned fields, butchered livestock, liberated (or murdered) slaves, and wrecked villas would almost certainly be on the minds of the men sent to direct the campaign, as well as on those of the Senators who dispatched them to do so. Finally, there was the additional fact that using de iure Romans soldiers to fight de facto Roman soldiers would have a profound effect on the Roman army 78

later

And, in fact, it did; see Valerius Maximus, 4.3.3c, about which more

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that would emerge after the war’s conclusion, in that every man lost by death or incapaciting wound was one which would be taken from the Commonwealth’s forces. Even a victory for Rome would mean that upon the war’s conclusion, only armies much weaker than what they had been before the hostilities had erupted would be on hand to cope with whatever unknown perils might develop in years to come. None of these problems were unforeseeable, even in the absence of certainty about how many of the Allies intended to revolt and how ready they were to do so. As speculated above, if the Senate was not aware of the scope of what challenged them, many of its members may have believed that it was something akin to another Fregellae. In that case, war would be a simpler if less elegant solution to their problems with the Allies than reaching some sort of accomdation with them, and it is easy to see why they would have elected to employ such a solution. However, this belief would itself be predicated on the assumption that the Allies had not learned the lesson from that affair which Opimius had taken such pains to teach them, which is that no single city could withstand the might of Rome. If that assumption was an error, and the Allies had in fact internalized this lesson, then by following the implications of both Asculum and the dispatch of an embassy to its logical conclusion it would seem to be obvious to any man of strategic imagination or vision that the Asculani were not acting alone. The Roman Senate was—and was designed to be—filled with experience politicians and, what is more, with experienced soldiers, the exact sort of men who should have been able to make such a mental leap. The very personnel of the embassy might have aided in such a bound; Appian, again, is extremely parsimonious in terms of the specifics which he relates about the embassy that was sent, and it thus cannot be known who the ambassadors were and who specifically they represented. If, however, they included delegates from all the members of the Alliance, then the Romans might very well have known exactly what they were facing, which was a confederacy of several peoples. In spite of this, they still chose to wave off discussing terms. Even if the embassy was not so constituted, the potential for what could be coming was almost certainly not completely absent from the appreciation of everyone the Senate. Surely somebody could have been able to make a fair prediction about all that war with the disgruntled socii would mean.

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Neverthless, the Romans collectively persisted in their choice to set themselves on a course which promised them harm, and perhaps harm of enormous proportions. The Romans are now presented as having arrived at a situation in which they had to make the choice either of acceding to Allied demands, or otherwise. They may have believed that the exertion of a war would be light, it is true, but there is also the distinct possibility that they recognized that a great struggle was coming, and still chose to undertake it. The war that they chose might have been recognized at the time as one whose potential for injury may have been so great that it sustaining it would be contrary to Rome’s best interests. Yet when faced with an alternative—one which would itself not be without difficulties, but which might well have resulted in less damage to the Republic than the war which it would prevent could be anticipating as bringing—the Romans collectively chose not to exercise it, and selected the path which led to bloodshed. These conditions—the decision to act contrary to self-interest, a decision made collectively by people who could see the dangers involved at the time when the decision was made, and in the presence of a viable alternative such that the decision was not one of compulsion—are exactly those which constitute the definition of what the popular historical writer Barbara Tuchman identifies as “folly”.79 At first glance, it would appear that by sending away the embassy and choosing war, the Romans had fallen victim to it. Then again, foolishness if not a trait typically applied to the Romans, so such an assessment may go too far. It may be more generous to claim that they had made a mistake, but even that may not be a foregone conclusion. It could have been that the patres weighed all the potential outcomes on their state that peace on Allied terms would bring on one hand, versus war and all it might do on the other. They then came to the determination that the second of the two, with all that would accompany it, was still seen as preferable. All that would happen over the next several years would make it appear that they were clearly in error, but this fails to consider the prospect that what peace seemed to represent may 79

The March of Folly (Ballantine Books: New York, 1985), p. 5.

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have been even more hateful to the Romans than even a strenuous war which, if won, would prevent that peace. Given that they made their choice based on this prospect, it must be wondered what the Romans thought peace on Allied terms would mean. As has been seen, the only thing Appian states the embassy was able to verbalize before being silenced, and therefore the only thing resembling a demand of the Allies that the Romans would have been able to consider, was the citizenship; before being summarily dismissed, the embassy expressed their frustration at having built the empire with the Romans but being considered unworthy of being citizens within it (πέμψασι δ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἐς Ῥώμ ν πρέσ εις αἰτιωμένους, ὅτι πάντα Ῥωμαίοις ἐς τὴν ἀρχὴν συνεργασάμενοι οὐκ ἀξιοῦνται τῆς τῶν ε ο μένων πολιτείας;

1.5.38). It stands to reason that the Senate’s decision was made on

this appeal alone: the Romans considered the prospect of enfranchising the socii on the one hand and war on the other, and found that war was the better option. Their decision, it seems, boiled down to these options, but the question remains as to why they had made the choice that they had: why was the thought of extending the civitas so unpleasant to the Romans that they believed a possibly, and as it turned out actually, catastrophic war to be a more attractive option? This is a component of the struggle for the citizenship that has not yet fully been examined in previous chapters. While it has been seen thus far that the Romans consistently voted down or by some means stifled the laws that were proposed to grant Allied citizenship, it has not been undertaken to investigate all the reasons behind why they had so done. As the battles which were now to take place as a result of this final refusal were approaching, a survey into the reasons for that refusal, and by extension for the others which have been narrated, seems appropriate. In the first place, it should be noted that the previous franchise opportunities which have been discussed so far had never arisen on their own, but had almost all come associated with ancillary developments that were found intolerable either by Rome’s governing class, its people, or both. Specifically, they had apparently always come connected with agrarian reform dealing with the use of the ager publicus. These reforms were attractive to the populace, it seemed, but not to Roman large landowners from whose numbers the majority of the Roman Senate and its magistrates were drawn. By inclination and indeed by law, the

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Roman magisterial order drew the greatest share of its wealth from land, land which they either owned or used without owning it (illegally or othewise). As this class would have been the one which the reclamation of the ager publicus would strike hardest, it could be expected that they would oppose that reclamation almost as a matter of course. Any legislative act which would be seen to facilitate agrarian laws would immediately garner the same opposition, and since that had indeed been the main motivations behind the franchise laws which Flaccus, Gracchus, and Drusus had promulgated, they would be doomed from the outset. It bears repeating that the proposals for enfranchising the Italians did not arise in isolation. Rather, they arose because the Romans who proposed them needed the land that Allies held to win over the favor of the (Roman) people, and the citizenship was to be used to purchase—in a manner of speaking—that land. Up to the year 91, therefore, it seems that the only way Italian enfranchisement had ever been considered would be in trade, and that Romans never seemed to contemplate granting the civitas in any other way. Since the question of giving the franchise for some other reason was therefore never really asked, it cannot be known for certain what the answer would be, although a great deal of evidence can be amassed to show that the Romans would have opposed—and strongly opposed—giving the citizenship simply as a bequest, even if unconnected to the ager publicus. In the first place, the repercussions of mass enfranchisements would have been considerable. As has been seen, the typical point of intersection between the Allies and the Romans had been military: the Romans made use of the Italians to field huge armies with which they would defeat their enemies by weight of numbers if by no other means. These numbers would still in theory be accessible to the Romans upon Allied enfranchisement, but they way in which they were to be employed would have to undergo a sizeable transformation. For one thing, as citizens the Italians would now have rights: at the dilectus their objections to service would now have the same force and could perhaps lead to the same outcome as the objections which the older Romans had, and they therefore simply could not be compelled to serve as they could be while they remained non-citizen Allies bound by obligations of their foedera. In addition, upon enlistment the onetime Allies would then have to be treated the same way as Roman

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soldiers in camp, with the laws which protected citizens from flogging and death now covering them, as well. Furthermore, in the field generals could not simply use them as “expendables” whose liberal employment could win the day, but would rather have to be as sparing of them as they had been of Romans in the past, and for the same reasons. Since the Senate had consisted of men who had likely done military service and even had commanded armies, they would have been well aware of the impact which this new utilization of former Allied soldiers—made necessary due to the rights they would have as citizens—would have on the army, and even if this would have been the only consequence to attend granting the civitas, it might well have been enough to defeat a motion seeking to do so. This was not, however, the only effect that the Senate would have to ponder. There were, in addition to strictly military considerations, also economic ones. To some degree these were related, in that one of the other primary advantages of the foedera which the Romans had made with the socii was that the latter would not only furnish soldiers, but would pay for them, as well. Upon grant of the citizenship, the responsibility for paying for any soldiers from the former Allied communities would now be in the same hands as those which paid the costs for soldiers drawn from the citizen body (of which these former Allies would now be part): id est, such a burden would have to be shouldered by Rome. Hence, to field the same number of men in the legions as before enfranchisement, the Romans would now have to pay as much as triple the price for them, with obvious implications for the treasury.80 Not only might bestowal of the citizenship drain the aerarium dry through military expenses without gaining any additional benefit, but it would lead to something else. When emptied, the aerarium would of course have to be replenished. As things stood in 91, revenues from the East had been sufficient enough to meet Roman expenditures and had been thus since 167, which meant that throughout the last half of the second century and the beginning decade of the first, the Romans did not have to 80 Based on the assessment that the Allies contributed two-thirds of the “Roman” army; see chapter 2.

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pay the tributum to furnish the state with capital. However, as the arguments posed by the Senate against the Gracchan lex frumentaria81 show, the proposal of even the slightest additional outlay of funds brought with it the terror that such an outlay would empty the state’s coffers. Even if allowance is made for rhetorical hyperbole in that instance, there nevertheless can be little doubt that the added money needed for enfranchised soldiers would put a severe strain on Roman assets. Enfranchisement, therefore, would very probably mean taxes on all citzens. For a generation of Romans who had never paid these, the unpopularity of their sudden appearance requires no explanation. These influences on the fisc resulting from the conversion of former Allied soldiers into citizens notwithstanding,82 there were likely other pecuniary reasons for opposing the franchise which would have been appreciated, not just by the magistrates, but by other elements of Roman society. For example, enfranchisement would mean that quondam Allied businessmen would now be eligible to vie for contracts. Furthermore, while large numbers of Italians probably already made use of Roman water supplies, enjoyed Roman games, and feasted at Roman banquets as resident aliens, now they would be legally entitled to do so without any future possibility of expulsion (something which, it will be recalled, the consul Fannius had reminded the Roman populace in 122; see chapter 3). They would, in so doing, diminish the availability of such services for current citizens, with whom new citizens would also come to compete for bribes at election-time and other sundry plums of being cives. In addition, therefore, to the impressions that enfranchisement would create on Roman arms, there were also those it would create on Roman finances, and they all spoke against cheerful acceptance of extending the civitas.

See, for example, Cicero’s recollection that Gracchus had depleted the treasury through his corn laws in both the De Officiis (2.21.72) and Tusculan Disputations (3.20.48). 82 And there might well have been others, such as the additional outlay of land which would now have to be given to them in equal measures as reward for services, as was not the case in the years before 91. 81

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Many of the reasons the Romans might have had for opposing the franchise are, as can be seen, directly related to the reasons why the Allies may have wanted it in the first place (see chapter 2): by granting the citizenship the Romans would have to stop abusing the Allies, which was a much more attractive outcome to the latter than the former. This abuse was both military and economic, as has been shown, and therefore the incentives for opposing a measure which would end that abuse would be based on such grounds. But citizenship for the Allies would not just affect Rome’s legions and its pocketbook. It would also affect its politics. As equal citizens, the former Allies would be able to vote, and their votes could shape Roman domestic and policy in a way that could lead it in directions not anticipated or desired by Rome’s older citizen body. This was all the more true because Rome’s allies far outnumbered actual Romans, as the sources make clear. Concerns along these lines are recorded as having been very much present amongst the Romans (Appian 1.6.49). Not only would the new citizens be able to vote and thus express their will about the laws and the magistrates who would govern them, but they would also be able to run for office and thus take a direct hand in such a government. Whether these were elected or not, it could probably have been anticipated that Allies, as citizens, would at least field candidates for offices, with the result that a limited number of magistracies would potentially have far greater pool of potential applicants for them, making the competition for them—which was already fierce—even more brutal. Nor, indeed, need sharing power with new would-be statesmen have been the only worry about which the Roman magisterial class would have felt anxiety. There was also the fact that a law which would grant the Allies the citizenship would have to be proposed and promulgated by an already-elected Roman magistrate. If this were to be done successfully, then the magistrate who had so acted might win the gratitude of an enormous host of persons, and, importantly, voters, aided by the law which would bear that magistrate’s name for time immemorial. The potential for any one Roman to gather that much influence would probably have been met with great antipathy by his peers. Indeed, there are several incidents recorded throughout Roman history in which men proposing laws which were even widely acknowledged as good and useful were opposed and defeated due to the popularity that their

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passage would bring.83 Consequently, even if all the other reasons cited above would not have been enough to sink a bill offering the citizenship, these last considerations might have been: what enfranchisement might mean for the forum and the curia, as much as for the camp and aerarium, would have earned it the enmity of the Roman governing class. All of these reasons are, perhaps, short-sighted and selfserving, but they are understandable: the incorporation of the former Allies would pose substantial disruptions in Rome’s military, economic, and political institutions. There are, however, other reasons which have been asserted by some scholars as to why Rome desired not to enfold their Allies into their citizen body, reasons which are even less attractive and more difficult to vindicate. One of these is a feeling of superiority, derived from the conquest of such a vast area, which had in turn led to arrogance and exclusivity, a feeling akin to what might be referred to as chauvinism.84 The Romans, it is argued, had come to think of themselves as the “master race”, and thus to think that the Italians, by dint of not being Roman already, were unworthy of being given the citizenship. Some evidence of this feeling amongst the Romans may be found in the sources: as has been seen earlier, Appian notes that part of the opposition to the franchise proposal of Flaccus was due to the detestable notion that Rome’s subjects might become equal citizens with themselves (ἡ ουλὴ δ᾽ ἐχαλέπαινε, τοὺς ὑπ κόους σφῶν ἰσοπολίτας εἰ ποι σονται; 1.3.21). Diodorus likewise observes that, during the war to come, the Romans drew inspiration for greater efforts from the fear lest they be seen as inferior to those

83 For numerous examples of this tendency in the first century see Gruen (1974, p. 211–259). Other examples from earlier are provided by Keaveney (1987, p. 99), as well as earlier in his discussion of the Gracchi, whose enemies repeatedly expressed a fear that the brothers were aiming at a tyranny which they could gain through the popularity they obtained by means of their laws. 84 Keaveney (1987, p. 99–113) makes much of this, citing what he believes to be examples of it in the form of Rome’s expulsion of rhetors, actors, and other purveyors of non-Roman culture (specifically, on p. 102).

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whom they considered their own inferiors (φανῆναι τῶν ἡττόνων ἡττους; 37.24). Others have attributed this reluctance to give the civitas to more than just chauvinism, but to a sentiment similar to racism. This feeling, it is held, can especially be glimpsed in the ways the Romans treated the Samnites and others of Oscan heritage, a treatment which did not come as much because these were not Romans as much as because they were Oscan.85 Human nature being what it is, it is possible that there were Romans who harbored such prejudices. Even so, it does not seem that these “racist” attitudes or the more “chauvinistic” ones described above had been held by the majority of the Romans, or, at the very least, that they had always so affected Roman citizenship policy. On the contrary, evidence has been collected by some scholars which demonstrates that the Romans had once been extremely generous with their citizenship.86 The testimony of Cato regarding the admission of foreigners as a source of Rome’s strength seems to indicate this one-time favorable attitude towards enfranchisement (as quoted in Aulus Gellius 18.12.7), as does Cicero’s paean to Roman openness found in Pro Balbo 13.31. Addtionally, there is the Roman grant of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum 85 A favorite theme of Salmon, who has located anti-Samnite hatred in magisterial abuse of Italians (see chapter 2) and in Rome’s suppression of Fregellae (see chapter 3). The subject of racism in the classical world in general and amongst the Romans in particular is addressed by Isaac (2004). That scholar asserts that racism as it is known today, one which is essentially predicated on physical differences and those of appearance, did not really exist in the ancient world. Instead, what Isaac calls “racism” was a set of attitudes and behaviors attached to peoples from diffferent geographical areas or to those with physical characteristics suggesting similarities to those from diffferent geographical areas (23–25). The Samnites and other Italians apparently did not qualify for this sort of hatred, due to the fact that they and the Romans were all alike Italian. Isaac would likely judge the anti-Samnite attitudes discussed in Salmon more as ‘ethnic prejudice’ than as racism. This, neverthess, does not rule out an irrational dislike of Oscans on grounds of their ethnicity and/or culture, which was certainly possible and may have influenced at least some Romans; for more on this point, see chapter 10. 86 Most notably Badian 1971, p. 375–385.

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to the Latins.87 This would seem to show that Rome apparently retained some willingness to give the franchise to individuals, if not to entire communities. Such an attitude speaks against a general feeling that others were inferior to Romans by virtue of their not being Roman, and by dint of not being Roman, that they were unworthy of being made Roman through the civitas. Instead, according to these scholars, Rome did not seem to object officially to the idea of giving the citizenship per se. What drew their objection was giving it to large numbers of people, and for reasons detailed above. For any number of the reasons discussed above, therefore, the Romans might have objected to giving the Italians the citizenship,88 and had stood against doing so from the time of the Gracchi to that Drusus. If all of them obtained, or indeed, if any of them did, then such an objection need not just be due only to the franchise being brought up as a way to facilitate reclamation of the ager publicus. Instead, it would have been because the extending the franchise would have drawn disfavor in and of itself. Such an antipathy need not have been vocalized—and thus may have gone unmentioned in the sources—because up to the autumn of 91, citizenship was only considered a means to resume adjudicating the public land. Yet Asculum and the Allied embassy meant that giving the civitas would have to be considered on its own, and weighed against the prospect of going to war. Both would represent an upheaval, but it seems that the Romans believed that war would be a less catastrophic one than granting the civitas, especially if the war looked like it might easily be won. War would mean deaths, wounds, loss of property, and perhaps even famine and plague, but these would obtain temporarily and would abate on Roman victory. The grant of the citizenship, however, would bring about changes in the way Rome governed itself, in the way it made war, in its finances, and perhaps in the character of its people, and these changes would be permanent.

See Appendix D. And it might well be that they had other reasons for opposing the franchise which are less easy to discover. 87 88

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It can well be doubted if very many Romans would have considered this a bargain worth making even in the absence of the strained circumstances in which it was being offered in 91. Asculum, however, meant that this final plea for the franchise had come after the Allies had shed Roman blood, and the affect this might have had on Rome’s willingness to entertain negotiations for peace can be guessed. Therefore, the Romans sent the emissaries away, though in so doing they brought war upon themselves. It apparently seemed easier to fall to violence than open their state to those upstart Allies who had attempted to force their way into it. For whatever the reason, the Romans refused to entertain the deputation that was sent to them after Asculum, and let it be known that they would entertain none other save those consisting of suppliants. Having risen from their knees, however, the Allies seem to have proved unwilling to resume them. Since they were now given no other choice, they therefore resolved to meet the Romans not with hands outstretched, but with arms upraised.

6. THE AIMS OF THE ALLIES BEFORE ASCULUM AND THE CHANGES IN TACTICS FOR THE SPING

It has been suggested by this chapter that what the Allies had planned was something rather like the secessio of the plebs in 494. That action had executed to compel the Romans to concede to those who had embarked upon it greater rights within the Roman state. It had not really been a bid to separate, though by the steps that were taken, the plebs had shown that they could get by without their fellow Romans if they needed to do so. The Italians, it has been argued, were in the exact same position, and with the exact same goals. There was, however, one main difference between the secessio occurring 494 and that conjectured in 91, which is that there had been no violence in that earlier secessio, and there certainly had been some in this one. Because it has further been conjectured that preparations for the secessio had been in the making since the passage of the lex Licinia Mucia, and because these preparations eventually led to vast numbers of men who would be raised and a very sophisticated system used to command, equip, and pay them, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that violence of some sort had always been the intent. Matters had gotten out of hand at Asculum, as the evidence cited seems to suggest, and had led to an unexpected turn of events, but that which was contrary to Allied

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intention seems not to have been the use of force, but rather its timing. Force, it appears, had been a possibility from the beginning, and the steps they took shows that the Allies had always had the prospect of going to war firmly in view. Preparing for a war and desiring it are not the same things, however, and the fact that the Allies proved themselves able to fight did not necessarily mean that this is what they had hoped would occur. Of course, the nature of the sources makes it such that nothing can be certain about their thinking, but it is not impossible that what the Allies had originally planned was something like this: come the spring of 90, the Italians would have assembled stores and weapons in Corfinium, while soldiers would stand in readiness all throughout Italy. These latter would then be set in motion, while at the same time an embassy would be sent to Rome to give it one last chance to give the Allies what they wanted. If they agreed, no blood would be shed, and the war could be averted. If they did not, the Allies would move swiftly against predetermined targets en route towards Rome. Assuming their buildup had evaded detection, the Romans would have had almost no warning and thus no time to set their own war machine into motion, and the same would be true for whatever of the Commonwealth’s remaining allies who might have offered help. Under these circumstances, the Italians might have been able to hit the Romans just hard enough that they would sue for peace. Whether such was the Allied plan cannot ever be known for certain, but even if it had been, it would depend upon stealth; already by the autumn of 91 the Romans seem to have been dimly cognizant that something was afoot, so even if Asculum had not occurred as it did, the Allied plan still may not have worked as they had intended. Whether or not that had been the war they had wanted to fight, the fact remained that, as 91 came to an end, things that had transpired in its final months that would not now allow for the execution if such a strategy if, in fact, that had been the one which had been designed. The Romans had indeed been astonished in 91, but there had been too little time to exploit that surprise. The only way the Allies could now wrest the citizenship from Rome would be to make the effort to subject them so dreadful that perhaps they could convince the Romans to make peace on Allied terms.

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If this was to be the character of the fight to come, the socii would still have retained a certain edge in such combat. Their men would likely be better trained, and probably a lot more accustomed to facing ghastly casualty rates. After all, the Allies had become used to the concept of fighting under men showing the will to fight to last Italian, while the Romans had been spared such a grim use. Neverthless, one thing was certain: whether or not it had been the hope the men orchestrating the secessio to fight a fast, limited war, or that of the Romans who rejected the embassy for a small and easily crushed insurrection, what now lay before the eyes of both was something quite different. As the ground begin to thaw in 90, what confronted both Rome and the Alliance was the prospect of a very bloody affair, and as events would prove, that was exactly what they got.

CHAPTER 5: WAR IN EARNEST, 90 BCE 1. THE ALLIED ARMY AT THE BEGINNING OF 90 BCE: COMMANDERS AND STRATEGIES When the spring of 90 finally came, and perhaps even a little before that, the Allies—now bolstered by a definite, clear base of operations and equipped with a fully formed, supplied, and battleready army—set forth to implement their strategy of holding on and making the war as hot for the Romans as they could. They were led, according to Diodorus (3272.5–7) and Strabo (5.4.2), by two “consuls” (ὑπάτοι), who were in effect basically theater commanders. Approximately half of the territory then in arms placed under the oversight of each. The sources are fairly clear, and modern scholars have generally agreed, that these two marshals were Q. Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi and C. Papius Mutilus of the Samnites (Diodorus, loc. cit). Since the subsequent activities of these men shows one primarily operating in the area near and north of Alba Fucens, and the other in the vicinity of Nola and in Campania, it is likely that the purview of each one was determined by the community from which he had come, and was delineated from that within the supervision of the other along linguistic and geographical grounds. Silo, therefore, seems to have taken command of the more northern, Latin-speaking areas, although the Frentani, who were Oscan but closely associated with the Marsi, apparently also fell into his bailiwick. Mutilus, for his part, took control of the southern, Oscan-speaking regions. A geographical

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boundary of some sort called the Cercolae formed the division between the two spheres of command (Diodorus, loc. cit.).1 Each “consul” was in turn assisted by six “praetors” (στρατ γοί), or division generals.2 It is broadly assumed that the forces placed under command of these στρατ γοί consisted of units drawn wholly from each of the individual communities of which the Alliance was composed, and that these στρατ γοί were placed in charge of the forces raised by the community from which they themselves had come, although events would show that sometimes the generals would command men of different origins than themselves. While the sources are clear about who the ὑπάτοι were, however, enormous difficulties exist in precisely identifying these στρατ γοί, due to the bewildering diversity of descriptions of them in the sources. Nevertheless, because some of the interpretations of military events to follow often depend upon knowing who the generals directing them were (as will be seen), it seems suitable that an attempt should be made at such an identification of these “praetors”. Therefore, during the course of this chapter, the main subordinates to Silo and Mutilus in the year 90 are going to be assumed—very, very conjecturally—to be as follows:3 from the north to south, the Picentes were led by 1 This is assumed to be a mountain or mountain range by Domaszewski (p. 12), and Salmon thinks likewise (1967, p. 344 note 1). The latter cites both J. Carcopino and H. Nissen as to which mountain was meant by the “Cercolae”. Of these, Nissen’s hypothesis that what is now the Monti della Meta was meant is more convincing than Carcopino’s suggestion that the word signified the Maiella. The former would put all Alliance forces Italy north of (and including) Sora under the command of Poppaedius Silo, the precise area where he is seen operating, while the latter would have his command end somewhat north of that city. Of course, given the extent to which the generals of the Alliance cooperated, coammanders and troops regularly fought in both regions. Thus, the precise division of where the theater of Silo was to be distinguished from that of Mutilus is not terribly important for the analysis to follow. See also Appendix I. 2 For the proper meanings of these terms—“ὑπάτοι” and “στρατ γοί”—see previous chapter. 3 For the reasoning which led to the selection of this list, see Appendix H.

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C. Vidacilius (Picenum also seemed to furnish a naval commander for the Allies, in a manner of speaking, as will be discussed below); the Vestini by T. Lafrenius; the Marrucini by Herius Asinius; the Paeligni by P. Praesentius;4 the Marsi by P. Vettius Scato;5 the Frentani by one Fraucus; the Samnites by Marius Egnatius; the Apuli by Trebatius; the Hirpini by Duillius (or Lucilius); the Campani by Lucius Cluentius; the Venusini by T. Herennius; and the Lucani, by Marcus Lamponius. Such men were the generals chosen by each of the peoples in the Alliance, although it seems important here to observe the fact that one of the attributes of the Allied war effort appears to have been the extent to which individual commanders would wander from region to region. Vidacilius, for example, is believed to be fighting in Apulia at one point, a substantial distance from Picenum. Lafrenius is certainly seen operating deep in Picenum, far away from the home of the Vestini, and Lucilius deep in the heart of Samnium, while Herennius seems eventually to have taken his men into battle as far away from his apparent home of Venusium as Sora. Moreover, another such hallmark seems to have been the extensive cooperation between generals, who would often combine for some enterprises but then separate for others, and on other occasions apparently lend men to one another. In addition to the tactical needs this behavior may have served, it was also perhaps deliberately done so as to keep the Romans from attempting to drive them apart by promising the civitas to some socii to get them to turn on the others. Either way, the result was that Italians from any one area seem frequently to have encountered the possibility of serving outside of their home regions, and perhaps serving with

4 The correct spelling of the name, according to Salmon (1967, p. 353), who prefers it to that of “Presenteius” which is suggested by Haug (p. 242). 5 Salmon (1967, p. 354 and especially note 2) is followed by Keaveney (1987, p. 216) in the belief that Cicero was correct in his statement of Scato’s complete name. That authority gives the Praenomen as Publius, as opposed to the Caius stated by Seneca and the Titus listed by Eutropius, the latter of which at one point preferred by Salmon himself (1958, p. 173).

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men and even under generals not from their own communities, in pursuit of the common goal.

2. THE SOUTHERN THEATER It has been suggested in the previous chapter that the Allies were deprived of the chance for implementing their original plans by the sudden outburst Asculum. They thereupon settled on a new approach to the conduct of the war, one involving objectives which had the virtue of being simple to grasp even if hard to implement: they were going to fight as hard as they could and hold out for as long as they could, in the hope that they could cause the Romans so much suffering that the latter would trade the citizenship for an end to the bloodshed. The strategy of the Romans now ranged against them, however, must have been slightly more complex. No official reference to their master plan exists, if there really was one, but it seems reasonable to assume that there was, and that the Roman priorities went as follows. In the first place, the Allies had to be contained and Latium and the perimeter of Rome secured. The Tolenus river, to the north of Latium, and the Liris river, to its south, would make logical enough lines of defense or offense from which to effect this, as both could be accessed by major Roman roads (the Via Valeria and Salaria to the upper and lower runs of the Tolenus, the Via Latina to the Liris). The insurgents would therefore need to be kept from pressing west of these rivers. If this end could be achieved, perhaps the next move would involve a Roman advance to be made along the length of the Via Valeria. That road, which ran from Rome to the Adriatic through the lands of the Marsi, Paeligni, and Marrucini, might serve to divide the Alliance and perhaps to allow the two sections of it to be separated and crushed in turn. Having therefore established these lines along the rivers, the Romans would then proceed to penetrate into territory of the socii, relieve the towns still loyal to Rome which were being besieged, and finally wipe out the Allied armies, destroy their cities, and bring them into submission. If such was their strategy, one other element would seem to be a critical part of it: the Romans would want to accomplish all of this as quickly as possible, not the least of which because a

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protracted war might bring about the very internal difficulties which the Allies had possibly predicted and counted upon for their success.6 That having been said, it is not easy to discern the extent to which the Romans appreciated the enormity of the task now on their hands. As they sources make clear, they certainly did designate both consuls to this war and sent with them several subordinates of proven ability. Still, it has been seen that Appian seems to convey a kind of nonchalance about the employment of their full military capacity, which (in his words) was only initiated when the war was eventually found to be “complicated and many-sided” (τότε ποικίλον τοῦ πολέμου καὶ πολυμερὲς ἐν υμούμενοι; Appian 1.5.40) and when they “came to recognize that it was a serious matter” (ὡς ἐς μέγαν ἀγῶνα; loc. cit.). Moreover, they would eventally put considerable constraints on one of their generals, C. Marius, in spite of his unparalleled war record and proven skill (more below). These difficulties were almost certainly political in origin, allowing the message to be gotten that no matter what the danger from the Allies might have been, these threats did not appear to compel the senatorial opponents of Marius to set aside their personal and political agenda, nor to prevent them from making what seems like a concerted effort to reduce his battlefield role as much as they could, possibly for the express purpose of humiliating him. If all of these facts can be taken to reflect that a blasé outlook on the war was present, it was one which the Romans would maintain to their great detriment. Such possible indifference notwithstanding, the Romans also seem to have resolved to divide their efforts in a manner similar to that adopted by the Allies, with the armies under the consuls apparently partitioned into a northern and a southern theater. To the south, L. Julius Caesar7 apparently took seven legions8 in order See previous chapter. Lucius Julius Caesar is generally recognized as having been the consul meant by Appian in almost all of the instances in his narrative in which he refers to “Sextus Caesar”. The latter, who had been consul in the previous year, did indeed play a part in the war: although it seems Sextus Caesar had gone to his province before the explosion at Asculum and took a while to get back to Italy, he appears to have returned in time to take over the siege of Asculum from Gn. Pompeius Strabo so the latter could betake 6 7

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to direct operations there, legions whose first order of business seems to have been setting up a defensive line of the kind described above. This Caesar executed by placing the armies under his legates in positions beginning from the northernmost at Casinum (held by P. Lentulus),9 then down to Capua (held by T. Didius), with P. Crassus forming the anchor to the extreme south.10 himself to Rome to run for consul. Sex. Caesar would ultimately die of disease during the siege (Appian 1.6.48). These actions will be discussed below and in chapter 6; for a further discussion of Sextus Caesar, see Keaveney (1983, p. 273–274; 1987, p. 141). That this was not the only military action in which Sex. Caesar was involved is speculated by Domaszewski (p. 25), who holds that he was in Italy in time to fight in an additional major engagedment before arriving at Asculum. More about this will also be discussed later in this chapter and in Appendix J. At the very least, it was certainly not Sextus who was fighting in the Southern theater, but was rather Lucius, and this will be reflected in the narrative to follow. 8 Two for himself and one for each of his five legates; so Salmon (1967, p. 353) and Domaszewski (p. 22–23) 9 For the selection of Casinum as the southern theater’s northernmost flank, see the discussion of the placement of the legates of P. Rutilius Lupus later in this chapter. 10 These dispositions follow those proffered by Domaszewski (p. 23– 24), whose theories about the placement of the Roman southern army and the overall strategy which that placement seems to convey is generally convincing. Domaszewski’s placements do contain a few minor points of difficulty, principal among which is his placement of T. Didius in Capua. Such a posting is specifically mentioned nowhere in the sources, though this fact need not throw Domaszewski’s placement into doubt. For one thing, Didius does not seem to have done anything worthy of record in the first year of the war other than being sent as legate to Caesar, specifically attested as such in Appian (in the place cited in the text above). Because he is not to be found anywhere else, or doing anything else, it is not impossible that Didius could have been sent to Capua. Secondly, that city is attested as an ally to Rome in a rather hyperboleladen passage in Cicero in which the Capuans are mentioned as having stayed loyal during the bella cum sociis (specifically during the bellum Marsicum) and offered weapons and quarters to the Roman armies (de leg. agr. 2.90). It would therefore stand to reason that some force of Romans be sent to protect it and take advantage of the weapons and lodgings the

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From this line M. Marcellus was apparently detached (about which more later), as was L. Cornelius Sulla, who seems to have been employed as Caesar’s immediate subordinate directly under the consul. Capuans extended. Finally, Didius would be in the neighborhood next year, operating around Herculaneum (for which see next chapter). For all these reasons, it may have seemed only logical to Domaszewski that, if Didius must be accounted for in the year 90, he ought to be put in a place where a Roman commander would be needed and where Didius was known to have been the following year. Admittedly, if Didius was in Capua, he does not seem to have done a particularly good job at defending Campania as a whole. Then again, that may have been a task assigned to Crassus to the south of him, whose record for the year 90 is hardly stellar (see below). Nor is Didius mentioned as having been of much help with the later battle Caesar fought near Acerrae, though this, too, may have the fault of Crassus: if, as speculated below, the battle of Acerrae took place towards the end of campaigning season, it seems to have occurred after the fiasco at Grumentum. Following that debacle (about which more below), Caesar may have sent Didius south to act bring relief to Crassus. Indeed, it may very well have been that Didius was sent to relieve Crassus entirely. The latter would definitely be in Rome by 89, there to be made censor with his erstwhile commanding officer Caesar. This would also explain how it is that Didius was in the neighborhood of Herculaneum the next year. Domaszewski’s arrangement is one which is constructed on his belief that Appian listed the Roman commanders geographically from north to south. This should mean that L. Cornelius Sulla and M. Marcellus, the last two to be named, ought to be operating in the very far south. However, both men are only specifically recorded in the sources as having fought in and around Aesernia. Domaszewski’s theory is that these were both on the front line, which is basically the approach adopted here, with Sulla asserted to be Caesar’s right hand man. No ancient source states that he was such, but it should be noted that in Appian’s ordering of the northern commanders, C. Marius is listed fourth in order going north to south. As he was certainly the right hand man of Rutilius, perhaps Sulla occupied an analogous position. At any rate, no ancient source renders this construction impossible. All told, then, Domaszewksi’s arrangements seem sound and are accepted by Salmon, although he likewise observes some of the difficulties with Domaszewski’s conjectures (1967, p. 353 note 1).

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Prevented by these arrangements from being flanked to the north or south, Caesar put himself in the center of this line at Teanum, and from there he marched on Aesernia in the attempt to relieve it.11 Near that city he was encountered by Vettius Scato, who had quite possibly just gotten to the area after helping Titus Lafrenius and Vidacilius repulse the army of Gnaeus Pompeius in Picenum (about which more will be discussed below). A battle promptly took place in which Caesar was worsted with a loss of two thousand men, which probably caused him to fall back on Teanum.12 Scato then moved on to replenish the besiegers at Aesernia or at least to hold the cordon around the city until additional reinforcements arrived, which seemed already to have been on the way under the command of Marius Egnatius (Appian 1.5.40–41).13 While this was taking place, Marcellus had probably already been sent by Caesar towards Aesernia from Beneventum by means of the road going past Saepinum.14 Quite possibly a two-pronged For Caesar jumping off from Teanum, see Domaszewski (loc. cit.). On the other hand, Keaveney (1987, p. 133) follows the suggestion of Salmon (1967, p. 354) that this battle took place near Atina rather than Aesernia. In part this placement had been made necessary based on their later interpretations of the activity of Vettius Scato, about which more later; if this initial battle was in fact situated at Atina, then it would almost certainly mean that Caesar had not launched from Teanum and may not have attacked at all, but perhaps had even been attacked himself en route to the south. Even if this reconstruction is the correct one—and it certainly is not impossible—the ultimate result is the same, which is that Caesar was repulsed and either fell back to the line he had already created as described above or created it upon his defeat. 13 This interpretation of events, which follows Domaszewski (p. 24), almost completely rearranges the chronological order of Appian. For a more detailed discussion of this reordering and the reasoning behind it, see Appendix I. 14 This route is found in the map supplied by Domaszewski at the end of his monograph (see also Map 1). Additional evidence is found for it in Salmon (1967, p. 21), who states that it definitely existed in Republican times. For the stationing of Marcellus around Beneventum see Domaszewski (p. 23), who argues that since Beneventum was never mentioned as having gone to the socii, it was instead Roman throughout 11 12

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attack was envisioned by the consul, with his own second attempt on Aesernia to be coordinated with the arrival of Marcellus. However, Marius Egnatius disrupted this plan by means of going on the offensive himself, attacking Venafrum and taking it—by treachery, according to Appian (1.5.41)—at the cost of two Roman cohorts. By whom these cohorts had been commanded is not mentioned; perhaps they were those of Sulla, who may have been in the area,15 or—as is perhaps more likely—they were those of Lentulus, who close by by at Casinum. Either way, it apparently did not entirely have the effect Egnatius desired. Caesar, recognizing in in this action that Egnatius was away from Aesernia, may have sensed an opportunity to pounce on that city, whose envelopment, in the absence of Egnatius, was denuded of the reinforcements he had brought. Alternatively, Caesar could tie up egnatius should he give chase, according Marcellus time to strike against the weakened attackers there. Therefore, the consul apparently changed or adapted his plan of a simultaneous thrust with the Marcellus (if such, indeed, was his plan) and attempted a second attack on Aesernia himself. This time he went in greater force, with 30,000 the war. This may be overstating the issue somewhat: while it is possible that Beneventum was not yet in Allied hands in 90, events in 89 strongly suggest it was Allied by then (see following chapter). As for Marcellus, he would certainly end up at Aesernia, since the Periochae 73 records that he was captured there, probably in late autumn. Moreover, Cicero records that his son later received the cognomen Aeserninus from the episode (Brut. 136; more below about the actions of Marcellus). Since Marcellus is known to have come to Aesernia and probably not by means of the central route through Venafrum or Teanum, ones occupied by the consul himself, it is logical that he would have come from the southeast by means of the road from Beneventum. 15 So Domaszewski, loc.cit., who places Sulla “on the connecting line against Teanum, somewhere near Allifae” and thus potentially in range of Venafrum. Contra Salmon (1967, p. 356), who places Sulla near Sora; this placement, however, is almost certainly due to his interpretation the “Battle of the Vineyards” in which Sulla was said to have taken part (see below). Keaveney also follows Salmon in his location of Sulla and for the same reason (1987, p. 139), but, as shall be seen, the sources may allow a different interpretation of the Battle of the Vineyards than that of both of these authors, and thus of Sulla’s location before and after that event.

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infantry and 5,000 cavalry (Appian 1.6.45). Such numbers suggest that Caesar added to his own two legions the legion of another commander. As speculated above, L. Cornelius Sulla was Caesar’s direct subordinate, one whose service in the Cimbric Wars (see chapter 7) suggested an ability for command which would have made him useful in an endeavor to pull off a sizeable expedition such as the kind apparently being essayed. Hence, these additional men probably belonged to him.16 Fortune, however, was against Caesar—and, perhaps, Sulla— this time, bad luck to Appian suggests poor reconnaissance may have contributed (1.6.45). Caesar’s command ability may have been affected by the illness which Appian reports had beset him, and thus he may be excused of the responsibility for the poor scouting. At any rate, in a narrow mountain passage en route to Aesernia the Roman force was suddenly attacked by Egnatius and driven back through the defile. Apparently the only way out of it was over a stream spanned by but a single bridge. While the Romans were expending the effort to cross it, Egnatius and his Samnites17 renewed their attack and fell upon them. Many of Caesar’s men were subsequently killed—the greater part of the army, according to Appian—in fighting so fierce that it was only with great difficulty that the consul was able to escape, again, to Teanum (Appian, loc. cit.; Per. 73; Orosius 5.18.14).18 After these two setbacks Caesar would not make any more efforts on Aesernia himself, but he was manifestly not yet ready to give the city up for lost. This is made evident by the operation of Marcellus, who, as has been mentioned, was already on his way to Aesernia while Caesar’s two attacks on it failed. At some point Marcellus made his move, about which there are no details in the sources whatsoever other than its ultimate outcome, which was its 16 But see Domaszewski (p. 26), who says these belonged to Lentulus, albeit for reasons he does not provide. 17 See Appendix H. 18 This follows the basic chronology established for Caesar by Domaszewski, p. 23–26, although he believes that the reference in the Periochae cited above refers to the earlier defeat of Caesar by Scato, not that Egnatius. As can be seen, this is not the interpretation taken above, for the reasoning behind which see Appendix I.

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failure. The fact that Marcellus himself was captured when city fell allows some inferences to be drawn on the way his operation went: possibly taking advantage of the absence of Egnatius fighting with Caesar, Marcellus seems to have driven off the besiegers temporarily, or at the very least managed to into the city. Since the previous commanders, L. Scipio and L. Acilius, are recorded as having made their escape in a most ignominious manner (Appian 1.5.41),19 his presence might have been what allowed the city to hold on for as long as it did, with the heroic measures taken by him justifying his later receipt of the cognomen Aeserninus.20 Presumably at some later time but before the town’s capitulation, a final attempt was made on the rescuing it by yet another of Caesar’s legates, L. Cornelius Sulla. This foray is recorded by Orosius (5.18.16), and Frontinus adds details (1.5.17): Sulla was apparently caught in yet another pass near the city and attempted to ask for terms (possibly in the attempt to buy time) from the enemy commander, one Lucilius.21 These were rejected, but Sulla was able to take advantage of the lack of vigilance he observed in the opposing bivouac to extricate himself from his own, using a trumpeter to create the illusion of a busy camp and thereby to disguise the removal of his men from it. According to Orosius, Sulla then managed to free the city and its Allies. This is at the very best an exaggeration,22 since the clear report of both Appian (1.5.41) and the Periochae (73) is that the city ultimately fell. It is 19 They escaped disguised as slaves. Indeed, during his report of the horrors within Aesernia, Diodorus does mention an expulsion of slaves from the city in the effort to conserve food for militarily useful persons (37.19). His account continues that these expelled slaves were treated with kindness by the Allies. It is not implausible, based on the actions of Vidacilius in Apulia (more directly) that the slaves were freed, possibly on the condition of serving with the Italian army. Under this guise, the Roman commanders may thus have been allowed to make their escape from the city, then slip away from the Allied encampments back to Rome. 20 See earlier note. 21 Duillius in the text of Frontinus; for the use of the different name, see Appendix H. 22 Salmon (1967 p. 359) stops just short of referring to this event as a fiction in Orosius inspired by lies told by Sulla himself in his Memoirs.

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unlikely but not impossible that Sulla did manage somehow to save the garrison, although for some reason he apparently could not liberate Marcellus, who is explicitly stated by the Periochae as having been captured with the city (loc cit.) On the other hand, the dire hunger which is stated by other sources as having been experienced by those within the city does not seem to allow for even the temporary lift of the siege, and as a result city soon fell into Samnite/Hirpine hands, and Marcellus with it (Diodorus 37.19; Appian, loc. cit.; Periochae, loc. cit.).23 While Caesar had fought his own battles and presumably ordered those of his subordinates in the vicinity of Aesernia, he apparently allowed P. Licinius Crassus to detach from his line and do what he could in southern Campania and Lucania. For some reason the relief of Nola was either not ordered of him or Didius by Caesar or, if it was, the command was not carried out by either man. Possibly the city did not seem either to the consul or his subordinates to have been in as dire of straights as Aesernia had been, and therefore it was believed that it did not require immediate rescue; Nola had, after all, withstood numerous attempts by the ever-victorious Hannibal to overwhelm it once upon a time. Direct assault might therefore not have been contemplated, but it may have been that what Crassus had in mind would involve a relief of Nola which could be obtained indirectly, accomplished by means of drawing some of the besiegers away in the attempt to stop a Roman expedition further to the south. If the Allies could be forced to diminish their press of the town Contra Domaszewski (p. 27), who arranges events such that the rescue of the garrison occurred before Sulla’s escape from Lucilius. By this reasoning, the city fell when Sulla managed to denude it of its defenders. Such a construction does not explain how Marcellus came to be captured with the city, however. Keaveney, for his part, places the attack on Aesernia after the episode in the defile mentioned by Frontinus, and asserts that Sulla freed the garrison and even briefly lifted the siege before the onset of winter drove him away (1987, p. 139–140). But this construction does not explain how the city continued to suffer the hunger reported in Diodorus which ultimately led to its fall, an aetiology which Appian affirms. Thus, if Sulla managed to rescue anyone, it must at most have been the rescue of only part of the defenders, as argued above. 23

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somewhat in this attempt, the Nolani could perhaps break the siege of their town themselves and spare the main army the trouble. Crassus could then crush the besiegers thus lured off and then return his attention to Campania and Lucania, and this may have been the overall strategic role of his expedition. Such is, to say the very least, conjecture of the most speculative sort to explain, on the one hand, an apparent gross oversight by the Romans, namely that of not relieveing Nola, since of their thinking in this regard nothing can be certain. On the other hand, it also seeks to come up with a theory as to what the exact mission of Crassus may have been beyond simply that of than bringing the war to the Lucanians. Having acknowledged the speculation as such, there is nevertheless nothing in the sources that renders it impossible that the task of Crassus was, in part, to draw away men from Nola at the beginning stages of a campaign, one whose additional and more important ultimate aim may have been a march towards Venusia, either to stop the insurrections being stirred up there (more below), or, even more daringly, to attempt to get around the Apennines to strike at the enemy on the Adriatic coast. What is beyond speculation is that Crassus entered into Lucania and soon arrived at Grumentum. That city had apparently been persuaded to open its gates to Crassus: enough of it stood for him to use as a safe haven later on to speak against a lengthy siege or an assault undertaken to force his way in. This apparent lack of action necessary to win the city over may have been because Grumentum lacked the means to defend itself Alternatively, it might simply have been inclined towards the Romans. If the latter, then perhaps Marcus Lamponius and an army of the Lucanians had been approaching the area to besiege the town, but regardless of the reason as to why he came there, Lamponius and his soldiers presently materialized near Grumentum. Battle between his forces and those of Crassus was soon joined. Crassus seems to have disdained a challenge of Lamponius to single combat, but the Romans still came off the worse in the engagement (Diodorus Siculus 37.23). This defeat was compounded by the fact that they had apparently made the mistake of setting up camp too close to a forested area, allowing Lamponius to burn the forest and thus the Roman camp with it (Appian 1.5.41; also Frontinus 2.4.15–16, an anecdote he repeats in 4.7.40–41). The Lucanians seem to have offered a much deadlier opposition than the Celtiberi over which

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this same Crassus had celebrated a triumph three years before, and he now found himself seeking refuge in Grumentum.24 No further action is reported of him by the sources for 91, but since there is some evidence that the Allies took possession of Grumentum sometime later, and that the city was still standing and in decent shape when they did,25 it is unlikely that it the Allies subjected the For the triumph, see the Fasti Triumphales, Asconius (14B) and the Scholiast of Bobbio (131); see also Broughton, p. 14. 25 Seneca (de ben. 3.23, quoting book 18 of Quadrigarius) reports an anecdote of a local woman saved by two slaves during an assault on Grumentum which came at the end of a strenuous siege. These slaves, who had ostensibly defected to the enemy, led her away (under guise of putting her to death as a cruel mistress) and hid her until those destroying the town recovered from their frenzy and “began to behave like Romans again” (miles cito ad Romanos mores rediit). Nothing is provided in this passage which might fix the time in which it occurred, but it must have taken place in a war during which Grumentum was destroyed by the Romans, in order for the soldiers to take leave of, and regain, their mores Romani. The fact that this passage is immediately followed by another in the same aithor about Vettius Scato suggests that the destruction in question happened during the Allied War, as Haug also believes (p. 256). The fury of the attack described by Seneca would almost certainly have weakened or even destroyed Grumentum’s fortifications, and since Crassus was able to retreat there after his defeat, it is therefore most unlikely that this devastation was done under his command when he had the upper hand in the area. If this hypothesis accurately reflects what occurred, then it is equally unlikely that Grumentum was subjected to a lengthy investment by Lamponius, since the assault on and capture of the city by the Romans (which, following the reasoning presented this far, must have come later than its occupation by Crassus) took place, according to the anecdote just quoted from Seneca, after such a long siege. Such a lengthy siege would be unnecessary if Lamponius, for his part, had weakened the city’s defenses by his own actions. Therefore, the fact that the city could hold out for an extended period against Roman besiegers, and that when it at last fell it was of sufficient wealth to be looted thoroughly by them, leads to the conclusion that it had not endured an envelopment of any great moment at an earlier time. Therefore, since the fortifications at Grumentum appear undamaged and its resources seem relatively undisturbed by either Crassus or Lamponius, it is most improbable that either man subjected it to a blockade. If no 24

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town to a lengthy siege. Nor is it likely that it was at this time destroyed by an extensive assault, a fate to which Florus states that it was eventually subjected (Grumentum … ferro et igne vastantur; 2.6.11). It is far more probable that Grumentum fell by a brief storm sometime soon after battle, though Crassus himself seems to have escaped, as he would be in Rome to be made censor the next year.26 Perhaps Didius was moved south in his place, as he would be seen near Herculaneum the next year.27 At the same time as all of this was occurring, the Picentene Vidacilius had been making his way into south from Asculum, where earlier he had united with Vettius Scato and Titus Lafrenius to defeat Pompeius Strabo (more below).28 After the three of them siege had thus occurred, then Crassus perforce must have gained the city without exertion, and Lamponius probably did, as well. The devastation described by Seneca (and Florus; see above) therefore likely transpired when Gabinius tore through Lucania in the following year, as will be described in the next chapter. 26 So Broughton, vol. 2, p. 32. 27 See earlier note; for the activities of Didius, see later in the chapter and Chapter 6. 28 This interpretation relies upon the conjecture of Domaszewski (p. 23–24) that the events of the first half of Appian 1.6.47 took place before those events related in 1.5.41 (see Appendix I). Following Orosius (5.18.10), that scholar postulates that the battle in which Gn. Pompeius was recorded as having been beaten by Picentes was the opening engagement of the war (about which more will be discussed later). For this action, Scato, Vidacilius, and Lafrenius combined forces, and after driving Pompeius off they separated, with Lafrenius keeping Pompeius pinned in the north. Vidacilius then went adventuring in the South until changing circumstances in Asculum forced his return. Keaveney (1987, p. 135) is also willing to believe that Vidacilius was operating in the south, though Salmon (1967, p. 357) disagrees, stating—albeit unconvincingly— that the actions attributed to Vidacilius, a Picentene far from home, belong instead to Trebatius, whom he suggests may have been either Venusian or Apulian. Salmon’s opinion on the identity of Trebatius as an Apulian generates a certain degree of traction; see Appendix H. However, Salmon’s assignment of the deeds of Vidacilius to Trebatius runs counter to what Appian states, which is that it was indeed Vidacilius responsible for these exploits. Yet whether these maneuvers were executed by

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had shut Pompeius in Firmum, Lafrenius was left to hold him there while Scato and Vidacilius went to the southern theater. Scato, as has been seen, soon found himself engaged with Caesar. Vidacilius, in the meantime, began some maneuvers in Apulia. Here Vidacilius won support for the insurgency from towns in the neighborhood, towns which eventually included Venusia, among others (Appian 1.5.42). That same author reports that some of the cities had to be forcibly persuaded into this support by means of sieges, which presumably meant that the élite of these towns had wished to remain loyal to Rome. That being the case, upon capitulation, the “principal Roman citizens” (καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς Ῥωμαίων .. ἔκτεινε) and the pro-Roman Apulians in these municipalities were executed, while the commoners and slaves—very likely the ones liberated from the wealthy—were enrolled into the Allied army. This last seems to have been standard Italian procedure, as it is also attested in Campania.29 It was possibly likewise implemented at Aesernia, whose slaves were driven from the city by its proRoman defenders during its siege in order to reduce non-combat personnel, and who thereupon found “consideration shown to them by the enemy” (τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιεικείᾳ διωρ ώσαντο; Diodorus 37.19). Such a move would be entirely consistent for an Alliance whose strategy was to last as long as possible: as the Allies may still have been collectively outnumbered by the Romans and the other socii whom the Romans managed to retain, they would probably have embraced anyone who would volunteer, or could be made to volunteer, for service. This pertained not only to liberated slaves, but apparently to liberated prisoners, as well. As was mentioned earlier, the Romans had often used Allied cities as places of incarceration for various inconvenient figures (see chapter 2). Some of these were now set free by the socii and apparently put to gainful employment for the cause. Towards this end, the holding cells of Asculum seems to have furnished the useful services of one Agamemnon, an archpirata who in gratitude for his freedom was Vidacilius or Trebatius, the purpose of the enterprise was the same: to gather more men and materials for the war against the Romans. This was accomplished successfully, as can be seen in the text above. 29 As was also observed by Salmon (1967, p. 358).

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apparently willing to ply his trade on behalf of his liberators against his former captors. For this purpose he seems to have been given with a small force and sent against the Roman countryside (more below). So, too, did Vidacilius now set free a son of Jugurtha named Oxynta who had been imprisoned in Venusia, and sent him to the “consul” Papius Mutilus in time for the latter to make use of the prince at Acerrae (Appian 1.5.42; more directly). According to the chronology postulated above, such activity may have been going on in Apulia by mid-spring to early summer and possibly earlier.30 It may very well have been to put a halt to it that Crassus had been dispatched into Lucania. As events would unfold, Crassus would fail in this objective (if indeed his was such), and if he also had the idea that he would drain men away from Nola, that scheme also seems to have been frustrated. In fact, not only did the cordon around Nola remain unloosened, but the absence of the legion of Crassus meant that the Allies could send more even men to it without concern for his interference. This was precisely what the “consul” Papius Mutilus proceeded to do, and he soon took the city, apparently by treachery (Periochae 73; Appian 1.5.41).31 The city would henceforth become a bulwark for the Samnites, who would hold it throughout the rest of the war, continue to hold it through the interlude of peace in the rest of Italy, and would indeed maintain their grip on it until the conclusion of the Civil War at the end of the next decade, as will be seen. The Periocha of Livy’s book 73 makes references to some unspecified complures populi who went over to the “enemies” (that is, the Allies) during the early part of 90. By this statement the cities of Apulia are perhaps meant, along with those in Campania that soon joined the insurgency. These Campanian cities included Pompeii, 30 Assuming, for example, that the Allied leader in question was in fact Vidacilius, who is seen operating in Picenum at the opening of the war, and Trebatius or some other local leader. If this latter was the case, then a trip from Picenum would not have been necessary and these operations could have taken place even earlier. Nevertheless, although for reasons cited earlier Vidacilius is held to have been the agent responsible, with all the implications for chronology that this assertion entails. 31 See also Appendix F.

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which had apparently been part of the Alliance from the beginning (Appian 1.5.39). They now also came to include others in the area, which joined the uprising either by their own volition or by compulsion (1.5.42). Among the former may perhaps be included Herculaneum. Velleius (2.16.2) notes that this city was later conquered by Romans under Didius and Hirpini under Minatius Magius, implying that the city had gone to the Allies and thus had to be taken. Appian omits it from a list of towns which had to be coerced, from which it can be inferred that Herculaneum went to the Alliance of its own accord. By contrast, those cities which had to be compelled may have included Nuceria, which apparently saw its territory ravaged, as is mentioned in Appian (loc. cit.).32 Having From this ravaging, however, Keaveney (1987, p. 134) draws a different conclusion. He states that Nuceria was always devoted to the Allied cause, but that the cities around it, like Herculaneum and Pompeii, were the ones convinced by this demonstration. This is an odd claim, given that the Pompeiani are mentioned by Appian 1.5.39 as having been with the Allies from the start (as seen above). Nevertheless, a passage in Cicero (pro Sulla 22.58) which shows the faithfulness of the Nucerian P. Sittius even while the rest of his family defected, is interpreted by Keaveney to mean that Nuceria was actually always on the Allied side. Furthermore (he continues), while Appian suggests ravaged territory, he does not specifically state that it belonged to Nuceria: his words ( ὡς δὲ καὶ Νουκερίας τὰ ἐν κύκλῳ πάντα κατέπρ σεν; 15.42) can be interpreted to mean territory nearby, rather than that of the city. Keaveney additionally believes that the fragment of Sisenna (56) which speaks of fields “being laid waste up to Nuceria” (agros populabundus ad Nuceriam) does not apply to this episode, as he makes clear in note 19 on page 148. In same note Keaveney disputes Salmon (1967, p. 344 and note 8), and states that the reference of Florus to the wreckage of Nuceria ferro et igne (2.16.11) must refer to its treatment by Roman hands in 89. What, then, Keaveney seems to be asserting is that the territory all around Nuceria which Appian describes as having been devastated refers to Herculaneum and Pompeii, not Nuceria. The agros populabundus ad Nuceriam in Sisenna refers to Nuceria, and not Herculaneum and Pompeii. Since both passages are equally imprecise, however, it is just as likely that Appian means Nuceria in his passage and Sisenna meant Herculeaneum and Pompeii in his; since Pompeii was known to be pro-Alliance, and since Herculaneum seems to have been as well (see above), this may in 32

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been convinced in this manner, it supplied Papius with 10,000 men and 1000 cavalry. Picentia probably also joined the Alliance at this point, although it cannot be determined whether it did so voluntarily or not. Its ultimate destruction, as mentioned in Florus (2.6.11), was likely effected not by the Allies, but by the Romans in the next year, as described in the next chapter. Cities which leave no doubts as to whether compulsion was used included Stabiae, Surrentum, and Salernum, as their rough treatment by Papius makes makes clear (Appian, loc. cit.). Upon their capture, their prisoners and slaves were added to the Samnite forces, following the pattern already discussed above.33 Armed with such men, and apparently reinforced additionally by men sent from Lucania by Marcus Lamponius34 and possibly still further by others from Vidacilius (assuming he was still in the area, if he ever had been),35 or perhaps with Apuli sent by Trebatius, Papius Mutilus advanced on Acerrae and put it under siege (Appian, 1.5.42). He seems to have encountered no resistance from Didius, although it may have been that the latter had been sent south to do what he could to repair the situation in Campania and Lucania. Instead, it seems that meeting this challenge fell to L. Julius Caesar, who managed to pull himself together after his last defeat in Aesernia and marched on Acerrae with what remained of his legions. Caesar had also been reinforced, with 10,000 infantry coming to him from the Cisalpine as well as with additional fact be the better interpretation. Therefore, it will be assumed here that Papius Mutilus had to ravage some Nucerian territory to obtain the compliance the Nucerians, and that it was this ravaging to which Florus refers. Sisenna, for his part, refers to Roman treatment of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 89, which will be described in the next chapter. 33 Although see Salmon 1967 p. 358, which is at slight variance with the account presented above in that he argues that the capture of Nola was subsequent to this activity, and not prior to it. 34 Orosius 5.18.14–15 mentions that Caesar fought against Samnites and Lucani in the battle to come. Assuming the internal chronology of Appian 1.5.42 is reliable (see Appendix I), the latter may have already defeated Crassus and taken Grumentum, leaving him able to lend his men to Papius and thus furnish the Lucani noted by Orosius. 35 See earlier notes, as well as Appendix H.

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infantry and cavalry from Mauretania and Numidia (Appian, loc. cit). These helped offset the twenty cohorts which Orosius states were with Sulla, probably at that moment en route to Aesernia.36 When Ceasar arrived, his opponent immediately made use of a present sent to him from Venusia in the form of the newly-freed Oxynta, son of Jugurtha. This man was dressed in royal purple by the Alliance and revealed to Caesar’s men, whose African forces acknowledged Oxynta as king and propmptly defected. As a result, Caesar was compelled to send the rest home as untrustworthy (Appian 1.5.42). Soon thereafter, Papius, emboldened, attacked and was making an inroad into the Roman camp when Caesar stuck back and killed 6000 of the enemy.37 Caesar’s victory seemed to put an end to Allied advances in the area. It is probable that winter was coming on now; at any rate, a line of Appian makes it reasonably clear that, while Papius remained in the area, he did not attack, leaving the two armies to eye each other uneasily (καὶ οἵδε μὲν ἀλλ λαις ἀντιστρατοπεδεύοντες οὐκ ἐπεχείρουν οὐδέτερος οὐδετέρῳ διὰ φό ον; 1.6.45).38 The victory

The chronology of Orosius makes it clear that Sulla’s Aesernian expedition was defeated after Acerrae, though it is not unlikely that they were on their way there as that battle was taking place. 37 Caesar may have had help: it is perhaps shortly before the battle at Acerrae that Caesar received an offer from a Cretan for “a betrayal” (προδοσίαν), as a reward for which Caesar proposed granting the man civitas. This was laughingly refused by the Cretan, whose sense of irony was apparently high: he wryly suggested that the consul could save himself a lot of trouble by offering the franchise to the very men against whom he was fighting, since that was their ultimate object (τὰ δὲ τῆς πολιτείας τίμια 36

τοῖς περὶ ταύτ ς νῦν διαφερομένοις διαφερομένοις, οἵτινες αἵματος ἀγοράζουσι λῆρον περιμάχ τον). The Cretan accepted a thousand drachmae instead

(Diodorus Siculus, 37.18). 38 Appendix I suggests that the battle described in section 1.6.45 has been misplaced in Appian’s narrative from where it should have come, which is between sections 1.5.41 and 1.5.42. In that case, this line about the two sides not daring to attack each other may belong to before the battle at Acerrae, not afterwards. Nevertheless, the fact that Caesar was able to quit the scene and go back to Rome (1.5.42) is itself an indication that Papius was done for the year, so it may be that after Acerrae both

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of Caesar had hardly been overwhelming, but it had been enough: Acerrae had not fallen, and the morale of the soldiers had been sufficiently boosted to declare Caesar imperator (Orosius 5.18.14– 15). Likewise, back at Rome the Senate—presumably desperate for some good news after a string of abysmal failures (about which more will be discussed presently)—put aside their saga (Orosius, loc. cit., Periochae 73). The victory also allowed Caesar to quit the field (App. 1.5.42): aided, no doubt, by the return of Sulla from the last attempt at Aesernia, Caesar seems to have taken the opportunity to leave this subordinate in command while he returned to Rome to hold consular elections39 and propose a law which might very well have greatly shortened the war, about which more later.40 In this sides resumed the position they had occupied before it, which was anxious watchfulness towards each other. 39 As proposed by Domaszewski, p. 26. 40 Keaveney (1987, p. 134–135, 138) has a completely different order of events, which struggles to preserve the chronology found in Appian (a consistent feature of his work). Thus, Keaveney has the victory at Acerrae occur before the disaster at the hands of Egnatius. While other reasons for adjusting the chronology of Appian in the way that is followed above have been presented in Appendix I, some additional military considerations also suggest that Keaveney’s construction is implausible. In the first place, it does not seem likely that Caesar would leave Acerrae to engage in a relief attempt against Aesernia with an enemy defeated but by no means destroyed at his back. If nevertheless he had done so and then suffered a catastrophic defeat of the type he is described as having suffered at the hands of Egnatius, it seems incredible that the Caesar would not have been attacked in his weakened condition again at Teanum, especially if Papius was still in the neighborhood of Acerrae, less than two days’ march away. At the very least, it is almost inconceivable that Papius would not have made one more attempt at Acerrae with Caesar quite literally recovering from his wounds in Teanum, whether that involved having a go at Caesar or not. Yet despite the fact that it is almost beyond doubt that a chance to strike at a weakened foe at one place or another would have been irresistible to a commander as seasoned and bold as Papius proved to be, Keaveney nevertheless would have it that Papius spent the rest of the year idle. Furthermore, section 1.5.42 of Appian (that part of his work concerning Acerrae) mentions reinforcements as already having recently

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way, the operations in the south, ones which had largely been ones of great success for the Allies, came to an end. Their successes here, however, were more than matched by some early victories for the Allied cause in the northern theater, to which attention will next be turned.

3. THE NORTHERN THEATER While the Romans in the south were being battered by Scato, Marius Egnatius, and Papius Mutilus, things in the north were going equally poorly for the Commonwealth, and thus equally well for the Allies. It is not unlikely that, if the strategy in the south was what was conjectured above, then that for the north (if there was one) was constructed along the same lines. Assuming that such is the case, then the consul P. Rutilius Lupus set out with seven legions under his overall command. Three of these he seems to have dispatched under three of his legates along the course of the Tolenus and upper run of the Liris river for the purpose of establishing a defensive line, from which an offensive operation could, in turn, be conducted. Quintus Servilius Caepio seems to have been stationed at the northern terminus of this line near Reate on the Via Salaria so as to keep communications open between the army and Umbria and Etruria (or perhaps to help keep the peace there; more below). South of him, C. Perperna was placed towards the end of the Tolenus. Between them, the consul seems to have arrived shortly before that battle, as has been discussed above. These would have been vital for a campaign conducted by Caesar after a shattering defeat such as that dealt by Egnatius, and indeed 1.6.45 mentions those reinforcements as having been sent to Caesar for the specific purpose of being used at Acerrae after the episode in the defile. Therefore, 1.6.45 seems to show reinforcements being sent to Caesar for Acerrae, and 1.5.42 shows their arrival. For this reason, and due to the strategic irregularities that would otherwise result if Appian’s chrionology is retained just as it appears, make it almost certain that Haug (p. 227–230) and Domaszweski (p 24) were correct to intuit that 1.6.45 is a disconnected passage from another source which describes events prior to the battle at Acerrae, one which should more properly have been inserted between 1.5.41 and 1.5.42. As such, their hypothesis is accepted above, and Keaveney’s is discarded.

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placed himself and C. Marius, whom Rutilius seems to have kept close by as his direct legate, taking up a position in the neighborhood of Carseoli. Finally, Valerius Massala seems to have taken the southernmost position of the line on the upper run of the Liris, guarding the rest of the army from the Marsi from a position near Sora.41 Just as Marcellus had been detached from Caesar’s line in south, so too was Gn. Pompeius Strabo, the remaining legate of Rutilius, was detached from northern line and sent into territory slightly to the north of the end of it. His role was not to be defensive but offensive, having apparently been given by the consul the task of advancing to capture Asculum. This was almost certainly ordered with the aim of opening the coastline and attacking those Allies who were behind the Appenines. It was en route to Asculum that the first action of the northern theater— action which Orosius gives as the first overall in his account of the war (5.18.10)—took place: at some time which was likely around the beginning of the campaign season in 90 and thus early spring, Pompeius engaged with the Picentes and was beaten. This sounds almost exactly like an engagement described in Appian, in which a combined army led by Lafrenius, Vidacilius, and Vettius Scato met These positions, again, follow Domaszewski (p. 21–23), based on the record of the activities of the legates which strongly suggests that, here again, Appian arranged them north to south. As was in the case for the south, there seem to have been two exceptions to this. Like Marcellus to the south, Pompeius Strabo was not part of the northern line, and was instead sent forward into Picenum to attack the Allies in something of a flanking operation. Furthermore, Marius deems to have been the right hand of Rutilius, in much the way that it is speculated Sulla was for Caesar (for which see earlier note). Both, as has been observed, were listed fourth of the five legates for their respective consuls, and neither seem to have fought in the region to which this place in the order would seem to consign them. As far as the boundaries of the consul’s territory, Domaszewski suggests that Sora was the southern terminus for Rutilius (hence Massala’s placement there) and Casilinum, the northern terminus for Caesar (hence the placement there of Lentulus). He offers no reason for this delineation, but there seems to be no good reason to doubt it; hence, it is retained here. 41

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Pompeius near Falerio,42 defeated him, and drove him to Firmum, where he was subsequently enclosed by Lafrenius (1.6.47). Because of these similarities, the battles are often seen to be the same event in modern scholarship.43 If this is the case, then by virtue of its 42 As noted by Salmon (1967, p. 353 note 5), Appian’s Φάλερνον ὄρος is certainly an error, as that mountain is nowhere near Picenum; Falerio, however, is. 43 However, see Keaveney (1987, p. 132), who holds that these were two separate engagements. This, however, stems from his attempt to take Appian’s narrative as strictly chronological, attempts which generally end unhappily. If, however, the opinion of Haug is followed (p. 227) and it is assumed that Appian is arranging his events first geographically, then chronologically within his designated geographical divisions (see Appendix I), then no conflict appears between the statements of Orosius and Appian. Thus, while the event which the former describes as the first of the war is to be found towards the end of Appian’s narrative of the year 90, it is to be found at the beginning of his record of what happened in northeastern Italy (described in sections 1.6.47 and 1.6.48). These events took place over the whole year, as do the events in southern Italy (narrated over sections 1.5.41 and 1.5.42 (with 1.6.45 between them; see, again, Appendix I) and central Italy (discussed in sections 1.5.43 to 1.6.46), so it may well be that the engagement with which 1.6.47 opens was the very first of the year. For this reason, it is assumed as much above. Keaveney is, on the other hand, almost certainly correct in that this engagement was not a siege of Asculum from which Pompeius was driven by Lafrenius, Vidacilius, and Vettius Scato. In this he disputes Domaszewski (p. 23). The logic of the latter author is as follows: Appian notes that Lafrenius definitely fought against Pompeius in a battle which shut him into Firmum. The same author notes Lafrenius died in a later battle against Pompeius, when the latter broke out of that town. Since, in turn, that battle was the prelude to the siege of Asculum, which came after the breakout and thus the death of Lafrenius, the sling bullet must date from an earlier engagement (in which Lafrenius would have been alive to be a target for it). However, that bullet was apparently found in Corropli, about twenty miles due east of Asculum and thus forty miles from Falerio; see Kathryn Lomas and Edward Herring, The emergence of State Identities in Italy in the first millennium BC. Accordia Research Institute: London (2000), p. 191. The bullet was thus found rather far from Falerio, where Appian holds that this battle took place, and as a result (Domaszewski reasons),

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placement in Orosius and the subsequent activities of the men involved in it, it would seem that this battle would have occurred very early in the year.44 After his defeat Pompeius spent some time there must have first been a siege, one lifted by Lafrenius and his confederates in an operation so successful that it forced Pompeius to flee thirty miles to the north (the approimate distance betwen Asculum and Falerio). There the Alliance caught up with him, defeated him, and drove him another sixteen miles into Firmum. This seems exceedingly unlikely, especially since another possibility for how the sling bullet came to be found at Corropoli suggests itself. This is the second battle between Pompeius and Lafrenius mentioned in the same section of Appian (see below). That author’s very words state that, after some time elapsed after his initial defeat, Pompeius erupted from Firmum. After a close fight which was lost by the Italians when they lost heart after the death of Lafrenius, the socii were driven all the way to Asculum. It is conceivable that they were pursued along the coastal road, and the bullet—intended for Lafrenius while the latter lived—was slung at his retreating army after his death. If this is so, then the epigraphic evidence need not separate the battles mentioned in Orosius and Appian, and, again, they are assumed to be the same event in the text above. 44 Haug’s conjecture about the chronology of 91/90 as it appears in the Periochae would mean that this battle could have been amongst the many nameless engagements at the end of Periocha 72. It might therefore have been mentioned in Livy but may not have seemed appropriate to be singled out by name in the Periochae, for reasons unknown. Orosius, on the other hand, had apparently considered it to be a matter of greater interest, and gives more details. Presumably Appian is doing so, as well; however, to get the battle mentioned in the latter to align with that discussed in Orosius, it becomes necessary to alter the chronology of Appian in a manner similar to that proposed by Haug and Domaszewski (cited in an earlier note), for which see Appendix I. Assuming that the rearrangement offered there is valid, then the events in 1.6.47 begin early in the year, extend through the summer, and culminate with the siege of Asculum sometime in the fall, a siege whose conduct and outcome is described in 1.6.48 and whose beginning was contemporaneous with the happenings at Acerrae described in 1.5.41. The siege continued through the fall of 90, stretched through the winter (during which Pompeius Strabo would have left it and gone back to Rome to run for the consulate) and ended in early 89, for which see next chapter. This reconstruction makes sound sense, and is more convincing than that of Keaveney (1987, p. 131–132, 140–

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in Firmum reorganizing and reforming but holding quiescent, though exactly how much time cannot be determined. If he was finally compelled to move by the approach of another Roman army (as asserted below), he might have spent much of the summer closed within the city before that army could arrive. The expedition of Pompeius had perhaps not been designed to draw off some of the enemy, although it managed to accomplish this very thing. At least, it may have appeared to do so to the consul directing the northern theater: with three separate armies dispatched to defeat Strabo, Rutilius may have seen an opportunity to send one of his legates to relieve Alba Fucens and perhaps proceed on to Pinna. It seems that the otherwise unknown C. Perperna45 was selected for this task, but P. Praesentius and an army of Paeligni46 were apparently waiting for him: in the battle which ensued the latter extracted from Perperna 4000 casualties as well as much of his armament (Appian 1.5.41). Rutilius then took the unusual step of cashiering Perperna and adding what remained of that legate’s command to the forces already under C. Marius, a relative of the consul’s (Orosius 5.18.11; Dio, frg. 98). Given that both Marius and Rutilius were soon both engaged in building bridges across the Tolenus river, it appeared that the next push towards Alba was going to be theirs and was going to be undertaken together47 (a joint attack perhaps along the same lines as that which may have been attempted against Aesernia by Caesar, 141), who rejects it in the attempt to save the chronology in Appian (a feature of his which work will recur in practically all of his interpretations of battles in this war, as has been and will be seen). 45 Perhaps Marcus Perperna, consul of 92, is meant here, since all the other legates were ex-consular or ex-praetorian. As will be seen, Perperna would not exactly show a spectacular amount of battlefield ability for an ex-consul, though in this war such stumbles were by no means unusual; the triumphator Crassus had likewise hardly covered himself in glory (as has been seen). 46 For this attribution of command, and therefore for the location of the battle (which is not disclosed in Appian) see earlier in the chapter, as well as Appendix H. 47 Keaveney (1987, p. 135) suggests they were to advance on either side of the Via Valeria towards Alba, which is almost certainly right.

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as described above). This construction work would have made it difficult to conceal Roman intentions from the Allies, but in order for them to make sure that an offensive towards Alba was in fact the Roman plan, Marsic spies were sent to infiltrate the enemy camp. These mixed in with a foraging party and for a time were apparently quite successful in gathering and passing on information to the socii about Roman movements (Dio, loc cit.). One of the things the spies might well have been able to observe is what was likely a rift that beginning to emerge between the Roman consul and his most able legatus. As the building was continuing Marius looks to have spent much of his available time attempting to convince Rutilius that the troops they were leading were not yet fit for battle and needed additional training; in fact, the old general have lacked confidence as much in his commander as in his men. Rutilius, suspecting Marius had ulterior motives for this advice, grew more and more exasperated, and on top of it had begun to notice that intelligence about his movements was finding its way to the hands of the enemy. The work of the spies then seems to have brought about the additional benefit for the Allies of causing Rutilius to suspect the nobiles amongst his staff of betrayal, leading him to send complaints along these lines to the Senate before any hard evidence had been found to support his accusations. Eventually the Allied spies were discovered, but Rutilius seems to have become no less paranoid even as the bridges neared completion (Dio, loc. cit.). At this point Vettius Scato appeared48 and built his camp across the river between the two camps of the Romans (Appian 1.5.43). Salmon (1967, p. 354) argues that before Scato arrived he had fought his way up the Liris valley and had defeated Valerius Messala, who had been stationed there. This had led Rutilius to replace Messala with Sex. Julius Caesar, the returning proconsul. A number of reasons led Salmon to this conjecture (of which more will be discussed further below), but one of them was geographical. As was seen, Salmon argues if the first defeat of L. Julius Caesar, one dealt to him by Scato, had occurred near between Aesernia and Atina, rather between Aesernia and Teanum as speculated above (see earlier notes). Thus, for Scato to get to the area of Carseoli from that locality, the most logical route would be through the Liris valley, where presumably Messala was stationed (see 48

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A stratagem attempted more than once by the Allies during this war involved their building of camps near their enemies in the hopes of luring the Romans into battle.49 This seems to have been the very thing Scato was hoping to do with Rutilius, whose itch for a brawl might well have been reported to Scato by his spies. Whether or not this was a deliberate aim to force a battle on Scato’s part, it successfully did that very thing in spite of the attempts of Marius to dissuade Rutilius from this course of action. As seen above, Dio reports that Marius had advised the consul against engagement and proposed a delay instead. At this juncture he also seems to have pointed out that by holding their position but not fighting, the Romans could be resupplied indefinitely from home by means of the unimpeded eastward track of the Via Valeria. At the same time, their presence would simultaneously compel the Marsi to stay where they were but force them to live off their land, which would soon be exhausted (a condition to which Diodorus 37.24 may point). above. Scato would then have had to have fought his way through the legate, and Massala’s defeat would have led to his replacement. None of this, however, is required by what the sources report. If, as conjectured above, L. Caesar had launched his attack from Teanum and not Atina, then Scato would have beaten him closer to Aesernia and then moved to help press the siege at the latter, which is exactly what Appian says that he does. He could then move towards Rutilius by means of first the road connecting Aesernia to Sulmo, and then on the Via Valeria past Alba Fucens (see Map 1). This region would, in turn, have been cleared of danger thanks to Praesentaeius and his defeat of Perperna (see above). In fact, even if this engagement with Caesar had taken place near Atina, Scato could still have fallen back and taken the Sulmo—Aesernia road described above, and thus need not have gone by Sora and Messala at all. Moreover, even if he had in fact gone up the Liris valley by Sora, Scato could very well have evaded, and therefore did not necessarily have to fight, Messalla. Finally, there is no record of such a defeat of Massala by Scato anywhere in the sources. For this reason, the Salmon’s advocacy of Messala’s replacement is not overwhelming, and there is ample room to suggest that Messala remained where he was. This will become important directly, as will be seen. For more on this, see also Appendix J. 49 See, for example, Appian 1.6.50 (an episode which will be described in the next chapter).

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Rutilius, however, would have none of it, and immediately decided to take advantage of what he believed to be a mistake on the part of the enemy: since Scato had made his camp nearer to the bridge of Marius, Rutilius believed he would have an opportunity to cross over the Tolenus by means of his own bridge without opposition, and then hit Scato from the south.50 In the meantime, Marius would cross the bridge he had built so that he could pin the Marsi to the north as Rutilius advanced. With this plan in mind, in the early morning of the eleventh of June Rutilius seized what he had believed was his opening and began his crossing. This he pulled off, but once on the other side he fell into the trap which Scato had set for him in the form of a sizeable portion of men concealed in some nearby ditches, men who pounced when Rutilius emerged on the eastern bank of the river. The surprise was apparently total: in Ovid’s rather lurid phrasing, the river ran purple with the blood of the Roman dead, among which being that of Rutilius himself, who was apparently slain by a head wound.51 The river also apparently carried not just the blood but also the bodies of some of the many men who were reported as having been driven into the water. When their corpses and weapons floated downstream, Marius—who was crossing his bridge to implement the prong of the attack assigned to him—seems to have guessed That Marius was to the north of Rutilius may be seen by the flow of the Tolenus, which is from south to north (Domaszweski, p 22); this will become important momentarily. 51 This battle is reported in great detail by a variety of sources. These include the descendants of Livy: it is found in Orosius (5.18.12–13), in which the greatest amount of detail can be found from those drawing from the abovementioned historian; in Obsequens (55), where it is noted that Rutilius apparently disregarded the advice of the gods as well as that of Marius when he pressed the attack in spite of having found that the liver of his sacrifical victim had had no head; and in the Periocha of Book 73 (Eutropius 5.3.2 and Florus 2.16.12 also mentioned the death of the consul in battle, but only so much, and Florus even gets that wrong, stating that it was Caesar who had died). The sources also include Appian (1.5.43), who describes the battle’s overall strategy and most of the particulars, including the death blow to Rutilius, and Ovid, whose Fasti (6.563) provides its exact date. 50

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(correctly) that the enemy in front of him was a small holding force and spurred his men on with vigor. These responded by driving the enemy off and capturing their camp, forcing the Marsi to sleep on the ground where they had won their victory over Rutilius (Orosius also mentions that the counterattack of Marius killed 8000 of the socii, almost certainly an exaggeration). When the next day arrived those Marsi were compelled to withdraw due to lack of supplies. It had been a great victory, if not a perfect one, for the Allies: Marius had driven Scato back, but not before the latter had accomplished the destruction of what was sure to have been a considerable number of men in the legions under the command of Rutilius. Indeed, the bodies of those sent back to Rome for burial had caused such inordinate wailing that the Senate declared that henceforth the dead would be buried on the spot (Appian 1.5.43).52 Unfortunately, Scato and his men do not seem to have been able to take advantage of the momentum from the battle and had to halt the press along the Via Valeria due to the need to bring in the harvest. For his part, Marius, almost never in the mood to rush to the attack under any conditions and certainly not with soldiers of unproven ability, seems to have contented himself with pulling together the remnants of the legions of Rutilius, instilling discipline, and committing the occasional detachments to disrupt the harvesters (Diodorus, 37.4.2). In the meantime, he awaited the appointment of a new consul to take over the command of the northern theater. As it would turn out, L. Julius Caesar apparently had no time to return to preside over the election of a suffect (his second assault on Aesernia was about to get underway), and he seems to have left the matter of command of the northern theater in the hands of the Senate. The six-time consul and savior of the Republic might have seemed like the ideal candidate to assume the vacant command, but the Senate apparently had reservations about entrusting him with it. This might have been due to enmity 52 The Allies do not seem to have lost anywhere near that many men in this engagement (the testimony of Orosius notwithstanding), or, to this point, in any other (Acerrae had not yet occurred). However, they seem to have recognized this idea of burial in situ as a good one, since Appian reports that they too implemented a similar program.

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for Marius amongst the optimates, or even suspicions of the commander’s over-fondness for the enemy,53 but it might also have been from the simple consideration that Marius was by now close to his seventieth year, and if a reference in Plutarch is to be believed, he was feeling his age (Marius 33–34).54 Furthermore, Marius and his defensive proclivities were well known, which might make him ideal for repelling Allied incursion but perhaps not the best sort for swift strikes designed to humble the enemy rapidly. The Senate might well have desired someone better suited for these. Finally, there was a chance that he too might die in battle, leaving the army leaderless again and thus in the position of requiring another replacement general. It might therefore have been for any, all, or none of these reasons that the Senate decided to divide the command formerly held by Rutilius between Marius and Q. Servilius Caepio. He, like Marius, had been a legate under the dead consul,55 and had shown sufficient fire escaping a siege in which he had been trapped earlier in the year (Per. 73) that he seems to have earned the confidence of the patres. It is unknown exactly how this joint command was envisioned to work, or if, where, and when Caepio received some of the forces under the command of Marius. If Caepio did receive such reinforcements, Marius may have had to move away from Carseoli and perhaps gave the Allies the chance to lay waste to it, as Florus asserts occurred (2.6.11). This, however, does not seem likely, as it seems difficult to believe that Marius would have moved from a position which lay on a direct path to Rome, and therefore Carseoli must have been lain waste—if indeed it was—at some later period. 53 For Marius and the enemies he tended to make, see chapter 7; for his connection to the Allies, see chapter 3. 54 On the age of Marius, see Carney 1970, p. 8. 55 As their powers were equal, they were perhaps both named propraetor; Keaveney (1987, p. 137) postulates that the Senate initially formalized Marius’s command by having him named as legate to the urban praetor so that “the imperium he exercised was the praetor’s, not his own”. He provides no citation for this, however, and none of the ancient sources mention anything of the kind; hence, this argument is not followed here.

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The placement of Caepio as co-commander seems to have given an opportunity of sorts to the Marsi, however, and they soon attempted another gambit, this one under the direct command of their marshal Q. Poppaedius Silo. Silo’s plan was to pretend to defect to the Romans (Appian 1.6.44), presumably in exchange for the citizenship. Silo, as has been seen, had been a well-known petitioner for the civitas before the war (see chapter 3). The idea that he would be willing to betray the Allies cause to acquire personally that which for which he had been agitating for some time might not have been a difficult one to sell. Moreover, Caepio would be just the sort to whom Silo in particular could make such a sale, since very likely the two men had known each other before the war. It will be recalled that Silo had been an intimate of Drusus, the one-time best friend and former brother-in-law of Caepio (Dio frg. 93).56 Due to the well-known falling out between Drusus and Caepio, he and Silo need not have been friends; Caepio, upon becoming an inimicus of Drusus, might very well have placed himself amongst the staunchest of opponents of Italian citizenship, and his enmity towards Drusus might well have extended to Silo.57 Yet at the very least their knowledge of each other may have given Silo an insight into Caepio’s personality, such that he could discern whether the ploy he had had in mind would work. Confident that it would, Silo appeared in the Romans camp along with his “children” (in reality two slaves disguised in purple and passed off as his sons) and a great deal of “treasure” (actually gold—and silver-plated ingots of lead), and presented both to Caepio along with himself and a scheme for capturing or destroying the Marsic army now bereft—or so it seemed—of leadership. It may very well have been this last that finally won Caepio over, since such a great success would perhaps restore his family name; this had been stained by his father’s criminally arrogant behavior at Arausio in 105, a disgrace about which a man with Silo’s connections would 56 For a full discussion of Caepio and his relationship with Drusus, see Badian 1964, p. 36–70 and especially p. 39–45. For the bonds between Silo and Drusus, see earlier chapter. 57 Indeed, based on what was soon to take place, a friendship seems quite unlikely.

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doubtless have known very well. Led therefore by gullibility, recklessness, or ambition, Caepio followed Silo right into the trap which had been laid somewhere near Amiternum.58 Once there, Silo mounted a hill as if to look for his former command, and in so doing gave a signal to it. At this signal, rather than delivering the men he had promised into Caepio’s hands, Silo instead delivered Caepio and his forces into the hands of the Marsi and Vestini. No casualty figures are given, even by Orosius, who is normally quite free with these. All the sources which comment on the battle itself, though, are unanimous in that Caepio’s army was completely destroyed.59 Following this disaster, the Senate seems to have decided that the best use of Marius would be to stop saddling him with inepts as nominal superiors or colleagues and gave command of the remnants of Caepio’s forces to him, which they did.60 At some point prior to Caepio’s fatal adventure, and thus probably around the beginning of July, the Senate commissioned soldiers to the proconsul Sextus Julius Caesar (the consul of 91), and sent him towards Asculum. Very likely Caesar had started towards his province before the autumn of his year in office and had just now returned61, perhaps having been recalled specifically 58 So Domaszewski (p. 26) and Salmon (1967, p. 355 and note 1), citing epigraphic evidence. 59 These sources include the Periocha of Livy’s Book 73; App. 1.6.44; Orosius 5.8.14 (who mention both Marsi and Vestini as those who defeated Caepio); Florus 2.16.12 (who mentions only that Caepio’s forces were annihilated, but does not discuss the circumstances around that destruction); and Eutropius 5.3.2 (who comments on Caepio’s death alone). 60 Contra Keaveney (1987, p. 141), who, as mentioned earlier, states that Sextus Caesar was given the command of the entire theater based on the claim of Appian that Caesar was given proconsular power after the expiry of his office (Σέξστος δὲ Καῖσαρ ἐξ κοντος αὐτῷ τοῦ χρόνου τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀν ύπατος ὑπὸ τῆς ουλῆς; 1.6.48). Yet Appian’s can just as easily be interpreted as claiming that Caesar was only given charge of the relief of Picenum, and is so interpreted here. 61 Such is the hypothesis of Keaveney (1983, p. 273–274; 1987, p. 141), as cited above. Other elements of his interpretation of Periochae 73 are at odds with the interpretation of that passage which is to follow below, and these will be discussed presently.

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by the Senate., and was given command of some of the soldiers with which Appian claims the Romans were eventually compelled to furnish their commanders upon their discovery of Allied resolve. To stop him, Silo seems to have sent a force of Paeligni in the consul’s direction, probably those of Praesentius which had earlier defeated Perperna and had since then had likely been sent to guard Silo’s flank as he attempted to ensnare Caepio near Amiternum. It was probably somewhere along the Via Salaria that the two armies caught up with each other, and a great battle ensued. It seems that the proconsul surprised the Paeligni—about 20,000 strong, according to Appian (1.6.48)—as they were changing camps and heavily defeated them, slaying 8000 and capturing a great amount of weapons. Nothing more is heard of Praesenteius, who may not have survived the battle. If he did, then at this point he conceivably fell back with what remained of his men, either on Alba or on Amiternum and Silo; if he did not, perhaps just his men did so. Sex. Caesar, for his part, continued on his way to Asculum.62 News of his approach seems to have reached Pompeius Strabo, who was at this time still shut up in Firmum. He had been enclosed there since the early spring following his aforementioned defeat by Scato, Lafrenius, and Vidacilius.63 Heartened by these 62 The interpretation of this event is much different from what appears in several works of modern scholarship; for the nature of these differences and the reasons for why they exist, see Appendix J. 63 As mentioned above, Keaveney (1987, p. 131–132, 140–141) has a rather different interpretation of what was happening in Picenum which attempts to preserve the chronology of Appian. His understanding is that the accounts of Orosius 5.18.10 and Appian 1.6.47 describe different events, and following his argument Pompeius first arrived in Firmum (which he used as his base), sallied out, fought against the Picentes under an unnamed commander (perhaps Vidacilius), and lost. He then retreated and remained quiescent for quite some time until the battle described in Appian 1.6.47 (“the two bouts are obviously months apart”, p. 141), before coming to grips with a combined force of Vidacilius, Lafrenius, and Ventidius (Keaveney holds that that it was Ventidius and not Vettius, putting him at odds with what the most common textual emendation would have; see Salmon 1958, p. 170). This force, Keaveney continues, defeated Pompeius a second time, again drive him back on Firmum, and this time besieged him there under Lafrenius. This would account for

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developments, Pompeius seems to have decided upon a breakout, to be effected by means of sending his apparent legate Sulpicius64

epigraphic evidence placing Lafrenius at a battle near Asculum (see earlier note). In the meantime, Vidacilius and Ventidius went their separate ways. Where the former ended up going is not mentioned. As to the latter, since this battle took place (according to Keaveney) in mid-summer, Vidacilius would have had plenty of time to make his Apulian journey and then return late in the year as per Appian 1.6.48. Pompeius, on the other hand, remained in Firmum until the approach of Sextus Caesar. Keaveney is reasonably firm that no siege of Pompeius took place after this first battle (it would only come after the second), and therefore offers no explanation as to what Pompeius did during these months between the first and second battles. Apparently he was simply idle for these weeks. These lost weeks notwithstanding, Keaveney’s explanation of the activities of Strabo are not at great variance with the one suggested above. The main difference (beyond the removal of Scato for Ventidius) is that Keaveney separates into two battles what is taken to have been only one here. By contrast, the assessment presented above is even further congruent with the more convincing elucidation of Salmon (1967, p. 353), which also holds that the battles mentioned in Orosius and Appian are identical but rearranges the chronology in Appian. By this rearrangement, the deeds described in 1.6.47 are placed at the very beginning of 90, but the internal sequence of events contained within the episode narrated between 1.6.47–48 is retained. Thus, an initial assault on Asculum by Pompeius never made it there but was met to the north by Lafrenius, Scato, and Vidacilius, and was repulsed by them with sufficient vehemence to force Pompeius into Firmum. There he was then besieged by Lafrenius until the arrival of Caesar (Domaszewski, p. 23–24 has a similar interpretation to this one, but he suggests that an initial siege of Asculum was what was driven off by the Allies, based on evidence derived from the sling bullet discussed earlier). Salmon’s interpretation does less violence to the substance of the sources that what is offered by Keaveney, and is thus the basis for what is argued above. 64 Servius Sulpicius Galba, according to Domasewski (p. 27) and Salmon (1967, p. 356); P. Sulpicius Rufus, according to Keaveney (1987, p. 141). The latter’s assumption partly rests on the preservation of Servius Sulpicius in Per. 73, a passage discussing a Roman commander’s defeat of Paeligni which this essay assumes to have been undertaken by Sex. Julius Caesar. For more on this point, see earlier notes, as well as Appendices J

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behind Lafrenius while Pomperius himself was to hit Lafrenius in front. The fighting was apparently ferocious, and was finally decided when Sulpicius effected the burning of the enemy camp. This proved too much the Allies, whose commander had in the meantime fallen in battle, and they fell back to Asculum. Pompeius then followed and thereupon lay siege to the city.65 News of this victory spread quickly: at Rome the magistrates, who had doffed their saga due to the victory of L. Julius Caesar at Acerrae somewhat earlier, now felt sufficiently relieved that they resumed the purple-bordered toga and other insignia of office (Per. 74; Orosius 5.18.17). It also spread to southern Italy, at which point Vidacilius, whose home was at Asculum, hastened back from Apulia with the apparent aim of attacking the Romans from without the siege lines while the men inside were to attack him from within. Yet this plan failed to materialize, due to the refusal of those inside the city to act. Instead, Vidacilius only managed to break into the city himself. When exactly this took place is difficult to ascertain, though possibly it occurred in late fall of 9066 and may and R. See also additional discussion on this matter to be found in Broughton, vol. 2, p. 30. 65 Appian 1.6.47; Periocha 74; Orosius 5.18.17. The latter two specify that the Picentes were the ones defeated, not the Vestini, of which people it was argued above that Lafrenius was the leader. Nevertheless, this evidence need not be overly worrisome: the fact that battle took place in Picenum would mean that it would be easy for the anonymous compiler of the Periochae and Orosius to assume that the men defeated there were Picentes. Very likely many of them were, perhaps added to the command of Lafrenius by Vidacilius before his great sweep through Apulia (see above). 66 Salmon does not seem to commit to a date for this event, though the position of it in the narrative in one of his works (1967, p. 364–365) suggests that he believed it might have occurred in early 89. That author certainly seems to believe that Vidacilius was still alive in that year (ibid.; see also 1958, p. 174, though he there maintains that Vidacilius died later in that year than will be speculated in chapter 6). By contrast, Domaszewski seems to suggest the breakthrough took place during the larger battle of 89 described in Velleius Paterculus 2.21, Per. 74, and Appian 1.6.48, 50, which is certainly when its sequel ran. Keaveney, however, interprets the arrival at Asculum and the breakthrough at the

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have been the last action in which Pompeius took part in that year. He was soon replaced by the arrival of Sextus Julius Caesar, who held the siege together while Pompeius headed to Rome and, exploiting his victory in battle, was subsequently elected Consul for 89. While this was occurring in Picenum, Poppaedius Silo turned his attention towards getting rid of the remainder of the army of Rutilius to the west. He thereupon cast his eye towards Marius, in the direction of whose position he began to approach with what was presumably the largest element of the Allied northern army. Marius, for his part, determined to hold firm. Plutarch records an exchange in which Poppaedius Silo (to whom he mistakenly refers as “Publius Silo”) taunted Marius with the barb that, were Marius a great commander, he would come out and fight, to which Marius replied that, were Silo a great commander, he would compel Marius to do so (Marius 33). Silo almost certainly knew better than to hope that such name-calling would work on this particular subject, as Marius was not the sort to be ambushed in the way that the impetuous Rutilius and the gullible Caepio had been. Accordingly, Silo seems to have resorted to a new strategy. A gap in the Roman line existed between Marius, who was near Carseoli, and Valerius Massala, who was near Sora. This was caused by Perperna’s command having been transferred to Marius upon his defeat by Praesentius. Silo seemed aware of this, and based on his next series of actions, he looks to have planned to move down the Tolenus valley and slip through the gap. In this way he could outflank Marius, perhaps with the aim of crossing the river and gaining command of the Via Latina, from which he could possibly threaten Rome itself. Of course, Marius certainly would no more allow this to happen than he would allow himself to be goaded into battle by Silo’s taunts, so the general seems to have responded to Silo’s movements by similar ones of his own, always putting himself between Silo and the road to Rome. As both armies progressively moved southward there was probably some desultory skirmishing end of 90 (1987, p. 151), which is fairly convincing. For Vidacilius and his role in the battle at Asculum of early 89, see next chapter.

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between them, and it is not unlikely that these little scraps did not go very well for the Romans at the beginning. It may be to one of these small fights that Plutarch refers in an episode he relates, in which the Romans, having caught up to the Marsi, met the enemy on the field and bested them, but, on the retreat of the latter, did not charge and finish them. This led Marius to express disgust and voice his inability to decide about which soldiers were worse, the cowardly Marsi who showed the Romans their backs or the Romans who refused to stab them there (loc. cit.). At any rate, by means of these minor scuffles the Romans under Marius were becoming progressively more seasoned, but they were not yet ready for a major engagement, and Marius knew it. He would therefore not risk battle which could lead to their destruction, and thus open the Roman flank and leave undefended a direct path to Rome, until his milites were capable of better.67 Yet as much as Marius may have contented himself with the minuscule clashes to which both the commanders restricted their armies as they maneuvered into the area north of Sora, the fact that a great battle sure to come seems to have been recognized by both Silo and Marius. To help his chances in it, Silo appears to have summoned the army of the Marrucini for the attack he was to make, which promptly arrived under its commander Herius Asinius. Silo was also perhaps reinforced from the south by his fellow marshal Papius Mutilus, who may have sent some Venusini under the command of T. Herennius by means of the overland route past Aesernia into Marsic territory (Servius ad Aen. 9.587).68 Adcock (p. 60–61; 90–91) speculates that Marius was on the defensive throughout his command at least partly out of a desire to resolve the conflict by means of a settlement with the Allies. This is not likely, but is nevertheless not completely out of character for the general, who had shown some sympathy for Italians in the past (see chapter 3). On the other hand, Marius was also a master of defensive tactics and recognized the weaknesses in his soldiers, so it was probably far more these considerations, and less the leaving open of the possibility for a resolution without fighting, that made his evasive tactics seem to him to be the best option. 68 This summoning and itinerary of Herennius is based on the postulate that the Herennius mentioned in Servius ad Aen. 9.587 as having 67

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Marius, in turn, seems to have gotten the word to Valerius Messala, who took advantage of Italian preoccupation with the Sulla’s last advance on Aesernia (see above) to risk detaching himself from his post near Sora to move north to the aid of Marius. While he awaited Messala, Marius had apparently sealed himself and his men in camp in a manner reminiscent of his earlier behavior at Aquae Sextiae during the Teutonic and Cimbric wars of the previous decade. In that instance, Marius had fortified his camp and kept his men off the field until their blood was up for battle, all the while exposing them to the taunts of cowardice by the enemy.69 In this one, he seems to have done the same thing (Marius 33), and apparently continued to do so until such a time that Marius felt battle could be joined. When at last the time finally came, Marius was struck by an onslaught of the attacking Marsi and Marrucini. Upon these enemies Marius proceeded first to inflict a heavy defeat, and then next to drive them from the field, pushing them deep into Marsic territory. There it seems the fleeing Allies only won escape from him by scaling the walls enclosing their vineyards. Once on the other side, however, a sickening surprise awaited them: Messala had not much earlier appeared from the south and was encamped nearby. He then proceeded to attack the erstwhile socii70 on his own side of the vineyard walls. The Allies were fought apud Soram was from Venusia (see above). It is at variance with Salmon’s assertion (1967, p. 355–356) that Herennius was terrorizing the Liris valley, having evaded Sulla, whom Salmon maintains as having been stationed there. In the face of this difference it can be observed on the one hand that Sulla—as will be seen below—may very well have not been in the region where Salmon places him at all. On the other, it is just as plausible that Herennius, if he had started from Venusia, got to Sora (or near to it) by going by means of the roads through the territory of the Hirpini and Samnium (see Map 1) rather than by having fought his way up the Liris. If so, the affray referred to in Servius may be a part of the larger battle described below, which is the interpretation which will be followed here. 69 As recorded by Florus, 1.38, Plutarch, Marius 18 and Moralia 203; Orosius 5.16.9–13; and Frontinus 2.7.12. See also chapter 7. 70 Interestingly, Messala may have been the son of the Valerius Messala who was prosecuted by Metellus Numidicus for crimes against

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doubtless exhausted from the earlier battle and flight and probably had little energy left to withstand this strike of Messala’s, and as a result their rout was soon total. Six thousand men were alleged to have been killed in this battle, many others were taken prisoner, and seven thousand were stripped of their arms. Among the dead was Herius Asinius, the commander of the Marrucini.71 Following this battle, the Marsi apparently had not completely lost their fighting spirit and quickly reformed again, but no great battle is reported as having taken place in the aftermath of the Vineyards. Winter was probably coming on now, and the fact that the campaigning season would soon be over perhaps contributed to the lack of will for any further hostilities. It seems likely that this formed the backdrop for an anecdote related by Diodorus Siculus (37.15, where he reports it as having occurred in Samnite territory; this is almost certainly an error). According to that author, the grim legions of Romans and Marsi advanced towards each other in what would probably be the final battle of the year in which they would participate. However, as the men drew within range of individual sight and both sides began to distinguish the features of their opponents, there arose a spontaneous compulsion to stop the battle. Diodorus relates that the soldiers beheld on the other side personal friends, kinsmen related by intermarriage, and former comrades-in-arms; in fact, it might very well have been that some of the older soldiers of both armies had once served side by side under Marius himself during the Jugurthine and Cimbric Wars. This recognition, combined with the lateness of the season and the exhaustion which the campaign had likely produced, sapped the impulse to kill. The men then yielded to the urge to suspend the bloodshed and began to lay aside their arms and embrace each other. At this point Marius and Silo came to the front themselves, and upon observing the mood of their men decided not to force Allies (Gellius 15.14.1; so Broughton, vol. 3, p. 212), so doubtless no love would have been lost between them when the legate went on the attack. 71 The details of the battle are reported in Appian 1.6.46; mention of it is likewise made in Per. 73, which reports the slaying of Herius, and Orosius (5.18.15), which confirms the number of the slain, as it that author’s wont.

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the issue. Instead, they decided to parley about citizenship, while the battlefield “lost its martial aspects and assumed a festive air” (ἡ πᾶσα σύνοδος ἐκ πολεμικῆς τάξεως εἰς παν γυρικὴν διά εσιν μετέπεσε). With that, the hostilities seem to have stopped for the remainder of the year (Appian, loc. cit.)72. In the final analysis, the counter-campaign of Marius can only be described as a success: the general had performed with his usual éclat and had managed to avoid being flanked in a spectacular fashion. Plutarch’s unflattering portrayal of the old man as “tardy, unenterprising, and timid”, either because “his age was now quenching his former heat and vigor or … some distemper affected his muscles”73 seems most unjust here. All told, the Roman efforts in the northern theater, of which this counter-attack was a part, seemed to have fared better in the than in the southern one. As the campaigning season ended there, the Picentes were successfully shut up in Asculum under the watchful eye of a proconsul who had already crushed the Paeligni on the Via Salaria, while the Marsi had temporarily succumbed to exhaustion and held quiescent further south. On the other hand, it cannot be forgotten that those Marsi had defeated three separate Roman armies that year (those of L. Julius Caesar, Rutilius, and Caepio) and but for Marius may have wreaked even further destruction, while the Paeligni and Picentes had effected a substantial thrashing of Pompeius and Perperna earlier on. In the north the Alliance had driven one Roman commander from the field in disgrace and had claimed the life of a consul and the deputy who had been tasked to succeed him, in addition to the death they had dealt to the thousands of soldiers under the leadership of these unfortunates. Thus, the socii in the north had decidedly made the Romans feel the effort it would take to subdue them, and had perhaps done so with even greater effectiveness than their southern brethren. What was more It will be immediately recognized that much of the way this campaign is at profound variance with the interpretation of it which is found in other scholars. For the nature and reasons behind this disagreement, see Appendix K. 72

73 εἴτε τοῦ γ ρως τὸ δραστ ριον ἐκεῖνο καὶ ερμὸν ἐν αὐτῷ … εἴτε … περὶ νεῦρα γεγονὼς νοσώδ ς καὶ σώματι δύσεργος; Marius 33.

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important still was that many of these socii apparently yet possessed a will to fight on which was undiminished despite the late victories of the Romans, and doubtless the potential for carnage which that unbroken will portended must not have been lost in the capital.

4. FIGHTING IN OTHER AREAS: THE SEA, ETRURIA, AND UMBRIA With the approach of winter, the hostilities of the year 90 had ground to a halt in many places. To the south, Aesernia had fallen to the Allies but a fairly large Roman army hovered between Teanum and Acerrae, one almost certainly commanded by L. Cornelius Sulla while L. Julius Caesar had gone back to Rome. There it was eyed distrustfully by Papius Mutilus, whose string of splendid successes had been halted by a loss to the aforementioned L. Caesar. To the very northernmost Picenum was engaged in a siege overseen by Sex. Julius Caesar, who had relived Cn. Pompeius Strabo in time for the latter to return to Rome to run for the chief magistracy. Between Asculum and Acerrae, Silo and his men had for the moment yielded to the same fatigue which it seems had affected their Roman adversaries, and had suspended the operations in Marsic territory. Other than the fall of Pinna, which, if it fell to the Allies at all, seems to have done so sometime after Aesernia was taken and thus in late fall,74 no more action is recorded as having taken place in these areas. 74 So Domaszewski, p. 27, following what seems to be the chronological arrangement in the fragments 19–21 of book 37 of Diodorus. That Pinna fell is believed by Salmon (1967, p. 353) and by Keaveney (1987, p. 118). The latter cites for Pinna’s fall evidence from an anecdote in Valerius Maximus 5.4.ext.7, in which a young man named Pulto rescues his father from the Romans during the Allied War (Italico bello Pinnensem iuvenem, cui Pultoni erat cognomen … cum obsessae urbis suae claustris praesideret et Romanus imperator patrem eius captivum in conspectu ipsius constitutum destrictis militum gladiis circumdedisset, occisurum se minitans, nisi inruptioni suae iter praebuisset, solus e manibus senem rapuerit; emphasis added). This implies that the Romans were attempting to reduce an Allied town, which in turn implies that Pinna had become such and had fallen to the Allies despite the admittedly ambiguous indication that it had withstood the siege and remained loyal to Rome. On the other hand, Smith (p. 631)

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There were, however, other theaters than the ones described above which saw action in 90. Apparently one of these was the sea. It seems some Allied naval operations took place, due to the fact that the Romans responded to them: a certain legate Otacilius is mentioned in a fragment of Sisenna has having done something “with light boats and cutters” (cum scaphis ac lembis, frg. 38P). What, presumably, he did with these was sail with them.75 Another fragment of Sisenna refers to the setting afire of twenty fast ships and as many transports (actuarias ad viginti navis item complures onerarias incendunt), although by whom it is not said. If, however, it was the Allies who were doing the latter, then it may very well have been that they made use of the archpirata Agamemnon in this capacity. Diodorus mentions that this man “ravaged the countryside of the enemy” (τὴν πολεμίαν χώραν κατέτρεχε; 37.16).76 It was very believes that Valerius has made a mistake here, a skepticism shared by D. R. Shackleton-Bailey in his Loeb translation (p. 506–507 note 15 refers to this as “probably another of [the ancient author’s] blunders”). 75 Keaveney (1987, p. 134 and note 20, p. 146–147) disagrees with Broughton (vol. 2, p. 37) that Otacilius served in 89, probably correctly: fragment 38, in which Otacilius is mentioned, comes from Sisenna’s third book, which seems to have been devoted primarily to the year 90 (so Haug, p. 215; see also earlier note on Nuceria). Since Aul. Plautius Albinus is reported as being commander of the fleet in 89 (Per. 75, for which see next chapter), he probably relieved Otacilius, who had served in the previous year. 76 This is the conjecture of Salmon (1967, p. 345 note 4). The passage in Diodorus Siculus over this remarkable man (37.16) is usually translated in such a way as to suggest that he led a band of soldiers, not sailors. However, the text allows for the possibility of naval service: the verb used to state that he volunteered for service is στρατεύω, which can mean “lead a fleet” (Xenophon uses it this way in Hellenica 1.5.21). Given his experience, it is likely that the Allies recognized that his particular talents could best be used by sea, and he was given men (στρατιῶται, a noun Thucydides—2.88—once used to describe sailors serving on naval vessels, possibly marines) with whom he ravaged the countryside of the enemy from aboard ship (the verb used for this activity in Diodorus is κατατρέχω, which is often used in a nautical capacity; Thucydides 2.94). It is most unlikely that he was set as leader of the Marsi in the same way as Papius Mutilius had been for the Samnites, as Orosius asserts (5.18.10). On the

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probably in response to this threat from the sea that Roem resorted to using freedmen to garrison the coast of Cumae, as mentioned in Appian (more below). Therefore, Agamemnon not only may have disrupted Roman shipping, but also conducted ship-borne raids against coastal settlements, for which reason Otacilius was sent to stop him. Indeed, since in the next year the Roman fleet is in the neighborhood of Pompeii, it is quite probable that that city, once acquired by the Alliance (see above), became the base of operations for its naval effort.77 However, no source mentions any great clash of vessels, so it can probably be safely intuited that the sea played a relatively small role both in the first year of the fighting and, ultimately, in the war itself. Two other operations are worthy of note in this year, and while the first is of only indirect bearing on the Allied War, the second is larger import. The former is mentioned only in one line of the Periochae 74, in which is described the suppression of a revolt of the Saluvii in Transapline Gaul by C. Caecilius Caelius. From the short notice it cannot be determined whether the Caelius in question was already in the Transalpine as a promagistrate,78 or if he had specifically been dispatched by Rome to meet this threat. If it was the latter case, and he was specifically sent to suppress the Salluvii in 90, it would follow that such an expedition and the army which would be raised to embark upon it would place a still further other hand, it may very well be that the Marsi (or, rather, the “northern Allies” who were sometimes referred to collectively as “Marsi”; see Salmon 1958, p. 170–171, and earlier notes above) put him over their fleet operations. 77 So Keaveney (loc. cit.). 78 Broughton (vol. 2, p. 25, 27, and note 1, p. 30) suggests that he either was sent as praetor or might have been a promagistrate in Gaul already; Keaveney (1987, p. 208) follows the suggestions of Broughton, though for reasons he does not cite he shifts the rebellion to the Transpadane (and even offers it as the Cisalpine on p. 140, which is probably a simple error on hias part) as opposed to the Transalpine, and speculates that the Roman commander might have been C. Coelius Caldus (cos. 94), but was probably not C. Caecilius Cornutus. Badian also believes that Caldus was the commander in question here (1964, p. 90– 95).

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demand on Roman manpower. Even if it was not and he was already there, then his activities sill employed soldiers who represented men who might have been brought home to serve against the Allies. Of greater significance, however, is the revolt of the Etrurians and Umbrians which, following the chronology of the Periochae of Livy (74), broke out somewhat late in 90. Exactly when this took place is uncertain, especially its beginning, although the source just named places its conclusion after the breakout of Pompeius from Firmum and about the same time as when Marius was fighting dubio eventu against the Marsi. Orosius likewise places its end after both the Battle of the Vineyards and the events in Picenum (5.18.17), while Appian too states that it happened while “such things were occurring on the Adriatic side of Italy”, namely the defeat of Lafrenius and investment of Asculum by Pompeius Strabo (τάδε μὲν ἀμφὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἦν τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον, 1.6.49). What this combination of sources probably implies, then, is that the Etruscans and Umbrians rose at about the same time as Sex. Caesar started towards Picenum, perhaps waiting until the proconsul and the men he commanded were at a safe distance. The campaign against them to follow probably took the rest of the summer and most of the fall, in light of the fact that the Romans would first have needed to have gathered soldiers for it and then mobilized them. This was eventually accomplished under the leadership of the legate Aulus Plotius, who was dispatched to deal with the Umbrians, and the propraetor79 L. Porcius Cato, who was sent against the Etruscans. These expeditions do not seem to have lasted very long, and the details of combat are very few indeed: their mention in Sisenna seems to indicate that fighting may have taken place in or near Iguvium, Perusia, and Tuder (fragments 94, 95, and 119), and a passage in Florus (2.6.11) states that Faesulae and Ocriculum were amongst the areas destroyed during the war. If such speculations 79 Praetor, according to both the Periochae and Orosius, but seeing as how Cato was consul the next year, service as praetor for 90 may be doubted. Thus his designation as a promagistrate by Broughton (vol. 2, p. 28, 32) is generally accepted.

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about these cities are correct, then a possible reconstruction of the campaign might be posited. It would appear that Cato and Plotius started through the newly-insurgent territory along the Tiber valley and stayed together perhaps as far as Perusia, with Cato parting at that point from Plotius to advance ultimately to Faesulae by the Via Cassia while Plotius took the Via Flaminia to Iguvium.80 This reconstruction is, again, is nothing more than a theory: certainly Livy’s Epitomator gives no detail about any operations whatsoever, Appian is equally silent, and the only evidence to be drawn from Orosius is that the fighting must at times have been intense, as victory was only won through plurime sanguine impenso et difficilimo labore.81 At any rate, the expedition seems to have wrapped up in time for Cato’s ultimately successful campaign for the consulate, and so must have been over some time in advance of early November (see below). The hypothesis above has been offered in the attempt to offer some description, however conjectural, about what seems to have See map 2. Harris (1971, p. 215–217) takes note of the fragments of Sisenna and suggests that Iguvium, Perusia, and Tuder may have been the sites at which action took place, or at the very least where the uprising had taken hold. On the other hand, his belief is that the fighting had been fairly light, and that descriptions of difficulty in Orosius are a “characteristic exagerration” Likewise, he seems to think that while fighting could have taken place at Ocriculum and Faesulae, the cities themselves were not part of the uprising, although it must be noted that his reasoning is not convincing here. Salmon believes that the latter two cities were in some way involved, but, for reasons he does not provide, also holds that the campaign in Etruria and Umbria had taken place after the elections and thus later in the year (1967, p. 360). Hence, in his account Cato is designated as consul-elect. Again, Salmon gives no reasons for why this expedition must have taken place after November. Certainly there is nothing in the sources which would make it impossible that it did not happen earlier, and was over by that month. Therefore, if chronology above is correct, then the operations in Etruria and Umbria were hardfought but rapid ones. These may have launched in late summer and ended as fall was coming on, in time for Cato to make his way back to Rome to stand for the consulate. This is the construction which is adopted above. 80 81

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happened in Etruria and Umbria, when it happened, and where specifically it was in those regions that the activity that is mentioned occurred. What is missing is who amongst the Etruscans and Umbrians undertook these actions, and why. In the first place, it does not seem terribly likely that Etruria and Umbria had been part of the original Alliance whose formation and mobilization had almost been complete in 91. Reasons for this conjecture fairly readily suggest themselves, some with more likelihood of being the correct ones than others. For one thing, there was a matter of proximity to Rome and inaccessibility from the rest of the Alliance. Even if Etruria and Umbria were sympathetic to the Allied cause from the beginning, then considerations of distance may have prevented them from supporting it in arms early on. Both areas, it will be observed, lay very close to Rome, and in the case of Umbria there were a large number of Roman settlements both along the Via Flaminia, which went through that territory, and to the east of that road. This would mean that a Roman offensive into the Umbria would have, and apparently did have, a relatively unobstructed path. By contrast, reinforcements from the other Allies (such as the Picentes, for example) would have to pass the barrier of Roman these colonies to bring aid. Therefore, the simple fact that the Etruscans and Umbrians would be within easy striking distance for the legions but would be far less accessible to assistance from their would-be partners, a fact which all sides would have recognized, may have influenced the decision of these peoples at the beginning of the war. Additionally, the élite of the Etruscan and Umbrian communities might not have been as desperate for the citizenship as those of the peoples lying further the south. On the one hand, their mercantile element—to whatever extent these actually had an influence in any of the Allied communities—was much less substantial in Etruria and Umbria, and their landowning segment had apparently proved very unwilling to part with what they held of the ager publicus, or to risk assessment of the land they owned near to it, in trade for the franchise. Indeed, the last time the issue of land reclamation in exchange for the civitas had arisen in the form of the proposals of Drusus, Umbrian and Etruscan hostility to these proposals might very well have led an agent of theirs to murder him (see chapter 4). Moreover, while the Etruscan and

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Umbrian upper classes did see a fair amount of Roman interference in their domestic affairs and experienced the occasional abuses, as was the case with the other socii, they had also been aided quite a few times by Roman intervention which was often directed against their own lower classes (see Chapter 3). Thus, even though they suffered from the same burdens of military contribution and the attendant taxation as the other Allies, they apparently considered it worth the price to have the protection of Rome to ensure their external safety, and the support of the Romans to guarantee the perpetuation of aristocratic power within their own borders.82 None of these factors necessarily indicate that the leading men of the Etruscans and Umbrians did not desire the citizenship, nor that they would not have welcomed it were it freely given. They merely suggest that these leaders were neither willing to barter their land for it, which was the exact price asked by Drusus. It may actually have been primarily to protect their lands that they wanted the franchise in the first place. Moreover, these factors also suggest that the Etruscan and Umbrian élite were unwilling to use force in the attempt to seize the civitas from Rome given the risks involved. Without the support of the upper classes, the communities of the Etruscans and Umbrians likely could not have been a part of the Alliance at the start. Indeed, it seems likely that many of these communities never actually took participated in the war at all. Appian can certainly be interpreted in such a way, since he never mentions any actual fighting amongst the Etrurians and Umbrians who were “incited to revolt” (ἐς ἀπόστασιν ἠρε ίζοντο, 1.6.49). Appian’s silence on any battles carries the additional inference that the Etruscans and Umbrians were mollified by news of the Senate’s approval of what would become the lex Julia (see next chapter), a law which had “made more friendly those who were already friendly [and] stabilized those who were in doubt” amongst them (τῇδε τῇ χάριτι ἡ ουλὴ τοὺς μὲν εὔνους εὐνουστέρους ἐποί σε, τοὺς 82 For the rigid aristocracy that seems to have been the prevailing social system in Etruria/Umbria, see Harris (op. cit., p. 114–129, p. 202– 212). For the military, political, social, and economic motivations which would have dissuaded their principes from war, see the same author (p. 212–229).

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δὲ ἐνδοιάζοντας ἐ ε αιώσατο;

loc. cit.). The conclusion can be drawn that Appian meant to indicate that no fighting took place amongst the Etruscans and Umbrians, and that there was more the threat of a revolt than the actual execution of it. Of course, this would run counter to the other sources presented above which state that some of the Etruscans and Umbrians did fight, and indeed may have fought bitterly. Nevertheless, it is fairly easy to reconcile all the sources by simply assuming that the people of Etruria and Umbria were divided in terms of the war, with some ultimately siding for the Alliance and others for Rome, the assertion of Florus (loc. cit.) that the revolt encompassed omnia Etruria notwithstanding.83 This assumption is not without problems of its own, to be sure. Most importantly, if the position of the principes of Etruria and Umbria was as described, then it is necessary to explain why that position would have changed (or at least, would have changed for some of them) by mid-summer of 90 from that of the previous year. The answer may lie in the fact that the Romans had been faring poorly thus far in the war, and had drained its manpower reserve fairly dry in the process. Indeed, at about the time of the Etruscan/Umbrian revolt the shortage had become so acute that liberti were soon being enrolled in the army and given the task of guarding the coasts. Since both Appian and the Periochae take note of this situation in the same part of their respective narratives which describe the disturbances in Etruria and Umbria, the soldiers sent into these regions might well have brought Roman manpower needs to such an extreme.84 Perhaps, then, the Etruscan and Umbrian towns which did rise considered themselves relatively free Harris comes to this conclusion, as well (op. cit., p. 217–218). This is mentioned as occurring before conclusion the Etruscan/ Umbrian situation in the Periochae (74) but after the latter people were noted as “incited to revolt” in Appian (1.6.49). This difference in the sources need not imply a contradiction: the need to gather men to send them into Etruria and Umbria might have denuded the coastal guard, and thus required supplementing by the freedmen, as in Appian; this denudation in turn would have happened before the defeat of the Etruscans and Umbrians, explaining its notice before that signaling this defeat in the Periochae. 83 84

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of the danger of reprisals from Rome due to the Commonwealth’s defeats elsewhere. Alternatively—or perhaps additionally—it might also very well be that the Etruscan and Umbrian communities which fought Rome did not do so at the bidding of, or even with the assistance of, their ruling classes, and may have actually done so against the desires of that class. The fact that the principes of Etruria and Umbria might not have considered the civitas as grounds for war by no means rules out the fact that the lower classes might have had a difference of opinion about it. It was, after all, these elements of Etruscan and Umbrian who would have felt the onus of Rome’s military needs the most, both in terms of the soldiers required to serve and the taxes (relative to their wealth) it took to support them. It might well be the case that the acquisition of the franchise to bring relief to these burdens would have provided a suitable casus belli for these.85 Under such circumstances, if their aristocrats would not lead them against Rome to wrest the citizenship for them, then it is not difficult to imagine they would make the attempt on their own. In fact, the Etruscan and Umbrian lower classes had had a history of acting contrary to the wishes of 85 In his discussion of the potential for Roman citizenship in Etruria and Embria, Harris argues that the civitas would not necessarily have brought about a profound change in Etruscan and Umbrian society of the sort which would have ended the dominance of the aristocracy (op. cit., p. 222–224). Nor would the citizenship have won for the lower classes— whose status he compares (p. 121–123) to serfdom, albeit with property rights as well as eligibility for taxation and military service—some sort of “possibility of getting hold of power in their towns”. In so arguing, he disputes Emilio Gabba, whose words uses, and the latter’s conviction that the possibility of changes of these kind was an inducement for why the lower classes in Etruria and Umbria ultimately sought to join the war (1976, p. 73). Harris is probably correct in his skepticism, and his reasoning for it is convincing. Nevertheless, Roman citizenship would almost certainly have reduced the military responsibilities the lower classes were expected to discharge and likely also the amount of taxes they would have been compelled to pay, a fact for which Harris makes no allowance. Therefore, even if the Roman citizenship would have left them in relative “serfdom”, at least it would have been serfdom whose burdens of conscription and taxes would have been easier, and this alone might well have been a suitable reason to fight.

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their leaders,86 and if in general it was true that the “Italian peasants … would for the most part be ready to follow the lead” of their upper classes, that does not seem always to have been so amongst the Etruscans and Umbrians.87 It is, therefore, not beyond the realm of possibility that the Etruria and Umbria may have been of divided loyalty to the Romans. This was certainly true of the other areas from which the Alliance had acquired members, although circumstances for the division in the north seem to have been slightly different in the southern regions. A revolt limited only to a few towns in Etruria and Umbria may explain why the Periochae, Florus, and Orosius would all indicate fighting, while Appian would assert that the region persisted in their allegiance to the Commonwealth. This sort of limited uprising might also explain an aspect of the lex Julia. This law will be discussed more extensively in the next chapter, but for the moment it is pertinent to note one of its provisions as mentioned by Velleius Paterculus, who states that by this law the franchise would be extended to those who had qui arma aut non ceperant aut deposuerant maturius (2.16.4).88 The use of the pluperfect tense in this description strongly implies that those qui arma … deposuerant maturius were communities who had already given up fighting by some point in time determined by the Romans, one which is not specified in the sources but which was certainly prior to the passage of the law in the fall of the year 90. The only Allies for whom this condition seems to have applied were the Etruscans and Umbrians. Why the Romans would have shown such generosity to these becomes easier to explain if Etruria and Umbria had been divided in terms of holding to the Commonweath: they would simultaneously “have not taken up arms” and “have laid Harris, op. cit., p. 114–118. The phrase is that of Brunt 1988, p. 100; but while he notes elsewhere that these principes might not always have had the best interests of their lower classes in mind and specifically mentions the Etruscans and Umbrians in this regard, he does not list them as those to whom an exception to his rule might be made. 88 The above assumes that the provision found in Velleius actually pertains to the lex Julia and not to the so-called ‘lex Plautia Papiria’, a position generally agreed upon, as will be discussed later. 86 87

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them aside shortly”, and if those communities which had joined the insurgents had done so against the wishes of their ruling classes, then the Romans might well have decided not to punish those communities whose lower classes had resorted to such acephalous adventuring by excluding them from the civitas. Indeed, these communities would be exactly the sort whose doubts would need stabilizing, which Appian notes was precisely the effect for which the law was intended, and was the very effect which it ultimately had.89 89 Keaveney (1987, p. 142) takes a slightly similar position to the one presented here. His view seems to be that the lex Julia was passed after the revolt in Etruria and Umbria had erupted but before it had come to a conclusion, although his interpretation still allows for the possibility that events transpired as related above. Mouritsen, however, has a substantially different opinion (1998, p. 153–166). According to his theories, the Etruscans and Umbrians—as was the case with all the other Allies in the war—fought for independence from Rome, but they happened to have waited until late in the year so that they could join when Rome’s defeat seemed imminent. The signal of this inevitable defeat was the enrollment of the freedmen into the coast-guard, which in Mouritsen’s view took place before the revolt of these areas, as opposed to afterwards. Contrary to the evidence of Appian, Mouritsen continues, the lex Julia was not passed in order to appease the Etruscans and Umbrians, because it had actually been passed before their insurrection. Part of Mouritsen’s arguments center another law, the lex Calpurnia, which he argues was an enabling law designed to enroll new citizens into tribes and therefore must have been passed after the lex Julia, which would have created enough new citizens to make new tribes necessary (for more on this, see Appendix L). Mouritsen uses the commonly accepted chronological parameters of what was covered in the missing books of Sisenna to date the lex Calpurnia mentioned in fragment 17 (see, again, Appendix L) to the summer of 90. Hence, if this law had been passed after the lex Julia, then (Mouritsen argues) the lex Julia must also have been passed in the summer. If this is so, then the Etruscans and Umbrians would have known that they would be given the citizenship through remaining loyal, but chose to revolt anyway. All of this is less than perfectly convincing for a number of reasons. In the first place, the fragment of Sisenna does not allow for as precise a dating as Mouritsen would have it (see, again, Appendix L). Secondly, for the lex Julia to have been passed at any time, L. Caesar would have had to

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The quelling of the revolt in Etruria and Umbria was over before the winter of 90 and therefore was brought about at close to the same time as Acerrae, the Vineyards, and the investment of Asculum. As has been seen, these victories halted the string of Roman defeats which had been taking place all over Italy early in the year. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the year seemed to be ending on a positive note for the Romans, it would be difficult to suggest that the year had been little short of disastrous for them. The affect of the earlier losses and even the victories on Roman morale can be guessed from their wearing of the saga, from the edict mandating the burial in situ of fallen Romans, and from the case of one Caius Vettienus, who cut off two fingers of his right hand to avoid service in the Allied War, for which misdeeds his property was confiscated and he was reduced to slavery (Valerius return to Rome. This he clearly did not do after June 11, since no suffect for the fallen Rutilius was elected, and he was obviously busy in the south before June. Mouritsen sidesteps this absence of a suffect election by stating that it was possible that Caesar had returned at some time after the death of Rutilius but before Nivember, and simply chose to elect no suffect during this return because the legates had already been placed in control of the army, a situation Caesar would have been content to let stand. Such an argument is extraordinarily weak, and it may actually have been illegal for Caesar to have acted in such a way (see, for example, Chapter 9 and the difficulties the consul Cn. Papirius Carbo would encounter as a result of his hesitation to elect a suffect upon the death of his colleague in 84). Finally, Mouritsen argues that the real purpose of the law was not to prevent uprising in Etruria and Umbria, but to guarantee the loyalty of others whose vacillation was depriving Rome of vital manpower (see below). This last point is far more convincing than the others, but it still presents a final problem. Mouritsen argues that once the lex Julia was passed, those who were wavering promptly affirmed their commitment to Rome with gusto, tipping the manpower odds in Rome’s favor. However, if the passage of lex Julia was in the summer of 90, and the law was designed to address manpower concerns, it does not seem to have done so in the fall, as not only Appian (whose account Mouritsen frequently discards) but also the Periochae seem to indicate. Due to these problems, Mouritsen’s reasoning concerning the lex Julia and the timing of its passage ultimately fails to persuade completely, and is therefore not followed here.

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Maximus, 6.3.3c). If, has been suggested above, it was indeed the strategy of the Allies to wear the Romans down by means of tenacious fighting and count on Roman weaknesses to bring them to terms, signs such as those just described point to the fact that it might well have been working. As the end of 90 approached, then, the Senate must have contemplated the sobering fact that Rome’s armies not fared at all well in the year, and that unless they did better in the very near future, the Allies might continue to inflict such horrible casualties on them in the year to come that the patres might be compelled by popular pressure to sue for peace. It would therefore be incumbent on the Romans to ascertain why they had met with such reverses and to take steps to reverse the trend. An analysis of their performance would probably have led to the conclusion that some of their troubles came from matters beyond their control, but at least one of their possible weaknesses was within Roman power to correct. What that weakness was, and what the Romans did to diminish it, will be the next topic of survey.

5. ROMAN VULNERABILITIES AND THE STEPS TAKEN TO CORRECT THEM

It is, perhaps, somewhat remarkable that the state whose legions had conquered a good portion of all it surveyed would have such trouble in battlefields that were essentially in its own backyard throughout the year 90. Given that these failures may at first glance appear unusual, it might be worth asking why had the Romans done so poorly. In part, reasons for it might lay in the very debilities which (it has been suggested) the Allies thought that Rome might have. First among these was the fact that, in contrast to Rome’s opponents in previous wars, the men at whom the Romans now found themselves casting pila could not be overawed by the experience, training, discipline, and the inherent Romanitas of their antagonists. Rather, the Allies against whom the Commonwealth now fought had the exact same training, experience, and discipline as the Romans did. In light of the ways Romans could evade service and the severity of penalties for military infractions, the socii very likely had had even more of this training, experience, and discipline that the Romans themselves did. Nor should it be forgotten that the Romans were invading what was essentially the territory of the enemy, territory which in

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many case may have been quite unknown to them. This element of the war is, perhaps, not always appreciated; because by 90 BCE the Romans essentually held sway over almost all of Italy, it may simply be intuited that they were familiar with the entirety of “their” peninsula. Yet that does not seem to have been the case, and it stands to reason that, no matter how extensive Roman power over and involvement in Italy may have been, they would not be as familiar with the land they had taken by conquest as those who, while beaten, nevertheless still actually resided in “Roman” territory. The battles fought against the Romans during the year 90 were often waged by those very Allies who had spent their whole lives in the area where these actions took place, and the superior knowledge of geography on the part of those native to it seems to have proved crucial in many of these engagements. By way of illustration, Marius Egnatius in his defeat of Caesar, Scato in his ambush of Rutilius, Lucilius in his outmaneuvering of Sulla, and Silo in his deception of Caepio were all apparently helped by knowing and making use of the terrain. In addition, the Italians seemed to have been helped by the lack of quality of the Roman commanders. P. Crassus, for example, had made an exceptionally poor choice of encampment at Grumentum, one which had left the avenue open for the employment of a stratagem by the enemy which had almost destroyed his army. Likewise, L. Caesar’s blunder in the defile in Samnium suggests poor reconnaissance, although perhaps the commander had been too ill to order the necessary scouting; Sulla’s suggest the same thing, though apparently without the excuse of illness. Scipio and Acilius seem to have been sadly lacking in all aspects of command ability at Aesernia; Rutilius was apparently paranoiac and rash before the Tolenus; and Caepio was either tragically naïve, disastrously arrogant, or uncommonly stupid enough to fall for Silo’s trickery at Amiternum. Against such men were ranged commanders who seemed to have a talent for ambush and guile and whose bravery would be lauded; see, for example, the assessment made by Diodorus of Marcus Lamponius (37.23.1), along with Appian’s assessment of Vidacilius (1.6.48) and Cluentius (1.6.50) from later in the war. This acknowledged, it is to be observed that, beyond these traits, the Italian commanders were otherwise presented as merely adequate and not particularly brilliant. This would in turn suggest that the captains who had so

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beaten the Romans in 90 had been men of valor but not, it seems, men of genius, with strategic capacities reaching little more than simple competence. Competence, however, seemed to have been sufficient; in other words, while it does not seem that there was a new Hannibal risen amongst the Allies, their generals apparently had had talent enough to capitalize on Roman blunders, of which the year 90 BCE had presented several. In the first full year of the war, then, the Romans could not “outsoldier” their former Allies, nor apparently could they “outgeneral” them, and were compelled to fight in areas where the enemy knew the lay of the land better than they did. Yet all of those deficiencies, even in combination, had at some point or another beset the Romans in earlier wars in which they acquitted themselves much better than they had in year 90. On those earlier occasions, the Romans had always had one major advantage which offset the imbalance in those times when the enemy had better knowledge of the ground, one which helped compensate for those rare occasions when the enemy held superiority in quality of soldier and the slightly less rare circumstances when the enemy had superior commanders. That advantage was weight of numbers, and it was one which the Romans in theory should have been able to exploit to the fullest after regaining consciousness following the initial stunning blows of 91. Even if it is to be allowed that the peoples who had joined in the secessio may have supplied some of the best soldiery of the “Roman” army, they did not provide the majority of it, and indications are that the manpower resources left to the Commonwealth ought to have been ample enough to guarantee a sizeable battlefield disparity in favor of the Romans. However, the indications of the sources are that such was not the case. Indeed, Appian asserts that the numbers fielded by Romans and Italians were equal (Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν ἴσον αὐτοῖς ἀντεξέπεμπον; 1.5.39). Significantly, by the end of 90 the Romans had begun to behave in such a way as to suggest a shortage of men.90 As seen above, freedmen were enrolled in the army (Per. 74,

90 In fact, the Allies apparently experienced a similar shortage, as evidenced by their willingness to co-opt slaves and even surrendered

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Appian 1.6.49), and the testimony of Dio (frg. 100) suggests that in the next year, newly-minted consul L. Porcius Cato was forced to make war with superannuates and other men unfit to serve, about which more will be discussed in the following chapter. As will be noted there, the standard interpretation of this fragment of Dio’s is that it pertains to men under Cato’s command in 89, as opposed to those with whom he defeated the Etruscans in 90. Unless these second-rate soldiers were men whom Cato brought with him as supplementa upon taking the field in 89, then it is likely that these also were the men who had fought in 90 under the command of Cato’s predecessor Marius, of whom Cato assumed command as consul. If so, the flaws described by Dio might further explain the difficulties Marius had had with the men during the maneuvers leading to the Battle of the Vineyards.91 soldiers (see above) into their ranks; however, this was to be expected from what ought to have been a numerically inferior side. 91 Of course, it must be noted that Dio himself gives nothing of the context into which his narrative of the troubles that Cato had with soldiers under his command could be placed. In that fragment, Cato is saddled with suboptimal troops who even engage in a small mutiny, which Dio adduces as evidence of their their lack of combat-readiness. Cato is not referred to as Consul, nor is anything said about the season other than that the ground was wet, so it may be that Dio is mentioning an episode from the Etruscan expedition. Still, a fragment of Sisenna mentions a mutiny of soldiers under a name similar to that of the man held responsible for it in the section of Dio mentioned above (Γάιος Τίτιος in Dio; C. Titinnius in Sisenna). Since this fragment comes from Book IV, and since Sisenna’s book IV is held to narrate the year 89 (see Haug, p. 215, who asserts that book IV stretched from Autumn of 90 to Autumn of 89), then the spring of 89 is generall accepted by modern scholars as the time in which this episode occurred. Of course, because Autumn of 90 is held to be covered by Sisenna’s Book IV, it is not impossible that the both authors describe a mutiny occurring in late 90. Nevertheless, this essay follows the typical ordering of things and places the uprising in 89, and thus occurring with Cato commanding the (former) troops of Marius; it is treated as such, and more extensively at that, in the next chapter. Besides, even if Dio refers to events from the Etruscan campaign, it does not detract from the ultimate point that the Romans were forced to make use of soldiers that were lacking in firmness and overall excellence in 90.

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These sources all lead to the conclusion that in the year 90 the Romans had apparently begun to suffer from a want for soldiers, and were forced because of it make use of the infirm or the otherwise deficient. Yet why they would have come to this paucity of milites is a bit of a puzzle. Of course, the Romans would obviously lack the services of the twelve peoples who had seceded. Moreover, the Etruscans and Umbrians eventually joined the uprising, and the relative lateness of the hour for when they did so suggests that the matter was being debated amongst the Etruscan and Umbrian communities for some time before this move was ultimately taken by those parts which did revolt. Such circumstances make it probable that even those who ultimately did not join the other socii probably still did not furnish their contingents to Rome until after they had made up their minds. On top of this, many of the other Allies who did show up had had their effectiveness diminished by craft, such as the Numidian horse whose wavering loyalty had caused Caesar to send them home (as described above). Finally, there had been the revolt in the Transalpine, which had either required more men to be sent or had kept the legions already in Gaul from being used against the Allies (see above). Indeed, these Gauls seemed to have been sympathetic to the Allied cause enough to send reinforcements later used by Lucius Cluentius against Sulla in the following year (Appian 1.6.50, about which more in the next chapter). Thus, the Romans appeared to have lost the full use of several of those Allies who were not actually fighting them, and suffered the constraints which resulted from it. But even accounting for all of these diminutions, matters should not have come to such a pass that the Romans would be so desperate for men as the steps they took that were mentioned above might indicate. After all, a number of the Allies still clung to them, and their men and were apparently entirely at Rome’s Indeed, if Dio and Sisenna refer to troubles the future consul had with his men in 90, it simply means that both Cato in Etruria and Marius approaching Sora alike had men of poor quality under their commands in 90, as opposed to the same men commanded first by the one, and then by the other.

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disposal. Among these were apparently the Cisalpine Gauls, as can be derived from the success enjoyed by Q. Sertorius recruiting men and requisitioning weapons for the Roman effort among them (Sallust, Hist. 1. 77/1. 88; Plutarch, Sert. 4). More importantly, it also seems—at least at first glance—that Rome still enjoyed the aid of the Latins. According to estimates given by various scholars,92 the Latins ultimately supplied something along the lines of a fifth to even a third of the combined Roman-Italian army, and with their According to Brunt (1971, p. 3–91), due to various factors which he describes in greater detail than needs mention here, the population as reflected by the census data available for the year 225 was not substantially lower for any Italian people (Romans included) than what would have been the case in 91. In that year, the Latins had numbered about 134,000, as compared to Rome’s available manpower of around 300,000 and the 320,000 available to the other Allies (see specifically the table on p. 54 of Brunt’s text). Moreover (he argues), it is quite likely that the Allies would have had good reasons for misrepresenting the number of men they could field, claiming far fewer than the numbers of which they were capable. Assuming Brunt’s thesis is correct and these various peoples could field the same basic percentage of manpower from their several populations in 91 as they could in 225, the Latins would have been able to field about half as many men as the Romans could to a “Roman” army, with the rest of the Allies able collectively to contribute about the same number as the Romans themselves. However, Mouritsen (1998, p. 158) claims that the various changes in Italy between 225 and 91 would have been far more deleterious to the other Allies than to the Romans and Latins, leading to “substantial emigration to Roman and Latin areas” (but see Chapter 2 and 3 for Rome’s response to that migration). Moreover, the same scholar notes that “income from the empire and territorial expansion in Italy and Gallia Cisalpina in the second century would have allowed for a greater growth in the Roman population. In short, the demographic changes since 225 were all in favour of Rome and the Latins”. Thus, it might very well be that the numerical odds of 4.5 to 3 against the Alliance might be scaled even further in Rome’s favor, and that the Latins had in turn increased their fecundity and their contributions to Rome such that the disparity between Romans and Latins may have drifted to less than two to one (p. 161). If this was so, the Latin contribution to the “Roman” army had perhaps reached as high as thirty percent of it by the outbreak at Asculum, consistent with the figures from Ilari which Mouritsen quotes on page 44. 92

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help the Romans ought to have had half again as many men as the Allies, and nearly double the numbers of the Italians before the revolt of Etruria and Umbria added to the insurgency. The Allies had achieved some stunning successes, to be certain, but it is doubtful that they managed to kill twice as many Romans/Latins in every engagement they fought, victory or loss. It was far more probably the case that, with perhaps the exceptions of the second assault on Aesernia, the Battle of the Tolenus, and the ambush of Caepio at Amiternum, all of the Allied victories had probably seen a comparable number of men killed and wounded between the two armies, and their losses likewise. Hence, unless every battle was a bloodbath which resulted in fearsome Roman losses relative to the Italians, as was probably not the case, with the manpower still available to them the former ought to have been able both to meet the latter on the field with superior numbers and to have done so with little difficulty.93 Nevertheless, the fact persists that the sources seem to suggest quite the opposite. This means either that some unmentioned external factor was diminishing Roman numbers, or that there is an error about some of the propositions mentioned above which, absent such an error, would seem to guarantee a Roman surfeit of men. It is possible that such an erroneous assumption may involve one source of manpower held to be available to the Romans which, more than any other, would have served to furnish their numerical superiority over the Allies. That source is the Latins, and a correction of such a mistake involving them might very well provide the solution to the difficulty of Rome’s apparent poverty of soldiers. According to most modern accounts, the Latins remained faithful to their compacts with Rome while the rest of the Allies went to war.94 Yet this attitude of theirs is strange in light of the fact that throughout the second century it had been the Latins who had most often demonstrated to acquire the civitas. It had been the Latins who in 187 and 177 had specifically asked for Roman help in getting their men back because so many of them had Indeed, Salmon also noticed this very fact (1967, p. 344–345). A sampling would include Haug (p. 110 note 6; p. 211); Brunt (1988, p. 102), Keaveney (1987, p. 119), and Salmon (loc. cit.). 93 94

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migrated to the city and attempted to assume that citizenship illegally that it imperiled their ability to meet their quota of soldiers. It had also been the Latins who had had led the revolt against the Romans at Fragellae to gain the franchise by arms; and it had even been the Latins who had conspired to murder the consuls during their festival on the Alban Mount in frustration for the failure of the franchise bill of Drusus (de vir. ill. 66; see previous chapter). If any people would have seemed to have been the logical choice to have fought Rome to gain the coveted franchise, it would have been the Latins above all. Nevertheless, the Latins were conspicuously loyal, or so many modern scholars assert. Their explanation for this loyalty rests in part on the fact that Latin upper classes could become citizens through the ius civitatis per magistratum adipiscendae, whereby their magistrates could become Roman citizenship ex officio. This right, it is held, had existed since the time of the Gracchi, and it kept the élites connected to Rome; apparently, as the élites went, so went everyone else in the Latin communities.95 Even so, among the ancient sources only the Periochae specifically mentions that the Latins sent help to the Roman people (Per. 72). Appian refers to help rendered to Rome by “other people of Italy allied to them” (Ῥωμαῖοι … ἀντεξέπεμπον ἀπό τε σφῶν αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἔτι συμμαχούντων σφίσιν ἐ νῶν τῆς Ἰταλίας, 1.5.39) but does not single out the Latins.96 No other source does, either, and even the reference in the Periochae about “help from the Latins… sent to the Roman people” (Auxilia … Latini nominis et … missa populo R[omano]) could be explained away by assuming that such help came from Latins who were merely defending their own cities without calling for Roman help, such as at Alba, Firmum, and Aesernia. Moreover, there is the fact that at least one Latin colony, Venusia, definitely went over to the other side (see above), and there is the notice in Florus (2.6.5–2.6.6) which mentions “all of So Sherwin-White, p. 111–112; 215–216; Keaveney (loc. cit.) mentions that it paid “handsome dividends” in the Allied War. For more on this right, see Chapter 3 and Appendix D, where the objections of Mouritsen (1998, p. 100–108) are noted. 96 As Mouritsen (1998, p. 163) observes, “In the entire first book of Appian’s Civil Wars the Latins are mentioned only twice—in connection with C. Gracchus’ citizenship bill.” 95

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Latium” in revolt, and names a general, Afranius, who led the “Latins” against the Romans.97 It is generally agred upon by modern scholars that Florus is mistaken in this statement. Even if he is, it nevertheless remains true that while the Latins are notable in their absence from the Alliance, they do not stand out in their support of the Romans. This is still more strange in light of the fact that other Allies who helped Rome—such as the Mauretanians, as well as the abovementioned Gauls and Numidians—do find mention in sources (see, for example, Appian 1.5.42; Sisenna, fragments 29 and 71). It might very well be that this lack of mention is merely a vagary of transmission, and that the Latins and the other unmentioned but still loyal socii sent their contingents just as before the war erupted. Likewise, it could also be coincidental that the Romans just happened to fare badly in the war in 90 only to recover in 89 (as shall be seen), after the passage of the lex Julia. This was a law which, again, enfranchised all the Allies which had not taken up arms or had laid them down again swiftly, a law specifically designed to “make more friendly those who were already friendly [and] stabilize those who were in doubt”, and one which was passed due to the Senate’s fear, as Appian specifically states, that the Romans be surrounded on all sides (δείσασα οὖν ἡ ουλ , μὴ ἐν κύκλῳ γενόμενος αὐτοῖς ὁ πόλεμος ἀφύλακτος ᾖ; 1.6.49). Nevertheless, that the Romans started making substantial battlefield gains in 89 after such a law was enacted the year before may be post hoc, but not necessarily propter hoc. On the other hand, it may be that another explanation exists, which is that the Latins were not as loyal as has been represented in the modern scholarship. Of course, no Latin city is mentioned as having gone over to the Allies with the exception of the abovementioned Venusia, and even that is usually explained away by the excessive “Oscanization” of that community.98 On the other hand, the distance of Venusia from Rome might provide an equally compelling elucidation for why they joined the Alliance: Venusia could fight with the other Italians in arms because the Venusians 97 98

omne Latium … consurgerent (2.6.5–2.6.6). So Salmon 1958, p. 167.

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both wanted the citizenship and were close enough to the other Allies that they could give their support without fear of Roman reprisal, which may not have been an option the other Latin towns enjoyed. It may be that the other Latins might have done the same thing if they shared Venusia’s position. Yet even if they could not or would not actually join the other insurgents, one thing the Latins might have done is hold aloof from the struggle, neither fighting nor contributing their soldiers.99 If this was what occurred, it is not hard to see why the Latins would have chosen this route: in so doing they would attempt to use the Roman need for their manpower to blackmail the Romans into giving them the franchise, since without Latin soldiery the Romans could not attain a substantial numerical superiority over the Allies. Roman numbers would therefore be drastically diminished, which accords well with the desperation for men that the accounts of the first year of the war seem to indicate.100 The

Sherwin-White hints at this, but does not explicitly state that the Latins withheld their support; p. 149. 100 This is the theory of Mouritsen (1998, p. 151–166), which is attractive in spite of the fact that, in his interpretation, the deliberate inactivity of the Latins was not due to calculation on their part as much as to a dissimilarity of interests between them and the other Italians. As Mouritsen would have it (and consistently argues throughout his work), the other Allies wanted independendence, in which the Latins were not interested. Indeed, he even cites the inactivity of the Latins as evidence that the other socii wanted a separation, and specifically a separation which was possibly to be based on the destruction of Rome. According to his construction, the Alliance wanted to overthrow and wipe out the Commonwealth, something to which the Latins would not acquiesce due to their “cultural and historical link” to the Romans. Of course, this affinity did not deter the Romans on their end from razing Latin Fragellae to the ground some thirty-five years before, but Mouritsen would have it that it was potent enough to cause the Latins to stand apart from the other socii. As a consequence, they did not take part in the Allied scheme. Instead, they would let the Romans fight the Italians on their own until the former became so desperate for Latin numbers that they would grant the citizenship to the Latins to get them. Apparently, then, the Latins were willing to risk Rome’s destruction at Allied hands but not to take 99

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part in it, hoping that the latter would come to its senses and extend the civitas to the Latins before it was doomed. In this way, Mouritsen neatly solves the apparent problem (mentioned in the text above) of why the Latins would not join the uprising if all the socii concerned wanted the citizenship, since the Latins seemed to have wanted it the most. Accoding to his argument, the Latins did want it, but the other Allies did not, hence the Latin absence from the Alliance. Such a solution, however, is not the only one which could un-knot this particular dilemma. An alternative to it readily suggests itself, one which preserves the Allied quest for the citizenship which has so much support in the sources, but at the same time attributes the same desire for the franchise amongst both the Allies and the Latins in spite of the latter’s lack of battlefield appearance alongside the others to fight for it. This solution is one based on simple self-interest and conservation of effort. In the first place, for reasons narrated in the text above, it may be safely assumed that the Latins wanted the citizenship as much as the other Allies, and quite probably wanted it even more than the others did. They were also probably just as willing to fight for it, but if they could get what they wanted by not fighting, this would be a better outcome still. Such an outcome could be accomplished by simply holding out from the Romans, since essentially the Latins had nothing to lose by doing so. In the first place, the Latins doubtless foresaw the possibility that events would unfold as they eventually did, and could therefore bide their time until the Romans would be willing to buy their help by the citizenship. In the meantime, they would defend their cities from invasion by the other Italians, but do nothing more. The Romans would have too much on their hands to attempt to force the Latins to send the contingents they would be withholding, and even if they made such an attempt, the Latins could always threaten to defect to the enemy, a situation Rome clearly could not afford. Admittedly, there was always the possibility that the Romans would fare better than they actually ended up doing and would therefore never place the call for Latin help to be given at the price of the ciizenship. However, should the Romans have gained the upper hand before seeing the wisdom of granting the civitas, the Latins retained the option of joining the Alliance late, and it is probable that the Alliance would probably have welcomed them in spite of their earlier stance. With Latin help the balance of numbers would then lie in favor of the Allies, and would probably lead to Roman capitulation to Italian demands. This route would be more costly in terms of men, but if it came down to this extremity, the Latins would still get what they wanted. The Latins probably knew that they would have to fight eventually, either for Rome

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Latins might easily have guessed that which had dawned on both the Romans and the Allies by the winter of 91, which was that the war would be protracted and bloody. If they could get their wish for the citizenship—one which they had repeatedly expressed, as demonstrated above—but could get it either without having to expose themselves to the perils of such combat, or by limiting that exposure, such a policy would immediately become the obvious path of action. Nor need this policy have originated with the élite of the Latin communities, who might very well have been too content with the privileges they got from the Romans to risk them with this kind of defiance.101 If that were the case, the lower classes—who were subjected to the demands of Rome without this potential for reward—might have simply refused to muster, and they might even have spoken of joining the Alliance without their upper classes.102 Such muttering, coupled with the defection of the Etruscans and Umbrians, may in turn have led or at least contributed to the sort of anxiety about a multiplication of enemies and encirclement described which is described in Appian (loc. cit.), and might further have led to the passage of the legislation which ultimately brought about the full cooperation of the Latins. Once put into the field fighting for Rome, such men and their numbers might well have made an immediate difference in the tide of battle, and their appearance may, perhaps, go a long way towards explaining Rome’s reversal of fortune in 89.

as Roman citizens against the Allies, or as members of the Alliance against the Romans to get the franchise. However, by keeping aloof from the war for as long as they could, the Latins could save their men until they could be most usefully applied to further their cause. The indications of Rome’s manpower shortfalls can easily be read to provide testimony that the Latins did exactly that. 101 See earlier note. 102 Indeed, there is the remote chance that they had actually done so: while (as mentioned above) it is commonly assumed that Florus is simply wrong in the oft-cited passage of 2.6.6, a few Latins may actually have decided to serve with the Alliance under the mysterious Afranius. Such service, however, is at the very least extremely unlikely, and is as such not considered to have occurred by this essay.

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6. THE DOWNHILL SLOPE FROM THE SUMMIT: THE END OF 90 AND THE BEGINNING OF 89 By the end of 90 the Allies had met the Romans in open battle and had traded blows with them to their advantage: against an opponent that had matched the Romans in ability, manpower, and leadership, neither Roman muscle nor Roman tactics had made much headway. As far as the Romans were concerned, it was now clearly time for a new strategy, and one was presently adopted. This strategy—one which very well might have brought ultimate victory to the Romans in the war—did not take the form of a battlefield maneuver, but rather of a legal one. By means of it, the Romans were finally able to overwhelm their antagonists to such an extent that a peace could be found. This legal maneuver was the passage of the lex Julia. The timing and the purpose of this law has been alluded to above, but its exact shape will be described in the next chapter. So, too, will be described its consequences, ones which brought the Allies to their knees but which would ultimately cause them to rise to their feet again in the future.

CHAPTER 6: IMPERFECT DEFEAT AND INCOMPLETE VICTORY, 89–88 1. THE LEX JULIA The experience of L. Julius Caesar commanding the southern theater of Rome’s effort against its disaffected Allies in the year 90 was in a sense one shared by many of the Commonwealth’s commanders in that year: defeated several times,1 he had nevertheless managed to salvage something of his campaign with a victory late in the warmaking season.2 As winter of that turbulent year approached, Caesar’s area of oversight had apparently become quiet. This stillness was apparently enough that the consul developed sufficient confidence in the theater’s stability to risk leaving his command in front of Acerrae in the hands of a legate, quite probably L. Cornelius Sulla, while he himself went back to Rome to hold the consular elections.3 This was probably the first time that Caesar had been able to return to the city since taking the field. If this was in fact the case, it is very unlikely that he had had an opportunity to propose any laws during his tenure as consul up to this point, in light of the military responsibilities that kept him from Rome. The occasion of presiding over the comitia, however, apparently gave Caesar such an opportunity, and with what seems

1 Including one absolute catastrophe in the mountains of Samnium, as has been seen; see previous chapter. 2 Specifically, that at Acerrae; see previous chapter. 3 For the chronology of the passage of the lex Julia, see, again, previous chapter, as well as Appendix L.

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to have been the approval of the Senate (Appian 1.6.49; Per. 80),4 he availed himself of it to offer a groundbreaking piece of legislation, the lex Julia. Information about this law is fairly sparse, and certainly scholarly opinions on its contents are far from unified.5 Still, a few of its provisions are fairly well-attested in the ancient sources and generally agreed upon by the modern scholarship which is built upon them. First and foremost, this law almost certainly gave the citizenship to the Latins, as Aulus Gellius and Cicero explicitly state.6 Furthermore, it seems that the law also gave the citizenship to other Allies, as Cicero also explicitly mentions in the same place where he discusses the bequest to the Latins: Iulia, qua lege civitas est sociis et Latinis data (pro Balbo 21; emphasis added). Who specifically these other Allies were is not described by Cicero in this passage, although if it is to be assumed that he is accurate in his report (and there is no evidence to the contrary), then it is likely that the lex Julia can be connected to a law referred to but not named in both Velleius Paterculus (2.16.4) and Appian (loc. cit.), one stated by each to have given the citizenship to some of the Allies.7 4 There is a broad agreement that the lex Julia is the unnamed law mentioned in Appian, about which more directly (see also Appendix L). As for the approval of the Senate, Appian’s evidence is supported by the Periochae of Book 80 of Livy, or at the very least is not overturned out by what is found there; more on this point will follow. 5 See, again, Appendix L for a further discussion of some of the provisions of this law. 6 Gellius: civitas universo Latio lege Iulia data est (4.4.3); Cicero: Iulia, qua lege civitas est sociis et Latinis data (Pro Balbo 21). As for reasons why the Latins would have been so enfranchised, see previous chapter. 7 Furthermore, Appian explicitly states that this bequest was made around the time that the Etruscans and Umbrians revolted, which is known from the Periochae to have occurred in 90 (74); hence, Appian almost certainly refers to the Lex Julia. As far as Velleius is concerned, the objection could be raised that he is not necessarily referring to one individual law, but to a process, since he claims that by means of enfranchisement the Romans regained their strength not all at once, but “little by little” (Paulatim deinde recipiendo in civitatem, qui arma aut non ceperant aut deposuerant maturius, vires refectae sunt; loc. cit.). Yet the lex Julia would certainly have been part of that process, perhaps supplementing the lex

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If that is the case—if, in other words, the lex Julia named in Gellius and Cicero as having enfranchised some of the allies is identical to an unnamed law referenced in both Appian and Velleius as having done the same thing—then further provisions of the law can be found in the sources. According to the accounts of the aforementioned Appian and Velleius, this law gave the citizenship, not to all the Allies, but only to those who were not actively in arms against Rome at the time of its passage, either because they had never joined the uprising, or because they had but had already withdrawn from it. It is not impossible that this latter provision was likely added on behalf of the Etruscans and Umbrians, who fit precisely the description of Allies who were once in uprising but were in it no longer by the passage of the law in the late fall of 90 (for which see previous chapter). With the use of this testimony from Appian and Velleius to fill in some of the details, then, the socii who Cicero mentions as having been eligible for enfranchisement alongside the Latins become easier to identify. Attention can then be returned to Cicero’s aforementioned oration for a few further aspects of the Julian law which it appears to illustrate. One of these was that the citizenship it offered was to be accepted on a voluntary basis: those peoples who did not approve the measure would not be made citizens against their will and have their own sovereignty violated. This seems to have been a serious concern for Heraclea and Naples, as Cicero directly indicates.8 Another article of the law was that it was to affect entire communities, as can be inferred from Cicero’s use of populi to describe those by whom approval was needed within the communities to whom the franchise was

Calpurnia (see below and Appendix L), so the proviso that the civitas was only extended to those who remained loyal or whose dalliance with disloyalty had been brief can with confidence be claimed to have been part of all the laws which contributed to it. 8 Cicero, loc. cit. The full text of the passage is: ipsa denique Iulia, qua lege civitas est sociis et Latinis data, qui fundi populi facti non essent civitatem non haberent. in quo magna contentio Heracliensium et Neapolitanorum fuit, cum magna pars in iis civitatibus foederis sui libertatem civitati anteferret (emphasis added).

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extended.9 The use of universo in the description of the breadth of the law’s application in Gellius likewise attests to this feature (4.4.3). Finally, Cicero seems to indicate that only Allies from Italy were being offered the franchise. Although the orator does not declare this in so many words, nor mention any restrictions on the places where these other socii who might benefit from the lex Julia could live, the only communities besides those of the Latins which he does name are Neapolis and Heraclea, as has been seen. This, too, accords well with what is stated both in Appian and the Periochae, who also note that only Italian nations were given the citizenship by this law. Why it is exactly that L. Caesar decided to introduce this statute cannot be known, although it is likely that the recent eruptions in Etruria and Umbria helped prompt the decision, as Appian suggests (loc. cit.). Furthermore, if there were any threats of a similar eruption amongst the Latins, these threats would also undoubtably have been extremely influential. Certainly at the time in which it was being drafted and debated the Roman military machine was taxed to the breaking point: in addition to the legions in the Transalpine and those in winter quarters at Acerrae, in the Liris/Tolenus valleys, and investing Asculum, there were others which were in November of 90 probably just returning from Etruria with Cato, escorting the commander who was attempting to win the consulate through the victory he had latterly won, or perhaps still in the field with conducting mop-up operations under Plotius in Umbria. Whether the Latins were making noise about defecting or not, if they had indeed withheld their men from the army in 90, as chapter 5 suggests, then the Romans would likely have been most anxious to have these. If the Latins had not done so, then the Romans were in their overextended condition even 9 A similar use of the word populus is found in the Periocha of Livy’s book 80: Italicis populis a senatu civitas data est. Use of this passage as evidence for the terms of the lex Julia is, however, problematic; it appears in the context of the Samnites and Lucani finally being given the citizenship in 87, and the mechanism by which civitas data est is not mentioned. It is also extremely vague about who these Italicis populis were. Therefore, while this may be an aside, in which a law passed in 90 was brought up in the book covering the year 87, no certainty may be had.

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with Latin help. Either way, the Commonwealth could not afford to let what one scholar refers to as the “horrid prospect of further serious defection” come to pass,10 and the wisdom and even necessity of preventing this through the grant of the citizenship must now have become patent. As it happened, Roman commanders already seem to have had the power to bestow the citizenship on individual soldiers even before the lex Julia, if a fragment of Sisenna is to be believed. According to the notice described by this fragment (frg. 120), a lex Calpurnia allowed certain combatants to be given the civitas.11 This law may have been employed—it may even have been designed— to grant the franchise to any Italians who may have been serving in the legions overseas and chose to adhere to the standards,12 and may also have been the law which granted the authority by which Caesar had been authorized to make his offer to the Cretan that is related by Diodorus Siculus (37.18).13 Perhaps the consul had

Keaveney 1987, p. 171. See Appendix L. 12 As mentioned in Chapter 4, Brunt (1971, p. 435) is probably correct in his claim that a few legions were serving overseas at the outbreak of the Allied War, even if his figure of six of these may be an overestimate. 13 So Gabba (1976, p. 91), Brunt (loc. cit.) and Keaveney (1987, p. 170). Of course, there is no indication that the Cretan in question was a miles, the only sort of person who Sisenna’s fragment suggests was eligible for the citizenship under the lex Calpurnia. This problem can be overcome with no great difficulty by assuming that the lex Calpurnia may have authorized the grant of citizenship to anyone who had done Rome a good turn, and that miles were the only ones who happened to be mentioned by Sisenna. Even if the lex Calpurnia was meant only for soldiers, Caesar could probably have accepted the Cretan into the colors easily enough and then granted him civitas, had the Cretan chosen that option. The objection could be raised that Caesar actually had no authority and was simply acting as Marius had done, allowing the clash of arms to drown out the voice of the law, although the presence of such an enabling law as the lex Calpurnia makes such a stance improbable. Thus, the theories of the scholars cited above are probably the correct ones, and Caesar had almost certainly extended his offer based on the legal authority given to him as a general by that lex. 10 11

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found that interview with the Cretan inspirational:14 as the story goes, in exchange for some favor to the consul the Cretan had been offered citizenship, which he laughingly refused—he wanted coin instead—with the suggestion that Caesar would do far better to make his offer to his enemies, since they were fighting for that very thing. In light of the current lengths to which Roman manpower had been pulled, Caesar may have figured that the cause might be helped better by a law which could enfranchise entire peoples as opposed to giving the civitas to individuals one at a time. For whatever the reason, sometime after his return to Rome Caesar proposed his law. In so doing, he tendered that which earlier had only been offered to individuals in return for signal displays of loyalty to entire communities of Italians so that they might persist in allegiance. At the same time, he apparently made sure to incorporate the provisions of the lex Calpurnia into his new law so that it would continue to allow commanders to advance the franchise singulatim to those not otherwise qualified for the grant given to communities. This would have been important, because the Romans would have needed to retain ways to reward those who had rendered signal aid to Rome but were not included in the bequest en masse, such as soldiers from non-Italian Allies. Indeed, Pompeius Strabo seems to have made use of the lex Julia for exactly this purpose, as an inscription recording his grant of the franchise to some Spanish cavalrymen indicates (ILS 8888). Likewise, individual enfranchisement would enable commanders to reward persons who had come from communities that had joined the Alliance, but who had themselves defied their neighbors and persisted in supporting the Romans.15 It might also allow for the See chapter five and notes for more on this offer. So Keaveney, loc. cit.; also p. 178 note 26. In this note he speculates that it may very well have been that Minatius Magius, the ancestor of Velleius Paterculus whose acquisition of the citizenship is emphasized by his descendant (2.16.3), was enfranchised by the lex Julia, although the fact that Magius associated himself with commanders in the Southern theater who did not have consular or even praetorian imperium leads to the question of who would have given him this privilege. Perhaps Pompeius went out of his way to award the man before the passage of later franchise laws made such a viritane award unnecessary (more below). Such a 14 15

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enfranchisement of those who themselves wished for the civitas but came from cities to whom that commodity offered but had been rejected. Since, as has been seen, the lex Julia had the approval of the Senate, it seems that the Council had accepted the idea that the citizenship be given to some of the Italian states, although not the ones still under arms. This represented a partial alteration in its stance on such mass enfranchisement maintained hitherto (see chapter 4), but it can be doubted whether the Senate’s overall attitude towards that enfranchisement had changed drastically. As has been argued earlier, the main objections to mass enrollment on the scale before the lex Julia had likely involved the effects it could be foreseen as having on Rome’s military, economic, and political landscape. The potential repercussions on the first two must now have appeared acceptable enough to allow (admittedly limited) enfranchisement to occur. To the Senate’s thinking, a future in which soldiers of Latin, Etruscan, and Umbrian origins would have the be given the same respect and consideration as Romans might have been easier to swallow than the alternative of prolonging or even losing the current war without them. Furthermore, footing the bill for future use of one-time Allied soldiery would possibly be less devastating for the aerarium than more years like 90 had been. Nevertheless, even in this extremity in which the Commonwealth had drifted, it seems that the latter point—the potential impact on Rome’s political machinery—continued to prove troublesome. As Appian himself observes, the Romans and their governing body continued to be very aware that the new citizens about to be created would be numerous, and that in theory their votes might be overwhelming at the comitia (loc. cit.). This was plainly still not acceptable to the patres, and a way was therefore apparently sought whereby the Italians could be given the citizenship to fulfill strategic aims, but given it in such a way whereby the intolerable consequence that their voting rights would be equal to that of the old Romans could be avoided. citation would be of a special type, which the notice in Velleius indicates was the sort given to Magius (cuius [Minutius Magius] illi pietati plenam populus Romanus gratiam rettulit ipsum viritim civitate donando).

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Such a solution seems eventually to have been found. As per another provision of the lex Julia, upon their admission to the civitas the new citizens would not be mixed into the thirty-five existing voting tribes, but would instead be restricted to voting in special tribes set aside for them. That this made its way into Caesar’s law is attested by Appian (1.6.49) and Velleius Paterculus (2.20.2). These sources agree only so far, however: in terms of the fine points, these two—and Sisenna (fragment 17), who also seems to provide some details—diverge, particularly on how many tribes there were to be and when they were created. So also diverge the theories of the modern scholars who interpret these authorities. A veritable a minefield of varying opinions results, through which no certain path can be found. Since, however, a great deal of what occurs in the year 89 and thereafter hinges upon the various citizenship measures passed by the Romans and the restrictions on voting which those measures stipulated, some effort to make sense of them must be essayed even if such an effort depends upon a great deal of speculation. This will be attempted below. Nothing in what the sources state make it impossible that the sequence of events involving the lex Julia and the incorporation of the Italians went as follows: when Caesar proposed his law he probably did not include provisions which he knew would lead to anger on the part of those for whom he was proposing it. This would be an especial concern if his purpose was to forestall the possibility of future desertions, or calm areas where fighting had occurred in pockets but had not encompassed the entire area, conditions which may have prevailed amongst the Latins, Etruscans, and Umbrians, respectively. Therefore, if his bill even addressed the issue of incorporation at all—and, if one scholar is to be believed, “it is impossible that the lex Julia would have left vague a point as important as the position of the new citizens vis-à-vis the established body of old citizens”16—it might initially only have stated that the Italians to be enfranchised would be incorporated into the Roman state by means of new tribes created especially for them (the ancient and traditional operating procedure until 241, if

16

Gabba 1976, p. 92.

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not thereafter).17 The lex Julia did not necessarily create these tribes, nor even specify how many of them there were to be. Instead, it is possible that it merely went only so far as to enumerate that new tribes were to be created, although it is not unreasonable to suppose that it further directed that no matter what number would ultimately come into being, they would come into being two at a time, as this would continue to keep the tribes at an uneven number.18 The text of Appian admits such a conjecture: as seen above, it certainly states that by the decree of the Senate giving them the citizenship the novi were not incorporated into the existing tribes but rather parcelled out into different ones. However, Appian’s choice of vocabulary in his description of this tribal assignment is unfortunate, in that the participle used to indicate the assignment, δεκατεύοντες, derives from an unusual verb whose meaning has been debated. It has often be translated as “break into ten”, which seems to indicate that the lex Julia did in fact create tribes, and specifically created ten in all, into which the novi would be shunted. However, because the more standard usage of this verb is one in which it means “tithe”, “devote”, or “dedicate”, its presence in the text has sometimes been held to be a mistake by some scholars, while others suggest that it means nothing more than “divide” and that no specific number of tribes is therefore indicated.19 Given the purpose for the law cited above, Salmon 1958, p. 180–181. Salmon, loc. cit. 19 Among the many scholars who have rejected the conclusion that the use of δεκατεύοντες means that there were ten tribes is Nicolet (1988, p. 233–234), although his interpretation of the mechanism of the lex Julia is complex, unwieldy, and ultimately unconvincing. Another is Salmon (1958, p. 180–181; 1967, p. 361–362 and note 4), whose opinions will be discussed below, and Keaveney (1987, p. 170–171 and p. 178 note 28); the latter does so to account for the statement in Velleius Paterculus that there were not ten tribes created, but rather eight. Gabba also opts for this (1976, p. 92–95), but does so as much to accept what he believes to be the certainty in Velleius (his language is at least unambiguous) and forego the “desperate undertaking” of trying to interpret Appian than from his conviction that eight was the real number. Sherwin-White, for his part, seems content to let the matter stand as a 17 18

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and the fact that the initial reaction Appian describes as having met the lex Julia was one of happiness which only gradually turned to disappointment,20 it seems rather unlikely that an ironclad limitation of tribal assignments was included in the initial law (for reasons to be described below). Rather, it is easier to imagine that Caesar left the number of new tribes to be brought into being unspoken, with the inference that it would be in a number that would indicate parity with the old number of tribes. A fragment of Sisenna seems to record that one Calpurnius created two new tribes, a fragment from a book from that author which described events around late 90.21 It may very well be that what occasioned the creation of two new tribes was the first influx of citizens from the lex Julia, as a fairly broad scholarly consensus holds. As it would eventually be uncovered, however, the Romans actually intended nothing like parity. The number of tribes to come into being would be small indeed, and may ultimately have been as few as eight; certainly Velleius mentions that only eight ended up being created.22 What was worse still was that apparently those vexed question (p. 155, where he adds that discussion over it is “somewhat profitless”), as does Mouritsen (1998, p. 163). 20 ὅπερ ἢ λα ὸν αὐτίκα ἢ καὶ ὣς αὐτὸ ἀγαπ σάντων τῶν Ἰταλιωτῶν ὕστερον ἐπιγνωσθὲν ἑτέρας στάσεως ἦρξεν [emphasis added]; 1.6.49

It reads in full L. Calpurnius Piso ex senati consulto duas novas tribus; no verb is associated with it. See also Appendix L. 22 Salmon (1958, p. 182–184) has a different opinion. According to his construction, Velleius is in fact not referring to the creation of tribes at all, but is rather indicating that the novi cives were mixed into only eight existing tribes after the war had more-or-less ended, and even then only those novi who had taken part in the Alliance; those who had not, those who had been enfranchised by the lex Julia, had in fact been mixed into the original thirty-one rustic tribes. Further, Salmon continues, the Allies themselves had demanded that the situation end up this way, as opposed to accepting what the original Roman designs for them had been. Indeed, this was the way the Allies ultimately were incorporated into the state after the chaos of the mid-eighties was decided, during which they had accumulated a great deal of political capital and had presumably spent it in this fashion. Salmon cites as support for the conclusions epigraphical evidence which had been shown to him privately by Lily Ross Taylor, who would later publish what she found in her Voting Districts of the Roman 21

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tribes were forced to vote last in the comitia tributa; this Appian specifically mentions in the passage cited above and repeats the claim later (in 1.8.64), rendering it likely that this was not a mistake on his part but rather a deliberate assertion. That author further states that this would eventually cause a great deal of displeasure amongst the newly enfranchised, for reasons which are easy to understand: due to the way the comitia tributa operated, measures Republic (from which it would be quoted by Sherwin-White, p. 155–157). Salmon also puts forward the conclusion that the mixture of the loyal former socii into most of the original thirty-one rustic tribes and former insurgents into eight of them happened after the agitation of the mideighties; as he puts it, these arrangements “were made or completed by the radical leaders who had espoused the Italian interest after the Social War, do not seem to be malicious or partisan”. On the basis of this chain of evidence such a theory is attractive, although it runs into problems. In the first place, Velleius mentions that this voting restriction was the cause of later agitation, not the outcome of it. Salmon does not really account for this fact, save in his assertion that the Velleius was writing his work “with a maximum of haste and a minimum of space” and therefore “expressed himself imprecisely”. Moreover, there is the fact that Sisenna definitely mentions that new tribes were created, and Appian also expressly states that the Allies were divided, not into the existing thirty-five tribes (οὐκ ἐς τὰς πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα φυλάς), but rather into new tribes (ἑτέρας). Additionally, Appian is just as unequivocal in his statement that the tribes in which the former Allies were to vote had been compelled to vote last, making these tribes essentially powerless (see below). If the Allies were mixed into existing tribes from the very beginning, this would seem to condemn the votes of Romans already in that tribe to the same sort of powerlessness, and it is hard to see how they would have stood for it. Salmon seems to meet these objections with the observation that both the new tribes and the voting last was what the Roman plan for the Allies was originally to be, but that the Allies would have none of it and eventually managed to effect the distribution described above. All in all, this codicil is also fairly convincing, even though the solutions to the aforementioned difficulties which Salmon offers are not always as penetrating as could be hoped, especially in his somewhat cavalier selection of what to believe from Velleius and what not to believe. Even so, his theory will be accepted in this essay, albeit via a modification which will be found in the pages to follow.

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were passed and men were elected once a simple majority was reached, at which point further the voting on the matter ceased. Tribes which voted first thus had the greatest amount of influence, and correspondingly those which voted last had the least. In fact, since a popular measure might attain majority status early on, many of the tribes scheduled to vote last would never even get the chance to cast ballots at all.23 This placement in the voting order, coupled with the fact that the number of tribes was to be so small, meant that an arrangement the kind enacted for the novi cives would almost guarantee that, unless the other tribes were deadlocked, they would have practically no voice of any kind in the assembly which both decided the lower magistracies—and it is to be remembered that only through these could candidates become eligible for the higher ones—and which passed or rejected most of the laws.24 In light of these facts, it is puzzling that Appian would claim that these dispositions had been part of the lex Julia, all along but that they did not create an uproar when the law was first passed. He attributes this initial lack of outrage either to the fact that the peoples who obtained the franchise thereby were content with what they acquired, or that they simply did not notice the debilities that were attached to that acquisition.25 This strains credibility. What would have been more likely is that if indeed the lex Julia been equipped with such terms from the beginning, the loyal socii would have been more likely to have been insulted rather than overjoyed (the reaction Appian specifies at least for the Etruscans, who are described as ἄσμενοι at the bequest). On the other hand, it is possible that what happened instead is that they recipients were deceived through omission about what they would be getting, but when the deception was revealed to them they would express their dismay in the manner Appian records.

For a throrough discussion of the Roman voting procedure see Nicolet 1988, p. 224–289; see also Mouritsen 2001, p. 94–101, for additional emphasis on the order of voting. 24 For the lawmaking role of the comitia tributa, see Williamson, p. 20– 23, Millar (1998, p. 16–18; 150–15), and Mouritsen (2001, p. 88). 25 See earlier note. 23

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In other words, the lex Julia might well have been passed with the vague indication that the new citizens created by it would be enfolded into the citizen body through new tribes created for them. What they did not know at the time was how many tribes there were to be, but they trusted that they would come into being in numbers of tribes that their vote would not be meaningless. The tribal activity of Piso described in Sisenna was the first step in this process. In point of fact, however, the lex was not going to give the new citizens anything like effective voting power, which may have been the intention from the very beginning. The Allies did not notice this (per Appian) because they did not yet know just how few tribes were to be created for them and were therefore pleased with what they got (also per Appian). When the truth came out, their happiness turned to anger. If such an interpretation of Appian—conjectural though it certainly is—is anywhere close to describing what actually occurred, the fact remains that by the end of 90 the Romans had shored up any wavering amongst those socii which had not taken arms against them, and may have regained the devotion of those which had taken weapons only in part. This possibly brought to Rome a vast pool of manpower which had been kept from the Commonwealth throughout this year. It was, however, only to be a temporary expedient; not long after, the willingness of the Romans to give the citizenship on such terms would be extended, while that of the Allies to accept it on such terms would diminish. The measure which the Romans decided to enact with the apparent aim of helping end a destructive war would ultimately not do so in the way that they had planned, and indeed it would hold the cause for much greater bloodshed in the future (as will be seen). At the moment, however, the year 89 dawned with the Romans in much the same military position as they had been in the year before: their aim was still to protect the advances on Rome, to contain the uprising and prevent its spread, and then to crush the armies of the Allies, destroy their cities, and finally bring them into submission. The way they went about doing so will be the next subject to which attention will be turned.

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2. THE BATTLES OF ASCULUM AND THE MARCH DOWN THE COAST

As these legislative developments were occurring in Rome, the final months of the year 90 gave way to the opening of 89. The old year had not seen much progress in the Commonwealth’s efforts to crush the Alliance, and indeed the Romans had lost territory to the insurgents: Alba still hung on, and Pinna may have, but Aesernia, and Nola had certainly fallen to the Italians, and almost certainly Grumentum had gone over to them as well (see previous chapter). Likewise, the socii had built a fleet which had yet to be chased from the seas. Still, there were some new alterations in circumstances which would potentially affect operations in the coming year. Importantly, throughout 90 the Romans had been hindered in their offensives by the fact that the Appenines protected the territory of much of the Alliance. The defeat of Crassus in Lucania, the early enclosure of Pompeius in Picenum, and the destruction of Caepio’s force in Amiternum had meant that this defensive ridge could not be flanked to the north or the south, while the Allied victories at Carsioli, Venafrum, and Aesernia meant that it could not be forced by means of a frontal assault, either.26 Yet towards the end of 90, the various phenomena occurring at Asculum had pushed the door to the Adriatic coast ajar, and with enough added force it might be opened completely. This would in turn present the potential to acquire a direct path through the lands of the Vestini, Marrucini, Frentani, Apuli, and Venusini. If Asculum represented a potential vulnerable spot in the Allied holdings, it was the only one which could be seen at the conclusion of the first full year of the war. In fact, to the south the Allied position had gotten stronger. In that region, the Allies held the entire southern run of the Via Appia south of the Liternus from Nola to Grumentum by the start of 89. They also seem to have remedied a weakness in their line from the previous year. In 90 they seem to have allowed the Romans access to the eastbound arm of the Via Appia by their apparent failure to hold or take Beneventum, a failure which probably allowed for Marcellus to strike at Aesernia from there (as described in the previous chapter). 26

See Domaszewski (p. 28) for a similar analysis.

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His expedition, ill-fated though it was, would have advertised the potential dangers of leaving Beneventum unoccupied, especially as it lay in a position which oversaw the route to Aeclanum, one that might give access to first to the territory of the Hirpini and then, beyond that, to the Allies behind the Apennines.27 It is almost certain that, after the failure of Marcellus, the Allies had indeed proceeded to make Beneventum theirs, even if no specific campaign to seize it is recorded. In fact, Roman activity in the coming year emphatically suggests that the eastern branch of the Via Appia had been shut off, and that such an obstruction had come through Allied command of that city. If the Allied defensive line had been lengthened in such a way, any attempt by the Romans to flank the Italian position from the south would have to begin with fighting through Alliance-held Campania; as it happened, this was indeed the exact route the Romans took. Therefore, the precarious situation at Asculum may have meant that there was the beginning of an opening which might be exploited to create an avenue into the Alliance. Other than that one, however, there seems to have been no other weakness. Everywhere else, the Allied defensive barriers stood firm. As a consequence of these facts, the task which lay ahead of the Romans in 89 was the same as the year before, but no less difficult for all that. As for the former Allies, on the other hand, their aims would also have remained the same as those of the previous year: hold on, hold together, and make the cost of defeating them so bitter that the Romans might resort to alternative means than conquest to settle the unpleasantness. The Allies had definitely managed the former two, as they had plenty of fight left and remained steadfast to each other. As to the last, the Allies had certainly inflicted enormous casualties on the Romans in a string of spectacular victories over them in the previous year, and the wearing of the saga, the burial edict, and the case of C. Vettienus indicates that the Republic had felt those casualties keenly28 (see chapter 5). Likewise, the vehemence of Roman resolve recorded in Diodorus 37.22 may 27 28

See map 1. For these, see previous chapter.

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also be telling: in that fragment, the Romans give voice to their grim determination that they not be “shown to be inferior by their inferiors” (φανῆναι τῶν ἡττόνων ἥττους). The fragment cannot be dated, but it might well belong to 90, when the Romans had come to discover that their opponents could strike with far more ferocity than they may have anticipated. As a result, they vowed their resolve not to be bested, making a tacit admission in so doing that being bested was a possibility which now confronted them.29 To be sure, by the end of the year the Romans had answered back with some victories of their own, but even these losses need not have been a source of much lamentation by the Allies: if their overall object was less to beat the Romans than to make even the very act of fighting excruciating for the Republic, then they had effected this with aplomb, the late victories of the Romans notwithstanding. Battered a little but doubtless still resolute as 89 dawned, the Allies may well have derived encouragement from the passage of the lex Julia (as Appian denotes, 1.6.49), with its implication that the Romans were at some level willing to concede the franchise to abate the threat of continued war. A signal might thus have been sent to the Allies which confirmed that their pressure was paying dividends. All that remained was to keep it up until the Romans could be persuaded to extend that willingness to enfranchise to those remaining in arms, and then their ultimate aim, it seemed, would be won. If these were in fact the goals of both sides, then fighting in pursuit of them started early in 89, although the continuous sieges of Alba and Asculum had probably meant that some sort of desultory skirmishing had occurred all through the winter. It had probably been in late 90 that C. Vidacilius had managed to force his way back into his native city in a maneuver which had been designed to lift its siege but had failed to do so.30 Vidacilius had been notable for his energy earlier in that year, and he seems to have been quite disgusted at the lack of fighting spirit the demoralized remnants of the army of Lafrenius had shown in their Such is the reading given to this fragment by Haug, p. 219–220. See last chapter for arguments as to the timing of this action and the scholarly disagreements about it. 29 30

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inability to break out and drive off the Romans; Appian mentions that he rebuked them for their cowardice (ὠνείδισε μὲν αὐτοῖς τὴν ἀτολμίαν; 1.6.48). It is therefore very likely that he busied himself for the remainder of the year 90 restoring discipline and making the occasional efforts at the Roman lines.31 In the meantime, Sex. Julius Caesar seems to have died,32 leading to his temporary replacement by one C. Baebius by decree of the Senate (Appian, loc. cit.). Baebius would not hold this commission long, however, as the newly-elected Cn. Pompeius Strabo was soon on his way back to Asculum. His alacrity may have derived from a personal eagerness to resume the siege of that city, or perhaps from some anxiety that it would capitulate before his arrival, allowing a measure of the gloria for Asculum’s capture to devolve upon Baebius (such would

31 According to that passage of Appian, upon breaking into Asculum Vidacilius first subjected the people in it to the aforementioned harangues, but he eventually succumbed to despair over his inability to free the city, massacred his enemies, and committed suicide (more below). Domaszewski (p. 28–29) believes that this entire episode constitutes a single incident unfolding over perhaps one or two days, and sets it during and shortly after the climactic battle between Pompeius and the Marsi (again, more below), and thus to the year 89. For this belief he draws upon the statements of Orosius (5.18.21) as support. Salmon (1967, p. 364–365), by contrast, also believes Appian is describing a single episode of no more than a few days’ length, but holds that it fell out sometime after the aforementioned battle. For a variety of reasons, some of which involving the battle and thus to be described extensively below and in Appendix M, both of these interpretations lack persuasiveness. By contrast, there is the possibility that Appian is describing, not the happenings of a few short days, but of a longer span of time. If so, then Vidacilius may have spent the weeks after his irruption into Asculum in 90 chastising his men, and perhaps even executing a few for lack of discipline and insubordination. That such activities may have taken weeks or even months is certainly not at variance with what Appian reports. He would then be prepared to play a role in the events which would follow in early 89. Such is the interpretation which is followed here. 32 Contra Domazewski and Salmon in the places cited above, which both hold that Caesar was still alive at this point.

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not be out of keeping with the character of any noble Roman).33 Alternatively, he may have had concerns that the Allies would launch a more concerted, well-planned drive to lift the siege. Pompeius may very well have gotten intelligence towards the last, as it seems that the Allies were indeed on the move in very early 89, and may have been even earlier that that. According to the sources, 15000 men from the insurgents along the Adriatic coast under one Fraucus, and so possibly Frentani, had been sent to bolster the uprising in Etruria and Umbria but had arrived there after that uprising had ended.34 Upon discovery of this, these Allies may have decided at this point to fall back upon Asculum and see if they could aid the Picentes currently besieged there. Such a deployment may have been coordinated with Vettius Scato, who was apparently also headed towards Asculum for the same purpose (see below). Either way, as they made their way to the Via Salaria 33 On fears of losing the gloria on the part of Roman commanders, see Harris (1979, p. 138–141). The fear described by Harris is that of losing it to successors, but it is not at all unlikely that a similar concern may have arisen in Pompeius regarding his placeholder Baebius; if the new consul was to gain any prestige from victory in taking Asculum, that victory would have to be his beyond dispute. 34 That the commander was Fraucus is certain, if Orosius is to be trusted; he states this directly (5.18.8). What is in doubt is who the men under him my have been. Orosius calls them “Marsi”, but may have done so because the label “Marsi” might have been a convenient catch-all term for all the non-Samnites in the Alliance (see Salmon 1958, p. 170–171; also, see discussion of Fraucus in Appendix H). On the one hand, there is the statement in Appian that these men were from the Adriatic coast ( οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον οὔπω; 1.6.50). The Marsi were not a coastal people (see Map 1). A way out of this apparent snarl may be found by assuming Orosius was in error about the Marsi. Perhaps he had noted in the original Livy that many Marsi had fought in the great battle to come around Asculum (see below). If these two engagements had happened illo tempore, which may be reflected in the statement—possibly mistaken or at the very least imprecise, for which see below—that they happened eadem die, then it might have been assumed by the later author that if Marsi were fighting in that later battle, they had also fought in an earlier one, which is about to be described in the text above.

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they seem to have encountered Pompeius, who was probably leading reinforcements from Rome towards Asculum on this road. These supplementa may have been augmented by a sizeable number of newly-minted citizens from the former Latin areas, and perhaps also by some men lent to the consul from the south (more below). Irrespective of the composition of his soldiers, Pompeius was marching in some strength, as will be seen. At the sight of the Romans, Fraucus seems to have made the decision to offer battle. In so doing he may have believed that he could defeat Pompeius, or at least buy some time for Scato to arrive at Asculum and drive off the defenders there. Pompeius, in turn, decided to accept the invitation, and in the ferocious fighting that commenced he managed to get the better of Fraucus, who was named as being among the many thousands who fell in combat. Three thousand more appear to have been captured, while the rest seem to have been positioned in such a way that they could not retreat to the south but had to fall back into the north into Umbria. These survivors also seem to have been deprived of their baggage, and perhaps also of their guides; Appian mentions that they became lost in a “trackless region” (ἀπόρου χώρας; 1.6.50), and that they were reduced to subsisting on acorns. A sudden winter snowstorm seems to have befallen them as they were surmounting a ridge, and as a result of it a great many of them froze to death (Oros. 5.18.19).35 In the meantime, Pompeius then seems to have resumed his march to Asculum shortly after attaining this success. He was probably just in advance of the aforementioned Allied relief army under the command of Scato. This army was huge, if the numbers reported by Velleius (2.21) are even close to the correct ones,36 and consisted consisting not only of Marsi, but probably also of forces 35 For a lengthy discussion on the reasons as to why the interpretation of this battle and the one to follow has taken the shape it has been given above, see Appendix M. 36 But see Haug (p. 225) for doubts on this score; she claims, although not too convincingly, that the numbers were magnified in a biography of Pompeius Magnus to make the battle fought by his father seem far more important than it was, and that this biography was used as a source by Velleius.

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from all over the area. Opposed to it, the army commanded by Pompeius, which would have been composed of auxiliaries and perhaps even soldiers from the southern theater added to the men that had remained at Asculum under Sex. Caesar and now Baebius, may have been more immense still. A titanic battle was therefore about to take place on a scale of greater enormity then in any previous confrontation in the war thus far. Indeed, the earlier victory of Pompeius on the way had already represented one which was an equal to any contest from the previous year, if the casualties reported in Appian and Orosius are to be trusted, and this one looked to be larger still. It is therefore understandable that there might have been one last overture of peace before it was joined, and there seems to have been a meeting to this effect between the commanders. According to Cicero (who claims to have been there in person), Scato, Pompeius Strabo, and Strabo’s brother Sextus met and, upon salutation by Strabo and the question as how he wished to be addressed, Scato replied that he wished to be hailed as a friend but was compelled to be hailed an enemy (Phil. 12.27).37 It is not 37 Cicero’s presence at this battle has been a matter of some debate, since he is claimed by Plutarch (καί τινα χρόνον καί στρατείας μετέσχεν ὑπὸ Σύλλᾳ περὶ τὸν Μαρσικὸν πόλεμον; Cicero 3) to have done his service with Sulla and seems to indicate this himself in his de divinatione (et ut in Sullae scriptum historia videmus, quod te inspectante factum est, ut, cum ille in agro Nolano immolaret ante praetorium [emphasis added], 1.72; nam de angue illo, qui Sullae apparuit immolanti, utrumque memini, et Sullam … [emphasis added], 2.65). However, a number of solutions to how Cicero could have been with Strabo at Asculum for this tête-a-tête with Scato and yet later with Sulla have been presented by modern scholars, and all of them are fairly plausible. According to one, Cato may have lent Pompeius some of his men from the south to aid in this in this epic engagement, of which Cicero may have been one, due to the proximity of Arpinum to the southern theater. If Cicero had thus served and had even been recruited in the south, then after the battle of Asculum he was returned there along with the other men in time to take part in Sulla’s offensive which led to Nola, the specific set of engagements mentioned in the passages from the de divinatione cited above. This is the argument of Domaszewski (p. 9) and Haug (p. 254). Keaveney (1987, p. 159 notes 2–3), however, finds this unlikely due to the sheer distances to be travelled alone, believing instead

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unlikely that peace based on the gift of the citizenship was discussed by these men in light of the recent lex Julia,38 but no matter what the conversation between Scato and Pompeius involved, it did not avert the coming violence. Accordingly, an engagement commenced in which Pompeius defeated not only the Allied relievers but also repulsed a simultaneous sortie from the city itself, one which had apparently been led by Vidacilius (Per. 74). The remnants of that foray apparently fell back into Asculum, while what was left of the Allied army which had aimed to free the city retreated back into their own lands in disarray, leaving the Roman blockade around the city as tight as ever. the theory of Cichorius (summarized in Ward, p. 121–123), which is that Cicero had started in the service of Pompeius Strabo and was later sent south to join the command of Sulla. Why he would have been transferred is unknown: maybe Cato had indeed sent soldiers from the south directly (the presence at Asculum of sling-bullets from Legio XV, which had been stationed in the south near Sora, can thus be explained), or “lent” Pompeius the use of all of the auxiliaries raised in early 89 with the understanding that the latter would send Cato’s share of these south if he attained victory. Pompeius then traded some of his men, which may have always been under his service and, back to Cato as part of his share of auxiliaries, and Cicero was one of these. Perhaps both conditions applied, and Cicero was either one of the southerners sent north and then returned, or was one of the men in Cato’s share of auxilia sent to him after Aculum. Alternatively, Cicero may have even requested the transfer either as part of the return of the borrowed men, or just for himself if no such lending had taken place; his brother was certainly serving in the southern army, and Cicero may have wanted to serve with him or be closer to home. Either way, there seems no substantive reason to doubt either Cicero’s presence at Asculum or his later presence in the army of Sulla, and if indeed he was transferred, it was probably very near the beginning of spring (see below). Mouritsen, who believes that this conference took place later in 89, would therefore be mistaken, since by that point Cicero would had begun his service with Sulla (1998, p. 164– 165). Such is the stance taken here. 38 So Keaveney, 1987, p. 151–152. In the same passage but a few lines later, Cicero himself notes that non enim ut eriperent nobis socii civitatem, sed ut in eam reciperentur petebant, perhaps an echo of something Scato himself said in negotiations with Pompeius.

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As it turned out, no other expeditions would be made to lift the siege, although Asculum stubbornly held on for almost a year before finally opening its gates to the Romans around the beginning of November.39 At some point prior to this it had lost the services of its commander, C. Vidacilius. As mentioned above, this man had apparently been an individual of remarkable animation and, to judge from the exploits he is postulated to have undertaken in the previous year, a bit of an adventurer. He was, as a consequence, probably not the sort who would take well to prolonged inaction and the boredom and deprivation of a siege. He soon apparently hit upon a way to end it, in a manner of speaking: according to Appian (1.6.48) and Orosius (5.18.22), Vidacilius invited all of his lieutenants and friends to a great banquet, where feasting and drinking on a grand scale commenced. At the height of the festivities, he proceeded to poison himself, exhorted his friends to do likewise, and then had himself placed on a conveniently waiting pyre and cremated; apparently the deed was much admired at Asculum, but not duplicated. No enlightenment is provided by the sources as to who took over the command of Asculum upon the death of Vidacilius, which, due to the apparent abundance of food, wine, and flammable objects, probably occurred not too long after the battle described above, before starvation and scarcity of fuel set in. Perhaps C. Pontidius, who is believed to have been a “praetor” of the Vestini40—likely he had replaced the fallen Lafrenius, who had been killed during the breakout from Firmum—had deferred command of the defense of Asculum to Vidacilius while the latter lived (it was, after all, his native city) but resumed leadership after the deadly banquet.41 See Appendix M for sources. See the discussion of the commanders in the previous chapter and in Appendix H for the command of Pontidius. 41 Such an attribution seems more convincing than another possible alternative, which is that a “Ventidius”—the father of the Senator, triumphator, and apparently one-time “muleteer” P. Ventidius Bassus— took over. Such an assertion rests upon the well-known story that this Ventidius Bassus had come from Asculum and had even been led as an infant, along with his mother, in the triumph of Pompeius (more below). Because of this anecdote, both Haug (p. 242, 257–258) and Keaveney 39 40

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In the meantime, Pompeius possibly waited for a few weeks after his victory against Scato before moving again, so as to make sure that there would be no additional thrusts at Asculum. If, as some scholars suggest, he had been lent the use of soldiers from or destined to the southern theater,42 he seems to have returned them before the arrival of spring. Satisfied as to the security of his designs for the city’s envelopment when that season arrived, Pompeius then decided to risk leaving Asculum at his back in the custody with part of his army, and to bring the war to the territory of the Vestini with the rest of it. The expedition launched for that pupose looks to have been a great success and soon led to the surrender of a number of the towns in that area (Per. 75), after which the consul apparently decided to return to Picenum and concentrate on the siege. In the meantime, he seems to have sent some lieutenants forwards against the enemy. One of them, Caecilius Cornutus, seems to have betaken himself through the now-pacified territory of the Vestini in the direction of the lands of the Paeligni, perhaps heading west and towards the city of Corfinium itself. In so doing, he would defeat the Paeligni and, presumably, the Marsi under Vettius Scato, who undoubtably had been tasked to defend the Allied base of operations in that town (1987, p. 141, 217 and 219 note 19) hold the belief that this Ventidius held a subordinate command in the war, drawing also in part upon the fact that a single manuscript of Appian mentions that a “Ventidius” as being one of the commanders who helped defeat Pompeius at Firmum (see last chapter). Keaveney also cites Syme (1951, p. 92), discussing the prominence of the Ventidii at Asculum. Nevertheless, other than the aforementioned Appian manuscript (whose “Ventidius” most editors amend to “Vettius”), there is no additional evidence that any Ventidius served in the Allied War, as Salmon notes (1958, p. 170). On the other hand, Appian does explicitly mention a Pontidius, and Velleius does likewise. There is wide agreement that he was a commander of the Vestini who may have served as subordinate to, and then replacement for, Lafrenius (see Appendix H). As such, he might very well have been amongst the men who were chased into Asculum in 90, and still available to assume or resume leadership there in 89. For this reason, Pontidius as successor to Lafrenius and then Vidacilius seems more plausible, and such is suggested above. 42 See above.

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(see below). This would apparently be the mission of Caecilius for the rest of the year.43 Two other legati of Pompeius seem to have likewise gone through the regions of the Vestini and into those of the Marrucni. One, C. Cosconius,44 merely passed through en route to the coast of the Adriatic, on his way to a remarkable series of escapades there of which more will be mentioned directly. The other, Ser. Sulpicius Galba,45 was in the meantime sent to protect Cornutus from the east and C. Cosconius from the north by neutralizing these Marrucini. A terrible brawl between the Romans under Galba and the Marrucini and Vestini seems to have taken place in Marrucinian territory at a place called the Teanum river by Orosius (5.8.25). By this identification, Teaté, the Marrucinian capital (whose whose name was pronounced “Teanum” in Oscan), was almost certainly meant instead.46 Among the Marrucini and 43 See Appendix N for the identification of this Caecilius as Caecilius Cornutus and for a more detailed discussion of this assignment. 44 Domaszewski (29) implies that Cosconius, whose actions in Apulia are certain, had been a legate of Pompeius. Keaveney (1987, p. 153–154) also allows for this possibility, although references to him by Appian as στρατ γός, and, later, to his successor being mentioned as taking over for him ἐπὶ τὴν στρατ γίαν gives him some difficulties; these he works out fairly successfully on pages 211–212. 45 On the identity of Galba as the Sulpicius in question see Salmon (1967, p. 365). Keaveney (loc. cit.) and Domaszewski (p. 30) disagree, holding the Sulpicius in question to be P. Sulpicius Rufus, tribune of the following year. However, since a Sulpicius seems to have been a subordinate to Pompeius in the previous year (Appian 1.6.47), and since it is likely that this was Servius Sulpicius Galba (see Domasewski, p. 27 and Salmon in the place just cited; both are also cited in chapter 5), it makes more sense that he and not the tribune of 88 would be the commander for this expedition. Such an assumption would be more likely if the surrender of the Marrucini did not actually occur until late in 89 or early 88 (see below), at which time P. Sulpicius would have needed to have been in Rome to run for and take office. See also Appendix R for the military service of Sulpicius Rufus. 46 For the pronunciation of “Teaté” see Salmon (1958, p. 174 and notes), which also makes clear the distinction between this city and both the “Teanum” on the other side of Italy and the “Teanum” in Apulia. For the placement of the battle at Teaté, see Salmon (in the place cited above

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Vestini to be killed in the battle was one Obsidius, styled as an imperator by Orosius; this man probably led the Marrucini as the replacement for Herius Asinius, since the latter had been killed in action against Marius the year before (see previous chapter). Galba’s actions seem to have been sufficient to cause the Marrucini to become quiet and possibly led to their surrender in the next year, as both the Periocha of Livy’s book 76 and Appian (1.6.52) seem to indicate that the Marrucini surrendered in 88, just as the Marsi and Vestini did. After this battle Galba may remained in the neighborhood as spring gave way to summer and fall, possibly wandering from the territory of the Marrucini from time to time to launch attacks on whatever Vestini in the neighboring area still remained in arms. As Galba and Cornutus continued at their missions to his north, Cosconius seems to have proceeded forward on his southern march whose destination was ultimately to be Apulia (Diodorus 37.2.8). Along with one Lucanus or Lucceius, who was likely his subordinate, Cosconius probably managed to ravage the territory of Larinum (Appian, 1.6.52) before coming to grips with a

as well as 1967, p. 365 and note 3) and Keaveney (1987, p. 155). Contra Domaszewski, who believes that this passage of Orosius is instead reporting the battle at which Poppaedius Silo was killed fighting against one Mamercus Aemilius, as reported in Per. 76 and Diodorus 37.2 (more below). This would mean that Orosius has mistaken both the Roman leader—“Sulpicius”—and the place where this occurred, which Domaszewski believes to be the Trinius river in the land of the Frentani. Yet for this conjecture he gives no evidence at all, and it is presumably based on the fact Orosius named Poppaedius as having died in this engagement (he clearly did not). Orosius has almost certainly made at least one error in his description of this engagement, but it seems less probable that Orosius he mistook the Roman commander and the place and got the Italian generals right, than that he instead mistook one of the Italian captains, placing Poppaedius where he does not belong. If the latter was in fact the case, then both Roman leader, one of the Italian leaders, and the place is accurately presented. This would make the battle at Teaté as a different event as that fought beween Aemlius and Poppaedius Silo, as per the opinion of Salmon and Keaveney. This is what is advocated above.

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force of Samnites under Marius Egnatius (Per. 75).47 This he defeated, causing the death of Egnatius in the process.48 Cosconius then resumed his march and took Salapia, which he burned, and then moved on to Cannae, which he also subjected. The Samnites, in the meantime, had apparently reformed and joined forces with the Apulians under one Trebatius, and together launched a counterattack against Cosconius while he was besieging Canusium. After fighting described by Appian as having been especially bloody (loc. cit.), Cosconius fell back on Cannae, and Trebatius presently followed. Upon the latter’s arrival at the river Aufidus, on one side of which Cosconius had apparently formed his men, a curious exchange seems to have followed in which Trebatius (who This engagement would therefore have taken place in the land of the Frentani, although there is no real reason to doubt the report of the Periocha of Livy’s book 75 that it was the Samnites under Marius Egnatius who fought against Cosconius and perished here. Indeed, if, as has been speculated above and in Appendix M, it had been Fraucus who had been sent into Etruria and died on that mission, then the Frentani could very well have used reinforcements along with a proven commander, as Egnatius had shown himself to be. Such an explanation is far more in line with the explicit notice of the Periochae that he was Samnite than Domaszewski’s construction (p. 18, 30), which holds that he was actually from the Frentani. For this, see also Appendix H. 48 Keaveney (1987, p. 153–154) speculates that Cosconius had made a detour into Samnium to fight Egnatius, only to return to the territory of the Frentani to continue stabbing southwards. His justification for this is that it was not certain that the nations between Asculum and the Frentani would allow Cosconius passage, and that he would need to seek an alternate route to Apulia. Yet why Cosconius would have thought a sojourn into Samnium would be any easier is not explained. Furthermore, Keaveney’s conjecture does not seem to have taken into account a crossing in force through the lands of the Marrucini of the sort speculated above, which could have compelled such passage even if no engagement seems to have been fought which reflect such compulsion. Moreover, his uncontested trek may have been the result of the Marrucini being tied up by Galba and the Paeligni by Cornutus. With these out of his way, Cosconius could easily have made the crossing cited above. This would make Keaveney’s proposed detour something of a needless addition, and it is therefore one that is excised from this essay. 47

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was on the other side) apparently asked Cosconius either to cross the river and join battle, or, failing that, to withdraw so that Trebatius could himself cross towards that end. Cosconius accepted the latter proposal and withdrew, quite probably in something close to shock at his good fortune. It is difficult to see why Trebatius would ever have believed that he would be allowed to execute such a maneuver without the Romans falling upon him and tearing him to bits, but it seems that he believed exactly that. In the security of this belief, he then began to traverse the river, and while he was at it Cosconius promptly fell upon him and tore him to bits, slaughtering close to 15,000 of his men. After this debacle, Trebatius and what remained of the Samnites and Apulians fled back to Canusium, where they seemed to have been content to stay and where Cosconius seems to have been content to leave them. Reasons for this attitude on the part of the latter are not difficult to intuit: while Cosconius had managed to cover a remarkable amount of ground in his expedition, he had probably lost a substantial number of his men in the process. Such losses, and the possibility of the onset of winter, may have slowed Cosconius and hindered his ability to launch major campaigns in Apulia once he had gotten there. Therefore, except for his conquest of a people called the Poediculi, Cosconius seems to have restricted his movements for the rest of the year to ravaging the territory of Ausculum and Venusia. The battles along the Adriatic coast had apparently been nothing but successful for the Romans, and disastrous for the Alliance. In two engagements near Asculum the Italians had lost several thousand men and one of its commanders, while another general and indeed one of their most successful was lost in the coastal run of Cosconius. The brief check on the latter in the form of his at Canusium had led his brutal mauling of Trebatius at Cannae, where the ghosts of Hannibal’s victims may have looked sympathetically on the horrible losses of the defeated socii. Such a string of defeats appear to have led to cracks in the Alliance. Blood had, of course, likely been accepted by the socii as the price for winning the war; even in 91, the Allies had probably accepted that a certain amount of it would need to be drawn to convince the Romans to give them what they had wanted. By the end of 89, however, the amount of it being shed by them was apparently starting to become more than they could bear, if the beginnings of

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surrender noted above were any indication. Such, at least, was what was transpiring along the Mare Superum; matters on the Mare Inferum will be the next object of survery.

3. THE WAR ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE APPENINES It is possible that in the winter of 90 the Senate and the newlyelected consuls may have decided to alter their approach to the war from the previous year, with efforts being divided less into southern and northern theaters and more into an eastern and western ones. As to the former, Pompeius Strabo seems to have been allowed to build on the momentum he had acquired in Asculum by returning to press the siege there, which worked out so well that he began to extend his reach into the lands of the Vestini, Marrucini, Paeligni, and ultimately down the Adriatic coast. In the meantime, the direction of the war on the western side of Italy fell to the other consul of 89, L. Porcius Cato. To accomplish this, Cato seems to have been given command of what remained of the armies of Rutilius and L. Julius Caesar, perhaps on the condition that he temporarily lend some of his men and, perhaps, most of the supplementa to Pompeius Strabo (as has been speculated above). Cato seems to have spent the early months of 89 organizing his department, a process which seems to have included replacing some of the legates of his predecessors with other men of his choosing. A substitution certainly had had to be made for P. Crassus, since he seems to have escaped Grumentum only to be elected Censor in Rome.49 Aulus Gabinius was apparently sent into his spot, as he is soon reported as having been operating in Lucania. The other men to be replaced may have included Otacilius, since Aulus Postumius Albinus was next reported as being commander of the navy,50 and possibly P. Lentulus also, as no further mention of him is made. Valerius Messala probably also went, since he, too, is recorded as having no part in the war in 89. Since both Messala and Lentulus had been operating in the same area, the lower and upper valley of the Liris,51 Cato may have So Broughton, vol. 2, p. 32; see also chapter 5, and chapter 7. By the Periocha of book 75 of Livy; for Otacilius, see chapter 5. 51 See chapter 5 and Appendices K and L. 49 50

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deputed into that area single legate to replace them both. This legate did not see a great deal of action, just as his predecessors had not; he may have been Q. Catulus, the consul of 102.52 What may have been the most significant change in command personnel, however, was the dismissal of the other consul of 102, C. Marius. A great deal of speculation has been offered as to why Marius was sent home. Among the reasons given have been his supposed difficulties with superior officers; the determination of the Senate to thwart his ambitions for command against the war that Marius, and probably everyone else, was sure was coming with Mithridates; his disappointment over not being offered the supreme command of the rest of the Allied War as proconsul; Senatorial suspicions of the possibility of inappropriate sympathy with the enemy; and the Optimate unwillingness to let him retain a command of any sort where further success might lead to greater popularity.53 Any of these may have been the reason for his removal, or, alternatively, all may have acted in concert to influence Cato’s decision to dispense with him. Then again, it may have been that none of them did. This modern speculation on the departure of Marius notwithstanding, of the ancient sources only Plutarch This follows Domaszewski (p. 20), who believes that the “Lentulus” of Appian 1.5.40 was not an error for the “Catulus” of Cicero pro Font. 43. Lentulus, by Domaszweski’s reckoning, was therefore a legate in 90, and Catulus was thus legate of 89. While this conjecture does not end the confusion which exists on this score (see Keaveney 1987, p. 208–209 for additional vexation over Lentulus/Catulus), such confusion ultimately does not play a crucial role here: if the “Catulus” of Cicero was in fact the same as the “Lentulus” of Appian, than quite possibly he was taken as legate by Caesar and simply retained by Cato. Neither man performed any action of note. 53 Speculations of this sort are found in Salmon (1967, p. 363), Keaveney (1987, p. 152), Carney (1958, p. 121–122; 1970, p. 52–53), and Luce (1970, p. 182–185). As was mentioned in the last chapter, the Senate’s use of Marius does seem to denote an unwillingness to give him an independent command no matter what the reason for it may have been, although some possible causes for this attitude will be discussed in the next chapter. 52

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gives a definite explanation for his withdrawal: Marius had retired because of illness, through which he had tried to persist through the year 90 out of a sense of duty but which finally compelled him to seek rest in the winter (Marius 33). This same author’s notice in Sulla 7, which suggested he retired due to his age, does not necessarily contradict this statement, since age may have played a role in the malady.54 At any rate, Marius would spend part of 89 recuperating, and the rest apparently did him good (as shall be seen).55 In the meantime, his position on the Tolenus was taken by Cato himself, with the possible support of troops given to L. Cornelius Cinna as his principal legate.56 Amidst these replacements, two men whom Cato seems to have left in place from the staff of Caesar were T. Didius and L. Cornelius Sulla. Both of these men kept in a defensive posture during the winter, during which the detachments which may have been sent from the southern theater to Pompeius and Asculum had However, see Carney (1958, p. 121–122), who argues that Marius was not exactly the picture of health that he had been before 100 but was by no means an invalid, either. Carney’s suggestion is one also made by many of the scholars quoted above, which is that that this alleged illhealth was merely a pretext. He adds to this an assertion that while the death of Marius in 86 finally came about due to a pulmonary condition, and that he was in fact suffering from an illness of a similar nature in 89, although perhaps that earlier sickness had not been a debilitating one. It may well have been, then, that Marius persisted in duty for the duration of 90, but accepted being cashiered in 89 with no ill-will, as it would give him a chance to recover from his malady. 55 It is perhaps at this point that he underwent the less than completely successful surgery for varicose veins described in Plutarch (Marius 7). Due to mention of his ownership of it the context of his retirement, an inference might be drawn that Marius had spent some part of 89 at the house he held at Misenum, making use of the warm springs at Baiae nearby (see Badian 1973 for a discussion of this house and its exact location), to which he had bidden (to return?) by the people to restore his health (Marius 34). However, it is difficult to see how Marius could have spent too much time in Misenum, as Campania was still very much a war zone. Instead, he probably took his rest in Rome, which seems to have proved sufficiently curative (see next chapter). 56 See Appendix N for assigning Cinna to Cato. 54

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possibly been drawn from their forces (see above). If these had been lent, they seem to have been returned by early spring. Regardless of the reason for the stillness in the western department beforehand, however, on the advent of spring it came to an end. While Cato moved to his north (more below), Sulla was apparently ordered to advance on Pompeii and wrest it from the Allies, possibly due to its use as a base for Allied shipping (for which see chapter 5). Such use would be consistent with the fact that Aulus Postumius Albinus, a legate and commander of the navy, was also sent to Pompeii to cooperate with the land activity there.57 Almost immediately upon his arrival a success was scored for the Allies, in a manner of speaking, but this was due not to combat, but rather to mutiny: Albinus was murdered by the men under his command, either because they had suspected him of treason (Per. 74; hinted at in Valerius Maximus 9.8.3) or because of his “arrogance”, which may have been his insistence on discipline (Orosius 5.18.22–23). Sulla made no moves to punish the assassins, and indeed may not have been able to had he wanted, as the men could have just as easily turned on him had he tried.58 Making the best of a bad 57 Salmon (p. 364) doubts the statement in Orosius 5.18.22 that Albinus was a “legate to Sulla”, almost undoubtably correctly. Certainly Sulla had not yet been elected consul, as Orosius wrongly states (Valerius Maximus 1.6.4 also describes him as such at a battle slightly later than Pompeii). Moreover, the chronology of the Periochae 75 and Orosius himself demonstrates that Cato was still alive when Sulla went to Pompeii. This would mean that Sulla would have had no call for an extraordinary proconsular command of the sort which would render Albinus his subordinate, expecially in light of the fact that Albinus was a former consul (of 99). More likely is that both of Valerius and Orosius are in error here, and that Sulla and Albinus were following the orders of the living Cato and were of equal authority under him as legates. 58 So Keaveney (1987, p. 152–153 and p. 160 note 10). Salmon (1967, p. 366 and note 3) perhaps goes too far in his suggestion that Sulla himself instigated the murder for the purpose of acquiring the command of Albinus. Since Marius had also had problems with his soldiers (see previous chapter), and since Cato would, too (see below), it is probably closer to the truth to suggest that the men were fractious and demoralized, especially since they had spent much of the previous year

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situation, Sulla instead merely proclaimed to the men of whom he now assumed command that they could atone for this crime by greater valor on the field, which seems to have had the additional effect of drawing his men closer to him (Plutarch, Sull. 6). This would not be the last time Sulla would make use of individuals who had compromised themselves through questionable acts and bind them to his will, and in this instance he seemed content to let some of the men stone an admiral, to encourage the others. The soldiers did not have long to wait for their contrition, as an Allied force under Lucius Cluentius promptly arrived near Pompeii to relieve the siege.59 Perhaps following the example set by Scato at the Tolenus from the previous year, Cluentius seems to have chosen a place to set up his camp so close to Sulla that it indicated contempt, in the hopes of luring the Roman into battle. Taking the bait,60 Sulla duly attacked in spite of having sent out foragers who had not yet returned, and he was subsequently beaten back with a ferocity that was apparently enough to cause his men to begin to flee. The providential return of the foragers prevented a rout, however, and Sulla was able to launch a counterattack which in turn caused Cluentius to have to quit both the field and his camp; this was then relocated to a more suitable distance (Appian

being defeated by the Allies, and thus would have behaved in this manner no matter who commanded them. 59 This arrival might have been very near to the time of the mutiny; according to Frontinus (1.9.2), Sulla was only able to restore calm by claiming the enemy was close at hand. That author suggests that this assertion was dissimulation on Sulla’s part, but it may well have been that Cluentius was coming, even if he had not yet made it to Pompeii. It is also not improbable that Sulla might have used a pre-battle speech to announce his amnesty in exchange for combat performance, thereby making use of Cluentius to calm his men. 60 Sulla was prone to the occasional fit of recklessness and attacking before all was in complete readines, as illustrated by this episode, by his first attempted frontal assault on Athens when in the east in 87 (Appian, Mith. 30; see also Keaveney 1982, p. 133), and during his first encounter with Norbanus in the Civil War (see chapter 9).

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1.6.50). Upon the acquisition of Gallic reinforcements,61 Cluentius went on the offensive again shortly thereafter. This time he was thoroughly defeated, losing 20,000 men62 which the sources claim were killed by Sulla’s men both in the battle and throughout the running mélee afterwards. This was pressed all the way to Nola, and during the course of it Cluentius himself was slain (Per. 75; Orosius 5.18.23–24; Appian, 1.6.50; Eutropius 5.3.2). Sulla was apparently given a grass crown at this battle (Pliny, NH 22.12), following which he seems to have put Nola under siege. He would prove unable to take it, however, an inability which may have derived from the fact that he must have left some of his men around Pompeii to continue the siege there. He would now further divide his men, leaving some around Nola to press that siege while returning to Pompeii. If the casualties were anywhere near as weighty as the sources make them out to have been between Pompeii and Nola, then the entire Italian army in Campania may have been destroyed, and possibly much of the available soldiery in the area of the Hirpini and Lucanians had been as well. Probably for this reason no more Allied operations are recorded by the sources in the former area, where the initiative seems to have passed to the Romans. This is 61 Possibly Transalpine; Domaszewski (p. 29) claims they were deserters from Roman armies, but offers no evidence whatsoever for this assertion. 62 Orosius states 18,000; Appian states 3,000 in battle and another 20,000 outside Nola (see below). The Periocha of Livy’s book 75 summarizes both battles, describing an initial skirmish followed by the major engagement which would account for the expulsion of the socii from two of the camps (L. Cornelius Sulla legatus Samnites proelio vicit et bina castra eorum expugnavit). Orosius and the Periochae both claim the opponents in these battles were Samnites, but Salmon (1958, p. 175–176; 1967, p. 366; see also Appendix H) claims that Cluentius was Campanian (Appian and Eutropius give no tribal designation for Cluentius, who is called “Aulus” in the latter but “Lucius” in Appian and Orosius). Salmon further argues that given the tendency of Roman authors to conflate all the enemies in the southern theater with the Samnites, such a mistake is explicable (1958, p. 170–171). Roman casualties cannot be determined but they certainly numbered more than one man, which is the most implausible number of them given in Eutropius.

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not to say that no Italians were fighting in Campania, because some certainly were. However, they were fighting against the Allied cause, as recorded by Velleius Paterculus (2.16.2). He refers specifically to the activity of his great-grandfather Minatius Magius of Aeculanum, who raised a body of men from the Hirpini (a legion, according to his descendant) and then took it west into Capua.63 He apparently had arrived there in time to take part in what remained of the siege of Pompeii, which presumably ended in its capture sometime before April by Sulla.64 63 Keaveney (1981, p. 294–296) fairly persuasively argues that the speech recorded by Aulus Gellius as having come from the Memoirs of Sulla was made to him by Magius upon his arrival at Sulla’s camp (20.6.3). 64 For the fall of Pompeii see Domaszewski (p. 30), who places it before the fall of Stabiae (more directly); Keaveney does likewise (1987, p. 153). The latter states that even a relative chronology of these events cannot be established, but this perhaps overstates the case. Stabiae would fall in late April (see below), so if the above construction is accepted, then Pompeii would have to have fallen earlier than that. Assuming it would have taken a month to approach Stabiae, invest it, and take it, then the fall of Pompeii would by consequence have to be placed in late March, if not earlier. If it can be accepted that the first elements of the siege were put down at the beginning of the campaigning season, that the death of Albinus took place shortly thereafter (perhaps the start of March if not earlier), and that the remainder of the month of March was spent in the battles with Cluentius, then Pompeii would fall shortly after the defeat of the latter; thus, late March. This is what is suggested by the chronology of the Periochae and Orosius, as noted above; in both sources Cato’s death (about which more below) followed a great victory won by Sulla which is almost certainly his defeat of Cluentius. Appian, however, places Cato’s death in the wintertme (1.6.50), which would perforce mean that the fighting around Pompeii transpired at the same time. Yet report can perhaps be reconciled to the chronology just speculated by placing the death of Cato in the very early spring instead. If he fell at the beginning of April, there might still have been a chill in the air, enough to count as winter. Haug (p. 252), however, objects that his death must have been later, to the circumstances suirrounding a mutiny Cato is said to have dealt with just before the battle in which died. Dio (frg. 100) describes this mutiny as taking place in lands which were wet and under cultivation (ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ χωρίον ἐν ᾧ συνειλέχατο ἐγεωργεῖτο), but this evidence is not in and of itself sufficient to overturn the chronology

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The approximate date for this expedition would be midspring, which renders the type of command exercised by Sulla difficult to define due to the fact that by this point Cato had almost certainly died (more below). As in 90, the surviving consul was unable to return to Rome to preside over the election of a suffect due to his involvement in battle (in this case with the Vestini; see above). Since things were apparently going fairly well in the western department, the death of Albinus and temporary setback near Pompeii notwithstanding, Pompeius apparently decided to direct the officers already in command there to continue to manage the war according to the strategy they had hitherto been following. Who then specifically was given senior command cannot be determined, but as T. Didius was a former consul (and a triumphator at that), command may have devolved upon him.65 Nevertheless, Didius would probably have seen no reason to direct Sulla otherwise than to pursue his current course, which was to move to the south to attack Stabiae. This was soon accomplished, and it just so happens the exact date for this feat is known: according to Pliny, it was April 29 (NH 3.70). That author also mentions that Sulla destroyed the city in the course of his assault, to such an extent that it was thereafter only good for villae. At the same time, Didius, to whom Sulla had sent the Hirpini under Minatius Magius, went on the move against Herculaneum (Velleius, 2.16.2). That city must have been captured some time before June 11, since on that day— the anniversary of the battle of the Tolenus—Didius was killed in battle, as reported by Ovid (Fasti 6.563). It is assumed that at this point Sulla was allowed by Pompeius and the Senate to take command of the whole of the southern area just speculated. The passage in Dio mentions the cultivation of the land merely to show that there were no rocks to be found on it. Such a clearing could have taken place months before the soldiers were camped on it, and therefore need not indicate that the episode took place during planting season. For this reason, it seems best to adhere to the chronology just described, as will be done in the text above. 65 The nature of Sulla’s command up to this point is the subject of speculation by Salmon (1967, p. 364, 366–367), who argues that Sulla was nothing more than a legate until fairly far along in the campaign. This is almost certainly right.

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of the western department, and indeed he may have been the only commander there other than Gabinius, who stationed a little to the southeast. As mentioned above, this man would certainly be seen in Lucania later, and he was perhaps operating there just below Sulla at the beginning of 89. If this is correct, than perhaps it was Gabinius who was responsible for the ravaging of territory near Nuceria of which mention seems to be made in some fragments of Sisenna.66 In theory either Sulla or Gabinius could have been given charge of the south. However, Sulla’s subsequent actions make it likely that it was to him that the south was authorized rather than to Gabinius, who now became his subordinate. Upon such an authorization, Sulla apparently soon put into action a plan which would require that he and Gabinius part ways. Sulla’s exercises will be described directly; Gabinius, for his part, would move further 66 Fragments 55 and 56. These fragments of Sisenna are, however, imprecise, as was mentioned in the previous chapter (see the description of the movements of Papius and the supporting notes). There it was speculated that, in the somewhat similar passage in Appian describing land around Nuceria being devastated by the Samnites, Nucerian land was meant (Νουκερίας τὰ ἐν κύκλῳ πάντα κατέπρ σεν; 1.5.42). This was being ravaged by the Italians to get Nuceria to join the Alliance. Since, however, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae were near Nuceria and were part of the Alliance, it is probable that their lands would have be burned by the Romans, and this would have taken place in 89, during the Roman assaults in that region which occurred during this year. Since the fragments of Sisenna taken from Book IV, which—as has been noted on several occasions—mostly deal with 89, then it is likely that the agros populabundus ad Nuceriam refers to the lands of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae being wrecked all the way up to the borders of Nucerian land. Presumably Nuceria itself was spared, as its treatment at the hands of Papius suggests it was of dubious loyalty to the Alliance, and it might well have defected (back) to Rome at this time. Alternativley, Nuceria suffered the same penalty twice, first at the hands of the Allies to get them to join the Alliance and then, later, at the hands of the Romans, who removed them from it and completed the devastation such that Florus (2.6.11) could list Nuceria amongst the cities destroyed by fire and sword. Such an outcome is unlikely but possible. Either way, land in the neighborhood of Nuceria was being ravaged, and it might well be that Gabinius was the commander responsible for it.

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south into Lucania, and he seems to have destroyed Picentia on his way to Grumentum, which he then took with some violence (Florus 2.6.11; Seneca, de ben. 3.23).67 Gabinius continued on his campaign until sometime around the time of consular elections at the end of the fall. The fact that he was apparently alive at some point subsequent to when Sulla had returned to Rome to run for consul, but had died before Pompeius is listed as Proconsul in the Periocha of book 76, means that it is fairly certain that Gabinius either died in the winter of 89 or early in the following spring, either just before or right as the campaigning season of 88 was starting. Moreover, that he seems to have met his end in the middle of another victory while assaulting an enemy camp may suggests the latter possibility, although 89 had certainly seen more than its share of winter campaigns. Either way, it was into his place Gn. Papirius Carbo seems to have been sent, assuming that the notice in Florus is not an error (discutit ... Carbo Lucanos).68 Carbo would then hold the southernmost of the theater for what remained of the year 88 and possibly until 87 (see chapter 8). 67 See the notes concerning the defeat of Crassus in the previous chapter for a discussion of that city and its destruction. 68 Salmon (1967, p. 366 note 2) has cause for doubting the accuracy of this report, observing that this passage in Florus states that “Gabinius defeated the Marsi, Carbo the Lucani”. The former assertion is certainly wrong, and perhaps, Salmon states, the latter might be as well, although he ultimately arrives at no conclusion on the matter. Keaveney (1987, p. 157), for his part, is untroubled by the passage in Florus but believes that the Carbo in question is C. Papirius Carbo Arvina, cousin to the consul of 85, following a suggestion of Broughton (vol. 2, p. 37). Broughton himself did not believe this was the case, however, as will be seen momentarily. Domaszewski is equally unconcerned with the error in Florus and follows that authority for Carbo, noting that a Carbo over Lucania (p. 30) but specifying which Carbo is meant. On the other hand, while Broughton allows for the possiblity that Carbo Arvina is he who was meant by Florus, he is more firmly persuaded that that the future consul Carbo was in fact the man in question, having been sent to Lucania as a promagistrate (loc. cit., p. 33). If Carbo the future consul was sent to Lucania, it would better explain how he suddenly ended up in the army of Cinna in 87 (see chapter 8). Broughton’s therefore opinion seems the most valid in this instance, and guides the text above and in chapter 8.

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In the meantime, while Gabinius was making Lucania howl, Sulla began to engage on an eastward march through the territory of the Hirpini. Even without the men who must have been left behind to continue the investment of Nola,69 Sulla must have had with him a sizeable collection of soldiers: these included those who had remained from the legions under his command in 90, the land forces of Albinus (nothing is said as to who took over command of the fleet), and the legion of the fallen Didius, as well as the supplemental forces raised by Minatius Magius. With these men Sulla headed towards Compsa and took it, perhaps leaving it under the occupation of Magius (Velleius 2.16.2). Such an arrangement would have protected Sulla from any attack from the south which had managed to evade Gabinius, while from the east he was apparently becoming freed from danger due to the remarkable campaign being waged by Cosconius, which must have been well underway by now (see above). That expedition would drain Allied forces slightly to Sulla’s north or pin them away from him to his east as Cosconius progressed. So shielded, Sulla then moved west-by-northwest against Aeclanum, assaulted the town, and drove its defenders back within its gates. According to Appian, the residents of the town evidently expected succor from the Lucani, and when Sulla asked for their surrender they therefore requested time, allegedly to deliberate but in fact in order to give the anticipated aid a chance to arrive. If the Aeclani had in fact made such a request, they had made it to the wrong person. Use of parley to buy time or gain information would become something of a trademark of Sulla’s in the years to come, and he had already made use of such a tactic himself during this very war (in the defiles near Aesernia, as discussed in the last chapter). Understanding, therefore, what the Aeclani seem to have had in mind, and quite probably confident that no aid from the It is unlikely that Sulla “ignored the threat to the rear from rebelheld Nola” (Salmon 1967, p. 367). Rather, he probably detached some men, and probably not a few of them, to hold that city while he proceeded with his expedition. It is also quite probable that Sulla kept in constant communications with Gabinius, who could in theory also act as something of a rear guard. 69

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Lucani was going to arrive one way or the other, Sulla acquiesced to the delay, but gave them one hour only. In the meantime, he busied himself gathering bundles of wood, and since the defenders were bound not to shoot down his men during the hour, he was able to place these by the walls of the city, which were also made of wood. Upon the expiry of the allotted time Sulla set fire to the piles, and in terror the inhabitants surrendered before the walls had ignited. Sulla then argued that they had surrendered by compulsion and therefore had been beaten into submission; thus, he opened the city to pillage (Appian 1.6.51). Sulla’s manipulation of the rules of war may have been motivated by more than simple greed or cruelty in this instance. Appian reports that the other Hirpini were more inclined to surrender whole-heartedly thereafter, and setting an example of a city towards such an end was a time-honored Roman custom.70 However, the fact cannot be ignored that the city was looted after it had opened its gates and almost certainly under the impression that by doing so Sulla would not despoil its inhabitants. They may have even gotten his word to that effect. The Italians were thus given an introduction to Sulla and his unique understanding of the terms of law and promises, and there can be no doubt that the lesson was not forgotten. For the moment, Sulla had discovered that the result of his stabbing through Aeclanum was that he now had unfettered access to the via Appia and, as a result, to a highway that connected to a road which led from Beneventum to Aesernia and ultimately to Corfinium.71 Accordingly, it seems that Sulla thereupon took to the via Appia and headed northwest on it towards Samnium. Such a direct route had the principal disadvantage of being easy to anticipate, however, and in fact Appian states that it was so anticipated by Papius Mutilus, who set up a position guarding the roads (Appian 1.6.51). The location of the Allied position is not given, but it was very probably at Beneventum,72 since from there

See Harris (1979, p. 50–53). See Map 1. 72 Contra Keaveney (1987, p. 156), who assumes that Sulla returned to Capua and approached from the west, thereby hitting Papius between 70 71

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the pass to Aesernia from both Capua and from Venusia could be defended. Yet Papius was foiled, as Sulla seems to have abandoned the Via Appia at some point and found a less obvious approach into Samnium, by means of which he there was able to attack Papius from an unexpected direction. Papius and the Samnites were defeated in this engagement, which sent the survivors reeling northwards; Papius was himself wounded in it, and was evacuated to Aesernia. While this was occurring, Sulla proceeded to destroy the Samnite encampment and continue on his advance. The next target of Sulla’s that is specified in Appian is Bovianum; Saepinum seems to have been bypassed or in some other way spared. Some doubt exists as to exactly what city is meant by that author, but if it is to be assumed that Sulla’s ultimate aim was Corfinium and that he was headed in that direction by way of Aesernia, a city by the name of Bovianum (the so-called Bovianum Undecimanorum) lay squarely in his way.73 This city was apparently well-fortified with three separate citadels, but after a hard-fought battle Sulla was able to take it by storm. This left only Aesernia, the site of his previous defeat the year earlier, between himself and Allied headquaters at Corfinium. But Aesernia Sulla would not take: after his string of victories Sulla broke off—or was stalled—here, and decided to return to Rome to run for the consulate. Thus did things come to pass in the southern sector of the western department in 89. In the meantime, shortly before the latter offensive had been set in motion, L. Porcius Cato, the conqueror of the Etruscans, had begun to stir from the position formerly held by Marius between the lower run of the Tolenus and upper run of the Liris. Here he had remained during the early part of 89, a stance attributable, perhaps, to the good sense of not campaigning in the winter months, and perhaps also to the fact that he may have lent some of his men to Pompeius for the Battles of Asculum. During this time the Allies had apparently decided not to Aesernia and Bovianum, where the latter is held to have been stationed. For further discussion of this campaign, see Appendix O. 73 See, again, Appendix O for this part of Sulla’s campaign; see also map 1.

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attack in the south as they had in the north, possibly due to the numbers of men they themselves had sent to Asculum. Yet Cato was not content to hold still for long, and at about the same time that he had ordered Sulla to begin his advance on Pompeii, the consul seems to have decided that he too, was going to move. Having perhaps heard of the numbers of Allied men which had fought in the battles around Asculum, Cato may have figured that the Allies would be so weakened by losses that they had become spread thin. If they had become spread too thin, perhaps a move to lift the siege of Alba would at last be possible. Such an expedition seems to have been so decided, but before Cato could get underway he had had deal with a brief insurrection amongst his own soldiers. These were the men who, according to Orosius, had formerly belonged to Marius (Porcius Cato consul Marianas copias habens; 5.18.24), and thus likely had first served under Rutilius. It may be recalled how Marius had consistently advised that consul against their use due to their lack of battlereadiness when the latter was alive. When Marius himself was given command of them, he had kept them mostly on the defensive while maneuvering towards Sora before finally entrusting the one great battle to them (see previous chapter). Dio may provide some insight into that lack of confidence: it seems that these men had been from the city and inexperienced, and many of them were too old for duty74. Perhaps these had been the men given to Marius as something of a grim joke involving superannuation: they, like their commander, were too old for this game. Either way, Marius eventually had been able to coax fine service out of them at the Battle of the Vineyards. In spite of the fact that throughout the campaign he had apparently not been silent in his displeasure at their occasional poor performance, the auctoritas he had wielded may have allowed him to get away with his harangues (see, for example, his harsh words as recorded by Plutarch Mar. 33). Further, if he had been as ill as Plutarch reports that he had been (see above), his personal example might well have been inspiring. But in 89 Marius was in command no longer, and it seems either that Cato simply did not have whatever quality Marius 74

ἀστικόν καὶ ἀφ λικέστερον τὸ πλεῖον τοῦ στράτου;

fragment 100.

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possessed that had enabled him to motivate these men, or else that he had not yet earned their respect. For whatever the reason, Dio records that when the consul adopted a tone of reproach to these men for some infraction—and it seems that Cato was rather prone to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong people, as will be seen below—their reply was to pelt him with lumps of mud (fragment 100). Cato was left no doubt furious and humiliated by this experience but was at least alive, a condition which Dio suggests might not have obtained had the men not taken up a position on farmland that had been cleared of rocks and thus deficient in deadlier missiles. Such a spontaneous display of illtemper did not seem to have been premeditated, but soon one C. Titius or Titinnius75 was singled out to blame for it as leader of the “mutiny”; perhaps he had cast the first lump, or—as Dio hints—he may just simply have been so annoying that his presence proved disruptive. For whatever the reason, this man was sent back to Rome, where it seems the tribunes interceded for him and saved his life. Having dealt with this irritant, Cato then ordered his advance against the Marsi in the direction of the Fucine Lake. En route Cato fought a series of battles which the Periochae label as rebus prospere gestis fusisque aliquotiens (75) but which Orosius labels as having been fought strenue (loc. cit.). It seems likely that one of these may finally have resulted in the deliverance of Alba Fucens.76 It may have been on this occasion that Cato uttered the boast that even the elder Marius had not done greater things, an outrageous claim that was of dubious accuracy for the Allied War and was patently false for the rest of his predecessor’s career. In addition to its spurious relationship with the truth, such a comment was additionally unfortunate in light of the fact that the son of Marius was still in the army and may even have been on the general staff. According The latter spelling is found in a fragment of Sisenna, 52, which seems to be dealing with the same episode. 76 This is conjectured by Domaszewski (p. 29–30), who likewise places this event in early spring due to the fact that the city likely could not have held on for much longer. Keaveney agrees (1987, p. 152), and there seems to be no good reason to dispute their conclusions. 75

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to Orosius (who describes the episode in 5.18.24) the boast had so infuriated the younger Marius that in the thick of the next battle he cut Cato down, allowing it to seem as if the consul had been slain by the enemy. That anything of the kind had actually happened is at the very least wildly improbable; it might, for example, be exactly the sort of story that an enemy of both Marius and his son might spread in order to label them as murderers and traitors.77 Still, in one sense it does accord with the stories found in the Periochae (loc. cit.) and Appian (1.6.50), in that both relate that Cato had died in battle with the Marsi.78 It is therefore reasonably certain that Cato did fall in combat. By whose hand cannot be determined, though it is more likely that it was the Marsi, as opposed to Marius, who felled him. Irrespective of whoever had actually laid him low, Cato was definitely now dead. Who his replacement would be for the Marsic line cannot be determined exactly, but there is a strong possibility that it was L. Cornelius Cinna.79 If so, then Cinna does not seem to have been involved in any epochal battles for the rest of the year, but rather engaged in several minor actions against the Marsi. 77 Salmon (1967, p. 364 and note 3) believes that the story of Cato’s death at the hands of the younger Marius may have been believable due to the discontent of the soldiery at Cato. As Salmon would have it, Marius the Younger himself acted from resentment that the command that should have been his father’s had gone to Cato, and perhaps he had been abetted by the disgruntled men. Keaveney blames the “savage disposition” of the Younger Marius and a family which was “notoriously touchy when they thought they had been robbed of what they believed to be rightfully theirs” (1987, p. 152). Both, it would seem give far more credence to this tale than it deserves, as Haug points out (p. 209): if Orosius obtained the story from Livy, than it was probably reported by him as a rumor, since the Periochae states that Cato died in combat. Such a rumor might very well be something reported—or, more accurately, invented by the Sullani much later in the eighties, once Marius and his men had become enemies of the state. But for reasons of his own, Orosius parted from his source, whose proper telling seems to be in the Periochae, and passed that rumor on as truth of the event. 78 Eutropius 5.3.2 and Velleius Paterculus 2.16.4 merely report that Cato was killed during the war 79 See Appendix N.

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These latter were probably led by “consul” Q. Poppaedius Silo, who may also have been Cato’s opponent earlier80 (see below), and whose aim may have been to prevent or at least delay the implementation of what was presumably the Roman plan. This plan was that Cinna would coordinate with Cornutus, the legate of Pompeius Strabo who had likely already commenced his operations in the land of the Paeligni (see above), and that the two of them would approach Corfinium simultaneously: Cinna would head towards Italia from the west, and Cornutus, from the east. Delay, in fact, was ultimately all that Silo from the Marsic side and Scato from the side of the Paeligni (for which see above) would be able to accomplish, and as the autumn and winter of 89 approached it must have became clear that Corfinium would have to be abandoned. According to Diodorus (37.2.9), this would not occur until after the Marsi and the surrounding peoples had yielded, and since this is mentioned by the Periochae as having happened at a time in which Gn. Pompeius Strabo could be referred to as “Proconsul” (Per. 76; see below), such a submission can be dated to 88.81 Therefore, by the winter of 89 Corfinium was still the central stronghold of the Alliance, but as the year drew to a close that city in a sense mirrored the condition of the entire northern front: it was wavering, and was about to be taken out of the war if it had not been taken out already. As has been seen, during the spring, summer, and early fall of 89 the men under the command of L. Porcius Cato scored a number of victories against the Allies, and they continued to do so after the consul’s death. Gabinius had slashed through Lucania to the very south. Above him, Sulla (after isolating Nola, which was still under siege) had completed a tear through the lands of the Hirpini, had forced open the Via Appia, and had taken Bovianum by means of taking a course which would have ultimately led him to Corfinium, had there been enough time. Above them both, Cinna was pushing towards the aforementioned Corfinium through the territory of the Marsi. The accounts of the exploits of the latter two commanders illustrate additionally that the Allies against 80 81

See also Appendix N. So also Domaszewski (p. 31).

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whom they fought were becoming exhausted, a condition which appears to have been shared by the Italians on the other side of the Appenines: the Vestini, Marrucini, and Paeligni—through whose lands Cornutus was also driving to rendezvous with Cinna at Corfinium—were all fading, and indeed a few of the Vestini had already lain down their arms. Despite this weariness, all of these areas still stubbornly held on as the winter of 89 approached, but it was clear that they could not stand for long. In the months to come either a victory or a defeat was sure to arrive. As will be seen, it turned out that what was coming was both.

4. THE DEVELOPMENTS OF WINTER, AND THE SPRING OF 88 An indication, perhaps, of the status of the whole northern sector of the Alliance towards the winter of 89 might be found in the fate which of one of its ablest commanders, Vettius Scato, would ultimately meet at that time. As has been seen above, Scato had last been seen at Asculum. There his attempts to forestall the huge battle that ultimately took place through a parley about the citizenship failed, and he was thereupon defeated in the engagement he could not prevent. It seems likely that after that battle, he and what remained of his army drifted back near the area of Corfinium. Even though he had by this point suffered a massive defeat, Scato was still one of the ablest commanders left to the cause of the socii. Consequently, it seems probable that he had been put over a force of Marsi and Paeligni and bidden to try and put a stop to the advance of the Romans coming through the lands of the Paeligni under Caecilius Cornutus.82 It seems that it was in this capacity that Scato, according to Seneca, had at some (unspecified) point been captured by some (unidentified) soldiers, who proceeded to lead him to an (unnamed) Roman commander (C. Vettius, praetor Marsorum, ducebatur ad romanum imperatorem; de benef. 3.23.5). Macrobius adds that he had been handed over to the Romans by his own men, and that he was to be surrendered specifically to Pompeius (C. Vettium … comprehensum a cohortibus suis,

82

See above and Appendix N.

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ut Pompeio traderetur; Sat.1.11.24).83 No specific time is given for this event by either authority, and therefore in theory it could have happened at any point after the last time Scato was known to have been alive, which was early 89 around the Battles of Asculum. However, there are some pieces of evidence which may point to the seizure as having happened late in 89 as opposed to it either having happened earlier or later; in other words, that Scato’s delivery to the Romans happened in autumn of 89 as opposed to spring of 89, or the summer or spring of 88. The first of these is the description given by Diodorus of the Allied situation after they given up Corfinium (loc. cit.). As will be seen, once they had quit this city, the Alliance took stock of what remained of their forces This same passage in Macrobius also refers to the prisoner as being C. Vettium Paelignum Italicensem, which is in clear contrast to Seneca’s reference to him as praetor Marsorum. For this reason, Haug (p. 256) has held it unlikely that Macrobius took the anecdote from Seneca, but rather that both took the story from Claudius Quadrigarius (or, rather, an exempla collection taken out of Quadrigarius). Seneca actually claims he has taken the material which immediately precedes the passage in question in that author. Macrobius, in Haug’s view, would thus be supplying the extra details from Quadrigarius which Seneca omitted, such as Scato’s capture by his own men and his being handed over to Pompeius, rather than simply taking Seneca’s story and adding details to it for poetic license. If this is true (and it seems likely enough), then either Macrobius got the national origin of Scato wrong and it had originally been correctly stated in Quadrigarius, as reflected in the excerpt of Seneca, or Quadrigarius himself had erred and Seneca had silently corrected him in relating the story based on his knowledge that Cicero (who had actually seen Scato and may have spoken to him directly) had labelled Scato as Marsic. Either is easily possible, but the former seems more so than the latter, especially if—as will be argued presently—Scato was captured in Paelignian territory and perhaps handed over by a Paelignian squad. Of course, this can lead to the question as to whether any of the other details related by Macrobius are equally mistaken. There is no evidence as to why this is not the case, but more importantly there is no evidence for it, either, and so in lack of anything better, it seems fair to assume that Macrobius only erred in the one element and not in the others. Thus, the rest of his information, upon which is based the construction related above, is solid, and is treated accordingly. 83

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and reorganized the military leadership under Poppaedius Silo and a five subordinate “praetors”. These included Papius and Lamponius, who had held commissions in the previous years, but Scato is not mentioned. Since it seems most unlikely that the man who had enjoyed so much success in the previous two years would not be continued in high command, it is probable that he was no longer available for duty in 88. This, in turn, would suggest that his capture came before 88. Secondly, Seneca passes on the story of his capture after he had just related on an anecdote taking place during a siege of Grumentum which had likely dated to the Allied War, an anecdote that he had specifically mentioned having from the eighth book of Claudius Quadrigarius. If Quadrigarius was mined by Seneca for both stories, id est that set in Grumentum and the one immediately to follow about Scato, then perhaps the latter event was contemporaneous with the former, which likely transpired during Lucanian offensive of Gabinius and thus towards the fall of 89 (see above). Finally, Seneca speaks of Scato being led to an unnamed Roman imperator. This word may have been chosen a general term meant to signify “commander”, but it also has a more specific meaning, which is that of a general who has won a great battle. If the imperator in question was Pompeius (as per Macrobius), then it may refer to the point at which that general would have earned the title, which was at the surrender of Asculum in late 89.84 For these reasons, it seems plausible that Scato’s arrest occurred in late 89,85 with the Marsic general having been betrayed See Stevenson, p. 95. As opposed to early 88, as Salmon suggests in two separate works (1958, p. 174, 178; 1967, p. 369). In the latter instance he offers no evidence from the ancient sources to suggest that Scato was caught in 88 as opposed to 89 (as, indeed, there is none) nor any particular reason for his own preference for that date. In the former, his thoughts are partially informed by the fact that he believed Scato to be a commander of the Paeligni; since the implication is that these did not surrender until 88 (Per. 76), Salmon’s logic seems to have been that Scato led them as long as they were in arms. However, even if that was the case—and Salmon would later come to believe that it was not, as in Appendix H—then it did not necessarily mean that Scato could not have been apprehended earlier, or later. Both of which are equally possible, but since there is at least some 84 85

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by the men under his command. Since it seems difficult to believe that the Marsi would turn on one of their own people, it may well have been that the deed was the responsibility of other members of the Alliance who were a part of his forces. If Scato was in fact leading a combined force of Marsi and Paeligni in the defense of Corfinium (as was suggested above), it might very well have been that the latter decided to deliver him in their own territory somewhere close to that city. At any rate, while the when, where, and by whom of Scato’s capture is not definitely known, the result of it is certain: before Scato could be handed to Pompeius, a loyal slave managed to snatch a sword from the scabbard of one of Scato’s own guards and stabbed the captive with it before turning the blade on himself (so Seneca and Macrobius in the places cited). Scato’s talents had been used to great effect by the Marsi and the other Allies, and his loss was probably a blow which may have helped set the tone for what would transpire in the following year. Moreover, the fact that it happened at all may reveal much about the state of mind of the members of the northern part of the Alliance at the conclusion of 89. No reason is given in the sources for why Scato was extradited over to his enemies, and there may be an infinite variety of reasons which may have motivated his soldiers to commit this act of betrayal. Yet it is at least possible that they had wished to surrender to the Romans and that Scato had forbidden it, or that they wished to curry favor with the Roman commander prior to the collapse of the Alliance whose inevitability must have been manifest, a process which they now hastened. While the capture and death of Scato was occurring, Pompeius was still waiting outside of Asculum, to which locale Scato was probably to have been taken before his unexpected end. The consul, then, seems to have missed out on the opportunity to have Scato drawn in his triumphal van, although he would soon have the chance to exhibit some prisoners from Asculum: by November and perhaps even earlier it seems that city had fallen.86 indication—however tenuous—that he was seized in late 89 and none for any other time, it seems justifiable to hold this last is the better date. 86 For the November date see earlier discussion of the Battles of Asculum and supporting notes, as well as Appendix M. However, there is

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Pompeius apparently allowed his men to ravage and loot the city fairly extensively (Florus 2.6.14; Orosius 5.18.26), in the process falling into some disrepute for not using the spoils to fill the exhausted aerarium. In reference to this, one scholar refers to Pompeius having “lived up to his reputation as a money-grubber” by this behavior.87 On the other hand, it is difficult to see how Pompeius could have done otherwise for his men—men who had endured the miseries of conducting a siege for well over a year— without risking a mutiny of the kind which had apparently been commonplace during 89. Moreover, it is likely that both Pompeius and the Romans wanted to send a message to the Asculani, since the hostilities which had claimed so many Roman lives had started here and with the slaughter of a magistrate of the Republic along with innocent Roman men and women who had just happened to be in the town when the outburst occurred. For this reason Pompeius seems to have been considerably less than charitable to the leading men of Asculum, its officers (who were flogged and then beheaded, according to the passage cited by Orosius), and its property, but overly so to his soldiers. The Senate might well have hoped that he would contribute some of the loot to the treasury, as indicated, but probably understood why he did not. As for accusations of the personal greed of Pompeius, these do not to be substantiated by any evidence of a vast personal share of the plunder. According to the sources, the only thing Pompeius seems to have gotten were books and fishing nets, and even these would be seized from his house later by Cinna (Plutarch, Pompeius 4). Whether they were disappointed by his actions or otherwise, the patres apparently did not begrudge Pompeius a triumph, which the Fasti lists as having been celebrated on December 25th of 89.88 the possibility that the city had fallen slightly earlier, giving Pompeius time to go back to Rome to hold the elections at or near the usual date (so Mitchell, 201–202). 87 So Salmon (1967, p. 365). 88 See also the commentary of Asconius on Cicero’s In Pisonem 58 (14b), Gellius 15.4.3; Cassius Dio 43.51.4–5 and 49.21.3; Pliny NH. 7.53.135; Valerius Maximus 6.9.9. Most of these authors mention the triumph in reference to the remarkable career of P. Ventidius Bassus, who as a young man had been carried by his mother in this triumph but would

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While in Rome to celebrate this victory, Pompeius had apparently had time to hold the elections, which resulted in the return of L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus as consuls for the coming year. There are some indications that Pompeius Strabo had desired iteration for 88, but if so, he seems to have borne his disappointment with no great difficulties. In the meantime, he had apparently been prorogued in his command and seems to have gone directly from his triumph back to Asculum, where he would continue operations in the months to follow.89 As such a positing indicates, as 89 gave way to 88 the war was nevertheless not yet over, in spite of the phenomenal Roman victories during the year about to pass, and in spite of the fact that though by this point a number of participants had surrendered—cities of the Vestini and Hirpini, for example—and a larger number were on the verge of so doing. For the year to come a few changes seem to have been made in the command structure, as Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius was sent south, presumably as a repacement for Cosconius for reasons which are not entirely certain (Diod. 37.10; Appian 1.6.53).90 Still, it would seem that Cosconius still had some exploits left to perform. According to the Periochae, a certain Asculum is mentioned as later as a citizen celebrate a triumph of his own after a long career as an officer in Caesar’s (and later Antony’s) army. The triumph of Pompeius does not draw a lot of commentary from modern scholars, even though there are elements of it which are somewhat irregular: principally, triumphs were not usually given for recovering lost territory, but only for augmenting what Rome already had, as has been pointed out earlier (specifically chapter 3, in the notes supporting the discussion of Fregellae and its aftermath). However, an exception may have been made in this case for a variety of reasons, not the least of which a boost in morale. After all, the Romans had previously only been treated to the spectacle of dead bodies coming into the city, so this sight of a victorious army making its way through instead might have been a welcome corrective. 89 It has been argued that Pompeius wanted re-election in part so that by means of the lex Memmia he could avoid the prosecution for maiestas, which apparently was threatening him on the expiration of his office. For more on this see chapter 8. 90 For more on the command of Metellus Pius in 88, see Appendix N.

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having fallen to Pompeius, who has already been named as a proconsul and therefore allows this capture to be dated to 88 (Per. 76). As has been seen, Asculum in Picenum had already fallen in the previous year, but what this report may signify is that Ausculum in the south had now been taken. In order for Pompeius to have been given credit for it, it must have been taken by one of his legates, as Cosconius, who was last mentioned as having been operating in the area of Ausculum, seems to have been. Therefore, the Periochae seem to be describing a last success for Cosconius before Metellus relieved him.91 The surrender of the Marrucini had probably also allowed Ser. Sulpicius Galba to be relieved (nothing more is heard of him in command), and that of the Marsi in 88 may similarly have allowed Cinna to go home as well. Cinna would certainly be in Rome by the fall of 88, in time to run, successfully, for a consulate of 87 (as will be seen). The relief of these commanders left the region of the Picentes, Marrucini, and Vestini to be overseen by Pompeius So Domaszewski (p. 31), although he believed the legate who had taken Ausculum was Metellus Pius; see Appendix N for why it is improbable that Metellus served under Pompeius. Haug, however, has a different explanation for this odd, apparently anachronistic notice about the surrender of an Asculum (p. 204). According to her account, surrender of Asculum in Picenum, which had in fact occurred in 90, had included with it a number of Vestini, and that this event is mentioned in Per. 75. This would be the only reference to the fall of the city in the Periochae, which contains no other mention of the siege and its conclusion. When the rest of the Vestini gave up in 88, it provided the occasion for Livy to recall the earlier Vestini and to mention the fall of Asculum during an aside. This digression which made its way into the Periocha of book 76. This is in theory possible, although by Haug’s own reckoning of the chronology of the Periochae, such a mention would place this event well before the same Summary’s notice that Sulla had run for consul in November of 89. In other words, the fall of Asculum is reported in such a way as to indicate it happened earlier in the year than it actually did. For these reasons, Domaszewski’s simpler interpretation of both this passage (with a suitable change of personnel) and the one involving the Vestini, one which holds that some of these people had capitulated after a battle that paved the way for the southern campaign of Cosconius (p. 29; see above), seems more likely; it is therefore the one followed here. 91

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himself (Per., loc. cit.). Finally, one Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus was apparently sent south, if he was not there already. The fact that he was soon to engage with Poppaedius Silo, who will next be seen in the vicinity of Aesernia (Diodorus 37.2.9–14), makes it probable that Lepidus was sent to take charge temporarily of the men commanded by Sulla in the latter’s absence for the conduct of his candidacy, and to oversee the oversee the siege of Nola in Sulla’s absence (Per. 76). On the Italian side, the beginning of 88 saw the Allies reorganizing what was left of their army and their general staff, according to Diodorus (loc.cit.). The apparently single commanderin-chief was to be former “consul” Poppaedius Silo. He had apparently proved himself sufficiently as a general to merit the appointment even over his fellow consul Papius Mutilus, who apparently still lived but was possibly still recovering from his wounds in the start of 88 and hence not entirely fit for sharing supreme command. Four additional commanders were nominated alongside and subordinate to Silo, of whom two—M. Lamponius and Ti. Cleppius—are named as having come from the Lucani.92 Another, one “Pompeius” (Πομπ ιος)—which is almost certainly a miscopied “Papius”, id est Mutilus—is also mentioned. Who the fourth was cannot be determined, since the commanders listed above are the only ones named by Diodorus, the lone source for all of these developments.93 92 For Lamponius see the previous chapter as well as Appendix H; for “Cleppius” as opposed to “Clepitius”, as it appears the text of Diodorus, see Salmon (1958 p. 178). 93 One of the usual candidates to be put in this spot is Pontius Telesinus. His nomination is in part due to references to him as having fought, not just in the Civil War, but in the Allied War as well (Velleius 2.16; Florus 2.6.6), and in part due to the testimony of Diodorus that by this stage only Samnites and Lucanians were left in arms. Since Cleppius and Lamponius were both Lucani, it is held that the other two commanders must have been Samnite, from which people Telesinus came. Arguments for Telesinus are made by Domaszewski (p. 18), who, like Haug (p. 212, 224, 243), asserts that Telesinus had fought in the war from the beginning, and Salmon (1958, loc. cit.) ,who only argues for a later role, and even that opinion would change later on (1967, p. 79).

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Diodorus further relates an additional undertaking by the Allies, which was a deputation sent to the East to see if help could be obtained from Mithridates (Athenaeus also makes a reference to petitions from Italian nations for alliance with Mithridates; 5.50.213). A coin which was struck bearing the name of Minius Iegius on the one side and eastern symbols on the other has been interpreted as displaying hopes for the success of this mission.94 It is possible that this embassy was sent in 89 and only arrived back in Italy after the fall of Venusia, whose capture (about which more below) provides the context in which the embassy is mentioned in Diodorus. Whether or not this was so, the mission was a failure: Mithridates, it is reported, would send succor to the Allies only after he had quelled Asia, with which he was occupied at the moment. That ruler would later prove no friend to Italians of any kind, as his subsequent slaughter of thousands of them in his realms would graphically illustrate,95 but at the beginning of 88 he Alternatively, due to the appearance of the name of a Minus Iegius on a coin (more directly), this individual is sometimes presented as the possible missing commander (Salmon, p. 369), although Keaveney presents a different suggestion for why he would appear there (1987, p. 157). As it turns out, the missing leader is mentioned in no action named as having fought in what remains of the war, so in a sense the quest for his identity is academic. 94 So Sydenham 643 (p. 95) and note; also Salmon 1958, p. 175, 1967, p. 369–370. 95 For sources of this event, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 168–169. Among them is Diodorus (loc. cit.), who states that that this embassy to Mithridates had been sent before Sulla’s march on Rome (see chapter 7). Since another, the Periochae of Livy’s Book 77, reports that the slaughter of Italians had taken place after that March, it can be inferred that this massacre had not yet transpired when Mithridates was contacted by the Alliance. Memnon also places the massacre after Sulla’s march on Rome (22.6–9), as does Appian (Mithr. 22–23); Velleius, for his part, implies that the massacre had only occurred after the Alliance had been defeated (2.18). Such evidence leads to the fairly firm conclusion that—contra Keaveney (1987, p. 157)—the Allies had not turned to Mithridates even in the face of his butchery of “so many of their cousins in the East”, since that had not yet occurred. Rather, they had sought his help before his true feelings towards them were displayed.

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possibly looked like a suitable enough source of aid. Admittedly, inviting Mithridates to Italy might have given the latter an excuse to mount a full-scale invasion, but in 88 the Allies might well have figured that even this possibility would be worth it if the specter of it caused the Romans to bring the war to an equitable conclusion. Finally, Diodorus also relates that the Allies were finally compelled to give up Corfinium and relocate to Aesernia. Preparations for this must have been made throughout the winter, but when spring arrived and the Vestini, Paeligni, and Marsi succumbed to exhaustion, the inevitable evacuation could no longer be postponed.96 Therefore, the Allies removed from Corfinium, which was probably occupied by the Romans soon after without a great deal of resistance. It was thus probably not destroyed, and its later prominent role in the Civil Wars of Caesar suggests it was not wrecked past the point of fairly timely repair. No Roman commander is mentioned as having finally taken possession of this city, which leaves open the possibility that it was Cinna who marched into it after receiving the surrender of the Marsi. Certainly such a symbolic gesture might have helped in his bid for the consulate of 87.97 Having transferred their headquarters, the Allies were on the move again in 88. Yet much of that movement led to positions of submission: along with the Hirpini (who gave in to Sulla in the previous year; Appian 1.6.51), the Picentes (who probably surrendered at the capture of Asculum), and probably the Marrucini (who had either surrendered in 89 or very early in 88), the spring saw peace being sought by the Vestini, Paeligni, and Marsi (as mentioned above). These notwithstanding, there were still Italians who continued in the struggle. Those who remained in the fight included Poppaedius Silo and his subordinate commanders mentioned above, as well as a not insignificant army under them Salmon posits that in the meantime the Allies had moved their flag to Bovianum, based on a line in Appian which suggests that this was the capital for the insurgents (1958, p. 177–178; 1967, p. 367). For a further analysis of this hypothesis, see Keaveney (1987, p. 156) and Appendix O. 97 This is, of course, pure speculation, although it is not impossible that it was Cinna who took possession of this town. 96

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which had been cobbled together during the winter and early spring. Its ranks were reported as having been filled with 30,000 free men and an additional 20,000 infantry and a thousand cavalry recruited from freed slaves (Diodorus, 37.2.10). So enforced, Silo decided to go on the offensive at the opening of the campaign season. He therefore proceeded to essay forth from Aesernia and soon used part of this army to recapture Bovianum, even apparently celebrating a triumph of sorts upon its capture (Obsequens 56).98 In the meantime, the Romans were on the move as well. While Silo was celebrating the return of Bovianum to Allied possession, Metellus Pius completed his journey down the Adriatic seaboard and arrived in Apulia, where he took over the soldiers of Cosconius. With these he then marched on Venusia and laid siege to it (Diod. 37.2.10). Upon getting word of this action, Silo then proceeded from Bovianum to Beneventum (or circumvented it) and headed towards Metellus. However, at this point Lepidus appeared, possibly from Nola where he may have been directing the continuing siege there. Diodorus (loc. cit.) and the Periochae (76) suggest that what happens next is that Silo engaged with Lepidus in a battle in which he was defeated by the latter. If Silo’s movements (and those of Lepidus) are as described above, then it may well be that Lepidus had pursued Silo for some time and only caught up with him after he had reached Apulia. This would accord well with Appian, who says that Silo had reached the latter territory (1.6.53). Diodorus, as has been seen, mentions the engagement and the defeat of the Allies, but is silent about one other result of this battle about which the Periochae and Appian are more explicit (as also is Obsequens, assuming this was the proelium proximum to Bovianum; loc. cit.). That result is that Silo himself was killed in battle. A divergence from the sources may appear to arise in the account of Silo’s final campaign as just presented, in that Appian seems to state that that Silo was defeated, not by Lepidus, but by Metellus (Καικίλιος δ᾽ αὐτῷ Μέτελλος ἐπελ ὼν ἐπὶ τὴν στρατ γίαν διάδοχος, ἐς Ἰάπυγας ἐμ αλὼν ἐκράτει καὶ ὅδε μάχῃ τῶν Ἰαπύγων. καὶ Ποπαίδιος, ἄλλος τῶν ἀφεστώτων στρατ γός, ἐνταῦ α ἔπεσεν; loc. 98

For its capture by Sulla in 89, see above.

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cit.). In fact, this contradiction is mostly ephemeral. In the first place, although Appian says that Metellus defeated the Apulians, he does not explicitly say that Metellus defeated Silo. Likewise, while Appian says that Silo died in Apulia where Metellus was maneuvering, he does not say that Silo died fighting the latter. This can easily be reconciled to the other accounts if it is accepted that Silo had almost gotten to Venusia when Lepidus caught him and defeated him, as postulated above. After Silo’s death in that battle, what remained of his army had probably fled in all directions and gradually drifted to Metellus in scattered units, which is the very thing Appian describes as having happened next (οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ σποράδ ν ἐς τὸν Καικίλιον διέφυγον).99 Although the Periochae and Appian both end their accounts of the Allied War with the death of Silo (and Orosius ends his with the fall of Asculum), it is clear that the conflict was not yet over everywhere. This fact is recognized by Velleius, who mentions that hostility lingered on at Nola (2.17) and by Appian himself, who notes that some Samnites and Lucani remained unbeaten (1.6.53). Only Diodorus (37.2.10–14) goes unto further details about what remained of the war. According to this authority, the Allies seem to have spent much of the remainder of the year 88 recovering from the loss of Silo and, perhaps, waiting to hear from Mithridates. However, sometime in early 87—the occasion was Sulla’s departure from Italy, about which, about which more next chapter—they seem to have sallied out and sent an army under Marcus Lamponius and Papius Mutilus into Bruttium.100 These two then attempted to capture Isiae by siege unsuccessfully, but while so This construction of Silo’s last campaign differs from that postulated by Keaveney (1987, p. 158), who holds that Silo was first defeated by Lepidus and then captured Bovianum. Metellus then arrived in Samnium and joined with Lepidus, Keaveney continues, and together they defeated Silo. Such an interpretation places an extra battle in the campaign, for which no good reason is given. It therefore seems reasonable to reject it in favor of the interpretation above. 100 See Salmon (1967, p. 369) for this correction to the text, which reads “Pompeius”; he prefers the reading of “Papius” to that of “Pontius” (id est Telesinus). This emandation appears sound, and is likewise adopted here. 99

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engaged they seem to have lit upon an additional scheme whereby they would capture Rhegium and from there perhaps invade Sicily. This, too, was foiled when C. Norbanus, the Roman governor of Sicily, collected a huge army and navy and broke the siege. Thus defeated, the remnant of the Allies apparently spent a little while longer conducting sporadic raids in Bruttium before they were finally reconciled to the Romans later in the year,101 about which more will be described later. Thus, it is clear that the Alliance—or at least a very small part of it—survived for some time after the death of Silo, who had been its principal architect and one of its most accomplished warriors. Nevertheless, there is a shift in focus away from this vestige in all of the sources except Diodrorus, and what remained of the war was shunted by these other narratives into the background. Reasons for this apparent abandonment of the socii are not difficult to find. In the first place, almost all of the sources are concerned with either Roman history or Romans themselves, as has often been mentioned previously. After the surrender of most of their communities and the death of their main leader, the Allies still in arms became a fairly insignificant factor militarily; they could therefore be relegated to the same brevity of discussion that any other small conflict would merit. Secondly, while the embers of the Alliance were being stamped out in 88, events whose importance were of nigh-titanic proportions were transpiring in Rome itself, and the impact of these would dwarf whatever influence the dying throes of the Allied War could have. Therefore, as a foreign event (in a matter of speaking), the Allied War had become a minor issue, and less deserving of focus than other things which were going on at this time of greater impact for the Romans. However, a more compelling reason for this treatment of the rest of the sources is at hand. As it turns out, these sources do not abandon the former Allies at all, since additional developments occurring over the year 89 and 88 had meant that the history of the Allies would be identical to the history of the Romans. According to notices in Appian (1.6.53) and Velleius Paterculus (2.17), passages which are confirmed by a notice in the Periocha of Livy’s 101

So Salmon 1967, p. 369–370.

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Book 80, the remainder of those socii who had not yet been given the civitas by means of the lex Julia had finally acquired it through subsequent legislation (with the exception of the Samnites and the Lucani who were still in arms). This acquisition had come to them at the very least upon the defeat of Silo in 88, but had probably begun to be attained by some of the Allies even earlier (more below). Unfortunately, these passages are fairly meager in the detail that they provide about this process, such that first and foremost there is no indication of the name of the law by which this bequest was made, or even whether it was just one law as opposed to several of them. Appian, for his part, merely notes that “all of Italy was enfolded into the Roman commonwealth (Ἰταλία πᾶσα προσεχώρ σεν ἐς τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν, χωρίς γε Λευκανῶν καὶ Σαυνιτῶν τότε). Velleius likewise only notes that the Romans gave

the citizenship to the Allies (Romani … civitatem dare maluerunt), while the Periochae adds the additional detail that it was apparently done with the consent of the Senate (Italicis populis a senatu civitas data est). As a result of this lack of attribution, it is not only impossible to know which tribune(s), praetor(s), or consul(s) made such an authorization. It is also very difficult to come up with more then a vague indication of when he (or they) did so, and, importantly, why.102 Nevertheless, while too little is given by the sources to permit certainty on any of these points, enough is given by them to permit conjecture on what may be the more important elements, such as when, why, how the citizenship was given. Since these issues are fairly vital towards an understanding of both the end of 88 and what comes after, such a conjecture and an examination of the evidence upon which it is based will follow below. In the first place, it will be assumed here that the passages in Appian and Velleius listed above are not, in fact, simply hearkening This claim seems to fly in the face of the received wisdom that such a law can, in fact, be identified as the lex Plautia Papiria, probably passed sometime in 89. Certainly the lex Plautia Papiria did enfranchise some Italians, but based on what is known of both the timing and the terms of this law, it seems fairly clear that it was not the one which gave the franchise to the rest of the Italians (save the Samnites and the Lucani). For a more extensive look at the lex Plautia Papiria, see Appendix P. 102

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back to a law which both likewise described (but did not name) in earlier passages. In other words, these authors are not describing the lex Julia, but a different law. This is fairly easily supported by the texts: in addition to the fact that this second legislative initiative is placed later in the narrative of these two authors, the language used by each to describe this later law is different and less restrictive than that used to describe the lex Julia. In Appian, for example, the earlier law gave the franchise only to those Italians who had clung tight to the terms of their alliance with Rome (Ἰταλιωτῶν δὲ τοὺς ἔτι ἐν τῇ συμμαχίᾳ παραμένοντας ἐψ φίσατο εἶναι πολίτας), as opposed to “all of Italy” (Ἰταλία πᾶσα) described in the second. In Velleius, the law named earlier likewise only gave the franchise to those who had never fought or who had surrendered by a predetermined point (recipiendo in civitatem qui arma aut non ceperant aut deposuerant maturius), as opposed to it giving the citizenship to all the remaining defeated states (victis adflictisque … universis civitatem dare maluerunt). Therefore, it seems sound to believe that Appian and Velleius are not recalling the lex Julia, but are both naming a different law. Having made this assumption, it is also held that both Appian and Velleius are here also both describing the same (unnamed) law as opposed to separate ones, as it was also believed they were so doing with the lex Julia in earlier passages. The placement chronologically in their respective texts103 and the similarity in the language used by both seems to make this hypothesis a sound one. If both of these assumptions are correct, then Velleius may also be read to suggest why it is that the Romans chose this course of action, and this in turn might suggest when they did so. As can be readily be seen, such a mass enfranchisement marks quite a departure from what it has argued was the Roman attitude towards such an action. As was speculated earlier, that attitude was generally a negative one, due to the changes which would be wrought by such admissions on the economic, political, and military apparatus of the Republic.104 Admittedly, that they had altered their position 103 Although see Appendix P for the difficulty with this, one centering around the praetor Asellio. 104 See chapter 4.

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somewhat is evident by the lex Julia, but it has been argued that this law was passed from sheer necessity: faced with the possibility of the Latins defecting to the Alliance or at the very least deprived of their manpower, and needing either to bring about the surrender of the Etruscans and Umbrians or make sure those communities stayed surrendered (preventing flareups for the future), this earlier legislation had been enacted with no doubt begrudging approval of the patres in 90. There was, however, little danger of the Alliance gaining more members after mid-89. The Allies were not, perhaps, completely destroyed at that time, but their power had been diminished to such an extent that their eventual submission seems certain, as any would-be latecomers to the confederacy would have recognized. Why, then, would the Romans have chosen to give the franchise to a defeated enemy (as the language of Velleius), rather than simply resume—to the extent that such was possible—a status quo ante bellum? One explanation which modern scholars offer is that the Romans, having foreseen future difficulties with excluding Italian allies from the citizenship contrary to their desires, decided to bow to inevitability and grant the civitas to the conquered Allies to guarantee the peace.105 Such is, of course, quite possible, but it does indicate a generosity on the part of the Romans which is somewhat contrary to their previous demeanor. On the other hand, it is not difficult to see how perhaps the Senate and the people may have altered their stance somewhat based on the length and the ferocity of the war. Just as may have been part of the logic behind the lex Julia, the Romans must have arrived at the conclusion that whatever economic drain on the aerarium might have been caused by having to pay for what were once cost-free Allied contributions to the legions, it would likely have been insignificant in comparison to the millions and millions of sesterces already lost attempting to defeat these. Additionally, the potentially slight military consequences of having to treat such soldiers as Romans would probably have been of no moment in light of the more dire military consequences of having been forced to treat them as enemies. 105 This seems to be what is contemplated by Badian (1958, p. 226) and Keaveney (1987, p. 170–171).

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Having endured such an ordeal once, it stands to reason that the Romans would not be sanguine about going through something similar at a later time by Allies who still wanted the franchise. Giving them what they wanted could forestall such a future development. Similarly, there may have been Romans who opposed sharing the citizenship and the city to the Italians based on beliefs about the inherent inferiority of the latter before the war. Such beliefs may well have been challenged and even changed by the battlefield performance of these ostensible inferiors, who certainly displayed skill and valor which matched the Romans. Likewise, sharing the Commonwealth with such men may have become more palatable than leave open the possibility they might return to arms in the future, and once again kill pure-blooded Romans in great numbers. As the war continued, then, than even Romans who held on to their prejudices may have come to feel that it was better to give the Italians a citizenship they may not have merited than have them continue as non-citizens in enmity to the Republic, an enmity which might once more boil over into violence if their wishes were not granted. Finally, a way had also been found to blunt the potentially deleterious effects of huge numbers of new citizens on the political structure of the Commonwealth. The new citizens to be enfranchised could simply be incorporated in the tribes in the same manner as those given the citizenship by the lex Julia, and indeed, Appian asserts that this is precisely what occurred.106 In this instance, however, there may have been one critical difference: whereas in 90 the Romans may very well have disguised the ways by which they would enervate the vote of the novi cives, now they probably made clear how this was to be done. Since those Allies who had already lost and had surrendered would have faced no better alternative, it is probable that they accepted this offer as better than nothing. In this way, the defeated Allies could be given the citizenship to make sure they never erupted against Rome in the future, figuring that the damage to the treasury and diminished battlefield power would be easier to handle than another 106

For a similar opinion see Mouritsen, 1998, p. 166.

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insurrection, and their effects on the government of the Roman state if which they were now members would be negligible. Therefore, even though the Romans were on the verge of winning the war, they might have chosen to make this concession to a defeated foe through having foreseen a similar war in the future if the citizenship were withheld at this point. This is not impossible, and may very well have been the deciding factor. Such clairvoyance nevertheless continues to seem strangely out of character for what is typical Roman behavior towards a vanquished foe. On the other hand, it may well have been that the laws was passed, not so much for the Allies who had surrendered, but for the ones who had not. Vellieus may be interpreted in such a way: he writes that the Romans foolishly seem to have preferred to grant the citizenship when they themselves were exarmati, rather than when they were integri; when, in other words, the Romans were “weakened from fighting”, rather than when they were “whole and sound”. Perhaps this reflects that the Romans had become exhausted and had given the citizenship as a means to induce those who had been beaten, but had not yet given in, to surrender and therefore end the combat. The fact that the Italians were on the brink of defeat did not mean that they could have found ways to limp on, perhaps for years to come. Rather than commit to such protracted, if minor, hostilities, and in the process further drain the treasury while simultaneously denying themselves use of what remained of Italian manpower, the Romans may have decided that giving the citizenship to end the fighting would result in a better outcome that continued efforts to beat the socii back into line, even ones which were functionally already defeated. If so, then the very thing that the Allies may have hoped would happen as the result of the war had apparently come to pass, although the result was not exactly as they had predicted. Assuming that Roman thinking on the matter was thus, then it is not difficult to envision how events may have unfolded: sometime in late 89 or early 88 a law was passed allowing commanders in the field to offer the citizenship to the Allies as the basis for surrender, an alternative preferable to the leaders of the Commonwealth than the exertion it would take to bring the worsted but still defiant Allies to their knees by force. In this, an extension of the lex Calpurnia and lex Julia was created: now commanders could enfranchise, not just soldiers, but whole

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communities. However, this citizenship would come with certain debilities, namely those of the lex Julia. Unlike what had happened in early 89, in mid-88 the Romans did not even try to maintain any subterfuge about how many tribes would be created: there would be very few of them, and they would vote last. Peace on such terms would possibly have been very attractive to those communities which had taken a savage beating the year before, such as the Marrucini, Marsi,107 Vestini, and Paeligni, and according to the Periochae all of these had begun to surrender right around the beginning of campaigning season of 88. Yet for the others, such as the Samnites and the Lucani, it was not enough. They may not Of course, there remains one final, minor detail which is not completely satisfactorily resolved by this construction, and it involves the fate of Q. Poppaedius Silo. As has been seen, Silo was still not only fighting with the Alliance but even leading its soldiers in battle past the point at which—as per the construction above—his own community, the Marsi, had surrendered and been given the franchise. Theoretically, Silo, the most noteworthy of advocates for the civitas, should have taken it wih his countrymen, and it its therefore somewhat puzzling not to seem him do so. A number of possible solutions to this riddle present themselves, however. One the one hand, it may well be that Silo, like the Samnites and the Lucani, would not accept anything less than a complete citizenship, and resolved to lead these men until they got it. On the other, he may have wanted to give in and accept what the Romans had offered, but had given an oath to stay with the Allies until all gave in together; the Marsi may have broken that pact, but, perhaps, Silo would not. Thirdly, it may well have been that he suspected, or was told in no uncertain terms, that while the Romans would embrace the rest of the Marsi, they would never, causa vitii, accept the leader of the Alliance and the man who had led Caepio into ambush on false terms (this last is the opinion of Brunt 1988, p. 109). Silo, then, would have no other choice than stay where he was, to fight and die for a cause which, ironically, he had to a certain extent actually already won. In the end, however, nothing can be known about Silo’s motivations beyond that that they were strong enough to see him remain in arms against Rome until his death, although it is apparent that no matter what they were, his services would have been, and were, gratefully retained by the Allies. 107

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have been as badly hurt as the northern communities had been, and Rome’s readiness to make this concession to the latter had signified weakness and a willingness to make sacrifices to secure an end to the fighting. If they were to hold out against the Romans a little longer, they could perhaps get even more favorable terms, such as citizenship for those who deserted to them, the right to keep their plunder but have their own property returned, and the return of their captives. As it happened, they were perfectly correct in their belief, and they therefore remained in the field until they got what they wanted, as well be seen.108 In such a way peace, for the most part, seems to have been acquired at long last between the Romans and their former Allies, who were now the Republic’s newest citizens. However, those newest citizens were still to be distinguished from Rome’s older cives due to the restrictions which had been put on the way they would take part in the government of the Commonwealth. To those who had already submitted to Rome’s mercy, this may have seemed like a good deal, and to those who had not but whose ability to hold out was almost gone, it might very well have been more acceptable than more campaigning and dying towards an ultimate outcome which might be even less favorable than this one. The offer was therefore taken by most of them for lack of anything better which could be anticipated. Yet it would seem unusual that men who had sacrificed so much to gain all the rights and privileges of being Roman citizens, as the ancient sources 108 Mouritsen (1998, p. 165–166) also has opinions along these lines, although in his conception the offer of franchise was made to the others after their surrender and not before. The Samnites, for their part, had then demanded it as a condition of their capitulation, fearing lest the Romans would not give it to them after their surrender as they had with all the others and thereby make an example out of them. Such fears may have been well-founded, as Sulla’s later activities would show. Such terms, along with the other conditions, were refused at first. However, Mouritsen concludes, Cinna later granted these concessions. This construction is not impossible, but it is based on the premise that the Romans only offered the citizenship after the Allies had surrendered; this premise seems less likely than that they had used it as a bargaining chip to effect that very capitulation, as argued above.

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repeatedly stress that they had, would be satisfied with anything less than these. What they had been given was in fact less, and the sources suggest the very sort of dissatisfaction that might be expected. For the time being, however, peace of a sort was brought about with the former Allies, and this allowed the ancient authorities to divert their attention to matters brewing in 88 and 87 which would be of profound significance for all Romans, old and new. As will be seen, these matters not only concerned the new citizens, but would eventually actually involve them, as well.

5. THE END OF THE WAR: WHAT WAS REAPED AND WHAT WAS SEWN BY THE EXTENSION OF THE CIVITAS

By the middle of 88 it seems that all of the men who had gone to war to acquire the citizenship, and even some who had not, had at least received an offer giving it. Those Allies who had put aside their weapons by the middle of 88 actually took the offer, and if— as has been consistently argued up to this point—their struggle had been for such an outcome, then the history of that struggle should come to an end here. However, it does not do so, because the civitas they accepted was not the citizenship for which they had taken up those arms, but was instead one lacking almost anything resembling the ability to make their voices heard in elections or in the ratification of laws. To those who had accepted it because they were beaten, or because they were nearly so, this seems to have been adequate enough to call an end to the fighting, at least for the time being. But it cannot be doubted that they still wanted what it had turned out they had not had the power to take. What that was was the Roman citizenship in its full and complete form, and not just the skeletal version they had received. Their ultimate goal—a secure claim to a Roman citizenship which was the equal to that of the original Romans, whereby they could be full partners in the Empire—had, then, still not yet been won. Superior force had made them take less at a time when it looked like war until extinction, fighting to the last Italian, would still not achieve their ends. Sound military sense, and indeed simple common sense, had dictated that, in a circumstance wherein the only options they could take would result in varying degrees of getting less than their full desires, they had taken that which had offered them the most.

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In fine, the Italians, having found themselves in a situation in which they could not win, had chosen the route whereby they had lost the least. That did not mean, however, that their resolve was broken: it seems clear that as long as fighting could have gotten them their wish, they would have fought on. Nor did it mean that, if returning to fighting would get them their wish, they once again turn to arms. As it turns out, such a scenario soon presented itself to the ex-Allies, and when it appeared to them that combat would bring about the accomplishment of their goals, the former socii took their up pila again. Soon their struggle began anew, as will be seen: the Allies who had fought for the rights and privileges of the citizenship are soon seen fighting for those selfsame rights once more, and those who did so were not only the Samnites and the Lucani (who remained in the field), but others as well. The circumstances under which the struggle resumed, and its outcome, will be described in the chapters to follow.

CHAPTER 7: NEW CITIZENS: MARIUS, SULPICIUS, SULLA, AND THE MARCH ON ROME 1. THE “RETIREMENT” OF C. MARIUS As has been seen, the assassination of Drusus and the opening of the Allied War caused in Rome a general state of anxiety which resembled a fairly dire depression, one which extended through the final months of 91 into many of the first few weeks of 90. Expression of this malaise apparently toom many forms, of which one was various legal actions against members of the aristocracy who were blamed for the misery caused by the war. It also seems to have presented itself in the hysterical wailing with which the steady stream of bodies and the endless procession of funerals following in the wake of Asculum, Aesernia, the Tolenus, and the ambush of Caepio was met. Eventually, however, the city seems to have begun to right itself after the panic which had set in, and aiding in that restoration of calm had been some victories won fairly late in the campaigning season of 90 by L. Julius Caesar at Acerrae, by Gn. Pompeius Strabo near Asculum, and by L. Porcius Cato in Etruria (alongside Aulus Plotius in Umbria). Rewards had in turn fallen on almost all of these men: Cato and Pompeius, as has been seen, were named consuls of 89, while L. Julius Caesar became censor, joining in that office his former legatus P. Crassus, who seems to have made his way back to Rome after his loss at Grumentum relatively unscathed.1 One name, however, is conspicuously absent from the list of honored commanders from 90, and that is C. Marius. In spite of 1

More on the actions of these censors will be narrated below.

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having first prevented a complete rout at the Tolenus, and then won the major Battle of the Vineyards, Marius received no triumph, no additional office, nor anything else of the kind. In fact, the year 89 found him not only unpromoted, but actually out of the field entirely. A number of reasons have been speculated for this retirement in the previous chapter, including that which, according to Plutarch, Marius himself propounded. This was was ill health, and given his age, it is not hard to imagine that ailments may have been the actual, or at least a main, cause for his withdrawal from action. On the other hand, it has also been suggested above that Senatorial enmity towards Marius also had a hand in his relief, just as it had had an influence in the way Marius had been compelled to handle the troops put under his command after the death of the consul P. Rutilius Lupus. That enmity also may well have played a role in the events of 89 and 88, events which were of such great import to both to the Commonwealth and to those former Allies who had become the Commonwealth’s newest citizens that it may be forgiven if a brief digression on the sources of that enmity may be undertaken before those events that may have been affected by them are analyzed. Such a foray need not be extensive, as the life of Marius has been amply and ably described elsewhere,2 but a few important aspects of his political and military career deserve some mention here. In the first place, it has been much observed that Marius was something of an arriviste, a term for which the Roman equivalent was expressed in Latin as novus homo. A “new man”, as Cicero explained—in reference to himself, as he was one of them—was a person who lacked distinguished ancestry, or, more specifically, a person who could not identify someone in his family who had been elected to high magistracy in Rome (de leg. agr. 2.3). It seems the Roman nobility tended to look with disfavor upon such men becoming consul, if the sources are to be believed: Cicero had said of his own candidacy for the office of consul that the aristocracy had practically sealed off that magistracy as if by armed guards (loc. cit.), while Sallust in writing about that same election asserted that 2 See especially the small monograph and supporting articles by Thomas Carney, as well as the more recent study by Richard Evans.

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the nobiles had regarded an election to the post by a new man as a “pollution” (nobilitas invidia aestuabat et quasi pollui consulatum credebant, si eum quamvis egregius homo novos adeptus foret; Cat. 23.6). Such an attitude had also apparently confronted Marius when he had run for the magistracy, as Sallust additionally notes in a different work but using almost the exact same language (B.J. 63.6–7).3 It has been speculated that the influence of this prejudice on Marius and has career has been exaggerated,4 and that perhaps the demeanor against such men in general has been overblown. Nevertheless, even if this bias was not as concrete nor widespread as Cicero and Sallust claim, it is certainly likely that there were at least some Romans who held this sentiment, and the result of it might well have been that those who held such thoughts were inclined to regard Marius with suspicion from the very beginning. If that is so, then the novitas of latter may have played a part in the attitude of the ruling class towards him, which is perhaps best described as a coolness bordering on loathing.5 Even if this “newness” had only been a fairly small element in that attitude towards Marius amongst the Roman aristocrats, there were also the brutal realities of the electoral politics in Rome which would only add to whatever hostility may have already existed. Elections were often a source of new enmities or for the exacerbation of existing ones: since very often there was nothing resembling a platform upon which Romans ran for office, candidates usually sought to secure votes by showing why they themselves were the best men for the job, and this task often involved demonstrating why they were to be preferred to their Sallust’s exact words in this later passage are Novus nemo tam clarus neque tam egregiis factis erat, quin indignus illo honore et is quasi pollutus haberetur. For additional discussion of this attitude amongst the nobilitas regarding new men gaining the consulate in general, see Gelzer (p. 33–36), Wiseman (1971, p. 104–107), and Epstein (p. 55); for its specific application to Marius, see Epstein (loc. cit.), Carney (1970, p. 26); and Badian 1964(b), p. 144–147. 4 Evans, p. 68–70 5 See, again, the biographies of Carney and Evans for examples of this hostility, although the work of the latter has different explanation for it than the former. 3

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opponents.6 Personal attacks could and not infrequently did ensue, and as a result the emergence of every successful candidate almost always left an unsuccessful one who was frustrated in his ambitions (it seems unlikely that there were many elections in which candidates ran unopposed)7 and probably inclined to hold a grudge against the victor, both from jealousy and for whatever may have been said during the canvassing. It may well be wondered if a Roman from any background could have become consul without making at least some inimici;8 it can therefore only be imagined how many Marius had made in his election, not just to one term in that office, but to the five subsequent terms during the Cimbric and Teutonic wars which followed a few years after that initial one. If the nobility had already had their reservations about Marius due to his origins, it is not too difficult to conjecture how much those reservations would have been increased by his repeated iterations as consul. After all, such a monopoly on Rome’s must powerful position would perforce freeze other candidates out of it, a fact which may have been enough to engender virulent animosity in and of itself. Worse still, each re-election brought about the accumulation of a vast amount of power in the hands of one man, power with possibly limitless potential for abuse; to the minds of those Romans for whom fear of tyranny not just a rhetorical device but a real concern, the consulates of Marius must have brought some genuine anxiety. Every term served by Marius, therefore, had represented on the one hand a year in which at least one putative “worthy” candidate had not been given power, to be taken amiss by not only the disappointed candidates themselves but perhaps also by those other members of the aristocracy who already begrudged novi homines. On the other, each one provided one more prospective 6 Rather than on anything resembling issues or a platform; so Mouritsen (2001, p. 92–94, 117) and Morstein-Marx (p. 275–276). See also Appendix C. 7 A brief overview of the Roman candidacy is provided in Frank Frost Abbott’s A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions (Athenaeum Press: New York, 1901), p. 169–170; see also Nicolet 1988, p. 298–310. 8 See Epstein, p. 1–28 for the extent to which the making and holding of enemies was commonplace in Republican Rome.

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opportunity for Marius to decide that he was growing over-fond of the authority he could wield and to act to make it permanent, even if during every previous election he had been given the same prospective opening for tyranny and had in fact never done what it may have been feared that he would do. Marius, therefore, might have been difficult to bear as parvenu, resented by the aristocracy for denying some of them the consulates which they might have felt they had deserved, and dreaded as a would-be tyrant. Added to all of these sources of irritation there was the final fact that Marius had displayed a willingness from almost the very beginning of his public life to take steps to thwart the will of the Senate or diminish its power and prestige, if by so doing he could accomplish his own aims. For example, during his tenure as tribune in 119 he had passed a voting measure which helped eliminate the ability of unscrupulous individuals to intimidate men on their way over the bridges to cast their ballots, which apparently had been a familiar tactic in the employ of the aristocracy to ensure that voting went their way.9 Ten years later, Marius had gathered support during his first bid for the chief magistracy by means of speeches which had been most unflattering to the élite (Sallust, B.J. 85).10 Having successfully attained the consulate, Marius had often either solicited or at the very least accepted the aid of tribunes to override various Senatorial dictates. By means of their assistance, he had been given command against Jugurtha during the Numidian war in spite of the fact that that province had already been allocated to Metellus. His success in that war brought him fame for his command abilities, and based on Carney 1970, p. 20–21; Evans, 96–107. The latter also speculates as to whether or not the opposition of Marius to a corn-pricing law (both measures are reported in Plutarch Mar. 4) was to the lowering or raising of the price; if the opposition was to the latter, this would be another popularis standpoint (see Chapter 3 for the response amongst traditionalist Roman politicians to corn laws). 10 Plutarch Mar. 8 only reports that his speech contained “slanders against Metellus”, the commander in Numidia whom Marius hoped to replace, although it is not unlikely that these “slanders” had also included a searing condemnation of the whole order along the lines of the speech put in his mouth by Sallust. 9

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that reputation, he received dispensation to hold consular power again in 104 in spite of the customary ten year’s interim between re-election not having elapsed. This unorthodox re-election sent him to fight the war against the Teutones and Cimbri, and paving the way for four additional reelections in a row to bring the war to a conclusion.11 There can be little doubt that the Senate seethed over these irregular elections, even if Cicero is quick to point out that they put patriotism ahead of their feelings and did nothing to stop them (Prov. Con. 19). In a very real sense, then, the brilliant military career of Caius Marius, by which he earned the glory that persists to this day, had been won over the objection of the Senate, whose rules had to be countermanded at every point along the way. There was, then, probably very little in the career of Marius which would have made the aristocracy trust him, and much that would likely have incited the exact opposite feeling. In their thinking, Marius was a man who was essentially an outsider and thus perhaps not imbued with the centuries-old respect for Roman laws and customs, one who had won great popularity by means of his martial gifts and had been given power by the people unsanctioned by and indeed in the face of the disgust of the Senate, and one who seems to have taken a cavalier attitude about slipping past the reach of the Senate to circumscribe his actions. This sort of man might well use his popularity to bring about a despotism, a danger which in essence would attach to him as long as he lived. As it turns out, Marius had never actually translated his military victories into such a despotism, and he had even been acknowledged as savior of the state for his defeat of the Germans and, later, for quashing what looked like rebellion launched by Glaucia and Saturninus (the latter a former associate who had played no small part in several of his consulates). However, for a variety of reasons Marius had seen his power and prestige ebb Evans (77–96) believes that the Senatorial opposition recorded as having been levelled at Marius was due far more to his use of the tribunate and of plebiscita to circumvent their prerogatives than his novitas or even his iteration as consul. This may go too far, but it is certain that the Senate was greatly disturbed by such tactics, and it may very well have added to their discomfort with Marius even if it did not create that discomfort. 11

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somewhat in the period between 99–91, and his gradual fade from the pinnacle of prestige must have been a matter of some pleasure to the Senate. Even so, there was no telling what Marius could find himself doing if he ever returned to those heights of fame to which his former triumphs had once carried him in the 100s, and this was likely well-known to the Council in 90. For all these reasons, the selection of Marius as legatus by Rutilius Lupus probably had not been met with relish by the Conscript Fathers. Rather, any chance for Marius to have another command and demonstrate his excellent generalship (which was probably acknowledged even by his worst enemies) was very likely one which would have caused the nobiles some considerable dismay. If such consternation did exist, it might well explain, or at the very least help to explain, the particular—and, it may be allowed, peculiar—ways by which the Senate chose to make use of the talents that general throughout the campaign of 90. As has been seen, Rutilius had died in June of that year. When it turned out that the other surviving consul had not had the leisure to return to Rome to preside over the election of a suffect, Marius could easily have been given proconsular powers by the patres and placed in charge of the entire northern theater: indeed, his vast experience and apparently undiminished skill might have made such a decision seem like the obvious one. Instead, command of uncertain authority was divided by the Senate between Marius and Q. Servilius Caepio, the latter presumably to oversee the more northerly half of what had once been the armies of Rutilius, the former to oversee the more southern half. To the modern scholar, Caepio presents what might be deemed an interesting choice as cocommander for Marius. He had, it seems, never held a significant command in his life,12 and while he was the son of a man combat proven ability, his name had been tarnished somewhat by the Broughton (vol. 2, p. 20, 25 note 5, 28, 30) speculates that he had been praetor in 91, due to the fact that in the first place nine years had elapsed between this year and the year of his quaestorate, and in the second all the legati in whose company he had found himself were exconsular or ex-praetorian. No proof for this assertion can be found, however, and whether or not Caepio had attained the office, certainly no evidence can be located to show his leadership of men before 90. 12

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disaster at Arausio which seems to have been of his father’s making. As events have shown, the Younger Caepio was certainly not up to this commission, something which his inexperience might have allowed to be predicted, although that foresight seems to have escaped the Senate. It has been speculated that Marius was friends with the younger Caepio,13 but even if such a fondness had existed, it is difficult to see how Marius would not have perceived an insult in having such a person placed as his equal, regardless of whether such an insult had been planned.14 At any rate, the joint commission would not last long, as has been seen. The destruction of Caepio’s army may have overcome Senatorial resistance to giving Marius the responsibility for what remained of the northern army, and it seems he was placed in charge of what remained of the original forces of Rutilius thereafter. With these men and with the help of Valerius Massala15 he had managed a southern campaign that culminated in the Battle of the Vineyards, which must have been a matter of hesitant rejoicing for the Senate: it is perhaps noteworthy that it was not, in fact, this victory which had led to the resumption of the purple-bordered togas and insignia, but rather that of Pompeius in Picenum which had done so. Necessity had brought to Marius another command, and he had made the most of it. Nevertheless, when the opportunity to be rid of Marius and arrest his gain of any additional gloria et fama finally presented itself by the election of the new consuls in 89, it So Badian 1964, p. 55. See chapter 5 for some reasons why this command may have been given to Caepio, a choice which, though ultimately an unfortunate one, may not have been entirely designed as an insult to Marius. 15 See Appendix J and K. Badian (1964, p. 230) adduces pre-existing connections between Marius and Massala, which may explain why the latter was replaced in 89; indeed, if it is in fact the case that both Lentulus and Massala were both simultaneously replaced by Q. Catulus (see chapter 6), the insult would have been a double one if the command changes in that year had in fact been politically motivated: not only was Marius himself sent home, but his friend Massala was replaced by a man who had since become a dire enemy since their former cooperation in the Teutonic/Cimbric war (see Carney 1970, p. 37–39; Badian 1964, p. 37–39; more on this hatred will also be discussed below and in the next chapter). 13 14

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seems to have been one of which those who disliked Marius amongst the nobility had been able to take advantage.16 If indeed the Latins had sat out the first year of the war and had been persuaded to join it by the lex Julia (see chapter 5), then their sheer numbers might have seemed to put the ultimate outcome of the war beyond doubt. Consequently, the Senate may have been accorded the luxury of dispensing with an inconvenient but capable—and in fact inconvenient for that very reason—general. Marius would therefore play no part in the campaigns of 89, either because he had by his own admission become worn out by the previous year’s fighting, had become exasperated with the Senate’s intransigence, or had simply not been invited by either of the consuls for 89 to accept a post.17 Therefore, Marius had apparently retired after 90. Where it is that he went once he left camp cannot be known; the fact that he had a villa in Misenum in Baiae which was supposed to be healthful may suggest that this as where he spent the next several months (assuming he was actually ill), although the fact that there was heavy fighting in the immediate vicinity may tell against this possibility, as mentioned in the previous chapter. Whether he recovered his health in Misenum or—as is more likely—found it again in Rome, cannot be known; what is certain, however, is that soon Marius appeared in the Campus Martius and proved still capable of taking exercise with youths in training (Plutarch, Mar. 34). Why it is Marius felt the urge to put on this display is usually attributed to his desire to take the field again, this time against Mithridates in the east.18 Plutarch (Sull. 8 and more extensively in

16 It may very well have been that Cato, the consul of 90 who cashiered Marius, had been one of these enemies; certainly his disparaging remarks about the general reported in Orosius 5.18.24 might suggest inimicitia (for which see previous chapter). See also speculation to this effect in Badian 1964, p. 41. 17 See, again, previous chapter for various reasons suggested for his removal, self-initiated or otherwise. 18 The various misdeeds of this king are not of great importance for this essay; it will suffice to note that by early 90 it seemed almost certain that the Romans were going to declare war on him in the immediate

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Mar. 34–35) and Appian (1.7.55) both mention such a desire explicitly,19 and some scholars have suggested that it had been a desire of a lengthy duration, arising shortly after his final consulate in 99. In fact, it is sometimes argued that Marius had even attempted to foment the war both during his Eastern visit in 98— Plutarch seems to denote a certain bellicosity in his blunt interview with the Mithridates on this voyage (Mar. 31)—and afterwards, since the ambassadors sent to attempt to get the monarch to desist in his misbehavior were alleged to be creatures of Marius.20 This agitation had been rooted in his hope that he would be the one named to fight the war when it occurred. Whether or not Marius actually was able to instigate the war, or even inclined to make the attempt, it is not at all difficult to believe that he may have looked to a potential conflict against Mithridates as a chance whereby he might win an easy victory and collect massive amounts of loot in the process, educate his son in generalship,21 or simply alleviate the boredom he may well have felt from inactivity. Since it was most future. Indeed, even the Allies knew this, as their embassy to him (see last chapter) indicates. 19 Velleius does not directly state that Marius wanted the command, but only that Sulpicius proposed to give it to him (2.18); about this more below. 20 So Luce 1970, p. 187–194. This interpretation is not unconvincing, although it does bespeak of a certain power Marius would have had in getting his men named to the deputation, or the ease with which the Senate was willing to accept the nominations of such known associates even if Marius himself had not pushed for them. Moreover, it implies that these men would be willing to provoke an unauthorized war merely on the chance that Marius would be named to oversee it, a possibility which is by no means certain. In fact, it might just as easily have been the case that Aquillius, former legatus of Marius and later his co-consul of 101, wanted the command himself, perhaps for the easy spoils to be won there; his ultimate fate (as recorded by Appian, Mithr. 21) is illustrative. Hence, Marius may very well have supported such a war, and that support may have been based in part in the hope that he would be chosen to command it, but his ability and even his wish to place ambassadors to provoke the conflict seem doubtful. 21 Plutarch claims Marius himself gave this as the reason for his fervor for command, which was apparently universally derided; Mar. 34.

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unlikely that the Senate would itself give him such a charge, by advertising his health he seems to have let the Roman people know that he still had some vim left in him. In fact, Marius may even have been testing the waters to see whether a run for yet another consulate would be feasible. Apparently a wish for a seventh term was commonly suspected of him: Dio (fragment 98) mentions misgivings along these lines as having occurred to Rutilius as an explanation for the constant advice to delay before the Tolenus, and perhaps Marius himself was vocal about it.22 Given the potential field of candidates in late 89, Marius may have thought he stood a decent chance for reelection: with the exception of the Sulla, the only obvious other candidates of recent substantial military accomplishment may have been Galba, Gabinius, Cosconius, and Pompeius, already consul, who seems to have desired re-election (Velleius 2.21). Since the consular provinces for those elected in 89 would doubtless be Italy and Asia,23 Marius, if elected, would have faced the prospect of what everyone believed would be easy war in one and the remnants of what had been a very difficult war in the other, and it may very well be wondered if the Italian theater would not have suited him just as well. Another consulate could therefore bring him command in either place and might present ample opportunity to win renewed gloria, instruct his son, and find something useful to do with his time, and it is not beyond the pale of possibility that 22 Plutarch mentions that Marius himself circulated the prophecy of the seven eagles shorltly thereafter, when he was on the run from Sulla (more below), and it was known well enough to be recorded, albeit disputed, in several authors (Mar. 36). It may have been that he spoke of it earlier than his flight, perhaps to feel out how receptive the people would be for a candidacy. 23 The opinion of Mitchell (p. 202–203 and note 18), that the Senate only allocated the provinces after the consuls had been elected—which they could apparently do in emergencies—fails to persuade; it seems far more likely that the lex Sempronia would have continued to be followed in this instance. Besides, even if provinces had not explicitly been assigned in 89, in the absence of a major catastrophe between 89 and 88 in any of the others it was probably beyond question that these would have been the ones alotted even if they had not been by the time of the candidacy of 89.

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running for the office may have been contemplated by the old man. Nevertheless, as the year went on Marius must have abandoned his plans for the seventh eaglet,24 if he had ever really had them. It would turn out that the Senate had discovered a suitable colleague for Sulla in the form of Q. Pompeius Rufus, and faced with what would almost certainly be active opposition from the nobiles, Marius decided to stand down (there is certainly no record of him canvassing in 89).25 Yet the fact that Sulla and Pompeius Rufus seem to have won election with no real difficulties did not necessarily mean that Marius also had to put an end to his aims for another command. In the past, Marius had found ways to obtain commissions by means of using the tribunes, as has been seen. So, too, would it be possible for him to do now: the people, he must have figured from a great deal of personal experience, could easily be persuaded to vote to transfer the governorship of a province from one former consul to another, and a plebiscitum to that effect might be all the more assured of passage with the support of the mercantile class with whom Marius had always See earlier note. At first glance, this statement seems to run counter to the statement of two sources which both seem to indicate that Marius not only thought about running for the consulate, but actually did so. One of these is Orosius, who states that Marius aimed at a seventh consulate and the command against Mithridates (Marius, Sylla consule et contra Mithridatem in Asiam cum exercitu profecturo ... adfectauit septimum consulatum et bellum suscipere Mithridaticum; 5.19.3) The other is Diodorus, which mentions that several Romans wanted the commission against Pontus and that Marius contended for it with C. Julius (Caesar Vopiscus). (ἀντιποιουμένων πολλῶν 24 25

ἐνδόξων τυχεῖν τῆς κατὰ Μι ριδαάτου στρατ γίας διὰ τὸ μέγε ος τῶν ἐπά λων. Γάιός τε γὰρ Ἰούλιος καὶ Γάιος μάριος ὁ ἑξάκις ὑπατεύσας ἀντεφιλονείκουν;

37.2.14). The fact that the latter is known to have sought permission to run for consul (more below) strongly implies that he and Marius ran against each other. However, neither source explicitly states that Marius ran. The verb used by Orosius, adfectare, can mean simply “desire”, and need not necessarily be read to declare that Marius submitted a candidacy. Likewise, the verb used by Diodorus, ἀντεφιλονεικέω, merely means “oppose”, opposition that need not have come during an election. For more on this point, see Appendix Q.

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maintained a fairly close bond,26 since their economic concerns in Asia would be best served by a man of considerable ability and sympathy to their interests. Indeed, Marius may not have bothered with explorations of a seventh consulate at all, but may have looked to the tribunate for a command from the beginning, as Appian seems to suggest (1.7.55).27 All that would be needed would be a friendly tribune, and as luck would have it, one of those was soon found early in 88. However, the tribune in question was of a most unusual background, and the process by which he became available for use by Marius involved a bizarre sequence of events and, as it turns out, the former Allies. Because an understanding of this man’s life is vital to why he found himself in the orbit of Marius, and why in turn the novi cives also soon found themselves in the picture, a second digression to discuss these circumstances seems appropriate here.

2. THE STRANGE CAREER OF P. SULPICIUS RUFUS, THE ALLIES, AND THE UNLIKELY PARTNERSHIP When P. Sulpicius Rufus took office as tribune in December of 89, there was little to suggest that he would ever become anything but a traditionalist conservative Roman statesman, and much instead to suggest that he would become precisely that. He had been an intimate of the most august circles of the Senate, connected by bonds of amicitia with those who had once been the firmest supporters of Drusus, a man with whom, according to Cicero, Sulpicius himself had been good friends (adulescentes et Drusi maxime familiares ... C. Cotta .... et P. Sulpicius [emphasis added]; de orat. 1.7.25). Sulpicius appears to have liked and had been liked in turn by all the right people, had disliked and had been disliked by all the

This connection between Marius and the Roman financial interests is emphasized in several places by Carney (1970, p. 15–6, 21–26, 40, and 54, for example); nut see the objections of Evans (p. 129–131), who argues that such a closeness may be overrated. 27 Plutarch indicates that he did not seek the aid of a tribune, but that Sulpicius came directly to him (Mar. 34). 26

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right people, and had seemed to believe in all the right things.28 Therefore it probably came as no surprise that sometime in the early part of his tribunate he found himself opposed to the attempt of C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus to obtain senatorial dispensation to run for the consulate of 87 in spite of not having served as praetor.29 Exactly why it is that Caesar coveted this office so badly that he could not wait and follow the established cursus is not known for certain,30 although it is perhaps not too far-fetched to speculate that he may have wanted to capitalize on the luster which recent events had brought to his family name. As has been seen, within the last three years one Julius Caesar—Sextus, a relative of some unknown degree of affinity—had been elected consul and had died after performing some heroic deeds in the late war. Another, Lucius—brother of the would-be candidate—had been elected consul the very next year. He, too, had also enjoyed some success in the war against the Allies, and was currently censor. Furthermore, he had passed a law which had enrolled many former Allies as citizens, and thus may have accumulated a formidable clientelae in the process. Caesar Vopiscus may have believed that the Julii Caesares stood in such good stead with the people that he could skip the praetorate, an office which, even if he won it, would cause two years to elapse in which his momentum might be stalled. However, such a candidacy would be illegal withough Senatorial approval, and “infringed almost every rule in the book”, according

For the early career of Sulpicius see Mitchell (p. 197–198 and supporting notes) as well as Badian (1958, p. 230–231, and 1964, p. 41). See also Appendix R for his military career. 29 Cicero describes this attempt and the opposition of Sulpicius to it on several occasions, including in the Phillipics (11.11), where another man attempting to run for the consulate without having been made praetor is said to be “another Caesar Vopiscus”; in Brutus 226, where the eloquence the speech of Sulpicius in opposition to the candidacy is compared unfavorably to that of Antistius on the same subject; and in the Responses of the Haruspices 20.43, where the opposition is described as the first step that set Sulpicius down a fateful path; more on that path below. 30 See Apendix Q for some of the speculations as to his reasoning. 28

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to one scholar.31 Since electoral regularity had been a concern of the best men from at least the time of Scipio Aemlianus and probably long before (Per. 50; Appian, Pun. 112), it would stand to reason that a firm Optimate as Sulpicius seems to have been would immediately set himself against Caesar’s request. If it cannot be known for sure why Caesar wanted to run for office before his proper eligibility for it, what is more certain is that he seems to have wanted to run badly enough either to instigate violence towards Sulpicius to remove the latter’s obstruction, or to return violence which was directed at him by Sulpicius, as Asconius illustrates (25).32 Cicero appears to suggest that this opposition to Caesar marked a change in Sulpicius and his policies, in that he was soon carried away from the good graces of the Senate by his popularis methods (Sulpicium ab optima causa profectum Gaioque Iulio consulatum contra leges petenti resistentem longius quam voluit popularis aura provexit; Resp. Har. 43).33 This may be taken to mean that the Senate supported Caesar contrary to the expectations of Sulpicius, who, like the people, opposed the candidacy, that he was censured the Senate for his use of violence, or both. The second of these may be supported by a notice in Asconius, who notes that Caesar’s contest with Sulpicius was the cause of the civil war because Sulpicius had carried his (rightful) resistance to Caesar to inapprioriate lengths by The words of those of Powell, p. 458. For Suplicius as the instigator, see Mitchell, p. 200; for Caesar as this instigator, see Badian 1958, p. 231 (the same is implied in Lintott, p. 446). 33 This follow’s Lintott’s translation of the phrase, which suggests it was a sailing metaphor, and that the popularis aura blew him ab optima causa (away from the best cause). Charles Duke Yonge’s translation of that passage, however, would have it that Sulpicius first tacked to the popularis breeze “in a good cause” (The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero. George Bell & Sons: London, 1886, p. 91), which has the support of Powell (p. 456– 457). Either translation works in the context of the passage of the de Haruspicum Responsis, however, which is one describing how various men were either alienated from the Senate because they turned popularis, or turned popularis because they had been alienated from the Senate. Thus, Sulpicius was either blown by a popularis wind from the side of the best men, or was blown from them for the best possible reason (id est, opposition to the candidacy of Caesar). 31 32

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having resorted to weapons (Nam et sperabat et id agebat Caesar ut omissa praetura consul fieret: cui cum primis temporibus iure Sulpicius resisteret, postea nimia contentione ad ferrum et ad arma processit; Asconius, loc. cit.). Thus, perhaps Sulpicius had gone too far in his gangsterism for the comfort of the patres, and a breach occurred. Alternatively, perhaps Sulpicius had tasted the methods of the other side and found them to his liking, leading to his desertion of the optimates. Either way, Sulpicius and the nobiles began to diverge at or near this time, and if the breach recorded by Cicero between Sulpicus and his former close friend Q. Pompeius Rufus had not yet transpired, it soon would (de amict. 2). Even assuming Sulpicius had survived the controversy with Caesar still in the good graces of the Senate, the laws he was apparently contemplating at this time would easily have caused him to forfeit that standing. Since on the surface none of them seem to have been specifically designed to injure the nobiles, and all can easily be viewed as having been divised to extend Senatorial power, it may well be that he, like Drusus, had made them with the best of intentions towards his faction but was met with a reaction he did not expect. Among these laws were a measure mentioned in Plutarch which decreed that no Senator be allowed to incur a debt of over 2000 drachmas (Sull. 8). On first glance this seems punitive and thus to date from after his departure from the boni. However, it may have been designed initially to diminish the power of moneylenders (who would almost certainly have been equites, for whom Sulpicius may have inherited the distaste his friend Drusus had once had for them), or reduce the role of bribery in electoral canvassing. It may also have been a simple protective measure: there certainly was a debt crisis in Rome at this time (see following chapter), and Sulpicius may have been attempting to save the Senators from falling into debt at mammoth interest rates by means of passing this legislation for their own good. Another law Sulpicius put forward proposed the recall of exiles or, more appropriately, for the recall of “those expelled by violence” (as the Rhetorica ad Herennium specificies; 2.28.45). This, too, seems like a change of allegiance on the part of the tribune, since he had apparently interposed his veto on something vey similar (so the same ancient source). However, in this case it may simply have been that Sulpicius forbade the bill because he wanted the credit for passing something similar; having changed the

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wording of the legislation, he then put it forward under his own name34. To which exiles specifically this measure was to apply is uncertain: some scholars hold that it was extended to those expelled from Rome in the aftermath of the turbulent tribunate of Saturninus, while others that it was designed to bring back those men forced out by the trials of the Varian quaestiones either in its early or later stages (men who perhaps included some of the tribune of 88’s own friends). However, neither the ad Herennium nor the Periochae (77) specifies who was to benefit, and both of them suggest instead something of a blanket amnesty: it may have been draughted to allow that exiles from all the previous periods of turbulence perhaps even going back to the time of the Gracchi could all come home. If indeed Sulpicius had not in fact yet split from the optimates, this measure might have been designed to win their favor, since it called for an impartial return of all men regardless of faction. As has been suggested above, it is certainly possible to construe both laws in such a way as to read into them a malicious intent. Sulpicius, it can be argued, had structured the first to strike a blow at the most powerful men in the Senate (since likely they had run up debts to attain office), and had designed the second to embarrass the patres by bringing their enemies back. On the other This practice—of voting against or vetoing a law only to promulgate or support something similar under a different name—was apparently not at all uncommon in the first century, as Gruen (1974, p. 211–259) illustrates; see also chapter 4. Keaveney (1987, p. 172 and p. 178 note 33) puts forth the belief that recall the Varian exiles was the reason C. Caesar Vopiscus had run for consul, and that the opposition of Sulpicius to his candidacy was on these grounds. However, Keaveney cites no evidence for this beyond the passage from the ad Herennium already noted, which certainly says nothing of the kind. On the other hand, Lintott (p. 453) offers the theory that what Sulpicius was proposing was not a recall of the Varian exiles, but was rather a return of the Saturninian exiles; perhaps this was to show his new colors, since Sulpicius had first made a name for himself attempting to prosecute Norbanus, a colleague and almost certainly a close associate of Saturninus (Mitchell, p. 197–198; Badian 1964, p. 35–36). However, since the primary sources do not specify either group as beneficiaries, perhaps both were meant; see above. 34

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hand, they may just as well have been intended to promote the Senatorial position, and it could be that they were first constructed while Suplicius and the Senate got along. If, then, these laws which are so often read to signify a vindictiveness engendered by a falling out with the nobiles actually predates that separation, then perhaps Sulpicius believed he would garner Senatorial support for them. In this way, he may have behaved just as Drusus had done and put forward measures which had an initial sting but which ultimately were intended to have helpful results for the boni. Such may also have been the case for a third law, involving the tribal distributions of the Allies.35 As was seen in the last chapter, both the lex Julia and that unknown law (or laws) by which citizenship was given to those Allies not included in the lex Julia all seem to have included the same limitation on Allied voting, which is that all the novi cives would be relegated into new tribes which would vote last in the comitia tributa. It has been suggested in the previous chapter that at first the lex Julia had not specified how many tribes there were to be, and that it therefore allowed for the misapprehension that the new tribes would be created in numbers similar to the old ones and that something like equality would be effected thereby. This misapprehension may possibly account for the lack of the protest at these restrictions, a remonstration which might well have been expected from Allies had they been aware that they were being cheated. Since the lex Julia had been designed in order to keep some of these Allies loyal or to prevent their resumption of an earlier disloyalty, the Senate would not wish to drive to anger, and thus led them astray by the false hope of more complete voting rights. Only later would it be revealed that the tribes would actually be very few in number, 35 Sources for this law include Appian (1.7.55) and the Periochae (77). The latter suggests that freedmen, too, were also to be distributed in the same way as the new citizens. Thus Asconius seems to confirm, taking note of a law passed by Manilius twenty-three years later which also dealt with freedmen voting and mentioning the law of Sulpicius in the same context. Plutarch (Sull. 8) also makes a reference to this law and to the others just described, which he mischaracterizes in a most uncharitable way that is almost certainly derived from the way they appeared in the Memoirs of Sulla, which the biographer uses as a source.

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certainly far less than the original thirty-five, and the votes cast in them potentially worthless in terms of being able to elect junior magistracies and pass laws. Such a weakness of voting had almost certainly been the design of the Senate from the very beginning as a way to reconcile themselves to the mass enfranchisement, a fact which at first they wished to keep hidden from the first groups of novi cives. There can be little doubt that the men made citizens by the lex Julia were furious upon the discovery of this duplicity. As for as the former Allies who would later be made citizens in 88 and after, they probably disliked the situation no less, but since they had accepted the citizenship as an alternative to continuing a war they were losing and had probably known what the terms would be from the outset, they may not have been as vocal. There was, in short, almost certainly a great deal of discontent amongst Rome’s newest citizens, and it might not have been difficult for a thoughtful Roman to predict that in that displeasure lay the seeds for great future mischief should an unscrupulous sort of person come along. Should some popularis tribune emerge someday and promise the former socii to win enhanced rights for them, he could potentially mobilize a large following for whatever end he wished. Worse still, should such a demagogue be able to make good on his promise, he could then potentially make use their gratitude and apply it to all sorts of unpleasant ends for the Senate. Sulpicius may himself have been that very sort of man, or may have recently become that sort of man, having been blown by the popularis breeze far far indeed from his earlier pro-aristocratic sympathies. Alternatively, prehaps he was still a would-be propugnator Senatus, but may have came to the conclusion that, if a strong optimate partisan carried a law of this kind instead of a popularis, then the favor of the novi could be harnassed on behalf of the Senate instead of against it. Such an accumulation of power in one man’s hands would of course be dangerous, but it might well be preferred to have that dangerous accretion be in the right hands rather than in the wrong ones. Should he be trustworthy, an optimate who proposed and carried the law could use the resulting favor with the novi to get them to support optimate candidates, withhold that support from optimate enemies, and approve optimate-sponsored laws, building over time a following which would make the rule of the Senate ever stronger.

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Thus, there is the possibility that all of his laws may have dated to a period before his strife with the Senate and may have been designed to further the aims of the boni. Some additional support for this conclusion may also be found in the nature of the laws themselves. On the one hand, it has been shown that the provisions of such laws, if examined from a certain point of view, may be seen as inclined to favor the Senatorial party. However, they also appear to lack any aspects which would be especially attractive to the populace at large, as there was nothing really in them for the general public.36 The personal finances of Senators and the recall of exiles may have been a matter of only marginal interest to the urban or agrarian working class, and if they did in fact care anything at all about tribal redistribution for the former Allies (and for freedmen, who also seem to have been included),37 they might very well have looked upon the idea with disapproval based on residual ill-will from the Allied War which, it should be observed, had not yet died down completely. Given these facts, it may be wondered how Sulpicius hoped to pass them in the face of a disinterested populus. Obviously the support Sulpicius could expect to gather from the former Allies and freedmen after the law was carried would be immense, but during the law’s promulgation they would have been unable to be of much help to him due to the very impotence of their voting which his law attempted to remedy. Admittedly, if there was no salient reason for why the people at large would support these bills, it may also very well have been that there would be no strenuous outcry against them, either. Even if there was, it seems that Sulpicius was discovering rather forceful ways to overcome opposition. Nevertheless, ceteris paribus Sulpicius could only expect the odds to be even as to whether the people would approve his measures or reject them without some powerful persuasion as to why they should do one or the other. The Senate For the necessity of attracting popular support to pass laws in the face of opposition, see Mouritsen 2001, chapter 4 and especially p. 80–88. 37 For the inclusion of the freedmen in this bill see the Periocha of Livy’s Book 77; an allusion to this may also be found in Plutarch (Sulla 8), where Sulpicius is presented as offering various rights to freedmen and slaves for sale. 36

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could furnish such persuasion to support the laws, so it might have been that Sulpicius, like Tiberius Gracchus and Drusus before him, presented his laws to that body in the hope that he would thereby gain its endorsement. If he did so, their reaction must have been one of horror and disgust, leaving Sulpicius without assistance amongst his one-time factio and, it may be speculated, thoroughly disillusioned. If he then continued to harbor any hopes of pushing through his legislative agenda, as it certainly appears that he still did, he would have to find a way not only to convince the people to vote for his laws, but he now had to do so over the objections of the Senate, which would now be ranged against him. Such, at least, is a hypothesis about the timing of the laws of Sulpicius and their relation to his controversy with the patres; it is nothing more than that, of course, but it does not seem impossible that Sulpicius could have framed his laws before the split. Whether his laws were divised before or after he had drifted too far from the optima causa, however, the result would have been the same: just as before, Sulpicius would need to find some way to vouchsafe approval for his laws, and he would now have find it in the face of strenuous Senatorial displeasure. This need not necessarily have come from the urban plebs; the mercantile class could provide sufficient numbers to pass the law, and could probably do it more effectively that the urban plebs.38 But to enlist their aid the tribune would need to have something with which it could be purchased, since it can be doubted that their reaction to his proposals would have been substantially different than that of rest of the citizen body. The merchants they may have been more enthusiastic about the recall of exiles, or less so about the debt law, but it seems doubtful that they would have exerted themselves against the Senate based solely on the contents of the legislation in and of itself. Indeed, by his association with the cause of Drusus, Sulpicius Indeed, Mouritsen (2001, p. 43–45; 78–80) suggests that it was primarily this class who did most of the voting unless the people at large had a good reason for appearing at the comitia; this conclusion is disputed somewhat but not completely refuted by Morstein-Marx (p. 41–42), whose objections still allow for the assertion that, all things being equal, it was the well-to-do who passed most of the laws unless the larger urban populace had an especial stake in the legislative issue in question. 38

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may very well have earned the dislike of the business interests, which he might well have reciprocated. If the businessmen were ever to grant their aid to Sulpicius, they would likely require some convincing. Sulpicius would probably have very much liked to have the help of a person with influence amongst the mercantile class, by means of whom its favor could be won so that the laws he would propose could be carried by means of their votes. Conditions, therefore, ably suited the creation of an alliance between two men who each had something to offer each other. Marius, for his part, wielded the necessary influence with the businessmen and was certainly on the outs with the Senate. If he brought over the former (along whatever voting strength his veterans could present), then with that aid Sulpicius could quite probably steer his laws to enactment. The laws themselves were probably not hateful to the general anyway: very likely the exiles had included some of his former supporters, his wealth would have made the debt provision irrelevant, and he seemed to have retained a friendly demeanor—if not a burning zeal—for the Italians. Nevertheless, that the laws were unobjectionable to Marius did not mean that there was anything in them which would cause him to put in the effort to mobilize the mercantile class to secure their passage. To obtain this effort, Marius would require additional payment in the form of the Mithridatic command as proconsul (and it might very well have been with this that he persuaded the negotiatores to do their part; see above). This could easily be obtained through a plebiscitum, about the proposal of which Sulpicius, for his part, might not have had all that many reservations. Of course, such a plebiscitum would, if carried, mean that the man who had currently named for the Asian expedition would have to be disappointed. That would-be proconsul, however, was L. Cornelius Sulla, and it is unlikely that the new partners cared a whit for his discomfiture: his status as new darling of the Senate would have little endeared him to either man, of one of whom he was already a dire inimicus. Above and beyond Sulla, however, they could expect additional stubborn resistance from the Senate and, perhaps, from fellow tribunes (although as events would turn out, resistance from the latter did not actually come; see below); what is more, that resistance could very well be violent, as has been seen in the case with Caesar Vopiscus. While Sulpicius appeared to know how to handle himself in that regard, both men would have wanted

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to take care that an inconvenient shoemaker’s knife stay out of the side of the tribune, or that a broken table leg stay far away from his head. Therefore, as Marius and Sulpicus made their compact, both probably took precautions to see to the safety of the latter, and soon a body of young men from the well-to-do took to hanging around Sulpicius to whom he may well have given the sardonic nickname of “Anti-Senate”.39 Marius and Sulpicius, then, found each other useful for their own particular aims, and soon the partnership was struck. It may very well also have been that the two men kept their accord a secret as they put their plan into motion, which was probably sometime around the middle of spring;40 Marius continued his daily exercises with the recruits on the Campus Martius, apparently drawing the amused pity of the “better part” (τοῖς ελτίστοις) of the crowd who occasionally watched (Plutarch, Mar. 34). These aristocratic onlookers at least in the early part of the year may have included such optimates as the consuls of 88, Q. Pompeius Rufus and L. Cornelius Sulla. The latter, as has been seen, has already played a fairly sizeable role in the quest of the Allies for the civitas, and he would soon play an even larger one, due in no small part to the enmity he shared with Marius to which allusions have been made earlier. Just as was the case with Marius, a brief look at the career of Sulla up to this point may be in order, as an examination of his past does much to explain his position in 89 and the attitude he would take subsequently. His life, too, has also been described in greater detail elsewhere,41 so this final digression will, again, need not be lengthy: it will suffice merely to glance at those aspects which explain his relationship with the nobiles, with the man who designed 39 Alluded to in the context of what is to follow in Appian 1.7.56; named and probably distorted by Plutarch in his Marius 35 and even more grossly distorted in Sulla 8, where Marius and Sulpicius are alleged to have operated beside these a stable of almost a legion’s worth of blades whom Sulpicius is claimed to have kept in the city. 40 Lintott suggests as much about the secrecy (p. 449–453); the timing is provided by Luce 1970, p. 193–194. 41 See Badian (1970, p. 4–13), Keaveney (1982, p. 1–55), and Christ (2002, p. 54–77) for Sulla’s early personal and political life; for his role in the Allied War see previous two chapters.

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to replace him in Asia, and with the Italians against whom he had already found himself contending.

3. THE SPECTACULAR RISE OF L. CORNELIUS SULLA Lucius Cornelius Sulla was born to a branch of the patrician gens Cornelia which had perhaps achieved its greatest heights in the person of P. Cornelius Rufinus, who had been consul twice (in 290 and 277) and Dictator. In the former capacity capacity Rufinus had served on campaigns against the Samnites, had helped bring about the conclusion of the Third Samnite War, and had celebrated a triumph; however, during the “Fourth” Samnite War he had been involved in a defeat at the Cranite Mountains. At least one scholar suggests that this defeat helped bring about an end to the popularity of Rufinus, a disfavor that his enemy C. Fabricius was able to exploit by engineering against him a charge of possessing too much silver plate in 275.42 This was probably an infraction— like that of holding too much ager publicus—of which most Senators were guilty, but it carried with it the penalty of expulsion from the Senate, and to this punishment Rufinus was duly consigned. The many, many sources which attest to this occurrence43 lend the impression that the story was probably extremely common, and if this were so, it must have been that Sulla himself was very familiar with the exploits of his ancestor—twice consul, Dictator, and implacable foe of the Samnites—and the circumstances which ended his career. He would also have known of the consequences, which is that the expulsion of Rufinus had sent the family was in something of a political decline ever after: for the next two centuries this line of the Cornelii, who became Sullae in the generation after Rufinus,44 would boast of praetors but no consuls. In the case of L. Cornelius Sulla, that political decline was accompanied by financial decline as well: it appears that the Salmon 1967, p. 282–285, 383 Merely a few would include Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.13.1–3, Per. 14, Gellius 4.8.7, Valerius Maximus 2.9.4, Plutarch Sulla 1, Florus 1.3.22, and Pliny NH 33.50.142 and 33.54.153, thought this last does not refer to Rufinus by name. 44 Keaveney 1982, p. 6–7. 42 43

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allegedly vast fortune of Rufinus had dwindled away, and on the death of his father, Sulla himself—who had been left nothing by way of an inheritance, in all likelihood because his father had had nothing to leave—was quite destitute indeed. For a while in his youth Sulla lived in the poorer section of Rome, decidedly not a part of the aristocratic milieu to which his patrician lineage and distinguished ancestry might have entitled him but for lack of funds. His poverty had made a political career impossible,45 and therefore he seems to have spent his days in the company of actors, courtesans, and other merry-makes throughout the course of his twenties. In this condition he lived the life of a voluptuary who was likely either despised, pitied, or ignored by the nobilitas, with the possible exception of the Julii; the name Plutarch gives to Sulla’s first wife—Ἰλία—may in fact be read as Julia (Sull. 6),46 and that family did have a habit of marrying its women to men who looked like bizarre matches (men such as Marius, who also famously married a Julia). Such a marriage to an ancient if recently eclipsed family may have brought some luster to Sulla’s name, if indeed it occurred, but but that borrowed majesty would not have been enough to bring him to complete respectability on its own. Certainly that marriage did not seem to have curtailed his profligate ways, as Plutarch reports that he enjoyed the company of many lovers, among whom was an older, wealthy lady of the world called Nicopolis.47 In a 45 Sulla seems to have been too poor to merit equestrian rating, and since infantry duty would probably not even have been considered an option for a Patrician, he seems to have not done the compulsory service required of all who would run for magistracies; Sallust, BJ 95. 46 Keaveney 1982, p. 9–10 (Christ mentions that Julia might have been her name but offers no comment on it; 2002, p. 199). As it is known from Plutarch that this first wife bore Sulla a daughter (Sull. 6), and that this daughter was almost certainly the one who married the son of the Pompeius Rufus (Appian 1.7.56), and that Plutarch also refers to Sulla as having been fairly young when the match was made, it seems probable that this first wife of Sulla married him before his change in fortunes which are to follow; more later. 47 That this affair occurred when Sulla was married to “Ilia” can be inferred by the fact that Plutarch refers to the marriage as taking place

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sense, however, this affair also helped to propel him out of debauched obscurity: Nicopolis seems to have died, according to the chronology of Plutarch, sometime before 107, and when she did she left her property to Sulla. At about this time his father’s second wife also died, and likewise left her property to him. Sulla was now a man of means, and his new financial windfall left him sufficient census ratings to run for public office. This he seems to have done, possibly being permitted to do so because of a loophole in the law which allowed men of suitable property who had reached thirty years of age to hold a magistracy without having had military experience.48 He was soon elected quaestor for the year 107, possibly with the help of the Julii. As luck would have it—and quite literally luck, in the form of random sortition49—this office led to Sulla’s introduction to the man perhaps most responsible to his spectacular rise to fame, C. Marius. Sulla was chosen to serve under Marius in the Jugurthine War of which the latter had just been given oversight, and there can be little doubt that at first the commander was not terribly pleased with his new officer. Here was, by all appearances, an indolent libertine who had not done a day’s worth of fighting in his life, a degenerate aristocrat who had spent his youth in tavens and when Sulla was still a youth (μειράκιον ὢν; Sull. 7), the same stage of life in which the biographer says he fell in with Nicopolis (ὥστε νέον μὲν ὄντα καὶ ἄδοξον; Sull. 2) 48 So theorized by Keaveney (1982, p. 12), possibly drawing on the fact that when Sulla fixed the ages of the magistracies on the cursus as Dictator (see chapter 9), he set the minimum age to obtain the questorate at thirty years (ibid., p. 173–174). As to Sulla’s age, the fact that Plutarch refers to him as having been fifty years old when he became consul (Sull. 6; Velleius Paterculus reports that he was 49 when he was elected; 2.17), made him over thirty in 108, when he first attempted to become quaestor (Sull. 3). 49 Badian (1970, p. 7) mentions that quaestors were usually chosen by lot in this period, although he believes that it was possible that Marius picked Sulla on his own; based on what Valerius Maximus states (see above) this latter is most improbable. Keaveney (loc. cit.) is more firm in his belief that Sulla was assigned to Marius through lot, and is probably correct in this assumption.

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brothers while Marius had spent his own in the tent, a reprobate who had become accustomed to being slapped on the back by actors and prostitutes now sent to the staff of a general whose own shoulder had once been clasped by the great Scipio Aemilianus. Sulla would seem to be the very epitome of the sort of person against whom Marius had made his passionate campaign speeches, and Valerius Maximus records his initial disappointment at Sulla (2.9.6). However, the fact that Marius immediately gave him the important task of raising cavalry suggests that that this mistrust was soon overcome; it may have been that the Julii had interceded for Sulla, or it might have fallen out that, as one scholar has suggested, “Marius—a snob like all new men—had a soft spot for Patricians”.50 Perhaps, however, Marius simply became impressed by Sulla’s abilities and may have even had some sympathy for his plight. Marius, after all, had been given the chance to make up for the lack of a famous name by using his abilities to make his name famous. It would only be fair to give Sulla the same break. Besides, if the anecdote about Rufinus had been as commonplace as it seems it was, then Marius might well have known almost as much about Sulla’s lineage as much as Sulla himself had, and might have counted on the fact that Sulla would go to any lengths to restore his family’s glory. Such enthusiasm might be of no slight utility in the coming campaign. Marius seemed to have an eye for men whom the optimates scorned but who might still be useful, and here was his greatest investment. Sulla apparently found soldiering agreeable—like Achilles in the Greek classics for which his passion was well known, Sulla resolved that no one excel him as a speaker of words or a doer of deeds (tantum modo neque consilio neque manu priorem alium pati, plerosque altevenire; Sallust 96; compare the Iliad 9.443)—and by means of his soldiering found himself in turn agreeable to Marius, who assigned to him greater and greater responsibilities. Indeed, it was by means of one of these that Sulla first achieved fame: Bocchus, the king of Mauretania with whom Jugurtha had taken refuge, soon decided to betray his suppliant, and it was to Sulla— sent by Marius for this precise purpose—that Jugurtha was 50

Keaveney 1982, p. 14; Badian 1970, p. 7.

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surrendered to end the war.51 Marius was therefore probably very aware of Sulla’s value, and, what is more important, Sulla himself was aware of it as well: back in Rome he advertised his role in the war frequently in speech and, indeed, by a signet ring depicting Jugurtha’s surrender (Plutarch, Mar. 10, Sull. 3). Plutarch reports that Marius was rather annoyed by this braggadocio, but apparently not enough to disdain Sulla’s services in the Germanic campaigns to which, by the will of the people, Marius had been dispatched as marshal by means of being elected a consul for a second time. Nor did Sulla decline the appointment, serving Marius first as a legatus and then, in the next year, as a military tribune, in which capacity continuing to be helpful as Marius spent these two years mostly in maneuver in northern Italy, waiting for the Gauls to arrive. It has usually been asserted that during these two years the enmity between Marius and Sulla that had begun with the affair of the signet ring started to become acute. Plutarch, obviously drawing from Sulla’s autobiography, suggests that Marius became so jealous of his subordinate’s successes that he stopped giving Sulla assignments, leading to the latter’s transfer to the command of Catulus, the other consular general sent to fight the Germans.52 For sources see Keaveney 1982, p. 26–27, notes 40–47. Spann, for example, goes further and suggests that Marius pointedly stopped giving Sulla anything to do but gave assignments to Sertorius instead (p. 24–25), which would have been made doubly annoying to Sulla because Sertorius was a “new man” (the theme of Sertorius being blocked throughout his career on account of his novitas is a motive running throughout Spann’s biography). If this was the case, however, Spann does not pick the best possible illustration for it: after all, what Sertorius ended up doing in the Cimbric/Teutonic wars amounted to espionage based on his apparent ability to dress like a Gaul and speak some of the language. Employment of Sertorius on such a mission seems less like a purposeful desire to slight Sulla then simple use of the means available; assuming Sulla did not also know the Gallic tongue, then Sertorius would be preferred for this duty because he would have had the knowledge to do what was required. As will be seen later, Sertorius and Sulla do seem to have become enemies, and their enmity may well have dated to this period, but it is difficult to see how Sertorius could be blamed for a lack of missions for Sulla, as the mission he took was one for which Sulla was linguistically ineligible. 51 52

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Sulla would, of course, be much concerned later on with highlighting anything resembling pettiness or mean-spiritedness on the part of his former commander, and as a result it is highly likely that this episode as reported by Plutarch has become extensively misconstrued. There is possibly a germ of truth in that Marius and Sulla may have begun to become annoyed with each other over Sulla’s seeing less action, but it is likely that this inaction was less the result of plum assignments being kept from Sulla and more because there were none to be had: Marius spent much of the first two years of the Teutonic and Cimbric wars training his men while the enemy had not yet come, and thus the chances for significant engagement were almost nil. This would probably have worn upon Sulla, who (as the last chapter has shown) tended to be fairly energetic by nature and who needed continued action to build a name for himself for subsequent offices. In his boredom he probably grew to annoy Marius, but that may have played a less substantial part in the transfer to Catulus than the fact that in 102 a change in circumstance had arrived, in that the invaders seemed to have been on the verge of returning. Knowing Sulla’s sanguinary disposition (and probably also aware of the lack of military gifts on the part of Catulus, who seems to have been elected consul in 102 with the help of Marius), and knowing perhaps still further that in the coming year he himself would probably on occasion continue resort to prolonged inactivity of the kind Sulla seems to have come to detest,53 Marius consented to send Sulla to Catulus and thus to bring about the best possible outcome for all concerned. Success for Sulla and Catulus was not immediate—while Marius destroyed the Teutones at the battles of Aquae Sextiae, Catulus had been unable to prevent Cimbric crossing of the Alps at the Tridentine 53 See, for example, the circumstances surrounding the first battle of Aquae Sextiae in Florus (1.38), Plutarch (Mar. 18; Moralia 203), and Orosius (5.16.9–13): Marius encamped in the vicinity of the enemy in a strong site but one lacking in water, to obtain which his men became so keen that it added in their valor when they finally engaged with the enemy. Frontinus (2.7.12) suggests that this was not done purposefully by Marius but by oversight (Florus also raises this as a possibility), but the testimony of Plutarch is clear in its assertion that Marius chose the site on purpose and precisely because of its lack of water.

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Pass, and then later suffered another reverse at the hands of the Cimbri at the river Adige54—but eventually it came and came in grand fashion: after being elected consul a fifth time and providing encouragement to Catulus (who may have only been prorogued through the influence of the newly-elected consul), Marius, Catulus, and Sulla combined for a huge victory at Vercellae. It can hardly be argued that Marius had been anything but overwhelmingly generous both to Catulus and to Sulla. To Catulus he gave the consulate after three repulsae, may have defended him in the Senate against loss of command based on incompetence after the Tridentine Pass, and ultimately shared the glory of the defeat of the Cimbri. Moreover, he eschewed a well-deserved triumph for his victories at Aquae Sextiae and took special pains to make sure that Catulus took part in his equally well-deserved triumph for Vercellae, which went above and beyond the call of courtesy no matter how much Catulus may have contributed to the latter victory. To Sulla, he had opened the path to military glory in Africa, had kept him on it in the north, and had approved the transfer so that he might have the most possible chances for victories by which he could make a name for himself. For that reason, the enmity which seems to have emerged between these two men and Marius must have been received with great bitterness: Catulus, it seems, had first tried to claim the lion’s share of the credit for the war (perhaps he was feeling touchy about his own failures in it and was attempting to rewrite history in a light more favorable to himself), and then later openly sided against Marius during the various conflicts of the 90s, a tergiversation which Plutarch Mar. 15, 23, Moralia 202; Per. 68; Florus 1.38; Ampelius 22, Frontinus 1.5.13 (for a disgraced officer after the first of these defeats see Frontinus 4.1.13, Valerius Maximus 5.8.4, Ampelius 19). Conspicuously lacking mention of these disasters is Plutarch’s Sulla, from the reading of which it is possible to derive the idea that Sulla put down the Alpine tribes while preventing Marius from starving; this might very well have been what Sulla wished to have remembered of the war, which thus deprives not only Marius of credit but also deprives Catulus of it, as well (the latter’s gallantry after the second retreat of his soldiers at the Adige is mentioned by Plutarch in his other works, for example, but not in the Sulla). 54

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would later end tragically.55 Sulla, for his part, apparently also tried to bolster his gloria at the expense of Marius: it is to be observed that an anecdote in which Catulus had ordered Sulla to gather supplies for his army before Vercellae, resulting in enough food to feed his own soldiers and those of Marius, is found only in Plutarch’s Sulla, which drew heavily from its subject’s autobiography.56 In this effort to steal some of his old general’s thunder, success seems to have eluded Sulla, as the tales of his exploits were apparently insufficient to secure Sulla’s election to the praetorate, something he later tried to fob off by noting that his bribe to the people had been insufficient. As far as Marius was concerned, the six-time consul probably would have understood Sulla’s motives to gain as much glory as possible for the purpose of winning the election, but there was a limit in how much he could take. Indeed, if Sulla’s maneuvers were transpiring while Catulus was also busily attempting to diminish his one-time colleague’s fama, then it may well have been that Marius was even less inclined towards sympathy for Sulla than he had been after the Jugurthine War. A split may well have begun at this time, if it had not existed earlier; if it had, it might have become irreparably exacerbated. Perhaps Sulla’s wives may also have played a role: Plutarch records that before Metella, whom he married in 89 (more below), Sulla had married three times, including Metella’s immediate predecessor Cloelia, whom he divorced for barrenness (amicably, according to one source consulted by Plutarch; less so, as hinted by another; Sull. 6). Before her, there was one Aelia, and the aforementioned “Ilia”. What the fate of his first wife was is not known, nor when Sulla married the second; perhaps the first wife had died, or perhaps Sulla had divorced her. If that woman had been a Julia, it might be that it was after the Cimbric Wars that she and Sulla parted, either by death or divorce; if the latter, it may So Badian (1964, p. 38–39, 51), who suggests that the enmity may have been fully exposed during the affair of Saturninus. 56 Keaveney (1982, p. 33–34) seems ready to believe this story whole and entire; Epstein (p. 50), following Badian (1970, p. 9) is less so, believing that the story had its origins in Sulla. The people of Rome were either unconvinced by the claims of Catulus and Sulla or unmoved by them, as will be seen below. 55

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have been acrimonious, as Plutarch hints (Sull. 2) and Sallust directly states (BJ 95) that Sulla was not the best possible husband. Their separation—for whatever the reason—may explain a curious exchange reported in Plutarch: when angered by C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus for some reason after Sulla had finally obtained the praetorate, the latter apparently threatened to direct against Caesar the power of his office. Caesar’s retort—Sulla was indeed entitled to call it “his” office, as he had purchased it fair and square—suggests a hostility between the two men that may have arisen after Sulla had ceased to be married to Julia, if indeed he ever had been. Such a distance from the Julii may have also had repercussions on Sulla’s relationship with Marius, who was certainly related to the Julii by marriage (as has been seen); it would not be the only time that the end of a marriage to a Julia would help put distance between two prominent Romans. Either, Sulla and Marius seem to have had a falling out which definitely dated to the early 90s, if not earlier than that. As was the case with most enmities, the inimicitia that emerged between the two found expressions in all sorts of ways, one of which was the courts. After his return from his propraetorian commission to Cilicia, Sulla—who had apparently done very well there—must have considered himself ready to run for the consulate. He was halted, however, by a prosecution for repetundae brought against him by one C. Marcius Censorinus (Plutarch, Sull. 5). According to Cicero, Censorinus apparently detested all matters forensic (Brut. 237), and indeed does not seem to have pursued this indictment with any vigor; Plutarch reports that he did not even attend the trial, and the affair was promptly dropped. However, it may very well never have been intended to succeed, but rather to blacken Sulla’s name just before his run for the higher office; given that Sulla had at one point been very poor, that he was once a notorious pleasure-seeker, and his ancestor’s reputation, it did not perhaps take a great deal of effort to spoil whatever fame he had acquired in the east through such an accusation of extortion. Given that Censorinus was later a partisan of the side of Marius in the

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conflicts to come, it might very well be that he was acting on the latter’s behalf in this instance, as well.57 This action seems to have kept the consulate out of Sulla’s hands for the rest of the 90s, and if Censorinus had in fact been doing the bidding of Marius, then doubtless Sulla welcomed the opportunity take some revenge and embarrass his former superior which came to him in 91. In this year, Bocchus of Mauretenia—the man who years before hand handed over Jugurtha to Sulla—now decided to install statues showing that event on the Capitoline, and in these sculptures Marius, apparently, was nowhere to be seen.58 Since Bocchus had to have obtained the Senate’s permission to have put these sculptures on the Capitoline, the fact that he was able to do so meant either that the Senate had either embraced Sulla as a member of their cause, had used the episode as an excuse to show their own contempt for Marius, or both. Either way, Marius exploded, and made moves to have the statues torn down. Open violence threatened to erupt between the supporters of Marius and the supporters of Sulla when news of Asculum arrived (Plutarch, Sull. 6; Mar. 32). By the beginning of the Allied War, then, Sulla had permanently lost the friendship of Marius but had, perhaps, gained that of the optimates. As has been seen, in the fighting against the Allies that would follow, Marius had done well, but Sulla had done better: after what seems to have been a rocky start in 90, he recovered to have a brilliant campaign in the following year. As a reward for his string of victories in the south in 89, Sulla was elected consul for the next year, a position which in and of itself suggested Senatorial approval which would be telegraphed all the more graphically by Sulla’s marriage to Caecilia Metella, a woman of such breeding that even some of the boni were appalled by the unequal match (Plutarch, loc. cit.). When the spring of 88 rolled around, Sulla had a new wife, had restored his family’s nobilitas, and could look forward to the possibility for an extremely profitable war which had come to him by lot in the form of his proconsular 57 As argued by Badian (op. cit., p. 10; also 1964, p. 170) and Keaveney (1982, p. 43–45). 58 Badian 1970, p. 10–12; Keaveney (loc. cit.).

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provincial allocation; his opponent would be Mithridates, an enemy whose mettle he had already tried during his propraetorian service. Sulla might well have looked down with great satisfaction on his former commander cavorting in athletic contests with the boys on the Campus Martius, watching Marius as he compounded his lack of power by adding the trappings of a clown. Such a man may seemed to have been little further threat to Sulla, and just as Marius was said not to have given vent to his annoyance at Sulla’s signet ring in 105 as beneath his dignity (Plutarch, Sull. 3), with such contempt Sulla might now have regarded the old man in his callisthenics on the Plain of Mars. The year 88 had opned with Sulla firmly ensconced in the Senatorial élite, in whose upper echelons he had at last won that place by election and by marriage to which his lineage should have entitled him. This élite had recently turned its back on Sulpicius and had never accepted Marius, since the (relatively) humble upbringing and occasional employment of tribunes towards personal ends by the latter and the recent political thinking of the former had made both a bit too revolutionary for the taste of the patres. It is, then, somewhat ironic that a revolutionary act was indeed coming, but that the person to instigate it would be he who had just recently confirmed his thoroughly noble and patrician credentials. It is to that act, its immediate causes, and its profound consequences upon not only the older Romans but also upon the Republics newest citizens, that attention will next be turned.

4. THE LEGES SULPICIAE, SULLA, AND THE UNTHINKABLE ACT

If, as has been speculated above, Sulla had ceased to think of Marius as relevant and had even come to regard him as a buffoon as he engaged in his daily regimen, he should, perhaps, have known better. At any rate, it seems he ignored Marius and his drills and apparently returned to Nola, where he presumably continued to press the siege while making arrangements with the army there for its eventual departure for the East.59 In the meantime, Sulpicius began to propose his debt, recall, and tribal laws with the support 59

Velleius 2.18; this is followed by Keaveney 1982, p. 59–60.

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of the mercantile class and, it seems, the novi cives. Appian records that violence erupted as these measures were being promulgated, with the veteres set against the new citizens and the two turning sticks and stones on each other (1.6.55);60 possibly the former were being instigated by C. Caesar Strabo, whose enmity with Sulpicius and willingness to use force has already been attested and who, like the majority of the Senate, probably had ample reason to oppose the latter’s bills. This violence increased as the day of voting on the plebiscita approached, and according to the abovementioned source, the consuls—it seems that Sulla had returned to Rome in light of the events transpiring there—became so concerned by it that they attempted to diminish it by declaring feriae, holidays during which a suspension of public business was effected. Appian’s assertion that crowd control was what motivated the declaration of the holiday is not impossible to believe, but it seems odd that this would have been the method chosen by the magistrates to defuse the situation in the face of urban tension. After all, while the postponement of voting might have gratified that segment of the population opposed to the enactment of the leges Sulpiciae at any cost, it would hardly have calmed the supporters of the laws. Rather, it would likely have made them more exasperated, and therefore potentially more violent, than ever. Of course, another reason for the feriae may perhaps be at hand: it may very have been be that the laws stood an excellent chance of passing, the opposition of the prisci notwithstanding. It is significant that no tribunes are recorded as having stepped in to intervene against Sulpicius up to this point. Of course, if—as Plutarch alleges—Sulpicius had surrounded himself with a corps of hired cutthroats, then the absence of hostile tribunes might be explained as their prudent desire to avoid being brutally murdered. Nevertheless, the consuls seemed to have suffered from no such terror which impeded their own intervention, and their persons were not sacrosanct as those of tribunes were, nor—it is to be conjectured—would their lictors have been of much use against an 60 It is, perhaps, noteworthy that “swords” are not mentioned by Appian in spite of the legion Sulpicius is alleged to have in his employ by Plutarch, a charge believed by Keaveney (1982, p. 58–59).

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angry mob if such a mob was being used to intimidate magistrates. This lack of dread on the part of Pompeius Rufus and Sulla may have been a testament to their fortitude, but it may very well have been that it was not in fact violence or the quieting of it which motivated their objection to the proposals. If it was not the threat of murder which kept the tribunes from prohibiting the bills, then it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the absence of their opposition might be a signal that the people actually supported the measures.61 If this assumption was in fact what was actually the case, then Sulla and Pompeius Rufus probably stepped in to block laws which were favored by the populace but which were doubtless strenuously opposed by the Senate, not because of danger to the Commonwealth, but merely to keep these laws from being enacted. Perhaps the consuls had the additional hope that whatever former Italian supporters Sulpicius had collected would go home in the interim, since the traditional method of depriving tribunes of partisans from the Italian countryside—expulsion laws—could no longer be employed. The hooliganism displayed both by those in favor of the Sulpician laws and those against them simply furnished Sulla and Rufus, who themselves were almost certainly steadfastly opposed to the laws, with the excuse to prevent anyone from being able to express their opinion by means of the vote. No matter what the actual motives of the consul were, the result of this action was certain: the voting on the measures was suspended, and apparently suspended for a period of time which had no well-defined end. However, from the very beginning of the tribunate the ancient prerogative—and indeed the duty—of that office had been to do the will of the people and remove obstacles placed in the way of the people’s will by the nobiles. This apparently Sulpicius set out to do, and to this end he apparently sought out the consuls as they were emerging from a meeting of the Senate at the temple of Castor, decreed the feriae illegal, and possibly threatened to have the consuls arrested if they did not declare the 61 For the difficulties faced by tribunes who attempted to veto legislation which obviously had support of the people, see Morstein-Marx, p. 124–126.

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holiday over (Appian, 1.6.56; Plutarch, Sulla 8, Marius 35). This the consuls apparently refused to do, and it seems this declaration was accompanied by some insolence on the part of the son of Pompeius Rufus (who had incidentally married Sulla’s daughter), who may have come on the scene with some hoodlums of his own. While Sulla and Pompeius seem to have withdrawn from the situation “to seek counsel” (ὡς ουλευσόμενος ὑπεχώρει; Appian, loc. cit.), Pompeius the Younger still confronted Sulpicius and perhaps said something unpleasant along the lines of wishing for a Scipio Nasica. For whatever reason violence soon broke out, and as Sulpicius was surrounded by his bodyguards who were apparently armed with daggers, they soon drove off his opponents. The son of Pompeius was apparently slain in the fighting. With their blood up, the Sulpicians apparently went in search of the consuls, at which Pompeius seems to have fled the city but Sulla seems not to have been able to do so. If this was the case, his situation might have become a straightened one indeed. Plutarch’s Sulla represents what happens next as a frightened Sulla running from Sulpician murderers and desperately choosing the only port which presented itself in such a storm, which seems to have been the house of Marius near the forum which the latter had purchased on his return from the East (Sull. 8; on the house, Mar. 32).62 That same author’s biography of Marius presents another possibility based on what Sulla asserts in his own Memoirs, which is that Sulla sought out the old general to seek his advice on what Sulpicius was trying to force him to do (Mar. 35). As wildly improbable as the either account may appear, there might well have been some truth to them: Sulla, who seems to have departed from the forum before his son-in-law was killed, probably caught wind of the slaying soon enough and may have felt that his own life was in jeopardy. At the very least, he was probably a little disturbed at this news as he approached the house of his former general. Here, at least (Sulla may have reasoned), was somewhere where the men of Sulpicius might not look assuming they were hunting him, and here might present an opportunity of another kind: if, as is likely, Sulla did not know of the partnership which Marius and Sulpicius 62

So also Keaveney (1982, p. 60) and Badian (1970, p. 14–15).

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had made (one which the two men had deliberately kept secret), then perhaps Sulla may have thought that he could get Marius to help put a stop to the tribune by an appeal to his vanity. Towards that end, the consul might very well have implored the former savior of Rome to use his influence with the mercantile interests to get them to cease in their support of Sulpicius, and with both these and the Senate ranged against the tribune, the domestic tumult could end before laws which would be devastating to the power of the upper classes could be enacted. Sulla may have presented to Marius a last chance for the latter to earn the respect and admiration of the Senate, and take his proper place as elder statesman which the optimates had so often denied him. Of course, this entire exchange is nothing but conjecture, though there is nothing in it which contradicts either what is said by the sources or what is known of the character of both men. At any rate, if Sulla had made such an appeal, an amused Marius may in turn have stated that he would see what he could do; in the meantime, he probably would have intimated to Sulla that he had probably better rescind the feriae, lest some violence be done to him. Sulla himself may have seen the necessity of withdrawing them, since the tribune was well within his rights to have Sulla imprisoned unless he did so. Yet whether he was led to this conclusion by the interview with Marius or simply had come to it on his own, it is recorded by both Plutarch and Appian that Sulla did indeed call an end to the vacation; he may even have done so from the courtyard of the house of Marius. Having taken this action, Sulla was apparently allowed to go in peace by Sulpicius, who would indeed have no real grounds to hold him (although it may well have been that Marius smuggled him out the back door to protect him from the supporters of Sulpicius just in case, as one version reported in Plutarch—Mar. 35—indicates). Having made good his escape, the consul proceeded to speed himself back to Nola and the legions he had left still pressing the siege there.63 63 Such a reconstruction essentially agrees with Lintott to the extent that Sulla did not know that he was to be superseded (p. 449–453); Keaveney (1982, p. 60–62) has a similar belief, and it seems their interpretation is more likely than that which claims that Sulla would have

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With Pompeius nowhere to be found and Sulla back with his army, Sulpicius put forward his bills and swiftly had them passed (Velleius 2.18; Per. 77). Shortly thereafter, Marius and the business interests received their part of the bargain: Sulpicius proposed that the Senate’s allocation of provinces to the consuls of 88 be voided, and that the command of the Mithridatic expedition be reassigned to Marius.64 This was probably not done without opposition, and it may very well be that the sort of scuffles which had taken place earlier continued; it is known from Diodorus that C. Caesar opposed Marius over the Mithridatic command,65 and may have lent his oratory and perhaps his goons to the cause. Nevertheless, there is no cause to believe, as some scholars have,66 that any of these laws were passed through vis: compulsion had perhaps been threatened against the consuls to get them to remit their feriae, which the tribune held to be illegal, but the fracas that erupted after the confrontation may not have been the plan of Sulpicius and may even have been opposed by him, since a dead son of a consul would by no means help him in his aims. It is perhaps noteworthy made any sort of bargain with Marius to have his life spared, as is implied by Badian (loc. cit.; followed by Luce 1970, p. 193–194). On the other hand, even if Sulla did not know of the tie between Marius and Sulpicius, he might very well have been suspicious that something was amiss where Marius was concerned. This would explain his rapid departure for Nola, as per the argument of Keaveney, which is almost certainly the correct one. 64 Plutarch (Sull. 8) states the Sulpicius also had the consulate of Pompeius Rufus voided completely; this is believed by Lovano (p. 24) but is almost certainly not true and is probably either a misreading of his source, which may have stated merely that Pompeius had his provincia taken away, not his office. It may also be that either Plutarch or his source had confused what happened with Pompeius and what would subsequently happen with Cinna, whose consulate was indeed voided by Octavius; alternatively, there may have been deliberate distortion attributable to that source, especially if that source was Sulla’s autobiography, which is quite possible. A similar hypothesis—id est, that the province but not the magistracy was taken from Pompeius—may be found in Keaveney (1982, p. 61). 65 See earlier and Appendix Q. 66 Keaveney, loc. cit.

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that neither the Periochae, Appian, Velleius, Orosius, nor even Plutarch mention that—once the feriae were removed—Sulpicius gained approval of his legislation through intimidation and force, something they might well have brought up had there been even a suspicion of this. In other words, nothing Sulpicius had done had been indisputably illegal (the altercation over the feriae could be justified as tribunicial removal of consular obstruction), and therefore had done nothing for which he could expect drastic action would be taken in counter. Certainly neither he, nor Marius, nor anyone in the Senate may have had cause to expect the sequence of events which were to follow, much less prepare for it. After his departure from Rome, Sulla made his way back to Campania and gathered six legions in Capua (presumably at least one or two were left at Nola under the direction of Mam. Aemilius Lepidus). It is almost certain that he had suspicions that something might happen concerning his command, but in the meantime he seems to have busied himself with preparations for the East as if all were normal (Plutarch, Sull. 9; Appian, 1.7.57). As this went on, Sulla very likely he encouraged his men with the prospect of the easy victory, the ample spoil, and the wide tracts of land that would soon become theirs after the war was over, as per Appian, who suggests that the men had been promised as much (loc. cit). As Sallust notes (BJ 96), Sulla had the unique ability to create a rapport with the common soldier—very likely many of them had been brought up in conditions not dissimilar to what he himself had experienced in his late adolescence and early manhood—and had used generosity and understanding to great effect in his campaigns against the Allies in 89 (see last chapter). In fact, he might even have kept the goings-on in Rome from the men in order to exploit the shock of what would come next: when messengers arrived to tell the army of what the Sulpician law had decreed, the surprise of the legions would probably have been great. It was at this juncture that Sulla—no stranger to actors and to the world of the theater, for which he had composed comedies in his youth67—promptly composed and performed in a dramatic piece of a different kind, taking upon himself the role of the 67

Athenaeus 6.261c.

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maligned victim of injustice. The staging of it took the form of an address Sulla made to his dumbfounded soldiers, of which Appian suggests the substance: Marius and Sulpicius had done Sulla a signal indignity, had taken away a command which had been rightfully given to him by the Senate, and had even murdered his son-in-law. All of this was, to an extent, true enough, though Appian suggests that he went on to play on his soldiers’ fears that a different army be chosen to conduct the expedition against Mithridates, something which was probably far from the mind of Marius at the time, as the evidence will show directly. In spite of all of this, Sulla continued, the men should continue to follow orders just as before; Appian claims that Sulla’s unspoken implication— that the orders they should continue to follow be his own—was received clearly by the troops. When the military tribunes arrived to take over command of the legions from Sulla, they were stoned to death (Plutarch, loc. cit.;68 Sulla’s army had apparently become quite proficient in this activity, as the affair with Albinus described in the last chapter indicates). Why it is that Sulla’s men had done this is not necessarily clear: the tribunes had come, according to Plutarch, to lead the army to Marius, so their dread of not being led east—one stirred up by Sulla—would seem to have been alleviated by the arrival of the tribunes, not exacerbated by it. However, the behavior of the soldiers in this instance was probably less motivated by a fear of missing out on the east and more from an intense loyalty these men had developed to Sulla himself. This was a man who, after all, had shown a great respect and appreciation for them and a willingness to overlook minor infractions as long as success was obtained. Marius might not be so indulgent, and at the very least he was not Sulla; having apparently come to the conclusion that that they were Sulla’s soldiers first and foremost, their general’s enemies became their own, and they demonstrated as much. Moreover, they may 68 This event is also mentioned in Plutarch’s Marius (35), and additional information is provided by Valerius Maximus (9.7.mil.1) and Orosius (5.19.3), which both identify one of the unlucky tribunes as Gratidius (both also refer to him as a legatus), an adfinis of Marius from Arpinum.

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very well have felt that it was their duty to rescue Rome from what had been presented to them (by Sulla) as tyrants, a city under the sway of demagogues abetted by men who just a few months before had been their deadly enemies but were now to be regarded as “fellow citizens”, equal to the original citizens in every way. Whether it be for these reasons, or for others which have not been recorded, the tribunes were killed. Sulla’s men were now compromised yet again, and in this state they presented themselves to their general and bade him to use them to restore his rights and, by extension, theirs. It seems that this was exactly the thing for which Sulla had hoped, and he soon set out to do precisely what the men had asked. It soon fell out that he would do so without his senior staff, as all of them resigned their commissions (except the quaestor L. Lucullus)69 and went back to Rome. These became part of what was according to Plutarch (Sull. 9) a fairly constant passing of men which began between Sulla and the metropolis, some of whom refusing to take part in Sulla’s march and returning to the capital, others coming from there eagerly looking to join Sulla’s endeavor (it may well be that Appius Claudius Pulcher—who is soon to be found overseeing the men at Nola—was one of the latter). The same source suggests that some of those seeking the consul had been encouraged from the revenge taken by Marius and Sulpicius on some of Sulla’s partisans, whose property they plundered (also Marius 35), although no other ancient author mentions this; quite probably it was manufactured by Sulla in his Memoirs in the attempt to justify his exploit. It is not improbable that Plutarch’s report— almost certainly of similar origin to the anecdote just described— that the Senate was being held hostage by Marius and Sulpicius was also part of a determined effort to disguise what was probably far more likely to have been the situation, which is that that the Council was appalled by what seemed to be going on. In fact, Appian indicates that it may have been in disbelief, hence their sending of envoys to Sulla to ask his intent, even though his intent must by this point have been plain (1.7.57).

69

So Badian (1980, p. 16) and Keaveney 1982, p. 63.

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Given the enormity of what Sulla seems to have been up to, such a reaction from the patres is perfectly understandable without the speculated puppeteering of Marius and Sulpicius. The Fathers may very well have detested the former two, deplored the violence surrounding the feriae, and loathed the laws that the two men collaborated to pass; they may even have had deep sympathy for Sulla because of the deprivation of command, and for Pompeius for the loss of his son. Nevertheless, what Sulla was now doing was something far different in magnitude of wrong than anything he had suffered, and whatever irregularity (if any) may have surrounded the Sulpician tribunate paled in comparison to the gross indecency one of Rome’s consuls leading one Rome’s own armies against Rome itself. Incredulity might well have been the appropriate emotion under such circumstances, and it seems to have gripped even Marius: as unorthodox as his career had been, it seems he had himself never contemplated doing was his former lieutenant what was attempting, and did not quite know how to react. It has been speculated that Sulpicius and Marius were stunningly naïve not to believe that Sulla would not resort to his march, trading one illegality for another.70 In response to that speculation, it is difficult in the first place to assert that what Sulpicius had done by way of the transfer of command was illegal, since laws had specifically been passed for that purpose. By contrast, Sulla had no such laws to authorize his action, nor even the Senate’s ultimum consultum, but had made his move sua sponte. Even if it had been, it seems that no illegalitry would have been so colossal as to allow any loyal Roman to predict what Sulla was in the process of doing. Marius was not prone to underestimating his opponents, and had never been slow in moving to counter a blow that could conceivably have been levied towards him: a soldier of his caliber would have become accustomed to being able to foresee any move an enemy might possibly be expected to make. Thus, his tardiness, which was almost certainly due to being surprised in a way that was not typically part of his character, suggests that 70 As is intimated by Badian (1970, p. 15–16) and Carney (1970, p. 54– 56) and stated directly by Keaveney (1982, p. 64).

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neither he nor anyone else had believed any Roman capable of what Sulla was now setting into motion. Marius could claim to have seen practically everything which could confront a soldier over his long carer, but he never saw this coming; the sources report that much of the city was thunderstruck by what looked like was about to happen, and it seems that Marius and Sulpicius could be included in that number. Plutarch (Sull. 9) notes that Marius had been in the process of preparing for his coming expedition when Sulla’s men killed the tribunes. After shaking off what seems to have been complete astonishment, the old general then apparently switched gears and attempted to gather men to defend the city, perhaps including some of the auxiliaries he had been raising for the east. However, Sulla had six legions with him, and Marius would not be able to raise that many men in the time it would take for Sulla to advance up the Via Appia to Rome. Probably he summoned whatever ablebodied men he could find in the city itself, and likewise appealed heartily to the freedmen, on whose behalf the tribal law of Sulpicius had also been enacted.71 In desparation, he may have even promised any slaves who would help him their freedom, as Plutarch and Appian suggest (an appeal to slaves is also mentioned in Valerius Maximus 8.6.2). The slaves, however, were no fools: by staying out of the fray they would remain slaves but alive, while fighting for Marius would mean the possibility of wounds and death even in victory; in defeat, such men could potentially face crucifixion. Therefore, it seems most unlikely that very many servi were raised in this way, and Marius had to make do with the best he could raise in the time remaining to him. The Senate, in the meantime, dealt with Sulla by means of sending out envoys, as mentioned above (Plutarch, loc.cit.; Appian 1.7.57). The first of these deputations was manned by the praetor M. Junius Brutus and by another praetor identified only as Servilius,72 and while Appian suggests they merely asked Sulla what he was doing, Plutarch suggests that they also attempted to forbid 71

note. 72

For the sources for inclusion of the freedmen in this bill, see earlier Broughton, vol. 2, p. 40–41.

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whatever it was that turned out to be. In this their tone was apparently far more stern than Sulla’s men were prepared to hear. In reaction to it, these praetors were stripped of their togas, had their fasces broken, and were savagely beaten by Sulla’s men. They were then sent back to Rome with a message from Sulla: in response to their query as to what he was doing, he answered that he was coming to free Rome of tyranny, presumably that of Sulpicius and Marius, as well as the exiles, freedmen, and novi cives aided by their laws. The two additional embassies which are recorded as having been sent thereafter (Appian, loc.cit.) presumably did not strike so lofty a tone, but Sulla seemed to have answered them similarly, if not as brutally. Along the way Sulla seems to have been met by Pompeius Rufus, whose cooperation with Sulla was total (so Plutarch and Appian describe in the places cited above). As he was approaching very close to Rome a final set of envoys arrived, and to these Sulla promised he would meet with Marius and Sulpicius on the Campus Martius. As the ambassadors hastened back to Rome, Sulla continued on, until they returned with the counter-offer: if Sulla would halt at a distance of forty stades from Rome, the Senate would review the state of affairs and find some way of guaranteeing him his rights. This proposal Sulla made an ostentatious show of accepting, and began to make his camp in the sight of the envoys, who then hurried back to the city. They had just gotten out of sight, however, when he dispatched a legion after them to capture the Esquiline gate, followed by three others to take the Colline gate, the Pons Sublicius, and the area outside city walls. Sulla then followed with the rest of his troops. Upon his arrival he discovered that his men were being pelted by roof tiles and bricks, to put a stop to which Sulla ordered that their houses from which these missiles were launched be burned down with torches and flame-arrows (Plutarch, Sull. 9, Florus 2.9.6; Appian 1.7.58 states that this was only threatened). Having thereby set the city on fire but driven off the defenders, Sulla made his way in. He was soon met by Marius with those forces he had managed to gather. These engaged Sulla in the Esquiline Forum, and the two sides battered each other fairly fiercely for a time; indeed, Sulla’s line was wavering until he personally took the standard and bolstered their courage. At the same time, he brought his men from outside the walls to come up the Via Subura and take the forces of Marius from behind. Having

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become exhausted from fighting Sulla’s initial forces, the city’s makeshift defenders seem to have lacked the strength to deal with these newcomers. A final repeated appeal to the slaves to help was met with no response, and at last the defenders were forced to flee.73 It had been a near-run thing: in spite of overwhelming odds Marius had come close to beating back what may have been four legions of Sulla’s ever-victorious army, and had only failed in the end due to lack of numbers sufficient to handle a fifth which Sulla brought up on the verge of defeat. Where Marius had gotten his men is, again, difficult to ascertain. In 88 most of Rome’s available legions were either in Picenum with Pompeius Strabo, at Nola with Lepidus, or assaulting the city under Sulla’s own leadership. Perhaps the soldiers Marius had led consisted in some part of former Italians from the Allied War.74 If, as has been speculated above, the preparations Marius had been making for the Mithridatic command had included raising supplementa, then it may well have been that some of these were drawn from former Allies, possibly even the Marsi who had surrendered in early spring (see previous chapter. These men would have cause to remember Marius with warmth—throughout 90 he had been an adversary worthy of admiration—and all knew his skill in battle. Moreover, an eastern campaign would bring adventure and quite possibly great rewards in the form of praeda, and while it seems obvious that Marius intended to draw the main body of his expeditionary force from Sulla’s legions, he might very well have sought some excellent soldiers from the Marsi or other former socii who could thus share In addition to the passages in Plutarch and Appian mentioned above, Sulla’s march is also mentioned in an extremely cursory way in Plutarch’s Marius (35), and similarly by Velleius (2.19, although he would be more explicit about the outcome), Eutropius (5.4.2), Florus (2.9.6) and Orosius (5.19.14); reference is also made to it in Augustine’s de civ. (2.24, discussing the omens which seemed to surround Sulla as evidece of demonic activity) and in an extremley confused passage of Exsuperantius (19, where Murena's takeover of the soldiers of Valerius Flaccus is also mentioned, although it would actually be several years before this would occur). 74 As much is speculated by Keaveney 1982, p. 66. 73

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in a war whose benefits would have been tangible. Indeed, if Marius had thrown his weight behind the tribal reallocation law, the former Allies might have had and even further cause to regard him affection. This, again, is conjecture, but it stands to reason that some of Rome’s newest citizens might have been attracted to a war against an opponent far softer than their last had been, under a proven general, and with the tantalizing prospect of high rewards. If these men were therefore with him, as Sulla approached Marius would probably not have had to do much to motivate them, especially since Sulla’s own interactions with the Allies had not been nearly as cordial. Fighting, therefore, for the chance to accompany Marius to the east and to keep the new voting rights which they had won, the former Allies—if these had indeed been the men employed by Marius in the Esquiline forum—had acquitted themselves amazingly well: the soldiers and their commander seemed an excellent fit. As it was, however, both alike had succumbed to superior numbers, and both alike had fled, leaving Sulla master of the city. If Marius had in fact managed to gather former Allied soldiers to use in his effort to defend Rome from Sulla’s march, these had shared the fate of the general in his defeat and, it can be little doubted, followed his lead in flight from the city. Even if he had not, Sulla’s victory might very well have portended evil tidings for the one-time socii. After all, Sulla’s avowed aim was to undo what Sulpicius had managed to enact, and while the legislation that had been of primary concern to him had been the law involving the transfer of the Mithridatic command, Sulla would also almost certainly had been an opponent of tribal reassignment from the very beginning. Furthermore, the sources may suggest as much if Sulla’s reference to the “tyrants” from which the consul vowed to deliver Rome included the new citizens (Appian 1.7.57), who in concert with Marius and Sulpicius had—as Sulla may have presented things—usurped control of the city. Therefore, Sulla’s assault on the capital must have been welcomed by very few, and it is impossible to believe that the Italians would have been in that number. Exactly what would befall them, and everyone else in Rome, will be described below.

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5. SULLA, THE LAWS MADE, UNMADE, AND PROPOSED, AND THE END OF 88 Once the capital was his, Sulla and Pompeius took some measures to secure it, and to make sure his occupying legions would be sadfe from the people, and vice-versa (Appian, 1.7.59). Sulla’s next order of business was to declare Marius, Sulpicius, the praetor Brutus, and some other men public enemies; all in all, twelve were so designated (Appian 1.7.60; Plutarch, Sull. 10; Cicero, In Cat. 3.10.24). As befitting their status, these could be killed with impunity by any who should happen upon them, but Sulla was to take no chances with Marius or Sulpicius: the one had a fame which would make him a standard around which future opponents might rally as long as he lived, and the other had—inadvertently or otherwise—killed the son of Pompeius, the husband of Sulla’s daughter. Therefore, he sent men to find these two and make sure they ended up dead. Sulpicius was swiftly located and executed, but Marius and his son proved more elusive; both would find their way to northern Africa, where some veterans of the father’s had been settled, and they began to plot their next move.75 Having taken these measures to dispose of the persons of their enemies, Sulla and Pompeius next disposed of their laws. All of these which had been passed after the suspension of the feriae were thereupon declared invalid, including the tribal reallocation law. According to Appian (1.7.59), however, the consuls were not yet done with legislation for 88. As they explained to the populus, the ultimate cause of the recent unpleasantness had been a tribune who had proposed disastrous laws against the wishes of the Senate, and had seen them enacted with the help of lowest sort of people (or so they alleged) whom they had suborned for this purpose. Therefore, the consuls first of all proposed that no more laws could be passed in the comitia tributa, and furthermore that no law even be proposed which had not first been approved by the Senate. In this, they were not proposing anything revolutionary, but for a return to what had once been Rome’s ancient traditions, going back even to the regal times (ὡς Τύλλιος ασιλεὺς ἔταξε). Additional 75 For sources on the other exiles, the flight of Marius, and the death of Sulpicius, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 164–165.

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measures were also promulgated to diminish the power of the tribunate, which Appian mentions but does not describe in great detail; finally, the consuls proposed to adlect 300 men into the Senate to restore its diminished numbers. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not these laws were actually carried in 88. Appian himself (the only source for them) is unclear on this point, mentioning that the consuls had proposed these laws (εἰσ γοῦντό), but never explicitly stating they passed. Instead, the only laws which that authority definitely mentions as having been brought through by Sulla and Pompeius were those reversing the legislation of Sulpicius. Certainly in 81 Sulla would return to Rome and pass edicts which were very similar to these in practically all respects, and for this reason, some scholars see these earlier laws (which are mentioned only in Appian) merely as a doublet for those passed later. Others believed that these laws described in Appian were passed in 88, but were undone a short time later.76 As to the latter alternative, on the surface it is hard to see how Sulla and Pompeius could be able to pass these measures other than by force, and indeed the fact that Sulla would later have cause to add 300 more men to the Senate (see chapter 10) seems to suggest that his scheme to do so seven years earlier had never been be enacted. Still, it need not be that Appian has made an error of transposition here; it is instead quite likely that he has recorded laws which the consuls offered but were possibly never put to the vote, or were voted upon but rejected. Since Sulla had made himself despised by this point (as Plutarch attests; Sull. 10) and since the same voting public subsequently rejected a number of his candidates for office (more below), they might just as well have rejected his laws out of hand as well. But whether they were promulgated and passed but were later overturned, or were promulgated but rejected, these laws would nevertheless give the Romans an indication of the sort of Rome which Sulla envisioned both for old citizens and for new; this indication would play a not 76 Gabba (1976, p. 134–135), Keaveney (1982, p. 67), and Willaimson (p. 342–343) believe that these laws were both promulgated and carried. Opposed to their view is Badian (1970, p. 16) and Weinrib (p. 32–43; see next chapter).

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insignificant role in their reaction to his later return after his eventual trip to the east. As far as the new citizens went, they very likely found themselves in an extremely constrained position after Sulla’s march and his subsequent victory over Marius and Sulpicius. In the first place, the tribal restrictions which had been imposed upon them earlier (through the lex Julia and the later unnamed franchise bills; see chapter 6) were now reinstated, along with which the resulting limitations on their voting powers. What this would mean first and foremost is that the new citizens they would have practically no ability to help determine the outcome on voting on laws in the comitia tributa, assuming that Sulla and Pompeius had not been successful and that such lawmaking powers still remained with that assembly. What it also meant is that they would have practically no say in the election to junior magistracies, since these were also elected by the comitia tributa. As a result it would be very difficult for the novi to elect anyone of their own choosing—and of their own people—to those offices. In fact, it might have very well been impossible that they be able to do so, as Sulla’s proposed adlection bill may indicate. This law, as has been seen, proposed to add great numbers to the Senate through its enactment. However, addition to the Senate by legislation—either consular or tribunician—was not the usual way by which new Senators were made. Instead, these were typically drawn from a pool of former officeholders and confirmed in their status by the censors. It just so happens that there had been new censors elected in 89, and, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, they are familiar faces: according to a number of authorities, they were L. Julius Caesar, the consul of 90, and P. Licinius Crassus, his one-time lieutenant. Curiously, knowledge of this censorate does not come from those sources which would be labelled as historical. Instead, testimony for their tenure in office comes from more indirect authors, such as Cicero (who mentions a Julius and a Crassus as having been censors in his Pro Archia 11, though he does not specify a date for this service), Festus (p. 366

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L), and Pliny.77 This last not only mentions that both men served together but also provides the additional illumination as to the dates for their office, which was at the time when Antiochus of Asia was subdued in the 565th year from the foundation of the city (certum est Antiocho Rege Asiaque devictis, urbis anno DLXV, P. Licinium Crassum L. Iulium caesarem censores; NH 13.5.25; likewise, he mentions the same date in 14.16.95, where he notes censores anno urbis conditae DCLXV). Pliny also mentions some of the things Caesar and Crassus did while in office, including their fixing of prices for the sale of Greek and Ariminian wine, and their prohibitions on the sale of ointments. Yet the more expansive chroniclers of the period, such as Appian, Velleius Paterculus, and the Periochae, do not mention this service at all.78 While he silence of the former two are less surprising, as they do not often record the measures of individual censors, that of the latter may be slightly more so, since this source has mentioned the deeds of several censors from earlier periods (cfr. Per. 56, 59, and 63, though these notices begin to disappear in later summaries following that of Book 63). Moreover, since their election is fairly irregular in that it was too early in 89 for censors to have been named at all—the last two, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and L. Licinius Crassus, having held the post as early as 92—it may be even more puzzling that no historical account mentions Crassus and Caesar in office. The preponderance of citation in other authors—especially Cicero, a contemporary of their tenure—makes it near certain that the holding of the office Caesar and Crassus did indeed occur and is not simply an error. For reasons not readily identified, it just so happens that the historians speak nothing of it. It therefore seems justified to note that there were censors in 89–88. Since that is the case, Sulla’s adlection law would seem otiose: why would Sulla frame such a bill rather than let the censors Valerius Maximus 9.2.2 also mentions a Caesar as consularis et censorius but gives his name as C. Caesar; similarly, Plutarch names the father of M. Licinius Crassus as a man who had been censor, but says nothing more about it (Crass. 1). 78 Nor do the less voluminous descendants of Livy, like Florus, Orosius, and Eutropius. 77

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determine Senatorial membership, as was traditional? An answer to this question may be found in the attempt to determine why there were censors in 89 at all, since—as mentioned above—it was not yet time for them. On the one hand, Ahenobarbus and L. Crassus had apparently not gotten along in 92 and had abdicated their posts, almost certainly before their completion of their census and the lustrum.79 Doubtless this failure of the previous censors to number the citizens may have played a part in the demand that a census take place which was earlier than usual.80 What may have been more urgent, however, was the fact that thousands of new citizens had been created by the lex Julia and the additional franchise laws of 89 and 88. These novi cives needed—or, at least, would want—to be enrolled within the citizen body, since by means of their registration they would be given a property rating, allowed to vote in the centuriate assembly, and become able to run for office.81 Thus, in addition to the reasonable certainty that there were censors for 89/88, there can be added a plausible reason for why they were chosen. But if the reason why Crassus and Caesar were elevated to the post was to make such a registration, they would prove a disappointment: while they were apparently able to get around to the lustrum—though under circumstances whereby its religious correctness was eventually to be invalidated (Festus p. 366 L.)—they did not seem to have gotten around to counting the citizens, either old or new ones,82 as Cicero’s pro Archias states (primis Iulio et Crasso nullam populi partem esse censam; loc. cit.).83 Such an So Broughton, vol. 2. p. 17 (which also provides the sources for their deeds in office). 80 Ibid., p. 37–38 n. 1. This would apparently set a precedent, as well; within three years after this Censorate, new censors were chosen for the purpose of numbering the citizens and reviewing the Senate. 81 See Brunt (1971, p. 15–16) and Nicolet (1988, p. 49–72). 82 On this point see Haug, p. 249 83 Cicero’s statement seems to refute the theory of Wiseman (1969, p. 63–64) that no lustrum could have been undertaken without an enumeration and vice-versa, as well as its consequence, which is that Crassus and Caesar had conducted a registry but for some reason it had been vitiated later. In fact, Wiseman makes the rather confusing 79

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inability might go far to explain why no strictly historical work tells of them: they did not complete the census, so no discussion of what would amount to a non-census needed to be made. Still, if the silence of the chroniclers is an effect of this failure, the cause of that failure is more difficult to ascertain: Cicero gives no reason for why Caesar and Crassus did not conduct the census, and no other certain aetiology can readily be discerned. One scholar has made what seems to be the reasonable assertion that “internal and external confusions must have prevented them from the practice of their office”,84 and there were decidedly more than enough of these between January of 89 and July of 88 amidst the war was still raging in Italy and the domestic dissensions of Caesar Strabo, Sulpicius, and Sulla which occupied most of the latter year. It therefore might very well be that the census could not be completed due to these disturbances. On the other hand, perhaps this inability to complete the enumeration might have sprung from other causes. One possibility is that the censors refused to conduct the enumeration precisely because it would seal the rights given to the former Allies by the enfranchisement laws, rights to which they were opposed. As it turns out, however, the attitude of the censors towards the Allies is difficult to discern. One of them, Caesar, had been an active participant in the war had seen a measure of victories over and defeats at the hands of the Allies. Furthermore, in his career prior to his consulate and the war he seems to have been fairly firmly in the Optimate camp, which was, as has been seen, far from kindly disposed towards Italian desires. But while these facts seem to indicate that Caesar would not be terribhly inclined to be generous towards the former socii, it should also not be forgotten that it was suggestion—based solely on the Antium Fasti—that there had been an enumeration in 89, it had been vitiated and replaced by the census in 86, that this latter was in turn struck down by Sulla in 81 (and the returns of 89 reinstated), and that the numbering of 86 was made valid again after Sulla’s death. What is more likely than this bewildering sequence of events is that the census of 89 was never actually completed, and that if the lustrum was, it was soon declared unlucky, perhaps for the very reason that no count had been made. 84 Haug, loc. cit.

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he who had proposed the lex Julia, which may have indicated a softening of this stance, or the lack of it in the first place.85 As for his colleague: Crassus, too, had fought in the war and had not only been defeated but had even apparently been captured at Grumentum, he does not seem to have been harmed there (see pervious chapter). Additionally, Cicero reports that he had once given the franchise to a citizen of Heraclea, which may imply a friendliness to the incorporation of the former Allies into the citizen-body. Therefore, it is not entirely easy to tell where the new censors stood on the enrollment of the Allies; there is evidence to suggest that they could have been perfectly disposed to enroll them with no reservations, and evidence to imply a reluctance to do that very thing. Either way, what seems clear is that while the main reason for censors to be named at all in 89 seems to have been that the new citizens be registered, this was not done. While the violence of 89 and 88 might have disrupted this registration, it might also have been that the censors elected not to undertake it due to concerns about the additions to the citizen body. However, one additional possibility to explain their failure might also exist: it could have been that the men deputed to the post might would have been amenable to suspend the enumeration of the citizen body if the right persuasion was used on them by those who were interested in fencing the new citizens out of the centuriate assembly and the candidate’s rolls. A person who might have been able to bring a great deal of persuasion to bear in the year 88 would have been L. Cornelius Sulla, who had recently made himself very persuasive indeed. Of course, the fact that Sulla may have had the ability to put pressure to bear on the censors does not make it certain that he actually did, nor that he would have even desired to do so. Nevertheless, a great deal of indirect evidence insinuates that he might well have had the desire, at least.86 In the first place, Sulla 85 For Caesar’s military exploits, see chapte 5; for the lex Julia, see chapters 5 and 6, and note L. 86 Keaveney (1982b, p. 499), for example, strongly infers that Sulla had the traditional Roman aristocratic bias against the Italians at least before

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was not entirely known for friendliness to the Allies, and his conduct in the war would certainly have indicated as much. That hostility may have manifested itself in an active wish to curtail their citizenship rights, and to do so by means of keeping the census from confirming them. To be sure, the halt of a census would not remove those rights completely and thus take away the civitas; as Cicero indicates, registration is proof of citizenship, but the absence of it is not proof of lack of citizenship (pro Arch. 11)87. Furthermore, since participation in the comitia tributa did not involve a centuriate rating, the novi would still retain the whatever presence they had in this body given to them by the lex Julia and the other enabling laws. However, once the revocation of the tribal redistribution had been brought about, as it was by the reversal of all of the leges Sulpiciae, then the presence of the former Allies in that assembly would have had been reduced to near meaninglessness. A lack of a census would diminish the political privileges of the new citizens still further for the reasons cited above: it would prevent a placement in the comitia centuriata and thus on voting for all non-tribunician laws, as well as a role in the election of higher magistracies, and it would keep the one-time Alles from running for any offices, for which a census rating would be required. It has been seen in the previous chapters that one of the main objections which had led to the fighting which broight about citizenship for the Allies in the first place had been an unwillingness by the nobilitas to allow for the extension to the Italians of an effective sharing of power within the Roman state. If Sulla had shared this same reluctance—and his later alignment with those who had earlier been most strident in their opposition to the Allied franchise seems to make this conjecture plausible—then he might have used his extralegal influence to dilute the powers of the 84; as he notes, “As far as [Sulla] was concerned, the Italians should be treated with all the consideration due to one’s inferiors (especially when one relied upon them in one’s campaigns), but it was unthinkable they should be allowed to have an equal share in the government with those who were real Romans” (emphasis added). On page 507 he explicitly states that this was Sulla’s attitude in 88. 87 So Brunt 1971, p. 91–92.

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new citizens still further by preventing a census. That Sulla was quite concerned to make sure that Rome’s magistracies and its council of State consist of individuals of whom Sulla personally approved is clear by the attention he paid to the composition of the Senate. This concern drew repeated legislative efforts on Sulla’s part. The adlection law of 88 described above is one such effort, assuming a law of this kind was actually one which Sulla had either passed or proposed in 88. It corresponds well to one which would later be presented in 81. Moreover, in the latter instance such an adlection law was also passed in a similar absence of a census (no census is reported from the time of Sulla’s return in 82 until the year 70; one—admittedly flawed—source even states that Sulla had abolished the censor’s office altogether).88 It seems to have been the case that Sulla was determined to bring about an ideal Senate, and did not trust censors with this task; as master of Rome in 81, he simply kept them from being elected, and chose the Senate through a lex. It may be wondered if he did not do the same thing as master of Rome in 88, using his considerable influence to convince or compel the censors to hold off on the registration. A side-effect of so doing would be the exclusion of the Italians from being elected to office, and, as a consequence, from being named to the council. It is distinctly within the realm of possibility that this was not by chance, but by a design on Sulla’s part.89 Such a design may go far to explain future moves Sulla would make, and these will in turn be described later. Therefore, the Italians had been greatly limited int heir political rights as Romans by the actions of 88, and Sulla had played a large role in that limitation: he had reversed the tribal redistribution, and had perhaps also prevented Italians from being 88 Schol. Gronov. Ad Cic. Div. in Caecil. 3, p. 384, ed. Orelli, quoted in Smith, p. 260–266. Gabba (op. cit., p. 147–148), however, disagrees, as will be seen later (Chapter 10). 89 Frank (1924, p. 336–337) certainly implies that this was Sulla’s intent in 81: he had suppressed the consorate in order to keep out those Italians who had not been registered in the census up to that year. Wiseman (1969, p. 65) infers a similar motivation to Sulla, as does Salmon (1967, p. 378 and note 4), suggesting that the Samnites specifically were the targets of the expulsion.

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registered by the census. Exactly when in the year he did this cannot be determined with pinpoint accuracy, since the precise month of 88 in which Sulla made his march is not given by the sources. Certain elements of its sequel—id est the flight of Marius chronicled by the Periochae, Appian, Velleius, and Plutarch—all suggest that the Sulla’s march must not have been too late in the year: Plutarch mentions the old general attempting to evade Sulla’s cut-throats by swimming away from them to ships off the coastline of Italy, wandering aimlessly on the beach for a time, and spending the night outside in the forest, and that authority (and others)90 also tell of Marius spending some time hiding in swamps. Since the ability to spend a great deal of time out of doors and in water suggests it was still warm enough outside to do so, it was perhaps mid to late summer when this flight occurred. This, in turn, might suggest that Sulla took control of Rome sometime in June or July, a timing that would also square with a conjectural disruption of the censors. Yet while it is not known when Sulla took control of Rome, there are better indications for how long he would stay there, which would be the rest of the year. It was apparently agreed upon that it would be he who would preside over the elections of next year’s consuls, while Pompeius would go forth to his province, which was to be Italy (if it had not been this before Sulpicius rearranged the proconsular arrangements, it was apparently made such now). This would mean the relief of Pompeius Strabo, who was then still at Picenum with his armies. Figuring that in this way his colleague would be so ensconced with the legions that he would be safe from the fruits of any assassination conspiracies that according to Appian were all over Rome, Sulla also saw to it that Rufus went out to the legions while still consul to supersede Strabo by means of his superior imperium; such is the implication of the Periochae and Appian, who both mention this departure and its sequel before the next consular elections.91 Thise sources, as well as See earlier note Acccording to Sallust—quoted in Gellius 10.20.10—Sulla somewhat hypocritically attempted to have Pompeius Strabo’s proconsular command abrogated by law, but was vetoed by the tribune C. Herennius. 90 91

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Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus, all record what must have been the original notice in Livy that Strabo was much displeased by this event,92 but nevertheless yielded his command. To this, it seems, his soldiers were disinclined, and they promptly slaughtered Pompeius Rufus either at assembly (Appian) or while offering a sacrifice (Valerius). Strabo therefore resumed charge of them. Neither Sulla nor, apparently, the Senate much felt like pressing the issue further, since the last attempt to deprive a general of his army had ended rather messily (although it might very well be this episode which led to the indictment of Pompeius on charges of maiestas recorded by Asconius 79; see next chapter). Strabo, therefore, retained his men, while Sulla looked to holding the elections. Fall was coming on now, and soon Sulla would be departing for the east. To prepare for this he sent the army back to Capua, although his concern against assassination had led to his surrounding himself with bodyguards (Appian, 1.8.64). There is nothing in what is known of his life up to this point to suggest that Sulla was a timid man, so for him to have taken this step implies that there was a great deal of hostility directed towards him by the people. This rancor did not, as it turned out, result in Sulla’s murder, although Plutarch does report that the public delighted in favoring the candidates with whom he would be displeased in the elections and rejecting the ones he sponsored.93 Accordingly, Sulla

92 Specifically, Appian 1.7.63, Per. 77, Velleius 2.20, and Valerius Maximus 9.7.mil.2. 93 These would almost certainly have included M. Marius Gratidianus, a relative of the exiled general who was apparently made tribune of 87 (see next chapter). It is commonly assumed that Sulla had been able to block the candidacy of Q. Sertorius for the tribunate (so, for example, Keaveney 1982, p. 70–71). However, Spann (p. 23–25, 162–164) has pointed out that it is hardly likely that Sulla could have prevented a popular candidate like Sertorius from attaining office given the nadir of his own popularity in late 88. However, Spann continues, Sulla might very well have been able to use his popularity and influence as returning hero of the Allied War and the consul-elect to block a candidacy of Sertorius in 89 for the tribunate of 88. Plutarch, after all, does not specify a date for this action,

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had to endure his inability to ensure the election to the consulate of P. Servilius Vatia, a triumphator recently returned home.94 Instead, the successful candidates for the office in that year were C. Octavius and L. Cornelius Cinna, the latter fresh from his fairly succesful campaign against the Marsi and perhaps the captor of Corfinium.95 Sulla seems to have distrusted Cinna for reasons which are not entirely known; perhaps he simply had a feeling about him, the way he would about Julius Caesar some years hence. Nevertheless, he did not block Cinna’s candidacy and made no moves to prevent his assumption of office after Cinna was duly elected, although he would try to limit Cinna’s actions in a different way, about which more will be discussed in the next chapter. As 88 turned into 87, Sulla began the process by which he take up the command for which he had committed an act so contrary to the mores of the Republic that no defense against had been mounted. In no small part this was probably because none would ever have been planned, because no need for it would ever have been conjectured: in spite of threats against it in the past, no Roman had ever actually led the commonwealth’s own soldiers against it, and it must have been earthshaking to the sensibilities of all classes, high and low, that one had now done so. Following this first shocking act, those others which he had also commited in 88—refusing the law of the people to surrender his army to a proconsular replacement, condemnation of men to death without trial, and the authorization of the killing of a sacrosanct tribune— seem pale in comparison, although any one of these in different times might well have marked him for death. Nevertheless, he was able to weather the last few months of 88 unscathed. Reasons for this are probably twofold: in the first place, his bodyguard seems to have been in place for the entirely of his sojourn in Rome, preventing any would-be tyrannicides from attacking him. Military and based on Spann’s arguments, it seems rather more probable that Sertorius was kept out of the tribunate of 88 than that of 87. 94 So Keaveney (1982, p. 71), following Badian (1964, p. 82–83), who is in turn following Mommsen’s emendation of Plutarch’s Sulla 10 that “Servius” there be “Servilius (Vatia)” instead. See also his note 74, p. 100. 95 See chapter 6 and Appendix N.

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intervention could easily have overcome these, but the only legions in the area were those of Pompeius Strabo, and for a variety of reasons it seems that he would probably wish to avoid coming back to Rome for the purpose of inciting trouble. Therefore, Sulla remained unmurdered, and even though by doing so he would could no longer stay and exert direct pressure on the city to keep himself and his arrangements secure, shortly after the new consuls took office Sulla rejoined his army in Capua. Soon he was gone, although, to an extent, he remained very present, as will be seen.

6. THE SHADOW OF SULLA The year 88 and the only remaining consul who had served in that year departed Rome at close to the same time. Nevertheless, the residual effects from the year would linger, as, in a sense, would the presence of Sulla himself; his figure loomed over everything which would transpire over the next few years. This thing that Sulla had done was very new, a res nova in every possible meaning of the word, and it must have occurred to all thinking Romans that others could follow the trail that the consul had quite literally blazed. Indeed, Sulla might treat the capital to a repeat performance do so when he came back from the east. If he would return, when, and in what manner—these must have been matters of great concern to the entire peninsula and helped shape the thoughts and actions of those who remained there, old Romans as well as new ones, in the months and years to come. It is difficult to dispute the claim that, while the last several years had hardly proved to be amongst the most stable ever experienced by the Republic, the one which had just elapsed may have been the most volatile in over a century. Over the course of it, men who were once shedding Roman blood were now Roman citizens, men who were already Roman citizens were now shedding Roman blood, military commands and voting privileges were granted and revoked, and one of Rome’s most sacred traditions had been shattered. What must have also been on the minds of everyone in Italy was a great anxiety about what was going to happen next. What that was will be the topic of the next two chapters.

CHAPTER 8: PROGRESS AND THE PROMISES OF CINNA 1. CINNA, SULLA, AND THE BEGINNING OF 88 Over the course of the fifty years that had led up to 87 BCE, the Italians had had a strange series of men who could be counted as their champions in regards to their acquisition of the Roman citizenship and the full rights associated with it. All of them had been Roman aristocrats, and all of them had had to fly in the face of the traditional establishment, which had been set against granting these rights. Indeed, the fate of the first two such advocates, C. Gracchus and M. Flaccus, had demonstrated just how intransigent the boni would be to the proposal of enfranchisement for the Allies. Of course, its should be observed that part of the hostility directed at those two had stemmed from the fact that the proposals for extending the civitas had come as a gateway to agrarian reform, to which the patres would always be opposed. On the other hand, part of it had almost certainly derived the fears those Fathers had about the financial, military, and political consequences which would attend on the Allies becoming Romans of equal standing to those who were already cives. The Gracchi and Flaccus had managed to polarize a large number of men amongst the élite who opposed their laws—both in what they contained of themselves and in the way the tribunate was used to advance them against the will of the Senate—and caused them to unite. While it has often been asserted that this coalition was not a party in the modern sense of the term, it might be appropriate to compare it to the following of a particular kind of political philosophy. The bedrock of this philosophy was first and foremost the maintenance of Senatorial influence in the passing of laws both foreign and domestic, and secondly an automatic 479

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opposition to tribunes who sought to pass legislation which had not first gained Senatorial approval. For this reason, the next two proponents of Allied rights were especially odd, since both seem to have been true believers in this philosophy. The first of these was M. Livius Drusus, who, in his early career, had once been such a firm partisan of the curia that he was later remembered as being a propugnator Senatus. Yet in the year 91 this man found himself—after various twists and turns of fate—using the tribunate in the same basic ways that C. Gracchus had done, and for the purpose of enacting laws which in some cases were very similar to those of the latter, including the extension of the citizenship the the Italians. Unrelenting Senatorial opposition had led to the downfall of these proposals, and assassination would eventually put an end to any others Drusus might make. Ironically, soon thereafter measures required by wartime hardships had led to the Allies being given a weakened form of the citizenship anyway. Nevertheless, in 88 still another tribune and an apparent firm adherent to the principles of Senatorial supremacy found himself opposed by that selfsame Senate due to his own advocacy of Allied prerogatives. In that year, P. Sulpicius Rufus, for reasons which are not entirely unobscure, had come to advocate that the Italians who had been recently given the citizenship be distributed throughout the Roman voting tribes in such a way in that their ballots would carry the same force as that of the longtime citizens. The case of Sulpicius is somewhat different from the others, in that Flaccus, Gracchus, and Drusus had intended to use their laws as a boon whereby they could purchase Allied cooperation in land reallocation, whereas Sulpicius had apparently pursued bestowal of equal rights as an end of itself. In so doing, it is highly unlikely that he was any more motivated by simple altruism than his friend Drusus or the earlier Gracchus had been. Rather, Sulpicius may have wanted to amplify Allied voting rights so he could then use the gratitude he would earn thereby to increase his own following, perhaps for the purpose of furthering the ends of the Senate, but perhaps not. Nevertheless, Sulpicius seems to have found himself just as staunchly opposed by the socalled optimates as the others had been, and had come to just as sticky an end. A familiar pattern had thus reasserted itself in the affair of Sulpicius: just as in the past (and in the case of Drusus, the very recent past), the promoters of Allied privileges found

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themselves in conflict with the Senate, which either frustrated the passage of their laws or overturned them when passed, and in the end such promoters were compelled to desist in their efforts due to an involuntary but permanent retirement brought about by means which were most unquiet. The next major champion of (former-)Allied rights was, in a sense, an even more bizarre choice to be selected by Fate for such a task than the others had been. At time when this man came to their defense, the only thing for which he had apparently been known by anyone had been his dealing of death, destruction, and defeat to those Allies in battle. It may be that this seeming inconguity in why he would come to stand up for Italian rights has to do with that fact that so much about the life and early career of this individual, L. Cornelius Cinna, is obscured, due to lack of mention of it in the sources. He was apparently a nobilis, the son of a like-named L. Cornelius Cinna who was consul in 127,1 although nothing more than this fact is known of the father, and therefore no hint can be found of his personality, deeds, or politics. The elder L. Cornelius Cinna therefore seems to have been a perfectly unremarkable politician, who did not earn memory for anything other than his inclusion in consular lists due to his holding of an office of which there is no other record. Nor, apparently, did the son do anything worthy of preservation before the Allied War, although at some point he must have been a praetor. Cicero testifies that he was a legate of praetorian rank in that war (scietis fuisse tum M. Cornutum, L. Cinnam, L. Sullam, praetorios homines, belli gerendi peritissimos [emphasis added]; pro Font. 43), and his subsequent run for the consulate seems to confirm this assertion.2 It is generally agreed, by process of elimination through crosschecking between the other sources, that Cinna served as legate in Lovano, p. 27. No disturbance seems to have attended his run as it had for the earlier candidacy of C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who earned notoriety for attempting to run for consul without having first attained the praetorate. Furthermore, his election occurred under the watchful eyes of L. Cornelius Sulla, who, as later events would show, was a stickler about the following of the prescribed path of the cursus honorum (see previous chapter and chapter 6). 1 2

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89 rather than 90. Under whom he served meets with less agreement, but by where Cinna is seen operating later on, he seems to have been a subordinate of Cato rather than of Pompeius Strabo.3 In this capacity he seems to have gathered the divisions directly under Cato’s command after that consul’s death and assumed leadership of them, pressing Cato’s line of attack against the Marsi while his fellow legate Sulla achieved his own successes in the south. Sulla’s victories led to his election to consul for 88, during which time Cinna might very well have come under Sulla’s imperium or, as is more probable, that of Pompeius Rufus.4 Under such command, Cinna, along with Caecilius Cornutus5—with whose campaign through the territory of the Paeligni en route to Corfinium from the east Cinna seems to have cooperated by himself converging on Corfinium through Marsic territory to the west in the previous year—may have captured the former Allied capital in early 88. Upon the surrender of the Marsi, Cinna may have been relieved of duty and allowed to return home, or had perhaps instead obtained a dispensation from Rufus (before he died) to return to the city to run for consul. Either way, he was indeed back in the capital for such a candidacy, one which probably rested on the strength of his battlefield accomplishments: Cinna’s military record may not have been as flamboyant as Sulla’s had been, but it was solid enough, and might very well have stood him in good enough stead for the office. On the other hand, Plutarch indicates part of the reason why Cinna was elected—as he eventually was—was that he was thought to be displeasing to Sulla. This accords well with Dio, who states that the Sulla thought Cinna to be a “base fellow” (ἐκεῖνον δὲ εὖ See Appendix N and chapter 6 for more on these points. As discussed in the last chapter, Rufus would ultimately be assigned the province of Italy and would take over the troops of Pompeius Strabo. Since Sulla was allowed to keep the men he had commanded in 89 for the expedition to the east, it is likely that all of troops north of Aesernia were to be transferred to Rufus upon his taking the field, though until such time as he did so the commanders of these men—Pompeius Strabo generally and Cinna, specifically—would remain in charge of those soldiers whom they had led in 89. 5 See Appendix N for this identification. 3 4

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ᾔδει κακὸν ἄνδρα ὄντα;

frg. 102), while Plutarch additionally reports that Cinna belonged to the bloc which opposed Sulla (Exsuperantius does likewise).6 Why it is that Cinna would have been so identified is difficult to discern. If he had been a Marianus, he was not one so prominent as to compelled to join the eleven sent into exile along with the general by Sulla in 88, although even if he was a staunch but unrevealed partisan of Marius, it might have been wise for him to have kept this leaning a secret during the aftermath of the March on Rome. On the other hand, if it can be assumed that Cinna was not a high-profile supporter of Marius, then why else Sulla would have formed such a low opinion of him is not revealed. However, it almost certainly did not arise because the candidate had unveiled his tribal reallocation plans (see below) before his election, as Sulla might very well have rejected his professio out of hand if he had done so.7 Nor was it probable that Cinna had made promises to prosecute Sulla, as some scholars

6 Plutarch: εραπεύων τὸ τῶν πολλῶν μῖσος ὕπατον κατέστ σεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως Λεύκιον Κίνναν (Sulla 10); τῶν δὲ ὑπάτων Ὀκτά ιος μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς Σύλλα προαιρέσεως ἔμενε, Κίννας δὲ νεωτερίζων ὑποφερομέν ν ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὴν Μαρίου στάσιν (Sert. 4); Cinna de partibus Marianis fuit

(Exsuperantius, 23). 7 So Keaveney (1982, p. 72). By contrast, Lovano holds that Cinna may indeed have voiced sympathy for the novi cives and for those exiled by Sulla (p. 27–28). But candidates for office in Rome almost never ran on a “platform”, as has already been observed (see chapters 3 and 7, as well as Appendix C). This fact alone makes it improbable that Cinna would have offered such sympathy in public, an unlikelihood which is all the more acute given the fact that Italian sympathies would probably not have carried much purchase with the centuriate assembly whom he would need for election, in which, indeed, the Italians could not take part due to lack of census registry (see previous chapter). Further, publicly acknowledged feelings might well have gained Sulla’s refusal to let his candidacy stand (as noted above). Probably Cinna had campaigned primarily on his lineage and on his military record. Sulla’s suspicion of him may have been based on a simple feeling—his later moment of prescience in the case of Julius Caesar is to be recalled—or from some disagreement they may have had during their service under Cato in 89, a possibiity for which Lovano has also allowed.

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believe, for the same reason.8 Nevertheless, Sulla clearly seemed to regard Cinna as someone not to be trusted, even if the latter’s popularity made it less than wise to dismiss his petition out of hand. Therefore, Sulla did not move to halt Cinna’s election, though he does seem to have required that the latter take an oath to “be well disposed to his arrangements” (ἀραῖς καὶ ὅρκοις καταλα ὼν εὐνο σειν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πράγμασιν; Plutarch, Sull. 10),9 whatever that may have meant.

8 Keaveney (loc. cit.) is far from convincing in attributing this to Cinna. Sulla may have gritted his teeth and borne the deliberate rejection of his candidates with a false delight in the people “exercising the freedom which they enjoyed solely due to him” (ὁ δὲ τούτοις τε προσεποιεῖτο χαίρειν, ὡς τοῦ δ μου τῷ ποιεῖν ἃ ούλοιτο δι᾽ αὐτὸν ἀπολαύοντος τῆς ἐλευ ερίας; Plutarch, Sull. 10), but it does not seem likely that he cheerfully would have allowed a direct challenge to himself in terms of such an intended prosecution, no matter how much of a following Cinna seems to have developed (one indicated by Dio, frg. 102: οὐκ ἠ έλ σε δὲ ἐκπολεμῶσαι δυνάμενον τέ τι αὐτόν ἤδ ). Keaveney himself seems to have backed off that assumption a bit in his later work (1987, p. 175–176), in which it is asserted (as above) that Cinna’s platform probably involved nothing which would arouse Sulla’s immediate disapproval. 9 Dio reports something similar, to the effect that Cinna had apparently assuaged Sulla’s fears about him by repeatedly stating and then swearing an oath to the effect that he would “assist him in all things” ( καὶ ἔλεγε καὶ ὤμνυεν πᾶν οἱ ὁτιοῦν ὑπουργῆσαι). Keaveney (1982, p. 72–73) states that both consuls were compelled to do this, following the Scholia Gronoviana, p. 286 (Fecit Sulla duos consules, Cinnam et Octaviam, iure iurando astrinxit eos, ut nulliis contra acta Sullana faceret). However, his explanation for the evidence in the Scholia—that the oath was required due to Sulla’s reservations, not about Cinna, but about Octavius, who is held to have detested the march on Rome and the exile of Marius—is not supported by what is found in that source, and runs directly counter to the assertion in Dio that Sulla found Octavius completely amiable (τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ τε ἐπιεικείᾳ ἐπαινούμενον ἠπίστατο καὶ οὐδὲν παρακιν σειν ἐνόμιζεν; loc. cit.). Plutarch’s Life of Sertorius also states that Octavius “adhered to Sulla’s following” (τῆς Σύλλα προαιρέσεως ἑμενε). Probably the oath was of a fairly routine sort calling for magistrates-elect to respect the laws, an opinion favored by Lovano (p. 31 note 22; such an oath is also mentioned by Morstein-Marx, p. 10).

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Upon taking office, therefore, Cinna essentially represented an uncertain quantity. Sulla suspected him but apparently did not know what his intentions were, and this suggests that no one else in the city or outside of it really did, either. This would have included the novi, who would probably not have been able to locate in Cinna a standard-bearer for their cause, as it might very well have been in Cinna’s interests to disguise any sympathy he may have had for the former Allies. Even if the new citizens had been able to detect such a partisanship in the new consul-elect, the oath he had taken—one which the sources state had specifically included a pledge extorted by Sulla not to reinstate the laws of Sulpicius—might seem to have to tied his hands fairly effectively. For these reasons, as far as the novi cives themselves were concerned, at the beginning of 87 they were in the exact same position that they had been in before the laws of Sulpicius. This meant that they were citizens but possessed of no real voting power in the assembly which made most of the laws and elected the lower magistrates, and unregistered by the census whose rating determined the property qualifications for holding office and the ability to vote in the assembly which elected the highest magistrates. If and when there were to be any changes to that status was uncertain, but what was more than overwhelmingly probable was that their situation was not bound to improve as long as Sulla remained in Italy. It would turn out that he would not so remain for long. It was apparently in everyone’s best interest—the new citizens, the friends of Marius, Cinna, and Sulla himself—that he leave the peninsula immediately, and that is exactly what he did. Before he went, however, a certain tribune of the people named M. Vergilius (or M. Verginius) looks to have had the temerity to attempt to put him on trial, allegedly at Cinna’s behest (Plutarch, loc. cit.). If Cinna was in fact behind the indictment—Plutarch says that it was, although Cicero (Brut. 179), the only other source for the episode, mentions nothing of him—it cannot have been a serious attempt to get Sulla to come back and answer for his crimes, of which the specific charge in this case probably had to do with his role in the murder of of Sulpicius (although a number of violations could probably have been adduced against him). This is because Dio expressly states that Cinna wanted Sulla gone (frg. 102). Moreover, the Republic had no legal machinery in place whereby Sulla could be

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forced to come and answer this charge anyway. Although Sulla was technically liable to prosecution (the lex Memmia apparently did not protect promagistrates from tribunician action), tribunes were not allowed to send viators to beckon the men they accused, but had to do it in person. Since a tribune could not leave Rome for longer than a day without losing their sacrosanctity, which would in this case mean putting himself in the imperium of Sulla as proconsul, Vergilius would have had no way of compelling his defendant to come to court as long as the latter retained his command. Even if Vergilius could legally have sent viatores, there is little possibility that Sulla would have answered such a summons. He would in all probability do exactly what he ended up doing anyway, which was to ignore the situation. If Cinna had been involved with this putative prosecution, it would probably have been for the purpose of using it to send the message to the people in Rome that Sulla had respect neither for the laws nor for the tribunes, and that he stood still in the taint of having committed the sacrilege of killing of one of them. Such a message would, perhaps, be useful for what he seems to have had in mind to do next.10 10 For the legality of the prosecution see Weinrib, p. 32–43. In fact, here might very well be another reason for doubting that the laws Sulla proposed during his occupation of the city were ever actually passed (see previous chapter). If there had been such a push to curtail the “tyrannical” powers of the tribunate, as Appian suggests (πολλά τε ἄλλα τῆς τῶν δ μάρχων ἀρχῆς, τυραννικῆς μάλιστα γεγεν μέν ς, 1.7.59), then it seems odd that the ability to prosecute promagistrates would have been one which was left to it. The fact that Sulla subsequently removed all such powers (in 81; see chapter 10) is less satisfactorily explained as a correction to a simple oversight from earlier (caused by the fact that no tribune had apparently ever attempted such a prosecution before this), as Weinrib suggests, than by the far greater likelihood that he had never been able to enact such limitations in 88 at all. It will be recalled, again, that Appian never mentions that the proposed leges of Sulla and Pompeius had ever actually been enacted, only proposed. Otherwise, the above account more or less follows Lovano (p. 32) as opposed to that of Keaveney (1982, p. 75–76; 1987, p. 175–176), who states that Cinna attempted to do to Sulla what he would later do to Claudius—id est strip him of his imperium so that he could stand trial—and that this gambit had failed. After all, it would have been known that

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2. LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS AND THEIR RESULTS Casting Sulla as irreligious might have enabled Cinna to justify breaking—albeit in spirit—the oath he had made upon his election. If, as has been speculated, that vow had taken the form of both consuls vowing to uphold the laws that had been made and not to declare that Sulla’s arrangements were illegal, then the letter of the oath may not have been breached by the subsequent maneuver Cinna is recorded as made, which was putting forth his own proposal that the novi cives be distributed amongst all the tribes.11 In tribune would not be able to send viatores (just as argued above) and Sulla could simply ignore the tribune even without legal imperium. Worse, if such an attempt had been made, Sulla could have reacted to this motion to deprive him of his command as he had acted to the last one, which would decidedly be against Cinna’s interest. The indictment was therefore far more likely a façade designed for the purposes of propaganda (as suggested above), and little more than that. 11 For this proposal see Exuperantius (23–24), Cicero, Phil. (8.7), Velleius (2.20), and Appian (1.8.64) These sources also add that it was during the assembly for this specific law that violence erupted, which led to Cinna’s eventual expulsion from the city (more below). This connection between his redistribution law and violence also seems to have been indirectly referred to by Cicero in his pro Sestio 77. In that passage, the orator mentions the expulsion and follows the reference with a description of how often civil strife is caused by the wickedness of men who propose laws that will grant favors to those who are excitable and easily led (culpa atque improbitate latoris commodo aliquo imperitis aut largitione). Since the implication seems to be that Cicero is referring to a large number being granted such largesse—as would be the case in a tribal rearrangement—as opposed to the few who would be benefitted by the restoration of the exiles, the other measure of Cinna’s which would seem to excite strong feelings (more directly in the text above), his comment seems properly to be added to the testimony of the other sources claiming that Cinna’s eventual expulsion was caused by the redistributions. By contrast, the de viris illustribus (69) and Florus (2.9) state that is was the recall of the twelve exiles which led to the conflict between Cinna and Octavius. The Scholia Gronoviana adds a third possibility, which is that the breach was caused by Cinna’s actions de libertinorum suffragiis, although this may in fact also refer to the redistribution law, assuming that it, too, had a provision about freedmen, just as Sulpicius had (chapter 6). In the

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so doing, the consul would not technically be declaring that what Sulla had done was invalid, and thus reinstating the law of Sulpicius. Instead, Cinna was simply replacing that vitiated law with a new one of his own creation. Why it is that he promulgated such a measure is uncertain, as the silence on his political beliefs before his election as consul means that Cinna’s motives cannot be easily ascertained. Exsuperantius mentions it was propounded in order to gratify the associates of Marius,12 but it is difficult to see how Marius and his followers would have been helped by this action in and of itself, since it was likely that the only reason the similar measure of Sulpicius had gained the support of the general, rather than his indifference, had been the promise that the newly redistributed voters would help Sulpicius get Marius the Mithridatic command. On the other hand, Appian (1.8.64) states that the redistribution was to be a prelude to the recall of the exiles. By this, Appian may have meant that once the novi cives had been granted voting equality, Cinna could then carry a measure to bring back the exiles which would have failed without the new citizen vote. But this scenario is also doubtful: after all, if the numbers of the Mariani could be harnessed to pass a terribly unpopular law involving voter equality without the enhanced vote of the novi (as they had been by Sulpicius), then it seems more than probable that their numbers would also have been sufficient to pass a measure bringing back the exiles without such help. This is especially true in light of the fact that much of Rome may have had been sympathetic to such a

face of such a divergence in the sources, the numbers and greater reliability of those blaming the expulsion on the law covering tribal distribution make it more likely that their account is closer to accuracy than those blaming it on the recall measures; such an opinion is also held by Lovano, p. 32–33. See more below. 12 (Cinna) legem tulit ut novi cives, qui aliqua ratione Romanam acceperant civitatem, cum veteribus nulla discretione suffragium ferrent. Hoc videlicet in eorum gratiam faciebat qui Mariuni suffragiis suis extulerant; Exsuperantius 22.

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recall law, a sympathy which Plutarch observes.13 They would probably be less so for a redistribution law. Alternatively, what Appian might have been hinting at is that, by promising a recall, Cinna could gain the support of the friends of Marius and Sulpicius which he would find useful in enacting the voting measure. Once enacted, it is inferred, Cinna would then propose an additional law to bring the exiles home. To put it another way, Cinna used a recall measure to buy the support of the apparently still large numbers of Mariani for his redistribution measure, rather that used the redistribution measure to gain the numbers needed for the recall bill, numbers which the Mariani would have been able to furnish on their own. This is more likely just how things transpired. If it was, the conclusion cannot be evaded that the return of the exiles was not the primary desire of Cinna. This conclusion would accord well with his abovementioned lack of obvious pro-Marian sympathies before the election, as well as some difficulties he may have had later on with accepting Marius as an ally (about which more later). This would in turn mean that the recall of Marius was rather an instrument towards his ultimate purpose, which was gaining the tribal reallocation for the novi. Cinna therefore seems to have wanted to redistribute the new citizens, and not as a means to an end, but rather as an end of itself. The question remains as to why that might be the case. Of course, there is definite answer to why it was that Cinna sought to redistribute the tribes for its own sake that can be unearthed in the sources. Possibilities suggest themselves, of which some seem more far-fetched than others,14 but one which seems to

13

ἐφ᾽ οἷς ὁ Σύλλας τὴν μέν σύγκλ τον ἀδ λως ἠνίασεν ἡ δὲ παρὰ τοῦ δ μου δυσμένεια καὶ νέμεσις αὐτῷ φανερὰ δι᾽ ἔργων ἀπ ντα; Sull. 10. See also

previous chapter. 14 Appian (1.8.64) mentions that there was a rumor that he had received a 300-talent bribe by the novi cives for his support (Κίννας μὲν τοῖς νεοπολίταις συνέπραττε, νομιζόμενος ἐπὶ τῷδε τριακόσια δωροδοκῆσαι τάλαντα), which Lovano observes was merely that: a rumor, as Appian

well knew (p. 28–29). Appian did not seem to believe it himself, as his use of the participle νομιζόμενος indicates, and Lovano does not either; the

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have the greatest purchase is that he may have hoped to gain their thankfulness by means of this favor and use it build a huge clientela, as Sulpicius, who had attempted much the same thing, himself may have desired. A passage in Plutarch mentions Cinna’s attempt to “restore the flagging party of Marius” (Κίννας ... ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὴν Μαρίου στάσιν; Sert. 4), which may in fact be a reference to Cinna’s urge to build a following, although not in fact for Marius, but rather for himself.15 For whatever the reason, sometime in early 87 the former Allies found yet another improbable activist on their behalf, and when he called them into the city to help him promote the measure which would grant their equality, they seem to have responded in great numbers (quo nomine ingentem totius Italiae frequentiam in urbem acciverat; Vell. 2.20). If, however, the motivations for Cinna’s proposals are unknown, their outcome nevertheless is more certain: Cinna and the Italians, who had come into the city at his request to vote on this measure, apparently ran into the objections of some of the tribunes (Appian 1.8.64). A tumult then arose between supporters of the bill, who had been carrying daggers, and its opponents who were armed likewise, and the novi seem to have gotten the best of the engagement. In the meantime, Cinna’s colleague Octavius had latter scholar is almost certainly correct in dismissing it, and it will likewise be dismissed here. 15 Keaveney argues that the law was not proferred by Cinna but rather by tribunes, pointing to language in Appian which can be taken to suggest as much (1987, p. 180 and 187–188 note 1). This, however, presents an irresolvable conflict with Keaveney’s own earlier opinion that Sulla had passed his laws limiting tribunicial powers (1982, p. 68–69), which would seemingly prevent a tribune from doing any such thing without the approval of the Senate, which the redistribution measure certainly did not have (as will be seen below). This would seem to suggest either that Sulla had not been able to enact in 88 the sort of legislation he would enact later, or that the tribunes had not proposed the Cinnan measures. Besides, even if the tribunes retained their powers (as has been argued in this essay), their action would not be needed; as consul, Cinna would be well within his competency to propose any laws as he may have wished. For these reasons, the interpretation that Cinna was himself the primum mobile for the voting law seems the more likely, and is adopted here.

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been informed of the riot and appeared with a large force, one which had apparently been supplemented by senatorial supporters (Appian, loc. cit.),16 with the aim of putting a stop both to the disturbance, and, it may be inferred, to the voting on the proposed lex Cornelia as well. In the ensuing scrap Octavius soon got the upper hand: Cinna was expelled from the temple of Castor and Pollux, and in the meantime the veteres cives—unbidden, according to Appian—started to kill the new citizens in great numbers. Cicero mentions the city bestrewn with bodies and red with the blood of citizens (Cat. 3.10.24), although the dead probably amounted to less than the 10,000 mentioned as having been slain by Plutarch (Sert. 4). All the sources cited above indicate that Cinna was driven from the city,17 with the implication that he had not merely fled, but had been actively forced out of town. Such an inference makes the legal grounds for what happened next somewhat slippery. Appian says that Cinna was presently removed from office and from membership in the Roman commonwealth itself on grounds of abandoning the city while it was in danger (ὡς ἐν κινδύνῳ τε τὴν πόλιν καταλιπόντα),18 a charge something akin to desertion or at the very least dereliction of duty. Military misconduct had, of course, 16 Further descriptions of this sizeable force under can be found in Exsuperantius (22), Velleius (2.20), and Plutarch (Ser. 4). 17 As does Cicero (pro Caec. 30.87), the Periochae (79) and Granius Licinianus (35), the latter two of whom likewise mentioning that six tribunes were expelled with him. This would seem to give lie to the report which Appian says was given to Octavius, which is that “a majority of the tribunes” applied their veto to Cinna’s law (τοὺς πλέονας δ μάρχους κωλύειν τὰ γιγνόμενα, in the place cited in the text above). Plutarch’s Marius also mentions the exile, but states that Cinna was cast out for “playing the tyrant” (ἀρχειν τυραννικώτερον; Mar. 41). 18 Appian also reports that shortly before departing Cinna had attempted to stir up the slaves to revolt and that this charge was also levelled against him by the Senate (Κίννας ... ἀνὰ τὴν πόλιν ἔ ει τοὺς εράποντας ἐπ᾽ ἐλευ ερίᾳ συγκαλῶν; 1.8.65). Lovano (p. 34–35) is almost certainly correct in his assertion that this charge was false, and was attached to Cinna by his enemies after his death. What probably happened instead is that Cinna was driven away by the same forces which pursued his followers to the city gates, as Appian mentions a few lines earlier.

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led to stripping of imperium and exile in the past (it had been visited upon Caepio and Mallius for the Arausio debacle of 104, for example), but the circumstances surrounding this conviction beg the question as to how Cinna could have acted otherwise: he appears to have been stripped of his rights after being forced from the city, on the grounds that he had left the city from which he had been forced.19 Something questionable was going on here, as is intimated by a few authorities which claim that this divestiture of both consulate and citizenship was illegal. These include Velleius Paterculus(2.20), and Cicero’s willingness to concede that Cinna had behaved recte, immo iure implies that he, too, believed that what had befallen Cinna was contrary to law (Ad Att. 9.10). Equally illegal, it would seem, was Cinna’s replacement by L. Cornelius Merula, a flamen dialis whose priesthood (which he never laid aside) contained so many prohibitions that consular duty seemed almost impossible.20 This was not itself the difficulty, which lay instead in the fact that he seems to have been simply appointed by the Senate rather than elected.21 Assuming that what seems like lawbreaking in the fate of Cinna was in fact exactly that, then Octavius, Merula, the Senate, and Cinna himself would almost certainly have been So Lovano, p. 34–36. A lengthy listing of these is supplied by Aulus Gellius (10.15), who himself notes that flamines were rarely made consul. 21 According to Carney (1970, p. 61), the nomination of Merula as suffect would in essence mean that practically all consular duties would be performed by Octavius, and that this had been by design: the latter was henceforth for all intents and purposes sole consul. The people are mentioned as having no part in the deprivation of office nor in the replacement of Cinna with Merula, and the implication is that both were undertaken directly by the Senate (Cinna’s speech in Appian 1.8.65 says this explicitly). Merula himself would later say that he had not desired the magistracy (Diodorus 38.3; see below), which implies that he did not run for election but accepted the office when it was in essence thrust upon him. His appointment is mentioned by Plutarch (Marius 41), Velleius (2.20), and Appian (1.8.64); it is also mentioned by Dio (64.49, echoing Obsequens 70), who both alike also report the omen that all who had been responsible for having the authority of a magistrate removed did not manage to live out the year of having done so. This was also the case in this instance, as will be seen. 19 20

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well aware of the transgression; indeed, there could have been little doubt of it. The only doubt that would have remained would be as to what the object of these crimines would do next. The Gracchi, Flaccus, Drusus, and Sulpicius had all moved to act on behalf of the Allies or former Allies, and, as mentioned above, all had suffered the same fate: a violent death at the hands of Senatorial opponents. Cinna, who had now also shown a willingness to help the former socii gain complete citizenship rights, had also been roughly treated. Indeed, the violence attending his flight suggests that he might have only narrowly escaped the destiny of the tribunes just named. Even so, although Cinna remained alive, he had now been stripped of his office and even his status as civis by his Senatorial opponents. But because he still lived, Cinna had a choice about whether to accept his figurative annihilation in a way that the others (or most of them) did not have in accepting their literal destruction. Cinna, it seems, had won election at least in part due to antipathy to Sulla, and the actions he had taken in his consulate had shown his willingness to contest the intentions of the former. Such a willingness had now landed him in his current parlous state. Perhaps, it may now have occurred to Cinna, the time had come for him to leave off opposing Sulla and take to imitating him instead, and this is the very thing which he proceeded to do.

3. PREPARATIONS FOR THE RETURN Sulla’s March had shown that what was once unthinkable was now achievable: a Roman (and indeed, a Roman noble and Patrician) had overcome whatever innate revulsion the thought of advancing on Rome at the head of forces might have existed within himself and, with a friendly army at his back, had made such a move. If Cinna could likewise overcome a similar revulsion—and events would show that he could—then the work was halfway done: having come by the will, all that he would now need was an army. Joined by the six tribunes which the Periochae and Granius Licinianus22 state had been expelled with him, and by Sertorius, who seems to have attached himself to Cinna’s cause earlier upon 22

See earlier note.

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Sulla’s preventing him from attaining the tribunate for 88 (Plutarch, Sert. 4),23 the (for the moment, ex-)consul now headed away from Rome for the purpose of obtaining this necessary commodity. Cinna must have figured that the novi cives who had been willing to bleed—and, for that matter, to shed blood—for their rights in the Forum would be willing to do so again,24 so it seems that logic would dictate that his first order of business be to recruit his army from the former Allies. Appian indicates that this is precisely the action he took, visiting such cities as Tibur and Praeneste for this purpose (1.8.65). Nor was he mistaken in his belief that the onetime socii would come to his aid; if Velleius is to be believed, the ultimate result of Cinna’s labors was an army which approached a strength of thirty legions, of which the majority must have been Italians (see below), motivated either by gratitude to Cinna for what he had done on their behalf, self-interest as to what he could yet do, or both. However, the gathering of this force would likely have been a process that took some time, and as it was being undertaken Cinna continued on his travels headed southward. It seems that he had a specific destination in mind, namely Campania. It was here that a portion of the army which Sulla had commanded in 89 had been left before Nola under the command of Appius Claudius Pulcher, who must have been installed by Sulla as a propraetorian legate sometime in 88.25 The number of men deputed to Claudius was

23 For 88 as opposed to for 87, see Spann (p. 23–25, 162–164) and the previous chapter; likewise, Spann, p. 28–31 for additional discussion of how Sertorius came to the camp of Cinna. 24 If any of that crowd had survived, that is; see above. However, even the dead ones would be useful in raising men to avenge them, and it is not at all unlikely that Cinna made use of their example for just such a purpose. 25 So Broughton (vol. 2, p. 48). Possibly Sulla had installed Claudius in place of Lepidus, who probably was taken east with him, as a Lepidus would later be seen in his service when Sulla returned from Italy. It is almost certain that this Lepidus, the one fighting for Sulla in 81, was Mam. Lepidus (see chapter 9) and not M. Aemilius Lepidus, the turbulent consul of 78 whose dislike of Sulla seems to have been mutual (see

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probably not very large—possibly no more than a legion or two— but Cinna would nevertheless need them. In the first place, he would quite probably require all the men that he could get if the Senate and Octavius were preparing for his eventual return, as he must have known that they were doing (see below). Moreover, by having soldiers from the veteres as well as the novi amongst his army, Cinna would present less of an appearance that he was leading Italians to take over Rome. He would instead look as if was leading an army of Roman citizens of all kinds to restore his injured rights, a presentation would present a far less damaging spectacle to the Senate and to the urban populace than would the other. Finally, Cinna was an experienced commander of some talent, and he would know that even a single hostile legion to his rear might be troublesome. Therefore, the fugitive (still ex-)consul would have to have the support of the men at Nola. As it turns out, it did not take much to get them. Appian mentions that Cinna merely put forth some apparently impassioned oratory about his wounded rights, and, by extension, theirs. Having been elected by the people but deposed by the Senate, it could be argued that in essence the Senate had deprived the populus of the consul of its choice, as Cinna seems to have asserted (1.8.65–66). This apparently was all that was needed to win over the legion; alternatively (or additionally), there is also some mention of bribery (Per. 79, Vell. 2. 20; Schol. Gronov. 286 St.).26 This may actually have been cash that was dispersed, as Appian mentions that the Allied states had come forward with chapter 10). This would have been the same Lepidus who had defeated and killed Silo in 88, for which see previous chapter. 26 So also Salmon (1967, p. 374). Lovano (p. 36–37) argues that the bribery in question may have been nothing more than the typical promise of loot made by all commanders, and that this common practice was given sinister overtones by later accounts looking to blacken Cinna’s name. On the other hand, since the men were to march on Rome itself, it is difficult to see from whence spoils would come save from Rome. Thus, the promise of looting would hardly have been an innocuous one, since the men would be pillaging their own homes. If bribery did occur, it was more likely either in the promise of extra pay, of an end to service, or both, as is argued above.

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ready coin for his disposal (οἱ δὲ χρ ματά τε αὐτῷ καὶ στρατιὰν συνετέλουν, 1.8.86), although it may have been that the bribe in question took the form of a promise made by Cinna that, by following him, the soldiers could go home when the business at hand had come to an end. After all, some of these men might well have been in the field since 90 without break, and were now stuck in onerous siege duty and mired in the soul-sapping boredom which such duty implied. It cannot be doubted that the prospect of being relieved might very well have been extremely appealing. Regardless of what the specifics may have been, Cinna seems to have won over the legion at Nola rather easily. This is perhaps somewhat remarkable in light of the fact that these had once been Sulla’s own men now pledging themselves to an inimicus of his, although in this case of this legion loyalty to Sulla did not seem to have made much of a difference. Reasons for that can probably be intuited: Sulla had left them in Italy while he had gone to the East with the other legions, and in the process deprived them of the rewards which had seemed certain to flow from such an adventure. Likewise, many of the same arguments which Sulla had used on his men before his March on Rome could have been employed by Cinna for that he was about to make: he was, in the words of one scholar, “a proved soldier, a genuine noble, a patrician no less, and a legitimately elected consul”, just as Sulla had been, and theoretically just as potentially evocative of sympathy in his current state.27 For those who cared about the constitutional niceties, such credentials may very well have been compelling; for those who did not, denarii or the prospect of discharge (or both) might have been. In this manner, Cinna seems to have acquired the services of these men, if not their commander: Claudius seems to have refused to join Cinna in his march, for which he apparently went into a voluntary exile. That was made permanent when Cinna later made use of friendly tribunes first to strip him of imperium and then prosecute him, in a manner similar to what it is argued he may have

27

Salmon, loc. cit.

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attempted to do with Sulla,28 only this time with actual weight behind the effort, and success in it (Cicero, de dom. 83–84).29 Cinna now had the legion of Claudius in his command, and not long afterwards he seems to have been joined by Cn. Papirius Carbo, who may have been operating in Lucania; his subsequent presence in Cinna’s army is well attested.30 Why it is that Carbo attached himself to Cinna’s cause is unknown, as this man’s origins are just as obscure as Cinna’s are.31 Perhaps he had become Cinna’s friend at an earlier time, had had a falling out with Sulla, had felt cheated about not getting to go east, or simply thought that what had happened to Cinna had been an injustice. No matter what the reason for his allegiance, however, Carbo would soon become Cinna’s most trusted subordinate. This can perhaps be explained the more readily in light of the fact that if, as is probable,32 Carbo had actually been sent to Lucania as replacement for Gabinius, he would have been in the area with troops at his disposal.33 These he seems to have promptly placed at Cinna’s, and very likely won the latter’s trust and gratitude in so doing. Carbo’s presence as a commander in the region and subsequent adherence to Cinna would explain the notice in Diodorus that the Samnites and Lucani, who were operating in Bruttium at this time (37.2), but were only stopped in their siege of Rhegium by an amphibious operation from Sicily. It may be reasonable to infer from such a description that the reason they had penetrated so far is that there were no Roman forces on land to stop them. If Carbo had in fact once been in the area but was there no longer through having gone over to Cinna, then the result would have been an absence of men which gave the Samnites and Lucani their opportunity. In fact, this may have been a deliberate strategic move on Cinna’s part, as leaving Lucania bereft of men 28 As pointed out by Badian (1970, p. 17); but see earlier on in this chapter for comment on this attempt against Sulla. 29 Weinrib, loc. cit. 30 See, for example, Appian (1.8.67), the Perioca of Livy’s book 79, Orosius (5.19.9), and Florus (2.9) 31 This is also observed by Lovano (p. 58). 32 Although not completely certain; see Chapter 6. 33 Lovano (loc. cit.) says that Carbo was in such a position explicitly.

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might very well have made things very hot for the only other Roman army in the area, that of Metellus Pius, who was probably in the vicinity of Aesernia. Based on the future behavior and the well-known pedigree of the latter, it is most unlikely that Cinna would have thought it possible to persuade him to join the cause, making Metellus a possible enemy whose command abilities would have made him formidable (see Chapter 6). It would be dangerous for Cinna to have such a threat at his back, but Metellus would have found it difficult to act against Cinna from the rear if could be forced to occupy himself in dealing with the Samnites and Lucani in Bruttium. Nola, too, might have distracted Metellus: Granius Licinianus (20) records that the inhabitants of Nola burst forward and burnt Abella, located some six miles to the north. This may have represented a brief stop on the part of an army headed northeast towards Aesernia, one allowed to do so by the removal of the Romans which had been investing Nola.34 Cinna therefore may have taken the gamble that the Samnites and Lucani would busy themselves relieving Aesernia instead of attacking him, a gamble which paid off. It would not, however, be the last time in which Samnites and Lucani would be heard from, as will be seen below. With his army thus augmented by the southern legions, Cinna began his return voyage to Rome up the Via Appia.35 He was soon to have more of everything: more men, more money, and presently a great deal more military experience in the form of C. Marius, who had recently come back from Africa along with several others of the men Sulla had exiled. While in exile it seems that Marius had begun the slow process of acquiring followers to attempt a return to Italy of his own,36 but upon hearing of the disturbances in Also observed by Salmon (1967, p. 374). The report in Exsuperantius (27) and a similar notice in Florus (2.9) to the effect that Cinna made an additional voyage to Africa are almost certainly mistaken. 36 Granius Licinianus (35) mentions that he already had about 1000 men in Africa, and Plutarch (Mar. 41), says likewise, consisting of some Moorish horseman and whatever Italians had made their way to the island of Cercina where he had set up a base. Appian says he had about 34 35

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Rome, he had apparently decided that Cinna’s troubles furnished the opportune time to make his homecoming. It may very well be that he was specifically sent for by Cinna: the Periochae (79), Plutarch (Sert. 5), Velleius (2.20) and the Scholia Gronoviana (286 St.) all state this, although Appian (1.8.67) and another work of Plutarch (Mar. 41–42) rather indicate that Marius presented himself to Cinna somewhat later in the hope that the two of them could cooperate in their similar interests.37 If the latter was actually the case, then Marius had certainly made such cooperation all the more attractive by the soldiers he now had at his command: upon landing at Telamon in Etruria, the general had been joined by Brutus (presumably the same Brutus who as praetor had been abused so soundly by Sulla before his march; see Chapter 7) and some followers from Spain, and had managed additionally to recruit others from amongst the Etruscans through his personal magnetism, through his promise to advocate the voting rights of new citizens, and through freeing slaves and breaking open prisons.38 It therefore with about 6000 men and apparently a small flotilla of forty ships in addition (Plutarch, Mar. 41; Appian, loc. cit., Florus (2.9) that Marius approached Cinna and put himself at the latter’s disposal. Cinna apparently overcame the doubts of Sertorius and whatever reservations he himself may have had as to whether or not to employ the old man in rapid order (Plutarch, Sert. 5)39 and 500 slaves who had joined their exiled masters in Africa, although he may simply have omitted the Moorish cavalry (1.8.67). 37 The latter view is taken by Carney (1970, p. 62), Keaveney (1987, p. 180–181), and Lovano (p. 38–39). Badian (1964, p. 222) and Katz (p. 335–336) further suggest that this alliance was made with some discomfort on Cinna’s part, which does not accord well with the latter having been deliberately summoned by him. It may well be that Marius presented himself to Cinna unbidden and proved too attractive an ally to resist; the indication of Florus, that Cinna fled to Marius, seems most unlikely (2.9). 38 See sources cited in the text immediately above, as well Florus (2.9). 39 Reasons for these doubts of Sertorius are not well-explained. After all, Sertorius had served with Marius at least once during the Teutonic/ Cimbric Wars, and had perhaps done so again if Spann’s conjecture—that Sertorius had been associated with the Caepiones, had served with Caepio

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thereupon offered him a proconsular command. Marius, for his part, declined the proconsulate, as he was still a public enemy and would not accept the honor until he was specifically recalled. However, he did accept the commission (Plutarch, Mar. 41–42), and the army of Cinna was thereupon divided between himself, Marius, Sertorius, and Carbo (Per. 79, Florus 2.9, Orosius 5.19.9, Appian 1.8.67).40 An army consisting of exiled Romans, some forces remaining from the previous year the south, and thousands of new citizens had therefore coalesced and approached Rome. It had numbers, experienced captains (and experienced men), and apparently a decently-sized war-chest. But what it did not have was the element of surprise, as the last march on Rome had had: that which in 88 had seemed incredible was now almost certainly to suspected, and plans could therefore be made against it. The odds were that Cinna the Younger in the Allied War, and had later been transferred to Marius with the remnants of Caepio’s command (p. 21–23)—is an accurate one (and it seems convincing enough). Plutarch suggests that he either feared the consequences of the old man’s anger or simply was afraid Marius would outshine him in war. Neither are terribly credible, the latter perhaps less so than the former: although not impossible, it seems less than likely that a soldier of the quality of Sertorius would let his own narcissism stand in the way of the prosperity of his cause. Moreover, Sertorius may have observed instances of a terrible temper in Marius in the past, but if he had there is no record of it in the sources. By contrast, the career of Marius thus far had been notable for its moderation in victory (see discussion of Ostia below and notes), which suggest no cause for concern about his fury. This leaves the source of the reservations of Sertorius unknown, as they must remain here. 40 Plutarch (Sert. 5) omits the command given to Carbo. Perhaps he misread his source, which stated that Cinna divided his command among his three commanders (and himself), and assumed that the command was merely divided into three. Alternatively, perhaps Carbo was not given a separate command until somewhat later, and served as Cinna’s immediate lieutenant early on. This might better explain the curious notice in Appian (cited above): having—like Plutarch—observed that the command was split into three, he proceeds to name the four men who led the three parts. It may be that he intended to impy that Carbo served in a subordinate capacity to Cinna.

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would not gain the capital with the same ease that Sulla had enjoyed, a contingency of which the men under his command probably recognized. Nevertheless, these men had found the expedition to be worth the risk. For some the outcome was loot, for some the chance to go home, but for the former Italians, motivation almost certainly consisted of the desire to repay the efforts of the consul who had been injured while acting on their behalf and to help him complete the task he had been compelled to leave undone, which was to bring to them the unfettered rights of civitas. It was motivation enough for them to exert themselves most strenuously in the events to come, as will shown below.

4. BELLUM OCTAVIANUM AND THE REAL END OF THE ALLIED WAR As Cinna and his army of exiles and ex-Allies approached Rome, those who had taken charge of the city in his absence had been preparing to meet them. Although slowness of action on the part of Octavius is mentioned in Dio, Plutarch, and the Periochae,41 he had apparently managed enough alacrity to see that the defenses of the city had been repaired and engines had been put on the walls (Appian, 1.8.65). What it seems he could not do is raise an army to attack Cinna as he drew closer. Appian records that he sent for men to the Cisalpine and to those cities in Italy that had not gone over the Cinna towards this end, but they apparently did not reply in great numbers (1.8.66). Octavius also seems to have sent to Pompeius Strabo in Picenum and bade him return to Rome to fight off the invaders. The latter and his army apparently complied, although the majority of the sources aver that they did not get to the city in a timely fashion, apparently due to some vacillation on the part of the proconsul. Appian himself does not record any hesitancy on Pompeius Strabo’s part, but his indecision is attested in the Periochae (79), Orosius (5.19.9–13), Obsequens (56a) Granius Licinianus (35.13), and Velleius (2.21) as a cause for the holdup. All 41 Dio (fragment 102) refers to the nature of Octavius as ραδὺς; Plutarch (Sert. 4) describes him as being ἀμ λύτερον; the Periochae of Livy’s Book 79, in taking not of the disaster to come, blamed it on the consul’s segnitia.

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of these latter authorities censure Pompeius for temporizing and delaying, the Periochae going so far as to claim that Pompeius could easily have ended the bellum Octavianum (as it is sometimes called) before it had begun by leading his troops—a veteran army of at least three years’ continuous service under him—against Cinna directly (Et cum opprimi inter initia potuisset, Cn. Pompei fraude, qui utramque partem fovendo vires Cinnae dedit nec nisi profligatis optimatium rebus auxilium tulit). However, he did not do so, just as he had not led his legions against Sulla when the latter had occupied the city in the previous year. Why Pompeius had acted like he had is not entirely easy to discover, since almost all of the sources treat him with such loathing that his actual motives are somewhat obscured by the monstrous vices attributed to him: greed, opportunism, treachery, and ambition—one so all-encompassing that he was willing to have men killed and to put the state in jeopardy to achieve his desires—are apparently his main faults. Nevertheless, since his actions were to play a prominent part in what is about to transpire, a closer look at this figure, his past associations in Roman politics, and his possible thought process in 87 does not seem entirely inappropriate. Before the start of the Allied War the career of Pompeius is not well known, though the fact that his famous son would later be defended in a criminal suit by L. Philippus, the consul of 91, may suggest that Pompeius was rather to be reckoned amongst the partisans of the chief magistrate and the Senate than with those of M. Livius Drusus in the time just before Asculum.42 However, such a posture apparently did not mean that Pompeius had been opposed to extending the civitas or other privileges to the Allies, and in fact he seems to have felt quite the opposite, as his conduct during the war seems to illustrate. During that conflict, he had used the lex Julia to grant the citizenship to a troop of Spanish cavalrymen (see chapter six); he had also given citizenship rights to one P. Caesius of Ravenna (Cicero, Pro Balb. 22.50), possibly also by means of the lex Julia; and had extended the Latin rights to the peoples of the Transpadane (Asconius 3A–B).43 The cordial 42 43

So Gruen (1965, p. 70). See Stevenson (95–101), as well as Appendix L.

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relations between him and Vettius Scato (see Chapter 6) further seem to illustrate his lack of strenuous objection to the ultimate aim for which the socii were fighting. It would turn out that he could not use the meeting with Scato to bring about peace, as has been seen, but very likely this was not because Pompeius himself was set against Italian citizenship, but was instead because his hands were tied as far as being able to negotiate. Since he could not bring about peace with the Italians, he continued to prosecute war against them most successfully during his consulate. There have been suggestions that his bequest of the ius Latii to the Transpadanes and the failed embassy with Scato put him in odium with the Senate,44 although it is difficult to see how they would have let him triumph (as it has been seen that they did) if he had been thoroughly detested by that body. This was, perhaps, the crowning achievement of a most successful consulate. At its end, Pompeius may have wanted to be re-elected, as Velleius (2.21) implies, but if so he seems to have endured his disappointment gracefully and presided over the elections without any incident that has drawn the comment of the sources. Following this he went back to Picenum, where he seems to have stayed on, and fought on with the same skill and dedication, as proconsul. Between 91 and 89, then, Pompeius seems to have held something of a middle course in most of the conflicts inside and outside of Rome: although apparently a friend of Philippus, he did not seem to be an enemy of Drusus or to Allied enfranchisement; although possibly sympathetic to the Allied cause, that sympathy did not keep him from mauling the Italians in battle. During the turbulence of 88 Pompeius seems to have continued to hold that middle course and did nothing, holding aloof from the violence which led to the flight of the consuls and likewise from Sulla’s return at the head of an army. Exactly why he kept his distance is This is one of the arguments of Stevenson (loc. cit.). Gruen (1965, p. 70–71), however, disagrees with Stevenson, and is similarly unconvinced by the idea that Strabo’s troubles with the Senate dated from the Allied War. His disagreement with that idea is for different reasons than those presented in the text above, although those which he gives are very likely just as valid as the ones presented here. 44

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impossible to tell. There has been some suggestion that he stayed away because he supported P. Sulpicius as a former legate of his,45 but a number of facts make this unlikely. In the first place, it is by no means certain that P. Sulpicius actually was a legate of Pompeius in the war;46 in the second, his support certainly did not motivate him to interfere to prevent Sulla from hounding Sulpicius to death, as was seen. Yet if Pompeius did not aid Sulla, he certainly did not impede Sulla in any way, either. Perhaps Pompeius disapproved of the March, or approved of the Sulpician laws, but was fearful of Civil War. On the other hand, perhaps he thought Sulla’s cause was a just one—his son would later be a notorious associate of Sulla’s—but not one sufficient to merit his involvement. At any rate, for all intents and purposes Pompeius cooperated when his replacement, Pompeius Rufus, came to take over his command, and was conspicuous in yielding to the consul and expressing outrage when that consul was murdered by his troops (Appian 1.7.63), whether as part of an elaborate act or because such was his honest reaction. With his replacement dead, Pompeius resumed command of these men, and Sulla did not press the issue (as has been seen). Sulla’s reluctance may have come from an observation that the situation with Pompeius and his replacement bore an uncomfortable resemblance to his own predicament and portended a similar outcome, and Sulla, too, might have feared Civil War. Either way, Sulla left Pompeius in command of his army, which the latter continued to exercise throughout 88 and into 87. Such was the condition of Pompeius when Sulla departed from Italy, and such it was a little later on when Octavius sent for his legions as Cinna approached. Therefore, the inactivity seen as so sinister by the sources47 may actually have had a number of possible causes. This is not to say that Pompeius did not look upon So Stevensonn (p. 98). Gruen (loc. cit., esp. note 144); see also Appendix Q. 47 Ancient and modern: Salmon (1967, p. 374) actually refers to him as “the sinister Pompeius Strabo” (he had earlier referred to Pompeius as a money-grubber, p. 365), while Carney (1970, p. 64) refers to his later demise, by either plague or lightning (see below), as a “fitting death”. 45 46

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the present circumstance as an opportunity to further his own ambitions: Velleius (2.21) and Orosius (5.19.10) both seem to indicate that Pompeius attempted to extort concessions from both Cinna and Octavius, which presumably meant a second consulate.48 Then again, Pompeius may have truly been torn as to which side was the better, that of the Senate or that of the banished consul. This perplexity may have been heightened if he actually had had Italian sympathies (as his abovementioned behavior might imply). Finally, Pompeius may have had one further reason for pause: according to Cicero (as quoted in Asconius 79), the proconsul faced prosecution under the lex Varia. If, as one scholar has convincingly argued, the lex Varia was ultimately a law which redefined the offense of maiestas,49 then a wide variety of potential causes for this charge being attached to Pompeius may suggest themselves: his (possibly unauthorized) bequest of the ius Latii mentioned above, his association with Sulpicius (if there was such), his refusal to halt Sulla’s march, his suspected involvement in the death of Pompeius Rufus, and perhaps even his very unpopular refusal to replenish the aerarium with manubiae from Asculum (see Chapter 6) may all have been dredged up as grounds for accusation.50 If indeed he was as detested by the nobility as the 48 This is the opinion of Katz (p. 328–334), who notes that Pompeius was primarily motivated by this second consulate and shopped his services to both parties; both declined due to a surfeit of men available for the office. Carney (loc. cit.) also holds this view, as does Greenhalgh (p. 7). 49 Gruen (op. cit., p. 59–60). 50 Gruen (op. cit., p. 70–71) objects to most of these as the basis for Strabo’s indictment under the lex Varia, which he believes was caused by the rumors swirling around the death of Pompeius Rufus. On the other hand, it is possible that while Strabo’s enfranchisements, his putative involvement with Sulpicius, and his dispensation of the spoils of Asculum were not the direct cause of his accusation, they may have been indirect sources of motivation. Likely any or all of these caused intense resentment of Strabo, and some of this may have led an accuser to come forward with the charges of maiestas. Gruen would have it that his connection with the murder of a consul, not his connections to a murdered tribune, may have rendered him susceptible to the lex Varia. On the other hand, Shatzman notes how generals who devoted all manubiae from a campaign either only to the army or only the the aerarium

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quotation of Cicero in Asconius suggests (hominem dis ac nobilitati perinvisum Cn. Pompeium), then Pompeius might have legitimately feared conviction and may have sought assurances from Octavius that the charges be dropped before he would co-operate against Cinna. In so doing, Pompeius found himself dealing with Octavius, who seems to have been both obstinate and dense: such may be discerned from an anecdote from Plutarch, which recounts how Octavius refused to liberate slaves to fight against Cinna’s forces because it would be wrong to admit slaves into the commonwealth from which he was trying to exclude Marius (Marius 42). If the consul was, in turn, as thickheaded and stubborn as this anecdote seems to indicate, then he might very well have been slow to guarantee Pompeius this immunity. Under these circumstances, Pompeius may then have turned to the other side and offered his legions in exchange for the consulate (which was rebuffed, according to Orosius). Shortly after he had done so, Octavius may finally have been persuaded by emerging necessity to grant Pompeius what he asked. Whether or not that was so, Pompeius did at last move his army to defend Rome, and got there in time to prevent Cinna from taking it unguarded. It seems to have been a race that the proconsul barely won: Granius Licinianus reports that Marius sent a body of horsemen under Milonius—possibly the C. Milo that is mentioned in Appian 1.8.65—ahead to Rome in the expectation that it would not be protected (35.10–11), so it must therefore have been by the slimmest of margins that that the soldiers of Pompeius had been able to had got there in time. Pompeius was, however, not in time to engage Cinna before the latter got to the environs of the city, and his forces soon began

often found themselves liable for prosecutions, albeit not on charges directly related to his disposal of that manubiae (p. 188–198). It is quite possible that the hatred incurred for his (quite legal) distribution of the goods taken from Asculum led Strabo’s Senatorial opponents to attempt to destroy him via a trial. All tht would be needed would be a convenient excuse to charge him something, and the matter with Pompeius Rufus furnished them with the necessary mechanism for his destruction.

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the work of isolating Rome and putting it to siege.51 The army was, as mentioned above, divided into four parts, of which the placement of two—those of Marius and Sertorius—can be fairly well divined: the former, according to Appian took up a position to the southwest of Rome—“towards the sea”, or πρὸς τῇ αλάσσ (1.8.67)—and threw a bridge across the Tiber, while the latter did likewise from a position to the northwest (“above the city”, ὑπὲρ τὴν πόλιν; loc. cit.). This would halt any supplies which had already been sent by river from reaching the capital. Where exactly Cinna and Carbo were stationed is less obvious; Appian, who tells of all these arrangements, mentions that they were placed “over against” or “opposite—ἀντικρύ—the city, so possibly all four divisions were on the western bank of the Tiber.52 From here Cinna seems to have had a command of the Via Flaminia, and to counter the appeal for men Octavius had made to the Cisalpine (Appian 1.8.66, as described above), he seems to have sent men an expedition of his own there. These men first captured Ariminum (Appian 1.8.67),53 and then apparently Placentia. In the latter they seem to have ordered the execution of a man named Caelius—who had been placed there as governor by Octavius—in spite of the best efforts of the former’s loyal dog, though Caelius cheated them of his death by having his friend Petronius aid him in suicide (Valerius 4.7.5; Pliny, NH 8.61.144). While this action was being undertaken to separate Rome from succor and reinforcements from the north, Marius departed with some of his men to effect the same separation to the south.

51 Plutarch (Mar. 42) suggests that Marius called the shots in this army, and Carney—perhaps unsurprisingly—agrees (op. cit., p. 63), although Lovano (p. 40) is probably more correct in that the strategy was one agreed upon by all of the commanders; each of them, it should be remembered, had seen some significant combat experience. 52 This is also the opinion of Lovano (p. 39–40). 53 The capture of Ariminum is also mentioned by Granius Licinianus (35.28), who assumes it was undertaken by Marius as opposed to Cinna, Quite possibly this source, like Plutarch, made the—perhaps logical— assumption that Marius directed all operations.

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According to Plutarch (Mar. 42),54 he had apparently already sent the ships he had assembled in Etruria to Ostia, there to make it more difficult for grain ships and merchant vessels to enter the harbor and from there have their goods taken by land to Rome. Marius then seems to have moved his land forces to bottle up Ostia completely. According to that author (loc. cit.), the city was taken when the gates were opened to Marius by treachery. This was presumably instigated by one Valerius, the commander of the cavalry garrison there, who was responsible for its defection according to Granius Licinianus (35.14). Since the city had not surrendered of its own accord but had been taken by subterfuge, Marius apparently had decided to allow his men to plunder the port. The savagery of the sack must have impressed Livy, since it is mentioned in such descendants as the Periocha of his book 79, Orosius (5.19.17), and Florus (2.9.12). Plutarch (loc. cit.) also mentions mass murder in addition to plunder, although Appian merely mentions the looting (1.8.67). Some scholars have speculated that the ferocity of the affair may have signalled a change in Marius, who had hitherto been notably abstemious about such things: Ostia, it is asserted, was symbolic of his desire for vengeance on his inimici, since in spite of the extensive profits which had come to that city during his campaigns and consulates, it had nevertheless not furnished him sufficient aid in his flight from

54 The chronological order in this source seems to be the reverse of what is presented in Granius Licinianus, Orosius, and Appian. As Plutarch presents it, Marius first captured grain-ships and mercantile vessels with his fleet, sailed to the coastal cities and attacked these, captured Ostia, and finally built bridges across the Tiber. Such an order of operations does not make a great deal of military sense, and gives rise to several questions. Why would the bridges need to be built over the Tiber, if Ostia and all the ancillary cities had already been taken and thus there were no ships to stop? And why attack the smaller cities while leaving the main port open, rather than choke off the main source of supplies first? When slightly rearranged, however, the steps Marius are said to have taken are far more comprehensible; Appian seems to provide such a rearrangement, so for what is to follow his framework will be used and the details from Plutarch will reassembled into it.

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Sulla55. This may very well have been the case, but it is also quite possible that the sack of Ostia also served a strategic purpose of its own, in that it might make other cities in the area reluctant to resist should an army from Cinna or Marius be sent there. Either way, in this manner grain and men were kept away from Rome from the north and from the west. There was still, however, the south and the east, and if Cinna and the others were stationed on the west bank of the Tiber, then presumably there may have been some way to supply the city from those directions. Given his general method of operating, Marius might very well have desired to close these off as well before launching into a grand assault on the capital. The actions he would take slightly later probably represent his original strategic plan (see below). However, for some reason a battle soon erupted at the Janiculum at about the time that Ostia was being taken, one which required his attention back in the city. The sources give several accounts varying accounts of the action: according to the Periocha of book 80, it happened after the capture of Ostia and took the form of an attack made by Marius and Cinna, later to be joined by Carbo and Sertorius, that ended in a defeat inflicted on them by Octavius. Tacitus (Hist. 3.51), who cites Sisenna as his source, mentions that at this battle—he specifically cites it as taking place at the Janiculum—a soldier in the army of Pompeius found, amongst the corpses of the slain from the army of Cinna, the body of his own brother, a discovery which led to that soldier’s suicide.56 This makes it reasonably clear that some or all of the men under Pompeius took part in it, a supposition that finds support in the So Carney (1970, p. 64 and note 278), citing Plutarch Mar. 35 as the example of the meager support they had provided to him in his hour of need, and Mar. 7, about how he was not usually accustomed to display such strong emotions. 56 The same anecdote is told in the Periocha of book 79, in which the tale looks to have been placed in a spot where it does not belong (it comes just after the takeover of the legion of Appius Claudius by Cinna, for which see above). The way it is reported does not seem to connect it to any particular battle, rather noting only that it happened “in this war” (in quo bello). The story may, then, actually belong to the battle around the Janiculum, the context in which it is placed by Tacitus. 55

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narrative of Orosius (5.19.11–14), who mentions the same story right after a depiction of a battle in which Pompeius had engaged Sertorius and had fought until night parted the sides (the story is also found in Valerius 5.5.4). This would similarly accord well with Granius Licinianus (35.24–26), who also supplies the story and explicitly mentions Pompeius as having taken part in the fighting, as does Valerius Maximus (5.5.4) Presumably, then, this is the “great and monstrous battle” (magno atrocique proelio) described as having been fought between Cinna and Pompeius by Velleius (2.21), and that all alike are part of the same battle on the Janiculum described by Appian (1.8.68), as opposed to different conflict. If all of this is true, then the various sources allow for a bit more to be learned about this climactic event, which seems to have transpired in the following way: according to Appian, the defensive line at the Janiculum was overseen by a military tribune named Appius Claudius, for whom Marius had once done a favor. Quite probably at Cinna’s urging, Marius persuaded the man to open the gates to him near dawn, at which point he and Cinna both entered (Plutarch also mentions that Marius had occupied the Janiculum; Mar. 42).57 Granius Licinianus (loc. cit.) supplies what transpired next: in his account, Octavius and Pompeius seem to have caught wind of what was going on, and together—Octavius with six cohorts borrowed from the army of Pompeius—they attacked, driving back Marius and Cinna and killing the cavalry commander Milo in the process. By this point, however, Sertorius and presumably Carbo had been able to deploy, and they in turn engaged in hard fighting with Octavius and Pompeius which resulted in the deaths of at least a thousand of the defenders and seven times that number of Cinna’s men. Octavius apparently wanted to press the attack and seems to have sent men forward under Crassus (presumably P. Crassus, the former consul, censor, and triumphator; he would figure as a commander later in this 57 Granius Licinianus (in the place just cited in the text above) also mentions that Marius had taken the Janiculum, but then implies that a massacre of the garrison had taken place on the orders of the general; this, however, seems most unlikely, especially since such would have taken time and the opening at dawn suggests the desire for surprise and secrecy.

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conflict war, for which see below), but Pompeius seems to have persuaded Octavius to the contrary and got him to recall Crassus. According to the most uncharitable account of Granius Licinianus, this was a mistake, but one deliberately made so that the battle might not have ended the chances of Cinna then and there, as it might otherwise have done. By means of this error, Pompeius prevented a coup de grâce so that the fighting could continue until the elections and win him another consulate for his deeds. More probably, however, night may actually have been coming, as Orosius suggests, and Pompeius did not want to be drawn any further away from Rome in the dying light lest the fortune of the battle turn against them. Either way, the battle was soon over, and as consul Octavius could claim credit for the victory even if the battle had been fought primarily with the men of Pompeius.58 Those sources which supply details about the beginning of the Battle of the Janiculum mention that it was Marius who had set it into motion, displaying a forwardness which runs somewhat counter to his style. Then again, the Battle of the Tolenus had shown that Marius was not above rapid movements to exploit an advantage, so it might well have been that he attempted to seize the opportunity that his recognition of Claudius provided. Alternatively, perhaps he had succumbed to the wishes of his more aggressive co-commanders against his inclination, which had been to let the siege and privation take its course. Either way, it seems that Marius returned to his earlier strategy at this point, and soon thereafter he captured the coastal town of Antium, which may have been funneling supplies to Rome by means of the Via Appia. He then proceeded to capture other cities on the path northwards from the coast to that road, taking Lanuvium, and finally gaining mastery of the highway by means of his capture of Aricia, which would also put him in a position to monitor the Via Latina (Per. 80;

58 For the battle see also Lovano (p. 41). Katz (p. 332), somewhat less generously, follows the notice in Granius Licinianus, and rejects the notion that there might have been sound military considerations for what Pompeius had done.

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Appian, 1.8.69; Orosius, 5.19.19).59 By this point the lack of food in Rome must have started to become severe: having been denied whatever could be gotten from Etruria, Umbria, and the Cisalpine by Cinna’s control of Ariminum and the Via Flaminia, from the sea by the capture of Ostia, and from Latium and Campania by the presence of Marius on the Via Appia and Via Latina, all that remained open to Rome were highways into areas like Picenum, ones which had just seen several years of hard fighting in the Allied War. Indeed, Appian seems to be suggesting just this state of affairs, mentioning that the Senate had begun to fear what might happen if there were a scarcity of corn, a possibility which must by now have started to become more and more imminent (loc. cit.). In the meantime, Cinna, Sertorius, and Carbo remained outside the city of Rome, whose defenders were not only suffering from want, but were also beginning to suffer from disease. Granius Licinianus states that 17,000 were felled in this manner (35.35), a number which corresponds exactly to the numbers of those said to have become ill in Orosius (5.19.18). Pompeius—who might never have been adamantly opposed to the cause of Cinna and Marius in the first place—seems at this point to have argued for accommodation and to have prevailed upon the Senate to receive the envoys of Cinna (Granius Licinianus, 35.32). These pleas were rebuffed by the optimates, who apparently still considered themselves unbeaten, as they would continue to think for some time to come (so Appian, 1.8.69). As a consequence, Pompeius 59 See map 1. Orosius source omits mention of Lanuvium in this list of victories and further adds that Marius pillaged the towns he seized, although no other authority mentions this (it is believed, however, by Carney; 1970, p. 64 note 281). This might well have been an exaggeration on the part of Orosius. It is not impossible that Marius may have burned whatever was being sent to Rome to keep it from the enemy, or despoiled those cities which resisted him. For example, Appian mentions other cities besides those just named in his description of the campaign, including some taken by treachery, and it may be that of those which did not yield to him he the same example that he had made of Ostia. Still, it seems unlikely that a campaign of devastation through Latium would have gone completely unnoticed in the other sources, ones which make such a point of mentioning what had occurred in Ostia.

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apparently continued the parley on his own initiative in private. This is often seen as even more duplicity on the part of the proconsul, but it could just as easily have been that Pompeius was tired of having to watch his men60 die in droves from sickness during yet another siege. He had already endured a lengthy one at Firmum in the Allied War, it is to be recalled, and had subsequently conducted one at Asculum. His willingness to subject his men to such misery for a cause in which neither men nor commander may have believed all that strongly seems to have been limited. Indeed, if a story found in Plutarch (Pomp. 3) is not to be dismissed as complete fabrication, it may very well be that Pompeius had already seen an erosion in the morale and discipline of some his soldiers, who seem to have planned to mutiny and perhaps even to murder their general and his son. The fact that the uprising was so swiftly and easily suppressed, and the fact that only a few of the conspirators subsequently deserted, suggests that disaffection had probably not yet gotten to an uncontrollable pitch, but it seems clear that the soldiers were tired, hungry, and ill. Cinna is recorded by that source as having tried to bribe at least one of these men (πεισ εὶς χρ μασιν), and it may have been that to the others he an extend offer to defect and enjoy the relative plenty of his camp. This may have been a bribe in and of itself, and it may be wondered whether Pompeius himself had become tempted by it.61 60 Katz (p. 334) is almost certainly correct in dismissing the view that Pompeius was hated by his soldiery. For one thing, none of the sources observe this (save one; see below). For another, these men had certainly endured epic hardships and managed amazing feats under his command, and had killed his would-be successor Q. Pompeius Rufus on his behalf, if not at his behest. He, in turn seems to have endured some substantial damage to his reputation as a result of his letting them keep the spoils of Asculum. For all that Pompeius may have been hated “by the gods and by the nobiles” (Cicero apud Asconius 79) and even by the Roman people (see below), his men seem to have held him in high regard, and it is not improbable that he esteemed them likewise. 61 Badian suggests that the story is at the very least hyperbole designed to magnify the love felt for Pompeius Strabo’s son by his soldiery and his role in suppressing the mutiny (according to Plutarch, it was suppressed by the soon-to-be Pompeius Magnus by his evasion of his erstwhile

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Whether he was or not, however, his personal role in the war was soon over. Not long after the battle of the Janiculum, Pompeius was deed, either having been stricken by illness (as Velleius Paterculus holds; 2.21) or struck by a bolt of lightning (Plutarch, Pomp. 1, and Orosius, 5.19.18; Appian 1.8.68 and Obsequens 56a likewise both describe a terrific storm which arose at some point after the battle in which Pompeius and several others were killed).62 murderer and his tears before the men; 1958, p. 239–240 note 6. Katz, on the other hand, believes that there was slightly more substance to the tale, and is alos willing to believe the rather unflattering report about Cinna which it contains, whereby the exiled consul had allegedly paid a young man named Terentius to murder the future Pompeius Magnus and burn his father’s tent (p. 332–333; Greenhalgh does likewise; p. 7–8). However, it is difficult to see what Cinna would hope to accomplish by killing the man with whom he seems to have been in secret negotiations, unless on the one hand he had come to believe that with Pompeius out of the way his soldiers would desert the cause of the optimates, and on the other he had grown tired of bargaining with the commanders of the other side. The former may have been true, but the latter seems unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which the very negotiations in which he and Pompeius were supposed then to have been engaged. Indeed, the fact that these negotiations are claimed to have taken place at all also makes it improbable that the assassination attempt had taken place before the Janiculum (as Katz—who divides this event into two separate battles and places the plot before the second—would have it, and Greenhalgh as well). It is difficult to believe that Pompeius would have been wont to open or maintain a dialogue with those who had plotted the killing of himself and his son, if Cinna and his supporters had actually so done. Far more likely, then, is the fact that Plutarch is instead portraying a simple mutiny which was perhaps led by Terentius—apparently a Picentine from Firmum whose interests in his rights, along with the hardships he was enduring, may have made the cause of Cinna the more attractive—and involved a few hundred men. It is also likely that Strabo may have played a far more active role in quelling it than Plutarch implies, as Katz states, almost certainly correctly. 62 Carney, as seen above, believes Pompeius met a “fitting death” during the plague (1970, p. 64 and note 281). Katz also states that he succumbed to illness (p. 333 and note 20), and chides Gabba for not having noted this “correct interpretation”, at the same time dismissing unsupported theories that either the Senate or Cinna had him murdered.

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Obsequens additionally reports that his corpse was abused by the people for his treachery and greed, perhaps a lingering echo of resentment for his unwillingness to share the proceeds of Asculum (loc. cit.), as does Plutarch (loc. cit.; also Moralia 553). Ultimately the death of Pompeius did not have any immediate effect on the condition of his army, which did not defect (Granius Licinianus reports that Octavius promptly assumed control of them), although this stage of negotiations with Cinna was now closed. What the death of Pompeius did mean, however, was that Octavius was now without his services as a general; as loathed as the dead proconsul may have been by both the populace and the optimates, his talent in the field could not have been denied. The Senate would now need a suitable replacement, and would likely have already come to appreciate a need for more men even before the Janiculum. The casualties from that battle and the loss of the many thousands which the plague carried away thereafter would have made this desire for more soldiers even more urgent. As a consequence, even before that engagement had been joined commissioners were sent by the Senate to Metellus Pius. The latter was still trying to subjugate what remained of the Alliance in the south where Cinna had left him, and he was thereupon bidden to fashion a settlement with the latter that he might come and save Rome from destruction (Appian, 1.8.68; Dio, frg. 102; Granius Licinianus, 35.29–30).63 As has been seen, for some reason or another the Samnites had not taken the earlier offer of the citizenship. Perhaps it had not been offered to them or the Lucani, Lovano (p. 42) presents both alternatives. It should be noted that Granius Licinianus (35.31–42) describes how Pompeius had caught ill and was in his bed when a bolt of lightning struck his tent, shearing off its top and injuring him in the process; perhaps both the plague and the injury from the thunderbolt contributed to his demise. 63 See also the so-called Commenta Bernensia and the Adnotationes supra Lucannum, which make reference to this embassy in their notes on Lucan 2.121 and the speech made by as part of it by M. Antonius (sent, along with Q. Catulus [cos. 102] and his son, to Metellus, according to Granius Licinianus 35.23) calling for Metellus to come save Rome from Marius, who was preparing to do to it what the Gauls had done. See also Elizabeth Rawson (1987, p. 163–164; 167; 177–180).

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or—more probably, given what is about to occur—it had been, but they had held out for the opportunity of obtaining better terms than merely the franchise alone.64 Now they seem to have found such an opportunity, and they made the most of it. According to Cassius Dio, from Metellus they demanded first and foremost the citizenship for themselves and for their companions, such as the Lucani.65 The same author records that they also asked for the return of their prisoners and deserters (who would presumably also be given the franchise, at least in the case of the former), as well as the right to keep any spoil they had collected. Granius Licinianus adds that they also asked for the return of what had been taken from them in plunder. To this patres even in their desperation could not agree (so Dio and Granius in the places cited; likewise Appian, 1.8.68), and so it seems that Metellus he broke off the conference and the campaign against the Samnites was resumed. However, Metellus himself did not lead it, as he is next seen approaching Rome with his men (Granius Licinianus, 35.47–49; Plutarch, Mar. 42, Appian 1.8.69). Instead, it seems he delegated these undertakings against the Samnites to his legate Plautius, witth whom he probably left a small force (Per. 80). In the meantime, Marius and Cinna seem to have heard of the offer made to Metellus by the Samnites and found it more acceptable than the patres had, and through the agency of C. Flavius Fimbria they concluded a peace of their own with the Samnites and Lucani.66 This is also argued in chapter 6. Salmon’s conjecture on this point is almost certainly the correct one (1967, p. 375), although perhaps the Samnites also had in mind the slaves who had defected to their cause from places like Aesernia; maybe even a provision was thrown in for their pirate admiral Agammemnon. 66 So Granius Licinianus, 35.28–30. The Periochae seems to mention this in a two-line reference that is extremely confusing in its brevity. The text of that reference reads: Italicis populis a senatu civitas data est. Samnites, qui soli arma recipiebant, Cinnae et Mario se coniunxerunt. This would imply that that the Samnites had either not been offered the citizenship until now or, as is more probable, had received such an offer but only now accepted it after Marius and Cinna agreed to their stipulations. On the other hand, why they remained in arms is a mystery, unless the Epitomator meant to suggest that these people retained their arms and made common cause 64 65

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In this way the Allied War had finally ended; the Samnites and Lucani who promptly made short work of Plautius (Per., loc. cit.) did with Marius and Cinna. Recipiebant can be used to mean “keep” or “retain”, and as the very next line shows Plautius being defeated by these people (Ab his Plautius legatus cum exercitu caesus est), the notice may refer to them defeating Plautius for these Marius and Cinna. A similar notice in Granius Licinianus probably means the same thing. This seems to have been the only fighting they did subsequent to joining themselves to Marius and Cinna, and beyond a nebulous phrase in Granius Licinianus that Cinna accepted the Samnites into his own forces (eos recepit et copiis suis iunxit; loc. cit.) no source record that the Samnites actually fought alongside them anywhere else. This was observed by Lovano (p. 40) and Salmon (1967, p. 375). Instead, they seem to have kept to themselves in what is sometimes referred to as a state of de facto independence, although the fact that they stopped minting coins and gave over the other apparatus of selfgovernment means that actual independence was not assumed or, probably, sought (so Salmon, op. cit., p. 381). What becomes of the Lucani in this period cannot, strictly speaking, be known, but as they were last seen in the company of the Samnites still fighting against the Romans, it is probable that they likewise negotiated with Marius and Cinna, and likewise accepted their offer (the Samnites ... soli of the Periocha notwithstanding). There is no evidence to support Keaveney’s assertion that they were still in Bruttium holding Roman territory in arms (1982b, p. 501). That which he takes as evidence for such is a passage in Appian describing an event from five years later, in which Samnites and Lucani rush to aid the cause of Carbo against Sulla (1.10.90). Since these people emerge in 82 in the same places where they were fighting in 87, it is held that they had retained these regions as independent territories. However, the actial text of Appian states nothing of this kind, and merely notes that in 82 the Lucani were led to Praeneste by Marcus Lamponius, the same general under whom they had last been fighting in 87. This man was likely their best general, so it seems logical that he would be at their head then next time they went to war. In the meantime, Lamponius and the Lucani could have spent the intervening years enjoying a rest from the combat in which they had been engaged from 90 to 87, just as the Romans themselves took to repose during the triennium sine armis (see next chapter). As for the Fimbria with whom the Samnites and Lucani, made these negotiations it appears he had held some form of command in the division of Marius, as events will show; see Rawson 1987, p. 168.

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so as Roman citizens on behalf of Marius and Cinna. After four years, all of the Italians were finally made citizens of the Republic, and even if there were some from the old Alliance who had not fought for such a privilege as the rest of their comrades had, it was now theirs nevertheless. Yet these citizens still did not yet have equal rights with the Romans of older vintage, and their acquisition of these seemed to be something which the veteres cives would continue to be willing to oppose with violence and bloodshed. Furthermore, the Samnites and Lucani had only gotten the franchise at all through their agreements with Marius and Cinna. Both of these men had been declared outlaws by the Roman state, and still were when the Samnites and Lucani had treated with them. Should these men fail in their current struggle and remain such, or if, upon its success, there should ever be a move to return them to that status in the future, than the Samnite and Lucanian civitas could be declared invalid. The only way that all of the former Allies could remain citizens and the equals of the older Romans would be if the cause for which Marius and Cinna were fighting would both be won and preserved against whatever threats to it might be made by future challengers. This fact must have been apparent to all of the one-time socii as the summer of 87 continued. In the meantime, Metellus and much of his army had detached from Samnium and had headed to Octavius and Rome, possibly up the Via Latina before Marius had managed to close it. Shortly thereafter, it seems, Marius had managed to commence impeding the southern advances to the capital, which had in turn started to make getting supplies increasingly difficult, as has been seen. There was as yet probably no question of being able to starve the city into submission, but the inconvenience was likely beginning to tell. Moreover, if the plan of Marius was to keep approaching Rome while at the same time extending his lines eastward to occupy the roads—or more accurately, to do so while at the same time getting the rest of the Cinna’s army then nearby at the north of the city to begin to do likewise—then a cordon around the city might soon become a possibility. This, it seems, became a matter of come concern to the Senate, as Appian notes (ἡ ουλὴ ταραττομέν καὶ πολλὰ καὶ δεινά, εἰ ραδύνειεν ἡ σιτοδεία;

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1.8.69). In response they collected their forces and sent most of them67 forward under Octavius, Crassus, and the newly arrived Metellus, whose adherence to propriety had prevented him from taking command of the city’s defense in spite of a petition to that effect by some soldiers (one whose refusal had caused the defection of some of the men formerly under Pompeius to Cinna, according to Plutarch; Mar. 42). Their objective was to get to the Alban hills, some tweve-odd miles from the city. Once there it seems they spent some time deliberating as to what to do next, since in spite of what they perceived to be their own numerical superiority they did not wish to join into a decisive battle without careful planning. Granius Licinianus describes a disturbing episode which may have contributed to this hesitancy (35.47–49). At some earlier point Metellus had approached the army of Cinna, perhaps to join battle with him. All of a sudden his signiferi had cried out in friendly greeting to Cinna’s men and had received an encouraging reply from them. Metellus clearly feared to entrust battle to men of such dubious loyalty, a wavering allegiance to which Periocha also refers, adding that the men had been bribed by Cinna (Per. 80). Such bribery is not impossible, but what is more likely is that they had tired of war and simply did not want to fight any more, as some of these were men may have been in the field since 90. Metellus proceeded to advise negotiations. In this he seems to have been overruled by Octavius, who appears to have given ear to the wish of P. Crassus, the lieutenant who was recalled as the light was fading at the earlier battle around the Janiculum. As was mentioned above, at least one source holds that this retreat had prevented the Janiculum from turning into a total victory which would have put an end to the war. Perhaps Crassus wished to finish what he had started, and recapture some of the glory that had once been his in 93 (when he was granted a triumph over the Lusitani) but which had faded due to his disappointing performance in 90.68 Yet whether it was for this reason or not, 67 But probably not all, as there is no report of the immediate entry into the city by Cinna as would doubtless have occurred if all of its defenders had moved south; this is observed by Lovano (p. 43). 68 See chapter 5 and notes.

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Crassus seems to have requested from Octavius that he be sent to attack the opposing army, a request which was granted. Crassus, however, was then badly defeated by Fimbria, in which only the timely intervention of Metellus seems to have prevented annihilation (Granius Licinianus, loc. cit.). Presumably Crassus was at this point now more tractable to the idea of reaching an understanding with Cinna, and overtures were soon made to that effect. In the meantime, Cinna continued to gain strength, as deserters both from the armies of Octavius and from the city itself came to his camp (Appian, loc. cit.). Accordingly, a deputation was sent to Cinna to ask for peace. Cinna, upon receiving it, wished to know on what terms he was to be addressed: was he a citizen? Was he consul? The Senate had, it is to be recalled, stripped him of both titles. Apparently not anticipating such a question, the embassy went back to the Senate to ask what was to be done. In the meantime, Cinna and his men moved closer to the city and were apparently unchallenged by Octavius, who may have been back in the city consulting with the Council. The immediate problem of addressing Cinna as consul in spite of the fact that there were already two of those currently serving was promptly solved by Merula, who resigned the post (Appian 1.8.70; Velleius 2.22; Diodorus 38.1–3). Given the extent to which he had taken his priestly duties seriously (Appian 1.8.74; more below), there seems little doubt that he had never really wanted the office anyway, as Merula himself would later claim. The Senate was now free to restore Cinna’s rank to him, and the next set of envoys—which seems to have included Metellus—dutifully acknowledged his title. When Metellus returned to the city he was apparently roundly abused for this by Octavius, obdurate as ever, who accused him of treason and betrayal. However, in the face of a collapsing army it is difficult to see how Metellus could have done any differently; since fighting Cinna had become out of the question, it would be the duty of any patriotic Roman to avoid the further effusion of blood. It may very well have been Metellus who attempted to extract a promise from Cinna not to massacre his enemies, which is reported by Plutarch (Mar. 43) and Appian (loc. cit.). According to the former source, Cinna gave a “friendly answer”, although the latter paints matters somewhat differently: Cinna could not make such a promise, Appian has him say, but he did pledge his word that he personally would never willingly cause

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anyone’s death. Having said that, Cinna added that it would probably be best for Octavius to avoid the Forum, lest someone other than Cinna decide to harm him. Both sources also observe that Marius apparently was not asked to make such a vow, and the expression on his face seemed to indicate that he would not have made it if he had. Metellus, for his part, got the hint, and while Octavius swore he would resist Cinna and Marius to the last, Metellus soon betook himself into exile, perhaps that very night (Appian 1.9.80; Plutarch, Mar. 42). It was, as one scholar rather amusingly put it, “a family tradition”.69 In theory, the restoration of the rank and status of Cinna had put an end to the second march on Rome and the so-called Bellum Octavianum which accompanied it. In fact, there was still a great deal more blood to be shed, as will be seen. Nevertheless, to some of Rome’s former Allies and erstwhile enemies—specifically, the 69 This excellent turn of phrase is that of Katz (p. 334–336) referring to the exile into which the father of Metellus, the former commander of Marius in Africa, had gone so as not to swear an oath of allegiance to the laws carried by Saturninus in 100. The bon mot notwithstanding, that scholar’s interpretation of most of year is somewhat unsatsifying. As has been seen, he attributed the wavering of Pompeius to the latter’s apparent urgent need to secure a second consulate, and likewise suggests that Metellus may have shown less vigor at the Alban Hills because he, too, hoped for election to the magistracy for 86. Hence his willingness to negotiate rather than fight, the course that Crassus had urged. But it has been seen that Crassus was probably unwise to have fought himself, and the garbled text of Granius Licinianus seems to indicate that it was only due to the swift action of Metellus that Crassus did not end up dead on the field. As a strict conservative who refused to take command illegally of the legions of Octavius even when urged by the soldiers themselves to do so, it does not follow that Metellus was the sort who would cynically betray the commonwealth to secure election to an office for which his military accomplishments and pedigree would probably have already stood him in excellent stead anyway. Further, there is no evidence that Metellus and Cinna had broached the subject of getting the former to change sides and that this deal was scuttled by Marius and his refusal to be put aside, as Katz also strongly infers. Rather, Metellus seems to have acted to save as many lives as he could—including his own—against odds that were not in his favor.

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Samnites and the Lucani—the wars were at last over. In exchange for peace, they were provisionally awarded the citizenship and the plunder they had taken through years of hard fighting, which was presumably to be put towards repairing their losses from that combat. That provisional title became an actual one when the deposition and outlawry of Cinna was repealed: upon becoming a civis again himself, his grant of the civitas to the southern Italians was made valid. But if his promises to some of the former Allies had been kept, there was still an outstanding debt to be discharged to others, including the many that had helped secure Cinna’s victory. It would, however, take some time before that debt could be paid. Concerns had arisen in the meantime which were pressing on all Romans, not just new ones. These took precedence, and Cinna had to put out some fires—in a manner of speaking—before tending to the novi cives, whose needs could for the time being be left to simmer. Even so, the means by which Cinna extinguished some of these fires added fuel to others, and eventually violence would again boil over in Italy, as will be seen.

5. THE VIOLENT RESTORATION OF CINNA AND MARIUS As Metellus took to flight, Cinna was now free to return to Rome: the size of his army, the skill of his commanders, and his abilities to persuade the soldiers of his enemies to leave off further fighting had brought him to victory.70 He and his comrades therefore proceeded to make their way to the city, but just outside the gates Marius stopped. He was still an outlaw, the old general pointed out, and it would be illegal for him to go any further (it was for this In this way, the contradiction which Lovano (p. 44–45) seems to discern between those sources who seem to assert that Cinna forced his way into the city and those who claim he had been peaceably received can be reconciled: Cinna certainly had used an army to get the Senate to agree to his recall, both at the Janiculum and Alban hills as well as by means of the gradual severing of Rome’s supplies, but he had not battered his way into the gates. That outcome had been avoided, as Lovano himself concludes. The “sack” which Orosius, Florus, Velleius, and the Periochae (all in some measure descendants of Livy, it is to be observed) seem to describe is an exaggerated account of the trials and executions that would soon take place, as will be narrated below. 70

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same reason that he had refused the proconsular insignia which Plutarch suggests Cinna had offered him earlier, as has been seen). Cinna, however, had been restored to his status, as presumably had the tribunes who had been ousted with him, and together they entered the city to have Marius and the other exiles recalled. Since Cinna had taken an oath not to invalidate any of Sulla’s laws, it seems probable that this was done through the tribunes, as Appian asserts (loc. cit.).71 When this was accomplished, Marius regained his city, attended by his bodyguard of freed slaves called the Bardyaei, or “Spiked Boots”, as one scholar would have it.72 Once inside, Cinna and Marius are presented in Diodorus (38.4) as having held a meeting with their most eminent supporters to decide what was to be done with their enemies. “In order to establish peace on a lasting basis” (ὅπως ε αίως καταστ σωσι τὴν εἰρ ν ν), they came to the conclusion that it would be necessary to eliminate the chief men of the opposing side. Reasons for this may have varied. In addition to the possibility of further sedition they could stir up in Rome, which would have been an obvious concern, there was also the fact that Marius was probably just as thirsty for revenge as the sources assert (more below), and it seems likely that Cinna desired 71 Dio (frg. 102) and Velleius (2.21) state that Cinna himself proposed the law. If Cinna still cared anything for the oath he had taken to Sulla, he might well have justified this measure by framing a new law recalling the exiles, rather than through restoring the laws of Sulpicius which had been vitiated by Sulla. He had likely done the same thing earlier in the year, before the unpleasantness with Octavius. It was therefore possible that he drafted and passed the law himself, but it is just as possible that this was done through friendly tribunes. In the presence of equal likelihoods, while there seems no reason to prefer tribunicial recall, there is likewise no reason not to do so. Therefore, this essay will follow Lovano (p. 45) and assume that tribunes did it, while acknowledging the possibility of the other option. 72 Carney 1970, p. 63 and note 276, where he also speculates that these were not slaves but rather Etruscan serfs who were mischaracterized as slaves later (see Harris 1971, 114–147 for the distinction); thus, for example, does Plutarch refer to them here and in his Sertorius (5), as does the Commenta Bernensia commenting on lines 114 and 120 of Lucan (as per Rawson, op. cit., p. 165–166).

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it, too. Moreover, Sulla was still in the east, but would return some day. If a bloc of his friends, supporters, or even former opponents who considered his side the better than that of Cinna and Marius still remained in Rome when he did, they could cause problems, especially if such men were possessed of great authority, influence, or military experience. Since it was almost certain that many of the very men with whom Marius and Cinna desired to settle scores would be the same as those who would make trouble, would support Sulla, or both, the need for their removal would be doubly great. The question became how to go about getting rid of them. Simple murder would work, of course, but it would also be ugly and would perhaps alienate the people. Moreover, Cinna had recently vowed that he would not willingly cause anyone’s death, although it can be questioned to what extent he considered himself bound by that vow. Certainly there was one person whom most of the sources explicitly state was killed by Cinna’s direct order, namely his colleague Cn. Octavius.73 However, it seems that Octavius had provided Cinna with an excuse, and indeed a necessity, to give this order. Not at all disposed to go into exile as Metellus had done, Octavius (as has been seen) apparently announced during his harangue against the former that he was going to resist Cinna and Marius unto the last, even to the extent of burning down his own house while still inside it if he could find no one to join him in that resistance (Diod. 38.3). Encouraged in his resolve, apparently, by soothsayers and prophets (Plutarch Mar. 42; Appian 1.8.71), Octavius stood firm in his decision to remain defiant and according to Appian betook himself with a small remnant of his army and his noble friends to the Janiculum, which he occupied. Here, then, was open armed hostility to Rome and the government, and it could be handled as such: Appian reports a squadron of cavalry was sent to the Janiculum by Cinna under one C. Marcius Censorinus, the apparent friend of Marius who seems 73 In addition to the lengthier accounts to be cited below, Cicero (Tusc. Disp. 5.19.55), Velleius (2.22), Asconius (23), Plutarch (Sull. 13), and the de viris illustribus (69) all explicitly state that Octavius was slain by orders of Cinna.

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to have prosecuted Sulla on the return of the latter from his propraetorian command several years before.74 Marcius promptly drove off the defenders and attempted to arrest their leader. The latter refused to move, so Censorinus struck off his head and brought it to Cinna, who displayed it in the forum (Appian, loc., cit.).75 So much, then, for Octavius. But the others remained, and the matter of how to deal with them persisted. The questions about the niceties of putting away men that Cinna and Marius wanted gone may presume a sort of hesitation to resort to massacre of them on the part of these two men, a hesitation which may not be justified. In fact, the way the events for the rest of the year are reported in most of the sources suggests that massacre was precisely what occurred by the order of order of one, the other, or both of these men. Together, it is claimed by the ancient authors, they treated the city to the sort of slaughter and murder which an invading army would have visited upon it (Per. 80), just as if Rome had been a town of belonging to the Carthaginians or the Cimbri (Florus 2.9.13). Lurid details abound in these sources: women and children were violated and then murdered (Plutarch, Mar. 44), bodies were left in the streets unburied (Plutarch, op. cit. 45; Appian 1.9.72; also Mithridatic Wars, 60), and an overall orgy of homicide gripped Rome for five full days (Dio, frg, 102). Indeed, one modern scholar even suggested that Marius was “guilty of proscriptions far worse than Sulla’s”.76 In spite of all of these notices, however, a few curious facts exist. In the first place, there remain actually very few men whose names are known as having died at this time, reports of the alleged See chapter 7. The de viris illustribus also confirms that Octavius died occupying the Janiculum, and it is almost certainly to this event that Florus refers in his account, rather than to the earlier narrow victory won by the consul there (2.9.13). For other sources who report the death of Octavius and Cinna’s responsibility for it, if not the other details, see earlier note. 76 A. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius, Oxford 1970, p. 338, as cited in Evans, p. 12. Of course, it is difficult to reconcile this claim to the thousands upon thousands of men who were destroyed by Sulla, about which see chapter 10. 74 75

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bloodbath notwithstanding. Perhaps a grand total of fifteen men are singled out by name as having died. “Countless”—and nameless—others are reported as having been killed by the sources, but for all that, there is no mention of anything like the assemblage of thousands of men to be crowded into one location and cut down there, as Rome would see a few years later. Secondly, a contemporary of the events, Cicero, does not mention widespread butchery, but notes that the slayings, which were still plenty deplorable, were aimed only at the heights of the nobility. Aside from the anachronistic notice that Marius and Cinna had multos proscripserunt, whereby there is attributed to these men a method of dealing with enemies that was said to have been invented by Sulla four years later (see chapter 10), Eutropius also only mentions the principes as their targets (5.7.3). Indeed, it is doubtful whether Cinna could have retained control of the city if he had allowed widespread carnage, and even more doubtful that he would have wanted such a liquidation.77 Finally, the deaths seem to have taken place within a very limited period: with one exception (an alleged attempted murder of Mucius Scaevola by Fimbria; Valerius Maximus 9.11.2, Pro Rosc. Amer. 12.33, Lucan 2.124–129), all of them had concluded by the second week of January, and may have ended well before that. It is reasonably certain that the hecatombs of Roman dead described by the later sources are an exaggeration, and that what happened is more along the lines of what Diodorus relates (38.4): Cinna and Marius had determined to dispose of the principes amongst their enemies, but not many more persons than that. If Marius and Cinna had thus decided that mass murder was out, as it seems that they had, then the question still confronting them was how these principes would be made to disappear. One possibility is that they were simply brought up on capital charges. Cicero seems to be indicating that this was the case in the Tusculan Disputations (5.19.55), where, in reference to the deaths of some prominent men which Cinna is blamed for having caused, he states 77 This point is observed by Lovano (p. 46–47), Keaveney (1987, p. 184), and Rawson (1987, p. 175), who all suggest that the purges of Cinna were rather limited in terms of both numbers and duration.

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that the consul acted as if everything was done according to law (ita se gessit, ut ea facere ei liceret). Dio and Diodorus, to be sure, mention a widespread extinction of men without a hearing of any kind (loc. cit.). In spite of that, it is fairly clear that at least two inimici of Marius and Cinna were legally indicted: Appian specifically mentions that Q. Lutatius Catulus and L. Cornelius Merula were treated in such a fashion (1.8.72; indeed, Diodorus himself notes this). The charge each man faced is not known. In the case of one, it was perhaps perduellio: since Catulus had been part of the embassy to get Metellus to join Octavius and make war on one of Rome’s elected officials, high treason seems like a charge that could reasonably be made to stick.78 For the other, it was perhaps maiestas for his role in the illegal deposition of a consul. No matter what the legal particulars may have been, it is likely that there were both to be merely show trials: a guilty verdict was almost assured, and both men probably knew it. Typically the outcome of certain prosecution could be evaded by exile, but Appian reports that such was not to be the case this time, since both men may very well have been too dangerous to let live. Furthermore, the fact that Marius had not been given this privilege by Sulla, but had had to escape through his own wits, may have influenced such a decision. Accordingly, both men were put under surveillance to prevent escape,79 which must have come to the attention of Catulus. Several sources note that he sent to Marius to ask for his help, which probably meant that he asked to be allowed to escape and avoid the death penalty (Cicero, de orat. 3.3.9; Diodorus, 38.4; Plutarch, Mar. 44). This ultimately proved unsuccessful—Marius merely responded “He must die”—and rather than be executed, Catulus found a way to asphyxiate himself

So Rawson (loc. cit. and especially note 80). Appian directly refers to this surveillance in the passage cited above, and Dio (frg. 102) also seems to be making reference to it, albeit in a much-overstated fashion, in his comment that the gates of Rome had been shut to prevent escape (καὶ ἐκείνας [τὰς πύλας] τε ἔκλεισαν ὥστε μ δένα διαδρᾶναι); what this probably means is that the roads in and out of the cities were watched to prevent the flight of the accused. 78 79

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using fumes from burning lime.80 Merula, whose prosecution is deplored by the ancient sources for its patent injustice, likewise did not wait for conviction, but rather chose to open his veins.81 Merula and Catulus had therefore been tried, but had not waited for the verdict. It is exceedingly likely that these men were not the only ones brought into the courts, and that other prominent optimates were similarly impeached. If so, some of these others may also have elected not to face justice, if it can be called that, and likewise attempted to evade it, but through escape rather than suicide. One of these was probably M. Antonius, who was 80 Plutarch and Appian in the places cited above as well as Velleius 2.22, Florus 2.9.15, and Valerius Maximus 9.12.4; Augustine (de Civ. 3. 27) incorrectly reports that Catulus drank poison, while Cicero (op. cit., as well as de nat. deor. 3.80 and Brutus 307) mentions his death, but not the method by which it was accomplished. According to the Commenta Bernensia and its notes on Lucan 174, Catulus had been tried by M. Marius Gratidianus in the latter’s capacity as tribune of the people (the Adnotationes super Lucanum also notes that Gratidianus had done the prosecuting), which would have a most unpleasant sequel when the son of Catulus returned to Rome with Sulla (see chapter 10). The notice that Gratidianus “fixed a cross” for Lutatius probably means that he was going to have him thrown from the Tarpeian rock, a penalty which was sometimes referred to colloquially as “the cross”; for the role of Gratidanus see Rawson (op. cit., p. 164–175). She likewise takes note of the fact that the Tarpeian rock was sometimes referred to as the cross, mentioning the observation to that effect by William Oldfather, who in turn cites Seneca (Controv. 1.3.4) on p. 63 note 47 in his “Livy I.26 and the Supplicium de More Maiorum”, Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 39 [1908], p. 49–72). See also Appendix S. 81 Velleius 2.22 (who adds that Merula prayed for vengeance before his suicide), Florus 2.9.16, Valerius Maximus 9.12.5, and Augustine, de civ. 3.27. A line from the thirty-first book of Dio, which is usually incorporated into fragment 102, may also refer to this, as its subject, who despaired of divine deliverance from something, committed suicide (this is noted by Cary on p. 476–477 of the Loeb volume). Appian adds that he left a note on a tablet in which made sure to let it be known that he had taken off his flamen’s cap before he had done it, as otherwise it would be a sacrilege (1.8.74), while Tacitus observes that the post of flamen dialis lay vacant for seventy-five years after Merula (presumably meaning to imply that Julius Caesar’s term in office was too brief to count; Ann. 3.58).

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likely brought up on the same charge as Catulus had been, as he had also been on the embassy to Metellus (see above). Whether prosecuted or not, Antonius definitely went into hiding with a rather poorer friend,82 whose desire to impress the great man led to his guest’s undoing. Upon sending out a slave to get better wine than usual, the attention of the merchant selling it was aroused, and he managed to discover the reason for the purchase. The wineseller then went to Marius to inform him of the fugitive’s location, at which knowledge Marius became so pleased and excited that he sprang forward as if to deal with Antonius himself, ultimately having to be persuaded to send a detachment of soldiers for this purpose (Plutarch, Mar. 44; Appian, 1.8.72). Antonius then appears to have summoned the best speech of his entire life, one which had been notable for them, and wove a spell of oratory around the milites sent to dispatch him which had them rapt and weeping until the commanding tribune interrupted the declamation and cut off the speaker’s head.83 This was taken to Marius,84 and it soon joined A poor farmer in the countryside, according to Appian 1.8.72; a plebeian, according to Plutarch Mar. 44 (the ciusdam pauperculae mentioned in the Commenta Bernensia on Lucan 121 may have been his wife). 83 So Velleius 2.22, as well as Appian and Plutarch in the places cited above; the latter notes that the name of the tribune who finally killed Antonius was one P. Annius, which is confirmed in Valerius Maximus (8.9.2). Plutarch’s Antony (1) and Asconius (25) merely report that Antonius died, and Cicero is also content with a brief note to that effect in his Brutus (307). His Tusculan Deputations (5.19.55) and First Philippic (1.34) offer more, in that they attribute responsibility for the deed to Cinna, rather than Marius. 84 Cicero, de orat. 3.3.10; Per. 80. Florus (2.9.14) adds that the head spent some time on the dinner table of Marius before it made its way to the Forum (see immediately below). This was also mentioned in Lucan (2.121–124). The commentary of the Adnotationes super Lucanum on this line contributes more information still, noting that Marius seems to have embraced the man who brought him the head of Antonius warmly and invited him and his gruesome guest to dinner. If this man was the military tribune P. Annius, as Valerius Maximus would have it (9.2.2, which also reporting on this anecdote), then he would likely have been a suitable dining companion for the old soldier; so Rawson 1987, p. 167. Similarly, the Commenta Bernensia—which also describes the head on the dinner 82

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that of Octavius on the rostra.85 P. Crassus also looks to have decided to make a break for it, perhaps to evade a penalty for maiestas, but was hunted down by a troop of cavalry under Fimbria, his adversary from the Alban hills (Per. 80, Lucan 1.24). According to most of the sources, Crassus committed suicide before he could be taken (Cicero, Pro Sest. 48, de orat. 3.3.10, Asconius, 23, 25),86 and his head was then dutifully sent by Fimbria to Marius and Cinna to add to their collection (Adnotationes super Lucanum on line 124).87 Fimbria also seems to have captured Lucius Julius Caesar and his brother, Caius Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, the latter almost table—supplies one last detail, which is that Marius punctured the tongue of Antonius repeatedly with a γραφεῖον, a somewhat ironic ending for the grandfather of the man who would one day treat Cicero in a similar fashion. 85 In fact, the placement of the head of Antonius on the Rostra may have been something of a grim joke. According to Morstein-Marx, the Rostra had since the fourth century been used as a place to commemorate “ambassadors who had been outrageously killed on their missions” (p. 48–50). If the crime with which Antonius had been charged had had to do with his embassy to bring back Metellus, then perhaps this was a way for either Cinna or—as is more likely—Marius to given him a place alongside other envoys who had found unexpected hazards in the performance of their duties. 86 According to Cicero’s Pro Sestio, this took place in Rome, although the implication from the other sources is rather that Crassus was in flight. The scholiasts on Lucan 2.124 each suggest a different location for where he was caught, with the Adnotationes super Lucanum suggesting Minturnae and the Commenta Bernensia mentioning Volaterrae (for additional discussion see Rawson, op. cit., p. 168–169; see also maps 1 and 2). Both these scholiasts and the poem upon which they are adding commentary all hold that Crassus did not perish by his own hand, but rather that Fimbria killed both him and his son; Florus (2.9.14) and Augustine (3.27) does likewise, as does Cicero’s Tusculuan Disputations (5.19.56) and Plutarch (Crass. 4, 6). The latter reports that Sulla would later use their murder as a way to inspire the remaining son of Crassus, the future triumvir. Appian, for his part, holds that Crassus had managed to kill his eldest son to keep him from savagery at the hands of Fimbria’s horsemen, but was prevented from turning the blade upon himself (1.8.72). 87 See Orosius 5.19.23 and Diodorus frg. 102 for the size of the collection.

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certainly having been prosecuted for his activities in the tribunate of Sulpicius (see previous chapter and Appendix Q). The crime of which L. Caesar had been charged is more difficult to ascertain. It may be that none had yet been levied against him, but that thought that consulares had not been faring too well of late may have occurred, and that his authority, military experience, and family connections might make him a target. Hence his flight with his brother. If, in fact, Appian was correct in that P. Lentulus, Caesar’s legate in 90, was also his (uterine) brother (1.5.40), then he may also have fled with them. Caesar was apparently correct in his suspicion that he would be marked for death: Fimbria was soon after them, and apparently caught them when a man named Sextilius, whom C. Caesar had once defended in a trial, turned them over to their pursuers near Tarquinii. So, at least, according to Valerius Maximus 5.3.3,88 who also adds a note not found elsewhere: according to a later passage, C. Caesar was dragged to

Cicero (de orat. 3.3.10) also takes note of C. Caesar’s death, observing merely that it followed betrayal by an Etruscan host. Actually, neither Cicero nor Valerius mentions that Lucius Caesar was captured with his brother, although it is probable that they fled together. Appian (1.8.72) claims that these two were arrested in the street and killed along with Lentulus, whose death is only mentioned in this passage. Florus (2.9.14) has a most unusual report which claims that Caesar and Fimbria were killed in their respective houses, which is probably the result of a copyists’s error. It seems reasonable to assume that the text should be emended from Caesar et Fimbria in penatibus domuum suarum trucidantur to Caesares Fimbria in penatibus domuum suarum trucidantur (Augustine uses very similar language in de civ. 3.27, and Forster’s apparatus in the Loeb text notes that there is a problem in the Latin here). Assuming such an emendation should be made, there may be a way to reconcile all of these various accounts. It may have been that Caius Caesar had managed to make his getaway and got to Etruria, but Lucius Caesar and P. Lentulus were apprehended before they could do the same. Catulus and Merula had been under surveillance, after all, and these men might have been as well. If so, then Appian, Florus, and Augustine refer to Lucius Caesar and P. Lentulus, rather than to these and Caius together. Unfortunately, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (5.20.56) provides no illumination, noting merely that the Caesares were killed. 88

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the tomb of Varius and killed upon it (9.2.2).89 Whether this occurred or not, the Caesares were likewise added to the new voiceless speakers on the rostra (Per. 80), and it seems that presently Attilius Serranus90 (cos. 106) would also make his appearance there (Appian 1.8.72). M. Cornutus, however, seems to have managed to avoid joining them. According to Plutarch and Appian, Cornutus, too, found himself a hunted man for reasons which can only be guessed,91 but with the help of some cooperative slaves he was able to acquire a dead body and pass it off as himself, hanged to avoid execution. The agents of Marius who had come for him were satisfied, and Cornutus was apparently able to use this ruse to make his escape to Gaul (Plutarch, Mar. 43; Appian, loc. cit.). With the deaths of these men and the manner of them Cinna might well have been satisfied, and indeed the sources show that for several he may have been directly responsible. What may have pleased him much less, however, were some other deaths that occurred at this time; some the victims in question were probably also amongst the accused, but rather than suicide or execution by soldiers, it seems that these men ran afoul of the Bardyaei, the bodyguard of Marius. Perhaps the most well-known victim of these 89 Frederick Shipley, the translator of the Loeb volume of Valerius, suggests in his notes on this passage (p. 310–311) that if this story were true, it does provide an interesting parallel to the fate of Marius Gratidianus upon Sulla’s return, which would therefore not be entirely novel (see next chapter). 90 For this identification see Lovano note 90, p. 48–49. 91 If, as has been speculated in chapter 6, the campaign which brought about the surrender of the Marsi had been conducted by Cinna and Cornutus, not Caecilius Pius, and if that campaign had gone along the lines speculated for it, then Cornutus would have been a legate of Pompeius Strabo and one of some talent (see also Appendix N). Perhaps he had continued to fight under Pompeius during the latter’s maneuvers against Cinna and Marius and was prosecuted for that offense alone, or perhaps some enmity had developed between he and Cinna during the earlier campaign. Either way, if for any reason Cornutus had come to be an enemy of Marius or Cinna, or was even perceived to be such, then his military gifts would have made him dangerous and would require his elimination. Charges could probably be found or invented against him to accomplish this if necessary.

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is one Q. Ancharius, who is described by Plutarch as being a man of Praetorian rank (Mar. 43).92 According to that author and Appian (1.8.73), this man came to Marius, whose friend he had apparently once been but seems to have been no longer (Appian seems to suggest a quarrel), possibly to do as Catulus had done and beg for exile. Marius, who seems to have feared assassination, apparenty devised a signal with his bodyguards whereby he could indicate that the men who approached him were either dangerous or otherwise: if he stretched out his hand to the individual in question, the Bardyaei were to leave him alone, but if not, they were to use force to repel him (Plutarch, loc. cit.).93 For some reason Ancharius did not get the benefit of this signal. It may have been that Marius did not intend to allow him to go into exile, and the fact that his head would soon make its way to join the other prominent men on the rostra gives this impression (Appian, loc. cit.). Alternatively, Marius may have had cause to fear murder from him, or actively wanted him dead for some other reason. The again, it may simply have been Marius had been surrounded by so many people at that moment that he was not able to make the gesture to guarantee the safety of Ancharius before it was too late, as Dio suggests (frg. 102). Either way, Ancharius was promptly stabbed by 92 In its commentary on Lucan 2.124, the scholiast behind the Adnotationes super Lucanum lists this man’s name as “Euanthius”, for which (as well as for analysis of the rest of this passage) see Rawson 1987, p. 165–166). 93 Augustine (de civ. 3.27) and Dio (frg. 102) also observed that this was the signal to be used, and Lucan (2.124) likewise makes an allusion to it; according to the latter, those to be spared were required to kiss his hand, which is almost certainly a poetic invention (see Rawson, loc. cit.). Of course, these sources attach a more sinister undertone to this signal and emphasize the tyrannical aspects of what it implied. For example, Dio suggests these orders had been given to the Bardyaei because Marius wearied of specifying the men whom wanted slain, and and figured it would be easier just to single out those he wanted to live. These notwithstanding, it would seem to make better sense that Marius would have cause to be concerned about the prospect of being murdered amidst a throng of putative supporters—Drusus, it is to be recalled, had met his end in just such a way—and that such his order to bar those who did not get the signal was likely a defensive measure on his part.

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the bodyguards,94 and his body—or part of it—was disposed of in the way suggested above. As time went on, the Bardyaei seem to have been becoming progressively more and more unruly: the fragment of Dio just mentioned hints that more persons then Ancharius met his end from the inability of Marius to gesture to him in time, while Plutarch mentions that they took advantage of their station to rape, loot, and vandalize as they saw fit (Mar. 44; Sert. 5; so also Appian 1.8.74). As former slaves they may have had some scores of their own to settle, and it is not difficult to imagine that men who had gotten used to being bullied by Roman and Etruscan nobiles would not have relished their chance to manhandle a few of these in return.95 At any rate, they soon began to overstep their bounds in ways which presently became intolerable: one of the scholiasts on Lucan (Adnotationes super Lucanum, line 2.120) reports that the particularly gruesome death of one Baebius96 was caused by fugitivi after they were told the whereabouts of this man. If these fugitivi were the Bardyaei, then they might have gone after this Baebius on behalf of their benefactor, since this individual was described by that same scholiast had as an enemy of Marius who had often spoken against the general in the Senate (inimicum Marii qui multa in senatu contra Marium decrevisset).97 Baebius, too, may have been one of

94 Plutarch and Appian in the places cited above; also Florus, 2.9.16. Appian, for his part, omits the reference to the signal but rather states that Marius actually ordered him to be murdered, although the setting of the anecdote at a sacrifice and the actual stabbing just as the sacrifice was beginning may have meant that Marius was too preoccuped to notice until it was too late. For the timing of this event, see below. 95 Carney (1970, p. 65) is probably correct in this assessment. 96 Named by Appian as Marcus Baebius, and thus not the officer who briefly pressed the siege at Asculum in the winter of 90–89; 1.8.72. 97 According to this source, he was betrayed by a certain Terentius; Rawson (1987, p. 166) believes this man to be the eques Terentius Hispo rather than that this Terentius was an actor (Terentius histrio). This Terentius is also given responsibility for finding Baebius by the Commenta Bernensia on line 119, although in that source the subsequent dismemberment was done by milites as opposed to fugitivi; Florus, Lucan,

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the men being tried who had gone into hiding; the abovementioned scholiast of Lucan, as well as the Commenta Bernensia on the preceding line, suggests that Baebius had had to be found, and therefore may have fled from the possibility of condemnation by tribunal as the others had. Yet found he was, and these fugitivi proceeded literally to rend Baebius limb from limb and then dragged his remains on hooks through the Forum.98 For him to have met his end in this way would be both repulsive and below the dignity due his station as a Senator, a travesty compounded by the fact that one Numitorius—also a Senator—was treated in a similar fashion, and possibly by the same men (Florus, 2.9.15).99 If this was so, then it might well have been that the Bardyaei had gone too far; Appian seems to indicate that Cinna had urged Marius on several instances to restrain them, but this Marius either could not or would not do (1.8.74). Finally, Cinna and Sertorius decided to take matters into their own hands, and Sertorius sent a detachment of soldiers to enter into their encampment at night, and they felled all the Bardyaei with javelins (Plutarch Mar. 44, Sert. 5; Appian, loc. cit., Orosius 5.19.24).100 With the removal of the and Augustine (in the places cited in the text bellow) give no indication about the men responsible for this action. 98 See Florus (2.9.26) and Lucan (2.119–120) for the dismemberment; Florus (2.9.13–14) and Augustine (de civ. 3.27) for the hooks. Rawson (loc. cit.) believes that Florus 2.9.26 is a doublet caused by Baebius being put in the wrong place. Appian also mentions the end of Baebius, as has been seen, but just says that he was killed in the street. 99 Also indicated in Appian, 1.8.72. For the Senatorial standing of Numitorius, see Broughton vol. 2, p. 433; Harold Mattingly—“The Date of the Senatus Consultum De Agro Pergameno”; American Journal of Philology, vol. 93, no. 3. (Jul., 1972), p. 420—shares this opinion. 100 For a further duscussion of this event see Carney (1970 p. 65–66 and note 285), where it is referred to as a “terrifying object lesson, of which Marius is reputed not to have had forewarning”. Carney’s interpretation is that the soldiers of Marius and Cinna went on a rampage for “five days and nights”, just as Dio’s fragment records (see above), with the violence made all the more sharp by the fact that some of their soldiers—and indeed large numbers of them, per Carney—were freed slaves with long memories (see above). Cinna could not afford to alienate

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Bardyei, the killings seem to have come to an end for the most part. Based on what can be derived from the various sources which describe the homicides, that end might be dated to sometime before November of 87.101 In the interim, Sulla was declared a hostis, his property was apparently confiscated, and his house destroyed.102 Still, it was inevitable that, unless he died in Asia, Sulla would eventually come home, sentence of outlawry notwithstanding. For this reason, a number of men who had either been condemned by the trials and had made their escape, or who simply could not stomach the current regime, made their way to him (Plutarch, Sulla 22; Appian all of these, Carney continues, so he singled out the guards of Marius as a way to get the hint to the others and cause the violence to discontinue. Doubtless there are some elements of truth to this account, but it is to be wondered as to just how large the population of freed slaves of freed slaves in Cinna’s army actually was. Marius is mentioned as having raised a few, but the largest part of Cinna’s army was apparently Italians. Either way, Cinna probably would not have hesitated to do away with the Bardyaei if they showed signs of continuing to menace Senators, whether prosecuted or not. In fact, if Dio is to be believed, Marius himself may have had difficulty restraining them, and may have also desired their removal. Therefore, the auspicious incident which Sertorius initiated may have had the approval of Marius and may not have been a move by Cinna “to improve his own position at M(arius)’s expense”, as Carney would have it. 101 The Periochae, Appian, Velleius, Orosius, Florus, and Lucan all indicate that the executions had ceased before the election of Marius and Cinna to the consulate of 86, about which more below. For a minor exception—albeit one with some bearing on the chronology, not just of the trials, but on the officeholding of Marius Gratidianus (more below)— see Appendix S. 102 Velleius (2.22), Valerius Maximus (4.3.14b), and Ammianus Marcellinus (30.8.9) clearly indicate that there were eventually confiscations of property, although the latter two somewhat improbably suggest that this was put of for sale and no one came forth to buy. As for Sulla, Appian is the only source which mentions that Sulla was declared a public enemy (six times, according to Lovano, p. 49 note 3; a few of these would include 1.8.73, 1.9.77, and Mith. 51), but a few others mention the destruction of his house and loss of his property which suggests such a sentence (these include Eutropius. 5.7.3, and Plutarch, Sulla 22).

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1.9.77; Orosius 5.20.1; Velleius 2.23–24;103 Eutropius 5.7.3). Sulla’s return was very probably going to mean war, as everyone likely knew, and Plutarch reports that false rumors to the effect that this return was imminent had helped lead to the choice of Marius and Cinna as consuls for 86 (Mar. 45). According to the Periochae there was nothing resembling an election in which this outcome was obtained, although Plutarch and Appian do not suggest otherwise than that the elections were perfectly standard (Per. 80; Plutarch, loc. cit.; Appian, 1.8.75).104 Either way, Marius would not live to enjoy his seventh eaglet105 for very long; on the Ides of January he died of an illness which, as it apparently left him bed-ridden for several days prior and prone to delirium, was one that was thus was probably on the order of pneumonia.106 In his place L. Valerius 103 Specifically mentioned are the other colleagues of Laenas who apparently fled after he had killed Lucilius; see Appendix S. 104 As has been observed by Lovano (p. 49–50 and note 94), amongst the many sources which make reference to this consulate there are a few which can be read to suggest that typical electoral procedure was not followed; along with Periochae, which states this explicitly, Velleius 2.23 seems to hint at it in vague way, as do Orosius 5.19.23, Lucan 2.134, and Florus 2.9.17. Still, in light of Appian and Plutarch, who are no less explicit that the election was legal and valid, it is nevertheless quite possible that elections were held. That these men might have been chosen is all the more to be believed if the comment in Plutarch which indicated that Sulla was returning had any basis in fact: as it happened, Marius and Cinna might very well have been the only experienced commanders left it Rome who could stand a chance of opposing him, given the condemnations of L. Caesar, Crassus, and Cornutus, the self-imposed exile of Metellus, and the death of Didius in the war. Of course, it is quite probable that, if there were elections, they were rigged from the outset, but for sake of appearances at least it stands to reason that they were held. This is also the thought of Carney (1970, p. 70). 105 See previous chapter and supporting notes for Marius and his eagles. 106 So Carney 1958, p. 118–120, 1970, loc. cit. A number of the ancient sources merely report that he died in the first month of 86 (Cicero, de nat. deor. 3.81, Per. 80, Florus 2.9.17, Orosius 5.19.23, Appian 1.8.75, Lucan 2.74, 130–133). Velleius reports on his illness (2.23), which is discussed in much greater length in Plutarch (Mar. 45), who reports the malaise,

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Flaccus was chosen (Velleius 2.23; Plutarch, Sull. 20; Appian, 1.8.75 and Mith. 51), and for the rest of the year no more disturbances are recorded at Rome. Upon his homecoming to the capital, then, Cinna had in essence done some housecleaning: he returned Marius to where he belonged in Rome, had restored the tribunes who had been compelled to flee by Octavius, and had gotten rid of both the latter and a number of the most powerful and influential optimates who might have continued to pose difficulties had they been allowed to live. But this activity had apparently taken up the entire year, and when 87 came to a close the former Allies still had yet to see a law designed to do what that of Sulpicius had done. Still, Cinna had been reelected for 86, and he no doubt continued to extend promises that he would do right by the men who had fought for him. Unfortunately, difficulties still lay in the way. In the year to come Cinna had yet another crisis to resolve, and at the same time he might very well have been frustrated in his attempts to redistribute the Allies by the Senate, which he needed to conciliate and which seems still to have opposed equality for the Italians.107 In a small way, however, 86 would bring the Allies incrementally closer to their goal, as a measure was enacted which may at least in part have been designed to help them. That measure, and other matters with which Cinna’s second consulate was consumed, will be described below.

weakness, and hallucinations Marius suffered. Diodorus (37.29) and de vir. ill. (67) bear the curious suggestion that Marius may have committed suicide, although perhaps it was that as his illness progressed, he endured a weakness that was such that it caused him to meet his death willingly when it came. 107 Both Lovano (p. 56–57) and Badian (1964, p. 223) not that the Senate consisted not merely of Cinna’s friends and sycophants but retained a large percentage of its membership, with whom Cinna seems to have made some effort to work. It is therefore not terribly difficult to conjecture that even if Cinna had proposed laws in favor of the former Allies, these might have been scuttled by the Senate, and that Cinna would have to keep working on them.

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6. THE YEAR 86 AND THE PROBLEM OF UNPAID BALANCES By February of 86 some semblance of order had returned to the peninsula. Cinna, who had desired to return home after his unwilling departure, had managed to do this very thing, and had even won a second consulate in the bargain. In the process, however, he had also incurred some obligations, as has been seen. These had only partially been fulfilled. Marius had been recalled, of course, as had all of those exiled with him, but there remained the novi cives and the freedmen who had been called to his aid, and these were still waiting for their compensation. Yet the indications from the sources are such that in early 86 Cinna still could not yet attend to their wishes, but was compelled to concentrate on the problem of debts of much greater magnitude than the political ones he still owed. This was debt in the literal sense, and it seems to have caused a full-financial crisis which affected the entire Commonwealth and had done so for several years.108 Its first symptoms were recorded as early as 89, when private creditors began demanding immediate repayment of loans with interest in spite of the pleas of debtors concerning the difficulties of such repayment due to the war. The praetor A. Sempronius Asellio apparently was petitioned by both lenders and borrowers to do something, but after attempting to work out an unofficial compromise which ended in failure, he allowed the suits to go to the courts. Since this apparently was tantamount to siding with the debtors—according to Appian, the interest which the creditors attempted to collect was permitted by custom but strictly prohibited by law, and therefore the rates would likely be voided and perhaps the usurers even fined for their infraction if the cases went to trial—Asellio was soon murdered.109 108 The specific causes and effects of the debt problem are fully and excellently described by Lovano (p. 70–76), from which only the most relevant details will be drawn for use here. 109 The exact place where this occurs differs according to Valerius Maximus (9.7.4), by whom it is placed near at the Temple of Castor at one end of the Forum, and Appian (1.6.54), who locates the murder near the Temple of Concord on the other side. This is not an entirely academic puzzle, as Domaszewski uses the account of Appian to place this event at

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Nor was private debt the sole problem, but rather seems to have mirrored the exhausted public finances, as well. It will be recalled the objections mentioned by Orosius on the part of the Senate to the generosity Pompeius showed his soldiers in letting them keep the spoil of Asculum were in part predicated on the exhausted state of the aerarium (5.18.26; see chapter 6). Further, many sources show that Sulla went off to war with very little gold in his war-chest (Plutarch, Sull. 12, and Appian, Mith. 4.22, both testify to his lack of funds). It was doubtless hoped that the treasury eventually could be restored with time, since revenues from the western provinces (if not the eastern ones) might be enough to replenish it once the major expenditures of the Allied War had ceased. But it was by no means a foregone conclusion that this would be the case, and if western revenues proved insufficient, then taxes might have to be collected, something certainly could not happen until the debt crisis in the private sector could be solved. For these reasons, Cinna might very well have spent much of his second consulate in cooperation with his colleague attempting to hammer through a debt bill proposed by the latter. According to the sources, the substance of this lex Valeria seems to have involved a great reduction in the amount to be paid by debtors: debts incurred with silver coin could be paid in copper (argentum aere solutum est; Sallust, Cat. 33), which essentially mean that threefourths of such debt would be wiped clean (Velleius, 2.23). The winning of support for this bill very likely consumed all the available energies Cinna had to spare in 86, meaning that for a time the Italians would have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the city at large. This debt laws may very well have been of no great interest to the Italians whose redistribution was being delayed by Cinna’s fight for its enactment, although another which was to be passed in the next year would have been of greater use to them. This was the the festival of the Dioscuri in January of 89 (p. 29), thus affecting the timing of the laws used which gave the franchise to the rest of the Allies (see Appendix P). Lovano, for his part, follows Appian’s construction (p. 71).

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reform of the coinage which was accomplished through the efforts of the collected college of tribunes and the praetor M. Marius Gratidianus (Cicero, de off. 3.80; Pliny, NH. 33.46.132, 34.12.27).110 Still, as important as this measure may have been, it still did not correct the fact that the Italians had been promised enhanced voting rights but had yet to get them, which was likely a source of some dismay in their communities.111 Promising, perhaps, to do better by the novi cives, Cinna seems to have managed to win an election to his third consulate at the end of 86 along with his right-hand man Carbo (Appian, 1.9.76; Per. 83), an election and a term in office about which more will be discussed in the next chapter. In the meantime, Cinna might have been able to claim with some justification that he had at least made an effort on the part of the Allies even if the redistribution had not yet been effected, since it seems that it was he who was responsible for yet another premature nomination of censors in 86. These officers were apparently tasked with charge of both numbering the people and reviewing the Senate, and according to the sources both were done: Cicero clearly states that one of the censors, Philippus, reviewed the Senate (and in the process passed over for membership his own uncle App. Claudius, the one-time commander of the legion seduced by Cinna and forced into exile as a result, as described above; de domo 32.84). The remarkable longevity of the other censor, M. Perperna (who apparently died at the astonishing age of 98), provides the occasion in the sources which take note of it for additional evidence of the review of the There was apparently some chicanery at work here according to Cicero, whose account tells of how Marius and the tribunes had agreed on the measure, but before all of them could announce the joint efforts he stood up and feigned as if it was of his devising alone, for which he received an enormous surge in popularity; statues were even erected in his honor which were pulled down by Sulla when he entered the city, according to Pliny. 111 The assumption here and in the pages to follow is that Cinna was not able to redeem his pledge to the former Allies to effect their redistribtion in either 87 or 86. This assumption is generally agreed upon, although that agreement is not unanimous; for some of the arguments about the dating of the redistribution, see Appendix T. 110

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Senate to be supplied: in commenting on his lifespan, Pliny (NH. 7.157) mentions that he had outlived all but seven of the men he confirmed in the Senate (a detail confirmed by Valerius Maximus 8.13.4; Cassius Dio 41.14.5 suggests he had outlived all of them). All of these references show that the Senate was reviewed, and it seems that the people were numbered also, though evidence for this last is much more scanty. It comes, in fact, from only one source: St. Jerome, whose chronicle mentions that in the 173rd Olympiad a census was held, and that 463,000 citizens were counted. Such information has become a subject for a great deal of scholarly controversy due to the fact that the numbers are so incredibly low: it represents only an 18 percent increase over the numbers which had come from the last known census to have preceded it, that of 115 (which listed 394,336), and this in the face of the fact that the Roman citizen body had ostensibly been augmented by hundreds of thousands of Italians. It is, of course, possible that what is here cited represents a scribal error somewhere along the line, and that the numbers actually given should be much, much higher.112 There is no evidence for these, however, and it may well be that this was the number counted. But if the figure given was, in fact, number counted, this leaves the obvious question as to what could account for such a small census. Certainly the smaller returns cannot be easily accounted for by Roman military losses: obviously Arausio in 105 and the disasters during the Allied War had led to the deaths of many thousands of Romans, but even if 100,000 Romans had died in that war, another 30,000 had died in the Bellum Octavianum, and Sulla’s soldiers in the east had not been counted, then the numbers still indicate nothing like full registration of Romans and former Allies. Even assuming that Italians had suffered the same number of casualties in the war with Rome, the total would still fall far short of the numbers which ought to have been transmitted. The evidence then suggests that the census was in some way deficient, and that far more people ought to have been counted than it seems actually were; if that is the case, the next question which arises is why it should be so. 112 This possibility is presented in Brunt (1971, p. 91–99) and Harris (loc. cit.), among others.

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A variety of answers suggest themselves. In the first place, voting in the comitia tributa did not depend on census registration, as has been seen, but a number of other things did: registry in the census determined property rating, and that in turn classified how a citizen was to vote in the comitia centuriata, if he met the minimum standards for being able to run for office, whether or not he would be eligible for conscription, and the extent to which he might be called upon to pay the tributum if it should ever transpire that this would be collected again. Of these rights and responsibilities, it may well be imagined that the former two were of little use to most of the Italians. The system had been set up to guarantee that only the wealthiest Romans would have their voice heard, so the ability to vote in the comitia centuriata for those who were not in the richest centuries was probably of little consequence. Likewise, most Italians probably would have had neither the means nor the motivation to seek office in Rome. Thus, the rights which would be conferred upon census registration might have appealed only to the wealthiest of the Italians; it would be they who would have an influence in the Centuriate assembly, would have the denarii and the desire to hold office, and simultaneously would have the leisure time required for a trip to register for the census in the capital. On the other hand, the responsibilities which went along with registration—eligibility for the draft and for taxes—might have provided positive inducements to stay away from the numbering, especially since there was the distinct possibility that both draft and taxation might soon make an appearance in the peninsula. As to the former, the return of Sulla almost guaranteed the possibility of war for which conscription might well be a resort; as far as the latter goes, the depletion of the aerarium has already been discussed. Indeed, Cinna might well have called for censors in part to meet precisely these exigencies. For a great many of the Italians whose supplies of blood and coin available to be expended for the Republic might have been at a low ebb indeed, the census might well have been something that they actively avoided save by those wealthiest for whom the numbering meant more benefits than burdens. This might well explain the low numbers, especially since

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it seems that by this period census registration was no longer compulsory on pains of the fierce penalties which once had attached.113 It is therefore probable that many Italians did not exert themselves to register. It is also not unlikely that the censors themselves were hardly keen to include as many Italians as they could have in their count. As has been seen, one of the men who were chosen to perform this duty were L. Philippus, who had been the stanchest opponent of Drusus and according to reports in Florus (2.6.8) and the de viris illustribus (66.12) was so detested by the Allies that they had actually planned to murder him. Little love could have been lost between the one-time socii and the man who was going to guarantee their inclusion into the citizenship rolls. The other, M. Perperna, had been consul in 92 but was otherwise unknown, having taken no part in the Allied War—unless he was the same as the C. Perperna cited by Appian 1.5.40–41 as having been stripped of command following his defeat by Publius Praesenteius—nor in the bellum Octavianum or the war on the return of Sulla. His politics are unknown, and his feelings towards the Italians (his own Etruscan origins notwithstanding) are equally obscure, but in an age not noted for seeing prominent Romans die in their beds, Perperna’s celebrated lifespan could only have achieved by being agreeable to the right people, which meant that he probably had at some point defected to Sulla. Therefore, it may very well be that he, too, shared no great love for the former Allies, especially if he had been the man cashiered by Rutilius for his defeat in the war against them. If so, then the men who were named censors might very well have gone about the numbering of the people rather judiciously, and this may also help to explain the much smaller returns than expected. Indeed, at least one scholar 113 These are in part the arguments of Frank (1924, p. 333–334), although the sources make clear that his assertion to the effect that voting did not matter to the Allies is not entirely accurate. Tribal voting, in which all citizens could take part in making laws, apparently mattered a great deal, to them although it can be doubted whether centuriate voting was a zealously pursued. Wiseman agrees (1969, p. 60–62), as does Brunt (1971, p. 16, 24), who likewise notes the easing on punishments for evasion of registration in the post-Jugurthine war era.

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suggests that these low numbers were purposefully engineered to undercut Cinna’s credibility with the former Allies, which would certainly have met with Sulla’s later approval.114 Either way, Cinna could in some way claim to his Italian base of support that he had made strides on their behalf. To the wealthy who had been registered in the census, he could assert that the censors had been nominated due to his influence. He could likewise perhaps arrogate to himself credit for the debt-relief and coinage laws, which might very well have favored the larger landowners. To those who had either been passed over in that census, or who were disgruntled about the tribal redistribution, he could plead Senatorial obstruction and with what was probably with a great deal of truth. Cinna, it seems, had become signally excellent in getting men to support him due to self-interest, and he doubtless could point to the fact that he had done something for the Italians who had fought for him while simultaneously vowing to complete his promise in the future. He could therefore call upon desire for gain and gratitude to win their continued favor, and almost certainly made liberal use of fear as well: there was, as Cinna probably had no hesitation in mentioning, the specter of Sulla in the East remained unvanquished, and Sulla would eventually come back. When he did, only the Gods knew what sort of designs he may have had upon his enemies and the Italians. Sulla was, it could have been argued, certainly no friend of theirs, and if he had in fact blocked the census of 89, that fact might have been brought up by Cinna to the former Allies. Of course, a new census had since been taken, but who really knew if its results were to be considered safe: his March on Rome and slaying of Sulpicius had shown that Sulla had apparently considered no law or tradition inviolate, amd Cinna might well have introduced the possibility that Sulla could find a way to strike down the census and reduce the wealthy Italians back to political powerlessness again. Finally, if Sulla were to come back before the tribal reallocation had been completed, then there would doubtless be no hope of that law ever coming to pass; indeed, even if he came back afterward the redistribution had carried, Sulla could always have the law reversed, by compulsion if necessary. He might 114

This is the conjecture of Brunt (op. cit., p. 91–990).

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even attempt to remove the citizenship from the Allies entirely, or at the very least from the Lucani and the Samnites. The only way to guard against this was to continue to support Cinna, as both Cinna and the Allies were likely quite aware. The latter almost certainly used this awareness to bid for the continued support of the new citizens, even in the face of his inability to get enacted for them the law they wanted, and as the years to come will show, he did so successfully.

7. THE YEAR TO COME As the summer of 86 passed by, then, the former Allies would have found that mighty strides had been made towards the ultimate aim of full and equal civitas within the Roman state. Nevertheless, the journey was not yet completed; indeed, there remained the possiblilty that not only could forward progress be halted, but even a violent retrograde movement could be forced on them. There was also the possibility that the same violence which would deprive them of their newly-won rights could deprive Cinna and his supporters of more even than that. To ward off that possibility, Cinna would still need the former Allies in the years to come, and the Allies would still need him, as well. In the future which was just upon the horizon, they would have to continue to depend upon each other. As events will show, the new citizens continued to adhere to Cinna and his cause until the end of the decade.

CHAPTER 9: THE RETURN OF SULLA AND THE CIVIL WAR 1. AN UNEASY PEACE After the disturbances of 87 and 86 had come to an end, there existed in Italy a period of relative calm and quiet, as indicated in the previous chapter. At least in the capital itself, Cicero could somewhat generously characterize the age between January of 86 and early 83 as triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis (Brutus 90.308). But while Italy was free of tumult, it remained a fact that this serenity did not obtain everywhere: if the urbs Romana was at peace, it was without question that the orbis Romanus was not. The Romans were most notably at war in the East, fighting against an opponent who had apparently turned out to be a much more formidable enemy than those who had resorted to violence to obtain the command against him had possibly realized. Mithridates had been able, it seems, to raise vast forces for his war with the Romans. Furthermore, while he had briefly been courted by the Italians still trying to wrest the rights of civitas from those selfsame Romans, he had turned down these requests for aid, and then sealed his hostility to everyone from the peninsula by means of a general massacre of all who had come from there in his own domains and in the domans of those who sought his favor.1 Just as Jugurtha had done earlier at Cirta, Mithridates had demonstrated once again that the only people who had truly insisted on treating the Allies 1 See Chapter 6 for the embassy to Mithridates from the Allies and its timing; for sources on the Mithridatic massacre, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 168–170.

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differently than the Romans had, in the end, been the Romans themselves. It may not therefore be too much of a stretch to assert that Mithridates had represented a significant threat to all of Italy,2 and that ending that threat once and for all would likely have been as matter of some concern for all Romans, new and old alike. Yet it may also not be unreasonable to assume that the man who been given the duty of dealing with Mithridates, had then insisted on being allowed to discharge that duty (an insistence which manifested itself in force), and was at the moment in the process of so discharging it, represented a not insubstantial threat to Rome in and of himself. From Rome’s government and governing aristocracy L. Cornelius Sulla could claim injury and a loss of rights, and under similar circumstances he had used his army to secure restitution. Nor was it necessarily the case that such an outcome be avoided by means of the complete restoration of these privileges; given his temperament and past actions, it must have been feared by many throughout Italy that he would similarly employ that army to seek, not just restoration, but also revenge. As it would turn out, he would soon make it certain that he intended to do precisely that (see below). Such revenge-seeking would mean even more deaths, trials, and banishments, and potentially would also mean the sowing of the seeds of discord for generations to come. Added to the menace that Sulla’s return would signify to the nobiles was that which he would pose to the middle and lower classes, for whom he presented the specter of a loss of political power and the capacity to make their voices heard. Before his departure Sulla had, it seems, attempted to pass legislation which would place all lawmaking power in the hands of only those who had gained the approval of the Senate and ratifying power only in the comitia centuriata, the assembly which gave disproportionate influence to the wealthy (see chapter 7). Such a transfer of power would have meant that the ability to have an effective direct say on the way they were governed would be greatly diminished for the less affluent, and it might very well be that on Sulla’s return he would attempt to see to it that such laws would be brought forth 2

Keaveney (1982, p. 79) makes such a declaration.

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again. Furthermore, such a proposal would be doubly dangerous to some of the novi cives. In the first place, those who were not from the élites of their communities would be under the same pains as their older Roman counterparts: only the rich, and not they, would have votes with any sway at all. This fact was probably of less concern to the lower classes of those Italians who remained in the areas where they had always lived as to those who had migrated to Rome, since it would have been rare for the former to have been able to afford the journey to Rome to vote anyway.3 But those who had moved to the capital would found themselves in the same boat as the veteres of similar financial standing should Sulla’s laws be enacted, and therefore facing the prospect that the expression of their will at the polls would be subverted in favor of the greater voice given to the wealthy. Matters would be much the same even for the wealthier segments of the Italians. It presumably took a census rating to take part in the Centuriate Assembly, and, as has been seen, the census numbers for 86 had been very low indeed. It could therefore have been the case that a good many Italians had not been numbered in it, and as a result at least a few of the dives and the domi nobilies former Allied communities might have found the exercise of their rights in that body in jeopardy. Furthermore, they may have been unable to run for an office, should they have been so inclined, without a census-rating, depriving them of another benefit of the citizenship. If Sulla was able to resurrect his proposal to install legislative approval in only the Centuriate Assembly, the result would be that at the very minimum only the well-off of the novi cives would be able to take part in that approval, and even then only those very few who may have been enrolled in the census of 86. For everyone else, there may have been the comitia tributa, where they could vote without necessarily having been registered, but the powers of that congregation would be greatly curtailed by the removal of its statute-making powers to the other voting body. The result would be that the only political matters over which the less-moneyed new citizens could exercise influence would be in the election of lower magistracies. These would still be of some 3

Ao Mouritsen (2001, p. 117–123).

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use, as the lower offices determined eligibility for upper ones, even if the candidates for whom they would vote would almost certainly not include anyone from their original communities so long as such men lacked a census rating. Yet even that power would be eviscerated as long as the novi cives remained undistributed amongst all the tribes. Cinna had promised them that they soon would be so redistributed, but when and if he did so, it would still in no way be a foregone conclusion that the distribution would be permanent. On his return, Sulla might be able to find a way to undo that, in the same way that he had undone the laws of Sulpicius aimed at bringing about the redistribution. Sulla, therefore, might very well have been perceived as a distinct hazard to whatever powers the Italians had been able to acquire in his absence, and if the worst were to come to pass, he might reduce the citizenship rights of many to practically nothing. Finally, Sulla might very well strip some of them of even these almost non-existent rights. It is to be remembered that the Samnites and Lucani had been enfranchised through the bargain they had struck with Marius and Cinna. These two had both been outlawed by the Senate at the time they had made it these arrangements, a verdict they had ultimately changed by force. If Sulla could manage to effect a reinstitution of outlawry to which these men had been sentenced and on that account revoke their edicts, than these Italians would lose the franchise and go back to being what amounted to a subject people to the Romans. Of course, Sulla himself might very well promise on his return not to do any of these things, and ultimately did proffer such a vow. But Sulla’s promises had not always carried great weight: he had in the past demonstrated a great proclivity towards vowing to do one thing but then finding a pretext for doing the opposite, as he had shown to the Allies at Aeclanum and to his own people during his March on Rome. Therefore, to Romans of practically all stripe Sulla very likely presented the potential for a great deal of harm. If the triennium sine armis presented to the external viewer the appearance of a lack of turmoil, a veritable tempest of anxiety must have been brewing under the surface. The government controlling the capital was faced with the choice of either waiting for Sulla and yielding the initiative to him, or seizing that initiative and doing something about him. The man in charge of the government, L. Cornelius

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Cinna, ultimately chose the latter course, choosing put into motion a course of action apparently designed to deal with both Mithridates and Sulla. What the course of action was will be discussed below.

2. DEALING WITH SULLA IN THE EAST If popular sentiment in Rome could be ascertained by the laws that were passed there, then the threat posed by both Sulla and Mithridates must have been fairly clearly perceived in Rome: as early as 86, measures began to be put into place to deal with both of the aforementioned sources of peril to the government in the East. The urgency may have been occasioned by the rumors of Sulla’s immediate return from Asia which Plutarch where swirling in Rome in late 87 (Mar. 45). If there had been such reports, they turned out to be false ones, as Sulla in fact extremely busy in late 87 with the lengthy siege of the Piraeus of Athens in which he had become mired. It is therefore difficult to see how any of these stories could have made it back to Italy at all; perhaps the news that Sulla’s subordinate Lucullus had been sent to procure ships—as he had been sent to do near the end of the campaigning season of 87 (Appian, Mithr. 7.33, 11.51; Plutarch, Luc. 2–3)—had been misinterpreted to mean that Sulla was going to use those ships to ferry his army back to Italy. Either way, the upshot seems to have been that it became imperative that two men of recognized martial skill be elected (or elect themselves) consul, and as a result Marius and Cinna soon were voted to fill those magistracies. Marius, however, promptly died, and to his vacant office was elected L. Valerius C. f. Flaccus. The Valerii Flacci had apparently had connections to Marius, as a relative of the consul of 86—the similarly named L. Valerius L. f. Flaccus—had been consul in 100 along with the general. Yet unlike many associates of Marius, this attachment does not seem to have put the entire family under a cloud amongst the nobiles. Instead, the fact that the family continued to be respected by the patres can be seen by the elevation of that same L. Valerius L. f. Flaccus to the censorate in 97, and had since become princeps senatus. Due to this position of respect amongst both the Mariani and the optimates, the man chosen to

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succeed Marius looks to have been acceptable to a broad segment of the Roman aristocracy.4 For all that, what it seemed that the new consul was lacking was a great deal of proven military aptitude (Appian refers to him as ἀπειροπόλεμος “inexperienced”; Mith. 8.51). With that being the case, he may not perhaps have seemed like the ideal choice to send to prosecute the Mithridatic War as proconsul. Even so, Flaccus was soon dispatched to Asia for that very purpose before the end of 86. It may be wondered why Flaccus was chosen for that assignment over Cinna, whose military capabilities were proven. No answer to this question can be found in the sources. Perhaps it was that the proconsular provinces were assigned ahead of time, and that Marius would have been the one sent to deal with Cinna had he lived. This would accord well with the old general’s longstanding desire to best Mithridates, one which, if the sources are to be believed, he had been harboring for over a decade (see chapter 7). The acquisition of that command had caused Marius a great deal of grief over the past three years, and it therefore seems unlikely that he would have given it up in favor of his colleague once it had finally come to him. Furthermore, this assignment carried with it the prospect of doing battle with Sulla, whose reluctance to be superseded by anyone, let alone his detested rival, could be readily imagined. The last time Marius and Sulla had fought it out had been in the streets of Rome, where Marius had scraped together a makeshift force and had nearly managed to repulse the evervictorious flagellum Samnitis in spite of the vast numerical disparity in favor of the latter. It becomes staggeringly difficult to imagine that Marius would not have have been thirsting for for a rematch. In light of these facts, Cinna might well have yielded to his associate, and let him fill the consulate whose province was already determined to be Asia; this would leave Italy to Cinna, where he had work to do anyway. Even were that the case, the death of Marius may have changed these, and it seems reasonable to assume that Cinna could have altered the assignment of provinces and taken the eastern 4 For the connections of Marius and L. Valerius L. f. Flaccus, see Badian (1964, p. 47–48).

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command had it suited him. Clearly it did not, and Cinna elected not to go. It may have been that he elected to say in the peninsula because perhaps he did not trust the Senate not to condemn him in his absence. Then again, Cinna may not have trusted Flaccus with the work of calming the financial catastrophe. Finally, it was reasonably clear that Sulla would return to Italy unless he were neutralized in Asia, and that would certainly mean war. Cinna may have lacked confidence in the ability of Flaccus to ready the preparations for it, and felt that he himself, with his strategic gifts and connections with the Italians, would be a better selection to stay and play a direct role in raising the army which would be needed to defend the Commonwealth against the proconsul’s return. For any, some, all, or none of these reasons, Cinna remained in Italy, and Flaccus was sent towards the east to confront the perils to be found there. Yet if the sending of him may have seemed like the best option at the time, it must nevertheless have been clear to the government in Rome that someone inexperienced in was was now being dispatched to Asia, and would there encounter either a nowintimidating Mithridates, the proconsul already sent to fight that monarch, or both. Hence, there was the distinct chance that Flaccus would be overmatched by what he might in the easy. In order to compensate in some way for this situation, Cinna apparently took a few distinct steps. In the first place, Sulla had has his hands full throughout 87 contending with the armies of Mithridates commanded by the latter’s subordinates in Greece. If he were so occupied throughout 86 as well, then Flaccus might be presented with an opportunity to avoid a confrontation and slip past Sulla. Once he had done so, he could proceed directly to Pontus, and it is probably the case that Flaccus had been given the good advice (or even the explicit order) to do this very thing. Such an evasion might potentially lead to a number of useful consequences. It would first and foremost hold off battle with Sulla himself, of which the benefits would be obvious. Secondly, it might allow Flaccus end up in an Asia and there attack a Mithridates substantially weakened by the absence of men needed to pin down Sulla in Hellas. If, as it seems, Mithridates had committed a good portion of his available forces to that end and thus had few men closer to home, then Flaccus might be faced, not with a daunting and terrible antagonist, but with a much more manageable one. An

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easy victory, a defeated foe, and the gain of massive amounts of supplies from the East might then ensue.5 In fact, Cinna may have been contemplating an even grander enterprise, as his subsequent actions may indicate. Perhaps the consul had it in mind to raise an army of his own in Italy, lead it into Greece, and combine efforts with Flaccus—who would be fresh from overwhelming Mithridates and flush with the resources of the latter’s kingdom—to bring the recently-declared hostis to heel. There is nothing to prove this was Cinna’s design, although there is nothing to make it impossible, either, and a good deal to recommend it as an option he might have considerd. At the very least having Flaccus steer clear of Sulla would make good sense even in the absence of such a larger design. Flaccus had therefore doubtless been sent to replace Sulla, but not to displace him if he could avoid it: given the disparities of numbers between Flacccus and Sulla, the vastly differing levels of skill possessed by each, and the ultimate Roman interest in the area (id est, to get Mithridates) the option of staying away from Sulla entirely would have been the soundest choice to make. Failing that, the hope seems to have been retained by Cinna, the Senate, or both, that some sort of accommodation could be reached with Sulla. A reference in Memnon of Heraclea suggests that Flaccus had been bidden to offer Sulla the chance to acknowledge Senatorial authority should the two of them come into contact after all.6 If Sulla did so, then presumably the sentence of outlawry passed against him would be revoked, and the two proconsuls would share the command. If Sulla did not submit, then he was to be asked to avoid fighting fellow Romans and let Mithridates be put out of the way before he and Flaccus could fall

5 Lovano (p. 98–99) and Frier (p. 588) also suggest that deliberate avoidance of Sulla may have been the mission of Flaccus. 6

ἡ δὲ σύγκλ τος Φλάκκον Οὐλεριον καὶ Φιμ ρίαν πέμπει πολεμεῖν Μι ριδάτῃ, ἐπιτρέψασα καὶ Συλλᾳ συλλαμ άνειν τοῦ πολεμοῦ. ὅμοια φρονοῦντι τῇ συγκλ τῳ. εἰ δὲ μ , τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν πρότερον συνάψαι μάχ ν ;

Memnon 24.

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to making war upon each other.7 Of course, it is difficult to believe that Sulla would have accepted either offer: on the one hand, if he had chosen the first option, then at best the victory achieved and the credit for it would be shared, rather than Sulla’s alone. This would be an outcome no Roman general would logically be expected to prefer.8 But should Sulla have chosen the second, then he would be expected to let Flaccus go his own way while he continued defeating the generals of Mithridates. If Mithridates in Asia was as weakened as has been suggested by his expenditures in Hellas, the Flaccus could win a cheap victory against an enemy debilitated by Sulla’s efforts and claim the victory, the glory, and the spoils. Should Flaccus prove unable to do so, then it would fall to Sulla to have to fight the king after vanquishing his deputies. In the worst case scenario, this could potentially result in Mithridates actually having been defeated by Sulla but going to Flaccus to surrender, robbing Sulla of the fruits of his efforts; he more than anyone else would likely understand how important it was to the reputation of a victorious commander to obtain the surrender of the enemy directly, as the signet ring of Jugurtha surrendering to himself and not Marius (one which he may still have worn in 86) would remind him.9 Even if Mithridates did not do this and surrendered to Sulla, the proconsul would have have expended a great deal of resources and manpower in earning it. It would be in this shape that he would be compelled to grapple with Flaccus. Sulla’s attitude could therefore probably have been anticipated on this score. Hence, if it was indeed the case that Flaccus was given this brief, it was probably to be used only if it turned out that he could not elude Sulla. If the latter could in fact be sidestepped, that would continue to be the better option (as noted above). For all these reasons, it becomes less and less probable that the army of Flaccus was being sent against Sulla, as Plutarch, who was doubtless influenced by Sulla’s own account of the enterprise, 7 So Badian (op. cit., p. 223–224); in a similar vein, Keaveney (1982, p. 120). Lovano believes that Memnon’s account is “highly improbable” (loc. cit. and especially note 63). 8 See Harris (1979, p. 138–141). 9 See chapter seven for this ring and its significance.

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maintains (Sull. 20).10 Instead, it seems that Flaccus was sent in the sincere hope that he would not chance upon the hostis at all, and if he did, that he would try to conciliate him with this offer rather than risk coming to blows. Regardless of whether or not he could circumvent Sulla, it was reasonably patent that Flaccus was going to have to do some fighting with someone. To help in that endeavor, Cinna seems to have sent along with him the energetic C. Flavius Fimbria as legate. Fimbria, as has been seen from his activity during the Bellum Ovtavianum, had proved himself an able diplomat, as it was he who brought to a successful conclusion the deal with the Samnites. He was also a more than competent soldier: he seems to have defeated a former triumphator in battle, and to have shown a remarkable efficiency in hunting down fugitives from the trials of the optimates (for all of which see previous chapter). It is highly probable that in the execution of this last assignment, Fimbira had not only displayed his worth to Cinna and Marius, but had also likely made himself detested by the nobility; there were even accusations that he had attempted to murder Mucius Scaevola (Cicero, Pro Rosc. 33).11 Sending this beau sabreur with Flaccus would encompass the best possible outcome for all concerned, as it it would give the proconsul a subordinate of demonstrable talent and enthusiasm, and at the same time keep a potential political liability and threat to concordia out of Rome.12 10 Badian, loc. cit.; contra Keaveney (1982, p. 96), in which Flaccus is depicted as the head of “usurpers who were attempting to wrest [Sulla’s] province from him”. 11 So also Valerius Maxiumus 9.11.2, almost certainly gotten from Cicero. 12 So Badian (1964, p. 223); Keaveney (1982, p. 119–123) holds that Flaccus the princeps (Lucius L. f. Valerius Flaccus, not the current consul) had been responsible for the offer made to Sulla and possibly over the objections of Cinna, which is not entirely unlikely, but that Fimbria had been attached to the expedition by the latter to monitor what Flaccus was doing. Keaveney also darkly hints that Fimbria’s own specific mission was to murder his commander before terms with Sulla could be made. For the launch of the expedition see Memnon and Plutarch in the places cited above; also Per. 82, Appian 1.8.75, and Mith. 8.51. For Fimbria sent as

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Under such instructions, Flaccus and Fimbria departed towards Asia from Brundisium. It was not an auspicious journey; Appian mentions that a storm which had arisen while the majority of the army was crossing had sunk some of the ships, and that those men that landed safely were thereupon roughly handled by forces sent by Mithridates (Mith. 11.51). Because of this, the advanced columns which had gotten to Greece ahead of the main body was now isolated from it, in very few numbers, and in hostile territory. Figuring that to do otherwise was to commit themselves to destruction at the hands of the soldiers of Mithridates or his allies, this vanguard betook itself to Sulla and was added to his army (Plutarch, Sull. 15; Appian. Mith. 11.51). Sulla, it seems, had welcomed them, thus beginning a policy which reward him amply in the future (see below). When at last Flaccus did land, Sulla headed in his direction and was apparently intent on repelling him by force until distracted by the arrival of more soldiers from Mithridates, which he turned to fight (Plutarch, Sull. 20). In this way, Flaccus accomplished his aim of forestalling a dustup with Sulla, and his army was allowed to continue on the Via Egnatia into Asia.13 This bit of good luck notwithstanding, the campaign which had had an unfortunate beginning apparently got no easier as the weeks progressed. Memnon speaks of a want of supplies (24), which may have contributed to the inability of Flaccus to restrain his men from looting Byzantium, as described by Dio (frg. 104) and Diodorus (38.8). A notice in Cicero suggests that many Asian cities shut their doors to him, possibly as a result of that looting (Pro Flacc. 26.61), which made the requisition of supplies all the more difficult . Still, Flaccus was able to surmount these challenges and had begun to win some victories in Asia (Memnon, loc. cit.). In spite of legate to Flaccus see Orosius (6.2.9), de vir. ill. (70), and Dio (frg. 104); Diodorus (38.8) merely notes that he was there in a subordinate capacity, as does Memnon, while Strabo (13.1.27) speaks of him as a quaestor. Appian speaks of him as a privatus and volunteer, one sent specifically to compensate for the military inexperience of Flaccus (Mith., loc. cit.). More on Fimbria’s command can be found Rawson (1987, p. 168). 13 For an additional account of this series of events see also Keaveney (1982, p. 92, 96–97).

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these, it seems that he had started to become disliked by his men. Appian states that this sentiment had begun to arise even before the crossing from Italy had been completed, and that indeed Fimbria had had to exert himself mightily to keep the rest of the army from joining Sulla as the vanguard had done (loc. cit.). Fimbria himself was presently added to the list of men disenchanted with the commander. All the sources which describe this rift between the proconsul and his soldiers, as well as that between him and his lieutenant, give a consistent explanation for why they occurred. In their telling, Flaccus had alienated officers and soldiers because he was a bad man brimful of greed and harshness (Memnon 24, Appian Mith. 8.51–52, Dio, frg. 104). This demeanor was such that Fimbria was soon seen as preferable to the men due to his friendliness, consideration, and superior leadership abilities. Such a sentence passed on Flaccus may not have been entirely just; for example, it may well have been that the “greed” in this case was the sensible policy of forbidding looting, so as to make it easier to drum up support in the areas of the campaign. Likewise, the “harshness” could have been merely an insistence on discipline. On the other hand, the preference for Fimbria may have more understandable. It had already been seen that this man was a gifted leader, and he is represented by the sources as one who seems to have been possessed of some charm, prone to boldness and fond of a jest.14 He was, then, not entirely unlike Sulla, who had also Of course, his humor was of a fairly grim sort: Cicero reports that, having unsuccessfully attempted to stab Scaevola to death, Fimbria next resorted to prosecuting him. When asked what the charge was to be, he is claimed to have said that Scaevola was to be accused “of not having received my blade generously enough” (quod non totum telum corpore recepisset; Pro. Rosc. 33; see above). Likewise, Fimbria was not above pointing out irony: late on, he is said to have esponded to Sulla’s accusations of being an usurper with a joke about Sulla in turn being an outlaw ( Σύλλας δὲ 14

Φιμ ρίου δύο σταδίους ἀποσχὼν ἐκέλευε παραδοῦναί οἱ τὸν στρατόν, οὗ παρανόμως ἄρχοι. ὁ δ᾽ ἀντεπέσκωπτε μὲν ὡς οὐδ᾽ ἐκεῖνος ἐννόμως ἔτι ἄρχοι;

Appian, Mith. 1.9.59). He could also be self-effacing, as seen in the aftermath of his capture of the city of Troy (for sources see Greenidge and Clay, p. 185). Subsequent to this event, Fimbria is said to have engaged in banter with a resident in which he boasted that he captured in

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once been a protégé of Marius and like him was eventually much liked by the men under his command. However, Fimbria seems to have inherited from Marius a certain lack of patience with the foolishness of superior officers.15 This may have led him to help stir up feelings against Flaccus by mispresenting the latter’s unwillingness to let them collect loot as avarice, whereby his own apparent willingness to allow it would be seen as generosity (Dio and Diodorus both imply that this was the case in the places cited above). Things between the proconsul and his legate came to a head over a quarrel which apparently had begun as a dispute between Fimbria and the army’s quaestor about their lodgings. In this squabble Flaccus sided with the questor, and threats of resignation and a public dressing-down soon followed. The soldiers had also apparently taken sides in favor of Fimbria and things quickly degenerated until finally Flaccus was killed by his soldiers (or, as some sources assert, by Fimbria himself). Fimbria was then given command of the expedition by the men, and with this sorted out, they continued on the campaign.16 Fimbria’s conduct of the war with the men he had gotten from Flaccus soon led to some fairly amazing successes. He notably captured the city which stood where Troy once had been, by his own boast accomplishing in eleven days what had taken Agammemnon ten years to accomplish, even if he was compelled to acknowledge a resident’s point that the defenders in this case did

eleven days what it had taken Agammemnon ten years to storm. The reply to this was that in this case “the defender was no Hector” ( οὐ γὰρ ἦν Ἕκτωρ ὁ ὑπερμαχῶν τῆς πόλεως; Strabo, 13.1.27), at which Fimbria was apparently amused. Humor of this kind might very well have been appealing to the men under his command, especially if there was implied a certain willingness to make light of himself (as the exchange at Ilium indicates). Flaccus, by contrast, seems to have been considerably more dour. 15 See, for example, chapter 5 for Marius and the travail he suffered at the hands of the stupidity of Rutilius Lupus. 16 See Memnon, Appian, and Dio in the places cited above; also Velleius 2.24, Plutarch, Sull. 23 and Luc. 7, 34, Strabo 13.1.27, Per. 82, Orosius 6.2.9, de vir. ill. 70.

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not have a Hector.17 He also subjected Nicomedia and Cyzicus, all the while allowing his soldiers their loot (Diod. 38.8; Dio frg. 104). In fact, after seizing Pergamum18 from the son of Mithridates, he even managed to come close to getting his hands upon the king himself at Pitane. Yet the chance to end the war then and there was missed due to the inactivity of Lucullus, the subordinate of Sulla who had come to the area with the fleet he had finally acquired. This man was entreated to use that fleet to cut of the enemy’s escape route by sea and thus bring about his capture, but perhaps from fear of what Sulla’s reaction would be if he and Fimbria were to receive credit for the king’s capture, Lucullus refused to help (Plutarch, Luc. 3).19 Mithridates was therefore allowed to escape to Mitylene, and from there he soon began to make overtures, not to Fimbria, but to Sulla, who had defeated his armies in Greece. These overtures then led to negotiations, and these in turn culminated in Sulla’s traversing into Asia with the ships of Lucullus, where in the city of Dardanus he and Mithridates concluded peace by means of a fairly generous treaty.20 With the war finished thereby, Sulla could next 17 Per. 83; Strabo 13.1.27 (who includes the joke, as has been seen in the previous note; Dio, fr.104, Appian, Mith. 8.53; Obseqens 56b; de vir. ill. 70, Augustine, De civ. 3.7; Orosius 6.2.11. 18 Per. 83, Memnon 24; Appian, Mith. 8. 52; de vir. ill. 70; see also Frontinus, 3.17.5 (mentioning a battle near the river Rhyndacus); and Orosius 6.2.10 (though it only describes the flight of the son of Mithridates). 19 The other sources for this episode—Per. 83 and Appian, Mith. 8.52—merely report that Fimbria failed to catch Mithridates, omitting the role Lucullus may have played in it 20 Plutarch (Sull. 23) reports that Mithridates had begin to make such overtures to Sulla before the fall of Pergamum. The terms eventually agreed to are spelled out in outline by Appian (Mith. 56–58; Per. 83, Florus 1.40.11–12, and Strabo 13.1.27–28 all merely note that Sulla crossed over into Asia to make the peace), to which other sources have supplied specifics. These terms included the evacuation of Asia; a fine of some denomination (according to Memnon 25, this was 3000; according to Plutarch in the place cited, 2000); the return of Roman prisonders and deserters; and some portion of his fleet (half of it, according to Velleius 2.23; seventy bronze-plated ships, according to Plutarch and Granius

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direct his attention to Italy, as the many fugitive optimates who had fled to him were doubtless entreating him to do (Orosius 5.20.1, Plutarch, Sull. 22; see previous chapter for the fugitives). This he was not going to do right away, as first and foremost he could not go back home and wrestle with armies there while leaving Fimbria at his back. Therefore, he soon led his army eastwards to remove the latter threat, and near a place called Thyateira he found Fimbria and commanded him to relinquish his illegal command. When Fimbria did not do so, Sulla began to besiege the latter’s camp. Fimbria’s men began to desert him in droves—it was one thing to attack cities and collect spoil, but another to make war on fellow Romans who outnumbered them and from whom no loot could be taken—and Fimbria was soon in dire straits indeed. Appian circulates the story that he then tried to Licinianus 35.78; eighty triremes, according to Memnon, loc. cit.). Memnon (loc. cit) also states that Sulla was to promise not to punish the states which had declared loyalty to Mithridates. It may well be imagined that Sulla had not agreed to this stipulation (Keaveney—1982, p. 108–109—is almost certainly correct in that he did not), and at any rate he did not abide by it if he had. Indeed, Plutarch (Sull. 25, Luc. 4) states that 20,000 talents were laid as an indemnity upon Asia beyond what Mithridates paid, presumably as recompense for their desertion. What all of this means is that as a result of the peace, Sulla was fairly well-stocked with coin and with ships. Plutarch further mentions that the treaty had infuriated the soldiers under Sulla’s command, who had wanted to make the butcher of so many Italian men pay far more vigorously (Sull. 24). Sulla defended himself to them by claiming that he feared the king would make an agreement with Fimbria to get better terms, a agreement which might involve joining forces with the latter against himself (indeed, Appian claims that Mithridates had in fact threatened to see if better terms could be gotten from Fimbria; loc. cit.) According to Florus, however, Sulla had made his peace with such easy stipulations because he had wanted to defeat Mithridates more quickly than completely (triumphare cito quam vero maluisset; loc. cit.). This is almost certainly true; Sulla wanted to end the war with a victory so he could return to Rome, and for this reason chose a partial triumph over a more complete one which might have taken several additional years of warfare to achieve. This, also, is the opinion of Keaveney (1982, p. 105) and Badian (1964, p. 225–226).

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have Sulla assassinated by a slave to no avail, and that as the army continued to desert, Fimbria asked for terms (Mith. 9.59–60). Sulla did not come to speak to him in person, but let it be known that Fimbria would not be harmed if he chose to fly to the coast and repair to any location of his choosing. It is, however, improbable that either the attempted murder or the negotiation and promise of safe conduct had occurred. Sulla had, after all, not exactly been receptive to letting his enemies go peacefully into exile, as his unsuccessful hunting down of Marius illustrated, and would almost certainly be even less inclined to allow this had his life been threatened. Nor is it likely that his past record of keeping promises would have convinced Fimbria of his safety even if Sulla had so pledged. At any rate, the ultimate outcome of the circumvallation was that Fimbria soon committed suicide, and his forces now belonged to Sulla.21 Appian also notes that Fimbria was conspicuously allowed burial, since Sulla had apparently decided at this point to present the image that he was not going to imitate Marius and Cinna in their behavior towards the dead.22 The Mithridatic War was therefore finished, and Sulla emerged from its conclusion as the supreme commander of all Roman forces in the East. This meant a number of things for Italy and for the men currently running the Roman government, none of them pleasant. On the one hand, peace had been made with Mithridates, but the latter had not been eliminated. This left open the possibility that he would be able to make trouble for Rome in the future, as would in fact end up being the case, albeit years later. More immediately, it meant that Sulla was now free to come home. Not only that, he was free to come home with the reputation as the conqueror of the East, and with the vast wealth gotten from looting and from the settlement with Mithridates, which included ready money and ships. Adding to his advantages was the fact that opposition to him could be found neither anywhere along the path 21 In additon to the place cited by Appian, see also Per. 83; Plutatch, Sulla 25; de vir. ill. 70; Orosius 6.2.11 (Diodorus 38.8 mentions only the suicide). 22 See also Keaveney for the capture of the army of Fimbria (1982, p. 100).

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back to Italy, nor behind him and he proceeded upon that path: the army which—it has been conjectured—had been sent to stop him from making peace with Mithridates had in fact ensured that very thing, and it in turn had been so spoiled by being allowed to take loot that it killed one of its commanders who tried to curtail that activity and deserted another when he proposed to make them fight against an enemy from whom more peril that profit could be expected. Over and above all these other things, the principal asset which Sulla retained was his army. Already battle-hardened from the Allied War, it had gained even more experience in the process of defeating an enemy which had turned out to be surprisingly more difficult than had been suspected. The fighting had been hard, but while the rewards had been ample, there can be no doubt that Sulla’s army was ready to come home and be given land on which to settle, which had almost certainly been promised to them by their general. To get it, that general would need to be safe, sound, and a legitimate pro-consul: it is greatly to be doubted that the Senate would furnish farms to the soldiers of an outlaw who, it is not to be forgotten, had led them against Rome itself. With this sort of an army—tempered by hard fighting and devoted to his cause, because, in fact, it was their own—Sulla could now begin to wind his way back to Italy.

3. A WAR OF WORDS AND THE RAISING OF ARMIES Although nothing can be found in the sources to confirm or refute it, speculation was made above that Cinna may have come up with a strategy whereby Sulla would be caught in the East between the victorious arms of Flaccus—ones supplemented by Asian supplies given as indemnities by Mithridates and other local potentates— and the new army Cinna himself would be raising. If such a plan had existed, it was now wrecked. In the first place, Flaccus had not been victorious and had not brought Mithridates to terms. Instead, he been killed and was replaced by Fimbria, who then prosecuted the war with such proficiency that he made Asia howl. Yet Fimbria, too, had not accepted the capitulation of Mithridates, who had sought peace, not from him, but from Sulla. This had meant that the wealth of Asia would now fall into Sulla’s hands, as indeed it had. Worse, Fimbria had also lost his command, but not to one of his legates, as Flaccus had. Instead, he had lost it to Sulla, and had

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gotten himself killed along the way. It was bad enough that Cinna was now bereft of Asian resources, and it was worse that Sulla now had them, but what was worst of all was that he had even lost the army to be used as the “anvil” upon which Sulla was to be struck. Even if such a grandiose strategy had not been on Cinna’s mind, it still was calamitous that nothing barred the way back to Italy for Sulla, victor over Asia, and his army. This was not the extent of the bad news, however. Sulla’s apparently sudden victory against Mithridates had come at a time when Italy did not seem in any way to have been prepared to confront the victorious proconsul adequately should he decide to make a swift return. It is almost certain that Cinna had dismissed the army with which he had converged on Rome by early 86, if not sooner. The balance of two legions had been sent east with Flaccus (Appian, Mith. 8.51), but the rest seem to have been sent home, and for many of them it may very well have been their first furlough since 90. Indeed, it may very well be that Cinna had gotten these men to follow him by means of promising such a demobilization (see Chapter 8). Italy had probably been desperate for an annus sine armis, and it is difficult to see how Cinna could have denied it. If this was the case, and doubtless it was, to have sent requests for men in 86 would have been a difficult venture at the very least. Moreover, it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume, as some scholars have,23 that there was a “peace faction” in the Senate who would have made the gathering of forces in 86 and early 85 difficult even had Cinna been so inclined to raise them. It may have been they responsible for the pocket commission Flaccus carried offering amnesty and a joint command to Sulla, and they definitely seem to have obstructed Cinna in other ways (for which mire below). Therefore, Cinna must have received word from the East—which would have made it progressively more evident that a war with Sulla was coming—with increasing displeasure and worry, and his reaction can only be imagined when he received the news that put the eventuality of that return beyond doubt. As Appian reports, such news came in the form of a dispatch that was sent by 23 So Keaveney (1982, p. 121–124), Lovano (p. 53–54), and Badian (1964, p. 222–224).

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Sulla shortly after the suicide of Fimbria (doubtless in the form of a typical proconsular report), which let the Senate know all that had transpired with the Mithridatic war24 and that the fighting in the East was over, leaving him free to come back home (Mith. 9.60). Sulla’s missive probably informed the Senate of the surrender of Mithridates and the terms he had obtained. It might also have spelled out the exact nature of the warmaking apparatus he had at his disposal in terms of men, money, and naval vessels, and possibly had let it be known the fate of Fimbria, as well. Hence, it might serve as something of a warning as to what might be in stre for Rome should they attempt to bar his homecoming. What probably was not made obvious was exactly when Sulla’s homecoming with these soldiers and equipment was going to take place, though that may have been guessed by the time of year in which the letter was received. It cannot be known for certain when that was, although Appian (the only source to mention the missive) seems to indicate that it was sent close to late summer, and had

24 On the nature of Sulla’s note as a typical proconsular dispatch, see Frier (p. 590–591). He, like Keaveney (1982, p. 117), takes note of the final line of that section of Appian cited above, one which states that Sulla had not acknowledged that he was a public enemy (οὐχ ὑποκρινόμενος ἐψ φίσ αι πολέμιος). Frier builds upon that line the speculation that Sulla deliberately avoided making any reference to his outlawry in this post, with the implication being that he was sending the exact response which would be expected from a legitimate promagistrate, as he considered himself to be. Frier interprets this as perhaps the beginnings of an overture to the nobility, who by accepting the report might overturn the sentence of public enmity e silentio. Keaveney, for his part, claims that the dispatch was tantamount to a “dare” to Cinna to dispute Sulla’s status as proconsul. Yet Sulla must have figured that an antagonism with Cinna was more than probable already. It would make better sense if Sulla had used this note to reinforce his contention that he had done nothing contrary to law and that, by extension, the move to declare him a hostis was itself illegitimate. He could therefore claim status as the aggrieved party, and perhaps attract those whose feelings were undecided as to whom to support. A softer stance taken by Sulla better explains what happens next, and his dispatch is interpretated as taking such a stance in the text above.

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therefore arrived in early fall, of 85.25 If that was the case, then it may have been safe to guess that Sulla’s return would not antedate the beginning of 84. There was, after all, likely still a great deal to arrange in the East, upon which the Senatorial hearers of the dispatch may have been able to count. In the meantime, personal responses to this communiqué of Sulla’s seem to have varied, although there seems to have been no official reply which was

25 Appian suggests that the post was sent after the death of Fimbria (loc. cit.). That death is recorded in the Periochae, but attempts to triangulate the date of the letter based on the report of that source is frustrated due to the fact that the Summary of book 83, in which Fimbria’s suicide is mentioned, has a chronology which is difficult to untangle. In that text, Fimbria’s end is reported after a notice which mentions that Cinna had been killed, which is known to have occurred in his second consulate with Carbo and fourth overall, and thus mid–84. This would seem to imply that both the suicide of Fimbria and the settlement of the Asian affairs had happened after Cinna had died. This is almost certainly false; Appian (BC 1.9.76) mentions that Cinna was alive when he heard of Sulla’s victory, and Velleius likewise mentions his death after Sulla had settled the East but before he had landed at Brundisium in 83 (2.24). What may account for the twisted sequence of events in the Periochae is a digression in Livy’s original book which was occasioned by mention of Sulla’s return. In other words, Livy contained a brief notice about the Asian events early on in book 83, but gave fuller details when it came time to describe Sulla’s landing much later in the book. In this aside, focus was shifted away from Rome to Asia, where Sulla’s victory and the death of Fimbria were given the complete attention with which Livy did not interrupt his narrative earlier on. Haug maintains that this sort of thing did not typically occur in Livy (p. 205), but the conjecture that it did in this case seems a better alternative than assuming an error on the part of Livy, on the part of Velleius and Appian, or from all three. All this having been said, the Periochae gives nothing by way of concrete details in terms of when such a dispatch may have been sent, and in fact does not mention the dispatch at all. In the absence of such reliable guidance, the only source giving any sort of chronology is the Mithridatic Wars, which suggests that winter quarters were taken by Sulla’s army shortly after the report was sent to Rome. It is this timing which is followed above.

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made to it by the Senate at all. The notice was therefore either rejected or ignored, but for a time the patres held to silence. On the other hand, the lack of official acknowledgement for this epistle did not mean that there was nothing being done about it. Cinna, for his part, already seems to have begun to draft a reply—in a manner of speaking—in the previous fall, when he managed to see to it that two men of some not inconsiderable command experience were elected consul. He himself was one of these two men, and his right-hand man Gn. Papirius Carbo—who had apparently fought the Lucani during the Allied war and had definitely served at Cinna’s side during the Bellum Octavianum26— was the other (Appian, 1.9.76; Per. 83). This election would manage to serve two purposes, in that it would not only give imperium to two seasoned generals, but it would also reward Carbo for his service. It may also have been a candidacy to which the nobiles would not object, at least at first.27 Having managed to come by a See previous chapter for Carbo’s military résumé. Concern for public opinion would seem to run counter to what is stated in the de viris illustribus (69), which declares in no uncertain terms that Cinna had made himself consul without the help of the people and proper election (iterum et tertio consulem se ipse fecit). Appian also seems to suggest he and Carbo did this for 84 as well as 85 (1.8.77), and the Periocha of book 83 hints at something similar. However, both Badian (1964, p. 223–227) and Lovano (107–108) think that the elections for both 85 and for 84 were legitimate ones. Lovano draws on the pressure put on Carbo to name a suffect later on as the grounds for his evidence (see below), and Badian on the acceptability of both men and the need to continue them in wartime as his. These arguments appear to be weakened by the aforementioned troublesome notice in Appian, which mentions that neither man would return to Rome to hold the comitia, and that they proclaimed themselves consuls. The full text reads τοῖς δ᾽ ἀμφὶ τὸν Κίνναν 26 27

εἴρ το μὴ στρατολογεῖν, ἕστε ἐκεῖνον ἀποκρίνασ αι. οἱ δ᾽ ὑπέσχοντο μὲν ὧδε πράξειν, οἰχομένων δὲ τῶν πρέσ εων ἐς τὸ μέλλον ἑαυτοὺς ἀνεῖπον ὑπάτους αὐτίκα, τοῦ μὴ διὰ τὰ ἀρχαιρέσια θᾶττον ἐπανήκειν (emphasis added). Such

an irregularity on the part of Cinna and Carbo does not square well with a theory that their offices were on the up and up. But it is possible to interpret this passage another way. Perhaps Appian had meant, not that the consuls did not return to Rome at all, but merely that they had arranged for elections to be held earlier than usual—id est, right after the

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capable and congenial colleague, Cinna now went to work arranging a proper reception for the returning conqueror Sulla, sending deputations throughout the peninsula to obtain goodwill, money, provisions, and soldiers (Per., loc. cit.; Appian, 1.8.76–77). It may be wondered the extent to which the novi cives, to whom Appian especially mentions that Cinna and Carbo made their appeals, would have been inclined to proffer their support. If, as has been speculated, the promised tribal rearrangements had not yet taken place, then they had still not gotten that for which they had shed blood in 87 after two years of waiting. Yet it may have also have been that the former Allies were willing to grant some sort of latitude to Cinna on account of the extenuating circumstances which attended the inactivity. It seems likely that Cinna had not regained Rome until late summer of 87, and had spent the rest of the year removing his opposition and conciliating a Senate whose members presumably were still as opposed as ever to equal rights for the ex-socii. Having done that, during the next year it seems that Cinna’s major legislative initiative was dealing with the financial crisis, whose necessity would likely have been patent. It could not be denied that the former Allies had been put off as Cinna scrambled to accomplish these things, but given that this delay was by compulsion and was for all that only for a year and a half by this point, the former Allies might have been inclined to be forgiving. It is probable that Cinna and Carbo may have pointed out during their recruiting drive that they had failed to deliver on their promise due to obstinate members of the Senate, but promised the novi that next year would finally be their year; dispatch from Sulla was received, which was possibly in fall of 85 anyway (see above)—and thus would not have to be interrupted in their recruiting to hold them at the usual time (Badian does note that the elections were perhaps a little earlier than usual, but does not justify why; it may be that this was his thought, as well). Such a theory may explain why there was no return to Rome, but that does not necessarily do away with the indication from both Appian and the de viris illustribus that both men had essentually made themselves the chief magistrates without election, something which the other sources neither confirm nor deny. Thus, any attempt to cast these two as scrupulous adherents to the letter of the law must at least be treated with skepticism.

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indeed, according to the Periochae (84) it was a promise that was kept (about which more below). Moreover, Cinna had actually accomplished some things for the Italians. As the consul of 86 he had seen to the election of Censors well before the year in which those officials were supposed to have been chosen, and even if their accounting had been defective, at least some Italians must have been registered and were thus able to vote for the highest magistracies and run for the lower ones. Finally, Cinna and Carbo likely would not have hesitated for a moment to point out that, even if they themselves had been tardy in fulfilling their obligations to the new citizens, the latter would doubtless do far worse with Sulla. Just as before, then, Cinna had made an appeal to the former Allies, and just as before they seem to have come through for him and, after his death, for his cause (as will be seen). It was, as Cinna almost certainly framed it, their cause too. While consuls were industriously engaged in such activities, Sulla had occupied himself putting matters in order in Asia and letting his men rest from battle there, busying themselves in collecting the indemnities their general had assessed but otherwise recovering from the strenuous campaigns they had carried out over the previous six years (Plutarch, Sull. 25; Appian, Mith. 9.63).28 In neither Italy nor in the camp of Sulla did there seem to have been any question as to the proconsul’s ultimate aim of returning to Rome and waging war on his enemies, an object which Vellieus claims had never been hidden (Vix quidquam in Sullae operibus clarius duxerim ... neque inlaturum se bellum iis dissimulavit; 2.24). Up to this point, the only real ambiguity had been whether or not he would be able to do so—he might, after all, have died in battle—but now even that uncertainty had been removed. It is, then, perhaps to be considered a matter of some curiosity that Appian would record a second letter sent by him to the Senate, in which he claimed that he would soon be coming to avenge himself on those who had wronged him, but that to everyone else (and especially the new citizens) he meant no harm (ἀλλ᾽ αὐτίκα καὶ τοῖσδε καὶ τῇ πόλει πάσῃ τιμωρὸς ἥξειν ἐπὶ τοὺς εἰργασμένους. τοῖς δ᾽ ἄλλοις πολίταις τε καὶ

28 See also Keaveney (1982, p. 110–112); Badian (1964, p. 227, 1970, p. 19) takes a slightly more cynical view of this activity.

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[emphasis added]; BC, 1.9.76). The tone of this missive was clearly threatening—Appian comments on its haughtiness (φρον ματος)—and it is to be wondered what Sulla sought to accomplish by it. Obviously he hoped to minimize resistance to himself by illustrating that he contemplated nothing ill for those who were not his enemies29 (whoever those actually were), but to what end? Even if this letter would have succeeded to absolute perfection and deprived Cinna and his supporters of any effective army with which to ward off Sulla, having lost it due to widespread belief in Sulla’s intentions not to harm anyone other than his enemies, it still indicated that Sulla would be taking certain vengeance on his inimici. But by returning to Rome, Sulla would theoretically lack any legal means to punish these enemies. It should not be forgotten that he was no longer consul, and his proconsular imperium would—in theory— vanish when he crossed the pomerium. How did he then intend to mete out the justice to his foes? Did he intend to prosecute them? This would seem to place a far greater trust on the ever-tentative outcome of trials than his expression of the certainty of his revenge would indicate. Did he hope by such a letter to persuade the Senate to grant him dispensation to enter the city armed (again, but legally this time) for the purpose of rooting out his adversaries and slaughtering them? And, if so, what else did he contemplate? Did he intend to use his army to change the laws? The fact that he pointedly mentioned not tampering with the rights of the new citizens seemed designed to reassure on that score, but, again, how could he have legally hoped to change the laws anyway as a proconsul? Did he intend on winning another consulate for himself, by sword-point if necessary? Or was he already contemplating the revival and modification of an ancient and longunused office by which his very word would become law, one he would eventually claim for himself? An attempt to use this letter to try and ascertain what Sulla’s mindset was, and, more importantly, what he envisioned for the νεοπολίταις προύλεγεν οὐδενὶ μέμψεσθαι περὶ οὐδενός

29 As pointed out by Keaveney (1982, p. 119), Lovano (p. 107), and Frier (p. 590–591).

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future, is by definition speculation of the profoundest sort. However, the question is not entirely uninteresting. When Sulla did finally return, he set about fashioning changes to a great many aspects of Rome’s society, changes whose bredth indicate lengthy contemplation and planning. This would seem to imply that such contemplation and planning had started in Asia, if not sooner.30 Then again, Sulla could only make those changes legally by means of extraordinary powers endowed upon him by the Senate, ones given (or, rather, forcibly extracted) as a response to the devastations of the previous year. It is difficult to see how those powers Sulla attained could have been acquired save through the same emergencies. Yet it seems that these were the very catastrophes that he was now trying to avoid, even though doing so would deprive him of the chance to acquire the powers needed to bring about what may have been his already-formed conception of what the Commonwealth ought to be. If Sulla had planned on remaking Rome, he would need an authority which had only been given in answer to the direst emergences. He therefore needed those emergencies to come to pass, but it seems that he was simulataneously trying to negotiate out of these. In then end, Sulla’s thought process cannot be known, and hence might be most profitably left here. To return to the matter at hand: it is hard to see how a letter with such ominous connotations might have actually brought about the peaceful resolution Sulla seemed to want by it. Still, a different and more plausible intent for Sulla’s letter may be closer at hand than the above might indicate. Sulla was likely too much of a realist to think that war at this stage could be evaded, but things might be easier for him when that war inevitably came if there was already in place a well-articulated and repeatedly offered justification for his actions. This letter might have been the first step towards the construction of that justification, one establishing that his only motivation would be the restoration of his injured rights. Such a line of reasoning might win supporters to his side, keep certain parties from getting involved, acquire the approval of those from whom approval was desired, or ease the consciences of those who would otherwise be troubled by 30

So Keaveney (1982, p. 163–165) and Badian (1970, p. 20).

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what he had done and would do. Hence, Sulla might have been creating a role for himself of the maligned proconsul merely trying to return home in peace in the face of the wicked designs of the criminals who had wronged him. It was a role similar to the one he had played in 88, and Sulla may have hoped to have similar success with it. No matter what Sulla’s intentions with that missive actually were, the response he ended up getting was an embassy sent to him from the Senate at the bidding of its princeps, L. Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had perhaps observed that Sulla had pointedly mentioned that he had been named a hostis in this second letter, something he had not done in the first.31 As a consequence, the princeps may have believed that this was the sticking point which seemed to gurantee war, and if that condemnation could be revoked, perhaps war might be averted. At the very least, the Senate could at least try to make offers of peace and thereby deflect accusations of having determined for war without having explored every alternative.32 Envoys were then duly sent to Sulla as winter approached (Per. 83, Appian 1.9.77). In the meantime, the Senate seems to have come up with the idea that, as a show of good faith, the consuls should stop their recruiting until Sulla’s response was heard. To Cinna and Carbo such a decree would have instantly been perceived as exactly what it was, which was the very height of optimistic foolishness. Even had Sulla not been known for his swift movements (which he was), to discontinue making ready in the face of a potential enemy who already had his army in place would have been madness. Therefore, the recipients of these orders—not being insane—paid little heed to them, but continued on gathering men and materiel as earlier. If, as has been speculated, the consuls had already held the electoral comitia right after the receipt of Sulla’s first dispatch, they may already had had themselves re-elected for 84 and thus were free not to have to go to Rome to hold elections (which Appian states is the case, 1.9.77), leaving them to continue their work uninterrupted.33 Appian, loc. cit. This is the thought of Frier, p. 592; more below. 33 See earlier note. 31 32

τοὺς ἐχ ροὺς πολέμιον αὑτὸν ἀναγράψαι;

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In spite of his reputation for celerity, for the moment, Sulla did not appear to be making haste towards Rome, and devoted himself to correspondence and the collection of indemnities while Carbo and Cinna devoted themselves to the collection of men. These were coming along nicely for the latter, but it still must have troubled Cinna that Sulla’s army would have a great advantage in terms of experience and cohesion than his own armies would when the showdown inevitably came. It is for this reason that Cinna proceeded to make a terrible and, it would turn out, fatal error, one which ultimately showed the boundaries of his leadership abilities. Throughout his career Cinna had shown himself to be a capable politician, an occasionally fine orator, and a soldier of some excellence: he seemed instinctively to know how to motivate men and in particular to know how to motivate them to act to his advantage, as well as to their own. However, as a strategist he was not, perhaps, of the highest order. His campaigns in the Allied War had been crowned with success, but in that war he had inherited the army and perhaps the tactics of his predecessor L. Porcius Cato. He seems to have had the good sense to use his men to complement the plans of Pompeius Strabo, but even this he may well have done so at the explicit orders of the then-consul to whom (in theory) he would have become subordinate on Cato’s death. In addition, his maneuvers during the Bellum Octavianum had been first-rate, but they also may not have been his: his general staff contained at least one full-fledged military genius in the person of C. Marius, and another one in the making as represented by Q. Sertorius. It is hard to imagine but that their counsel had done much to promote Cinna’s cause, up to and including the designing of his plans for military success. Too, Cinna himself had probably been wise enough to have counselled Flaccus not to close with Sulla, but if his grand strategy really had been as speculated above—id est, to raise an army in Italy and crush Sulla between this force and that of Flaccus in the East—then it was one which was certainly full of daring, but which might generously be categorized as one that depended on a number of variables and outright luck, to say the very least. All of these facts may indicate that Cinna’s own strategic vision was somewhat limited, and perhaps point to a way of thinking which tended to contemplate broad, bold moves without taking into account all the potential outcomes and sources of difficulty.

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Such a tendency might well explain the disaster which soon befell the consul. According to the narratives, as the gathering of men continued, Cinna seems to have decided to collect all forces in Ancona; this was likely done sometime towards the end of winter in early 84 (although winter was apparently not quite over, as will be seen). What it was they were to do there is not entirely obvious, although those accounts which give any indication as to their purpose suggests that it was from Ancona that they were to board ship to go and fight Sulla. So far, at least, do those sources—the Periochae (83) and Appian (1.9.77–78)—agree, but while the Periochae only states so much, Appian adds more. According to that author, Cinna intended to embark his men onto ships at Ancona and sail from thence to Liburnia on the Illyrian coast, which was to be their base of operations against the returning proconsul. Why it is that Illyria would have been chosen for the place to begin an assault on Sulla is not explained, and indeed such a bizarre move resists easy explanation. In the first place, if Cinna had intended to fight Sulla somewhere in Hellas, then crossing into Illyria from Ancona seems like a far more difficult and dangerous undertaking than simply going by ship from Brundisium into Epirus, and doing battle with the proconsul there or nearby. Nor does it seem that this latter route was rejected because it was barred to them, as it seems to have been wide open. Sulla, it seemed, was still in Asia, and if it is to be assumed (as it has been above) that his second letter to the Senate had been received towards the beginning of winter, then very likely he would continue to be in Asia until spring. If Cinna’s object was to get at Sulla, why would they take an indirect path to and through Liburnia, instead of the open straight one right ahead of them? To answer this question, at least one scholar has come up with a hypothesis as to what Cinna’s plan may have been. According to this theory, Cinna was considering making the voyage to Liburnia in order to give the soldiers a training mission in Dalmatia, and therefore give them some experience before coming to blows with Sulla’s armies in the war to come. After all, very few expeditions had ever been fought in the area before this time, and against an unknown opponent the combat may have been easy. Furthermore, in 78—the first year after the disturbances in Rome and Italy had finally become manageable—an expedition would be sent there, suggesting that the Dalmatians may have needed chastising anyway,

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and that this need may have existed for several years. Finally, Cinna’s son as suffect consul of 32 may have advised Octavian to do the same thing before confronting Antony.34 There may also be other explanations for why Cinna would choose to go there. Italy, it will be remembered, had endured four years of hard fighting from 91 through 87. Perhaps Cinna thought to take the war elsewhere to spare the land from even more devastation,35 from which it may just have been beginning to recover (although Greece had also just seen three years of fighting of its own). Such a plan would certainly be audacious, but—as may have been the case with many of Cinna’s plans—it did not take into account certain factors, of which what may have been the most important was that Sulla’s whereabouts may not have been known for certain in the winter of 84. When last heard from he was in Asia, as has been seen, but even as Cinna was doubtless drawing together his forces, Sulla seems to have been setting sail for Greece; he made the Piraeus in three days, according to Plutarch (Sull. 26). It turns out that Sulla was to stay in Greece for the rest of the year, but he also had the luxury of being able to take the leisurely pace of someone who was not in a hurry. If he had managed to discover that the majority of the army to be used against him was somewhere in Dalmatia, it is not inconceivable that someone of his typical speed of action would have immediately sailed for Italy. If he were to do so, then the homes of those on the Dalmatian exercise would be defenseless in the face of such a threat, denuded of men who were instead engaged in a training mission across the water. This was something which must have crossed the minds of Cinna’s men as they assembled into the harbor at Ancona, where ships might take them away from Italy and leave their homes vulnerable to a swift attack. Moreover, there were a number of potentially unforeseen factors that could have lurked in Illyria: the tribes there might be far fiercer than had been anticipated, leaving the army to have to 34 So Badian (1964, p. 226–228), followed by Frier (p. 592–594); contra Keaveney, who seems to think they were to be led directly against Sulla (1982, p. 121–122). 35 Greenhalgh also holds this as a motive for Cinna (p. 13).

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contend with a tough enemy on foreign ground with possibly little chance for spoil. There could also have been disease, or famine, and in this way the army there might be destroyed; such would mean that even if Sulla did not pounce the moment they left Italy and took his time, he could still return and have his way with the peninsula, whose defenders had been wiped out. The result was that a campaign there was probably a frightening proposition, and one which Cinna’s new army apparently did not cherish. This army might well fight and die for him in Italy, but a pointless sortie into Dalmatia would not seem to serve any purpose other than to put them and theirs in harm’s way. Accordingly, as Cinna summoned his transports to ferry the men to Liburnia, these may have started to succumb to the fear and resentment to which such a deployment might well have given rise. The first set of departures seem to have made it to their destination without incident, but the second set encountered a storm which sapped their resolve to fight and caused them to desert (Appian 1.9.78).36 Having heard of these desertions, the remaining soldiers in Italy refused to board their transports. Upon getting wind of this, Cinna seems to have become infuriated and to have called an assembly of the men for the purpose of delivering a harangue to upbraid his men and restore order. Based on his earlier experiences as legate to Cato, Cinna probably ought to have known better than attempt to chastise men who were frightened and near mutiny, but apparently he had forgotten the lessons of the episode.37 At any rate, as he was headed to address the troops, the lictor who was clearing a path for him struck a soldier, at which point the soldier struck him back. Cinna then ordered that soldier’s arrest, and soon stones were being hurled and daggers drawn. One of the latter seems to have found its way into Cinna,38 whereupon he then died. 36 Much has been made about a line in this passage of Appian which suggests that the reason the soldiers became disaffected was their lack of desire to fight their fellow Romans, although the bases for such a claim are actually rather slight. For a more complete discussion of the significance of Ancona, see Appendix U. 37 See chapter 6. 38 In addition to Appian and the Periochae in the places cited above, Cinna’s murder by his soldiers is also mentioned by the de vir. ill. (69, in

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Cinna’s murder had not necessarily been an indication that the men under his command no longer meant to fight for his cause. Very likely it signified merely an unwillingness to fight overseas away from Italy, and it may very well have not even meant that, but rather broadcast only a fear of taking to sea before storm season had ended.39 The undisputed result of it, though, was that all consular power was now in the hands of Cinna’s colleague. Carbo’s next step was to take the wholly sensible action of bringing back which it was attributed to “too much cruelty”, on Cinna’s part, which in this case as in many others is likely a cipher for an attempt to exercise discipline), Orosius (5.19.24), Exsuperantius (29), and Velleius (2.24). Dio also notes his murder (45.47.2 and 52.13.2, observing in the latter passage that it came as a punishment for wanting supreme power), as does Plutarch’s Sertorius (6). The latter’s Pompeius, however, has a much more interesting account of Ancona (5). According to this text, the youthful Pompeius nondum Magnus had at one point joined Cinna’s army, but due to some unspecified accusation of wrongdoing levelled against him, he deserted from it. When his absence was noted, the men believed Cinna had killed him and grew furious due to their abundant love for the putative victim. Their rage then soon gave way to violence on account of the alleged tyranny Cinna exercised over them, and a would-be regicide centurion caught up with the consul as he fled and stabbed him. Interesting, again, but probably not accurate; Badian’s comment on this passage—“this has rightly caused nothing but amusement”—is perhaps the best evaluation of a rather risible anecdote (1964, p. 226–227). 39 Even Keaveney will concede this point (1982, p. 131); it is also advocated by Lovano (p. 109). The latter mentions that the conditions which led to the mutiny—if such a brief outburst can appropriately be referred to as such—may have been exacerbated by the younger Pompeius and his recruitment efforts nearby; Frier (p. 593) also refers to “the sinister Pompey”—apparently the adjective seems to attach itself naturally to this family (see previous chapter)—who was lurking in the area, fanning dissent. Such may very well have contributed to the difficulties encountered by Cinna, although such a conjecture is ultimately based only on Plutarch’s rather comical anecdote about the disruptive influence he was having on Cinna’s army (see previous note). All the other souces describing the recruiting the young Pompeius would eventually do tend to suggest that he had begun undertaking rather later, and if indeed if he had withdrawn from Cinna’s expedition, he likely would have wanted to have drawn as little attention to himself as possible.

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the men from Liburnia (Appian, loc. cit.), canceling the abortive expedition, and reassigning the ships assembled from Sicily and elsewhere (ones which had been intended for transport) to coastal duties. Despite these redeployments, the consul seems to have been left with some anxiety about the condition of his army. For this reason (according to Appian) he did not immediately return to Rome to oversee the election of a suffect, concerning himself instead with steadying the troops under his command and with continuing the preparations for the war. The Senate, however, became insistent, and upon threats of deposition from office, Carbo did come home (Appian 1.5.78, Velleius 2.24). It appears that the interval which had elapsed before the summons to return and his capitulation to it had not entirely restored Carbo’s faith in his soldiers, and it may have been for this reason that he contemplating asking the Senate for authorization to ask the Italians for hostages as an additional pledge of security, as it seems he had already done with the Gauls in Placentia (Valerius Maximus 6.2.10). This last, it seems, had not apparently gone so well, and the Senate denied his request (Per. 84). Carbo seems to have been looking for pledges of faith from anyone who could give them, and in this light he may very well have decided that the best way to acquire the faith of others would be to make a show of his own. Therefore, it was probably at this time that he finally redeemed the promise made by Cinna and secured the redistribution of the ex-Allies into all the tribes (Periochae, loc. cit.).40 By means of this good turn, Carbo may have There was apparently one small punitive provision in this new tribal redistribution law, which was that only those Italians who had accepted the citizenship via the lex Julia were to be merged into most of the 31 rural tribes. Those who had surrendered later were still subjected to the penalty of being restricted to fewer tribes (some distinction, it is presumed, had to be made between “loyal” and “disloyal” former Allies), but these tribes no longer voted last. This did not bring about complete voting equity between the former Allies and the Romans, but it was probably about as close to it as could be approached. Additionally, to the Allies who had held out until 88 and 87 and had initially accepted a citizenship whose rights had been far more limited than this, these measures seemed to have represented a compromise they could endure (see also Salmon 1958, p. 40

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hoped to garner both the gratitude of the Italians as well as their support based on simple self-interest. As far as the latter, Carbo could point out that Sulla’s latest letter may have included a promise to respect the rights of the Italians, but that promise may have been merely to respect those which they had won up to when the letter was sent (which was probably the Fall of 85). These rights would have been few enough: some of the Italians had been registered in the census, and the Samnites and the Lucani were given the civitas, but up to 84 (it has been argued) they lacked effective power in the comitia tributa. Now that they had it, it remained to be seen if Sulla would be quite so willing to promise to leave these rights alone. Given his previous hostility to the measure which was at least apparent, if not actual,41 the redistribution might be the very thing Sulla would be inclined to annul if he gained the power to do so. Furthermore, even if Sulla would give a vow that he would not take this action, Carbo could still exploit the unique ways by which Sulla had fulfilled his pledges in the past, ones not designed to inspire confidence in the air-tightness of his word. Carbo’s legislative initiative in this direction seems to have been crowned with success, and the redistribution law was carried. His endeavors to elect a suffect to replace Cinna had not done 182–184, and Sherwin-White, p. 155–157). As for the dating of this measure, see the discussion on the census and the supporting notes in the Chapter 8, as well as Appendix T, in which it is argued that it should be placed somewhere between 85 and 84. That it was in 84 when this occurred and not 85 is the opinion of Salmon (p. 377 and note 2), Keaveney (1982, p. 121 and 1987, p. 184), Lovano (p. 62–63, although he states that it may have come earlier), and Frier (p. 598). That it was Carbo and not Cinna who had done this is advocated by Frier and Keaveney (in the latter of his two works just cited; in the earlier, he believed it had been done by Cinna, as he does in another article; 1982b, p. 507). Since Lovano and Salmon attribute it only to the “Marian” and “Cinnan” factions, respectively, there seems to be little basis for rejecting the notion that it was passed in 84 and by Carbo, as is stated above. 41 See Salmon (1967, p. 378), who argues that Sulla could claim— however truthfully—that he had never actually opposed the redistribution of the novi into all the tribes, but had simply set himself against the transfer of his Mithridatic command which required that he vacate the redistribution laws of Sulpicius alongside his provincial assignment.

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quite so well. The sources report an almost comedic set of barriers to this election, of which bad omens cancelled one, and a thunderstorm cancelled another. After this last he seems to have resolved to leave off further elections and remain sole consul for the remainder of the year, which may have been more than halfway over by this point (Velleius 2.24; Appian, 1.9.78).42 The Senate could not deny that Carbo had done his duty in finding a colleague, even if he had failed to locate one, and let this measure stand. Yet if Carbo would have no partner in the highest magistracy, he would at least have the renewed partnership of the novi cives. His redistribution of them—one to which it seems the Senate gave its endorsement—would give the one-time Italians a further reason to stay fast and maintain their loyalty to the government in a way which would conceivably have worked even better than hostages would have.43 There can be little doubt that in this fashion Carbo did much to guarantee for himself large forces (more directly) in the war which was almost certain to come. Such a war was, again, almost certain to come, although it was perhaps not inevitable just yet. At about the same time as Cinna was collecting his forces for the ill-starred Dalmatian expedition, 42 This passage in Appian states that the second attempt had happened just before the summer solstice. 43 Frier’s dismissal of this measure as “certain to antagonize the nobility further, but … ill-suited to persuade Italians of the need for war” (p. 598) seems to take insufficient notice of the implications of this law. Up to the point of its passage, Sulla could promise to abide by the privileges which the Italians had hitherto attained and may even have been inclined to keep his word, since these privileges were not substantial. The future Dictator might not have been pleased by the gift of the civitas to the Samnites and the Lucani, but since they and all other Italians had very little political power before the redistribution, he may not have been too exercised by it. Things would be different after redistribution: by means of the new law, what amounted to full political equality with the Romans would be given to the Allies, something the nobilitas had opposed for decades and which Sulla might very well have continued to oppose as well. If such an opposition was made clear to or even suspected by the Italians, they might very well respond to the threat of Sulla with great vigor. After all, to gain these rights the Italians had fought for Cinna, and to keep them, they would quite probably fight for Carbo as well.

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Sulla seems to have left Asia and sailed to Greece, as has been seen (Plutarch, Sull. 26; Appian, Mith. 63). Very likely in the same launch went some agents of his who accompanied the returning envoys which Flaccus the princeps had sent in response to Sulla’s letter. These quite probably made it back to Rome as Carbo’s redistribution laws and abortive suffect elections were being pursued. It has been convincingly argued44 that what those ambassadors of Flaccus had represented was what seems to have become a standard senatorial legation to recalcitrant magistrates or former magistrates: in response to Sulla’s threatening epistle, the Senate had sent representatives asking if he was willing to put himself into the fides of the Senate and acknowledge its authority. This legation probably had not specified any specific protections it was to accord to Sulla, and may have been sent so that, officially, the Senate could absolve itself of any responsibility for the Civil War. This absolution would put the blame for any future nastiness on the ex-magistrate, who could now be cast as an enemy invader. Yet if this was their mission, the emissaries may also have communicated the Senate’s amenability to compromise, and to what may have been their surprise, Sulla seems to have projected a similar amenability on his part. Appian and the Periochae state that Sulla indicated that war could be forestalled if first and foremost the declaration of his status as outlaw would be revoked and he would be restored to his rights, titles, honors, and property (Per. 84; Appian 1.9.79). Appian adds that Sulla also demanded the same for the others who had taken refuge with him, and in addition wanted a priesthood. As far as his enemies went, Sulla continued, he would never deviate from his hatred of those whom he claimed had wronged him, but he would not act against any of those whom the Senate had declared were not to be touched. He would, however, not be disbanding his army, at least not right away: that would stay together as long as it would be needed to guarantee his safety and that of the state. Under such terms, Sulla would come home without violence (Appian, loc. cit.). Most of these terms may very well have seemed perfectly reasonable, and in fact they were designed so to seem: it would be 44

By Frier, p. 592; se also above.

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difficult to argue that an erasure of his prior condemnation, the restitution of what had been his, and protection for his friends and associates would be too much to ask for someone who had done so much for the state. Furthermore, a priesthood could easily be granted. But this last part provided the difficulty: Sulla was expecting to come back into Italy and return to Rome with his army, over which he would exert control to ensure the “safety” of himself and the Senate. It could probably well be imagined the ways in which Sulla would chose to keep himself and the patres secure with such men, and as a result the final provision doomed the measure. Carbo and any men towards whom Sulla had inimicitiae could never afford to let him keep his army in being, and even those who were not amongst Sulla’s enemies might well have recognized that what Sulla was proposing was only a short step away from undisguised tyranny. It may well have been that to those who looked upon Sulla’s demands in this way, “war seemed more useful” (bellum videbatur utilius; to used the words found in the Periocha of Livy’s book 84): it would indeed more useful than, perhaps, submission to slavery, which was not entirely far away from what would have been the outcome of Sulla’s maintaining his army in or near Rome. Even so, by rejecting these terms, Carbo and those who agreed with him would present the image of arrogance and refusal to reach an equitable settlement, while Sulla could simultaneously assume the mantle of the injured party and frustrated peacemaker. He could also attract those members of the nobilitas who were truly torn about whom to support, and these—alongside those who simply detested the government of Cinna and Carbo, or who had had personal grudges against the consuls—would soon find their way to the Sulla when he came to Italy, as he would in the next year. Nor does this necessarily indicate that Sulla attepted deception with his terms, as it might very well have been that Sulla would have put off war if the Senate had acquiesced to his proposals, since their doing so would effectively put the commonwealth at his mercy. However, Sulla must have known full

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well that these terms would not and could not be accepted, and he planned accordingly.45 If in fact Sulla had thought his terms would be rejected, then he was correct. On the other hand, it does not seem that his messengers even waited to hear what the resolution of the Senate on the matter was one way or the other. Upon arrival in Brundisium Sulla’s heralds had made the discovery that Cinna had So argued by Frier (p. 595–596), although he does not mention the implications of Sulla’s retention of an army and of the salut public he would be feared to guarantee with it. Frier’s consistent assertion is that Sulla’s exchange of letters with the Senate was carefully designed propaganda, and that Sulla never really intended on having his proposal accepted, but rather only wanted to make it appear that he was willing to find a peaceful solution. Very likely it was indeed propaganda, but it may go to far to claim they were a tissue of lies; he may very well have meant what he said, given the powers that his terms—if accepted—would leave him. Keaveney is far more generous to Sulla, making him out to be a determined advocate of peace and protector of the best men, although he also acknowledged that Sulla had nothing to lose by these negotiations (1982, p. 122). Indeed he had not, and this is seen by some of the things which are not mentioned in the final letter, namely the Allies. No more promises are made to guarantee their rights, because in theory Sulla could not make such guarantees: the upshot of his letter was that he was willing to return to Rome as a privatus, who would therefore had no choice but to recognize whatever laws were in force and could not—legally, at least— do anything to change them other than speak his mind in the Senate. Likewise his vow that he would not harm his enemies, since as a privatus he would have no legal power to do so. In sum, Sulla might very well have been willing to return to private standing on the stipulation of keeping his army, since with it he would have more than enough de facto power to achieve whatever he wished and at the same time keep himself safe from prosecution and murder. If the Senate was so thirsty for peace that they would accept it at such a price, then it cannot be doubted that Sulla would have sold it to them for this amount. However, he must also known or at least suspected that the Senate had more vim that this, at least for the moment. Sulla could therefore present the illusion of compromise which would cost him nothing and let his opponents reject it, which would at least put Sulla the moral high ground through having had his reasonable demands countered with an unreasonable rejection. 45

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died, and they swiftly returned to inform of this fact. Sulla seems to have regarded this this situation as one of major advantage to himself: Cinna’s murder had deprived the peninsula of one of its best remaining commanders, its acknowledged leading citizen, and a figure whose talent for attracting the devotion of men seems to have been substantial. Moreover, there were other indications which seemed to suggest that, without Cinna’s aid, the remaining consul Carbo would not possess the strength to keep a tight grip on the Roman world. As evidence for this apparent weakness, there was the situation in Spain. There, M. Licinius Crassus, the son of the former consul slain during 87, had emerged from hiding upon the death of Cinna and began to gather a small army, with which he allegedly captured the Spanish town of Malaca and plundered it (although Crassus himself always denied having done so; Plutarch, Crass. 6). Likewise, Q. Metellus Pius had, it seems, been found: he had gone to Africa—understandably enough, given his father’s successes there—and had raised an army. In fact, Crassus had briefly gone to join Metellus before a squabble between the two had led the former to go directly to Sulla (Plutarch, loc. cit.). Metellus himself apparently still held aloof from Sulla for a time, but upon being defeated in battle by C. Fabius Hadrianus, the governor sent to Africa by Cinna, he seems to have reconsidered his position; he would soon be joining Sulla as well (Per. 84; Appian 1.9.80). Finally, in Picenum Pompeius Stabo’s son seemed to have been similarly engaged in the beginnings of recruiting men for uncertain purpose,46 recruitment which was unimpeded—for the time being—by the consul. To Sulla it may very well have looked like Carbo was beginning to lose his handle on the machinery of government, having proved unwilling or unable to prevent the seeds of three potential challenges to it, and that this was the time to march. The raising of his own small army is described briefly in several sources, including Cicero (de leg. Man. 21.61, Phil. 5.43–44); Hirtius (Bellum Africanum 22.2–4), the Periochae (85), Velleius (2.29), and Appian (1.9.80); the reports in Dio (frg. 107), Diodorus (38.9), and Plutarch (Moralia, 203; Pomp. 6) suggests that what he intended to do with this army might not at first have been entirely clear, on which more below. See also Greenhalgh, p. 13. 46

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Nevertheless, matters were not as hopeless as all of that for the government in Rome. For one thing, a “peace party” may have been active in the Senate, but this merely indicates that the functions of the city were proceeding as normal. Indeed, the fact that the tribunes threatened Carbo with deposition unless he were to elect a suffect is a sign that throughout this period the organs of the Roman state continued to function as they always had, even if there were the irregularities of iterated consulates for Carbo and Cinna. Ultimately Carbo would not manage to elect a suffect, as has been seen, but in spite of the claims of some modern scholars, this does not seem to have offended the majority of the Senate in such a way that their offense was recorded in the sources, and it certainly does not seem to reflect the desires of a dominatio Carbonis which caused the nobilitas to turn to Sulla in disgust. Carbo had exerted himself twice in the effort to elect a colleague, and the two unsuccessful attempts seem have been enough; Carbo was apparently allowed to retain power without difficulty for the rest of his term, power which he would dutifully lay down at the end of the year. Crassus and Metellus Pius may indeed have been operating in the provinces, and Pompeius beginning to in Picenum, but all three presented challenges to stamping them out beyind the strength or resolve of Carbo, which both seem to have been victorious. In the first place, if Cinna’s soldiers had revolted over heading to Illyria due to the prospect of Sulla’s return in their absence, then there was little chance they could be persuaded to go to Spain to eliminate Crassus, whose numbers were fairly insignificant anyway. Had Crassus come to Italy, Carbo and his men would probably have trimmed him with no difficulty. Likewise, Carbo’s soldiers would not be taken to Africa to deal with Metellus, not due to fear of the latter nor of lack of devotion to the former, but because they needed to guard theor homes against Sulla. In fact, Metellus was eventually taken care of by the Praetor in Africa without help from Rome anyway. As far as Pompeius, it is to be wondered on what legal authority the latter was to be stopped by the government, as it does not seem that recruiting soldiers was illegal. In fact, it may very well be that the decree which the Periochae reports as having arisen in the Senate at about this time, a law advocated by both Carbo and Marius the Younger which called for the dissolution of all armies everywhere, was probably designed to address this very fact (Per. 84). Almost

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certainly this law did not call for disarmament of armies raised by the government, as it is difficult to see how the provinces could be maintained without them. What it probably was instead was a declaration that forces raised without an officially-sanctioned dilectus would now be contrary to law, thus making private armies illegal.47 Finally, Carbo himself may not have been as inspiring a commander as Cinna had been, but he seemed to have most of the peninsula behind him (Appian, 1.9.81–82). His successors in the consulate would, as well (Appian, 1.10.86), such when the war finally came they would provide him with an army which, according to various sources, may have numbered as many as 100,000 men.48 For all these reasons, it may very well be that Sulla’s agents were a bit over-hasty in their rush back to Sulla if they believed that Cinna’s loss was a crippling blow to the government in Rome; Cinna was, as has been seen, a fine commander, but it seems that under Carbo and his successors there was plenty of fight to be had in Italy, and Sulla was soon to discover this fact. As the end of the autumn of 84 approached, the entire Roman world seemed to be making preparations for war. In Africa and Spain fighting men had been raised by the opponents of Cinna and This would seem to make more sense than a law designed as a propaganda move to force Sulla to persist in keeping his army in being against the will of the Senate and thereby forfeit his image of peacemaker, as Keaveney (1982 p. 123), Lovano (p. 110), and Frier (p. 596) seem to indicate; it is, after all, difficult to see what sort of propaganda advantage casting Sulla as a lawbreaker on these grounds would have for the side that would obviously be doing the same lawbreaking. On the other hand, by making private legions illegal, the government would have justification for moving against Pompeius, and indeed it would do soon thereafter (Diodorus, 38.9; Plutarch, Pomp. 7). 48 According to Appian, 200 cohorts of 500 men each at first, although later this would be increased according to that same authority (1.9.82); hence, perhaps, the report in Florus of 500 cohorts (or eight legions, 2.9.19–22), or that which Plutarch says was Sulla’s own estimate of 450 cohorts (Sull. 27). The number given by Velleius (2.24) of 200,000 stretches credibility. For additional speculation on the forces faced by Sulla, see Lovano, p. 113–114 and note 25. 47

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his right-hand-man-turned-successor Carbo, and some of these were already en route to join Sulla’s considerable forces in Hellas. Armies inimical to the government were even being mustered in Italy itself, but a far larger force in that peninsula was being assembled to defeat and destroy the returning hostis. In spite of the elaborate choreography of correspondence between Sulla and the government, each of which seeming to propose peace, that was decidedly not what loomed on the horizon. Among those who braced themselves to weather that was coming were thousands of people who had been born Italici but were now Romans. These had, indeed, become fully Romani thanks to the passage of long overdue law which gave them nearly complete voting privileges, and the posture they assumed as the dark clouds were gathering was one in support of the consul who finally repaired their broken rights. However, it was probably as much fear as gratitude which led them to take up arms again, since they faced an opponent who claimed to have no interest in wresting away what they had finally won, but who was known for deception. Indeed, it may well have been that Sulla could do no other than to take away their rights in the same manner as he had done earlier. In order to erase his sentence of outlawry, he would have to annul all the legislation made by the government which had declared it and its successors, just as he had been forced to do with the Sulpician laws. Furthermore, the army at his back would not only want Sulla to be a citizen in good standing for the sake of their general, but would need him to be thus if they ever hoped to gain the lands he had almost certainly promised them on their discharge. The sources are almost unanimous in their assertion that—no matter what his dispatches may have said—it was Sulla’s intention from the beginning had been to return to Italy in arms; Velleius (see above) states this, as does Appian, who at no place ever mentions Sulla’s willingness to disband his army (nor does any other source). Since a return at the head of legions would mean blood, Sulla seems to have become determined to have it. Thus, it seemed patent to all concern that there was no longer a question of whether blood would come. Nor was it likely any longer a question of when that blood would come: it would begin when the spring came and the season for safe crossing from the ocean arrived. Rather, what remained uncertain is how much of

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that blood was to be spilt, and as events would show, it would be more than many, perhaps, could have imagined.

4. CIVIL WAR, 83 BCE During what must have been the very tense winter of 84 to 83, L. Scipio and C. Norbanus were elected consuls. It was a fairly wise choice, in the sense that both were men who, as promagistrates, had achieved some military success. Norbanus had managed to repel the remnants of the army of the Lucani and Samnites at Rhegium and had prevented their invasion of Sicily in 87 (see previous chapter). Scipio, for his part, had apparently recovered admirably from the ignominy of having to sneak out of Aesernia disguised as a slave during that self-same war and had later been sent into Macedonia, where he had successfully fought various Illyrian tribes there (Appian, Ill. 5, Plutarch, Num. 9; Jerome, 174th Olympiad).49 These were the men who would take upon themselves with dealing with whatever Sulla would do upon his return, and if it became clearer that that was going to be, it was probably no less nerve-wracking for those who waited. The anxiety of those months in Rome does not seem to have been experienced by Sulla, who on the surface seems to have had a more relaxing time of it while enjoying his sojourn in Greece. In addition to such administrative tasks as settling various Hellenic affairs, he also attempted to take curative waters for his gout, and collected artistic treasures and works of philosophy.50 Yet Sulla must have dealt with some anxiety if the account of Plutarch, to the effect that he feared his army would immediately disband upon its return to Italy, is to be believed (Plutarch, Sull. 27). Even so, when 49 See also Salmon (1967 p. 328 note 3) and Broughton (vol. 2 p. 58 and 62) for the identification of the consul with that Scipio who slipped out of Aesernia; for more on that episode, see chapter 5. 50 For the administrative functions see Appian (Mith. 6.39); for the cure for his gout see Strabo (10.1.9) and Plutarch (Sull. 26); for his collection of art works, Lucian (Zeux. 3) and Pausanius (10.21.6); for the books, see Strabo (13.1.54), Plutarch (loc. cit.), and Lucian (Ind. 4). A more extensive account of Sulla’s adventures in Hellas is found in Keaveney (1982, p. 124–125) and Christ (2002, p. 83–99).

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the weather finally permitted Sulla took to ship and soon effected a crossing, with his men landing at Brundisium51 in a force numbering around 40,000 men all told (Appian, 1.9.79). Scipio and Norbanus do not seem to have fortified the port, so Sulla apparently landed there unopposed; for their congeniality in letting him do so—the Brundisians apparently disdained suicide—the city was given a tax indemnity by Sulla when the war was over. With his army collected, Sulla then proceeded to march along the Via Appia towards Capua and thence to Rome. Velleius Paterculus (2.25) and Plutarch (Sull. 27) both assert that Sulla gave strict orders against plunder and sack along the way, which is not entirely outside of the realm of possibility. It certainly would not have been wise on Sulla’s part to antagonize any Italians who were not yet committed to either cause and delay his campaign by interminable actions in southern Italy. As far as the Italians were concerned, even those who opposed Sulla might have reasoned that a stand would better be made all together in Campania rather than piecemeal nearer to their homes. Since the outcome of the latter would almost certainly be combat followed by massacre and ravaging, the Hirpini especially may have wanted none of it in their domains. Sulla had already been that way once before, and those who lived there were probably still quite familiar with the consequences of fighting him. Sulla, therefore, made his march unmolested. Appian (1.9.80) and Velleius (loc. cit.) states that it was during this journey that he began to acquire additional men and support from other Romans who had decided to aid his cause. He had, it seems, already been joined by M. Licinius Crassus, who may have gone over to Sulla in the previous year and thus been with him since the landing; this seems to be the implication of Plutarch (Crass. 6).52 Apparently en route to Campania—perhaps even in Tarentum, since Plutarch reports he spent some time there (Sull. 27)—Sulla was met by Plutarch (Sull. 27) also reports that some landed on Tarentum. But this may be the result of confusion on that author’s part, since almost certainly Sulla would have gotten to Tarentum on the Via Appia anyway, and might well have made the sacrifice which Plutarch reports being offered there somewhat later, as opposed to on first landing. 52 This is also the opinion of Ward, p. 61; Keaveney (1982, p. 130) disagrees, believing Appian’s chronology. 51

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Metellus Pius, come with what remained of his army after its defeat by Fabius in Africa. This, along with its commander, was now given over to Sulla for whatever use he saw fit. In this way Sulla got a few extra men and a general of some talent, and Dio reports he also got something else (frg. 106): the reputation and reverence for Metellus was at this point now attached to Sulla’s undertakings, a reputation and reverence which could be used to add luster to these efforts and apparently persuaded not a few who had been vacillating to come over to his side.53 It was probably for all of these reasons that Sulla made an ostentatious display of treating Metellus as an equal, as both men were proconsuls of Rome. Other men soon joined them, including Cornelius Cethegus, a former enemy who had even been exiled alongside Cinna but who now seems to have believed Sulla’s cause to be the greater and was reconciled to him (Appian, 1.9.80). Also appearing alongside Sulla was the former consul L. Philippus, who would later be given a naval command by Sulla (Per. 86; more below).54 Others would come, about whom more will be narrated later, but with these men acting as subordinates to Metellus and himself, Sulla continued his journey into what was by now the familiar Campanian landscape. Not long after his arrival in Campania Sulla found an opposing army waiting for him under the consul C. Norbanus, possibly north of Capua near the conjunction of the Via Appia and Via Latina hard by the Volternus river.55 A battle looked very much

53 πρὸς γάρ τοι τὴν δόξαν τῆς τε δικαιοσύν ς αὐτοῦ [Μετέλλου] καὶ τῆς εὐσε είας οὐκ ὀλίγοι καὶ τῶν τἀναντία τῷ Σύλλᾳ πραττόντων, νομίσαντες αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀκρίτως οἱ συνεῖναι ἀλλὰ τά τε δικαιότερα καὶ τὰ τῇ πατρίδι συμφορώτερα ὄντως αἱρεῖσ αι, προσεχώρ σαν σφίσι 54 It is presumably this “greatest enemy” to whom Cicero refers as having been reconciled to Philippus; Cons. Prov. 9.21. 55 For this place, see map 1. That the encounter took place here is the conjecture of Keaveney (loc. cit.), which seems plausible enough. As for the sources which report on the battle, the Periochae says nothing of its location (85), while the recognized text of Velleius (2.25.2), Eutropius (5.74), and Orosius (5.20.2, which is almost certainly derived directly from Eutropius) merely add that it was near Capua. Florus adds that it was near the Volternus (2.9.19), while both Plutarch (Sull. 27) and an addition to Velleius reports that it was near the Tifatan hill. For this reason, it is held

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like it was going to take place here, but Sulla was apparently not unwilling to see if he could conserve his effort and avoid fighting if possible. It seems to have been towards this end that envoys were sent to discuss peace with Norbanus, as per the report of the Periochae (missisque legatis, qui de pace agerent; Per. 85). The presumably meant that agents were sent to try and persuade the consul to join Sulla’s side, but Norbanus seems to have declined and perhaps with some vehemence: Sulla’s agents were “maltreated” by Norbanus, according to that same authority” (et ab cos. C. Norbano violatis). Battle was then joined, and of the several accounts to describe the engagement, Plutarch’s is the most extensive. That description, which seems to have come from Sulla himself, notes how Sulla did not even bother gathering his men into formation, but let their vigor defeat the consul (ὁ Σύλλας οὔτε τάξιν ἀποδοὺς οὔτε λοχίσας τὸ οἰκεῖον στράτευμα, ῥώμῃ δὲ προ υμίας κοινῆς καὶ φορᾷ τόλμ ς ἀποχρ σάμενος ἐτρέψατο τοὺς πολεμίους; Sull. 27), apparently to the

loss of 7000 men and 6000 prisoners from the latter.56 Such a haphazard engagement was not out of keeping with Sulla’s style of command; from time to time he had demonstrated something of a reckless streak, which had worked against him when he faced Cluentius in the Allied War and again in his first assault on Athens in the East,57 but did not result in any ill-effects here. The beaten Norbanus fell back on Capua, and Sulla probably deputed a few legions to watch him (in the event which happens next Plutarch states that by Sulla’s own admission he only had twenty cohorts with him, Sull. 28). He then parted from the Via Appia and took the Via Latina towards Teanum, where he was apparently to have a similar appointment with another consular army.

that Appian’s “Canusium” is an error, probably for Casilinum ( so Salmon 1967 note 1; Keaveney (op. cit., p. 131 and note 5, p. 145). 56 6000, according to Appian; 7000, according to Plutarch, Eutropius, and Orosius (who both also mention 6000 prisoners and only 124 losses of his own; Appian gives the even more improbable figure of seventy, though he adds that many men were wounded). 57 See Chapter 6 for the battle against Cluentius; for the opening stages of Sulla’s attack on Athens, see Appian, Mith. 6.30–1 (as analysed by Keaveney 1982, p. 83).

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The force which he was about to face was commanded by L. Scipio Asiaticus, with Q. Sertorius along with him, probably as his principal legate. It was, moreover, apparently in some strength, outnumbering Sulla’s army two to one according to Plutarch (loc. cit.). Nevertheless, as Sulla approached he again attempted that which had failed in the case of Norbanus, which was to see if he could negotiate with the consul. In this case Sulla seems to have varied his tactic, and unlike what was probably the case with Norbanus, Sulla seems to have proposed discussing an end to hostilities by means of a settlement, rather than Scipio’s betrayal. This is according to the report of Cicero, although that authority would add that there was a possibility that good faith was not wholly at work here (non tenuit omnino conloquium illud fidem; Phil. 12.27). About this possibility Appian (1.10.85–86) and Plutarch (loc. cit.) express no uncertainty whatsoever: no matter what the topics of discussion for the dialogue was ostensibly going to be, both are explicit in their statement that Sulla’s actual purpose was the seduction of Scipio’s armies, a gambit he was to attempt either because he had heard that Scipio’s were demoralized and unwilling to fight, or because he intended to make them so. Scipio, for his part, seems to have been advised with great vehemence by Sertorius not to engage in any such parley (Exsuperantius 45; Plutarch, Ser. 6). Sertorius would, perhaps, be uniquely qualified to provide an insight into the opponent Scipio now faced, as the two men had known each other from at least the Cimbric Wars, during which time they had both served on the staff of Marius (see chapter 7). Yet it was also probably the case that such insight, or any special knowledge beyond common sense, would have been unnecessary to show that the proposed negotiations would be a pointless exercise. As Sertorius must have foreseen, in all likelihood Sulla would not present any terms which the Senate would find acceptable, would perhaps lie about them even if he did, and was at any rate clearly trying to win over Scipio’s army as he had done with that of Fimbria in the east. Nevertheless, the consul chose to ignore this sound advice for what may have been a variety of reasons (more below), and if Plutarch is to be believed, he and Sulla apparently communicated over the course of the next several days, laboriously determining the time, place, number of participants, and hostages to be brought to the conference.

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When all of that had finally been established, the two men finally met and discussed the “authority of the Senate, the voting of the people, and the rights of the citizens, amongst other laws and conditions”, according to Cicero (de auctoritate senatus, de suffragiis populi, de iure civitatis leges inter se et condiciones contulerunt; Phil. 12.27). What this probably meant was that first Scipio put forward the usual question which had already been presented to Sulla by the envoys of Flaccus in the previous year: would Sulla submit to the authority of the Senate and dismiss his army (hence, Cicero’s attribution that they conferred de auctoritate Senatus … inter se)? Sulla countered with what had by now become his own standard reply: he would not, but he would respect the rights of everyone, even his enemies and the new citizens, whose rights he would leave alone (hence, Cicero’s contention that they conferred de suffragiis populi, de iure civtatis leges inter se et condiciones contulerunt). As has been seen, Cicero observes that faith did not entirely obtain here, which means that at least one of the two parties must have been disguising his true aims. It is very likely that both of them were. In the meantime, however, an armistice was agreed upon while Scipio was ostensibly to pass along Sulla’s terms to Norbanus (Appian, loc. cit.). To Sertorius this must have seemed like lunacy, and he certainly would have known something about bad commanders: he had, according to Plutarch (Sert. 3) and Ammianus Marcellinus (29.6.7), been present in the armies of Q. Servilius Caepio the Elder in 105, and had been forced to swim across the Rhone in full armor to escape being slaughtered by the Cimbri at Arausio, a debacle caused by the very acme of Roman command stupidity. Moreover, if—as has been speculated fairly convincingly58—he had later served with Caepio’s son in the Allied war, he would also have known about the dangers into which gullibility in the face of treachery could lead an army, for which Ariminium would have provided a stark illustration (see chapter 5). Finally, Sertorius had a certain astuteness at reading men, for which both Marius and Didius had once employed him as a spy (see chapter 7). Having come to know Sulla through their service under Marius in what 58

Spann, p. 21–22

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remained of the Teutonic and Cimbric war, Sertorius could reasonably have expected such treachery from Sulla even if what had happened to Fimbria had not been common knowledge. Sertorius therefore did not need his missing eye to see what seemed like imbecility on Scipio’s part. For this reason, it must have been something of a surprise for him to get what was very likely his next assignment. During the armistice, Sertorius may have been ordered by Scipio to take what must have been a large number of men, slip out of camp, and take Suessa Aurunca, a city known to have been devoted to Sulla’s cause (ἣ τὰ Σύλλεια ᾕρ το; Appian, loc. cit.).59 Sertorius may have been impressed with this order, as it may have reflected an understanding hitherto unsuspected of Scipio as to the nature of Sulla’s true plans. Rather than the ignorance suspected by Sertorius, it may have been that Scipio knew exactly what Sulla intended, but affected a seemingly pliant demeanor to lull Sulla into a sense of security. In such a state, Scipio could perhaps lure him into a trap, or keep him in one: while pinning him at Teanum, Scipio could perhaps summon Norbanus from Capua and catch Sulla between two armies. Furthermore, if Sertorius could capture Suessa, it would close off a line of retreat and potential help from the west and Via Appia.60 The only direction Sulla could then go would northeast, into Samnium and the same foothills and mountains where he had come to grief at least once in 90.61 Best of all, if Scipio could find a way to summon aid from the Samnites, then Sulla could be surrounded on all sides (and Plutarch does suggest that being surrounded was a fear of Sulla’s, loc. cit.). Such a plan would depend on help from the Samnites, of course, with whom Scipio had had less than a perfect history: it had been from them that he had been compelled to escape dressed as a 59 As will be apprehended immediately, the account of Suessa presented here is quite at odds with the way it appears in other modern accounts. For some reasons for this, see Appendix V. 60 For the strategic value of Suessa, see Appendix V. 61 And possibly more than once. Admitedly, Sulla had since enjoyed great success in Samnium, but had won it by going around this area and attacking it from the road leading from Beneventum (see chapter 6 and Appendix O).

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slave in 90. Still, Scipio may have had some assurance to this effect already. According the passage of Cicero already cited, the conference between Scipio and Sulla had been attended by “the flower of the nobility on the one hand, and the other by Allies in war” (alter nobilitatis florem, alter belli socios adhibuisset). There can be little doubt that the flos nobilitatis was with Sulla, who, as has been seen, had amongst his following a constellation of optimate luminaries who had fled to his camp from the government of Cinna and Carbo. The socii belli would therefore have been with Scipio, perhaps an anachronistic indication that notables from the novi cives (until just recently socii) attended the consul. Indeed, they might have paid close attention to the discussions de suffragiis populi [et] de iure civitatis leges going on between the two men. If some of these had been Samnites, and Scipio had disclosed such a plan to them, then they might be willing to help him execute it. All that would then be needed would be to neutralize Suessa, the mission now being deputed to Sertorius. Of course, such a scheme would require a great degree cunning, guile, and craft from Scipio, but this would not entirely have been out of character for him; this was, after all, a man who had slipped past these selfsame Samnites during the investment of Aesernia while disguised as slave. Given his own past experiences with clandestine missions, Sertorius might have appreciated the artistry in this one. That Scipio had developed such a strategem can in no way be proven, of course, as the only source to mention anything about the capture of Suessa Aurunca is Appian (1.10.85), and his account does not place that capture as part of a grand plan to ensnare Sulla. Rather, it states that it had been done by Sertorius as the latter was en route to carry the substance of the negotiations to Norbanus in Capua. On this Appian can, perhaps, be doubted, as it is very difficult to believe that Scipio would have entrusted the carrying of such a message to Sertorius. In the first place, Sertorius had made it very clear that he believed the negotiations with Sulla to be a mistake (Plutarch, loc. cit.). For Scipio would chose him as the purveyor of its outcome in light of this fact is most unlikely, even if such were only a ruse de guerre to allow him to detach from the main body of the army and sieze Suessa. Sulla himself might have prevented such a dispatch of Sertorius, given that—as has been seen—the two of them shared an intense mutual dislike. Indeed, Sulla had actually acted on this recently, blocking of the candidacy

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of Sertorius for the tribunate in 88, and this hated went back several decades. Even had both Scipio assigned, and Sulla allowed, Sertorius to be the messenger to Norbanus, it is inconceivable that he would have gone to Capua, which was about seventeen miles southeast of Teanum, by any route other than the Via Latina up which Sulla himself had come.62 Suessa was not on that road, however, nor was it even in the same direction coming from Teanum, but was instead about nine miles almost immediately due west of that city. Suessa was simply not located in such a way that Sertorius could have taken it while “on the way” (δ᾽ ἐν παρόδῳ) to Capua, which was twenty miles away and in a different direction. Of course, it could have been that Sertorius went along the Via Latina long enough to persuade Sulla that he was headed to Norbanus, only to abandon that road once out of sight and then move on Suessa. But even if he had done this, Sertorius would have needed to have men at his disposal, and probably not a small number of them. These he could not have taken with him to Capua along the Via Latina for even a short distance without arousing suspicion, since, as was mentioned, Sulla’s army had travelled to Teanum by this route. Sertorius would have had to travel past, and possibly through, Sulla’s army with this expeditionary force, one likely far larger than he would need or be justified in having as a personal escort and thus bound to raise suspicions. To capture Suessa δ᾽ ἐν παρόδῳ to Capua, Sertorius would have first been delegated with the task of going there, and almost certainly stared for that city along a road taking him in a different direction that Suessa. That road would have taken him trhough the army of Sulla, leading to his design’s instant detection. Perhaps it was that Sertorius started towards Capua without his soldiers, abandoned it, doubled back to collect his men, and then moved on the city. Yet this would involve a series of steps so convoluted as to invite— perhaps even demand—disbelief. Rather than leap through this series of hurdles to preserve Appian’s report, it would be easier to assume that his account may have mistaken a detail it. Such a candidate for a mistake is at hand, however. What was probably the case was that Sertorius slipped 62

See map 1.

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away west to Suessa, possibly under the cover of darkness; he had conducted similar night missions as a legate to Didius in Spain. At about the same time, other men were dispatched to Capua with the fruits of the negotiations between Scipio and Sulla. Suessa was then captured while these messengers were “on the way” (δ᾽ ἐν παρόδῳ), but Sertorius was not one of these, contrary to what Appian suggests. If, indeed, Scipio had been attempting to trap Sulla, such messengers would have been vital to this effort: they would have arrived at Capua, but rather than apprising Norbanus of what had been discussed at the peace talks, they would have bidden him to hasten and contain Sulla at Teanum. If it can be allowed that Appian did commit an error, which would almost certainly have to be the case to allow Sertorius to have captured Suessa at all, then there is nothing in the sources which renders Scipio’s putative attempt to surround Sulla impossible. It therefore might very well have been that this was what was afoot while he and Sulla engaged in their talks. Although there is no way to be certain that this plan existed, what is certain is that, if it did, it did not succeed. Sertorius, as has been seen, came through with his part of it, as Suessa was indeed captured by him. There are also indications that Norbanus was in the process of playing his role in it, as well, as the very next section of Appian describes him as on the move, having issued forth from Capua. It may be that the Samnites had failed Scipio in this instance, and the promised help never materialized; alternatively, perhaps Norbanus had moved too slowly for his design to succeed. At any rate, Sulla soon learned of the capture of Suessa, and at this point the talks between them ceased. Scipio, it seems, had failed to envelop and destroy Sulla though his arrangement. Yet Sulla’s destruction still potentially lay within his grasp, if through no other mechanism than brute force. Scipio’s army was, as has been seen, twice the size of Sulla’s, and now that there was to be no peace, pretenses to that effect could be dropped and battle could commence. This, however, was not to be, for while Scipio may or may not have been at work on a secret plan to enmesh Sulla, Sulla had definitely been at work on the captivation of Scipio’s army. According to Plutarch (Sull. 28), Sulla subtly went to work towards this aim by sending his soldiers to fraternize with the enemy, and to use a combination of lies, flatteries, promises, and outright bribery to make that enemy more

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sympathetic to Sulla’s cause (Diodorus also mentions that his forces had been “corrupted with money”, διαφ αρῆναι χρ μασι; 38.16). When the capture of Suessa was then uncovered, accusations of perfidy could also be raised,63 especially in light of the fact that Scipio made no response to Sulla other than to send back the hostages which Sulla had given while at the same time not asking for the return of his own (Appian, loc. cit.), an apparent admission of false dealing. All of these were apparently enough for Sulla to win over the men: having given Sulla indications that they would desert to him if he moved within attacking distance, when he did so, Scipio’s men kept to their word. Several sources describe Scipio as having been left completely alone in his tent when Sulla found him (so Plutarch, Diodorus, and Appian in the places cited above; the latter mentions that he had his son with him). Sulla seems to have spent some time trying to win Scipio over, but when he could not, he let the consul go,64 apparently with no strings attached. This gesture seems to be one of enormous, perhaps even uncharacteristic, generosity for Sulla. After all, here was a man who had played Sulla false, and had secretly acted the enemy while pretending to be a friend, or at least to allow for the possibility of such amity. Sulla’s motto had always been that he would let it never be said of him that he could be surpassed in benefiting a friend and smiting an enemy, one which he intended to have as his epitaph (οὗ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν ὡς οὔτε τῶν φίλων τις αὐτὸν εὖ ποιῶν οὔτε τῶν ἐχ ρῶν κακῶς ὑπερε άλετο; cited in Plutarch, Sull. 38). Scipio, then,

should have been in line for a most terrible reprisal, but such did not come. However, a closer look reveals that this gesture would have, in essence, cost Sulla nothing, as was true of so many of his magnanimous gestures. The door for it had been left open upon Sulla’s discovery of Suessa. According to Appian, when Sulla heard Scipio’s men likely did not know his machinations, since necessarily the capture of Suessa would have to be done secretly (see, again, Appendix V); they would therefore have little alternative but to believe that bad faith had presented itself here. 64 Also mentioned by Velleius (2.25) and the Periocha of Book 85; Exsuperantius (45) and Eutropius (5.7.4) only mentioned the desertion of the army. 63

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what had happened, he made complaint of it to Scipio. The latter offered no response, “either because he was party to the plan or because he did not know how to account for the bizarre act of Sertorius” (εἴτε τῷ γενομένῳ συνεγνωκὼς εἴτε ἀποκρίσεως ἀπορῶν ὡς ἐπὶ ἀλλοκότῳ δὴ τῷ Σερτωρίου ἔργῳ). Given Sulla’s own enormous capacity for guile, it is to be doubted that he would have believed that Scipio was not responsible for Suessa for an instant, and Scipio’s silence, return of hostages, and refusal to ask for his own would have made his complicity manifest to someone far less wily than Sulla himself. Yet by not voicing his culpability aloud, Sulla could choose to believe that Scipio had not been behind the capture of the town if he had so wished. Now that his army had deserted him, Scipio was no longer a danger to Sulla, and while he may well have deserved to be killed for his deception, Sulla would gain no strategic advantage from Scipio’s murder. On the other hand, if Sulla had already begun the justification for his actions speculated above (namely, that he was only motivated by the restoration of his rights and those of his supporters), then a critical aspect of this would be to sieze and maintain the moral high ground. This he could do by sparing a consul who was now helpless and in his power. To preserve his image of always providing just desserts to both friends and enemies, he would find it useful to shift the blame for Suessa away from Scipio. This could be done easily enough: in order to keep this operation from being noticed by Sulla’s many spies, of whom Scipio was probably quite aware, and then related by them to their commander, Scipio had probably kept it a secret from his men that he had ordered Sertorius to take the town. It could therefore be made to seem that his legatus had done this unbidden, rendering the consul guilty of nothing than an inability to rein in his subordinates. Foisting the blame upon Sertorius would make him richly deserving of Sulla’s vengeance, but Sertorius was already an inimicus of Sulla and bound to suffer some evil should Sulla win the war anyway. The Suessa affair, therefore, accorded a man known to have consorted with actors in his youth yet another opportunity to participate in some political theater of his own. For this scene, Sulla played the part of the scrupulous, law-abiding promagistrate and generous conqueror to those who surrendered in time. Scipio, in turn, would have to perform the role of unfortunate bungler, but

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he, too, had once play-acted as a man far beneath his station to escape certain death at Aesernia. It may well have been that he offered a similar performance at Teanum, earning his life in the process. In fact, at least one author suggests that this drama worked out even better than Sulla might have hoped, in that upon his return to Rome, Scipio was given another command, and this, too, he squandered (Diodorus, loc. cit.; more below).65 All of these reasons may have been the basis for why Sulla chose to let Scipio go. He would very likely have been much less generous to Sertorius if in fact he had captured him, as Velleius states that he had, under circumstances which that author does not relate (2.25). Such a scenario, however, is most improbable. For one thing, it is mentioned in no other source. For another, it is difficult to see how Sulla could have pulled off this feat, unless Sertorius had moved from Suessa to Capua and Norbanus. This is because Sulla was apparently already on his way to that city to deal with Norbanus. A second embassy was apparently sent by him to that consul, unless Appian’s account of this is a misplacement for the first offer of negotiation made earlier (1.10.86).66 To this no reply was made. Norbanus, for his part, had either slipped past or driven away any force which had attempted to keep watch on him at Capua and was actually headed in Sulla’s direction, but rather than move towards him directly he apparently chose to remain on the Via Appia and in the meantime devastated all the land in the area, possibly from the suspicion (as it turns out, the correct one) that Sulla would go into winter quarters in Capua and that the wasted land would make it harder for him to find provender there. Sulla turned to the very same enterprise along the Via Latina, perhaps with the hope that in the process he would make the path of Norbanus back to Rome so much more difficult. Neither man apparently wanted to cross the area between the two roads and attack the other, for reasons which may be readily guessed: Sulla perhaps did not yet completely trust his new erstwhile reinforcements from Scipio and did not want to give them a chance A point raised by Spann, p. 36. Keaveney, at least, believes there were two seperate embassies (1982, p. 135); he may very well be correct in this belief. 65 66

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to go back over to Norbanus in a critical moment, while Norbanus for his part was probably now outnumbered—perhaps even significantly—and had already lost to Sulla once. The antagonists therefore avoided each other, and in this way, according to Appian (loc. cit.), the rest of the campaigning season was spent in the south. Norbanus, it seems, was gradually making his way back to Rome, soon to hold elections there. Along the way it seems likely that he had been joined by Sertorius, who had probably been holding quiet in Suessa. Norbanus may have relieved him of his command, either outright or because he believed that the talents of the latter might be better employed raising men in Etruria, where Exsuperantius (46–47) says he was next sent.67 The fear of Sulla’s The latter source implies that there was a defeat of some kind inflicted upon Sertorius, and that he escaped to Etruria lacking the protection of an army and fearing Sulla’s anger. However, no such defeat is recorded anywhere else, and the last action recorded in which he participates, the expedition to Suessa, is described as a success by Appian. There is, of course, the simple possibility that Exsuperantius is wrong here, and may be confusing the flight of Scipio with that of Sertorius. That source is certainly error-prone: in section 30, for example, he reports that Marius replaced Cinna upon the latter’s death with Carbo for his colleague in his seventh consulate, even though Marius died within days of assuming that seventh consulate and was himself replaced by Cinna with L. Valerius Flaccus (see previous chapter). Sections 46–47, describing Sertorius and his recruiting drive, precede section 49, in which the relection of Marius to his seventh consulate is repeated. Sertorius could then take advantage the protection of Marius and return to Rome (Tunc Sertorius, de Marii potestate secures Romam venit), even though Marius was this point long dead. It seems clear that Exsuperantius confuses Marius with his son, who would serve with Carbo (as will be seen). He may also have confused Scipio’s desertion with a defeat for Sertorius. Alternatively, it might have been that Sertorius did not take Suessa, as Appian reports, but was repulsed there, leading to his loss of an army and fear of Sulla. It may also have been that Suessa was retaken and Sertorius defeated in the process, or that sometime after Suessa there had been a skirmish between Sertorius and Sulla that had let to the latter’s capture of the former, thus reconciling Appian, Velleius, and Exsuperantius. It is difficult to see why Sulla would have let Sertorius go, however: he was a apparently a non-nobilis, an enemy, and a commander of proven ability (or 67

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potential action against their citizenship was apparently powerfully motivating for the Etruscans, and they are reported as flocking to the standards of the consuls in droves; ultimately they came forward in numbers that approached forty cohorts, if Exsuperantius is to be believed, a turnout which corresponds to Appian’s statement that a good portion of Italy still adhered to the consuls in spite of the defeats (loc. cit.). Some of those recruits may also have been from the remnants of Scipio’s army, of which it can perhaps be doubted that it joined Sulla’s side whole and en masse; while it seems likely that many of these men did change allegiances, others may perhaps simply drifted off and deserted while their comrades switched sides. In particular, that the Italians in Scipio’s army68 would have been taken in by Sulla seems most improbable despite the latter’s promise to the consul that he meant to keep Italian privileges secure,69 and at any rate, whatever promises Sulla had made to Scipio along those lines would have been rendered void on the discovery of Suessa and the end of their negotiations. Rather than join Sulla and hope for the best, it seems far more likely that the units of the novi would simply have gone home and waited for the opportunity to fight again. Indeed, Exsuperantius specifically mentions that this exact thing occurred (loc. cit.). Sertorius, it seems, made himself useful in this manner during the remaining days of summer. In the meantime, the government was simultaneously dealing with other troubles, of which one, which had begun in the year before but was now a full-fledged nuisance, was located in Picenum. In that area, the future Pompeius Magnus had started raising an army, as has been seen. had been before the putative defeat), so Sulla would have had far more incentive to kill rather than release Sertorius (Spann also takes note of this; p. 36). This incentive would be all the greater if he had managed to deflect the blame of Suessa and attach it Sertorius, as speculated above. None of these facts make it impossible that an unknown loss inflicted upon Sertorius existed, but it seems the most likely that Exsuperantius is simply confused in section 46 instead, and this interpretation is followed here. 68 See, again, the belli socius described by Cicero (Phil. 12.27) as mentioned above. 69 Contra Keaveney (1982, p. 132).

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Once it had gained sufficient manpower, Pompeius began to eject his enemies from Picenum—according to Dio (frg. 107) and Plutarch (Pomp. 5–6)—and had apparently operated the region as something of his own private regnum for a time (δυναστείαν ἰδίαν συνίστ , to use Dio’s very words). Even if this did not signify fullscale revolt, at the very least it meant that Pompeius was in defiance of the decree bidding that all private armies be disbanded. Accordingly, a legal army under the command of one L. Junius Brutus Damasippus was sent to stop him, but after an engagement in which the cavalry—under the direct command of both captains—played a prominent role, Brutus was defeated (Diodorus 38.9, Plutarch, op. cit. 7).70 With this victory, Pompeius had apparently now decided that he could join Sulla’s cause without going to him as a suppliant, and sent letters to Sulla which spelled out his accomplishments and his intentions. Sulla probably received this résumé with more amusement than concern for the safety of the sender (the latter assertion is probably an exaggeration of Plutarch), but sill bade that its sender come immediately. This Pompeius would do, but apparently not before besting yet another army: Scipio, having come back to Rome, seems to have been given another command (Diodorus 39.16), and this was sent north into Picenum against Pompeius. This, too, was soon worsted, although probably not without a single javelin cast, as Plutarch reports (loc.

70 The latter source mentions three separate armies sent to stop him at this time, of which Pompeius only defeated one before forcing the others to retire in confusion. This may well have been the case (Greenhalgh— op. cit., p. 14–15—accepts this chronology, for example), but the passage seems fairly plagued with chronological errors. It is reported in Appian that Metellus fought (with Pompeius) against one of these commanders allegedly sent after him, Carinas, in the following spring, and another exploit from passage (the routing of Carbo’s horsemen) is also reported as having been done by Pompeius in the following year. It is, therefore, perhaps more probable that Pompeius only fought and defeated Brutus initially, a not insignificant achievement in and of itself. For the identification of this man—known only as “Junius” in Diodorus and as “Brutus” in Plutarch, see Broughton (vol. 2, p. 65).

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cit.).71 Pompeius was apparently then able to make his way to Sulla unopposed some time in the fall, perhaps travelling down the same coastal roads his father’s lieutenant Cosconius had travelled, and then parting from them and taking the Via Appia to Capua.72 Sulla seemed impressed, and so much so that when Pompeius arrived with a strength of three legions and saluted the future dictator as imperator, he was given the same greeting in return (Per. 85, Appian 1.9.80; Plutarch, Pomp. 8). For part of what remained in the summer and early fall of 83, the government in Rome was engaged in putting out fires, so to 71 Plutarch suggests that just as the two sides were within pilum’s distance (πρὶν ἐν ἐμ ολαῖς ὑσσῶν γενέσ αι τὰς φάλαγγας), Scipio’s men spontaneously deserted. There is the possibility, as Bernadotte Perrin notes in her Loeb translation of the Life (p. 133–137), that this is a misattribution to Pompeius of an anecdote belonging to Sulla, as the behavior of Scipio’s men sounds much like that of his men who defected to Sulla when he, too, came within striking distance (καὶ αὐτίκα ὁ στρατὸς αὐτοῦ [Scipio] … κρύφα τῷ Σύλλᾳ συνετί εντο μετα σεσ αι πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰ πελάσειε.). The theory that Scipio had a new army at all is based only on these two sources named above (Diodorus and Plutarch), which may make the entire episode an unreliable one due to the unlikely coincidence of Scipio losing two armies to desertion. On the other hand, it is not impossible that it did happen in such a manner (Keaveney is not too troubled by this lack of likelihood, and he may very well be correct in his opinion; 1982, p. 134), although it seems more probable that there actually was an engagement, if only a small one, and not a complete . 72 Appian seems to place the arrival of Pompeius to an earlier time (1.9.80), coinciding with the arrival of Metellus into the camp of Sulla and thus before the battle against Norbanus and the (first) desertion of the army of Scipio. Yet this seems to be contradicted by the evidence of the Periochae, which mentions the joining of Pompeius to the cause of Sulla as having happened after both of these events. But this need not cause undue hardship, as Appian’s notice is clearly part of a digression on the various lieutenants making their way to Sulla; indeed, it seems to have spawned another digression of its own, one listing the accomplishments of Pompeius. The fact that the arrival of the latter is placed in Appian’s text right after the arrival of Metellus need not indicate that Pompeius came to Sulla shortly after Metellus did. Hence, an arrival in the fall is not necessarily ruled out by Appian. It is therefore postulated here (contra Keaveney 1982, p. 130, who suggests the earlier date).

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speak, although it seems it was even less successful doing so in the figurative sense (id est Pompeius) than in the literal one. According to Appian (1.10.86), sometime near when things were transpiring between Sulla and Norbanus in the south, a conflagration erupted on the Capitoline, a disaster for which Plutarch gives the sixth of July as the exact date (Sull. 27, although it seems to have broken out the night before; Obsequens 57). Responsibility for this catastrophe, according to Appian, was apparently attributed by some to Carbo, by some to Sulla, although Julius Obsequens (loc. cit.) merely states that it fraude aeditui ... conflagravit during the night. This is slightly more believeable than the assignment of blame to a demon laboring on Sulla’s behalf, which is that attached to the event by Augustine of Hippo (de Civ. 2.24).73 It is to be assumed that this fire was fairly devastating for antiquarians, as can be seen from notices in Livy observing the loss of a shield belonging to L. Marcius celebrating a victory over Hasdrubal which dated to the Hannibalic Wars (25.39.17) and golden bowls dating from the time of Camillus (6.4.3, although perhaps these were simply taken away by Marius the younger, who is reported as having stored some gold from the Capitoline in Praeneste; Pliny, NH 35.5.16). Priests, too, must have been heartbroken, both by the destruction of the temple of Jupiter74 and the loss of the Sibylline books, or at least two of them (Pliny, NH 33.16.88; Tacitus, Ann. 6.12).75 Beyond this, however, the blaze does not seem to have had any lasting repercussions, nor to have damaged the war effort significantly, as 73 The fire is also mentioned by Sallust, Cat. 47.2 (in mentioning the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy, he notes that it took place twenty years after the Capitol had burned); Plutarch, Mor. 379C (which mentions the destruction of the temple in the Civil Wars); and Jerome, 174 th Olympiad (which has a similar mention under the date). 74 It would later be rebuilt by Sulla, although he apparently would not live to see its dedication. That task would therefore fall to Q. Catulus, the son of the consul who took his own life in 87 (Plutarch, Pub. 15; Tacitus, Hist. 3.72; Per. 98) 75 Tacitus incorrectly dates this fire to the Allied War in the Annales, although in the Histories he correctly notes that it occurred in the consulates of Scipio and Norbanus; see earlier note. Given the participants in both wars, this may be a reasonable mistake to have made.

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recruiting apparently continued apace (Appian, loc. cit.). In fact, in a sense it may be asserted that this recruitment took as much from the temples as the fire did, since in the next year the consuls, falling short of funds with which to pay their men, would be authorized by the Senate to melt down the gold and silver which could still be found in Rome’s aedes and use this as payment for soldiers (Valerius Maximus, 7.6.4). That, however, was yet to come. At any rate, as the summer of 83 gave way to the fall, Rome’s legislative machinery continued to operate in spite of the various difficulties with which it had to contend. Carbo, presumably as a consular member of the Senate but still a private citzen proposed that the patres declare the followers of Sulla public enemies, and this was apparently duly enacted (Appian, 1.10.86). Carbo would not remain a privatus for long, as when the elections came he was elected to the consulate yet again (Appian, 1.10.87). As his colleague C. Marius, son of the seven-time consul, was chosen de spite being legally underage (Appian, although the younger Marius is referred to as the nephew of the great general: Μάριος ὁ ἀδελφιδοῦς Μαρίου τοῦ περιφανοῦς, loc. cit.; Per. 86; de vir. ill. 68). Why this choice was made is perhaps not too difficult to seek: according to Diodorus, it had been the latter’s name which had caused a good many of the volunteers who joined the consular armies to enlist (Ὃτι τῷ Μαρίῳ τῷ υἱῷ Μαρίου ὑπατεύσαντι οὐκ ὀλίγοι καὶ τῶν κατὰ νόμον τετελεκότων τὴν στρατείαν ἐ ελοντὴν ἔσπευσαν τῷ νεανίσκῳ κοινωνῆσαι τῶν κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον ἀγώνων; 38.12). These volunteers were older men, almost certainly

veterans who had once served the father, and they now expected to serve under the son.76 Additionally, it was about this time that the government had made another decision, which was to send Sertorius away from Italy and into Spain (Appian 1.10.86, 1.13.108; Plutarch, Sert. 6; Exupersantius, 48–50).77 Of the sources which mention this, two two suggest that the departure of Sertorius had not been the 76 So also Francis Walton, in the apparatus to his Loeb translation of this passage (p. 258–259). 77 Orosius (5.23.13), Appian’s Spanish Wars (16.101), and Florus (2.10.1–2) also take note of his departure and subsequent arrival, without adding further details as to the reasons for it.

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happiest one: according to Plutarch, he had objected to the consulate of Marius and had come to feel that the indolence, timidity, and even duplicity of Rome’s magistrates and commanders was to doom the city (Sert. 6). That author also states that he had left for his western command right after the loss of Scipio’s army (Appian agrees with this timing; 1.10.86). According to Exsuperantius, however, Sertorius had stayed for a while and recruited men in Etruria (as has been seen), but had soon grown disillusioned with the government, disparaged its idleness, and had even spoken approvingly of the energy, at least, which had been displayed by Sulla, prophesying a victory for the latter unless the defenders of the city were to find a similar dynamism. At least one modern scholar suggests that the font of the disgust felt by Sertorius had been that he himself had been passed over for the consulate in favor of someone who was not eligible for it by law on account of youth78, and this may well have rankled. Still, what Such is the argument of Spann, p. 37–39. Throughout his work, Spann consistently returns to the theme of Sertorius as an outsider, a novus homo whose political and even military career was hindered by such a status. Even in this dangerous hour, Spann asserts, the stubborn arrogance and élitism of the Roman nobiles persisted, and as a result the ruling party froze Sertorius out of office and the high command which would come from them due to his humble birth. It may very well have been that such was the case, but in this instance there are a few difficulties in asserting that Sertorius was driven to disgust due to attitudes towards his novitas and his exclusion from the highest magistracy that allegedly was its consequence. Principal amongst these difficulties is the fact that novitas did not to be excluding too many men in recent years. After all, the younger Marius was hardly much higher than Sertorius on the ladder of nobility. It was true that he was the son of a consular, but his father had been perhaps the most famous novus homo in Roman history, and it is most unlikely that the son would have been much more acceptable even though technically novitas no longer attached. Secondly, the consul of the previous year, C. Norbanus, had also been a novus homo (as Badian—1964, p. 230— and Frier—p. 598—have pointed out). He had held the consulate without too many obstacles. This would tend to imply that, if Sertorius was left out of the consulate, that it was for different reasons that his newness. In fact, it might even imply that Sertorius was not necessarily excluded at all. For 78

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seems to have bothered Sertorius far more than Marius was the fact that the government was taking no swift action to destroy Sulla. As it must have seemed to Sertorius, the latter was notorious for his rapidity of movement but seems to have become stalled, presenting the ideal moment in which to strike him while he was in such a torpor. Exsuperantius seems to imply this line of thinking of his clearly, and also that progressively his cavilling towards this end became increasingly difficult to bear by the Senate and by the consuls. It may well have also been that the government was itself purely symbolic reasons, Carbo’s selection to fill one of the available posts made sense: he was Cinna’s right hand, and the gravity of Cinna’s cause seems to have devolved upon him as a result. Furthermore, Varbo had accomplished the tribal reorganization, an action for which the vast majority of Romans—its novi cives, who outnumbered veteres by a significant amount—might have registered their gratitude at the polls. Marius, for his part, had the luster of his father’s name. It may seem bizarre that the Romans would have chosen a name over the military genius that certainly was vested in Sertorius, but it is also to be remembered that history accords him that status due to what he alter accomplished in Spain. In 83, Sertorius may have looked like nothing more than a fine officer, but not necessarily a better choice to lead men in battle as consul than either Carbo or Marius, who had both also done impressive things in war in 87 (see chapters 6–8 for these). If Sertorius was not injured beyond endurance by such a haughty attitude of the nobiles, then perhaps his distemper lay elsewhere. It might have been, for example, that Sertorius may have objected to the election of Marius on grounds of tradition: Marius was still too young. Yet concern for tradition did not prevent Sertorius from marching on Rome with Cinna, and no outrage seems to have come from him when Cinna was reelected thwice in a row without a biennium, nor when he and Carbo appointed themselves consuls for 84 (if, indeed, they had done so). Furthermore, there was precedent for the will of the sovereign people of Rome overriding tradition and making consul whomever they liked, as they had been doing since the Scipiones. Perhaps his anger was personal, stemming from jealousy and frustration in his own hopes for the office. Certainly Sertorius was as human as anyone else. Yet what seems to have been more important to him than the delay in his progress on the cursus was the danger in which the state found itself, as the sources make clear (see text above), and it was this which drew his commentary and, ultimately, led to his appointment overseas.

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not too pleased with Sertorius, especially if Scipio had circulated the story that Suessa had not been ordered by him, as he may well have done. Yet simply dismissing Sertorius might have been dangerous, and especially so if he had indeed been speaking in a praiseworthy manner of Sulla. After all, both Cethegus and Phillippus, described as dire enemies of his, had found ways to bury their differences with Sulla, and it may have been feared that Sertorius, too, could find some way to effect a similar reconciliation and go over himself to the enemy. It was perhaps for all of these reasons that Sertorius was given his Spanish commission, and for such reasons that he decided to take it. Alternatively, the consuls may have legitimately felt that Spain was in danger, or at the very least that someone who had made a reputation for himself there could aid in recruiting men (at which he also had displayed a singular talent), perhaps to lead them back to Italy the next year. If that was the case, though, it would turn out that before Sertorius could make it back into Italy the cause for which he fought was dead, and not much later he would be, too. Either way, Sertorius was soon headed west. The absence of a commander with the gifts Sertorius possessed would have been a boon to Sulla, even if at the time he may not have been aware of this fact. What he probably did know as the fall approached was that much of Italy was still against him, although the primary sources of opposition seemed to have been Etruria and the Cisalpine. He was also still probably heavily outnumbered, and to do something about both of these problems he seems to have dispatched several of his subordinates northwards. One of these was M. Licinius Crassus, who seems to been assigned the task of raising soldiers for Sulla from the Marsi. Here was an unusual duty indeed, involving first and foremost a recruiting drive amongst a people whose demand for the citizenship had been the strongest before the Allied War and who, by extension, might have been most protective of the rights that attached to it. Moreover, it would involve having Crassus go by the territory of the Samnites who, as shall be seen, were quite supportive of the opposite cause, making their lands into what was in effect enemy territory. This promised to be dangerous work, and Crassus, perhaps not unreasonably, asked for an escort, only instead to receive the stinging rebuke from Sulla that the ghosts of his murdered father and brother would serve nicely in that capacity. Crassus therefore fell to his task

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with enthusiasm, and apparently raised a not inconsiderable force in the process. It is likely that this occupied him for the rest of the year, or it may well be that once this was accomplished he returned to Sulla and spent the winter in Capua with his new recruits. Either way, Crassus sees to have suspended his activity somewhat earlier than might otherwise have been expected before the end of 83, and in fact actions all over seem to have died down about the same time. The climate may have had something to do with this suspension of activity: Appian seems to suggest that the winter which was coming was a particularly cold one (1.10.87), and Plutarch mentions storms in the moutains of Gaul that might very well have struck the peninsula as well (Sert. 6). It is not impossible to conjecture that the cold had not come as late in the year as it usually did, and that both sides of the war intelligently elected to cease fighting and prepare for the following spring.

5. CIVIL WAR: 82 AND 81 During what remained of 83 and the opening months of 82, signs were beginning to emerge that the tide was slowly turning in Sulla’s favor, or at least such could be divined based on what was occurring in the provinces. In Spain, Sertorius had found that the promagistrates he was to succeed had declared for Sulla, and it apparently took a significant effort to expel them (Appian 1.13.108). It may well have been that there was a similar aetiology behind the troubles C. Fabius Hadrianus is reported as having suffered in Utica. This man, who had earlier defeated and driven out Metellus Pius, might reasonably be adjudged to be a partisan of Cinna and Carbo, and it may have been to win the favor of Sulla as well as (or perhaps instead of) the greed for which the sources have made this man notorious that the Romans at Utica acted against him, promptly burning him and his family alive.79 If Sulla did not suborn this action, he must at least have considered it as fairly helpful to his cause. Soon other provinces were to receive his attention, as well: as soon as he could spare the men, soldiers were sent into Spain against Sertorius (Plutarch, loc. cit.), and others were 79 As mentioned in Cicero, Verr. 2.170; Diodorus, 38.11.1; Per. 86; Valerius Maximus 9.10.2; and Orosius 5.20.3.

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later shipped off to Africa and Sicily. Perhaps as a precursor to this latter action was the first military event which the Periochae records for the new year: L. Philippus, the old consul of 91 who had last been seen in the company of many nobiles making their way to Sulla’s side in the previous year, had been given a legate’s commission and ships, and with these he had sailed to Sardinia and had won over that island for his benefactor, killing praetor Q. Antonius in the process (Per. 86). Nevertheless, all of these happenings did not change the basic circumstances within Italy itself. Sulla was relatively secure in Campania and had managed to acquire a number of talented subordinates and even some additional men, but was still faced with a northern Italy which seemed uniformly hostile, and had expressed that hostility by providing a massive army to Carbo and the younger Marius, mostly from Etruria. Moreover, just as Cn. Octavius had done in his own defense of Rome in 87, Carbo also seems to have made an especial appeal to the Cisalpine, although in this instance Gaul seems to have been more responsive to those appeals than had been true of the earlier ones (Plutarch reports that an abundance of Gallic horsemen fought for Carbo; Pomp. 7).80 For the coming year, Sulla’s main objectives, then, would likely have been to neutralize all three problems: he would have to prevent any more Italians and Gauls from joining the enemy, if possible, and then he would have to crush the supporters of the consuls in the Cisalpine, and then in the area closer to Rome. On their end, Carbo and Marius would have on the one hand the task of preventing Sulla from accomplishing these objectives, and on the other of finding a way to overcome Sulla’s mystique, his tactical abilities, and the quality of his men, and use their own advantages to defeat and destroy him.

This is also Keaveney’s assessment of the situation (1982, p. 132– 135). As will be seen, these men would ultimately prove unreliable, although Keaveney consistently assumes that it was less the Gauls and more the Italians in the government’s army who would eventually both refuse to fight and later change sides. He continually neglects to provide evidence for this assertion, however, and as such it is rejected here. 80

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It is therefore not surprising to read that the spring of 82 had begun with these aims in mind. Sulla, for his part, seems to have signed pacts with several Italian communities which in some way guaranteed that he would not snatch away their newly-acquired voting privileges (Sulla cum Italicis populis, ne timeretur ab his velut erepturus civitatem et suffragii ius nuper datum, foedus percussit; Per. 86). Who these populi Italici were and what Sulla was to get from them in turn cannot be known for certain, but can probably be guessed. The Italians were probably the Marsi, the Picentines, and the Apuli, who would all either contribute to his cause or at the very least would not oppose him, along with the Latins and anyone whose territory lay near where he was to be traveling or where he currently was. What Sulla probably wanted from them was that they either join him or keep out of the conflict.81 As usual, Sulla really had everything to gain and nothing to lose from this policy. If he had intended to remove or diminish the lawmaking powers of the comitia tributa, as it has been suggested he had wanted to do in 88, then he probably would have had little enough to fear from keeping the redistribution in place, either because the census had registered few enough of the élites, because it did but he intended in some way to vitiate the last census, or because he figured the wealthy classes, even if registered in substantial numbers, would be sympathetic enough to his aims. Thus, it was essentially to buy noninterference from these Italians or their participation on his

81 Keaveney (1982b, p. 511–513) takes note of most of the same peoples. Both he (op. cit., p. 509–511, 1982, p. 136–137) and Salmon (1967, p. 332–383) also believe that Sulla did not include the Samnites and Lucani in this arrangement; they would continue to fight him, as Keaveney points out, and furthermore Sulla may very well have felt some sort of ancestral or racial hatred towards them, as Salmon speculates (although Keaveney disagrees; 1982b, loc. cit. See also chapter 4 and the supporting notes for Roman “racism” in general, and chapter 10 for Sulla’s demeanor towards the Samnites and Lucani). Whether this bigotry existed or not, a more simple explanation is at hand for why Sulla did not seek an arrangement with these: Sulla did not believe he would be in the area of these people, and need not have secured their neutrality right away.

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side, rather than concern for their rights, that led Sulla to make his deals, and as usual he came out far ahead in the bargain. With these accords in place, Sulla seems to have left a small holding force in place in Capua to guard his rear while he moved north. This holding force was, it seems, a precaution against whatever Campanians were against him, and it seems there were some: Appian describes how Neapolis was to be taken by treachery, its inhabitants put to the sword, and its fleet confiscated by the Sullani, so it seems that that city had either always been hostile to Sulla or had soon gone over to Carbo and Marius between Sulla’s landing and the city’s sack (1.10.89). With these Campanians neutralized or held at bay, Sulla proceeded northwest, moving along first the Via Appia and then, at the junction with the Via Latina, dividing his forces, with he himself taking part of his main body along the Via Latina headed north, while a lieutenant took another part in the same direction but along the Via Appia guarding his western flank. The man chosen for the task was probably Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, who is mentioned in Plutarch as having been a subordinate who was directly under Sulla during this campaign (Sull. 28).82 Somewhat earlier Sulla seems to have put another phase of his plan in operation, id est the detachment of the Cisalpine. Towards this end, he seems to have sent Metellus north, perhaps by ship (Metellus is later seen sailing to Ravenna; Appian 1.10.89). When this force was sent and when, in turn, it arrived is difficult to tell from the sources. According to Appian’s account, it seems already to have been there in the spring (1.10.87), so perhaps it had been sent in late 83 or early 82. Pompeius was soon sent to join Metellus. Plutarch suggests that Metellus had been a little too sluggish in his movements for Sulla’s taste and that Sulla had initially had thoughts of replacing him with the youth, although it was likely that it was apparently an unusually cold winter and this, and not age, had been dampening “the bold and warlike spirit of 82 So Keaveney (1982, p. 137–138) in his interpretation of the great battle to follow; more below. Broughton (p. 70) suggests that the Dolabella in question is the one named above, who would be consul under Sulla in 81.

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the proconsul”. At any rate, Plutarch also reports that Pompeius asked not to go unless Metellus requested his presence, which he soon did (Pomp. 8). Soon after the arrival of Pompeius it seems that both he and Metellus found themselves in a strenuous battle with Carrinas, Carbo’s legate, near the river Aesis close to the Adriatic coast south of Ariminum (Appian, loc. cit. and Orosius 5.20.5).83 Metellus soon won the victory, and as a result several towns in the region switched sides. To put a stop to that sort of thing, Carbo himself arrived on the scene and besieged Metellus somewhere in the area (presumably in one of the cities which defected) until news had come of the defeat of his colleague Marius at the Sacriportus (more below). These reports almost certainly included information to the effect that this loss had involved spontaneous defection on men under the government’s command, and as Carbo was and already inclined to mistrust the loyalty of the men under his command, he apparently decided to break off his investment of Metellus and retreat northwards to make sure of the morale of his men in the safety of Ariminum. Carbo had no sooner begun to disengage, however, then Metellus sent Pompeius after him. The latter catching up with what was apparently the rear guard of Carbo’s cavalry near the Aesis and attacked. Since the ground was not suitable for horsemen, these were apparently badly defeated by Pompeius and were compelled to surrender with all of their equipment.84 Soon thereafter Metellus apparently proceeded northwards along the coastal road, defeating an army of Carbo along the way at an unnamed location which resulted in the See Map 2. Appian and Orosius in the places cited above; Plutarch also mentions a battle fought on the river Arsis (περὶ τὸν Ἄρσιν) at which Carbo’s cavalry was defeated by Pompeius, and it is likely to this engagement that he refers in Pompeius 7 rather than to an exploit mentioned before his journey to Sulla, for which see earlier in this chapter. Objections to this construction may be found in the fact that the text seems to read Arsis, not Aesis. However, the Arsis for Aesis confusion in this passage has been suspected by several of Plutarch’s translators; see, for example, the edition of Aubrey Stewart and George Long (vol. 3, p. 202 note 202; London, George Bell and Sons, 1892). 83 84

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defection of five cohorts to his command, and in the meantime Pompeius defeated another army under Marcius—almost certainly C. Marcius Censorinus, who had earlier been seen commanding cavalry for Cinna—near Senae (presumably Sena Gallica, which is en route between the Aesis and Ariminum towards which Metellus was almost certainly headed).85 Once they had gotten to the arterial line of the Via Flaminia, however, Pompeius and Metellus apparently parted company: Sulla had by this time no doubt arrived in Etruria, and he likely wanted as many men as could be gotten to harass Carbo in as many places as they could be sent (more below). Therefore, Pompeius betook himself southwards to join Sulla, while Metellus apparently proceeded on his steady pace towards Ariminum. But it seems that Metellus had found that city difficult to take, and therefore apparently decided to disengage, making use of the navy (which was probably following along the coast) to have himself shipped further north to Ravenna. Of this city Metellus looks to have gained possession without too much difficulty, allowing him to enjoy the use of its grain fields (Appian, 1.10.89). In addition, Ravenna had some strategic value: if he were to sally forth from that town, he could possibly gain possession of the Via Aemilia and perhaps reduce further south Ariminum by cutting off its supply line.86 At the same time, his ships could p resumably block it off by sea, and as Pompeius was already holding possession of the Via Flaminia while travelling down it in Sulla’s direction, Ariminum could be isolated. Whether or not this was his strategy, it is on the Via Aemilia that Metellus would next be seen later in the year after the battle of Clusium (more below). While all of this was going on to the north, Sulla was making his advance in that direction from Capua. A number of cities in Latium seem to have stood by Carbo and Marius, of whom the latter had apparently been sent to command in the region, and Sulla first seems to have been diverted by the need to take one of them, Setia. It has been suggested that Sulla’s men were split for this

85 86

Keaveney also makes this determination (1982, p. 140). See map 2.

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journey and that Dolabella took the city,87 although it very well might have been that Sulla converged on it from the Via Latina and Dolabella from the Via Appia and that they both took the town together, depending on how much resistance was encountered. Marius fell back from here and Sulla followed; presumably Dolabella was at some point engaged in trying to take Norba, although that city would not fall until later (Appian, 1.10.94). At some point near Signia, which lay a little further up the road, Marius apparently decided to take his stand at a place whose exact location is uncertain but which is called Sacriportus in the Periochae (87), Orosius (5.20.6), the de viris illustribus (68.3, 75.8), Florus (2.9.23), Velleius (2.26.1), and Lucan (2.134).88 All of these So Keaveney (1982, p. 137–138), in what appears to be the attempt to reconcile the reports of the coming battle in Appian (who seems to suggest that it took place near Setia—Σύλλα Σ τιον καταλα όντος, ὁ Μάριος ἀγχοῦ στρατοπεδεύων ὑπεχώρει κατ ὀλίγον—and thus to the Via Appia; 1.10.87) and Plutarch, which mentions that it occurred near Signia—περὶ Σίγνιον; Sull. 28—and therefore on the Via Latina). In this way he compromises between Rawson (1987, p. 170–172), whose argument is that Appian’s text is to be preferred, and Salmon (1967, p. 384–385), who follows Plutarch and places this event in the Trerus valley, taking no notice of the line in Appian (Lovano takes note of both possibilities but offers no opinion on them; p. 123–125). Keaveney’s suggestion is more than plausible: as will be seen directly, for the great battle against Marius to come Plutarch states that Sulla would have to summon Dolabella from a sufficient distance that it would take some effort on the latter’s part to get his commander, and in the meantime had to cut his way through enemy forces barring his path. Thus, it seems more than likely that Keaveney is correct, and Sulla did not take Setia. That was done by Dolabella, who was on the Via Appia substantially to the west of the Via Latina, and he either took Setia himself, or did it with Sulla’s help, but definitely played an important role. 88 The location is unnamed in Diodorus (38.15), who only mentions Praeneste in the aftermath, as is also true of Plutarch (28) and Eutropius (5.8.1). In fact, the name of the place may be Sacriportum, as only the accusative (apud Sacriportum in Velleius, Florus, Orosius, and de viris illustribus; apud Sacri … portum in Lucan; ad Sacriportum in the Periochae) is used; Appian, for his part, refers to it as the “so-called Sacred Shore” (ἐπὶ τὸν καλούμενον Ἱερὸν λιμένα). The derivation of the term is of some 87

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sources describe a great battle which then took place there, but most of the details concerning it are supplied by Appian (1.10.87) and Plutarch (Sull. 28). According to the latter, Marius arranged himself and his eighty-five cohorts and offered battle to Sulla, who was eager to accept it on that very day due to a prophetic dream he had had. Before he could fight, however, he needed to have the men under Dolabella, and therefore summoned him. But Marius had managed to block off most of the avenues to Sulla and thus compelled Dolabella to have to fight his way to his commander’s position, all the while in a driving rain which must have made both fighting and marching a complete misery. When Dolabella finally arrrived, he pleaded that the men not be made to fight in their exhaustion, an entreaty to which Sulla finally yielded. What happened next, however, is somewhat confused: according to the de viris illustribus (68.3) Marius had been worn out by his labor and by watchfulness and was asleep when the ensuing battle took place, suggesting that perhaps it occurred very early in the morning (Plutarch, quoting Fenestella, offers a similar report as one of the alternatives explaining the action of the encounter). Such would make what happened next more plausible, since it involved a chase to Signia which is over twelve miles from Praeneste, and it is to be wondered how much of a running fight could be made late in the evening.89 On the other hand, Plutarch himself holds that Marius actually attacked as Dolabella was arriving, and that Sulla’s men—angry, no doubt, at the prospect that the evening meal and the sleep which was to be theirs after fortifying the camp was now to be stolen from them by the onslaught—violently repulsed them. Appian also suggests that, if not attacking, that Marius was at least present for the battle, and fills in the reason for why the flight to which his army was soon put took place: the left wing of Marius began to collapse, at which point five cohorts of infantry and two of cavalry spontaneously deserted to Sulla. This soon led to a rout and a pursuit all the way concern to Rawson (loc. cit.), whose assumption that it must have been named for an actual port is used in her attempt to pinpoint its location. 89 Rawson (loc. cit.) notes the twenty kilometers of distance between Signia and Praeneste.

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to Praeneste (a city in which Marius had already apparently taken the time to store a large quantity of gold; Pliny, NH 35.5.16),90 with Sulla’s men slaying all those they caught along the way. Marius himself arrived somewhat later than the main body of his men, who had found shelter in the city (so Appian; 15,000 of them made it into the city, according to Diodorus Siculus 38.15). His father’s son, Marius had perhaps tried unsuccessfully to rally his defeated troops, and on his own arrival at Praeneste he discovered the gates had been closed. Fortunately for him, a rope was soon lowered, and he was thereupon hauled over the walls into the city. The rest of his men were not so lucky: all told, Sulla’s army had managed to kill many thousands of the enemy,91 and were now about to kill more of them, since according to Appian, all of the Samnites who were found amongst the large number of those who surrendered were then slaughtered for being “ill-disposed” towards the Romans (ὧν τοὺς Σαυνίτας ἔκτεινε πάντας ὡς αἰεὶ χαλεποὺς Ῥωμαίοις γενομένους). 8000 prisoners in all met their end in such a fashion, according to Plutarch. Sulla seems to have tarried for a time near Praeneste to make sure that Marius would not try to break out and harass his rear as he moved north. According to the Periochae (loc. cit.), one such attempt was indeed apparently made without success, and Appian records that several other sallies were attempted later which fared similarly. Sulla then set up siege lines and entrusted them to one Q. Lucretius Ofella, who was apparently renowned neither for his See also Rawson, loc. cit., for this maneuver. Exactly how many thousands is not agreed upon by the sources. Appian does not give casualty figures, but Plutarch lists 20,000 slain acccording to Sulla’s own estimates (Plutarch also makes the wildly implausible claim that Sulla had lost only twenty-three himself). Orosius (quoting “Claudius”, who is doubtless Claudius Quadrigarius via Livy) lists 25,000, and Eutropius 15,000, while Florus mentions that the battle contributed to the more than 70,000 which Sulla killed in battle here and at the Colline gate (apud Sacriportum, apud Collinam septuaginta milia amplius Sulla concidit, although since 70,000 is the exact figure given by Eutropius for the latter battle, it may be that the septuaginta …milia refers solely to the Colline Gate, and the amplius refers to the additional casualties from the Sacriportus on top of those numbers). 90 91

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generalship nor his longstanding loyalty (Dio—frg. 108—implies that he was a recent addition to Sulla’s cause whose abilities were suspect, and Velleius 2.27.6 describes the novelty of his support for Sulla explicitly). Still, Sulla apparently deemed that he could be trusted to oversee this task, in which seems to have been competent enough (more below). Leaving Ofella to this work, and perhaps either allowing Dolabella to continue with Norba or replacing him with Mam. Aemilius Lepidus (Appian 1.11.94),92 Sulla then resumed his northern trek. His aim was almost certainly Rome, which seems to have been left almost undefended by Carbo’s operations in Gaul and by the envelopment of Marius in the south. Before Sulla got there, however, Marius had had time to send an order to L. Junius Brutus Damasippus to liquidate various political enemies, whose numbers at the very least included C. Carbo Arvina, P. Antistius, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Q. Mucius Scaevola.93 Why it is that Marius would choose to order this atrocity is unknown, nor is the reason why Damasippus would For the identification of this Lepidus see chapter 8 concerning Cinna’s luring of the legions under Claudius and supporting notes. 93 So Valerius Maximus (9.2.3) who mentions only the death of Carbo specifically and the display of his mutilated body; Velleius (2.26.2–3) and Orosius (5.20.4) mention all four men, with Orosius adding the detail that they were pierced with butcher’s hooks and dragged to the Tiber into which their bodies were cast. Appian (1.10.88) also names all four men and adds a further detail: apparently the men were slain when they had come to a meeting of the Senate which was convened just for this purpose (the de viris illustribus does not provide names but likewise mentions that the deaths occurred under a pretext of the Senate meeting and the casting into the Tiber; 68.2), and while three of the men actually perished in the curia, Scaevola fled a short distance; it is known from other sources (Per. 86, Florus 2.9.21, Diodorus 38.17, and Augustine, de civ. 3.28. 3.29) that he was apprehended at the Temple of Vesta and was even killed before her statue, a detail confirmed by Cicero (de nat. deor. 3.32.80; a letter to Arricus—ad Att. 9.21.3—also mentions the death of Carbo, and his Brut. 311 likewise mentions the death of Carbo and Scaevola along with Antistius) and seems likely to have motivated the indirect reference in Lucan 2.126–129 that “blood and flame” still remained in aged Scaevola even though he had escaped Fimbria’s knife (parvum sed fessa senectus / Sanguinis effudit iugulo, flammisque pepercit). 92

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elect to obey the order. Appian and Florus (2.9.21) both make it clear that by this point Marius had come to believe that his cause was hopeless, although perhaps prematurely, and it would seem that there was little this crime could do which would substantively help things. Perhaps, then, it was simple vengeance which motivated the order, since revenge was fairly brutal at this time.94 Appian records that shortly after the men were slain, Sulla brought his army to the Campus Martius with the possible intention of preventing any further homicides of this kind, at which he seems to have been fairly effective: all the men of the opposite faction fled, and Sulla was now master of the city, into which he entered and bade the remaining citizens be encouraged, adding that they would soon be “safe” (1.10.89). Probably under threat of compulsion, it is assumed that what remained of the Senate voted to restore to Sulla the proconsular power he would have lost upon entering the city (assuming he was still preserving the appearance of law-abiding proconsul), whereupon he proceeded with his army to go north to face what remained of the opposition to him in Etruria. In this region M. Licinius Crassus was soon seen operating (Plutarch reports his ravaging of Tuder; Crass. 6). Perhaps he had arrived there earlier in the spring, taking advantage of Carbo’s absence dealing with Metellus and Pompeius (see above), or—as is perhaps more likely—he had represented the vanguard of the army which Sulla was himself to lead there after he had dealt with Marius further south and had “reassured” Rome. Very likely the presence of Crassus had caused Carbo to hurry from Ariminum back towards the capital, and either in pursuit of Carbo, on a summons from Sulla, or both, Pompeius was soon to follow on the Via 94 For the particular lengths to which vengeance would be taken by Sulla, for example, see Epstein (p. 74), as well as next chapter. For the reasons why these men were singled out, Keaveney (1982, p. 139) has a number of theories, all of them plausible, including the fact that at least three of these had relatives or in-laws amongst the prominent supporters of Sulla and that all four had supported the embassy of reconciliation sent by Flaccus (although Flaccus was himself was not listed amongst the victims). It may also be added that at least three were apparently prominent, famous orators, and all may at some point have spoken out against Cinna, Carbo, Marius father and son, or all of them.

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Flaminia (as has been seen). Nevertheless, it seems that Sulla caught up with Carbo first. Having detached Censorinus from his main body to deal with Pompeius (more below), the consul soon ran into Sulla’s men somewhere on the Glanis river probably near the Via Cassia.95 Sulla had likely marched there after first defeating some opponents under an unnamed commander near Saturnia (Appian 1.10.89), allowing him then to send M. Lucullus (brother of L. Lucullus, Sulla’s admiral of sorts) up the Via Cassia to complete the detachment of the Gauls from Carbo’s cause. Lucullus would then leave the Via Cassia and would then move along the Via Aemilia in the direction of Placentia where he would next be seen. In the meantime, it was Sulla’s cavalry which made contact with that of Carbo at the Glanis. The skirmish which then took place does not seem to have been terribly serious in terms of battlefield death, as Appian reports that Carbo only lost fifty men. What was more important in the fact that some 270 of his Celtiberian cavalry sent by “the praetors”, presumably the same ones who had switched loyalties to Sulla in the meantime, are said spontaneously to have deserted in the midst of the battle. Carbo then broke off and proceeded to kill the rest of the Celtiberi, probably less from frustration than from fear of similar desertions at a crucial time (Appian, loc. cit.). Shortly thereafter a savage battle apparently took place near Clusium at which, according to Appian (loc. cit.), neither side emerged as the clear winner, although apparently Sulla withdrew from it. This was probably less from defeat, in spite of the fact of a convenient nightfall mentioned in the sources which is so often the code for that very thing, and more because he needed to betake himself south to Praeneste to tighten the noose around that city against the threat of penetration from outside, about which more directly.96

See map 2. This is the interpretation of Keaveney (1982, p. 141–142), following the testimony of Appian and the Periochae stating that Sulla personally helped ward off attempts at the relief of Praeneste; he is almost certainly correct in his view. 95 96

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As Sulla was departing, Carbo first seems to have decided to send some men back east to Spoletium to the relief of Carrinas, the subordinate who had been given the task of keeping Pompeius from linking with Sulla. There Carrinas had been defeated not just by Pompeius but by Crassus as well, and the two of them had cooperated—a precedent which would not continue long—in driving their opponent into the town, which they then surrounded. As it turns out, Carrinas would prove more successful in extricating himself that the relief army would be in aiding him do so. That army was defeated by Sulla somewhere en route, although Carrinas seems to have taken advantage of a heavy rainstorm and thick darkness to elude his besiegers and make his way back to Carbo at Clusium (Appian 1.10.90). With the men of Carrinas and the remnants of those defeated in their attempt to aid him now gathered to himself, Carbo seems to have sent some of them southward in another attempt to relieve Praeneste, as will be seen. In the meantime, he apparently left the city of Clusium in the hands of Damasippus while he and the proconsul Norbanus worked their way northwards to see if they could arrest the tide of defeat in the Cisalpine (the other consul of 83, Scipio, seems to have betaken himself into exile at Massilia, thus depriving Sulla of a powerful if unwitting agent acting on his behalf).97 In this enterprise, Carbo and Norbanus would be spectacularly unsuccessful. Having apparently decided to attack Faventia and thus open the Via Aemilia to Ariminum, they approached Metellus towards the end of the day guided by what seems to have been the hope that they could use gathering darkness to surprise their antagonist. However, there were vineyards in the area, and in the gloom the men of Carbo and Norbanus became entangled in them. These were then easily spotted by Metellus, whose soldiers fell upon the consul’s men and killed 10,000 of their number (Appian, 1.10.91; Orosius mentions 9000). What was worse than that was the 6000 more who deserted, and the rest fled in confusion, such that only 1000 men managed to 97 So, perhaps, Cicero pro Sest. 3.7, although the Scipio named there is given the praenomen Caius. What is above is, at least, the interpretation of Keaveney (1982, p. 155).

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make it into Ariminum in anything resembling discipline and order. Some of those who had scattered apparently were able to be reformed, as it looks like they would soon be sent up the Via Aemilia to see if they could deal with M. Lucullus at a somewhat later time. Meanwhile, Carbo seems to have left Norbanus in Ariminum to undertake this task while he himself made his way back to Clusium to continue to direct efforts to relieve Praeneste. Norbanus could not arrest the decline of the cause, however: shortly after the debacle at Faventia, a legion of Lucanians under Albinovanus, upon hearing of what had transpired, deserted to Metellus in spite of what seems to have been the efforts of their leader. The latter, however, seems to have had a change of heart of his own soon thereafter: while still in the camp of Norbanus he made overtures to Sulla, who promised him amnesty if he could make a display of loyalty. This he decided to do by means of inviting those legates of Norbanus as were present to a dinner (one of them, the otherwise-unknown Quinctius, seems to have been sent towards Fidentia by this point; more below), whereupon Albinovanus killed all of them and then defected to Sulla. Norbanus himself had not attended this banquet, but upon hearing rumors (although apparently not true just yet) that Ariminum and the neighboring towns were changing sides, he decided to flee, ultimately to Rhodes and to eventual self-destruction there (Appian, loc. cit.), about which more below. Attempts in the meantime continued to be made by various forces to relieve Marius in Praeneste. One of these, according to Appian, took the form of eight legions under C. Marcius Censorinus sent by Carbo shortly before the consul went on his Gallic foray. In response, Pompeius swiftly went after Censorinus, perhaps sped by memory of the good luck he had had against Censorinus before at Senae. He was presently able to ambush Censorinus and the relief expedition in a defile at some location which is not named but which was was probably near the Via Flaminia, kill many its soldiers, and then isolate the rest on a hilltop. Censorinus managed to escape by means of a trick which would

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work on Pompeius at least once more in his career,98 which was leave his fires burning while withdrawing the rest of the men under cover of darkness. This success notwithstanding, however, the men apparently blamed Censorinus for the ambush and began to desert him. Some of these went up the road back to Ariminum, and some gave up the war altogether, with the result that Censorinus was only able to bring seven cohorts back to Carbo (Appian, 1.10.90). This entire operation had been a complete fiasco with incompetence displayed on both sides, but it was catastrophically more so for the government than for Sulla, whose reverses had been lighy. Perhaps slighly more serious for Sulla was the news that a combined force of Samnites under Pontius Telesinus, Lucani under the old Allied War commander M. Lamponius, and Campanians under the otherwise unknown general named Gutta, was moving in a strength of 70,000 men towards the position of Marius. According to Appian, Sulla himself moved to stop them and managed to occupy all the passes which might lead to Praeneste, causing the Samnites considerable difficulties in these passes through which they now apparently began trying to force themselves (Appian, 1.10.90–92). Marius, for his part, could therefore neither get this help nor, it seems, could he help himself very much, as his several attempts to batter his way through Ofella’s siege lines ended in failure (Appian, loc. cit.; Per. 87). Not even the pressure applied by two additional legions sent by Damasippus seems to have been able to penetrate Sulla’s barrier around Praeneste, and the city which would ultimately never be relieved; it was instead violently captured by the Sullani (see below). As badly as Carbo’s designs in the south were going, those in the north were faring no better. Orosius describes a sharp confrontation between M. Lucullus and one Quinctius, a commander of Carbo’s who once may have been attached to Norbanus and who managed to evade slaughter by the renegade Lucani under Albinovanus earlier (see above). This battle took place at Fidentia, some fifteen miles from Placentia along the Via Aemilia (5.20.8). Plutarch (Sull. 27) adds the additional detail that 98 During his campaign against the armies of Mithridates; see Greenhalgh, p. 111.

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Lucullus was outnumbered to the tune of sixteen cohorts to fifty, and that even the cohorts he had lacked weapons. Nevertheless, a gentle breeze apparently caused flowers to fall upon the men of Lucullus and made it appear as if they had already been given a victory garland, and Lucullus interpreted this as a favorable sign. Indeed, the outcome was just as the omen seems to have portended, for when Quinctius attacked, Lucullus inflicted a heavy loss upon him (18,000 men and the loss of their camp, according to Plutarch; more than ten thousand, according to Orosius).99 Appian also mentions this battle, and likewise mentions a result of it: upon hearing of this defeat, of the stalling of Damasippus near Praeneste, and of the defection of the Gauls to Lucullus in the aftermath of the murder of the officers of Norbanus, Carbo apparently decided to emulate his predecessor of the previous year and flee from Italy (Appian 1.10.92). Leaving the not inconsiderable forces still under his command to Carrinas and Marcius Censorinus, Carbo he made his way for Africa, ultimately with tragic results for all three men (see below). Shortly thereafter Appian describes yet another battle between Pompeius and what remained of Carbo’s army near Clusium, in which the former destroyed another 20,000 men, following which the consular army continued its disintegration (Appian, loc. cit.). At a loss for anything better to do, Carinas, Brutus, and Censorinus apparently then decided to see if they could make one more attempt to break Sulla’s grip on Praeneste. They could not, it seems, so they then decided to turn back and head for home, since the capital itself had been left undefended. At this point Sulla, either from fear that the city would be (re)taken or from a desire to crush what remained of the armies of Carbo once and for all, sent his cavalry in pursuit of his three opponents, and he himself withdrew his army from the passes A brief reference both to this battle, as well as to Clusium and that at Faventia preceeding it, is also found in the Periocha of Livy’s Book 88, and also in Velleius 2.28, although that authority is almost certainly incorrect in claiming that all three of these battles took place before the Sacriportus (contrary to the chronology of Appian, the Periochae, and Orosius). 99

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around Praeneste and headed north in support of his horse. At the same time he seems to have summoned Pompeius and Crassus from the north. If it was his plan to annihilate Carinas, Damasippus, and Censorinus, then such a strategy did seem to involve the risk of allowing Marius to break out of Praeneste. This was apparently acceptable enough to Sulla: if he could completely wipe out any hope of aid from the north, then he could wheel about with his entire army—including the legions of Marcellus, Lucullus, Crassus, and Pompeius—and destroy Marius at the time of his choosing, along with whatever remained of his Samnite and Lucanian confederates. What he had not counted on was that the Samnites would also move on Rome, but this is precisely what Pontius Telesinus and 40,000 Samnites (according to Velleius 2.27.1–3) proceeded to do; their mission was to root out the wolves by burning down the forest which harbored them, according to a speech put into their leader’s mouth by Vellieus. Telesinus and the remaining generals of Carbo soon seem to have met in the Alban hills and coordinated their efforts. This is how Appian presents it (1.10.92), although Plutarch, deriving his information no doubt from Sulla’s own memoirs, omits any references to the Romans who had joined the Samnites; it instead becomes a life and death struggle between Rome and the Samnites and Lucani, “[Rome’s] most ancient and inveterate enemies” (τὰ ἔχ ιστα τῇ Ῥώμῃ καὶ τὰ πολεμικώτατα φῦλα; Sull. 29–30). These were soon at the gates of Rome itself, and here they were temporarily delayed, first by the city’s garrison under Appius Claudius, and then later by the arrival of Sulla’s cavalry under Balbus. Sulla himself arrived soon after, and he ignored the pleas of his subordinates to let the men rest, throwing them directly into battle. The results were mixed. On the right side, M. Licinius Crassus apparently completely routed the Samnites and drove them some distance from the city; it was probably with considerable effort that Crassus was able to restrain his men from further pursuit and get them to hold up at Antemnae, from which location he sent back to Sulla to ask for provisions for his men (Appian— loc. cit.—omits reference to Crassus and his role, though it is supplied by Plutarch both in the passage of his Sulla cited above and in his Crassus, 6). Sulla himself apparently had had a much more difficult time of it. In spite of his urging and personal appearance on the front lines, his left wing had given way and had

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fled to the city before the gates were actually closed on them, forcing them to fight. Sulla’s part of the battle been a very near-run thing indeed: while Velleius states that the Samnites apparently had begun to give way by nightfall (loc. cit.), Appian reports that fighting continued into the night, and Plutarch notes that panicked messengers had been sent to Ofella bidding him to lift the siege and come destroy the Samnites before Sulla and his men were overwhelmed. By early morning of the next day, however, it had become clear that Sulla had won the battle. Telesinus was found wounded and dying but with an expression of triumph and serenity on his face; if he knew that he had lost, he had at least been aware that he had cost the Romans dearly, and had poured every last drop of himself into the combat. Censorinus and Carrinas were taken prisoner but were summarily executed, and the heads of all three men were collected and used to some purpose at Praeneste (more below). Appian states that 50,000 men on both sides had been killed during this engagement alone, although most accounts dwell on the Samnite (and non-Sullan Roman) losses here, which was supposed by many to have been slightly higher that Appian’s estimate.100 This fight, according to Plutarch, had been fought on the kalends of November, which means that winter was soon to be beginning. In its aftermath, it was perhaps to be wondered how much longer Praeneste could hold out, especially since Marius had been suffering from hunger from the time of Carbo’s first attempt to relieve him (Appian, 1.10.90). The answer, it seems, was not very long. Along with news of the battle, Sulla had sent to Ofella the heads of the generals who had died there, and these were put on display on Ofella’s camp (Velleius, 2.27.3; Appian, 1.10.94; 100 50,000 on both sides, according to Appian (as mentioned); 70,000 according to Eutropius (5.8.1; Florus gives that figure for the combined total of the Sacriportus and the Colline gate, but, as has been seen, he does say “more than 70,000”, which therefore would include the numbers of deaths at the latter battle to which the unnumbered thousands who fell at the former are encompassed by the amplius; 2.9.23); 80,000, according to Orosius (5.20.9). The battle is also mentioned but with no relevant details by Lucan (2.135–138) and the Periochae (88).

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Frontinus, 2.9.3). According to Appian, the sight of them had led the Praenestines to come to realize that their cause was hopeless, and they they gave in to the besiegers and opened the gates to Ofella. During the widespread looting which Ofella granted to his men, he had likely come across two discoveries in short order. One of these was the 13,000 pounds of gold and 6000 pounds of silver which Marius had taken there, and this was soon seized, finally ending up on display during Sulla’s triumph (Pliny, NH 35.5.16). The other would probably soon have been the dead bodies of both Marius and the younger brother of Telesinus. These two had apparently tried to escape from the city by means of the underground channels for which Praeneste was famous (Strabo 5.3.11). However, Ofella had apparently taken precautions against this, and finding all the passageways guarded, the fugitives had determined on mutual suicide, which was eventually accomplished with the help of a loyal slave (Diodorus 38.15; Orosius 5.21.8–10). Ofella in turn returned the present Sulla had made to him in the form of the head of Marius, at which Sulla made a jest from Aristophanes (Appian, loc. cit.). In the meantime Praeneste, like much of the rest of Italy, was at Sulla’s mercy.101 Not long thereafter all of the Italy would likewise be in his hands. Various sources suggest that Norba, Volaterrae, and Nola were still offering resistance after the sack of Praeneste (Nola and Volaterrae, Per. 89; Norba, Appian 1.9.94), but they would soon fall. The first of them was taken by Mam. Aemilius Lepidus by means of treachery, though even as the city was being delievered, its inhabitants apparently had no desire to see themselves enslaved and their goods confiscated. Therefore a mass suicide was initiated, followed by arson which, by means of helpful winds, burned the town so thoroughly that no loot could be taken from it (Appian, loc. cit.). The Periochae states that Sulla himself had a hand in subduing the other two, and Cicero’s speech on behalf of Sextus Roscius notes the same thing (20–26; 110–115). According to

101 Further mention of the death of Marius in varying degrees of detail is found in Per. 88; Lucan 2.193–195; Plutarch, Sull. 32, Mar. 46; Diodorus 37.29, 38.15; Valerius Maximus 6.8.2, and de vir. ill. 68

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Granius Licinianus (36), this action had taken place sometime during 81, the year in which Pompeius triumphed.102 Once he had gotten the land, Sulla next needed to take care of the men who were still his enemies, and presently any of them with military talent were hunted down and killed. For this reason Scipio apparently was left conspicuously alive in Massilia, but Norbanus, who had slipped away to Rhodes, was found there by Sulla and killed himself to avoid extradition to the latter’s agents (Per. 89; Appian 1.10.91). Even while the war had not yet been decided, a new if minor danger had arisen in Sicily: the governor there, M. Perpenna, had apparently held the island with some men, with which an expedition to relieve Praeneste had apparently been threatened but ultimately never effected (Diod. 38.14.1). According to Plutarch, after that city fell Perperna established a haven of sorts for refugees from the defeat. These soon included Carbo, who had apparently in the meantime gathered a fleet from Africa (Pomp. 10), presumably with the help of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, replacement of Fabius Hadrianus and son-in-law of Cinna.103 Carbo would presently be joined in Sicily by Brutus Damasippus (Per. 89, Valerius Maximus 6.2.8). Pompeius was soon dispatched against them, and short work was apparently made of all three men. Brutus, sent by Carbo in a fisherman’s boat to see if Pompeius had landed at Lilybaeum, soon discovered to his misfortune that he had in fact done so; surrounded, he proceeded to take his own life. Perpenna fled Sicily and went into hiding for a time, only to reemerge sometime later (see next chapter), and Carbo was himself soon captured and ultimately met an end which was less than

102 On the other hand, while Nola seems to have fallen in that year, Volaterrae seems to have been slightly more troublesome; according to Strabo (5.2.6), this city included companies of the “proscribed” who endured a siege of two years which was only ended by a truce (he also mentions that Populonium which also sustained a siege at the same time). It may well be, however, that a two-year siege is something of an exaggeration: if both were invested in late 82 and fell in 81, the chronology in Granius and Strabo can be reconciled. 103 Greenhalgh, p. 24; Badian 1964, p. 93, 218.

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dignified.104 Pompeius was then sent into Africa to deal with Ahenobarbus, and did so with dispatch.105 Presently the only man left to challenge Sulla was Sertorius, and by 81 even he was not faring terribly well (although he would soon find his bearings, as will be seen). At any rate, neither he nor the now-vanished Perperna was much of a threat, and more importantly none of them could be found in the Italy itself.

6. SULLA VICTOR Upon the conclusion of these final operations, the wars were now over, and Sulla was (more or less) master of the Roman world. Part of that Roman world were the Italians who had once been Rome’s allies but were—for the time being, at least—now citizens, and citizens with in theory the same rights as all other Romans. Sulla had promised to the Senate, to Scipio, and perhaps even to many of these Italians themselves that they would have nothing to fear from him, and that the rights which they had finally made theirs were to be secure as long as they did not challenge him. Many of these Italians, however, had challenged him: what was to become of them? And would he keep to his word as far as the others? All of these must have been painful questions on the minds of the inhabitants of the peninsula as the last fragments of resistance to Sulla were finally ground into nothingness. Certainly by 81 all the wars—or the one long war, The Ten Years War in the words of Sir Ronald Syme—had finally come to an end, but this warfare had been of the most confusing sort, involving many promises, betrayals, and frequent changes of side. Who had actually won it? Was a winner even possible to determine, based on the closeness 104 Valerius Maximus 9.13.2 and Plutarch, Pomp. 10, which give a slightly more amplified acount than the terse messages found in earlier passages of Valerius (5.3.5 and 6.2.8) as well as those of Periochae (89), Orosius 5.21.11, Appian 1.11.96, and Eutropius 5.8.2; the chronology in the latter supports the claim of Keaveney (1982, p. 160) that Sulla waited until after Carbo had died and thus two vacancies existed in the consulate before calling for the Dictatorship. 105 Per. 89, Valerius Maximus 6.2.8, Plutarch (Pomp. 11–12; Moralia 203); Eutropius (5.9.1; Orosius 5.21.13 was almost certainly taken from this passage); a reference to this is also made by Dio 36.25.2.

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of the participants? Could it be that neither side had? And what would happen in the peace to follow? Over the next several years the answers to those questions would be revealed as a new order would be created from the wreckage of the Roman world and a new Commonwealth was to be created. What that new Commonwealth was to look like, and how the former Italians were to fit into that it, will be seen in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 10: THE END OF THE STRUGGLE— THE DICTATORSHIP OF SULLA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 1. ROME, ITALY, AND THE ITALIANS AND THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR At some point prior to the year 91, the Italians who lived alongside the Romans in the peninsula in a state of alliance with them had begun to conceive of the desire to merge with them into one commonwealth and become Roman. To the extent that any literary evidence from the ancient world for this period is reliable, this seems to be a definite fact. Furthermore, these sources indicate something else about that desire, which is that these Italians did not simply want the hollow name of citizen, but rather wanted the civitas in its full and complete form: they wished to obtain all the rights and were willing to shoulder all the responsibilities which that status entailed. The sources do not, unfortunately, provide the exact date at which this desire first manifested itself, nor do they give the exact reasons for why it existed, although what evidence the texts do provide allows for conjectures to be made about both the when and the why that attain a fairly high level of plausibility. Such conjectures were made in the previous chapters. Yet if the sources do not give a date for when this urge arose, nor the reason for it, the ancient authors do say what the Italians were willing to do about their desire. In the end, they were willing to fight to get what they wanted, and to keep fighting until they got what they wanted ad unguem. Warfare launched to accomplish this goal first erupted in 91, when many of the Italians under their own leadership rose up to wrest the franchise from a recalcitrant Rome by force. It would turn out that after three years of fighting they proved unable to do this, in the sense that they had not battered 633

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the Romans into submission and extracted what they wanted from a beaten enemy. On the other hand, what their raw strength could not obtain, their endurance fairly nearly did. The Romans ended up being able to absorb the worst of blows of the Italians and to return these in kind, but while Rome ultimately proved the stronger on the field, they had grown so sick of the contest that they offered the Italians a compromise in the form of a version of the citizenship which gave them all that the Romans got from the state except full political rights. Because the Allies had essentially been beaten and could hope for nothing better, they accepted the offer (or, at least, most of them did). It should not, however, be assumed that the former Allies were satisfied with this partial gain, and indeed events would soon show that they were not. Somewhat later, the opportunity to obtain more was offered: under the leadership of some Roman aristocrats, the Italians—now Romans, or very close to it—mobilized again, fought against the full-fledged Romans one more time, and this time were victorious. The nobles who had obtained their support of the ex-socii through pledges of getting them their full rights did in fact eventually fulfill their promises, and by means of this fulfillment, the former Italians at last acquired the privileges for which they had so long thirsted. From this point forward, they were legitimately Roman in every way. But due to the delays which had held up those nobles whom the novi cives had followed from attending their obligations, the rights that were acquired were very late in their arrival. As a result, the one-time Italians did not get a chance to enjoy them for very long, because at practically the same time as the laws were passed to give them what they had so long wished for, a threat to these privileges appeared. This threat took the form of another Roman aristocrat, whose attitude towards their new standing seemed hostile and whose aims might have been to take that standing away. Based on fears of this outcome, the nowRoman Italians took the field again alongside fellow Romans who likewise had an interest in repelling that aristocrat, and together they fought him. The result was unambiguous: they had lost, and their opponent had conquered completely. When he had done so, both Rome and the entirety of Italy were his, and the destinies of all Romans—no matter how recently they had become such—were completely in his hands. The war which had led to that conclusion

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had, however, been extraordinarily nasty. Tergiversations, lies, massacres, and pledges of vengeance had been commonplace, and so even when the last battles in it had finally been fought to their conclusion, there was the not unreasonable fear that the blood would continue to flow. As that combat came to an end, the losers found themselves not only defeated, but doubtless in the grip of a fear which was terrible. What was going to happen next? Would they be killed, and, if so, how many were to die? What was going to happen to the living? And would there ever be the possibility for a lasting peace, or would vendetta beget vendetta and repression lead to uprising into perpetuity? No one really knew, not even the man whose power at the end of the combat had become supreme. Nevertheless, if that man could not be certain as to what the outcome of his actions was going to be, he must at least have had some ideas about it as he put his plans into motion. His design, it seems, was nothing less than a completely new society, and it was a society which was to be both perfect and permanent. The steps he took to bring that design into existence, the extent to which those steps were successful and achieved their aims, and the final results for both Romans of all stripe will be narrated below.

2. PROSCRIPTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES When the battle at the Colline Gate had finally ended, L. Cornelius Sulla found himself the undisputed master of Rome. A short while later, the remainder of peninsula was firmly in his hands, as well: all the armies which had been opposed to him had been destroyed, and their leaders (or, rather, most of them) had been killed. Once Sulla’s mastery in Italy had become a certainty, the remaining question, simple but overwhelmingly important in spite of its simplicity, was what was to become of its inhabitants. If Appian (1.9.77) is to be believed, Sulla had himself made it no secret that he intended to wreak terrible vengeance on those who he believed had harmed him, and had made this intention manifest in the exchanges of letters between himself and the government then in control of Rome in the years which had preceded his return (as has been seen). Even before the war had fully ended and with himself the clear victor, Sulla had already effected part of this vengeance by confiscating the property of some of the opposing side who had fled when he approached the capital after the initial investment of Praeneste (Appian, 1.10.89; see previous chapter). But his fury had

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not gone much further than this in later 82, and this may have inspired some to hope that Sulla would restrain himself to just this. During Sulla’s first march on Rome in 88, it could be claimed—by him if by no one else—that that he had displayed relative mildness. As 82 was coming to an end, there have been some left in the city who held out the hope that, dire warnings of retribution notwithstanding, Sulla may have expended his ire on those who already been killed in arms, a number which was not inconsiderable. If there were any who held out this hope, however, quite a few were soon to see it evaporate in a most graphic manner. According to the Periochae (88), Sulla had all the prisoners from the Colline gate assembled in the Villa Publica and ordered the execution of all the Samnites, some 8000 men, while the Praenestines who had surrendered at their city were soon given similar treatment; a variety of other sources confirm this information.1 Dio Cassius (frg. 109) and Plutarch (Sull. 30) both These include Appian, who reports three specific massacres: one subsequent to the battle leading to the siege of Praeneste, where he specifies that Samnites were singled out for death (1.10.87); another after the conclusion of the Colline Gate, where again Samnites were specifically mentioned and the figure of 8000 from the Periochae (loc. cit.) was retained (1.10.93); and one more after the fall of Praeneste, where all male prisoners who were not “Roman” were cut down (the implications of that last will be discussed later; 1.10.94). These were all before the proscriptions, in which many others would be convicted and killed (as intimated later on in Appian; 1.11.96; see below). By contrast, the Periochae 88 specifies only two such bloodbaths, those of the Samnites in the Villa Publica and the Praenestines, before the proscriptions. Valerius Maximus (9.2) also mentions two, one of “four legions” (quattuor legiones contrariae partis fidem suam secutas in publica villa) in the Villa Publica and one of 5000 men after Praeneste, in addition to the 4700 to follow in the proscriptions. Plutarch, mentions one after the Colline Gate of 6000 men and then another of 12,000 upon the surrender of Praeneste, where apparently Sulla had attempted to hold trials of some sort but then resorted to mass slaughter after these were found to be taking too long (Sulla 31–32). Florus (2.9.25), for his part, only cites one, at which 4000 were killed, but then goes on to mention a general bloodbath during the proscriptions. 1

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state that Sulla used the former event to provide the suitable atmosphere for an address he was to make to the Senate, which was conducted at the same time as the slayings were occurring and, according to the sources, had to be made over the screams of the dying, which were plainly audible. The details of this particular speech are not recorded, though Appian preserves an account of an address made sometime thereafter in which Sulla vowed a new order which would prove profitable for those who followed willingly but catastrophic to those who did not. It also promised that Sulla’s “enemies” would soon be dealt with in a most grim fashion (τῶν δ᾽ ἐχ ρῶν οὐδενὸς ἐς ἔσχατον κακοῦ φείσεται; 1.11.95). There can be little doubt that Sulla meant what he had said, and that evil was in store for his inimici. What was not known for This corresponds fairly well with Orosius (5.20.9), in whose narrative one slaughter of 3000 men is followed by over 9000 killed during the proscriptions. The de viris illustribus (75) similarly mentions but one massacre, in which 9000 men were killed in the Villa Publica, and one is also mentioned by Dio Cassius, fr. 109, who gives no figures; Strabo (5.4.12) also cites one of three to four thousand men in the Villa Publica, but notes that during the proscriptions the Samnites were targeted specifically and killed in such numbers that they were practically exterminated (οὐκ ἐπαύσατο πρὶν ἢ πάντας τοὺς ἐν ὀνόματι Σαυνιτῶν διέφ ειρεν ἢ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐξέ αλε ... τοιγάρ τοι νυνὶ κῶμαι γεγόνασιν αἱ πόλεις).

The broad similarity in these stories all suggest a common source, possibly Livy (though see Haug, p. 133 for doubts on the extent to which Strabo would have used this author). Then again, it might very well have been a topic covered in a variety of authors, with relevant details (if they were known at all) obscured or exaggerated; for example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (5.77.5) is hardly to believed when he suggests that 40,000 men were slain and tortured after surrender ( πολίτας τε χωρὶς τῶν

ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀπολομένων τοὺς παραδόντας αὐτῷ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς οὐκ ἐλάττους τετρακισμυρίων ἀπέκτεινεν, ὧν τινας καὶ ασάνοις πρῶτον αἰκισάμενος,

5.77.6) At any rate, all that can safely be asserted from all of these sources is that Sulla authorized at least one general holocaust of prisoners prior to the proscriptions, and that these latter would later claimed many more lives but not all at once. Based on the general reliability of Appian, the Periochae, and Plutarch relative to that of Florus, Orosius, and the de viris illustribus, it is probable that there were two such slaughters, one at Rome and one at Praeneste, and that is the approach taken above.

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certain was who these enemies were: other than any military officers who had remained in the field after the conference with L. Scipio, which Sulla had specified, no one else was nominated as an ἐχ ρός.2 The result of this lack of specification led to a mood after the address to the Senate and the speech to the people which was, according to Dio and Plutarch, panic bordering on hysteria (loc. cit). Florus (2.9.25) and Orosius (5.19.21) confirm this mood, which was doubtless shared by all Romans, old and new alike. Sulla had, after all, consistently demonstrated that he was a capable of inflicting violence and even atrocity upon those against whom he bore a grudge, or whom he had considered dangerous, and in this number a good portion of the population of Italy might be included. Indeed, this terror at what Sulla might do next may very well have explained what was to happen at Norba (see previous chapter), which was still being besieged by Lepidus while these events were transpiring at Rome. If reports of the massacre of surrendered prisoners from the Colline Gate and Praeneste had reached Norba, they would hardly have engendered an inclination in the few remaining pockets of resistance there to give up their arms peaceably. Death in battle likely would have seemed preferable to what could have awaited them upon capitulation, and once Norba was betrayed, its inhabitants seem to have chosen to end their lives by their own hands rather than fall into the clutches of a man who very well might offer them worse. In addition to the slaughter of the prisoners, who were presumably combatants from the war, the sources also indicate that people within Rome, who were presumably civilians, had already begun to be subjected to execution, adding to the general terror over who would be next.3 Soon thereafter the mystery as to who was an “enemy” of the new regime was clarified somewhat by an 2 This address in 1.11.95 cites specifically the officers, but also mentions the ὁσοι—“others”—who violated the agreement with Scipio. This does not by any means suggest that “(t)he rank and file would be spared”, as Keaveney (1982, p. 150) asserts, but rather the opposite: that more names could be added at Sulla’s discretion (as they very shortly were), and that these names could belong to anyone. 3 Plutarch (Sull. 31), Dio (frg. 109), Florus, and Orosius (in passages cited above) all state this.

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innovation: the proscription list, which Velleius (2.28) and Appian (1.1.95) suggest was an invention of Sulla’s own. Plutarch (Sull. 31), Florus, and Orosius (loc. cit.) all suggest that it was created by Sulla by request—whose is not certain—in order to dispel doubts as to who was to be killed or not, and, perhaps, to signal the limits of his vengeance.4 Sulla might not, as an anecdote in Plutarch observes, have known who all of his enemies were,5 but he did know some of them, and the identities of these he began to publish. As to be expected, these publications were filled first and foremost with Roman aristocrats and men he could personally recall as needing punishment. Soon they extended beyond the city and encompassed all of Italy. The sources are filled with stories about how in both the capital and in the rest of the peninsula men were killed and their property seized, property which was then either sold very cheaply or given away to those who had proved useful either in slaying the new public enemies or revealing their whereabouts. Because the proscriptions were such a searing experience for the history of the Romans, it is difficult at times to get a clear picture of just what the ramifications of these lists were, and to get a complete handle on why they and the murders to which they led had come into being. Certainly all of the ancient sources recoil Plutarch (loc. cit.) asserts that the lists were published either at the request of one C. Metellus, who made it a special point not to try and dissuade Sulla from “punishing the guilty” but merely wished to know who these were, or at that of a sycophant named Fufidius. This last is the one mentioned by Florus, who suggests that the appeal was made lest the murders get so out of hand that Sulla would soon no longer have anyone to whom to give orders. In Orosius, it is Catulus who suggests them lest by the hitherto indiscriminate slaughter the reputation of Rome would become damaged, since armed combatants and unarmed civilians were both put to the sword (a somewhat ironic observation, given the bloody request he himself had made of Sulla in regards to M. Marius Gratidianus, about which more below). See also Keaveney (1982, p. 150–151 as well as p. 165, n. 3), who speculates that the lists were proferred amidst the backdrop of unrestrained massacre of the kind implied by Plutarch. 5 Sulla did not know whom he intended to spare, and thus by extension everyone he intended to destroy: ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα μ δέπω γινώσκειν οὓς ἀφί σιν (loc. cit.). 4

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them with justifiable loathing, and it is difficult to resist the temptation on the one hand to pass them over rapidly as a profitless cataloguing of horrors, or on the other (depending on the inclination of the student) to dwell on them, either for the purpose of condemning the man responsible for him, or to attempt to diminish their magnitude and acquit him. What might, perhaps, be of more value then either of these endeavors is an attempt to look at them for what they accomplished, and why this accomplishment was a desirable goal. In the first place, the proscriptions seemed to have served a number of purposes, of which one is the most obvious: they were a means by which Sulla himself could exact the reprisals for which the authorities are fairly unanimous that he hungered. Sulla had up to this point assumed the persona of the much-maligned proconsul of Rome and had taken great pains to justify the legal underpinnings of his actions. Even his march on Rome, as revolutionary as that had been, had been claimed by Sulla to have been launched to “free her from her tyrants”.6 Now that he had defeated his enemies in war, however, Sulla seems to have let that persona slip,7 and in its place there was simple, naked, brutal superior force without the restraint of law or pretence at obeying it. Without the constrictions of the role he had been playing up to this point, Sulla could give full vent to the fury and hatred of which his personality, according to both his ancient and modern biographers, made him abundantly capable. In fact, it seems likely that the culture in which he had been raised had made a thirst for vengeance something to be expected: Sulla’s Rome was one which tended to encourage and even praise inimicitia, and while Sulla would perhaps take it further than anyone before him, the extent of his vengeance was merely a matter of degree.8 Sulla himself might have argued that his anger was great because the injuries he had suffered had been such, inspiring in him a willingness to condemn 6 The response he gave to emissaries from Rome while he was en route in 87 was ὁ δ᾽ εἶπεν, ἐλευ ερώσων αὐτὴν ἀπὸ τῶν τυραννούντων (Appian. 1.7.57). See also chapter 7. 7 He would, as will be seen, presently don it again. 8 So Epstein, p. 74.

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to death all those who crossed him and to deny them even the opportunity for exile, just as he had in 88 (an example which Cinna and Marius would follow). The recompense for this injury would lead Sulla to extend his hatred further even then death, causing him even to disturb the remains of his enemies who had died. According to several sources,9 this fate that was visited on the remains of Marius, as well as his monuments and those accorded to other enemies, such as M. Marius Gratidianus10 (the amusement he had derived from the head of the son of Marius has also been described). Sulla’s memory was long, and he never seems to have had any difficulty whatsoever in ordering the repayment in a most terrible coinage of those who crossed him.11 Additionally, Sulla had for long maintained that his actions were in part directed by the need to settle accounts, not just for his own outrages, but also for those borne by the nobiles who had fled to him. Accordingly, it would be rather more surprising to find that Sulla had not allowed some of his followers to make use of the proscriptions to satisfy their own thirst for vengeance than to discover that he had. Therefore, while the lists were primarily composed of Sulla’s enemies, the new master of Rome was also apparently not above broadening his enmity to people against 9 Such as Cicero (de leg. 2.56), Valerius Maximus (9.2.1, which is almost certainly probably derived from Cicero and mentioning that the remains were scattered in the Anio), Granius Licinianus (35.26), and Pliny (NH 7.54.187), the latter two of which adding that Sulla’s daughter would later ask that her father be cremated so that he avoid a similar posthumous fate. 10 For the monuments of Marius, see Suetonius Div. Iul. 11; for Gratidianus, see chapter 8 for sources, as well as below. 11 Keaveaney (1982, p. 156–158) cites this as the primary cause of the carnage in his analysis of the proscriptions. As that scholar would have it, the humiliations visited upon Sulla, his outlawry, and the threats to his wife added an edge to Sulla’s thoroughness. Moreover, Keaveney asserts, there was the epigraph Sulla composed for himself about not being outstripped in kindness to his friends and terror to his foes ( οὗ κεφάλαιόν

ἐστιν ὡς οὔτε τῶν φίλων τις αὐτὸν εὖ ποιῶν οὔτε τῶν ἐχ ρῶν κακῶς ὑπερε άλετο; cited in Plutarch, Sulla 38). Sulla had apparently been

determined to live by this principle, and now he was going to—for lack of a better word—execute it to the fullest.

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whom he had initially apparently felt no actual malice, on behalf of those of his adherents who desired the unfortunates dead in order to satisfy their own grudges. In this manner he allowed entries on the rolls to be made as they were being composed, additions to them to be inserted afterwards, and further emendations made to proscribe those who had already been killed so that their deaths became sanctioned and their property alienable (more below).12 Perhaps the best example of this, albeit the most gruesome, is the case of M. Marius Gratidianus. His responsibility for the prosecution and ultimate suicide of Q. Catulus was now to earn him the horrific repayment of that man’s son, who (with the apparent help of L. Sergius Catilina) had the wretch literally torn asunder.13 In sum, the proscription list first and foremost gave to Sulla, and then secondly gave to those of his followers who had a need for it, the opportunity to satisfy their craving for revenge. But beyond this visceral gratification was also the fact that the proscriptions could also obviously be used to put known enemies out of the way, for the purpose of keeping them from posing difficulties to the reconstitution of the commonwealth which very likely Sulla had already begun to contemplate and may have been contemplating for some time. Whether these difficulties took the form of actual dangers or simply annoying hindrances, it would likely have seemed best to dispense with them from the outset. The lists would, then, make known all those who were unambiguously enemies of the state, and promptly have them put out of the way. Indeed, they might also be used to sound out those whose loyalty might be in question based on the reaction of these unknowns to seeing the lists: those who disclosed dismay either due to scruple or to connections with the condemned men might become troublesome in their own right, and their discovery would allow for them to be dealt with in turn. That the lists were also being used in this was soon noticed by the Roman people, such that they started to make a great display of enthusiasm for the murders and in this way they could shown their loyalty and deflect suspicion from themselves, as Dio suggests (frg. 109). The proscriptions were 12 13

Plut., Sull. 31; Cassius Dio, fr. 109. For sources see Greenidge and Clay, p. 200.

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therefore motivated in part by hatred, and part by common sense: by means of them Sulla could remove anyone who had in any way already harmed him and his associates, and could discover and dispense with anyone who might do so at a later date. As has been seen, one of the purposes of the proscriptions had been been the fulfillment of Sulla’s desire to give satisfaction to his adherents and, in a sense, to reward them for their support. It then follows that the element of reward was part of the proscriptions, both in the sanguinary sense and in the literal financial one: there was profit to be reaped from the killing, as men were given bounties for bringing in the heads of those who were declared meritorious of death. Moreover, appearance on the proscription lists did not just spell the end of a man’s life, but also meant the seizure and permanent alienation of his property. Some of this confiscated property was given by Sulla to his comrades, some sold to them at prices so low that they were very nearly outright gifts, and some sold at auction for equally ridiculous bargain rates. Fortunes could therefore be made even for those who did not personally execute or inform on the proscribed through the sale of confiscated lands and goods, a condition of which advantage was probably taken by many others besides such famous examples as Chrysogonus, the much-despised villian of Cicero’s Pro Roscio, and M. Licinius Crassus, who fell to buying up the property of the condemned with such enthusiasm that it soon alienated even Sulla.14 Yet the purchase and use of property acquired in this manner did have one fundamental condition: in order for it to be legal, then the proscriptions had to be legal as well. What this condition further meant was that Sulla could never be allowed to be declared retroactively an outlaw and his deeds vitiated without affecting the fortunes of the many who had attained profit by them. In a sense, this was merely an extension of the same basic policy Sulla had 14 So Appian (1.11.96) and Plutarch (Cras. 2; 6). Nor were his supporters amongst the nobiles the only ones to prosper. If Plutarch’s Sull. 33 is to be believed, Sulla liberally dispensed some of the property of the condemned men to his favorites from his earlier life in the slums of Rome.

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used from the Allied War after the stoning of Albinus (see chapter 6). When this murder had occurred, Sulla had allowed the men guilty of it to atone for their crime and evade punishment by valor in battle, with the implicit understanding imparted to those compromised men that forgiveness could only come from their— and his—continued success. Sulla’s authority would protect the men who had killed Albinus, but it was clearly to be understood that should anything have happened to him—should he be declared a hostis, for example, and the protective aegis of his authority in some way weakened—then the avenue would be open for later prosecutors to come after the guilty parties whom he had sheltered. That policy had the result of making men who had been compromised some of Sulla’s most valuable supporters. As has been seen, Sulla’s soldiers had become his partners in crime during the march on Rome, towards the end that they be led east. They came home much wealthier from the excursion, and were soon also to enjoy estates given to them that were supplied by the property of those Italian communities which had chosen the wrong side. But these soldiers were still guilty of a stunning offense from whose consequences they would be shielded only as long as Sulla lived and his arrangements were in place, and they could definitely still be condemned if those arrangements and their author were threatened. The same held true for the soldiers who would bind themselves to Sulla’s cause during the Civil War, and applied with even more force to those partisans who had taken part in the bloodshed of the proscriptions for personal motives. To a less dangerous but no less effective extent, it would also attach to those men who received some sort of monetary benefit from the proscriptions. Thus, those who had during the proscriptions quenched their thirst for blood, had made fortunes from the property of comdemned men, or both—these would be invulnerable as long as Sulla’s auctoritas obtained and provided them with immunity from prosecution or vendetta, but they would stand to lose in a significant way if that auctoritas were ever questioned. There were very few of Sulla’s supporters who did not in some way or another profit from an illegality committed by them or on their behalf:

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Crassus and his millions, Pompeius and his standing both as imperator and, later, triumphator15 in spite of his legal ineligibility for both, and countless others all owed something to Sulla and his willingness to stretch, bend, or break laws to keep their favor. Finally, Sulla’s willingness to twist leges et mores for the benefit of his partisans would have other effects as well, most notably the seizure of moral high ground. As has been seen, large numbers of people stood to gain from Sulla’s enactments, of whom the most obvious were members of his own factio. It may have been that not only the proscriptions but also other, later elements of the policy which Sulla would pursue had met with private reservations from these men, but it was doubtful whether they would ever speak these reservations aloud, much less publicly; it would be difficult to decry some of Sulla’s measures as contrary to law while gathering the harvest planted by his other illegalities. In this way, then, Sulla had used the proscription lists to remove his enemies and clear his path of danger, while simultaneously both rewarding his own following and effectively binding their hands and tongues. As long as Sulla’s actions were lawful, than the men killed and that property taken arrived at that status lawfully, but should any moves later be made to declare Sulla a criminal or undo his edicts, than the status of the men and property would be questioned and those who been involved with them would find themselves in jeopardy.16 It seems, then, that Sulla had arranged for both the massacres and proscription lists in large part out of the desire to strengthen links with his supporters and destroy his enemies, thereby removing any resistance to himself and his cause. In the corporeal sense there can be no doubt that he had been quite effective: the rivers of blood shed after the Colline Gate had gone far to eliminating his antagonists or intimidating those who were still 15 For this triumph see the Periocha of Livy’s book 89, and Plutarch (Pomp. 14). This triumph was not granted without some reluctance on Sulla’s part, since the request of Pompey had been made somewhat later when Sulla was more inclined towards lawfulness (see below). 16 Cassius Dio, frg. 108, offers a similar explanation, as does Appian 1.11.96 (concerning lands for Sulla’s veterans) and 1.12.104 (by way of offering a justification for the sang froid with which he was able to lay down his power). See also Gruen 1974, p. 8–9.

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alive. However, there was a limit to what simple murder could do. Admittedly, the removal of thousands of Romans, old and new alike, and the redistribution of their goods had gone far towards painting over the blemishes which Sulla seems to have perceived on his picture of an ideal Rome. Of these Sulla had thus far provided erasure. However, events would show that he was not satisfied with that erasure, but also intended to add his own touches to the painting. For that, a different type of force than physical would be needed, and that force—and the way it was applied—will be discussed next.

3. THE LEGES CORNELIAE At some point Sulla seems to have come to the conclusion that the Roman Commonwealth was in need of repair, and it could not be denied that the decade of the 80s had indeed seen to the wreckage of a great deal of it. As the sole wielder of power in Italy, Sulla was in a prime position to remake the state in whatever way he saw fit, and it seems he had a design for how to do so for how to do so. In fact, it was one whose intricacy and thoroughness indicates that it had been one of lengthy contemplation. Just when and where this contemplation had started cannot be determined. Nevertheless, at some point the voluptuary who had spent his youth amongst the actors, prostitutes, and poor of Rome, the sort who had not only not held office but had not even done basic military service, had become a legal theorist. In 82, with practically limitless powers of compulsion at his command, Sulla stood ready to become the architect of a new Commonwealth, or, as one biographer referred to him, a “Deadly Reformer”.17 However, Sulla was doubtless aware that anything established in Rome by compulsion could always later be undone. Lasting repairs could only be made by means of laws, and it seems that Sulla had a few in mind for the creation of his new society. His attempts at lawmaking activity after the March on Rome years earlier almost certainly represent an early attempt at enacting these. Yet it appears that those early attempts had failed, having been rejected by the people. Sulla was now ready to try again, and the 17

So Ernst Badian in the title of his very short work on Sulla.

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speech he is reported as having made to the Roman people by Appian indicates as much (see above). But such laws needed to be made by legal means, and to pass them, he would need to gain the power to make laws in a way that was unimpeachably proper. This need was for more than appearance’s sake, although it was certainly the case that a concern for legality had been a hallmark of Sulla’s public persona from the beginning, as seen above. Since 88, Sulla always framed it that his opponents had violated the existing law, had disregarded vows to uphold the statutes he had made, and had held offices illegally due to iteration or youth. This justified his actions, as he himself was Rome’s consul proconsul entitled to a command taken from him without justice. Furthermore, these offices conferred upon Sulla the responsibility to save the state for those who would destroy it (as he claimed his enemies were doing) by any means necessary. Even the proscriptions could in a sense be justified legally: assuming that the Senate had reinstated the imperium he had lost when traversing the pomerium, Sulla still held a command.18 By treating the executed as enemies not just of himself, but of Rome, he could justify their deaths as within his 18 On the other hand, see Keaveney (1987, p. 162). The assumption made throughout his account was that Sulla had not himself ever entered Rome during the whole affair, since that would have cost him his office, although it seems fairly obvious from the statements of Appian that, just as in 88, he had indeed crossed the pomerium in 82 (1.10.89 states that while Sulla had left his men outside the gates of the Campus Martius, he himself crossed in; αὐτίκα ἐπελ ὼν τὴν μὲν στρατιὰν ἵδρυσε πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν ἐν τῷ Ἀρείῳ πεδίῳ, αὐτὸς δ᾽ εἴσω παρῆλ εν. Later, 1.11.98 says that Sulla went outside the city while the people chose an interrex, implying that earlier he had been inside; αὐτὸς μέν που τῆς πόλεως ὑπεξῆλ ε). Keaveney himself strongly hints at that that earlier crossing on pages 65–67 and later on p. 221. Of course, it is possible that Keaveney is right, at least for 82; while Sulla had indeed crossed in 88 as consul, he had not crossed over again once named proconsul, and that the entry into Rome mentioned by Appian had been into districts over which the pomerium had not extended. Alternatively, it is equally possible that the Senate simply extended his proconsular powers after he had driven out Damasippus, as has been argued here. The result was nevertheless the same: whether he had had his imperium restored, or whether he had never lost it, he almost certainly had it in after the Colline Gate.

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purview as proconsul and the seizure of property as the spoil of war. In this way, Sulla may have pulled and twisted at his consular powers earlier and his proconsular imperium now to show that he was not only right in his actions, but even duty-bound to perform them. Yet no amount of pushing and shoving could entitle Sulla to make laws as a proconsul.19 To do that, another kind of authority would be needed, one which would not only have to be accepted but which would even have official sanction. Legislative power could come from three offices available to Sulla, of which two were inadequate for his particular needs. These were the praetorate and the consulate,20 of which the former would, perhaps, not have the required maiestas for what he was contemplating. It would also involve colleagues and potentially inconvenient and time-consuming elections. As everything true of a praetorate was also true for a consulate, it too would not suffice, and less still a suffect consulate, which would have become available when the deaths of Carbo and Marius the Younger had left these magistracies open. Further, such magistracies would involve not only assemblies for election, but also assemblies of the people to approve the laws passed. Given what seems to have been Sulla’s rebuff with these in 88, it seems that neither these offices nor the lawmaking capacity inherent in them had the potency for what Sulla wished to accomplish. The third office, however, would, and to attain it, Sulla ordered the Senate to appoint an Interrex. The man chosen for it was L. Valerius Flaccus,21 who had likely suspected that he would be presiding over a comitia, as tradition stated Interreges should do in the absences of consuls. Appian records his surprise that Sulla instead wished Flaccus to use the powers of the Interrex to perform another function of the consuls, which was to name a Dictator 19 For the inability of a promagistrate to summon the assembly (and thus propose a law), see George Willis Botsford, The Roman Assemblies from their Origin to the End of the Republic (MacMillan Company: New York, 1909), p. 141. 20 As a patrician the tribunate was closed to him, but given his hatred for that office it seems that he would not have desired it even if it were available. 21 See also Bellen, p. 55–569.

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(1.11.99). This position, according to Velleius (2.28.2), Plutarch (Sull. 33) and Appian (loc. cit.), had been in long desuetude and was therefore itself something of a novelty.22 In addition, to judge from Cicero’s recollection on the nomination in a letter to Atticus, the use of an interrex to name a dictator in this way was either not legal or at least violated custom (Att. 9.15.2).23 But Sulla would go a step further even than this breach of orthodoxy. Since in this instance the post would be for a specific legislative purpose, that of “the enactment of such laws as he himself might deem best and for the regulation of the commonwealth” (ὅτι αὐτὸν αἱροῖντο δικτάτορα ἐπὶ έσει νόμων, ὧν αὐτὸς ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ δοκιμάσειε, καὶ καταστάσει τῆς πολιτείας), Sulla additionally managed to orchestrate it that the

appointment be indefinite instead of fixed with the limit of six months that usually devolved on the office (Appian 1.11.99; 1.0.3).24 Appian then laconically adds that “the Romans did not like

22 Both the former sources state it had not been occupied for 120 years at the time when Sulla took it; the latter states “400 years” (παυσάμενον ἔ ος ἐκ τετρακοσίων ἐτῶν), a mistake which Gabba attributes to carelessness on Appian’s part (1956, p. 96). Instead of noticing that 400 years had elapsed since the appointment of Titus Larcius, the first dictator, and that of Sulla, Gabba argues that Appian had mistakenly combined his awareness of the fact that there had been a long time since a dictator had been appointed with this interval of time and came up with the flawed figure. 23 For a further discussion of the legitimacy of the office so conferred, see Wittmann (p. 563–572). 24 Indeed, Keaveney (1982, p. 160–165) notes that in all likelihood Sulla had waited until he had evidence of the deaths of Carbo and Marius the Younger before suggesting the office and had deliberately chosen an interrex to select it, since, due to the fact that this would not be a traditional Dictatorship, he would not want to be elevatted to it in the traditional way. This is not entirely congruent with with the elements of the Dictatorship which, as Keaveney himself notes, Sulla conspicuously adopted, such as the proper number of lictors (so Appian 1.11.100, although the Periochae 89 notes that this was an anomaly) and the fact that he had magistrates elected after his assumption of office. In this instance, as in many others, it seems Sulla was adopting that ambiguous approach to the law which was a hallmark of his career: obeying it—and insisting on it its obedience—when it suited him, bending it when it suited him, and

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it, but they had no more opportunities for elections according to law, and they considered that this matter was not altogether in their own power”.25 By this last, the powerlessness of the Romans, the author was probably making reference to the proscriptions which were, of course, continuing at this time and would not ultimately be ended until the next year. Since presumably anyone who complained too loudly about the irregularities of this proposed Dictatorship would soon find himself a public enemy, Sulla seems to have achieved a silence for what he was doing which he interpreted as tacit approval.26 Having killed or terrified into silence any potential enemies to his scheme, and having thus quieted by many favors any objections it, from his supporters, Sulla was therefore named Dictator, and in addition Flaccus attached the provision that “everything which he has done should be ratified” (L. Flaccus interrex de Sulla tulit, ut omnia quaecumque ille fecisset essent rata; Cicero, de leg. agr. 3.5). Having assumed this new office with its indefinite expiry and practically limitless powers, Sulla then went to work remedying the ills he perceived in the Republic. Over the course of his next few years in office the laws he passed to that effect were many, and some were of fairly small consequence in the long run:27 the reconstruction and expansion of the Curia Hostilia (Dio 40.5.3)28 and the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus (Plutarch breaking it when it suited him. Witness, for example, his looting of Aeclanum, his compassion for the murderers of Albinus, his march on Rome, and the triumph of Pompey, as compared to his vengeance on those who violated the peace terms proposed by Scipio and the fate of Ofella (about which more directly). 25 Ῥωμαῖοι δ᾽ οὐχ ἑκόντες μὲν οὐδὲ κατὰ νόμον ἔτι χειροτονοῦντες οὐδὲν οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ σφίσιν ἡγούμενοι τὸ ἔργον ὅλως; 1.11.99. The English translation

here and in the passage above is that of Horace White from his Loeb version of the text. 26 They would continue until the Kalends of June 81, according to the evidence of Cicero (Pro Roscius 44.128). 27 For a lengthier discussion of Sulla’s laws, see Hantos 1988, p. 19– 167. 28 Although for the symbolic nature of this project, see MorsteinMarx, p. 55–57.

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Publ. 15.1–2, Tacitus Hist. 3.72) are examples, as were also his sumptuary laws (Gellius 2.24.11, Macrobius Sat. 3.17.11–12; it was presumably these to which Plutarch makes reference in his account of the funeral of Sulla’s wife, during which he broke his own law himself; Sull. 35). These edicts, like a number of others (such as the setting up of permanent courts for apparently persistent offenses, to be staffed only by Senators), were in some cases not revolutionary in and of themselves, and in others were hardly of sweeping significance for the Commonwealth.29 In essence, all of these laws these basically were of concern to very few of either the new or the old Romans. Yet others of his laws were of decidedly greater import, and involved a wide circle of Romans of every description. Among these decrees of greater weight were the ones dealing with public enemies. In the first place, the sons and future descendants of all those proscribed would, in addition to permanent loss of their father’s property, ever after lack the ability to hold office.30 There were a number of reasons for enacting such a measure, over and above the reasons attached to the proscriptions already discussed. Visiting the sins of the fathers onto the sons and grandsons in terms of officeholding was well within Sulla’s revenge aesthetic, and while what the confiscation and resale of the proscribed man’s property had already made it probable that their heredes unable to meet the property qualifications for candidacy, this additional debility would guarantee that inability. Furthermore, such a measure also effectively debarred any potential future incident whereby some later magistrate who was son or grandson to the proscribed could propose laws to undo Sulla’s whole system. Nevertheless, even if such men lacked the power to reverse their own reversal of fortune, it might be possible that they could 29

179.

For an excellent survey of these laws, see Keaveney 1982, p. 176–

30 Among many other sources for this (the proscriptions and their consequences was a favorite topic in antiquity), see Cicero (Ep. ad Fam. 13.5) the Periochae of Livy’s book 89; Velleius Paterculus (2.28), and Cassius Dio (51.21.6, and also 43.50.2, in which the magnanimity of Caesar is contrasted to the cruelty of Sulla in this regard).

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gain the sympathy of a latter-day statesman who could remove these debilities on their behalf. It is also likely that Sulla resurrected one of his attempted leges from 88, one whose terms mandated that only those laws which had gained the approval of the Senate could be voted upon by the people,31 which would also help in squashing any future attempts to undo his reforms. Whether or not that law was brought forward in 81, it is definitely known that another one from 88 was, namely that which deprived tribunes entirely of their ability to introduce legislation (Per. 89).32 In this way, only higher magistrates could make laws at all, and if the Senatorial approval law was enacted, those who might endeavor to make future laws which would undo the new order would first have to go through the body which would likely have benefited most from that order and from its architect. Moreover, the hamstringing of the tribunate would have the additional effect of greatly diminishing the appeal of that office in the eyes of those who might run for it. In the past, this post had often become a stepping stone for politicians looking to build a following for a run at later high office by playing the popularis and introducing crowd-pleasing legislation. The tribunate could now no longer provide this opportunity. Yet it seems Sulla wanted to take no chances with this magistracy, one which had been in no small part responsible for many of his own difficulties. For this reason he went to even greater lengths to weaken it further still. To make sure that the tribunate would ever after suffer from a lack of ambitious, wellconnected men to seek and hold it, Sulla additionally decreed that any man who had held this post in the future would never be See Chapter 7 for these laws and the question as to whether or not they had passed. 32 See also Caesar, Bell. Civ. 1.7.3, claiming that Sulla had stripped the tribunate of all powers save the intercessio, although Cicero (2 Verr. 1.50.155) seems to imply that even that had been diminished (in the de legibus he notes only that their power to do harm had been eliminated; 3.22). Gruen disagrees with the removal of the intercessio, quite probably correctly (op. cit., p. 23, where he bases his argument in the words of Caesar). Suetonius (Div. Iul. 5), the de viris illustribus (75.11), Appian (1.11.100; 2.29) merely note that tribunicial powers had been diminished, but do not specify how. 31

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eligible for any higher magistracy after so doing (Appian 1.11.100; Asconius 67, 78). In such a way, then, Sulla produced a tribunate which could neither propose nor pass laws and whose holders would commit political suicide by being elected to it.33 It would thus be desirable only to men who lacked desire or hope for climbing higher, and thus probably second-rate figures anyway. By these means, Sulla had indeed turned the office into an imaginem sine re, as Velleius claims (2.30). What seems to have motivated Sulla in his legislative initiative was in part his own personal motives (to obtain revenge, and to do well by his friends), and in part simple good sense (to remove opposition and keep his friends close by means of favors conferred). It also seems indubitable that another motivation was his own particular political philosophy. As has been seen, somewhere along the line the one-time dissolute youth had developed a profound conservatism about Roman policy. Thus, even though his own career in its breaking of countless Roman laws was far from the standard one,34 when put in the position to remake the Republic into whatever form he chose, the form he selected was one of fairly rigid tradition. An important aspect of the programme he then inaugurated seems to have been his concern to make sure that power in Rome be kept out of the hands of the wrong people, as Sulla defined them. Sulla defined these, based on his laws and actions, as his own political and personal enemies, who now acquired the status of enemies of the state and were either dead or well-hidden. He also defined these as their descendants, and further still defined them as tribunes of the kind who had existed before his reorganization of that office. This was 33 Keaveney (1982, p. 169) also argues that the tribunate had also been stripped of the power of summoning and dismissing the Senate, based on the implication of Appian (2.29) that Pompey had restored that very right, a restoration the general would come to regret. He also argues that the intercessio was greatly diminished, although two passages in Julius Caesar’s Civil Wars (1.5.7 and 1.7.3) clearly state that Sulla left the intercessio untouched (as, again, noted by Gruen, loc. cit.). 34 Laws which he would continue to violate, as has been hinted in his grant of a triumph to Pompeius; moreover, on the death of his wife he broke his own sumptuary edict at her funeral (see above).

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the sort who had once either been ambitious men seeking to gain name recognition for future elections by means of currying favor with the populace, serious revolutionaries, or been both. Now that these wrong people had been neutralized,35 it fell to the Dictator to strengthen the powers of the right people, especially their grip on the Senate and the higher magistracies whose nominees would work in cooperation with that body. The power of both of these had been bolstered by the diminution of the tribunate, which had the effect of guaranteeing that all future legislation would come from the higher magistrates, and may also have been further augmented by the requirement of Senatoral approval of laws these higher magistrates would promulgate. Having broadened their capabilities, however, Sulla then apparently went about changing the numbers of the men who would serve either in the Council or in the offices whose tenure would lead to a Senatorial seat. The Senate by 81 was in somewhat sorry shape, having endured losses of its members through deaths in battle, riots, murders, and massacres. Assuming it had managed to achieve 300 members during the lectio of 86, which was by no means a foregone conclusion, proscriptions since then had taken away at least ninety of them and perhaps as many as 200.36 To supplement the Senate’s numbers, both for the sake of the dignity of the body and because they would be needed for the permanent courts he was establishing (as mentioned above), Sulla used the powers of his office to add men to the Council. Exactly how many men were to be added is a matter of debate, since neither the precise numbers of men in the Senate after the proscriptions nor the numbers of Senatorial membership after Sulla’s reforms are known. However, a letter of Cicero (ad Att. 1.14) suggests that after Sulla the Senate numbered over four hundred at least, and scholarly consensus And other “wrong men” could be defined as the equites, at least when it came to the courts; these were now no longer to serve on juries (Vell. 2.32). 36 For the former figure, Appian (1.12.103); for the latter, Orosius (5.22.4) and Eutropius (5.9), though this reckoning may have included all the Senators who fell in the Allied War and the unpleasantness after the return of Marius and Cinna. 35

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suggests its body included at least 600 men.37 The only number given concretely by way of Sulla’s own additions is that mentioned in Appian (1.11.100), who suggests that Sulla increased the Senate by 300 men. Who these men were is also a matter of conjecture. Sallust, a by no means unbiased author, mentions common soldiers gaining the Curia (multi memores Sullanae victoriae, quod ex gregariis militibus alios senatores videbant; Bell. Cat. 37.6), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus likewise mentions “common people” placed therein ( ουλ ν τε γὰρ ἐκ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων ἀν ρώπων συνέστ σε, 5.77.5).38 Appian and Periochae of Livy, however, specify that the new senators came from the equites.39 This last might be surprising, given Sulla’s apparent distaste for that class from whom he would take the courts (more below). But it can be explained rather easily by assuming that the equites in question were those men who were of property rating to merit service in the cavalry but who had not gone into politics. These would be the sons and brothers of Senators who had possibly not yet been able to run for office due to military service, or who had met with electoral misfortune, but who were otherwise of the right class, background, ability, and outlook.40 Given the specific purposes for which Sulla reordered the Senate, which was, again, in part to dispense the proper kind of justice in the courts, it seems more likely that the new Senators would have mostly been these men rather than the rough soldiers that Sallust describes, though it is not impossible that Sulla included a few of those as well (including the same Fufidius described by some sources as having played a prominent role in the So Syme (1938, p. 10) and Gabba (1976, p. 142). Then again, Dionysius makes this claim in the same passage where he mentions 40,000 men massacred by Sulla during the end of the Civil Wars, so the accuracy of the statement is therefore susceptible to doubt; see earlier note. 39 Appian 1.11.110; Per. 89. 40 So Hill (1932, p. 170–177). Gabba, however, believes that Hill was too exclusive in his definition of equites (1976, p. 146), in agreement with Syme (1938, p. 22–23). It will perhaps be observed that this plan is in many ways identical to the Senatorial increase which has earlier been attributed to Drusus (see Chapter 3), a fact which Gabba (op. cit., p. 136) also noticed. 37 38

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proscriptions).41 Such an adlection would accord well with the sort of scandalous generosity displayed by Sulla that as described by Plutarch (Sull. 33), although it was probably the case any of these milites to be so adlected were almost certainly in numbers so small that they would be harmless. As mentioned above, it was apparently of concern to Sulla to make sure that the right sort of men acquire or retain power, and that the wrong men be deprived of or kept from it. The right men in this case would be those who he personally elevated to the Senate, but since these would no more be immortal than Sulla was himself, a mechanism had to be installed to guarantee replacements for these men when they inevitably died or retired. This was accomplished by means of a regularization of the cursus honorum, whose first step—the quaestorate—would bring automatic entry into the Senate (Tacitus, Ann. 11.22). The numbers of the quaestors were also increased to twenty (about which more will be discussed directly), which meant that every year twenty additional Senators42 would be added to the chamber by the people themselves through election. It is probably in reference to this edict that Appian makes the otherwise highly unlikely claim that the tribes approved each addition to the Senate made by Sulla from the equites (αὐτῇ δὲ τῇ ουλῇ ... προσκατέλεξεν ἀμφὶ τοὺς τριακοσίους ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων ἱππέων, ταῖς φυλαῖς ἀναδοὺς ψῆφον περὶ ἑκάστου; 1.11.100). That author’s source probably mentions that the number of quaestors would added to the Senate in addition to the numbers which Sulla elevated directly, and thus the comitia would indeed—in a manner of speaking—approve men from the equites (or, rather, from the equestrian property rating, necessary for election to office). Yet those who gained the Curia in this fashion were almost certainlty not the same as the men enrolled by Sulla’s adlection, which would have almost certainly have been done by dictate and therefore not susceptible to popular approval or denial.43 So Syme (op. cit., p. 13). Give or take, depending on whether these quaestors were already men in the Senate seeking re-election to that office for some reason. 43 This is the argument of Hardy (1916, p. 61–62), and is almost certainly the correct one. 41 42

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Having exerted himself to ensure that the Senate would always be staffed by the right sort of men, steps would need to be taken to thrust (and keep) the wrong sort of men out of it. Who these wrong men were can, again, in part be defined as the enemies of Sulla, and by means of the proscription these men were either dead or exiled. Likewise, their sons were deprived of their property, and even if these sons still managed to maintain the sufficient property rating to run for office in spite of this, they were nevertheless kept out of elected office by law (as discussed above). The wrong men apparently also included most of the Italians and especially men from the communities of the Marsi, Marrucini, and Paeligni, who by the time of Cicero had yet to have sent a single man to the Senate.44 This may, of course, have been a coincidence, and certainly in the aftermath of the Civil War it can be imagined that other difficulties not directly attributable to lawmaking by the dictator would have stood in the way of the gaining of office for men from these peoples. Of course, Sulla may have been responsible from keeping out some of these by acta, if not the his leges, as those whom Sulla would have considered enemies would have taken care of the proscriptions; these would either have been killed or would have had to go into hiding.45 Moreover, it will be seen that additional confiscations beyond those of the proscriptions were also visited on some of the former Allied communities, and the loss of property which resulted from these might have rendered even more men ineligible through lack of the necessary wealth. However, it is to be doubted that these forces alone would be enough to keep all of these men out for such an extended period of time, and it is additionally possible that their exclusion was not coincidental but deliberate. In fact, Sulla himself had as his disposal powers which would be more than adequate to exclude them if he so desired. That he held this desire is occasionally disputed, and it is sometimes argued that, no matter what his stance on Italian rights had been in 88, by after 84 he is alleged to have undergone a So, again, Syme (op. cit., p. 5–6). Likewise, the sons of such men would have been made ineligible by law, as was the case with other Romans. 44 45

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substantial alteration in the position and had no difficulties with them, as his attitude during the Civil War is taken to illustrate.46 But an analysis of his behavior over those years suggests no profound transformation. Barring the assumption that Sulla’s attitude towards the Italians was not based on something like racism47 and was instead informed by a desire to keep them from holding any real power so as to preserve it for Romans of older lineage, there is little in the actions he took during the Civil War that is indicative of a change of his opinion about their inclusion in the Roman state. Those actions which do seem to indicate such a change are generally explained instead good strategic sense. For example, it seems he did indeed make of Marsi and even Samnites amongst his soldiers, left alone those communities which did not attack him, and negotiated favorable terms with some of the Italian peoples (as has been seen). However, to have done otherwise would have been folly, given the multitude of enemies already ranged against him. Of greater import may be his promise to preserve the tribal redistribution, a promise he seems to have kept. On the surface this may indeed indicate a perspective on Italian rights than was not a determined opposition to them, and suggests that the worst fears of the former socii, on which Cinna and Carbo had so artfully played, were unfounded. Yet here again, as was often the case with instances of Sulla’s alleged generosity, he actually lost very little from keeping his promise in this case, and his doing so certainly made so little difference towards a sharing of power that a 46 This point is made repeatedly by Keaveney (see 1982, p. 121; 1982b, p. 499). 47 See, again, Isaac (5–23), whose analysis of racism in the classical world concludes that it was focused on those from different geographical areas than the Mediterranean, as opposed to those from different ethnicities and languages. As the Samnites and other Italians came from essentially the same region that Sulla did, it is unlikely that racial prejudice in the modern sense (a feeling Isaac implies that Sulla would not have understood) motivated his actions. As mentioned in chapter 4, however, Isaac does not make a convincing case for the impossibility of an irrational hatred of Samnites based on perceived cultural or thenic differences, and this in turn means that Sulla might well have harbored these.

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conversion experience towards a newfound support for the former Allies cannot really be discerned. Having been left redistributed by Sulla, former Allies could, it is true, vote in the comitia tributa, which could approve or reject laws.48 This posed no real danger to the Senatorial control of legislation, since through Sulla’s programmthe comitia tributa could no longer be used by tribunes to pass laws and thus bypass Senatorial approval, as they once could do. The votes of neither former Allied citizens not those of any others could therefore be mobilized by radical tribunes to change to fabric of the Roman state against the wishes of what was without question its most conservative members. In this sense, the former Italians were just as powerless to help unmake or alter the Commonwealth as Romans of more ancient pedigree, and it can be doubted whether Sulla considered it worth the hassle to take from the Allies a legislative power which was practically negligible. There was still the fact that the comitia tributa also elected the lower magistrates, and this could theoretically have led to a scenario in which Allied voters could, over time, have caused some disturbances for any arrangement by which Sulla may have sought to exclude them from influence by means of electing such magistrates. Due to Sulla’s own reform of the cursus (more below) former Italians could, by their vote, help name men to the Senate, perhaps even men from their own communities. The men so named would, of course, not be very influential in the curia in the beginning, but even as “back-benchers” the men so endorsed by the novi could indicate acceptance or rejection of laws proposed by the higher magistrates. Over time, these men—some, perhaps, of Italian origins themselves—might be able to make progress along 48 Appian does not mention that Sulla put forward any act to take away the right of approval of laws from the comitia tributa; indeed, the fact that lawmaking power was retained by the comitia tributa is suggested by Millar’s assertion that lawmaking by the comitia centuriata was so rare in the late republic as to be anomalous (1998, p. 16–18; 150–151). Indeed, Mouritsen states that the comitia centuriata had not actually voted to pass a legislative act since the third century (2001, p. 88), although Cicero notes that they had voted to take away the citizenship of some Italian towns (de dom. 30.79). Perhaps Mouritsen draws the distinction between an annulment and a positive enactment.

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the cursus, and their ex-Allied supporters might even be able to help them advance towards magistracies with real legislative power. Sulla seems to have foreseen this, however, as other aspects of Sulla’s lawmaking diminished this possibility. In the first place, part of the power of the Dictatorship was the right to name Senators, a power which Sulla seemed to have exercised. In this way, Dictators were given powers that were more often associated with another magistracy. As was mentioned during the discussion of what seems to have been Sulla’s earlier adlection proposal from 88,49 such a nomination was traditionally the function of the censors. No census is recorded for having taken place in 81, and indeed none would be again until the year 70. This seems to provide evidence for a contention that, while Sulla did allow some magistracies to be filled by election during his tenure as Dictator (more below), the Censors were not among them. One consequence of this is readily apparent: without censors, Sulla himself as Dictator would be the individual who to determine who would sit in the Senate, and who would not. Sulla could therefore easily expunge would-be Senators ex officio, including those from Allied communities who had become eligible through election to lower magistracies. Another less obvious result of the absence of the censors would be that no enumeration of the people would have taken place during his Dictatorship, and none indeed seems to have been. This would mean that the last counting of the populus would have taken place in 86, and for reasons described earlier, this produced a number of citizens which was quite low, perhaps artificially so.50 If this was in fact the case, then very few of the former Italians may have managed to acquire a census rating necessary to be able to run for office (save, presumably, by a special dispensation from Sulla himself), and this fact would also keep such former Italians from joining the Senate through officeholding. The absence of censors, and thus the absence of census ratings, would also carry another consequence for the political participation of the novi cives. As has 49 See chapter 7, which also includes an investigation as to whether or not this law was in fact properly dated to this time by Appian in the first place. 50 See chapters 8 and 9 for this census.

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been discussed, while the comitia tributa elected the lower offices, the comitia centuriata—in which membership was determined, as its name implies, by the census rating—elected consuls. Therefore, while all Italians in Sulla’s Republic could vote on laws in the comitia tributa and on the lower magistracies (with certain exceptions; see below), they could only vote on laws put to them by magistrates for which many may not have been able to vote, ones which probably had to have gotten the approval of the Senate into whose numbers even the wealthiest of former Allies may not have been able to be elected, or from which Sulla could summarily expel them if they had been. Speculation that Sulla’s earlier stance on the Italians may have softened may therefore not be warranted. Sulla’s powers allowed him to keep anyone he wished from having power in the state he was building, and the evidence suggests that many of the former socii were within that segment from which he did not care to see the Senate or the magistracies drawn.51 By these measures Sulla revitalized the Senate and made certain that it was filled with those of whom he approved. For what must have been a similar purpose, Sulla also turned his attention to the magistracies. Since these men would be supplying future members of the Senate, trying cases under the permanent courts he had established, governing the provinces, leading Rome’s armies, and making and approving laws after such a time when Sulla himself would no longer be doing so, it would stand to reason that he devote some attention to these men. These offices also had to be filled by the right people, and as has been seen above, steps were taken that would at least keep the wrong people, as defined by Syme 1938, p. 5–6. However, Syme does recognise that some former Allies did make it to the Senate, among them a Samnite who had gone to Sulla’s side (p. 22–23). Gabba, whose desire to acquit Sulla of anti-Italian prejudice appears often in his works (see, for example, 1976, p. 97, 136–137, and 140, where he himself makes note of this tendency) has likewise compiled a list of seventeen “Sullan” senators who were or might have been former Allies, mostly of them Campanian (1976 p. 62 as well as note 29, p. 214). It will be observed that eighteen men out of 600 in the Senate (see above) hardly speaks to Sulla’s cheerful commitment to, or even a grudging acceptance of, former Italian participation in his new state. 51

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Sulla, away from them. Assuming that, by the excision of the wrong people, only the right people would be left, it was apparently additionally deemed necessary that there be more of these right people in some of the offices than had been the case previously. For this reason, measures were enacted which increased the number of quaestors to twenty (as seen above), and the number of praetors to eight.52 The purposes of such measures are not hard to seek: since the quaestorate automatically conferred membership in the Senate, twenty men each year would add to its ranks and would provide plenty of jurists for the courts (as explained by Tacitus, Ann. 11.22). These courts were now under Senatorial control per the Dictator’s decree, having been removed from the equites who had served as jurists for decades (Tacitus, loc. cit.; Velleius, 2.32). This increase in the number of quaestors would also have the consequence of allowing more new men to gain Senatorial membership by means of the first rung of the cursus honorum, and make it slightly easier to climb to the next, since eight of these former quaestores instead of six could now hope to become praetor.53 These eight would in turn provide ample judicial officials and then, following their year in office, supply governors for provinces without resulting to extended promagistracy.54 52 Sulla also responded to a shortage of priests and augurs by increasing their numbers, as well: Per. 89; de Vir. Ill. 75.11. Dio (37.37) also seems to suggest that Sulla had restricted these priesthoods to Patricians, though this appears nowhere else and is fairly unlikely. 53 While Pomponius (quoted in the Digest 1.2.2.32) seems to suggest a total of ten as a result of Sulla (four added to the six that had been the number since 198, as mentioned in Livy 37.27.2), Velleius (2.89) specifically mentions Caesar as having added two to the eight that then existed, and Cicero (Ad Fam. 8.8) mentions provinces governed by the eight annual former praetors in the years before 44. 54 This is the interpretation of Keaveney (1982, p. 171–172), who suggests that the increase in praetors would not end promagistracy but would provide a larger pool of men with imperium (or prorogued imperium), so that too much power for too long would not coalesce into the hands of too few men. Interestingly, Keaveney cites Marius as a possible reason for this, although Marius had won his gloria (and infamia) as a fully elected magistrate. Perhaps his meaning was that Marius had been elected to his iterated consulates because too few men of proven ability presented

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On the other hand, the extension of the praetorate did not make it easier to reach the highest office, since the number of consuls remained fixed; now eight men instead of six were vying annually for the consulate in suo anno alongside all those disappointed in previous elections. This would have had the effect of increasing the exclusivity of the consulate, and Sulla increased it even further by legislation on the way officeholders could submit their candidacies and when they could do so. Thus involved the socalled cursus honorum, whose traditional steps he now fixed by law. Mindful, perhaps, of the struggles in 88 involving C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, or of the more recent example of Marius the Younger, whose youth seems to have precluded election to the praetorate before he was elected consul,55 by Sulla’s dictate no one could become praetor without first being questor, nor consul without first having been praetor (Appian 1.11.100). Sulla may also have been responsible for another restriction on officeholding which is described by Cicero, during whose time apparently a biennium had to be observed between the holding of curule positions (Ad Fam. 10.25). Additionally, scholarly consensus seems to be that his lex annalis also fixed the minumum ages, not only for

themselves for prorogation, which is possible. Bit as far as trouble from promagistrates, that had come primarily from Sulla himself, and Keaveney alludes to the fact that Sulla here may have been attempting, in the immortal words of Syme, to “abolish his own example”. This might also have underlain his reasons for extending the pomerium (Tacitus, Ann. 12.23; Gellius 13.44.4; Cassius Dio 43.50.1). If he had not in fact crossed it as proconsul, then he would have discovered the relative ease with which a promagistrate could influence Rome without violating its present boundaries, and perhaps took steps to make that more difficult. 55 That Sulla was offended, not just by the background of the junior Marius, but also by his youth, may be reflected in the quip he made at receiving the latter’s head. Referring, perhaps, to the apparent presumption of Marius in holding the highest magistracy at such a tender age, he offered his lifeless enemy a quotation from Aristophanes suggesting that he ought to have learned how to row before he took upon himself the task of steering the ship (ἐρέτ ν δεῖ πρῶτα γενέσ αι, πρὶν π δαλίοις ἐπιχειρεῖν; Appian, 1.10.94)

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the curule offices, but also for that of Quaestor, as well.56 Finally, in what was certainly a decree inspired by so many of his enemies who had been able to secure iteration in office (Cinna, Carbo, M. Marius Gratidianus, and even Marius himself had all been allowed to be re-elected during their careers), Sulla also decreed that a tenyear period had to elapse between holding an office and holding it again (Appian, loc. cit.). Having reformed officeholding in this way, the Dictator established boundaries which he apparently took very seriously, as the unfortunate Q. Lucretius Ofella discovered to his cost. Thinking, perhaps, that his service to Sulla at Praeneste had merited an exception to the law in much the same way that that of Pompeius would win himself an illegal triumph, Ofella presented himself as a candidate for the consulate though he had been neither praetor nor even quaestor. Sulla had apparently attempted to dissuade Ofella from this course of action to no avail, and when he persisted in his canvass, Sulla sent a centurion to cut him down while the Dictator watched from a tribunal from the Temple of Castor. When the people seized the centurion, Sulla bade the man be freed and explained what had happened through a charming parable about a flea-ridden shirt being burned by a farmer after the fleas, having been shaken out twice, would still not stop biting. In this way he illustrated what might happen to those who ignored his future warnings, and it seems his message was clearly received.57 In this manner, Sulla established a series of safeguards as to who would be assuming power in Rome when he himself vacated it. It was a process far more restrictive than it had been earlier, at least in terms of ascent to the offices carrying imperium and true legislative power. Men who would hope to make such an assent found that the newfound ease of obtaining the quaestorate in many ways limited their advance in and of itself: with a much larger pool from which to fill a slightly augmented roster of praetors, the Roman voter would need a definite reason to know a candidate’s name so as to be able to make the determination that any one of 56 See Keaveney 1982, p. 173–174; Astin, 5–45; OCD, “cursus honorum”. 57 Per. 89; Plutarch, Sull. 33; Appian 1.11.101.

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them might be worthy of the higher office. Those lacking a name could no longer rely on the tribunate, which had once provided a vehicle for acquiring recognition by the urban masses58 through the laws tribunes could make, but whose desirability had now been poisoned by the new drastic restrictions of that post as have been described above. To be sure, there remained the office of aedile, whose duties included the holding of public games and in the process a sure avenue to recognition and affection amongst the populus. But the number of these magistracies had for some reason seemed sufficient to the Dictator, so no additional seats had been added to them. As a consequence, in any given year only four spaces at most were opened for former quaestors, and these, too carried a biennium. The aedilate therefore became highly competitive, and in turn presented few openings for the completely unknown man trying to use it to gain a following. By means of all these newly established or permanently fixed parameters, Sulla’s restrictions on officeholding—while apparently opening more positions for qualified men—very likely served to help restrict those posts higher than that of quaestor only to those who had a name and a lineage. That doubtless went very far towards excluding the outsider, the unproven, and the unknown, in whose numbers the Italians would be fit squarely. The laws which were passed by Sulla as Dictator were designed to rid the Commonwealth of elements which Sulla considered disruptive, and to prevent further possible pathways to disruption from emerging. His principal efforts seem to have been both to keep lawmaking away from those to whom it could not be trusted, such as the lower classes and those who would mobilize them to pass laws over the objections of the Senate, while simultaneously augment the numbers and power of the more reliable members of the citizenry. However, many of the very laws passed in the furtherance of this aim also had the effect of severely curtailing the rights and powers of the Italians, and it is unlikely 58 An urban populace to which Sulla added substantially by setting free 10,000 slaves of the proscribed, gaining in the process a sizeable number of men to be named after himself and who presumably would obey his commands and follow his political wishes (Appian 1.11.100, 1.12.104).

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that this fact was a mere happenstance. Like the older citizens, the new citizens would have found their ability to give their voice to the passing of laws greatly diminished by a rule that only laws proposed by the higher magistrates and approved by Senate would be available for passage, if Sulla had indeed decreed that to be the case. The difference between these two groups of cives was that, due to the fact that the last census before the Civil War had probably seen very few Italians registered and by the fact that Sulla assumed the powers of the censor himself, many of the Italians would neither have been able to vote for these officials nor become them through election. The new order that Sulla was building left little room for their participation, and it seems that Sulla had intended that very thing.

4. THE ITALIANS AND SULLA Just as it seems the Italians, in Sulla’s thinking, had perhaps merited special attention when he reordered the state, so had they also when he had been meting out his punishments to those who had annoyed him. It has already been seen that the Italians taken prisoner after the Colline Gate and the fall of Praeneste were earmarked for death. There are no recorded additional massacres elsewhere, but then again the Italians at Norba had saved Lepidus and Sulla the bother by slaughtering themselves. Otherwise, while Granius Licinianus does mentioned a roundup of condemned men who were cut down by cavalry, these were not mentioned as “prisoners” but, rather, as men who had been proscribed (36). This notice, however, underscores a point made earlier, which is that the proscriptions were certainly extended to all of Italy. It has been speculated that the proscriptions were justified as being aimed at the “enemies of Rome”, however they may be defined. Since the enemies of Sulla and his supporters definitely qualified, it was to be expected that the supporters of Cinna and Marius would be the primary targets, and Appian attests this very thing (1.11.96). Old scores of an even earlier vintage were also settled by them; Granius Licinius (36) and the Periochae (89) note that one of their victims was Samnite “consul” Papius Mutilus, who was refused admission into his wife Bastia’s house and committed suicide on her back door. Moreover, just as was the case at Rome, the proscriptions throughout Italy also soon involved men who may have guilty of nothing other than having been an enemy of a Sullan supporter, or

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having possess lands and goods that such a supporter may have wanted. In this manner the novi cives suffered in the exact same way as the veteres, but this would not be the only way that the former Allied communities would feel Sulla’s lash. As has been seen, the proscription lists were aimed at individuals, and at the very least there were over by the Kalends of June of 81 (according to the evidence of Cicero, pro Rosc. 44.128). However, Sulla had other things in mind for the former Allies, which extended beyond a few individual slayings. Soon entire communities were punished by means of mass confiscation of lands. While there were almost certainly others,59 among those specified as having been subjected to this treatment were Spoletium, Interamnium, Florentia, and Sulmo; this is according to Florus, who goes further and states that the latter city was itself entirely destroyed (2.9.27–28). Florus almost certainly exaggerates the fate of Sulmo, as enough of it remained for Caesar to order an occupation of it by Antony during the next Civil War a scant thirty years later (Caesar, B.C. 1.17), and it would later be remembered by Ovid as the place of his birth. This would mean that Sulmo either made a hasty recovery or was not as injured as Florus claims, and it is more probably the latter that was the case. Still, it is not improbable that Sulmo was one of the cities whose citadels were demolished and walls destroyed, as described in Appian.60 Praeneste, in addition to the looting described earlier, was apparently treated likewise (Florus, loc. cit.), as was Arretium, according to Cicero (Ad. Att. 1.19.4). In fact, Cicero mentions the fate of Arretium, as well as that of Volaterrae, on a number of occasions. Against these places Sulla seems to have taken an especial disliking, as in addition to confiscating their lands, Sulla also issued a decree having their citizenship taken from them. Sources are contradictory as to whether this decree was enacted: on the one hand, Cicero 59 For an additional comprehensive discussion of various cities subject either to confiscation or subjected to colonies of Sulla’s soldiers, see Keaveney 1982b, p. 515–544. 60 ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις ὁ Σύλλας μετῄει καὶ ἐκόλαζε καὶ τάσδε, τῶν μὲν ἀκροπόλεις κατασκάπτων ἢ τείχ κα αιρῶν; 1.11.96).

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apparently won a case defending a lady from Arretium by his argument that this deprivation was an illegal procedure, a case won even while Sulla was still alive (pro Caec. 95–98, 100–102; Ad Fam. 14; de domo 30.79). Cicero’s speeches leave the impression that Sulla was opposed in this move by the populus itself, which agreed to the confiscation but not the loss of the franchise. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that Sulla would have left this decision to the people at all, and that they would have cared about the Volaterrani and Arretines enough to risk the wrath of the Dictator.61 Further, the very fact that Cicero would have to argue that such an enactment was illegal is suggestive that it was at some point actually executed. A highly rhetorical fragment of Sallust also seems to confirm this, one which cites Sulla’s vengeance, singular because it even was to be extended against the unborn, as having deprived the “vast multitude of the Latins and the Allies” of the citizenship (Sociorum et Lati magna vis civitate pro multis et egregiis factis a vobis data per unum prohibentur; Hist. 1.55.6–12, whose text recounts a speech against Sulla by Lepidus). Perhaps it was a measure that was proposed by Sulla and enacted, but was swiftly undone upon his retirement. It is clear that, while the impetus for Sulla’s mass confiscation was partly a thirst for vengeance or a desire to dole out his particular brand of justice to these communities, there must have been other motivations for it. Indeed, the sources give a precise indication as to what another motivation must have been: land for his soldiers, which the sources state took place in the form of colonies at such places as Urbana, Faesulae, Aleria, Praeneste, and Pompeii, as well, presumably, as the places cited by Florus62 61 On the other hand, see Keaveney 1982, p. 203, who suggests this proposal had been made when Sulla had set aside his Dictatorial powers, and that the people thus rebuffed him; this does somewhat belie his earlier assertion that Sulla never in fact retired, and in theory could still have commanded the ability to terrify into submission even after laying aside the Dictatorship. 62 For evidence of the colonization, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 216– 217, Salmon 1982, p. 132–133, Harris 1971, p. 261–271, Wolff-Alonso, 113–138, and Keaveney (loc. cit.). As that last notes elsewhere (1982, p. 182; 189 n. 38), most of this land was in Campania, Etruria, and

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(interestingly, Arretium and Volaterrae were apparently destined for colonization but the land seems not to have been distributed completely, according to Cicero; ad Att. 1.19.14). Appian notes that Sulla eventually settled twenty-three legions of men in this way (1.11.100). Obviously, the colonies planted thus were a means by which Sulla could pay a debt to his men: as seen above, Sulla had been used to bestowing favors upon his men as reward for service to him even during the Allied War. For their willingness to march on Rome and fight against their own government they were now given one last compensation in the form of land taken from the Italians.63 In addition, as in the case of the proscriptions, the land distribution bound Sulla’s men to him and his regime; should anything threaten Sulla’s laws, these veterans would find their new property at risk and thus they would in theory be, as Appian notes, Sulla’s stoutest champions after his passing from the scene.64 The extent to which Sulla’s land measure continued to guarantee the preservation of his new Commonwealth can be seen a full fifteen years after Sulla had died. In 63 the tribune P. Servilius Rullus 65 seems to have borrowed a page from the by-now ancient playbook of Tiberius Gracchus and proposed an agrarian law with a fairly broad scope, seeking to make a distribution of public land and apparently appoint commissioners to investigate and decide what property belonged to the state and what belonged to private persons. All property, according to the words of Cicero speaking in Umbria, places suitable for small-farming. Areas less well suited for this purpose but were more useful for flocks were given to others, as well as whatever choice pieces of land were bought at auction by individuals during the proscriptions. 63 For more on the affect of Sulla’s colonies, see Wolff-Alonso (p. 259–288). 64 ὡς γὰρ οὐχ ἕξοντες αὐτὰ ε αίως, εἰ μὴ πάντ᾽ εἴ τὰ Σύλλα έ αια, ὑπερ γωνίζοντο αὐτοῦ και μεταστάντος, 1.11.96; ἀμφὶ δὲ τὴν Ἰταλίαν δυώδεκα μυριάδες ἀνδρῶν ἦσαν ἔναγχος ὑπεστρατευμένων καὶ δωρεὰς μεγάλας καὶ γῆν πολλὴν παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ λα όντων ... εὔνους αὐτῷ καὶ φο ερὸς ὢν ἔτι τοῖς ἑτέροις καὶ τὸ σφέτερον ἀδεές, ὧν τῷ Σύλλᾳ συνεπεπράχεσαν, ἐν τῷ Σύλλαν περιεῖναι τι έμενοι, 1.12.104 65 As will be seen later, the tribunes soon recovered their legislative powers after Sulla’s death.

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opposition to the tribune, was to be investigated, with the conspicuous exception of that which had been given and assigned by Sulla (de leg. Agr. 3.6–7). Cicero uses this fact to pillory Rullus, a so-called “Marian tribune” who would not utter Sulla’s name and instead refers to the excepted land as all which has been assigned “since the consulship of Caius Marius and Cnaeus Papirius”, yet who nevertheless seemed to be bending over backwards to make sure that the Sullani knew their property would be protected. Cicero’s jabs notwithstanding, it is difficult to see how Rullus could ever have hoped to pass his laws without obstruction, or even revolution, unless he included such guarantees.66 Sulla had doubtless foreseen the ways by which his bequests would unite the majority of Italy behind his system, but it is not improbable that even he might have been awed by the extent to which his policies had become successful. The Italians, therefore, had received some additional interest of this kind from the Dictator. As has been seen, Strabo suggests that the Samnites received even further attention still, and that Sulla launched a special campaign to exterminate them as a separate people, holding that no Roman would be safe as long as the Samnites remained (5.4.11).67 Appian specifically mentions the killing of Samnites at the battle leading up to the siege of Praeneste (1.10.87), and states that that massacre after the Colline Gate was approved because the prisoners were mostly Samnites (1.10.93). He also notes that when Praeneste finally fell, the Romans were spared but the Praenestines and the Samnites were killed (1.10.94). Furthermore, an especial enmity towards the Samnites is implied by a statement of Cassius Dio, which records that Sulla effectively considered the war over when the Samnites had been defeated (ὁ γὰρ Σύλλας ὡς τάχιστα τῶν Σαυνιτῶν ἐκράτ σε καὶ τέλος τῷ πολέμῳ ἐπιτε εικέναι ἐνόμισε; fragment 109).

66 See also Morstein-Marx (p. 199) for Cicero’s attack on Rullus due to this concession to civic harmony. 67 προγραφάς τε ποιούμενος οὐκ ἐπαύσατο πρὶν ἢ πάντας τοὺς ἐν ὀνόματι Σαυνιτῶν διέφ ειρεν ἢ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐξέ αλε: πρὸς δὲ τοὺς αἰτιωμένους τὴν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ὀργὴν ἔφ καταμα εῖν ἐκ τῆς πείρας, ὡς οὐδέποτ᾽ ἂν εἰρ ν ν ἀγάγοι Ῥωμαίων οὐδὲ εἷς, ἕως ἂν συμμένωσι κα ᾽ ἑαυτοὺς Σαυνῖται.

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Why it is that Sulla took a particular dislike to the Samnites, as these sources suggest that he did, is difficult to determine:68 as had been seen earlier, certainly he had made his military name in the Allied War in battles against them, even if at Aesernia they had worsted him, and before Pompeii Cluentius had briefly gained the upper hand against Sulla by luring him into battle through camping overly close to his position. If Sulla had built a reputation as “chastiser of the Samnites”, perhaps he found it a convenient reputation to continue ever after, and if he were to uphold his claim that none were to surpass the harm he did to his enemies, the Samnites would have to suffer most. On the other hand, since in fact the Samnites had only quit the Allied War after Sulla had gone to the east, perhaps he regarded them as still under arms against Rome. Then again, when Sulla had crossed into Campania in 82, he had gone through Samnite territory in doing so and had neither caused, nor suffered, any disturbance there (Vell. 2.25.1). It may well have been that Sulla meant it when he said that he would not harm those who were not his “enemies”, and that by their passivity, Sulla came to understand that the Samnites accepted the deal. It therefore may have been that their he regarded their later activity against him as an especial irritation, since after an opportunistic neutrality they had come in “like a third wrestler who sits by to contend with a weary victor”, as they are described by Plutarch in a biography of the Dictator which was certainly influenced by the latter’s memoirs (κα άπερ ἔφεδρος ἀ λ τῇ καταπόνῳ προσενεχ εὶς; Sull. 29). For all these reasons, it does seem like Sulla had treated the Samnites with especial ferocity, and whether it was due to this additional effort or simply due to the fact that, as a poor region, Samnium proved less able to recover from the Allied and Civil Wars as other regions had been,69 Samnium was nevertheless 68 Salmon (1967, p. 382–384) suggests the grudge might have been borne by his entire family, due to a defeat inflicted on Sulla’s last consular ancestor at the battle of the Cranite Mountains which was the actual reason for that ancestor’s expulsion from the Senate (the official charges had been possession of too much silver plate; see chapter 7) and the political decline of Sulla’s branch of the gens Cornelia. 69 This is the argument of Keaveney (1982, p. 182, 189 n. 39), who attempts to acquit Sulla of “some sort of racial hatred”. His argument in

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effectively wrecked (τοιγάρ τοι νυνὶ κῶμαι γεγόνασιν αἱ πόλεις; Strabo, loc. cit.). These were, then, the conditions in Italy which prevailed during Sulla’s Dictatorial rule. Of course, it cannot be denied that for at least some former Italians, matters were not so dire as for the Samnites, Etruscans, and other peoples visited with extensive confiscations. For these, the slow process of healing from a decade of warfare continued, while their people figured out ways to be part of their home communities and yet be Roman at the same time70. Among such people, the struggle had indeed ended, and they made their way into the future as Romans, even if that newfound this particular instance is full of special pleading, however. First and foremost, his sole note about Samnium involves the Strabo passage mentioned above and its claims that Sulla felt that Rome would never be safe as long as the Samnites were a separate people. Thus, Keaveney would have it that the Samnites were treated as they were due to fear and precaution. Appian, however, does not attribute Sulla’s fixation on the Samnites as due to fear, but due to simple hatred of them and as punishment for being “ill-disposed towards Rome” (ὧν τοὺς Σαυνίτας ἔκτεινε πάντας ὡς αἰεὶ χαλεποὺς Ῥωμαίοις γενομένους; 1.10.87). Keaveney ignores this evidence of Appian. Because of this fact, Keaveney’s claim— that “such treatment differed not one whit from what he meted out to Cinnans on the grounds that they were public enemies”—is clearly mistaken, as Appian records just such a disparity in treatment following the final surrender of Praeneste. If, on the other hand, Plutarch’s notation of that event—which is that Sulla spared no one and killed all 12000 men (Sull. 32)—is correct, then there might be firmer ground for this statement. Furthermore, Keaveney does note that Samnium was spared a colony (as described above), but points out—almost certainly correctly—that this was because Samnite land would be unsuitable for colonization, and that it was rather given as presents to the wealthier supporters who used it for pasturage. In the end, the point is probably a moot one: Sulla’s actions are offensive enough that the additional charge of genocide would only be one more unsavory attribute among many, and whether he attempted to extirpate the Samnites or simply treated them as he did all the other Italians, the poverty of Samnite land and the lack of men from ten years of fighting accomplished the same thing. 70 For a lengthier description of this process, see Wolff-Alonso, chapters 4–6; see also Sherwin-White, p. 119–174.

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Romanitas had slightly more restrictions than that of others. Yet subsequent events would show that a small, thin remnant of the former Italians would chafe under the Sullan system, and would try to find ways to shake off some if the debilities that were imposed by it. What was done by these, and the ultimate fate of them and the system against which they demonstrated, will be discussed below.

5. THE PERSISTENCE OF THE SULLAN SYSTEM In late 81 Sulla began the process of divesting himself of his powers, first laying aside the Dictatorship and holding the office of Consul for 80 instead, and then allowing himself to hold no office at all when January of 79 rolled around. It can well be imagined that Sulla continued to have an influence even during his so-called retirement, but he would not have such an influence for long: by March of 78 he had died. Upon that death, questions must have arisen again as to what would happen next. The answer, ultimately, was very little, at least as far as Sulla’s new Republic was concerned: over time his laws would be repealed one by one,71 but there would be no counterrevolution after Sulla’s death which would declare him an outlaw and reverse his measures. There were, of course, some attempts at this: shortly after Sulla’s death, the consul of 78, M. Aemilius Lepidus, was sent into Etruria to suppress a revolt launched against the colonies Sulla had planted there. It was, perhaps, an unwise choice of commanders on the part the Roman government, as apparently Lepidus had had some sympathies for the one-time Italians in their treatment by Sulla. Thus, and instead of suppressing the revolt, he soon joined it. In so doing, he availed himself of the aid of M. Junius Brutus, the one-time fellow exile of C. Marius, and of M. Perperna, the former governor of Sicily under Cinna and Carbo, who had both somehow managed to escape death during the proscriptions. This assistance notwithstanding, Lepidus was soon defeated in battle by his colleage Catulus, the son of the consul of 104 and inimicus of Marius who had been hounded to suicide by followers of that

71

See, for example, Gruen (1974, p. 1–46).

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general. The remaining supporters were defeated by Cn. Pompeius, and Lepidus himself soon retired to Sardinia, where he died.72 As has been seen, Lepidus was given his excuse for, and a great deal of support in, his actions against Rome by the Etruscans. These would some years later also support the revolutionary L. Sergius Catilina when he, too, launched his own war, and for the same reasons: Etruria had been reduced to poverty by Sulla’s consfiscations. They had also provided men to Sertorius, who had taken a legion of the men he had apparently raised in Etruria during the Civil War with him to Spain,73 and would add to it when Perperna took the remnants of the force of Lepidus west to join him. These Etruscans would remain with Sertorius until the very end in 72, which came about Sertorius was slain by Perperna himself. For at least some Italians, then, fighting against the Sullan system continued even throughout the 70s BCE. Yet that fighting took place elsewhere than Italy, and other then the Etruscans, no other Italians are mentioned as having taken up weapons against the government in Rome. It seems that they understood the futility of fighting Sulla’s new Commonwealth, and elements of that state would survive for the remainder of the Republic even if some of its laws were overturned or modified, which eventually allowed them greater participation in it. By 77 the struggle for the Roman citizenship was over. As was the case in 88, so it was nine years later that the Italians were forced to take what they could get from the victors: they had fought as long as there was any possibility they could win, but when those possibilities disappeared, they settled for the best they could get.

72 For a summary of the revolt of Lepidus, see Gruen (op. cit., p. 11–17). For sources, see Greenidge and Clay, p. 234–240. 73 So Spann, p. 40.

EPILOGUE: ROMANS OLD AND NEW

Sir Ronald Syme occasionally referred to the events of the decade of the 80s BCE as a collective, unified whole with his description of its fighting as a “Ten Years War”. In fact, if the “Ten Years War” can be said to have begun in Asculum with the murder of Servilius, extended through the conduct of the Allied War and the Marches on Rome, the massacres, the Civil War, and the proscriptions, then its end—at least in Italy—had taken a little longer to arrive than the span allotted to it by the epithet. It has been the thesis of this essay that Syme’s description is accurate on the whole if somewhat imprecise in the specifics: as he suggests, the decade is connected by a thread, which was the warfare to which the then-Allies resorted in order to gain the citizenship, the warfare to which the now-Romans returned in order to gain the complete citizenship and all of the rights associated with it, and the warfare in which they threw their support to protect the rights they had won against a threat who claimed he was no danger but had proven to be untrustworthy in the past. By the conclusion of the year 77, however, all the warfare in Italy was over, and if at the end of it the former Allies found themselves in the mood to reflect on their position, they themselves could not have escaped the conclusion that they had lost. In a narrow sense, they did indeed have the status of Roman citizens; those who were still alive could expect the same treatment at the hands of their officials and officers as other Romans, and in battle they could now serve alongside their fellow Romans without having to tax themselves for the privilege, could perhaps make careers out of that service, and retire to farms provided for them by their generals. They had free access to the city, and could claim, without qualification, whatever protections the declaration “Cives Romanus sum” might offer 675

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abroad, along with its risks. Those who had felt exploited—those closer to the bottom of the social and political hierarchy—could perhaps now feel less so. On the other hand, for several years to come they would lack almost completely anything resembling the ability to take part in the government under whose protection they had now been placed. It would not be until 70 that the power of the tribunes was restored, and at the same time censors were finally elected to register the people. Both of these were measures were, ironically, carried out in the joint consulate of M. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Pompeius (the Pompeius who had progressed far from his δυναστεία near Picenum and had in the intervening years become Great), two of Sulla’s most famous partisans. After twenty years, then, the Italians were finally full-fledged Romans. However, the price they had paid for this much-delayed goal had been the deaths of many thousands in battle, of additional thousands in wanton murder, and of poverty through proscription and confiscation that the reform of 70 did nothing to erase. Land taken from them would still be in the hands of others as late as 63, as has been seen, and the injustice of it could still be called to mind by the man who—in public, at least—called himself “the People’s consul”1 in that year. “It is allowed to be called the Allied War, that we might diminish the infamy of it, but if nevertheless we wish to tell the truth, it was a Civil War”. This is the assessment of the cataclysm of 91–87 offered Florus (2.6.1).2 Certainly many of the men fighting in that war, which to Florus was more properly labeled a bellum civile, would to a large degree also take part in the next war whose ability to be described as a Civil war was beyond doubt. If it can be allowed that Florus is correct in his judgement, then the usual outcome of civil wars appeared in this one, too, which is that both sides ultimately lost. One of the combatants in the war was the Roman commonwealth, whose citizens had expended oceans 1 For Cicero’s references to himself as a consul popularis in his speeches against the Agrarian laws, see Morstein-Marx 194–195, 206–208. 2 Sociale bellum vocetur licet, ut extenuemus invidiam, si verum tamen volumus, illud civile bellum fuit.

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of blood and mountains of coin to beat back the efforts of their one-time Allies only to grant that which they had been so dead-set against giving, and in the process had provided the opening for the violation of its most sacred laws and, ultimately, for a violent reshaping of their society which had been conducted against their will. As a result of that reshaping, what it meant to be Roman changed, with extensive additions to the citizen body made by all sorts of people, many of whom speaking a different language and having profoundly different customs than the original Romans and who had been deadly and virulent enemies just moments before their addition. Was this the same Rome which had stood for eight centuries? Would the “old Romans” be as strongly attached to their city now as before, be as willing to rid her of tyrants and maintain their freedom? The answer, apparently, was “no”, and it seems to have resonated from all levels of the new society. In the distant past, a Roman military hero had been falsely accused of a crime whose penalty was not the loss of a military command, but perpetual banishment from Rome; he had been tempted, but had ultimately forborne the use of arms to gain his rights back. More recently, another Roman military hero had been pressured by a tribune merely to give an oath to support a law with which he did not agree, an oath whose swearing would ultimately would have cost him nothing, and he likewise had been willing to accept perpetual banishment rather than accede to it. Sulla, however, was confronted merely with the loss of his proconsular assignment and in theory with the gift of leisure, but in the face of this perceived wound he would play neither the part of Coriolanus or Metellus. By rejecting these paradigms, he would establish one of his own. It could hardly be surprising that the next powerful man faced with what he believed to be—and by all rights was—an injustice would likewise eschew the role of martyr, and instead be governed by the exemplum Sullanum. It can also be little wondered at if the common people followed suit, and followed the men playing it. Should they be expected to act any better than the men who referred to themselves as the “Best Men”, and defend a Rome which was hardly theirs anymore? Indeed, these were the very men who received such an appellation because they had made it a practice not to appeal to the people, and had traditionally opposed many laws and lawmakers who claimed to have the interest of the people

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at heart. Was this a government for whom death was a worthy sacrifice? Or, given the turbulent times, would it not be wiser to side with those who could promise them the most? As for the other combatant in that war: if those Roman citizens with the most distinguished lineage and ancient families would behave in the manner of Sulla, Caesar, and the soldiers who marched with them, it would be very difficult to expect that new citizens would act much differently. These were men who had believed that Rome had been not only worth dying for but also killing for, and had recently killed a great many Romans to prove their devotion. However, this was also the same Rome which had spent decades, even centuries, making them aware of just how little they were appreciated. Many Romans had fought to the death to prevent these would-be citizens from mixing their blood—which they had often shed in defense of the city and its interests—with their own, and it was only after they were finally worn down by years of disastrous war that the citizenship was wrung from them. That citizenship had been defective, however, and the new citizens and old citizens alike both knew it. Rather than make it right, some Romans had been willing to fall upon their own city and kill their own magistrates, and to do this repeatedly. The end of the decade had seen a new government created which was based in part on an attempt to revive the privilege and power of Rome’s traditional aristocracy, a revival which kept magistracies and influence out of the hands of the men who were now citizens but lacked sufficient pedigree. That revival had been based on civil war, usurpation, theft, and murder, but it had benefited so many of the right people that undoing it would be unthinkable. Is it any wonder that the new citizens should persistently support the regime’s enemies, and deny that support to the regime’s friends? These new citizens, the aristocrats had so often said during the decades before 88 when they were merely socii, were not worthy of the republic. In the end, they had returned the reply—silently but deafeningly in impact— that the republic was not worthy of them, either. In 91 the Romans and their Allies had gone to war over, ultimately, the rights and responsibilities that attended membership in the Roman commonwealth. The Allies fought because they believed that by doing so they could come by those benefits which they believed were rightfully theirs, while the Romans had fought because they believed that by doing so they could prevent the

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diminution of those privileges. Both were, ultimately, wrong in their beliefs. Through their fighting the Allies ultimately only gained an incomplete version of those cherished rights, and even when these were in theory made whole, they would never really get to enjoy them. By the time they were at last eligible to begin to exercise the true rights of a Roman citizen, those rights were simultaneously taken away from everyone by Caesar and his heirs. On the other hand, the Romans could not entirely stave off Italian demands by force nor for long make them accept a diminished answer to their plea even after mostly defeating them. By their stubborn attempts to do so and to preserve their cherished status, they gave the ways and means to those individuals who would in turn leave them with just what they were attempting to give to their former Allies: the appearance of a full participation in a Republic but with no real ability to govern their state and share completely in its blessings. In the end, the Italians had wanted to become Romans, and the Romans had wanted to prevent it, and neither succeeded. The Italians ultimately became the equals to the Romans, but the Romans they would become were not the Romans of 92. For their part, the Romans kept the full blessings of their Romanitas out of Italian hands, but had done so at the expense of ultimately losing it themselves. Both, in the end, were forced to become something different than what they had been, and what they eventually would become, they would become together.

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APPENDIX A: THE ALLIED EMBASSY OF 91 As has been mentioned frequently throughout this essay, it has occasionally been asserted in the modern scholarship investigating the Bellum Sociale that the true desire of the Allies in the years leading up to war was for independence, not citizenship. Evidence that such a desire motivated the socii is alleged to be found in an episode from the year 91. In the autumn of that year, on the eve of the war about to be fought in which such an independence could potentially have been won by the Allies, an alternative to the complete dissolution of ties was presented by the Italians to the Romans. The specifics of what the Italians offered to the Romans (it is alleged) plainly demonstrate that the Italians did not wish to be enfolded into the Roman state, but desired instead something that, if it was not a total separation, would nevertheless guarantee to the Allies complete freedom of action and autonomy: in other words, equality with the Romans but not as Romans was what they proposed. The argument that the Allies wanted independence, as opposed to the citizenship, is one which patently flies in the face of the argument on which this essay rests, which is the precise opposite. That this essay has been allowed to continue to rest on such an assertion implies that evidence of the kind just mentioned has been considered, and, ultimately, rejected, as indeed it has. Not only that, but the embassy just described has been interpreted in a completely different way in the pages above, having been taken not as an indication that the socii wanted independence, but as further evidence that what they really wanted was the civitas. That the embassy therefore is not only not construed as weakening the primary assertion of the present work, but is rather construed as adding strength to it, makes it clear that the embassy is not as straightforward as some scholars might suggest. As a result, a proper understanding of what occurred with the embassy, what that in turn implies about the mindset of the Italians about to engage in a war, and what that mindset suggests was what they hoped to accomplish with that war, seems exceedingly appropriate. Lest such an analysis interrupt the narrative supplied in chapters 4 and 5, it seems better that it be conducted here. 683

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An investigation into the embassy sent to Rome and what it hoped to accomplish ought to begin with the primary source in which a description is found. That source is Appian, in whose text the Italians are portrayed as having sent emissaries to the capital in what was probably the hope of forestalling the hostilities which had begun at Asculum before they got out of hand (1.5.39). That this embassy hoped to effect a peace is evident, although Appian himself does not furnish specifics as to the terms on which that peace would be built. Instead, according to his account (which is, it should be noted, the only ancient source to mention this deputation), the Allied ambassadors arrived in Rome and made a complaint to the Romans that they had helped build the empire but had not been granted the civitas (οὐκ ἀξιοῦνται τῆς τῶν ε ο μένων πολιτείας). At this point the Romans curtly replied that they would accept deputations only from those who had repented of what they had done and who were ready to face Roman punishment, at which point the negotiators went home. At first glance, it is difficult to see how Appian’s text may be used to support the claim that the Allies wanted independence, or indeed anything other than the citizenship. This was the only thing they are cited as having mentioned, and even if the embassy had intended to demand something else, Appian indicates they were not allowed to do so. However, this lack of anything resembling concrete details about the embassy in the only narrative in which it is mentioned can be explained, by those holding that the Allies did want independence, by the simple fact that it is not an accurate depiction of what transpired. Bluntly put, Appian (the argument goes) flatly misconstrues what had occurred when the Allied envoys reached Rome. According to some scholars, the Allies had in fact presented their demands to the Romans, demands which Appian does not pass along. What is more, these demands did not ask for the citizenship, and the protest about the lack of having attained it was apparently Appian’s own invention. Rather, they called for a comprehensive overhaul of the Commonwealth. According to this interpretation, the Allied terms would have them remain socii, but they would govern the empire with the Romans as equals: to them would be given half the seats in the Senate and one of the two consulates to fill with their own candidates. Only in this way could peace be maintained.

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The evidence for these stupulations cannot, of course, be found in Appian, nor in any source which purports to cover the year 91. Yet it is claimed that an indication that such stipulations were actually the ones voiced by the Italian deputation exists, albeit in what is referred to as “an unlikely source”. This unlikely source is eighth book of Livy (specifically, 8.4) in which the Latins who were about to face the Romans in war in the year 340 are represented as having made the same demands. Clearly, it is argued, these terms could not have been what the Latins actually wanted in 340. Instead, Livy—or whatever source he used—has removed the embassy of 91 from its proper time, putting the demands of the Allies in that year into the mouths of the disgruntled Latins of 250 years earlier. So, at least, it has been argued.1 However, a number of problems with this hypothesis immediately present themselves. In the first place, there is no way to verify this interpretation, since the extant literary sources provide no clue as to what demands the ambassadors made to the Romans, if indeed they were allowed to 1 Primarily by Mouritsen (1998, p. 138–139). For his claim that Livy 8.4 more properly reflects the demands of the Allies from 91 he offers no real evidence, save that the demands presented as having been made in 340 were “clearly anachronistic”. For this Mouritsen cites T. J. Cornell’s “The Conquest of Italy” (Cambridge Ancient History 7.2, p. 361). However, Cornell likewise does not provide any justification for this claim. Emilio Gabba (1956, p. 27) also suggests that 8.4 was influenced by the embassy of 91, but only in the sense that in that passage the Latins justified their demands because of their military contributions, just as the Allies had done in the passage of Appian cited in the text above. The actual demands of 91, however, did not take the form of the elaborate scheme which Livy reports in 8.4 by Gabba’s reasoning. These, in turn, come from another episode still: specifically, from what was demanded of Rome by Capua in 216 (reported in 23.6). In other words, Livy took from his source the demands actually made by Capua in 216 but claimed by that source to have been made by the Latins in 340. The Latin explanation for why they deserved these concessions was in turn taken from the Allied embassy in 91, which for its part had not made given the exorbitant terms found in Livy, but rather appealed only for the civitas. This is, admittedly, an elaborate construction, but it is no less of one than Mouritsen’s, and is followed here.

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make any of them at all. As will be remembered, Appian is the only source to mention the negotiations, and the clear indication gotten from his account is that the ambassadors were cut short before they could make any demands whatsoever. Nothing remains in the record, then, to confirm this theory about Livy’s anachronism. It can be objected in counter that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: it could very well be that these demands were heard, and that Appian simply omitted them, putting in their place a falsehood about the Allied complaint about not being given the civitas before being silenced by the Romans. Indeed, some modern scholars assert that this is the very thing Appian might do, since his main theme—that the Allies went to war through a frustrated desire for the citizenship—would not be well served by any stipulations which patently sought to acquire something else.2 This does, of course, assume that Appian was more than willing to perpetrate historical dishonesty of the grossest kind. However, laying aside for a moment this unflattering assessment of Appian, there remains the fact that he is the only author to mention this embassy at all (whether accurately or not). This is curious, and all the more so in light of the existence of several sources which cover the period but do not mention this affair. Some of these would include Velleius, Eutropius, the Periochae, Orosius, and Florus. All of these drew from Livy, and indeed the last three were all directly descended from him (see chapter 1). Their silence on the matter allows the inference to be drawn that the embassy is not mentioned in their work because it could not be found in their main source: that is, they omit it because Livy himself likewise omits it in what are now the missing sections of his full work, where it chronologically would belong. Those who argue that the Italians did make their substantial demands would, it seems, have it that Livy mentioned them in book eight—two-and-a-half centuries prior to when they were actually made—but did not include the demands or even mention of the embassy in its proper chronological place, id est in 91. Such an assertion raises still further questions, of which the most important may be why Livy would permit such a hiatus in his 2

A favorite theme of Mouritsen’s; see Introduction.

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narrative. Speculation on this point hinges on one of two possibilities: either Livy knew about the embassy, when it occurred, and what it demanded, or he did not. If the former, then Livy—for reasons known only to himself—deliberately occluded it in his book describing the year 91 but made a veiled reference to it in an account describing an earlier time. If the latter, than it would seem that Livy’s sources led him astray: someone other than Livy failed to report the embassy when it actually occurred, but placed the essence of the event in a different chronological context for, again, reasons unknown. Both of these possibilities are fraught with difficulties. As mentioned, one of the possibilities for the omission is that Livy did know about the embassy and all its attendant details, but simply excluded them. It may well be wondered why he would do so. That he passed over the embassy as simply unimportant seems highly unlikely. In the first place, Livy’s remaining books are all exceedingly detailed, and filled with specifics that in some cases border on minutiae. It is not unreasonable to assume the missing books were equally replete with particulars; see, for example, the notice that the Romans at one point in the year 90 decided to wear their saga instead of the toga, one found in three of the sources which drew from Livy that are mentioned above.3 Furthermore, Livy apparently devoted an entire book to the year 91, perhaps to accommodate such details (see chapter 1, as well as Appendix G). Those who hold that Livy did include the details of the embassy of 91 in book eight make it clear that Livy did think the embassy was important enough to mention, even if in the wrong place. For these reasons, it seems manifest that an event as significant as the Allied embassy would not escape Livy’s notice as too trivial. Indeed, this last would be a logical impossibility if he had displaced the terms of the embassy to 340. Finally, given his thoroughness, it is even more difficult to believe that he left out mention of it as an oversight, especially as he allegedly went through the trouble of recreating the episode in the guise of the Latin War in an earlier section.4 Specifically: Velleius 2.16, Orosius 5.18.15, Per. 72. And a second time in the guise of the Second Punic War, for which see earlier note and below. 3 4

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It seems exceedingly improbable that, if Livy knew about the embassy, he failed to include a notice about it due to carelessness. Furthermore, it would also be most unlikely that, if he knew about it, he would have rated it too immaterial to mention. Therefore, absence of mention of the embassy in Livy’s descendants in their discussion of the year 91 would suggest that, if he knew about it and its importance (as he clearly did, based on his inclusion of it in 8.4), he still did not discuss it. This, in turn, begs the question of why this would be the case. An answer for this has been located by some in in the fact that Livy was writing during the early Principate, whose princeps made Italian unity one of his watchwords. As they would have it, the creation of the tota Italia of Augustus was, it seems, the culmination of a number of historical processes, of which the Bellum Sociale was one of the most significant ones. According to what it is claimed that Augustus projected, Roman Italy was not the result of the Italians having been broken in their last bid for independence (even though, according to this interpretation, such was what was actually the case). It was instead completed by the grant of their longstanding wish to become Romans, and granted as a reward for their valiant, if unsuccessful, attempt to acquire it by force. Augustus therefore wanted history to reflect that Romanitas was fervently desired by the Allies who wished, through enfranchisement, to end their independence of their own accord. The demands made by the Allies—if they were indeed the same as those Livy describes as being made by the Latins in 340—did not fit with this theme. For this reason, Livy apparently dutifully submerged them through his silence, lest he displease the First Citizen.5 It is, perhaps, not implausible that Livy would be capable of letting himself be persuaded to alter history so as better to suit a favored interpretation of Augustus. There was, for example, the alleged spolia opima of Cornelius Cossus, reported in Livy (4.20) having been won and dedicated to the temple of Jupiter Feretrius in 428 by a man who, as military tribune, would not have been 5 So Mouritsen seems to imply (1998, p. 138–139), noting in another part of his work how Livy was “inspired” by the tota Italia byword of Augustus (p. 47).

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allowed to do anything of the kind. Livy specifically mentions this difficulty in his text. Nevertheless, because the princeps had let it be known that he had personally seen these during his renovation of the temple, and Livy promptly includes mention of them and their illustrious discoverer in his work in spite of the problems this would entail. Modern scholars often attribute this episode to laziness on the part of Livy, as it presumably would have been no difficult task for the author to betake himself to the temple and see the spolia, or lack of them, for himself.6 However, it could also be that Livy found the idea of disagreeing with Augustus unpleasant, and did not press the issue. So, too, it may have been for the Allied embassy. Including the terms it demanded might conflict with the history of Italian unification which Augustus wanted told, so he buried them to avoid this conflict. Yet if Livy was moved to excise the Allied embassy from book 72 for such a reason, why would he then include the episode (in what would have been a thinly-disguised form) in book 8?7 He must have at least suspected that this book and the episode within it might be brought to the attention of Augustus, who would very probably have recognized what Livy had done. Was the anecdote so precious to him that he would risk the displeasure of the princeps to include it? Those who argue for such an anachronism have no answer for this question, to which, it is probable, there is none. Based on all of these considerations, it seems unlikely that Livy knew about the Allied embassy and the circumstances surrounding it but failed to report them for his narrative of 91, only to include them in book 8. The possibility remains open, however, that he did so inadvertently, due to what his own sources may or may not have reported. This would in turn imply that Livy’s sources—whoever they may have been—likewise did not mention the embassy in their accounts of the year 91 in such a way as to attract the notice of an author as painstaking and conscientious in terms of detail as Livy seems to have been. Yet that they did know about it is clear from the fact that they placed the missing details in 6 As it is by Patrick Walsh (1961, p. 14–15, 110–114; 1974, p. 13–14). See also Chapter 1. 7 And, it would seem, for a similar episode in Book 23; see below.

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their own accounts of the year 340, from which Livy drew for his version found in 8.4.8 Why the earlier writers would do this seems, again, to boil down either to carelessness, to their belief that the episode was too inconsequential to merit discussion, or to deliberate concealment of it for some unknown reason. Of these, the second of these can likely be ruled out safely. Such authors clearly considered the embassy important enough to mention (if not in its proper setting), and did so, so they must not have considered the event one too minor to record. It is possible that Livy’s sources deliberately excluded the embassy for their discussion of year 91 for some unknown reason, though it is not easy to speculate as why any of them would do so. None of them, after all, would have a princeps to please by perpetuating a myth of a war for Italian unity, as they were writing before this princeps came on the scene. Sulla might have functioned as the nearest earlier equivalent of Augustus, but there is no indication he harbored any fondness for a tota Italia. In fact, the war (and by extension his heroics in them) might be all the more justified if the Italians had made such enormous demands, ones that would have so profoundly altered the Republic as to have practically destroyed it (see Introduction). If there was therefore no political reason for Livy’s sources to remove the details of the embassy from their accounts of 91, there is likewise no reason for these authors to have left the details out of their actual chronological location only to reinsert them, in disguised form, in 8.4, where they would be found and used by Livy. That does not rule these authors as having deliberately excluded the embassy on other grounds. For example, it may have been that Livy’s source had no details at all about what the Latins had wanted in 340, and simply borrowed the stipulations from those of the embassy of 91. To avoid detection, this source may Assuming, of course, that Livy followed the same source or sources for the events of 340, 216, and 91. At least four sources directly cited by Livy covered such a broad span: Aelius Tubero, Valerius Antais, Claudius Quadrigarius, and Licinius Macer. For Livy’s use of all four, see Walsh (1961, p. 121–122, 139–141; 1974, p. 16). For the chronological scope of these four, see von Albrecht, p. 385–389. 8

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thereupon have elided these particulars from his later section. But this, too, is rendered vulnerable by the fact that this unknown author apparently reused the details from 340 in his discussion of the Second Punic War, when the Campanians are recorded by Livy as giving the same demands in 216 as the Latins are held to have done in 340. Livy himself makes note of this as a possible reduplication (23.6, noting the silence of Caelius on these terms). All that therefore remains is carelessness, whereby Livy’s unknown source either forgot to drop the terms of 340 from his account of the year 216, or forgot to include them for the year 90. This is not impossible, but is not terribly believable for all that. Given this extended chain of implausibilities, it become increasingly harder to accept the idea that an embassy was sent in 91, its demands were heard, and that they were the same as those put by Livy into the mouths of the Latins in book 8, but that no notice of this occurrence of any kind could be found in Livy’s account of the year in which it occurred (and thus could not be found in his descendants). This, then, leads to the final question: if Livy writing in the late first century could find no source with mention of the embassy, which seems to be the only believable explanation for why it appears that it was missing from his narrative, how could Appian writing almost two centuries later have found one so he could include it in his? It is obviously not impossible that Appian was able to find a description of the embassy in a source which eluded Livy. Nor is it impossible that he simply invented the story. As has been seen, some scholars assume that Appian would have had no compunction about distorting what had actually occurred with the Allied embassy (namely, that it made a list of stipulations like those found in Livy 8.4 and, it seems, 23.6) by leaving out the demands they made and substituting in their place an Italian protest about the citizenship and its subsequent silencing by the Romans. By means of this distortion, such modern scholars hold, Appian produced a doctored version of history so as better to suit his interpretation of the cause of the war. For reasons cited above, it seems that he can be acquitted of having done this last. After all, had the Allies made such demands, it seems reasonable to assert that someone one have noticed and preserved them, allowing Livy to be able to do so, as well. Yet the fact that Appian almost certainly did not grotesquely transfigure something that did happen

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does not mean that he could not have simply invented an embassy that never existed and put on their lips complaints about not having been granted the civitas. Such a fiction would serve his explanation for the casus belli just as well as a deliberately altered account of the kind described above. No evidence can be found to prove that he did so, of course, but by the same token evidence can be produced to prove that he did not. It therefore remains conceivable that Appian may not have recast what had occurred, but did invent something which had not for the purpose of his narrative. On the other hand, another possibility exists which preserves Appian’s integrity while still explaining the apparent absence of the embassy in Livy. This possibility depends first of all on the assumption that everything concerning the embassy happened just as Appian said that it did. This would essentially make the embassy a non-event: the Allies came to negotiate a way out of the war, but the Senate silenced their envoys after hearing no more than their initial complaint. Such a non-event might well not have registered as important enough to mention in Livy’s text. This still assumes— as has been assumed for the last several pages—that a record of the embassy is not, in fact, to be found there. This is not an unjustifiable conjecture, based on the fact that no mention of it occurs in any of his descendants covering this period. Yet Livy’s aforementioned attentiveness to detail continues to speak against this possibility, as does those of his descendants: it is far easier to believe that they could not relay it because Livy had never included it, and may not have included it because it was an episode of no major import. Then again, it should be pointed out that none of these descendants are very extensive in their coverage of the Bellum Sociale. Indeed, the Latin text of the parts of the Periochae, Velleius, Orosius, Florus, and Eutropius narrating the war takes up a combined total of nine pages with dimensions similar to the one used in this essay, with the accounts of the latter two authors taking up a page apiece. By contrast, one extant book of Livy (Book 45) takes up over forty such pages. The Periochae suggest that Livy devoted no less than six of these books to the war, including one entirely dedicated to the year 91 (as has been seen). It does not seem too far-fetched to assert that the majority of what was in the lost books did not make it into the authors which drew from them;

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in fact, a side-by-side comparison of the Periocha of Book 45 and the full text graphically underscores what was left out. Admittedly, these descendants do preserve details which seem to have much less weight than the Allied embassy (see, for example, the inclusion of the saga as noted above). Still, it is also true that this detail is found only in the three largest of Livy’s descendants; the other, smaller two did not include it, perhaps due to their compression of the original text. For later authors summarizing in few pages what probably took a few hundred in Livy, choices had to be made as to what to include and what to discard. A non-event like the Allied embassy, one which did not halt or even delay the coming war, might have been a prime candidate for rejection. Yet an author who devoted much more space to the war, such as Appian (whose Greek text of his treatment of the hostilities takes up about as many pages as the Latin text of all the other author just cited combined) might be more disposed to include it. In fact, his source for the embassy might well have been Livy himself, whom Appian is known to have consulted9 (see Introduction). Either way, the mention of the embassy in one ancient authority and its elision from the descendants of another need not require chicanery on the part of either of these. Such a difference could easily be attributable to a set of editorial choices on the one side which do not agree with those made by the other. For these reasons, there is no reason not to regard Appian as trustworthy on the matter of the embassy and what it was allowed to say before being muted, and he is regarded as such here. Furthermore, there is likewise no evidence to suggest that this embassy had been sent to ask for anything other than the citizenship, about which it had started to speak before being silenced. It therefore seems like evidence, not that the Allies wanted independence, but wanted the civitas after all, and it is taken as such here.

9 Although see Haug (p. 131–133) and Gabba (1956, 13–25) for the improbability of Appian’s use of Livy for the year 91.

APPENDIX B: THE DEBATE OVER THE INCLUSION OF THE ALLIES IN THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE AGER PUBLICUS BY TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

Appian’s description of the circumstances surrounding the formulation of the lex Sempronia gives the distinct impression that the tribune was not only concerned with bolstering the Roman small-farmer, but also with doing so for his Allied counterpart, and for the same reason: to ensure the continued depth of the pool of manpower available for Rome’s armies. Indeed, Appian’s words may even be read to suggest that the Allies were his primary concern. His introduction to the time of Gracchus describes how the Romans had initially intended to use the ager publicus to provide for future generations of the Italian allies,1 a purpose which had been frustrated by Roman landowners who consumed the land and drove away everyone else who would use it. This had contributed to the poverty of the Italians and to the loss of their strength through taxes and military service, and Gracchus decries the misfortunes of a people who were both useful in battle and related to the Romans (τοῦ Ἰταλικοῦ γένους ὡς εὐπολεμωτάτου τε καὶ συγγενοῦς [emphasis added]; 1.1.9), clearly indicating that nonRomans were meant. The implication of Italian involvement in his land redistribution is reinforced by Appian’s use of phrases like that attending his discussion of the debate leading up to the voting on the lex, in which he states that Gracchus declared that he believed of his legislation “that nothing more advantageous or admirable 1 Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν Ἰταλίαν πολέμῳ κατὰ μέρ χειρούμενοι γῆς μέρος ἐλάμ ανον καὶ πόλεις ἐνῴκιζον ἢ ἐς τὰς πρότερον οὔσας κλ ρούχους ἀπὸ σφῶν κατέλεγον. καὶ τάδε μὲν ἀντὶ φρουρίων ἐπενόουν, τῆς δὲ γῆς τῆς δορικτ του σφίσιν ἑκάστοτε γιγνομέν ς τὴν μὲν ἐξειργασμέν ν αὐτίκα τοῖς οἰκιζομένοις ἐπιδιῄρουν ἢ ἐπίπρασκον ἢ ἐξεμίσ ουν … καὶ τάδε ἔπραττον ἐς πολυανδρίαν τοῦ Ἰταλικοῦ γένους, φερεπονωτάτου σφίσιν ὀφ έντος, ἵνα συμμάχους οἰκείους ἔχοιεν; 1.1.7. The question has been raised as to whether Appian’s τοῦ Ἰταλικοῦ γένος meant “Italians” or plebs rustica; this is addressed by Shochat

(39–40), whose conclusion—that Appian did indeed mean use the term to signify the Italians and not the Romans of the countryside—is overwhelmingly convincing.

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could ever happen to Italy” (ὡς οὔ τι μεῖζον οὐδὲ λαμπρότερον δυναμέν ς ποτὲ πα εῖν τῆς Ἰταλίας; 1.1.11), and finally by the tribune’s pleading with Octavius (apparently in a contio before the final contio in which the vote was taken)2 that the law was to be “for the good of all Italy” (χρ σιμώτατον Ἰταλίᾳ πάσῃ; 1.1.12). Finally, when Gracchus had carried his laws into passage Appian claims that he was escorted home by an ecstatic throng as if he were a father and founder, not of any one people, but of all the races of Italy (Γράκχος δὲ μεγαλαυχούμενος ἐπὶ τῷ νόμῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ πλ ους οἷα δὴ κτίστ ς οὐ μιᾶς πόλεως οὐδὲ ἑνὸς γένους, ἀλλὰ πάντων, ὅσα ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ ἔ ν , ἐς τὴν οἰκίαν παρεπέμπετο; 1.1.13). In addition to these

reports, there is also a notice in Plutarch which seem to confirm that Italians figured into the thinking of Gracchus: in his Life of Tiberius (9.5) the biographer cites a speech—perhaps the same just mentioned by Appian, of which Plutarch is supplying details—in which the tribune justifies his programme by showing the contrast between “the wild beasts which roam Italy” who have a lair of their own and the “men who fight and die for Italy”, who have only the open stars to shelter them (ὡς τὰ μὲν ρία τὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν νεμόμενα καὶ φωλεὸν ἔχει καὶ κοιταῖόν ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἑκάστῳ καὶ καταδύσεις, τοῖς δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἰταλίας μαχομένοις καὶ ἀπο νῄσκουσιν ἀέρος καὶ φωτός, ἄλλου δὲ οὐδενὸς μέτεστιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἄοικοι καὶ ἀνίδρυτοι μετὰ τέκνων πλανῶνται καὶ γυναικῶν).3 There are, therefore, several indications

that Gracchus intended for all of Italy—and thus the Italians, as opposed to just the Romans—to to be aided by his law. On the other hand, neither Appian nor Plutarch are completely unambiguous in this matter. First and foremost, there is the fact that, once passed, these selfsame Italians would protest the operation of the lex Sempronia (Appian, 1.3.18, which specifies that they objected to the Triumvirate and they way it conducted adjudication of what land belonged to Rome, not necessarily the law itself). This somewhat accords ill with the idea that they themselves received benefits from it, unless the protestors were So Morstein-Marx, p. 164. This passage would seem to blunt the force of Shochat’s assertion that “there is not a single mention” of Italians in the Tiberius Gracchus, a claim also made by Mouritsen (p. 15), unless the “men who defend Italy” to which Plutarch refers are Romans; more below. 2 3

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only the wealthy socii and not the poor for whom the land was intended.4 Secondly, in the same speech discussing the landless who had fought for Rome, Plutarch refers to those exhorted to defend the (non-existent) shrines of their fathers as “these Romans” (τῶν τοσούτων ' Ῥωμαίων).5 Nor is there any other evidence in that author, who briefly discusses the operation of the Triumvirate while Gracchus was alive, that any land actually went to the Italians. This last also holds true for Appian, and there is the additional fact that, in the protests against the law made during its proposal, the wealthy Romans complained that what they have come to regard as their property—fields they had worked and had improved through their expenditures, gardens, homes, and the graves of their family, all of which they had placed on lands they had thought theirs, and which had even been given to them as bequests or dowries from their fathers—would be given to the πέν σιν, not to the Allies, something it seems likely would have been mentioned had the Allies been intended to be significant or even primary recipients of the land. Moreover, on the day of voting one of the questions Gracchus advances in the debate is whether it would be more just that the common land be occupied by a slave or a πολίτ ς (citizen) due to the ability of the latter to serve in the army (1.1.11). The question as to whether or not justice would be similarly wounded if that land be occupied by a slave rather than an Allied Italian is not raised, which may indicate that the land was not intended to be removed from the former and given to the latter. Other sources likewise cast doubt on the role Gracchus intended for the Italians to play in his redistribution plan, of which one is Cicero. In his speeches on a later agrarian law, the Orationes de lege agraria, that orator twice seems to suggest that only the 4 In addition to Appian, Sallust also hints that the Allies were not terribly sanguine about the redistribution (BJ 42). This can be inferred from the fact that this passage states that the Senate attempted to doom the lex Sempronia and made common cause with socios ac nomen Latinum. Also enlisted were the equites Romanos, and although the text does not spell this out explicitly, it may be wondered whether the socii et nomen Latinum were specifically those who were the equivalents of the equites, and thus the wealthy. 5 This was observed by Badian 1958, p. 171 note 1.

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Roman people had been the beneficiaries of the earlier one. In the first of these passages, Cicero comments that he has no problem with the idea of an agrarian law, since one had earlier been proposed by the illustrious Gracchi, “men most thoroughly attached to the Roman people” (Nam vere dicam, Quirites, genus ipsum legis agrariae vituperare non possum. Venit enim mihi in mentem duos … amantissimos plebei Romanae viros, Ti. et C. Gracchos … qui agri a privatis antea possidebantur [emphasis added]; 2.5.10). In the second, Cicero discusses the former inviolability of the Campanian land, noting that it was untouched by the Gracchi “who thought a great deal of what was advantageous for the Roman people,” (nec duo Gracchi qui de plebis Romanae commodis plurimum cogitaverunt … agrum Campanum attingere ausus est [emphasis added]; 2.29.81). Additionally, there is a fragmentary notice in the De Republica which asserts that Gracchus, for the sake of the cives, “neglects the rights and treaties of the socii” (Gracchus, perseveravit in civibus, sociorum nominisque Latini iura neclexit ae foedera; 3.41), which some have taken to mean that there was no distribution amongst the latter.6 6 The evidence from Cicero is far from clear-cut, however. In the first place, in his speeches on the agrarian laws cited above Cicero is pointedly trying to paint a contrast between Rullus, the author of the bill, and the Gracchi. This contrast revolves around the fact that the former was working only for the advantages of the Sullan possessors, while the latter were civic-minded Roman heroes. It would therefore be in his interest to show the extent to which the Gracchi were acting for the benefit of the Roman people, and to emphasize such actions over and above—and possibly instead of—whatever efforts they may have put in for the socii, if indeed there had been any (Morstein-Marx, p. 212–217). As can be seen above, in this speech, Cicero—as was apparently often the case when Cicero was addressing the populous—proclaimed a reverence for the Gracchi. In speeches delivered in the Senate, and in essays designed for less public readership, his attitude was frequently not as laudatory. In fact, the assessment of Morstein-Marx is that Cicero actually to be not only less fulsome in his praise of the Gracchi, but actually illdisposed towards them, public persona notwithstanding (p. 194–195, although a closer reading of the sources found in note 144 do not entirely warrant that assumption). If that was in fact the case, it would not be surprising that Cicero might want to emphasize irregularities in the Gracchan laws, such as any trampling on Allied rights, in a philosophiocal

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Finally, in the Periochae (of Book 58, specifically) there is a discussion of the revenues from Pergamum, whose management was bequeathed to the Roman people after the death of king Attalus III. Gracchus was able to appropriate these revenues by means of his status as tribune and through the involvement of his family with Eastern affairs,7 eventually used them to provide funding for the work of the commission. The Periocha here suggests that Gracchus was pressed to take the novel step of appropriating the Pergamene funds because the amount of land he had promised the plebs had turned out to be more than he could readily obtain treatise such as De Republica. Of course, this assumes that the passage in question—which is quite corrupt—refers to the Gracchi at all; that this may not be the case has been pointed out by Shochat (27–29). Yet if it does, it is not entirely outlandish to suppose that Cicero might be willing to exaggerate the extent to which the Gracchi violated Allied iura. For a violation of rights to be exaggerated, though, presupposes that the Allies had any sort of rights that Graccus neglexit by not giving them land that belonged to the Roman people. It has been wondered just what these rights may have been (by Shochat, loc. cit.). An answer may be possessory rights to lands adjacent to the ager publicus which might have been abrogated by the reclamation, as detailed in Appian 1.3.18 (see chapter 3). It may have been these about which Cicero speaks, putting words into the mouths of Scipio and Laelius, two of the main characters in the dialogue, which are not entirely inconsistent with what the historical figures might have thought (see Chapter 3). In light of this speculation, the assertion of Stockton that Cicero could not have written what he did if he knew that non-Romans would be included in the distribution fails to convince (p. 42–49). Even if some Allies were to be included in the assignment of reclaimed ager publicus, if contracts and possessions of others were trampled by the commissioners, then it is fairly easy to see how the inclusion by Ti. Gracchus in the distribution of some non-Romans would simultaneously ignore the “treaties and rights” of others. Cicero would thus not have been referring to the rights of those being given land, but rather to those having it taken away. Thus, what remains of Cicero—either in this dialogue or in the speeches against the agrarian law—is not completely clear in terms of what Gracchus intended for the Allies, and must be used with appropriate caution. 7 Polybius (31.15) recounts that the father of Gracchus had spent time in the east and in Asia.

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from the ager publicus (cum minus agri esset quam quod dividi posset sine offensa etiam plebis, quoniam eos ad cupiditatem amplum modum sperandi incitaverat, legem se promulgaturum ostendit, ut his qui Sempronia lege agrum accipere deberent pecunia, quae regis Attali fuisset, divideretur). The Summaries do not explicitly state as much, but if Gracchus was having difficulties of this kind distributing land to the cives, then it seems unlikely that he would have offered any to the socii.8 Ultimately, the guidance offered by the sources does not lead to a resolution to the vexed question of whether or not Tiberius Gracchus had ever intended for the Italians to take part in the distribution of the public land, and modern scholars do not seem to have reached a consensus on the matter either.9 Nevertheless, if

8 However, in Plutarch (Ti. Gracc. 14) that money is used to furnish supplies to those who had already been given the land, so it may have been that the land was not the issue, but finding for incidentals was the problem. This leaves open the possibility that the Allies were given land at least, whether or not they, too, were given supplies purchased through Pergamene funds. 9 A sample of some of the arguments concerning this issue which have been propounded might include those of Nagle (1970, p. 372–394), whose assertion is that Appian had blundered when he suggested that the Allies were to be included in the land distribution. This was not a blunder of language, but rather one of fact: Appian mistakenly believed that those men who lived in the Italian countryside who were to be the beneficiaries of the law were socii, rather than Romans dwelling outside the city. Badian, for his part, believes that Tiberius Gracchus never intended to involve the Italians in his land reform, but that Caius Gracchus had, and that the latter had deliberately exaggerated the aims of his brother to win the support of the Allies later on. By his reckoning, Appian’s account must have derived from this embroidery of Caius Gracchus (Badian 1958, p. 168–174). Mouritsen also argues that Appian was influenced by the sources derived from the propaganda of C. Gracchus, although this does not lead him to the definitive conclusion that no Allies were included. Rather, he asserts that if they were, they were only included as secondary to the Roman citizens, who were the main targets for distribution. That Appian emphasizes them both as those chiefly helped and harmed by the law stems from his need to highlight the discontent of the Allies and show how it was the first step on the way to the war (1998, p. 15–19).

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Running counter to these are the conjectures of Shochat (op. cit.), which hold something of the contrary position to Mouritsen: whereas for the latter Appian should be held as suspect due to the evidence of Plutarch, who does not mention the Allies at all (or so both Mouritsen and Shochat claim; see above for possible evidence to the contrary), Shochat argues the other way around, and states that Plutarch deliberately omitted the Allies in the Tiberius Gracchus to focus on the specifically Roman activities of his subject. Thus, Appian did not let the needs of his narrative thread cause him magnify Allied participation in the land reassignment which, as per Plutarch, was either nonexistent or minor; instead, it was Plutarch who minimized them out of his need to show that his subject only had Romans in mind. For his part, Stockton (p. 42–47) believes it “unthinkable” that Tiberius Gracchus would not have wished to aid to poorer Italians in some fashion. The evidence of Cicero’s de Republica he explains as special pleading derived from propaganda, which attempted to show that the objections of some of the Allies to the operation of the law—more directly—represented (falsely) the will of all of them. Moreover, Stockton notes the implausibility of Caius being able to misrepresent the laws of his brother which were not yet even a decade old and still in effect. Thus, the law of Tiberius must have included the Allies. Finally, Richardson (1980, p. 1–11) goes further still, and claims that Gracchus not only wanted to give land to the Allies, but intended to give them the citizenship as well. Only by such means could he avoid the religious and legal prohibition which prevented land from being sold or given to non-citizens. Enfranchising and bestowing land upon poorer Italians would, Richardson argues, greatly bolster Roman manpower, the avowed aim of Gracchus. Additionally, in this way the notice in Velleius that Gracchus intended to enfranchise Italy (2.2–3), those of Appian which claim on the one hand that Gracchus enjoyed the support of the whole of Italy (1.1.12) and then make the apparently contradictory claim that the Italians protested at the same time (1.3.19), and that of Cicero that Gracchus “violated treaty rights” (de Rep. 3.41) can all be squared: Gracchus did propose to give land and citizenship to some of the Allies— the poorer, using land most likely reabsorbed from the holdings of the wealthy—which would in turn increase the tax burden and the terms of military service for these wealthy, leading to their protest about violated iura. However, it may be objected that (assuming the Allies used the Roman system) those poorest Italians would not have been either taxpayers or soldiers, so presumably the Allies would not have missed

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a reasoned conjecture is to be employed, it is probably safe to venture at the very least that the Allies may well not have been the principal concern of Tiberius Gracchus. It is far more likely that he was motivated by the plight of Romani in the countryside, not that of the socii, and when he began his thinking on the law he did so with Romans first and foremost in his mind. As his thought process evolved, it probably soon encompassed more than just the rustic agrestes, and whether from compassion or necessity, it began to touch on the poor living within the city as well.10 Certainly the evidence of Plutarch shows that the urban poor began to look to him for succor, calling for his aid by means of graffiti on buildings and monuments (Ti. Gracc. 8).11 If, as Plutarch and Appian jointly indicate, his motives were to bolster manpower—if his aim was less εὐπορία than εὐανδρία, to use Appian’s pithy phrase—then Roman poor, first rustic and then urban, would have remained his primary interest. Yet in this regard it would also make sense that he would eventually look after the soundness of the Allies as well, both those still struggling to hold on in the field and those driven away from it by latifundia and ultimately landing in Rome, where their presence combined with their unemployment and idleness would have made them and could hardly claim violated treaty rights on their account. Moreover, Tiberius and his knowledge of the law could have found a way around the formula pertaining to the land he wished to distribute without making the recipients citizens, assuming some of the intended recipients were, in fact, not citizens. In the end, even if the grant of the citizenship was the intention of Gracchus, he did not live to see it enacted (for additional discussion on Richardson’s thesis, see Keaveney 1987, p. 48– 50). As has been seen, certainty about what Gracchus wanted is not to be derived from these arguments. All that can therefore be done is add to the conjecture, which, ultimately, is what will be done here. 10 See Nagle (1970, p. 376–381) for theories on Gracchus only coming to the urban poor fairly late. 11 Presumably at least a few of the urban poor could read, even if not very many; Morstein-Marx believes the estimate of W. V. Harris of twenty percent (cited in note 12, p. 70) to be too low, but even that would make it likely that some of the Roman lower classes were literate.

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them useless and, indeed, perhaps even a danger to the commonwealth. If what some of the literary sources indicate, that none save the Roman plebs ultimately received any land by the lex Sempronia, was actually the case, that need not indicate that such was the intention of the law’s author, whose aims may have been thwarted by the coalition of Roman nobiles which had formed against Gracchus and his laws from the moment he had proposed them. The machinations of these opponents, and the countermeasures taken by Gracchus, are well-described elsewhere12; it had been one of them, an attempt to restrain the commission by means of drastically reducing its operating budget, that had led to the arrogation of the Pergamene finances mentioned above (Plutarch, Ti. Gracc. 13). This particular gambit did not meet with success, but others taken after his death were of more efficacy (see Chapter 3). Either way, for the purposes of this essay the question does not necessarily need to be solved; in the end the Allies almost certainly received no land, whether or not any had been intended for them.

12 See, for example, Plutarch’s life, as well as Appian 1.10.10–1.2.17, Velleius 2.2–2.4, Periochae 58, Cassius Dio frg. 83, Florus 2.2, as well as Stockton’s excellent biography of the Gracchi.

APPENDIX C: THE DATE AND PURPOSE OF THE EXPULSION LAW OF M. JUNIUS PENNUS As was seen in Chapter 3, one of the very few things reported by the sources as occurring in the year 126 in Rome was a law passed by the tribune M. Junius Pennus.1 This law, according to Cicero in his De Officiis, “would prevent strangers from using the city and expel them” (peregrinos urbibus uti prohibent eosque exterminant; 3.47). It is usually held to be the same law found in Festus (388L) whose passage gave C. Gracchus an excuse to decry the “imbecility and greed” which motivated such measures (Eae nationes, cum aliis rebus per avaritiam atque stultitiam, respublicas suas amiserunt).2 Other than the expulsive element suggested by Cicero, nothing else is known concerning the terms of this law, nor why it was carried, and both of these unknowns (especially the latter) have become subjects of scholarly debate. Given the connection this law seems to have with C. Gracchus, as well as the connections it is alleged to have had with other important Roman figures, its potential impact on the socii, and what it may reveal about the Roman attitudes towards the latter at the time of the passage, it seems to be worthwhile to see just what can be discovered about this law. On the other hand, this law is not one of the so enormous an import as to justify interrupting the narrative presented in Chapter 3, where it is briefly discussed. For this reason, such a brief investigation into the lex Junia will be attempted here. One of the most important strands in the modern scholarship on this legislation is one which seeks to connect it with the franchise law to be proposed in 125 by M. Fulvius Flaccus (see Chapter 3). The theory is that the tribune had hoped by this legislation to prevent foreigners already in Rome from trying to According to Cicero who mentions the tribunate of Pennus as having occurred during the consulate of Orestes, id est 126 (Brutus 28). 2 Offered, it is alleged, either in 126 before his departure for quaestorian service, under Orestes or later upon his return; so Stockton, p. 94–95; Keaveney 1987, p. 53–53 and p. 70–71 notes 30–33. More will be explored in this point directly. 1

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vote to pass the would-be lex Fulvia illegally, or to keep those not yet in Rome but contemplating a trip for such illegal voting from doing so. Indeed, some state that he wished to accomplish both of these goals, in much the same way that the expulsion act passed by Fannius in 122 would attempt to do (see Chapter 3).3 Evidence for this Pennus acting with this purpose seems to come from the quotation of Gracchus in Festus that was just cited. By this reckoning, the words which Gracchus was using indicate his disapproval of the law. That disapproval, in turn, came from the fact that it was designed to frustrate a legislative initiative of Flaccus, a friend of Gracchus and fellow participant on the commission which adjudicated the ager publicus per the terms of the leges Semproniae.4 By this interpretation, the younger Gracchus was apparently suggesting that the foreigners (presumably the Allies) were acting out of the avaritia and stultitia he mentioned. In other words, they had “lost their states through [their own] foolishness and greed”: they had unwisely attempted to vote illegally from thirst for the benefits of citizenship, and it had caused their expulsion by this law. The objection of Gracchus seems to be that the punishment was too harsh: the allies may have acted from greed and stupidity, but that did not justify expelling them from the city. Furthermore, by this construction, the opposition to the law reveals not only the meaning of the phrase, but also the circumstances under which it was uttered: they were given in a public address opposing its passage. Finally, this construction runs, the speech was part of an active effort to get the people to reject the bill; thus, it was delivered, not after the law had been passed, but beforehand, in 126. Objections to this construction immediately present themselves, of which one of the most significant is timing. Assuming that Gracchus was delivering a speech to persuade the This is believed by Badian, who states as much in Foreign Clientelae (p. 176–177) and repeats the assertion later (1970, p. 388–389); Baldson (p. 100) agrees, while Husband (p. 320) is undecided, for reasons to be described below. 4 Badian (1958, p. 177–178) argues that such a connection ought to be made, although he admits of the difficulties caused by the sources. 3

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people not to vote for a law he despised because it was designed to impede a law to be passed by one of his friends—which is in fact an extended chain of four separate assumptions linked together, none of them supported by any evidence—then it is likely he would have needed to do so in early 126, the year in which he was quaestor and Pennus the tribune. This is because, while he could have made the speech at any time between when he knew that the law was to be debated and when it was to be voted, he would have his greatest chance of reaching the most people most effectively as the law was being promulgated, id est in a contio. Contiones could only be called by sitting magistrates,5 and it was rare for those magistrates who were proposing the laws to invite opponents to speak against them save during the customary suasio/dissuasio which occurred directly before a vote was to be taken.6 Since that is the case, then a speech made by Gracchus in opposition to this law would probably not have been given in a contio called by Pennus, to which, as an opponent of the bill, it is unlikely that Gracchus would have been invited. That being the case, then the only way he could have made his alleged speech would be in a contio more amenable to hearing him speak.7 As quaestor in 126 Gracchus could have summoned such an assembly, but he would have had to have done it early in 126, as he was soon sent off with the consul to fight in Sardinia (see Chapter 3). He might have departed for that island as early as January, which would not give him much time to derail the law, since for the next several years he would be with the army and does not seem to have made it back to Rome during that service. The chain of hypotheticals mentioned above therefore adds a fifth link, which is that the law of Pennus was promulgated in early 126. This, in turn, gives rise to another problem, which is how the lex Junia could have been designed to Morstein-Marx, p. 38. Morstein-Marx, p. 160–203. 7 Alternatively, Gracchus could have been called to speak in a contio called by another magistrate opposed to the law in the period during which the proposal was put to the people but before the final vote, but that too would likely have been in early 126, since Gracchus would soon depart to Sardinia and would be there for the remainder of that year and the next (see Chapter 3). 5 6

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impede the would-be lex Fulvia, whose proponent would not be elected consul until the next year. More on this last problem will be explored below, but for the moment, it will suffice to observe that any connection between Flaccus and the purpose of the lex Junia that draws support on the passage in Festus just described depends on the string of conditions which is vulnerable at practically every point. First of all, Gracchus may not have actually disapproved of the law. As was seen, all Festus notes is that he said things about many republics in what he wrote about the law of Pennus and about foreigners (respublicas multarum civitatium pluraliter dixit C. Gracchus in ea, quam conscripsit de lege Penni8 et peregrinis, cum ait…). Those pluraliter dixit could have been, but were not necessarily, disparaging. Use of strong words like stultitia and avaritia may suggest censure, but does not prove such.9 Admittedly, in writing about this law of Pennus years later, Cicero (loc. cit.) refers to it as sane inhumanum, especially in contrast to the later expulsion law of Crassus and Scaevola (on this point more will be discussed presently). It may well be that Cicero’s disapproval echoed that of contemporaries of Pennus. If so, then it may also very well have been that this enactment quite unpopular in its own day, a disapprobation which Gracchus may have shared and which may be reflected in the text quoted by Festus.10 But there is also the firm possibility that both the Romans acive in 126 and Gracchus specifically had a difference of opinion to that of Cicero, as certainly Cicero seems to have disagreed with Gracchus in other contexts quite often (for which, see Appendix B). Even assuming Gracchus did dislike the law about which he wrote, it need not have been the case that what he wrote was ever a speech delivered in public. It could just as easily have been something like a letter or a pamphlet. Examples of each of these He accepts the emendation of Müller, as do most other scholars, of Penni for p. Enni. 9 Stockton (p. 94–95) points out this very possibility, noting that Festus states that Gracchus conscripsit de lege Penni, but not contra legem Penni. 10 Keaveney (1987, p. 55) cites this as a possibility which he believes to be true, although his description follows a slightly different sequence of events than the one postulated above. 8

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are known to have been preserved, as both Cicero and Plutarch claims to have seen them.11 Still, if it were further allowed that Gracchus did put forth an oratio in which he attacked the law, that speech need not have been made before the law was passed, but could well have been made years after its passage. Finally, whether Gracchus offered an address assailing the legislation before or after it was carried, it need not have been on behalf of the proposed law of Flaccus, but could have been for entirely separate, unknown reasons of his own. If any or all of these conditions described above were reflective of what was actually the case, the result would be that Gracchus had not spoken so as to check the law of Pennus, lest this law pose a barrier to the designs of Flaccus, in early 126, in a contio of his own calling, before he was called away for military service. The quotation in Festus could easily point to a variety of other possible conclusions, and since that is so, there arises the distinct possibility that this lex Junia may, in fact, have had nothing to do with Flaccus. Such a possibility of a disjunction between the legislation of Pennus and the initiative of Flaccus is not only found in the absence of any evidence for a connection to be drawn from Festus. There are other reasons to doubt it, and these, too, also depend in part of chronology. In the Brutus, M. Junius Pennus was claimed by Cicero to have been tribune during the consulate of Orestes (Fuit enim M. Lepido et L. Oreste consulibus quaestor Gracchus, tribunus Pennus [emphasis added]; Brut 109). This suggests that Pennus was tribune at some point between the first of January and the end of December of 126, the year in which Lepidus and Orestes were consuls.12 It is most probable that Cicero meant that Pennus was tribune for the majority of 126, which would have had him take office on December 10 of the previous year.13 It is, of course, Plutarch notes in his biography of Tiberius Gracchus that Caius had written of his brother’s trip through Tuscany “in a pamphlet” ( ἔν τινι ι λίῳ, Ti. Gracch. 7), and Cicero quotes something that Caius Gracchus had written to Marcus Pomponius (C. Gracchus ad M. Pomponium scripsit; de. Div. 2.29.62) 12 Consuls took office on the first of January after the year 153; Per. 47 13 Tribunes took office on December 10 (Dion. Hal. 6.89) 11

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possible that Cicero was instead indicating the other possibility, which is that Pennus was elected on December 10 of 126, to serve the majority of his term in 125, although it is something of a stretch for Cicero to date Pennus to a consulate which had but three weeks left to it when he took office.14 Either possibility, however, carries with it difficulties for the speculation that the expulsion law of Pennus was aimed at disrupting support for the potential law of Flaccus. If Pennus served in the earlier period (December 10 of 127 to December 9 of 126), then he would have been out of office for almost a month by the time that Flaccus spent his first day as consul, which would have been the very earliest in which he could have promulgated his franchise bill.15 A law of Pennus designed passed to prevent illegal Italian voting for this law at about the time that such illegal voiting would have been occurring—in other words, passed as the law of Flaccus was being prepared to be put before the assembly—would therefore have been impossible.16 Of course, there was nothing to have prevented Pennus from passing the expulsion law in 126 in anticipation of the proposal of Flaccus and whatever extralegal Italian endorsement it might have gained. However, this would have depended on Pennus knowing ahead of time that Flaccus had such a bill in mind. It is exceedingly unlikely that Pennus would have had such knowledge, however, unless Flaccus exhibited behavior must unlike typical Roman candidate for office, who tended to avoid any discussion of the policies and legislative projects they intended to pursue while So Stockton (loc. cit., especially note 37) disputing Carcopino’s advocacy of this very thing. Stockton is probably correct in his skepticism of what would amount to a “solecism” of Cicero. 15 This has been pointed out by Stockton and followed by Keaveney in the passages already cited. 16 That this law was at least promulgated can be inferred from the evidence of Appian (1.3.21) and Valerius Maximus (9.5.1), which both suggest that the law was being pursued in such a way that it would eventually be put before the people. It is therefore possible that someone could have hastily passed a law to prevent Italian fraudulent voting for the law in anticipation of the comitia if they had reason to suspect that such might exist. 14

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campaigning.17 Even if Flaccus had been so inclined to telegraph the law he may have been contemplating, simple prudence would have warned against him doing so. In order to be elected, Flaccus had to win a majority of votes in the comitia centuriata, in which the centuries of the wealthy and upper middle classes held almost a majority of those who would vote. These would be the exact sort of people who would oppose a citizenship bill whose goal was to buy Allied co-operation in the resumption of the assessment activities of the Gracchan commission, which was the very thing the law of Flaccus intended to do (see Chapter 3). What this would mean was that Pennus probably could not have framed his law to prevent the Italians from voting on a measure which Flaccus would be known to be intending to propose on his election, since it is almost certain that Flaccus would not have disclosed his intention to promulgate such a law before he was elected. Pennus would thus have had no knowledge of it, and no need to stand in the way of its putative Italian supporters. Moreover, even if Flaccus had announced his object, it would have been far from certain that there would have been any Italian supporters for his measure. As has been seen, the Italians had previously indicated their great displeasure at the activities of the triumviri, and had exerted themselves mightily to bring about an end to them (see chapter 3). That they would turn from this position in exchange for the citizenship was by no means a sure thing, or would not have been as far as anyone knew in 126. Neither Flaccus nor Pennus could therefore have been sure Italians would support a citizenship bill to pave the way for more land reclamation even if Flaccus had broadcast his decision to propose one before his election. Finally, even if Pennus had known what Flaccus was thinking of doing and had some further insight that 17 In fact, as Mouritsen (2001, p. 92–94; p. 117) points out, candidates almost never ran on a legislative agenda or on what might otherwise be called “the issues”; as he puts it, “Political issues, it seems, were avoided at all costs, and not simply those that might cause controversy, but issues in general”. This is also noted by Morstein-Marx (p. 275–276) although he is less vehement in his assertion. Thus, it is most unlikely that Flaccus would have run for consul on the “platform” of the legislation he intended to pass.

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the Italians would be so in favor of it as to attempt some sort of ballot-stuffing to ensure its success, a law to restrain them would be useless if Flaccus would have failed in his candidacy. Pennus would consequently have had to wait until November to see if Flaccus were returned, giving him very little time to frame and pass his measure before his office expired.18 Then again, Pennus may have pushed his proposal to keep fraudulent Italian voting from helping Flaccus get elected consul in the first place.19 However, for Pennus to do this he would, again, have needed to have grounds to suspect that Italians might try to do such a thing. For the reasons listed above, he likely would have had no grounds for such suspicion: Flaccus would probably have kept any plans for making his law a secret, and therefore Pennus— and, almost certainly, the Italians themselves—would not have known about them. The Italians would, then, have had little cause to exert themselves to see to the election of Flaccus, and his participation in the Triumvirate may have even engendered an antipathy towards him amongst the socii. It therefore seems just as impossible that Pennus could have passed an edict in 126 whose ultimate purpose was to keep Italians from illegally voting to elect Flaccus as it is that he passed such an edict in that year to keep them from potentially voting on a law of his once elected. In the absence of knowing what Flaccus intended to do, the Italians might not have seen him as a particularly desireable candidate for consul, nor might Pennus have seen him as a particularly objectionable one. Of course, this might have changed if an inundation of Italians had beset the city at election time, indicating their intent to use their numbers to get Flaccus elected. Pennus would then have had ample grounds to suspect chicanery, might have intuited that it involved something Flaccus was planning, and therefore the impetus to pass his law in the last days of his tribunate to prevent a 18 For November as the time when consuls were elected, see Nicolet 1988, p. 238. 19 Andrew Lintott (in Cambridge Ancient History, Volume IX: The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–143 B.C. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1994, p. 76) mentions this as a possibilty.

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repeat performance in the following year. Yet there is no evidence for this massive influx of Allied would-be voters,20 and therefore nothing that would have seemed amiss to Pennus in such a way as to force his law. For all these reasons, it becomes exceedingly difficult to believe that Pennus put forward a law in 126 so as to prevent illegal Allied voting and thereby to block the election of Flaccus, nor that he put it forward to constrain the passage of a law Flaccus intended to advance in 125. At least, it is difficult so to believe if the chronology of the tribunate of Pennus is what it is claimed to have been, namely that he served from late 127 to late 126. However, there remains the possibility, however unlikely, that Pennus took office in December of 126, still technically during the consulate of Orestes, to serve until December of 125. It will be recalled that this was deemed most improbable, but not impossible, above. If it had actually turned out this way, then such a term in office would remove the need to assign Pennus any sort of prescience about what legislation Flaccus might propose, and to rush to pass a plebiscitum in the attempt to weaken that law’s chance of being enacted. By December of 126 the election of Flaccus would have been an accomplished fact, one Pennus could not have influenced. Rather, Pennus would have the time, in 125, to react to the And it is also most unlikely that such would have been successful in the first place. While it has been observed that there were no identity checks during voting (see Mouritsen 2001, p. 28–29), if Italians had attempted to sneak in to vote in the comitia centuriata so as to elect their man, then they would probably have wanted to vote in the wealthiest centuries, since these wielded the most influence. However, they also almost certainly would have been recognized there due to the relatively few numbers of the wealthiest in Rome, and this would have led to a voting irregularity which probably would have led to a prosecution, given the unpopularity of Flaccus during his consulate (see Chapter 3). On the other hand, they might then have attempted to vote in the centuries of the less wealthy, but his would have been to no avail if the wealthiest centuries managed to elect two consuls before the vote got to the poorer ones. Therefore, it is difficult to see how Italians could have hoped to influence an election to a magistracy as important as the consulate through fraudulent voting. 20

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lawmaking efforts of Flaccus, without the need to predict them. Once it came out that Flaccus had a citizenship law in mind, Pennus might then have put forward his own law in the attempt to obstruct it. Yet if Pennus served the greater part of his tribunate during the consular term of Flaccus, a much easier and a simpler means to make difficulties for the erstwhile lex Fulvia than an Italian expulsion could have been availed by the tribune Pennus. He could simply have vetoed the law, and been done with it.21 All these arguments serve to illustrate the difficulty of assigning to the law of Pennus the purpose of preventing the socii from electing Flaccus or helping pass his laws through illegal voting. To these may be added another objection, one which may be raised due to the description of the lex Junia by Cicero. His testimony is practically all that exists to demonstrate the timing of this law, and is also the only real evidence as to what that law actually did. Pennus, according to the de Officiis, looked to debar foreigners from the city and keep them outside its borders (peregrinos urbibus uti prohibent eosque exterminant; usu vero urbis prohibere peregrinos). Of this action, Cicero attaches his opinion that it was a bad one (male), one that was very close to transgressing the bounds of human behavior (sane inhumanum). To be sure, Cicero continues, under some circumstances this sort of procedure would be warranted: it would not be right for those who were not citizens to pass themselves off as if they were, and to prevent this, an expulsion law would not have been indecent. As Cicero notes in the same passage as that in which he censures the lex Junia, a law for such a purpose was enacted by the consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola, men of surpassing wisdom (Nam esse pro cive, qui civis non sit, rectum est non licere; quam legem tulerunt sapientissimi consules Crassus et Scaevola [emphasis added]; 3.47). 21 Of course, Tiberius Gracchus had showed the potential dangers of using the veto to obstruct a law supported by the people (as Appian suggests had been the case with that of Flaccus; 1.5.34). Still, in this case it seems unlikely that Flaccus could do what Gracchus had done and simply have Pennus deposed, because Flaccus was not himself a tribune as Gracchus had been, but was a consul instead. Therefore, there seems little which could have been done to prevent Pennus from using a veto if he were tribune for 126–125 and opposed to the law of Flaccus.

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Cicero’s actual thoughts about Crassus and Scaevola—which seem to change in other writings—notwithstanding, it seems reasonably clear that in this passage Cicero is drawing a contrast. One the one hand, there is the action undertaken by sapientissimi consules Crassus et Scaevola, who drew up a law to prevent usurpation of the rights of Roman citizens by those not entitled to them. On the other, there is the action of Pennus, one which is sane inhumanum. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the law of Pennus, which drew Cicero’s displeasure, was markedly different that that of Scaevola and Crassus, whose wisdom is acknowledged. If, then, the latter was a law whose purpose was to prevent the usurpation of citizenship privileges, then that of Pennus must not have done so. Correspondingly, it becomes equally difficult to believe that Pennus passed it to prevent the Italians from illegally voting to elect Flaccus, pass his laws, or both. Such activities would by definition involve the usurpations of the rights of citizens, whose prevention Cicero acknowledges as just. That the enactment of Pennus is described as almost barbaric must mean that it did not serve to deflect such illegal usages, but must have done something else. For these reasons, attempts to pose the expulsion act of Pennus as a potential shield against the election or the laws of Flaccus are probably mistaken. If the arguments above are correct, and Pennus did not design his law to thwart the aid of Flaccus through voting irregularities, then it was apparently passed merely to get foreigners out of the city. It is not certain why Pennus would have thought it necessary to remove them, though there has also been the suggestion that this law was yet another which was passed at the behest of the Allies, due to the fact that so many of their citizens had come to Rome that they were having difficulties meeting their military obligations. This would put it into the same category as those laws which had been passed at the request of the Latins in 187 and 177 (Livy 39.3; 41.8–9).22 In both of those years there was to be a census within the next eighteen months, which might have added a sense of urgency to the need to recover as many Allies by their own cities as possible before they became Roman citizens through their 22

So Keaveney 1987, p. 53–55.

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(fraudulent) enrollment as such by the censors (Per. 60). There was also to be a census in 125, the year after the law of Pennus was passed. In fact, there may have been a precedent for an expulsion taking place in the year before a census, since the consul L. Postumius Albinus also seems to have done such a thing in 173 (Livy 42.10). However, since it is widely considered that the law of 187 had put a severe limitation on the former Latin right of the ius migrationis, which may in turn have been revoked completely shortly after that year,23 an Allied request for laws to bring about the return of their citizens would have rested on the grounds that their citizens had come to Rome illegally to pose as citizens there. If the Allies had made such a request in 126, it would perforce have been to stop an activity which would qualify as an usurpation of citizenship, and therefore Pennus would indeed have legislated against such an usurpation. Yet Cicero seems to suggest he did not act to debar improper arrogation of the iura civium, as the wise Scaevola and Crassus had done, but had done something else, something repugnant. Attributing the law of Pennus to a request for the Allies along these lines continues to leave the question as to why it would be condemned by Cicero. A further possibility exists, which is that this law had been carried to expel foreigners but without having been asked for by the Allies themselves.24 If it had thus been enacted unbidden, such 23 That it may have been curtailed as early as 268 is debated (see Sherwin-White, p. 103–104); by 177, at least, it seems that the law required that only those who had progeny to leave behind could assume Roman citizenship, and since loopholes were being found to that, the Romans may have ended the ius altogether by either the law of 177 or in 173, when the aforementioned L. Postumius Albinus had ejected foreigners under the Claudian law of 177 which he may have modified in the process. 24 And it is to be noted that all the other expulsion laws—ones requested by the Allies—seem to have been enacted by consuls, not tribunes; this would be appropriate, since it would in essence be a matter of foreign policy (the return of foreign nationals to their communities to facilitate the ability of those communities to make their manpower contributions).

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might explain Cicero’s condemnation of it (and that of C. Gracchus, since without the request of the Allies for its passage such a law might be interpreted as being motivated by meanness, greed, or stupidity). Yet there remains the question of why Pennus acted, if it was not at the request of the Italians on the one hand nor to frustrate Flaccus on the other. Unfortunately, the sources give no guidance through whose use such an explanation can be found. In their absence, some speculation might be permitted, and this will be attempted below. Given the historical attraction Rome seems to have held for the Allies, it is not impossible to conjecture that enough Allies and foreigners had managed to make their way to Rome by 126 to catch the notice of the tribune. It might even have been that many of these peregrini were in the city because the activities of the Triumvirs has stripped them of their land on or near the ager publicus and left them nowhere else to go. If this was so, then the urban populace must have thus been increased by their numbers, making the cry for land even louder. Consequently, fresh urgency may have been put into the commission. It is perhaps for this reason that Appian mentions that there were “some” during the consulate of Flaccus who put forward the suggestion that the Allies be given the franchise, or at the very least that it be given to those who complained most volubly about the redistribution, so that their complaints might be silenced and the commission could acquire more land (1.3.21; see also chapter 3). Who these τινες were is unknown, but if they reached the ear of the Triumvirate, then they might have proved influential to Flaccus. In a sense, then, perhaps the measure enacted by Pennus and that which was nearly carried by Flaccus were connected, in that both alike may have been motivated by the pressure put on the urban populace by the presence of Italians. By casting out all non-citizens, Pennus moved to relieve that pressure in his way. Flaccus, by acquiring more land for distribution for the Roman poor, would attempt to relieve it in his.

APPENDIX D: THE IUS ADIPISCENDI CIVITATEM

ROMANUM PER MAGISTRATUM

According to Asconius 3C, the so called “Latin Rights”—ius Latii—included a certain privilege which has become known as the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum, by means of which those men from the Latin communities who had attained certain high electoral offices could attain the Roman citizenship causa honoris. There is a scholarly consensus that this had not always been the case, and that this right was added to the ius Latii at some point after those iura were first given. However, the question of exactly when it came into being is by no means a matter of scholarly agreement. One of the arguments that have been advanced for the timing of the addition of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum to the ius Latii holds that it added to the Latin rights sometime around the tribunates of Caius Gracchus.1 This argument rests in part on evidence derived from a fragmentary extortion law (known for the medium on which it was discovered as the tabula Bembina), which is believed to date to the second tribunate of Gracchus. The law seems to have had a provision which excludes magistrates from Latin towns from making use of the right to seek citizenship by means of successful prosecution, with the presumption being that they already had this right from having held office. Assuming that this evidence is sound, the question becomes whether that right existed before the time postulated for the enactment of the law found on the tabula Bembina or not. The testimony of some of the literary sources has been advanced in favor of the suggestion that the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum did indeed exist before the tribunates of Gracchus, but not much before. In the first place, there are speeches by C. Gracchus describing abuses inflicted upon Italian magistrates in Latin towns by Roman magistrates, ones quoted by Aulus Gellius (10.3.3–5).2 These are said by Gracchus to have 1 Such an interpretation is favored by Sherwin-White (p. 111–112, 215–216) and Stockton (p. 189–190). 2 See also chapter 2.

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happened nuper. Since through the per magistratum privilege these men would have been Roman citizens, and as such the magistrates visiting from Rome would not dare to mistreat them, the ius granting the citizenship to Allied officeholders could not have too much before the floruit of Gracchus in 123. Secondly, there is another passage of Asconius (17), one discussing Lucius Opimius. This passage observes that at the time of the revolt of Fregellae,3 many other allies—specifically, Latins—who did not take part in the uprising revolt were nevertheless grumbling (ceteros quoque nominis Latini socios male animatos). Such conditions might have been a cause of concern for the Senate, and this new privilege may have come into being as an effort to conciliate the disaffected Latins.4 Therefore, Gellius seems to indicate that there was a time within the living memory of C. Gracchus in which this ius did not exist, and that an occasion for it to come into being was the animadversion of the Latins engenderd by Fregellae. As can be seen, this evidence is hardly overwhelming. In the first place, it is by no means certain that Roman officeholders so arrogant as to have committed the misdeeds which Gracchus describes would have shrunk from them even if the Italians they abused were Roman citizens. Thus, the ius might well have stretched into antiquity, but the citizenship it gave to the local authorities need not have restrained the superbia of the travelling Romans. However, if it may be conceded that Roman abuses were more likely to be visited on non-citizens than citizens, then such visitation would indeed tend to suggest that the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum did not exist before circa 130–123. It may also be conceded that the Fregellae affair and the resulting dissension amongst the Latins might have made it advisable for the Senate to search for a way to ease the tension, and that extension of this privilege might have gone far to do so. Yet this in no way proves that the Senate actually did so by the ius, or indeed by anything at all. In fact, if the somewhat extraordinary ferocity displayed by Opimius at Fregellae is any indication, it is unlikely 3 4

For which see chapter 3. So Stockton, loc. cit.

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that Rome was in any mood to soothe any of Allies, Latins included. Fregellae therefore hardly makes and ironclad case for the inclusion of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum into the ius Latii, but could easily point to the Romans being less conciliatory than ever in 125. Even the evidence of the tabula Bembina is not unassailable. Those who hold that it presumes the existence of the ius assume the law engraved on it makes specific reference to Latin magistrates, something which—as has been pointed out5—is far from certain. Hence, while the law on the tabula may very well date to the time of Gracchus, it may have nothing to do with the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum. For all these reasons, the argument in favor of the addition of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum to the Latin rights in the mid-120s is a far sight from irresistible. This has also been discerned by other scholars, and in recognition of the weaknesses of this argument, another has been advanced which asserts that this ius did not in fact exist at all before 90.6 This other construction does not necessarily do violence to Asconius 3C, since in that author the privilege is mentioned in the context of Gn. Pompeius Strabo (cos. 89) founding Transpadane colonies, almost certainly in the year of his consulate, to whom he gave the ius Latii. The text of Asconius is reasonably clear that the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum was one that already attached to the ius Latii at the time of the foundation of the colonies. This would perforce mean that, if Asconius is to be believed, the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum existed by the year 89, although it cannot be known if it existed earlier than this year, and no unambiguous textual attestation can be found to provide a more concise dating. In the absence of such precision, leave may perhaps be granted to employ conjecture. Clearly the evidence renders it entirely possible that the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum was added to the ius Latii very close to the year 89; it The arguments of Bradeen in this regard are persuasive (p. 221–224) So Bradeen (p. 225), although his evidence is not convincing on this point, the opinion of Mouritsen notwithstanding (1998, p. 100–108; more below). 5 6

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might well have dated to 90, and perhaps to fairly early in that year. It is speculated in chapter 5 that the Latins held aloof from the war during its first year. Perhaps the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum was one that was added to their iura in an attempt to persuade them to join the struggle, one whose lack of success would ultimately lead to the lex Julia. Such, at least, is one possibility, though it certainly cannot be proved. It is not the only one. Indeed, it may still be that case that the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum does actually date back to the time of C. Gracchus. The evidence for this hypothesis, as has been seen, is flimsy, but that does necessarily result in its impossibility, nor even to the impossibility that the ius was added in the aftermath of Fregellae. Even if the latter was not what occurred, other potential points for the addition of the ius may present themselves at about the time of Graccus. As chapter 3 notes, the sources cearly state that C. Gracchus and Flaccus had primarily been interested in enfranchising the Latins, in part because they wanted to adjudicate land in Latin territories, and in part because history suggested they these had particularly wanted the citizenship.7 Once the plans of Gracchus and Flaccus were defeated, it might be plausible to suppose that the Senate would look for ways to ward off any seeking to follow in their example in the years to come. One way to do this might be to offer the chief men of the Latin communities the citizenship. This would be easier economically than enfranchising all of them,8 and would give any future would-be agrarian reformers nothing with which the cooperation of the Latins could be bought. Such a difficulty in winning the support of the Latins after the addition of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum would be all the more true in light of the fact that the men chosen to be magistrates in the Latin communites (and thus enfranchised by the ius) would likely be the wealthiest of them, and thus would probably have the most land to lose if the ager publicus were to be redistributed. Finally, as the wealthiest these would be of the proper conservative bent to preserve the privileges of the Roman élite as voters, and as such 7 8

For which see chapter 3. For the economics of enfranchisement, see Chapter 4.

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their enfranchisement would likely not cause significant ripples in Roman politics. At least one significant problem nevertheless exists with this last construction, one serious enough to throw the dating of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum to the 120s period into doubt. That problem revolves around the fact that the exercise of this right would seem to result in a constant loss of Latins to Rome. Those men who had become Roman citizens would by definition cease to be Latin citizens, and at the same time lose their eligibility for service in Allied contingents and, presumably, for taxation in their home communities. Because drainoff of manpower had already been a concern for the Latins as early as 187, as the expulsion law enacted at their request in that year illustrates,9 it is therefore difficult to see how the Romans would allow this to continue by means of the grant of citizenship to the Latin nobility through this ius.10 By way of answer to this objection, it should be noted that there need not be a foregone conclusion that a great diminution of Latin soldiery would be the result of this privilege. In the first place, such a conclusion presumes at the outset that a form of dual citizenship had not yet been developed,11 or that some other unnamed mechanism had not been devised whereby the Latin tax base and pool of military manpower could be retained. Yet even allowing that such an apparatus was not in place, it still need not be the case that the Allies would have lost vast numbers of soldiers through election. If their magistracies and the qualifications for them were similar to those of Rome, then the offices to which this right would attach would be open only to those men amongst the Latins who had passed through their mandatory period of military service. Since no more service would therefore be required of them, these men had already been “lost” to their communities by the full discharge of their obligations (save through volunteering, which was unlikely based on the unpopularity of serving in Rome’s armies). Moreover, if such men had adult sons, these would not For which see chapter 3 and Appendix C. These are the objections of Mourtisen, loc. cit. 11 As per Sherwin-White, who clearly states that it had not (p. 111). 9

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necessarily have become citizens alongside their fathers. The younger men would, perhaps, remain in their communities, retain some of the family property, and continue supporting the Latin community with taxation and military service.12 Even if none of the options presented above are correct, then it still might be that the ius adipiscendae would not have been a major problem for the wealthiest of the Latins, especially if it was a recent development. The loss of perhaps four men per year from the Latin upper class might have been absorbed with some grace if it mean that the men they left behind—who may indeed have shouldered a greater burden on the field and a greater loss to the tax collectors—would face reduced competition for gaining office (and the franchise) themselves. What it might do, however, is create a great deal of difficulties for the non-élite middle classes, and thus keep the desire for mass enfranchisement (as opposed to individual grants) alive. This in turn might explain Latin behavior in the Allied War, as citizenship was still something they would want but was still out of reach for most of them. As chapter 5 discusses, it seems that in this circumstance their numbers—or rather the lack of Roman access to them—eventually provided the leverage they used to get what they sought.

12 In fact, the ius migrationis had stipulated that no Latin could exchange his citizenship for Roman without leaving behind a son, presumably to replace his father in the army.

APPENDIX E: M. LIVIUS DRUSUS AND THE OUTBREAK OF THE ALLIED WAR A good many of the ancient sources which discuss the beginnings of the Allied War attribute its outbreak in some way or another to the frustrated legislation and subsequent murder of the tribune M. Livius Drusus. The Periochae of Livy’s Book 71, for example, directly states that when Drusus could not keep his promises of granting the franchise, the Allies began to engage in rebellion (Cum deinde promissa sociis civitas praestari non posset, irati Italici defectionem agitare coeperunt; emphasis added). Orosius asserts much the same thing even though he (mistakenly) mentions that it was only the Latins and not the Allies who fought.1 Florus, also, blames the outbreak of the war to the failure of Drusus to bestow the civitas.2 Finally, Diodorus attributes the war to a promise made by the Senate, then on the outs with the plebs, to give the citizenship to the Allies in exchange for their support, a promise on which they reneged (37.2).3 This happened when Philippus and Sex. Julius Caesar were consuls, and thus the civil disturbance was probably that surrounding the various laws of Drusus. What is more, the language used by each of these authors can be read to suggest, not only that the Allies fell to war on the failure of the tribune’s laws, but that indeed they had not even contemplated such a course of action until then: the use of verbs like agitare (Per. 71), excitare (Orosius), and accendere (Florus), which 1 siquidem Livius Drusus, tribunus plebi, Latinos omnes spe libertatis inlectos cum placito explere non posset, in arma excitauit; 5.18.1–2 (emphasis added). 2 Itaque cum ius civitatis, quam viribus auxerant, socii iustissime postularent, quam in spem eos cupidine dominationis Drusus erexerat, postquam ille domestico scelere oppressus est, eadem fax, quae illum cremavit, socios in arma et expugnationem urbis accendit; 2.6.3 (emphasis added). 3

ἐκ γὰρ τῆς διαφ ορᾶς ταύτ ς στασιάσαντος τοῦ δ μοτικοῦ πρὸς τὴν σύγκλ τον, εἶτα ἐκείν ς ἐπικαλεσαμέν ς τοὺς ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐπικουρῆσαι καὶ ὑποσχομέν ς τῆς πολυεράστου Ῥωμαϊκῆς πολιτείας μεταδοῦναι καὶ νόμῳ κυρῶσαι, ἐπεὶ οὐδὲν τῶν ὑπεσχ μένων τοῖς Ἰταλιώταις ἐγένετο, ὁ ἐξ αὐτῶν πόλεμος πρὸς Ῥωμαίους ἐξεκαύ .

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can apply both to mental as well as physical action, might easily imply that the planning of the war began with the death of Drusus as much as the action of it. These sources would in turn seem to corroborate the evidence found in Appian, which appears to state fairly clearly that the coniuratio amongst the Allies started to be formed around the time of the death of Drusus.4 Such a reading is, however, problematic, based on the preparations which the Allies had obviously managed to complete by the spring of 90, a few short months away from the murder of Drusus in the fall of 91.5 By that time the socii had accomplished a number of time-consuming tasks in a span which seems far too little for what would be required to execute them. In the first place, the Alliance itself had been made, and Appian states that it had already existed even by the time of Asculum (the massacre at which described a few lines after those describing the beginnings of the compact). It beggars the imagination that a few short weeks between late 91 and early 90 would have been enough to construct this coalition. After all, some of the communities which joined the Alliance were in some cases located at great distances from others members of it, in many cases spoke different languages, and may have been hostile to each other in the not-so-distant past. That these could band together in so little time is all the more remarkable in the Alliance which would be formed would have to be one which could resist what would almost certainly be a dedicated Roman effort to split them it and destroy its members in turn. The trust which would have to be engendered—and which was so engendered, if the tight co-operation which they would display in 90 is any indication (see chapter 5)—would almost certainly have taken much longer than a single season, even if it could be done freely and in the open. 4 καὶ οἱ Ἰταλοὶ τοῦ τε Δρούσου πά ους πυν ανόμενοι καὶ τῆς ἐς τὴν φυγὴν τούτων προφάσεως, οὐκ ἀνασχετὸν σφίσιν ἔτι ἡγούμενοι τοὺς ὑπὲρ σφῶν πολιτεύοντας τοιάδε πάσχειν οὐδ᾽ ἄλλ ν τινὰ μ χανὴν ἐλπίδος ἐς τὴν πολιτείαν ἔτι ὁρῶντες, ἔγνωσαν ἀποστῆναι Ῥωμαίων ἄντικρυς καὶ πολεμεῖν αὐτοῖς κατὰ κράτος. κρύφα τε διεπρεσ εύοντο συντι έμενοι περὶ τῶνδε καὶ ὅμ ρα διέπεμπον ἐς πίστιν ἀλλ λοις; 1.5.38. 5 For Drusus still being alive on the Ides of September, see Cicero de orat. 3.1.1–2.

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It was not, however, done openly; Appian notes that the Allies first began to form their confederation κρύφα, in such a way that the Romans would remain in the dark about it (ὧν ἐς πολὺ μὲν οὐκ ἐπῄσ οντο Ῥωμαῖοι; loc. cit.). This element of secrecy also suggests that even more time would be needed, with all the slow and cautious overtures and the painstaking employment of arts of persuasion needed to convince potential partners to make war on the most powerful state in the world made even more slow and cautious by the fact that they would have to be extended in such a way as to prevent the Romans from discovering and destroying the Alliance in its formative stages. Once the Alliance was finally cast, the soldiers, materiel, and the machinery for leadership would also have to be created in this same atmosphere of secrecy. Therefore, it is little wonder that the sources suggest that the Allies were not quite ready when the war broke out (see Chapter 4). It is rather more to be marveled that they had advanced as far as they had. Yet none of the patient, stealthy, and above all timeconsuming serioes of maneuvers just postulated conforms with what the sources mentioned earlier seem to suggest, which is that the Alliance was formed ab initio and ready to move within a few short weeks of the death of Drusus. Months or even years would be required, and this Velleius Paterculus is probably correct in his assertion that the war was the result of a momentum which had been gathering for some time (Mors Drusi iam pridem tumescens bellum excitavit Italicum [emphasis added] 2.15.1–2). How, then, can the claims of the sources that the death of Drusus had started the war be retained in light of these facts? At least one scholar suggests that they should not be.6 According to his account, Drusus did not offer the franchise to the Allies at all, but only to the Latins, just as Gracchus had done. After all, the Latins had most frequently and consistently demonstrated an ardent desire for the citizenship.7 Furthermore, it is alleged that Mouritsen (1998, p. 129–151). And, it is to be remembered, it is Mouritsen’s thesis that the other Allies did not want the citizenship at all. Therefore, because they did not seek the franchise, Drusus did not offer it to them, or at least did not do so at first (Mouritsen later brings up the possibility that Drusus may have 6 7

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Drusus would have believed that granting the citizenship only to the Latins was something that the Senate could swallow more readily than giving it to all of the Italians, to which the Senate had traditionally been opposed. As propugnator Senatus and as an astute politician (see chapter 3), Drusus would not have deliberately done anything of which he knew the Senate would disapprove. Therefore—according to this construction—Drusus was not offering the Allies anything they wanted, and they therefore would not have been moved by his death. Why it is then alleged that Drusus and his tribunate was the flashpoint for hostilities, and why he held to have been an apparent advocate for the Allies—as exemplified in part by his intimacy with Silo—is explained (this argument continues) by exaggeration and distortion from the later politically-motivated trials, at which supporters of the now-dead Drusus were condemned for inciting the Allies to revolt. For such charges to have been considered valid, it had to be established that there was collusion or at least connection between the revolt and Drusus (and thus his supporters by proxy), and if this did not exist, it would have to be invented. Therefore, it is asserted, a rhetorical fiction was employed to create a linkage between Drusus and his friends to the actions of the Allies, a linkage which had not really been there. Since the war conveniently broke out shortly after the tribune was killed, a neat correlation between the two events could be drawn at these trials. That the warmaking ability demonstrated by the Allies (as described above) must have been much longer in the manufacture than the space between the murder and the outburst to follow was one which, it is alleged, the prosecutors ignored. Later, this propaganda was incorporated into the material from which the subsequent historical accounts were drawn. Therefore, this argument concludes, the actual coincidence of the commencement of the war immediately after the death of Drusus was interpreted by those later historians as having been nothing of the kind. Instead of these hostilities merely erupting after the murder, that

changed his mind about this, although he discounts this possibility just as quickly; op. cit., p. 124 note 45).

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eruption was stated by the sources as having come about because of the murder. Such an argument is quite cunning at points, although it ultimately fails to persuade for a number of reasons. First of all, it makes the suggestion that Drusus would not have included any Allies other than the Latins in his proposal, in part for the simple reason that he would have known it would be doomed to failure. The Senate was, per this construction, dead set against the franchise for all of Italy. Yet the Latins and their enrollment were held to have been more acceptable to the patres. Why it is that this would be so is not well-explained. Certainly the Senate had not shown a ready willingness to enfranchise entire communities of Latins in the recent past, even if they may have enfranchised some individuals by means of the ius adipiscendi civitatem Romanum per magistratum.8 Rather, they had shown quite the opposite tendency, as the fate of the proposals made by Flaccus and Gracchus show. Indeed, because of his unique family history, Drusus would probably have been as aware as anyone of the failed laws of Gracchus (as has been seen), and because of his closeness to the optimates, would have been equally aware of the demeanor of the Senate towards bestowing the civitas on any Allied populus. The likelihood is that enfranchisement of the Latins alone would not have been a more palatable option, or if for some reason it was, then it would probably have been only very, very slightly more palatable. This, by extension, would have meant that enfranchisement for the other Allies would have only been very, very slightly less so. Such odds do not make an overwhelming case for the suggestion that Drusus would have elected not to offer the citizenship to the other Allies because doing so would have guaranteed failure of his bill. More likely, his bill would have stood equal chances for success or lack of it no matter who the intended recipients of the franchise would be. Secondly, the objections to the grant of the franchise do not seem to have doomed the bill of Drusus on its own accord, just as it had probably not doomed similar proposals from three decades earlier. This is because in every instance in which citizenship was 8 Although Mouritsen also argues against the existence of this very right, for which see Appendix D.

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offered to the Allies from the Gracchi on, land distribution was always associated with it, just as it was in this case. If, as has been asserted in chapter 3, the citizenship was to be offered to the socii as a way to quiet their protests at the resumption of adjudicating the ager publicus both in 125 and 91, then laws to that affect would almost certainly be doomed to failure for that very reason. The extent to which citizenship for just the Latins would have been more or less objectionable than citizenship offered to all the Allies cannot therefore be determined, since it never seems to have come up as an independent measure. Instead, it always seemed to arise adjacent to a proposal which would never be met with pleasure by the Senate. Hence, if Drusus would not have automatically ruled out extending the franchise to all the Allies, as opposed to the Latins only, based on the fact that doing so might diminish the chances of his bill’s success, then it remains possible that he would have been open to the suggestion of including all the Allies in his offer. Certainly by not restricting adjudication of the ager publicus to Latin areas, but instead trading with all the socii so as to open up that land lying all over Italy, might have given Drusus a great deal more land with which he could requisition the support of the plebs for his judicial bill. The problem then would have been whether the other Allies would have been amenable to the suggestion. That they would have been would have been disclosed to Drusus by his friend Poppaedius Silo, whose closeness with Drusus is described in several sources (see chapter 3). It seems difficult to believe that this acquaintance was completely manufactured during the Varian trials. It may, perhaps, have been possible to exaggerate its extent for a jury, but to lie to one directly and assert an association which did not exist, and to do so in trials conducted in the open (as trials were so conducted in Rome), strains credibility. Furthermore, as a man of substance in Rome Drusus almost certainly had friends and contacts amongst the Allies, as indeed almost all Romans of substance did, and it is highly probable that Silo was one of them. Therefore, it might well have been that Silo could have informed Drusus of the Allied position, and Drusus might well have been influenced by this knowledge to include the Allies in his franchise proposals. The defeat of such proposals would doubtless have inspired the very rage and determination described by Appian and all the other sources, and may indeed have led directly to war.

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Therefore, a connection between the death of Drusus and Asculum is not successfully disproven through the argument that Drusus and his legislation had nothing to do with the Allies. Obviously there is value in recognizing the possibility that a post hoc ergo propter hoc situation might exist here, but the fact that Drusus is represented as having proposed to offer the citizenship to all the Allies in exchange for their cooperation with his proposed land laws, that the Allies are presented as having accepted it with enthusiasm, that he proved unable to deliver it (having been frustrated by the Senate and the urban populace and then silenced by assassination, as seen in that selfsame chapter), and that a revolt broke out shortly after the last possibility of its delivery was extinguished, all rather robustly suggest that there is more than mere accident at work here, and that there is indeed some connection between the death of Drusus and the war. What cannot be true, however, is the apparent assertion from the sources that planning must have started with the death of Drusus. However, a closer look at the sources reveals that this suggestion may not actually exist. In the first place, it was observed above that the verbs used in the Latin sources may indicate that planning as well as action began with the death of Drusus. On the other hand, they may not. All of these verbs may be used to describe actions alone, and if they are properly read as doing so, then the Latin sources may not have been referring to the planning at all. Livy’s placement of the Allied activities sees to confirm this. According to the passage of the Periochae cited above, the Allies began to move when Drusus was not able to come through with the civitas, but while he was alive. This suggests at least the possibility that they had been planning something for some time before his death. Appian, to be sure, seems to contradict this, but Appian may simply be in error, and even he suggests that the Romans were unaware of the formation of the Alliance “for a long time” (ἐς πολὺ μὲν οὐκ ἐπῄσ οντο; loc.cit.). Furthermore, it will be seen from chapter 5 that Appian’s chronology is not always airtight.9 9 So also Gabba 1956, p. 8–9. A mistake in his account due to error is probably a more charitable argument than that of Mouritsen, which is that

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In sum, the sources reveal that Allied planning for the war may have gone back for several years (as is argued in chapter 4). This would mean that the murder Drusus may have only provided the occasion, but not the impetus, for action. Such a conclusion accords exactly with the simple sentence of Velleius quoted above, claiming that “at the death of Drusus the Allied war burst out, having been simmering for a long time” (2.15.1).

Appian’s narrative is “an elaborate and fully consistent piece of fiction” (1998, p. 133). See also Appendix I.

APPENDIX F: SOME QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE INVESTIGATORS SENT BY ROME INTO ALLIED TERRITORY, 91 BCE According to Appian, in the autumn of 91 the Romans had begun to get wind of suspicious activities amidst the Allies and sent investigators into the lands of the socii to try and discover what was happening.1 These investigators apparently answered to high-ranking Roman officers sent to manage the inquiry; Appian says that these officers were proconsuls (ἀν ύπατοι) who at that time accustomed to oversee all of Italy, an administrative measure that would later be revived by Hadrian. That last detail was probably an error of Appian’s part,2 and it may well be the former was, as well; in other words, it is possibly the case that Appian is mistaken, not only in his assertion that proconsuls managed Italy in 91, but also in that claiming that the men managing the investigation were proconsuls. The only officer Appian specifically names in the passage is Q. Servilius, and of the various other sources to mention him and what happens next, most name him as a praetor instead.3 Yet whether Servilius was a praetor, proconsul, propraetor, or proconsul, and whether the other men supervising the investigation were likewise, it seems clear that their mission was to find out what was going on and to do it quietly. If they had any other mission than that, they appear to have been limited in its performance by the fact that no soldiers in any large quantities seem to have put at their disposal. Given what happned to Servilius at Asculum and the easue with which the Picentes dispatched him, it certainly seems that he had no forces under his command. Likewise, if the Servius Galba mentioned by the Periochae of Livy’s Book 72 as having been nearly 1 ὧν ἐς πολὺ μὲν οὐκ ἐπῄσ οντο Ῥωμαῖοι διὰ τὰς ἐν ἄστει κρίσεις τε καὶ στάσεις: ὡς δ᾽ ἐπύ οντο, περιέπεμπον ἐς τὰς πόλεις ἀπὸ σφῶν τοὺς ἑκάστοις μάλιστα ἐπιτ δείους, ἀφανῶς τὰ γιγόμενα ἐξετάζειν; 1.5.38.

Salmon argues this point convincingly (1958, p. 168). These sources are collected in Broughton, p. 19. They include the Periochae (72), which names him a proconsul, as well as Velleius (2.15.1) and Diodorus (37.13) which name him praetor, as does Orosius (5.18.8), assuming that the Servius there can be emended to Servilius. 2 3

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captured in Lucania shortly after the outbreak of hostilities at Asculum was also such an investigator,4 then the ease with which he was hemmed in suggests that he, too, lacked men. Certainly it would not have been the first time that praetors or proconsuls were sent into potentially dangerous situations without milites, or at the very least, without great numbers of them: as proprietor, Sulla had been sent into Cilicia to restore ousted Cappadocian king Ariobarzanes in the mid-90s without a great force, and he was compelled to make use of locally-drawn contingents of Asiatic allies for this purpose (ἰδίαν μέν οὖν δύναμιν οὐ πολλὴν ἐπ γετο, χρ σάμενος δὲ τοῖς συμμάχοις προ ύμοις; Plutarch, Sull. 5).5 Perhaps the investigators were merely

sent into the areas with a token force as escort, and it was these who were the unnamed Romans listed as having perished with Servilius and his legate Fonteius (see chapter 4). This might be understandable if the Romans were sent to investigate under cloak of secrecy, beneath which fewer men would be easier to conceal than more. As stated above, the only officer supervising the investigation who is mentioned by name as such in any of the sources is Servilius. The names of others can be guessed, however, and it might be useful to hazard a few. Knowing whether or not some Romans named in the accounts were, in fact, engaged in this enterprise may shed some light on some of the developments which would occur in 90 that were of not inconsiderable importance, and may help explain why the war went the way it did in that first year. For that reason, a brief glance at some likely candidates for having served as members of this investigation will be attempted, and in order that it not cause the narrative in chapter 4 to wander too far afield, it will be conducted here. Other than Servilius and, possibly, Galba, it has been speculated that the L. Scipio and L. Acilius who were later seen “in command” at Aesernia may have been as investigators there when the outbreak occurred and that with their escorts they took over 4 Domaszewski (p. 17) Haug (p. 201), Salmon (1967, p. 347), and Keaveney (1987, p. 117–118) all claim that he was. The latter, following the account in Appian 1.5.38, further speculates that Galba had been a praetor just as Servilius had been (Broughton—vol. 2, p. 21—agrees). 5 See Badian (1964, p. 157–162, 168–170).

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the defense of the city (Appian 1.5.41).6 This is plausible enough, although the further speculation that L. Postumius7 is another might give cause for further analysis. This man is mentioned by Appian and Livy’s Epitomator as commanding the resistance to the Allied envelopment of Nola (Per. 73; Appian 1.5.42 describes the end of the siege). His case is unlike that of Servilius and Galba, and, perhaps that of Acilius and Scipio, in that Postumius actually did have a fairly sizeable force at his disposal: two thousand men were with him, according to Appian (Ῥωμαίοις, δισχιλίοις οὖσιν; loc. cit.). With this body, it has been argued,8 Postumius had fled to Nola on the outbreak of the war, was given refuge, and held the city until a relief effort by L. Julius Caesar failed. On that occasion, he was subsequently forced to ask for terms and was summarily executed (see chapter 5). It is difficult to see why Postumius would have 2000 men with him for his part in the investigation, while Galba, Servilius, Scipio, and Acilius had none, although it may be that there was something special about the area where he was sent. Akternatively, it may have been that the men he had with him had not originally been under his command, but had just happened to be in the area for some undisclosed reason in time for him to take charge of them. The sources are silent about either possibility, allowing no certainty to be had as to why his case would have been different from the other investigators. On the other hand, there has also been some speculation that Postumius was not part of the inquiry at all, but rather that he had been sent to Nola with his men either to protect that town from the Alliance or keep it from defecting.9 Because “(N)othing suggests that Nola was particularly pro-Roman”,10 and since the fact that it ultimately fell by treachery implies that at least one Nolanus sided with the Allied cause, it is believed that the latter option is to be preferred, and that Postumius was sent to hold the city for Rome. By By Salmon, Domaszewski, and Keaveney (cited above), and by Haug, p. 239. Keaveney also suggests that these, too, were Praetors, though Broughton (vol. 2, p. 28–29) believed they were Legates. 7 By Salmon, Domaszewski, and Haug (loc. cit.). 8 By Salmon, loc. cit. 9 This is the opinion of Mourtisen (1998, p. 130–131). 10 Ibid. 6

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this argment, Postumius got there at some point between the fall of Asculum and the time the Allies had been able to move on the town, and since the forces of the Alliance were not there to help them resist, the Nolani was forced to open their gates to him. This speculated move to defend Nola would have therefore transpired sometime in the late fall of 91.11 Ultimately Nola was taken by the Alliance, which occurred in in 90, as it is mentioned in the Periochae as happening after Caesar is referred to as being consul. In fact, the fall of Nola is one of first things mentioned in the Periocha of Livy’s book 73, suggesting it occurred at the very start of the campaigning season. Since it seems unlikely that the Romans would have had time to arrive at Nola, take it, and lose it all in the space of a few short weeks at the beginning of spring of 90, it is held that the Romans must have gotten there earlier. Moreover, while by the autumn of 91 war will have already been declared and a few campaigns will already have been launched (see chapter 4), the Alliance was not yet in full readiness at that time, making it more likely that Nola could have been taken then rather than later. Indeed, it is difficult to see how a 2000-man Roman army could force its way into Nola if the Alliance had fully mobilized, as it seems to have done by spring of 90, since this outcome would have required that Nola either be undefended by the Alliance (which is unlikely, given that it was important enough to the Allies for them to have taken it back the next spring) or defended with so few numbers that the small force of Postumius could have defeated it in a battle which is completely unrecorded in the sources and promptly taken the city. Thus, Nola appears to have been seized, or at least reinforced, by the Romans in 91, and their defense was overcome and Nola taken by the Alliance around the spring of the next year. But the timing and the purpose of the arrival of Postumius gives rise to questions, if his movements really were as they were just speculated to have been. One of these is how Postumius could be referred to as “Praetor” by the Periochae. If, his arrival in the spring of 90 is to be ruled out, then he must have held that office when he arrived at the city in 91; by the next year, when Nola fell, his term would have 11 Salmon, Domaszewski, and Haug agree with Mouritsen on this point, although Keaveney (1987, p. 118) does not.

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expired. Additionally, thereis the question as to why he had soldiers, while Servilius and Galba did not. This is easily answered by the assumption that either he just happened to fall into command of these men by happenstance, or that he was not a Praetor looking into the activity of the Allies, as they were. If it was the latter of these, and he was in Nola —as has been implied12—in a military capacity instead, a final question concerns his ability to have arrived in Nola so swiftly. If he was coming all the way from Rome, he would have had a fair distance to cover in the short interval following the unpleasantness in Asculum (over 150 miles, in fact). This apparently he did, all the while with Allies on the move in Samnium and Lucania. To this last, it might be argued that Postumius may not have come all the way from the capital but may have been in the neighborhood already with his men. However, if he was not an investigator, why would he be in Campania? An answer to this may be found in something of an unlikely source, which is the career of P. Servilius Vatia in the years following 90. Vatia celebrated a triumph in 88, according to the Fasti, for a command as propraetor in some undisclosed location, which is occasionally argued to have been either Sardinia or Cilicia. It may well have been the latter, in light of the fact that the area had apparently been troublesome earlier in the decade (see above, for Sulla’s service there); furthermore, Vatia would be sent there in 77, where the victories he won over the Isauri that would earn him the cognomen Isauricus may have been helped by familiarity with the region.13 Vatia would alo run for consul in the year of his triumph, 88, with the approval of Sulla, who as at this point running the city (see chapter 7). Sulla would likely have taken a dim view of anyone trying to run for office without observing the customary biennum since his last magistracy, and would later pass a law to this effect in 81 (for which see chapter 10). If that was the case, then—according to this argument—the latest Vatia could have been praetor in order to gain Sulla’s approval is 90. However,

By Mouritsen, loc. cit. Broughton (vol. 2, p. 28 and page 30 note 5) makes this argument; see also Chapter 4. 12 13

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this does not rule out an earlier service; he could have been held this post at any point before 90, just not after. If it was the case that Vatia was praetor, not in 90, but even earlier, then his officeholding might make it such that there was a different explanation entirely for the men under Postumius in Campania, to which Vatia’s military command provides a clue. It may have been that the Cilician command that won him his triumph was one that was not originally intended for Vatia, but for Postumius instead. His 2000 men may have been with him for the expedition he was to lead and may have been travelling south en route, ultimately, to Brundisium and embarkation for the east in the late summer or early autumn of 91. Before he arrived, however, he may have been called upon by the Senate to put off his voyage due to the outbreak at Asculum, and bidden to lead his men to Nola instead. When Postumius became trapped there, the command for Cilicia may have then been transferred immediately to Vatia (or perhaps was given to Vatia in the next year), who apparently raised enough men to replace those trapped with Postumius in Nola and acquired glory with them. If this is the case, then Postumius would have been praetor when he arrived in Nola and retained his command when trapped there as de facto propraetor; legally the last office he would have held, however, would have been praetor, and as such he is named in the Periochae. It is patent that this construction is extremely speculative, although it does clear up some of the differences between the activities of Postumius and those of the other investigators. Scholars who comment on these differences and theorize that Postumius was not inquiring into the Italian movements are therefore correct in that claim, as they are in the additional assertion that he came to defend Nola. Those who claim that this defense of Nola was undertaken before Asculum would be mistaken, however; if the conjecture above is right, than Postumius was indeed in the region before Asculum, but was diverted to the defense of Nola by the massacre there. Nevertheless, one question which is left unanswered by the mission hypothesized to have been that of Postumius involves the nature of the men he had at his disposal. The obvious answer is that they were Roman, but doubt can be thrown on this assumption based on what became of them upon the eventual fall of the city into which they had been led.

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Both the Periochae and Appian record that the city was eventually taken in the places cited above. Yet while the Epitomator does not provide a great deal of specifics, Appian’s narrative is more complete. The latter source notes that Nola was taken “by treachery”(Γάιος δὲ Πάπιος Νῶλάν τε εἷλεν ἐκ προδοσίας; 1.5.42), and while he does not state exactly what that treachery was, it may perhaps have involved an offer made by Papius to the 2000man garrison to be spared should they agree to change their allegiance and serve under him. This change of allegiance is the very next thing that Appian relates. Of course, as Appian presents it, the offer was made after the capture of the city, although it is not impossible it was made beforehand: it is certainly not too fanciful to suggest that Mutilus let it be known that if the defenders would defect and open the gates to him, they could save themselves the agonies of an envelopment and the terrible punishment that might follow afterwards if that envelopment should prove successful. Whether such an offer was made before or after Mutilus gained the city, however, apparently the entire garrison took him up it with the exception of its officers, including its commander Lucius Postumius; these holdouts men were then executed, according to Appian by starvation. This offer of Papius is somewhat remarkable, not only because it was extended in the first place, but also because it was universally accepted by all the rank-and-file soldiers in the city, ones who were ostensibly Roman citizens. Service in Rome’s army may have been unpopular, and perhaps there were those in Rome sympathetic to the Allied cause, but it stretches credibility to the breaking point to be asked to believe that Roman soldiers would be willing to join an enemy army even under duress. Likewise, as much as Papius would have needed men, it is difficult to imagine that he would have offered such service to, and then accepted it from, men whose loyalties would at best be questionable. On the other hand, if the interpretation of what brought L. Postumius to Nola offered above is the correct one, it might be possible to make better sense of the offer and its acceptance. It is within the bounds of believability that, as a praetor with auxiliaries heading towards his province, the soldiers with whom he was holding Nola were not entirely Roman at all, but may have been supplementa consisting largely of hitherto-loyal Allied soldiers. These men, who may have fully supported the Allied cause, might have

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found themselves unwillingly caught up in the siege in spite of loyalties that may not have been firmly affixed to Rome. An appeal to such men along the lines of what Papius is held to have offered them could conceivably have had great purchase: the officers might themselves have been Roman, which would explain their refusal to join Papius, but the lower-ranking infantryment might have had different sentiments.14 They therefore may well have defected, and may even have served in the Allied cohorts ever after, once they had left the praetor to his unfortunate fate.

Keaveney (1987, p. 134) notes that “(i)t has been suggested that this incident shows Papius trying to demonstrate that the blame for the war rested with the Roman upper classes”, but does not note by whom it was so suggested. At any rate, the actions of Papius are far more explicable by military and strategic necessity than by a desire to send a message, and, as Salmon (1967 p. 358) notes, this action is consistent with Allied behavior elsewhere; see chapter 5 for similar instances at Aesernia and in Apulia. 14

APPENDIX G: THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PERIOCHAE OF LIVY It is generally held that the chronology of the Periochae of Livy’s missing text is for the most part accurate, in the sense that the order of events which are preserved in it correspond to the procession of occurrences as they actually transpired. However, while the Periochae may be relied upon to supply the correct sequence of happenings, using it to supply precise dating must be done with some care, especially for the period under review in this essay. This caution is warranted due to the peculiarities which apparently existed in the original text (extrapolated from the same peculiarities seen it its surviving books), ones which, it seems, have found their way into the summaries.1 As is well known, Livy does not conform to any set pattern in the amount of space he allots to individual years: the majority of the first and second Samnite Wars (some forty years) is covered in book 9, for example, while almost the entirety book 37 is devoted to the single year 190. Thus, there is the clear indication that some individual years were important enough to have an entire book devoted to them, and in some cases certain years get the better part of two books. So it appears was the case for books 71 and 72, whose Periochae suggest were devoted almost entirely to events from the year 91; likewise book 73, which seems to have been entirely devoted to the year 90. Nevertheless, just as in the case of the extant text, soo, too, it appears for the Periocahe that books devoted primarily to individual years do not necessarily start with January of that year, nor end in December. Hence, the aforementioned book 37 does not end in December of 190, but sees the last several chapters devoted to events that happened during the following year of 189 (as indicated by the fact that the consuls of that year, are not only mentioned as having been elected, but are shown engaging in activities as consuls). This clearly happens in the Periochae, as well, as is evident in the Summary of book 74. Line one of this Summary begins with an action undertaken by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. Another action 1

For this entire line of reasoning see Haug, p. 206, 211–213.

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of his is described in line 7, but in that line he is especially noted as Cn. Pompeius cos. This clearly indicates that 90 gives way to 89— when Strabo was in office as consul—by line 7, and that correspondingly all the events remaining to that epitome and the next belong to 89. This last is likewise clearly indicated by the fact that, in the summary of book 75, L. Cornelius Sulla is referred to as a legatus in line 2, and the Periocha ends with his running for consul (which must have happened in 89, since Sulla was made consul in 88). Identifications of Romans as consul are clear indicators of the passage from one year to the next, and that all events following such markers must belong to the year in which the person named consul served. Unfortunately, these indicators do not always work in the opposite direction, id est everything listed as happening before an individual is named as a consul do not necessarily belong to the year before that person took office. This is especially true of battles, due to the fact that Consuls took office in January but campaign season did not typically begin until March. Thus, Pompeius is referred to as “proconsul” midway through book 76 accepting the surrender of some defeated Italians, dating this surrender to 88 (since he was consul in 89, he could only be described as proconsul after 89 had expired). However, the events mentioned immediately beforehand in that summary—specifically, the campaigns of Gabinius in Lucania and those of Sulpicius against the Marrucini—could equally well have taken place in either late 89 or early 88. This is because the last notice in the previous book—Sulla’s aforementioned campaign for the consulate—would have been in 89. These expeditions of Gabinius and Sulpicius would probably have been winter campaigns, fought between November of 89 and the regular campaign season of 88, and their placement in the Periochae cannot make their precise dating possible. In fact, given Sulla’s later importance, it might well have been that Livy devoted a good deal of the first parts of book 76 to Sulla’s actual election and whatever legislation he passed in office, picking up from where he left on in book 75, which was Sulla’s run for office. This would mean that lines 1–2 of Per. 76 and the military events they narrate could belong to either year (thus, winter of late 89 or winter of early 88). For this reason, it is important to observe that events like the intermittent warfare placed in the Periocha of Book 72, occurring

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chronologically between the massacre at Asculum and the very next event described, consul L. Julius Caesar’s loss to the Samnites which opens the Periocha of 73, may have taken place either in the winter of 91 or the early spring of 90. They may indeed have been continuous actions, like sieges, which spanned the entire period. An exact reckoning is therefore impossible from placement in the Periochae alone, and reasonable guesses must therefore be used to try and determine a more precise timing for these occurrences when such precision is necessary (it is not in the case just mentioned). Sometimes the simple realities of warfare or common sense aids in this process: for example, a notice in Per. 72 which mentions the arrival of foreign allies (auxilia deinde Latini nominis et exterarum gentium missa populo Romano) after its record of the massacre at Asculum but before L. Caesar is seen in battle (which was almost certainly in late spring) probably describes an event which did not transpire until after the winter weather of 91, and thus may be reasonably inferred to have taken place early in the spring of 90. Likewise, the previously mentioned campaigns of Gabinius and Sulpicius (Per. 76) could either both have taken place in the winter of 89, both in the spring of 88, one in one season and one in the other, or both persisting from winter to the following spring to the other. To sort them out, the most reasonable guess is all that is at hand, and that is what is used in those sections of the Periochae dealing with events of this kind.

APPENDIX H: THE ITALIAN COMMANDERS The determination of which men led the various Italian forces during the Allied War is of more than simply an antiquarian interest. As has been demonstrated in chapters 5 and 6, the identification of a captain, the men under his direction, and the place they occupied can often play a vital role in the proper interpretation of operations and, by extension, in the analysis of what repercussions those operations may have had outside of the battlefield. However, there is widely varying information about these Allied commands in both the literary and archaeological sources. This state of affairs not helped by the fact that Italian leadership was not static, but changed frequently over the course of the war due to a variety of circumstances, such as battlefield deaths or in some instances replacement by vote. This makes providing an identification of Allied commanders for this war a by no means easy task.1 On the one hand, it is generally agreed by both ancient and modern sources that two supreme commanders—given the somewhat misleading title of “consul” (ὑπάτοι)2—oversaw the Allied war efforts. It is likewise agreed as to who these were: Q. Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi and C. Papius Mutilus of the Samnites (following Diodorus, 37.2.5–7). The type of command bestowed on these men is discussed in chapter 5. According to the sources, each of these men were, in turn, assisted by six subordinates (twelve total) who were given the equally misleading title of “praetor” (στρατ γοί). It is, finally, generally accepted that these στρατ γοί were in fact the leaders of contingents drawn from the communities from which they themselves had come.3

The names of those who led the armies of Rome are somewhat clearer; for any controversies about these, see the notes supporting chapter 5. 2 For the imprecision of this nomenclature, see chapter 4. 3 So, for example, Sherwin-White (p. 147), Salmon (1967, p. 351 ff.), and Keaveney (1987, p. 122). 1

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Nevertheless, the consensus only holds so far; beyond that, both ancient and modern accounts disagree widely on who exactly these men στρατ γοί, when they held their commands, and whom specifically they led. The variety and permutations of these scholarly differences is enormous: for example, the ancient sources might all agree that a particular man was a “praetor” but diverge on his place of origin and thus whom he led. Alternatively, some ancient accounts might identify a man as “praetor” who is not so named or even mentioned in other accounts. Some men might be shown by the sources to be holding commands but not be named either “praetor” or “consuls”, men who are occasionally referred to in modern accounts—albeit not ancient ones—as “legates” and believed to have held commissions subordinate to the “praetors” and “consuls”. Finally, the forces of one people might be claimed to have been led by several men who are all described as “praetor”. It is not difficult to see why some of these confusions may have arisen: the sources for this period are hardly superlative, so some of the variations may simply be due to error on the part of the original historians or on their later copyists. Additionally, these “praetors” may also have been elected annually, just as the “consuls” were supposed to have been (see chapter 4). The outcome of these elections might have meant that men who were held a command in one year might simply have been removed for the next. Some replacements, at least, seem to have come from less delicate circumstances: several of these “praetors” are recorded as having been killed in battle, which would seem to indicate a necessity to supply successors for them.4 This confusion in the ancient literature about these commanders has contributed mightily to the frequent disagreement about them in the modern. The result is that it is difficult to offer a list of these “praetors” (the “consuls” are, again, fairly well agreed-upon) with confidence. The perils involved in such a compilation notwithstanding, the importance of an identification of the Allied leaders is of sufficient enormity that one was proffered in chapter 5. That list attempted to name which men were in positions of command for the Allies at 4

171.

For a fuller analysis of these difficulties see Salmon, 1958 p. 169–

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the start of the war, with emendations made to it throughout the narrative as needed. It should, nevertheless, probably go without saying that the identifications offered in that chapter involved a great deal of conjecture, and required coming to grips in some instances with a myriad of different assertions made by both the ancient authorities and by the modern scholars who depend upon them. On the many occasions when no consensus could be reached, a best guess as to who the most likely individual was had to be employed. As can be imagined, this list departs, and in some ways considerably, from those created by other modern historians. Because it does, it seems appropriate to supply a fuller explanation behind the reasoning for it. Rather than interrupt the narrative, such considerations will be provided here in the pages to follow. As was stated above and in chapter 5, there is broad agreement on the fact that the two overall commanders of the Allied armies were Q. Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi and C. Papius Mutilus of the Samnites. A general accord has also been reached about the commander of the Picentes, who is held to be C. Vidacilius.5 There is not as much harmony concerning the placement of T. Lafrenius6 at the head of the Vestini, as at least three scholars believe that he was instead the commander of the Marsi7 and hold that that a C. Pontidius should be placed at the head of the Vestini.8 The improbability of Lafrenius as “praetor” of the Marsi is discussed below; as for Pontidius, it is not only possible but even likely that he did indeed command the Vestini, since it turns out that Lafrenius died in battle before the end of 90 (see chapter 5). Since the description of Pontidius in Velleius and Appian admits the possibility that he was praetor either in 90, 89, or both,9 it might well be that he was elevated after the death of 5 Salmon (1958, p. 174; 1967, p. 357, 364) Keaveney (1987, p. 217) Domaszewski (p. 14) and Haug (p. 241) all agree on this point, based on the ancient evidence which they cite. 6 Salmon (1967, p. 353) and Keaveney (1987, p. 217) advocate this position. 7 Specifically, Domaszewski, Haug (in the places already cited) and an earlier work by Salmon (1958, p. 172–173). 8 The preferred spelling of the name, according to Salmon (loc. cit.). 9 So Salmon, loc. cit.

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Lafrenius and kept on for the next year. It is thus it is possible to retain the assertion that both men were leaders of the Vestini, as was done in this essay. Continuing from north to south, there is additionally a consensus that the Marrucini were led by Herius Asinius.10 On the other hand, chapter 5 claims that the Paeligni were commanded by P. Praesentius,11 which is by no means a universally shared opinion. Still, this seems a better fit for him than that made by those who claim either that he led the Frentani12 (more below) or that he was a subordinate to someone else leading the Frentani, like Vettius Scato.13 On the one hand, there is the fact that Praesentius appears at the beginning of the war in combat with C. Perperna (who likely had been sent to Alba Fucens and thus closer to the territory of the Paeligni than the Frentani; see chapter 5). On the other hand, there is a far more convincing theory put forward for Scato’s command: Scato was almost certainly in command of the Marsi. Support for this theory rests in part on the evidence of Cicero (Phil. 12.27), who refers to Scato as dux Marsorum. As an eyewitness to the war who had even seen Scato up close, Cicero’s evidence appears to be much more credible than that of Macrobius (1.11.24),14 who claims that Scato led the Paeligni. Further 10 So Salmon (1958, p. 173–174; 1967, p. 356); Keaveney (1987, p. 216), Domaszewski (p. 14), and Haug (p. 241) also find agreement in this assertion. 11 As argued by Salmon (1967, p. 353); Keaveney (1987, p. 216–217) agrees. 12 This was an earlier opinion of Salmon (1958, p. 174–175), from which he departed later, perhaps having recognizing that the bases he presents for this assertion in his earlier work are incredibly weak. 13 Haug (p. 242) argued that Praesentius was a subordinate, while Domaszewski (who mentions him briefly on page 19) gives no opinion about his rank or nationality. Both Haug (p. 241) and Domaszewski (p. 14) believe that the Paeligni were instead commanded by Vettius Scato, about whom more directly. 14 The notice of Macrobius was, however, enough to convince Haug (p. 241) and earlier Domaszewski (p. 14) that his designation of Scato to the Paeligni was the more appropriate. Domaszewski reinforced his opinion as to the suitability of this attribution with what seemed to be the additional contention of Seneca (de benef. 3.23) that Scato was a native of

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weakening the claim of Macrobius is the fact that Seneca also identifies Scato as Marsic (Vettius, praetor Marsorum; de benef. 3.23).15 These sources seem to provide ample evidence for affirming of the nature of Scato’s Marsic command and for discarding the objection that Lafrenius could not be commander of the Vestini because he himself was leading the Marsi.16 To return to Praesentius: given his role in battle it seems likely that he held a command of his own, and in the absence of a better candidate for whom he led on the one hand, and of better evidence for someone else leading those whom he is occasionally thought to have commanded on the other, Corfinium, whic h would perforce make Scato a Paelignus. Problematic to this data is the fact that on the one hand Seneca, as will been seen above, states explicitly that Scato was Marsic. Moreover, Seneca does not actually note that Scato was from Corfinium at all. Keaveney (loc. cit.) postulates that Domaszewski became confused, owing to the fact that Corfinium is mentioned by Seneca in reference to Julius Caesar (de benef. 3.24) only a few lines after the comment about Scato. This led Domaszewski to assume—mistakenly, per Keaveney—that Seneca was likewise making reference to Corfinium in the anecdote about Scato. This is a more generous assumption than that of Haug, who acidly writes that Domaszewski drew this inference “from thin air” (“Die Behauptung Domaszewskis S. 14, die Heimat des Scato sei Corfinium, ist aus der Luft gegriffen”; loc. cit.), although she retains her belief that Scato led the Paeligni. Salmon, for his part, ventured even to dismiss the identification by Cicero as a mistake or—better—an imprecision, one attributable to a tendency for Romans to conflate peoples from the same general area under blanket terms (“use of the term ‘Marsic’ and possibly of the term ‘Samnite’ to designate anyone who belonged to the central Italian or to the southern group of the rebels respectively” was common, he observes; 1958, p. 170–171). His belief then was instead that Scato belonged to the Paeligni, although he would change his mind later, almost certainly correctly. 15 Salmon (1967, p. 354 and especially note 2) is followed by Keaveney (1987, p. 216) in the belief that Cicero’s superior credentials make it more likely that his statement of Scato’s nationality is to be preferred to that of Macrobius (changing his mind from his earlier position) and thus that Scato was actually the praetor of the Marsi and not of the Paeligni. 16 See above, where the apparent conflict with the evidence that Pontidius was leader of the Vestini has also been discussed.

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it seems most likely that this captain was in command of the Paeligni. As for the Frentani, chapter 5 claims that they were led by one Fraucus, a conjecture based on the fact that Orosius (5.18.18) mentions a certain Fraucus—no praenomen is given—as being associated with the Marsi in a battle in the neighborhood of Picenum in 89. In fact, Orsius claims that Fraucus led the Marsi in what is the the only recorded exploit performed by him, one in which he dies in combat. Yet this battle is very similar to an event described in Appian (1.6.50), and it may very well be that the two authors describe the same battle (see Appendix M). In Appian, the men who are fighting against the Romans are described as having come from those people “on the Adriatic” (οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον). The Marsi do not answer to this description, but the Frentani certainly do. Since Fraucus almost certainly was not commander of the Marsi despite what Orosius says17 (Orosius makes a similar mistake about the archipirata Agammemnon), if such a Fraucus was in the neighborhood of the Marsi in command of men, it may well be that these men belonged to another member of the Alliance which is both on the Adriatic coast and close to the northeastern sector. Since commands for the Picentes, Marrucini, Paeligni, and Vestini have already been speculated, then only the Frentani remain, and certainly no better candidate for their leadership in 89 is supplied by the sources.18 Nor can one be found for them in 90, 17 Perhaps Orosius or his sources may have employed the Salmon’s “common use of the term ‘Marsic’ … to designate anyone who belonged to the central Italian” group of the Alliance in reference to Fraucus (see earlier note). 18 This reasoning is admittedly less than bulletprood, but there is also the speculation of Salmon (1958, p. 174), who allows that Orosius might have made some error in regards to Fraucus, one which might well be misidentification of his homeland. Salmon also suggests that, if Fraucus had been in command in 89, he might well have been such in 90 as well. Thus, it is not impossible that Fraucus led the Frentani and did so in 90. As for other scholarly opinions, Domaszewski has none which he mentions about this Fraucus, while Haug (p. 241–242) believes he may have been a subordinate, as does Keaveney (1987, p. 216). On the other hand, Keaveney believses that nothing can be determined about who

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so if Fraucus commanded them in 89, he may also have done so in the previous year. The “praetor” of the Samnites is claimed in chapter 5 to have been Marius Egnatius, attribution of command of this people to either Duilius or Trebatius notwithstanding.19 The fact that Egnatius is seen operating in Samnite territory, has a wellrecognized Samnite name, and is specifically mentioned as commanding Samnite troops (by the Periocha of Livy’s Book 75) makes it far more likely that he was in fact Samnite.20 Continuing down the peninsula, in spite of the belief of one scholar that nothing conclusive can be said about Apulian leadership,21 one Trebatius (he is only known by his nomen) is put forward in chapter 5 as commander of the Apuli. Because this commander can be seen fighting in Apulia in 89, it may very well be that he was from the region, a claim no evidence exists to refute. If he was “praetor” in 89 he may also have held the same command in 90, with the commanded the Frentani, as opposed to both Domaszewski and Haug, who are firm in their belief that command of the Frentani was held by Marius Egnatius (see immediately below). However, as will be asserted directly, Egnatius more properly belongs to another group. If this is so, then there remains no better candidate for leadership of the Frentani, so Fraucus is placed in the position he occupies at their head. 19 So Domaszewski (p. 27, 30) and then Haug, p. 242. However, it is more likely that Duilius and Trebatius were in command of other peoples, as will be seen. As for Egnatius, he is held by these two authors to be leader of the Frentani, based on a very questionable reading attempting to extract something from a passage of Florus (2.6.6) whose Latin makes little sense, probably due to textual corruption (Domaszewski, p. 14, 18; Haug, loc. cit.). This led Salmon (1958, p. 177) to claim that such an interpretation is “utterly incredible”, almost certainly correctly. 20 So Keaveney (1987, p. 217) and Salmon (loc. cit.), where he takes note of the evidence above and asserts that “only a hardened sceptic would refuse to regard him [as] anything but Samnite”. For this reason, his own later skepticism—he would place a question mark in a parentetical reference to Egnatius which has the force of suggesting he was from the Hirpini in a subsequent work (1967, p. 358, 366)—is probably unwarranted. 21 So Keaveney (1987, p. 216), and by their silence on the matter Domaszweski and Haug might have held similar opinions.

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silence of the sources about this due to the fact that he was involved in no action of note, or had no noteworthy action in any otherwise noteworthy event.22 This is hardly the most compelling of arguments, but those claiming that he was a Samnite legate are no more convincing,23 nor is the hint that he may have been from Venusia.24 Moreover, he was almost certainly not the overall commander of the Samnites, as is noted above.25 A certain Duilius is mentioned by Frontinus (Strat. 1.5.17) in what seems to be a command role near Aesernia (see Chapter 5). It has been argued that he could have led the Hirpini, and that he might be the same person as a Lucilius named on a coin with an Oscan inscription which could easily have come from the Hirpini. This argument is persuasive.26 For lack of anything better, it is assumed in chapter 5 that the Campani were led by Lucius Cluentius.27 This is at variance with the unlikely suggestion that the This is the belief of Salmon (1958, p. 176–177). Such as that of Keaveney (1987, p. 217). 24 So Salmon implies, contradicting his own earlier claim by means of a question mark in a parenthetical reference to Trebatius as being from Venusia (1967, p. 366). Since, however, he offers nothing for why he might be inclined even to suggest this, his earlier explanation (as weak as it is) is probably the better one. 25 A claim advanced by Domaszewski and Haug, as noted above (see earlier note), although they present no real evidence for why they hold this belief. 26 Salmon (1958, p. 175). This assertion it is more convincing than yet another question mark in a parenthetical note connecting him to the Pentri (1967, p. 358), which he offers later. Keaveney’s belief that nothing can be known about the leaders of the Hirpini, and that this Duillius/ Lucilius was a legate of the Samnites, also fails to persuade (1987, p. 216– 217), as does Domaszewski’s assertion that Duillius was a praetor of the Samnites (p. 27; he offers no opinion on the Hirpini). Finally, Haug’s belief that the praetor of the Hirpini was Aulus (her preference for the praenomen) Cluentius will be discussed immediately below. 27 Salmon believes that a Cluentius (Aulus Cluentius in Eutropius, Lucius Cluentius in Appian) found operating in Campania in 89 was actually Campanian, and may also have commanded the Camapnians in 90 (1958, p. 175–176; 1967, p. 366, even if ten pages prior to that he suggested that the Campanian commander was T. Herennius; more 22 23

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Campanians were led by T. Herennius. As far as this man is concerned, although there have been assertions that he was either a legate of the Picentes or the Samnites,28 it is more likely that he was a commander of the Venusini,29 a position taken in chapter 5. Finally, the assertion that Marcus Lamponius commanded the Lucani is generally agreed upon by modern scholars.30 In the face of the thicket of contradictory evidence from the ancient sources and the equally snarled collection of ideas from the modern ones, much of what is stated above is, again, highly speculative. Nevertheless, it is hoped that these speculations— which are the foundation for the commanders of the Allied peoples named in chapter 5—are reasonable ones, and that the inferences made in them are not without basis.

below). Domaszewski offers no opinion, and Keaveney’s assumption (ibid.) that he was a Samnite legate (and that no commander can thus be attributed to Campania) is unsatisfying. Finally, Haug’s assertion that he was from the Hirpini due to the fact that their lands were close to Campania seems to multiply the issue needlessly (p. 242). In the face of this less compelling evidence, Salmon’s contention seems the best. 28 The former a proposition of Keaveney (1987, p. 217) the latter of Haug (p. 242). 29 So Salmon (1958, p. 176), who argues that his name amidst a list of “Picene and Marsi” commanders by Eutropius (5.3.2) is a mistake, of which Eutropius made several, and that the later appearance of a “Herennius Picens” on the Augustan consular fasti is inconclusive. For his part, Domaszewski believes him to be a praetor, but does not say of whom (p. 19). The question mark placed behind a parenthetical reference to him as possibly Campanian in Salmon’s later work (1967, p. 356; see above) adds little enlightenment, and ultimately contributes nothing to refute his own earlier conclusion. It is therefore the one which is followed in this essay. 30 Salmon (1958, p. 177; 1967, p. 357), Keaveney (1987, p. 216), Haug (p. 241), and Domaszewski (p. 15) all agree on this point.

APPENDIX I: APPIAN AND THE ORDERING OF EVENTS IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE ALLIED WAR An attempt to work out the precise chronology of the military events in the first year of the Allied War is by no means an easy task, complicated mostly due to the fact that Appian’s account (the most complete of all of the ancient sources) is so difficult to follow. This is in part due to the fact that that author’s presentation is made geographicaly rather than chronologically,1 with events in one theater being placed in his narrative after events in another theater which, other sources suggest, may have occurred simultaneously or even slightly before the events which precede them in the Appian’s text. Futhermore, in at least one instance (1.6.45, the defeat of L. Julius Caesar in the defile near Teanum by Marius Egnatius) Appian seems to be relating an event which occurred much earlier than its placement in his narrative indicates.2 So Haug (p. 225–233, and explicitly states that Appian used and followed a geographically-arranging source on p. 227. 2 Haug (p. 227–230) attributes this jumble to a change of sources: essentially, Haug believes Appian follows one source for the southern theater from its beginning to its end in sections 1.5.41–42, but after he had finished his account of battles in that region and moved on to those occurring in the northern theater, he found details of another battle from the south—one which he had not found in his source for that section and had therefore omitted it—in a different source. He therefore took details from that battle (which became section 45) and placed them between two events from the northern theater which took place much later, rather than rework sections 41–42, where clues in Appian’s text itself suggests the battle from section 45 actually belonged. It is reasonably clear that the defeat of Caesar in the defile occurred, and should have been inserted in appian’s text, between the fall of Venafrum and the victory of Acerrae, since at the end of section 45 L. Caesar is shown regrouping after his defeat to attack Papius Mutlius, who was still besieging Acerrae. To do otherwise would assume that Caesar left Acerrae with Papius at his back, was attacked and defeated in the defile, and then returned to Acerrae ultimately to do nothing, as Keaveney does (1987, p. 133–141, where his attempts to preserve Appian’s chronology—as in the case of similar efforts made elsewhere in his account—meets with unhappy results). 1

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Nevertheless, by cross-checking the events described in Appian with other sources whose chronology is less suspect, it becomes possible to untangle Appian’s chronology. In the first place, Appian does indeed appear to be arranging the events of 90 geographically, although his geographical divisions do not seem to correspond to a northern and southern Italy into which Diodorus (37.2.7) suggests the Allies parcelled out the peninsula to Q. Poppaedius Silo and C. Papius Mutilus, one which Rome presumably imitated in assigning commands to P. Rutilius Lupus and L. Julius Caesar (and followed in chapter 5). Instead of this bipartite arrangement of events happening to the north and the south of the Κερκώλαι of Diodorus (whatever that may have been),3 Appian seems to have come up with four separate sections. The first of these encompasses Italy between Sora and Grumentum, whose battles are narrated in chapters 1.5.41, 1.5.42, and 1.6.45, of which the latter should probably be placed between the former two.4 The next region is that between the Tolenus river and Sora, the subject of chapters 1.5.43, 1.5.44, and 1.6.46 (1.6.45, again, should go between 1.5.41 and 1.5.42). The third includes the land between Firmum and Asculum, and the combat waged there is discussed in sections 1.6.47 and 1.6.48. The final area is Etruria, Umbria, and the coast of the Tyrrhenian sea, whose military action is the briefly recounted in 1.6.49. Having divided his chronicle of the year 90 into these geographical sections, Appian proceeds to present what happened in them chronologically. Thus, in the south L. Julius Caesar is defeated by Samnites (1.5.41), Nola falls (1.5.42), and Caesar wins a great victory (at Acerrae; 1.5.42), which is the exact order of these events in the Periochae presents it. Likewise, in central Italy Rutilius is defeated and killed, leaving Marius to rescue what remains of his army (1.5.43); Caepio is given equal powers with Marius, but is Military logic would seem to justify the conclusion that 1.6.45 should be placed between 1.5.41–42, and that Caesar’s departure from Acerrae at the end of 1.5.42 is not that of his army but of himself, to return to Rome to hold consular elections (as assumed in Chapter 5 and 6, as well as Appendices and P). 3 See Chapter 5. 4 See earlier note.

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killed due to a stratagem of Poppaedius Silo (1.6.44); Marius defeats the Marsi at the Vineyards (1.6.46); and some apparently desultory skirmishing takes place between the Marsi and Romans as the year draws to a close (1.6.46). Once again, the chronology is the same as in the Periochae. The first battle between Pompeius Strabo and T. Lafrenius is not singled out for mention in the Periochae, but Appian’s account of this battle, the subsequent rematch and defeat of Lafrenius, and the siege of Asculum, all follows the chronology of Orosius, whose text drew on Livy (see chapter 1). Appian reports the enrollment of freedmen into the Roman military and the revolt of Etruria and Umbria as separate events, not as a sequence of them, and does not mention the campaign to suppress the latter at all. However, the Periochae reports that freedmen were enrolled and then the Etruscan/Umbrian uprising was crushed, implying that at about the same time as the freedmen were mustered, this rising was beginning (as the report of the rising is in the pluperfect tense); in this, too, there is a correspondence between Appian and the Periochae. Therefore, within each geographical section the events are presented chronologically. Nevertheless, that chronology is not absolute, as it is in the other sources. This is, perhaps, a point that needs additional emphasis: Appian presents the events that occur within each region chronologically, but that chronology only applies within each region. The result is that occurrances presented in later parts of Appian’s narrative might very well be contemporaneous with, or even antedate, events presented earlier in the text; to put it another way, events narrated in sections 1.5.41–1.5.42 are happening at the same time as events discussed in sections 1.6.47–1.6.48. Indeed, the defeat of Pompeius Strabo by Lafrenius, Vidacilius, and Vettius Scato is the first battle of the war to be mentioned by Orosius (5.8.10), but is not mentioned by Appian at all until 1.6.475 (although it is the first battle mentioned in the section dealing with land between Firmum and Asculum, the subject of sections 1.6.47–16.48). 5 As recognized by Domaszewski (p. 24–29), who attempts to present a strictly chronological list of the battles in 90 drawn from all the available sources, one which is largely followed in Chapter 5.

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In sum, the various battles and other happenings during the year 90 are dealt with by Appian based first on where in four parts of Italy they occurred, and then when they occurred in that area. All the events of that region are narrated in order, then the author moves to the next region, goes back to the beginning of the year, and narrates what happened in that section in order. The occurrences in 1.6.47 (the defeat of Pompeius at Falerio and his holding quiescent in Firmum) are therefore happening at about the same time in the year 90 as those related in 1.5.41 (the fall of Nola and the defeat of Crassus at Grumentum) and 1.5.43 (the defeat of Rutilius Lupus). By the same token, those discussed in 1.6.46 (the Battle of the Vineyards) are transpiring at much the same time as those found in 1.5.42 (Caesar’s victory at Acerrae) and 1.4.48 (the siege of Asculum). It must be acknowledged that there are a few probelms with this construction. One of them involves the defeat of Praesentius by Marius Egnatius which is mentioned in section 1.5.41. Praesentius, as Appian makes clear, was a legate of Rutilius Lupus, who seems to have been given command of the Northern Theater and whose forces—save those under Pompeius—are only to be found in the area between the Tolenus and Sora, whose events are throughly discussed in sections 1.5.43 through 1.6.46. The placement of the defeat of Praesentius in the sections dealing with the southern theater seems to violate the greographical arrangement of Appian.6 No suitable explanation seems to present itself for this misplacement, nor indeed does any explanation at all save simple error on the ancient authority’s part. This is, obviously, deeply unsatisfying, but it will perhaps be sufficient to state that the displaced notice about Praesentius does not seem to warrant discarding the geographical arrangement of Appian, which will be retained in this essay in spite of the uncomfortable record. Two other problems revolve around the aforementioned section 1.6.45. It has been argued that this section—which, again, describes a colossal defeat of L. Julius Caesar by Marius Egnatius— should be inserted between 1.5.41 and 1.5.42.7 Doing so seems to 6 7

A fact which goes unnoticed by Haug. See, again, earlier note.

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solve the problem of its present disjunction in space and time in Appian’s text. Nevertheless, another difficulty arises from that problem-laden section. As has been seen, Appian makes references to two defeats suffered by L. Julius Caesar in 91, one coming at the hands of Vettius Scato (1.5.41), the other at the hands of Marius Egnatius (1.6.45). The Periochae, however, only mentions one of them. It has been speculated that the one which is omitted is the second one fought against Egnatius.8 At first glance this would mean that whoever compiled the Periochae chose to omit a major battle against that commander, one presented in 1.6.45 in which Appian states that Caesar lost “the greater part of his army” (τὸ πλέον τῆς στρατιᾶς ἀπολέσας) which consisted of of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Having left out this engagement, the Epitomator managed to include mention of tje much smaller engagement against Scato, where Caesar’s loss was only 2,000 men. This is odd, and what is more odd still is that if a defeat of Caesar mentioned by Orosius in 5.18.14 is indeed a different battle than another mentioned in 5.18.11, and not simply a reference back to that earlier battle,9 then Livy’s original text must have included mention of both. There is, however, a solution to this difficulty: it is by no means improbable that if two unsuccessful battles were in fact

So Domaszewski, p. 23–26 Complicating matters is the fact that Orosius mentions that Caesar fought against Samnites (and not Marsi) in both battles. Based on what has been argued about the command of Scato (see Appendix H), this is troublesome, although it could simply be an error; immediately prior to his mention of the first battle he mentions the Marsi under command of the pirate Agammenon, which is almost certainly wrong (see Chapter 5). There is also possibility that Scato was commanding a joint operation with the Samnites when he attacked Caesar, and that Orosius mentioned the Samnite component of the Italian army but neglected to mention the other (this is the solution proposed by Keaveney 1987, p. 133). Thus, it is not at all inconceivable that Orosius is correct in mentioning the existence of two battles, and likewise correct in describing when and how they transpired, but was wrong (or not as precise as he could have been) in the detail about the specific enemy who engaged the Romans in these battles. 8 9

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fought in the vicinity of Aesernia by Caesar,10 as seems likely, then the Periochae may have omitted one of them if it was a prelude to a later victory. The second of Caesar’s defeats would qualify as this, and thus it may have been that the Epitomator glossed over the defeat by Egnatius, although it was once included in the original Livy (where it could be found and passed on by Orosius). It seems therefore that such a proposed understanding of the chronology of Appian as that just described makes sense, and that those efforts to keep his sequence of events as they are presented in the text create more complications than they solve (for which see chaper 5 and Appendices J and K). For this reason, this hypothesis concerning Appian’s arrangement of events is the one which has been followed in this essay.

10 Appian mentions Aesernia as the location of the defeat by Scato in 1.5.41; Orosius mentions it as the location of another at the hands of an unnamed enemy in 5.18.16.

APPENDIX J: SOME NOTES ON SEXTUS JULIUS CAESAR’S DEFEAT OF THE PAELIGNI IN 90 BCE Chapter five describes how, sometime before the winter of 90, Sextus Julius Caesar was en route to Picenum to aid the efforts of Pompeius Strabo there. Along the way he met a host of Paeligni under P. Praesentius, who had been in the neighborhood of the Via Valeria since his defeat of C. Perperna; he was, perhaps, guarding the flank of Vettius Scato and Q. Poppaedius Silo as these men were busily defeating Roman armies under the consul Rutilius and his replacement Q. Servilius Caepio. Battle then commenced, in which Praesentius was sharply defeated, after which Caesar continued towards Picenum. The defeat of Praesentius by Caesar was fairly important, as it aided Pompeius Strabo in his attempt to break out of Firmum and thus ultimately made the reduction of Asculum possible. It therefore had a direct bearing on the great victories against the Allies in the northern theater and along the Adriatic coast in the following year, which could not have occurred without the neutralization of Asculum. In addition, many of its finer details have a bearing on a number of other battles and the generals who fought them, battles which made or enhanced reputations and led to a great deal of the conflict in the years to come. Because of its importance, it seems suitable to explain why it is that the conduct of the battle is narrated as it is in chapter 5, a narrative which is in many points at great variance with the opinions of several modern scholars. Because a more complete justification of the arrangement, one required due to the significance of the battle, might interrupt the course of the exposition if it were presented in an aside or long footnote, it seems best to remove it from chapter 5. A discussion of these differences and why they exist will be presented in the pages to follow. The sources of this battle are the Periocha of Book 73 of Livy, in which a Roman whose name is not agreed upon defeats the Paeligni, and Appian, in which Sextus Caesar—the expiry of whose consular power and his investment with proconsular power is specifically cited—achieved a great victory against an unknown opponent at an unknown location during an unknown time prior to his death at Asculum (1.6.48). On one thing all the modern 756

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accounts tend to agree, which is that in this instance Appian does have the correct Caesar; in other words, in this episode that authority correctly identifies Sextus Caesar and does not mistake him for Lucius Caesar, as he does practically everywhere else in Book 1 of the Civil Wars. They are, however, in accord about little else. In the first place, it has been wondered whether Appian and the Periochae are describing the same event, or different ones.1 The reasons for this doubt are as follows: the most common textual rendition of the passage of the Periochae holds that the victor against the Paeligni is one Servius Sulpicius, believed perhaps to be a legate,2 and not the proconsul Sextus Caesar. Appian mentions no such victory won by Sulpicius, so if the victor was indeed Sulpicius and not Caesar, then the battle described by the latter is not the same as that in which he did so is recorded in the Periochae (and recorded as occurring at about the same time as the battle of the Tolenus, possibly slightly later).3 The consequence of this is that Appian does not mention the battle described by the Periochae. On the other hand, that source does not mention any victory won by Sextus Caesar, so the immense battle recorded by Appian, one mentioned as being fought by Sextus Caesar on the way to Asculum, was likewise left out of the Periochae of Book 73. The two sources therefore describe separate events, and that described by one is left out of the other. There is nothing which makes this assertion impossible, but it is weakened by several facts. In the first place, it seems difficult to believe that either Appian or the Periochae would omit a battle of the importance that each ascribes to the (allegedly separate) engagements that each one does report. In other words, if there were two different, highly important battles, it is hard to believe that either would leave out one of them. More importantly, even This is the belief of Keaveaney (1987, p. 136–141). But not, according to Keaveney, the same Sulpicius mentioned in Appian 1.6.47 as being a subordinate to Pompeius Strabo; this man Keaveney believes to be P. Sulpicius Rufus (op. cit., p. 141; also p. 209–210 and p. 213, notes 22 and 24), based largely on the evidence of Cicero that this man was a legate in the war (Brutus 304). For a more extensive treatment of this P. Sulpicius, see Appendix R. 3 For the chonological peculiarities of the Periochae, see Appendix G. 1 2

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those who assert that the battles are separate recognize that the manuscript of the Periochae has to be emended from what it actually lists as the name of the Roman commander in question: the manuscript names him as Sex. Sul., a name which has no precedent in Roman history4 and is almost certainly due to a copyist’s error. That emendation could take the form of a modification of what the praenomen should be (to Serv. Sul.), but it seems equally likely that nomen should be changed (to Sex. Jul.), as many scholars believe.5 If it is, then the commander named by the Periocha of Book 73 is, in fact, Sextus Julius (Caesar, the proconsul), and this would seem to bring the accounts of Appian and the Periochae into alignment.6 If it is to be assumed, then, that the two sources are speaking of the same battle, and that by extension it was one in which the proconsul Caesar routed the Paeligni, the next question involves where this took place. Chapter 5 asserts that it was fought on the Via Salaria as the Roman was headed into Picenum. This placement is also at variance with some scholars, due to the curious existence of some sling bullets bearing the marking of Legio XV in the neighborhood of Asculum. Since it seems that Messala was in command of Legio XV,7 and since it appears that Messala had been posted to the southern end of the northern theater, these scholars assert that the best way to explain these bullets at Asculum would be to assume that Messala lost his command, and that his legions went north under a replacement. Because Appian observes that 4 See, for example, the notes in the apparatus of the text in the Loeb edition of the Periochae, p. 90, although the translator (Alfred Schlesinger) opts to revise the text to Ser. Suplicius and to connect him with the Galba from the Periocha of 72 (p. 91 and note 4). 5 Domaszewski (p. 25–26), Haug (p. 202), and Salmon (1967, p. 354) all believe that the repair of the manuscript of the Periochae should be done in such a way as to to replace Sex. Sul. with Sex. Iul., and their argument is convincing. 6 Keaveney (op.cit., p. 209) also has the final objection that Caesar could not have taken the field so early in the year (the chronology of the Periochae would imply that the battle was fought towards the beginnings of autumn). However, he gives no real evidence for this assumption, and as such the assertion lacks persuasiveness. 7 So Domaszewski and Salmon, loc. cit.

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Caesar also went north to Asculum, it is argued that the legions were taken from Messala and given to Caesar.8 Therefore, since Messalla’s legion was at Sora, the proconsul would have to have begun his trek to Asculum from that area, and would therefore either have fought the Paeligni somewhere nearby (according to one scholar)9 or would have fought them at some unnamed point further removed from Sora but along the way into Picenum. Some objections to both of these interpretations can be raised immediately, however. As to the first of them: if Caesar started from Sora, where he is alleged to have received the legion of Messala, and took a direct path between that city and Asculum, he would have gone up the Liris valley through Marsic territory.10 If the Paeligni he defeated (Per. 73) were the same men as those who had earlier defeated Perperna (id est, those under the command of Praesenteius), then it seems almost certain that he would have to have engaged them somewhere near where they had last been seen, in the neighborhood of Alba Fucens. However, no mention is made of the proconsul then moving on to relieve that city after defeating the Paeligni, but instead he left it to its own devices and allowed it to continue to be enveloped. Furthermore, this route would also take Caesar through Carseoli and thus into the vicinity of the victorious army of Scato, and yet no move is recorded as having been made by Scato to halt Caesar’s advance. It seems very difficult to believe that Scato would allow a force of Romans to operate to his rear, which at the very least might menace him and at the very worst move to invest what must have been recognized as Salmon (1967, p. 354) further speculates that the reason for the transfer was that Messala was cashiered due to a battle Salmon postulates Messala had lost to Scato shortly before the latter emerged at the Tolenus, for which see chapter 5 and the notes supporting the discussion of the battle of the Tolenus. As was argued there, the battle in which Salmon claims Messala was defeated has gone unreported in the sources and is certainly not required to explain the movements of Scato between his defeat of L. Caesar and his later defeat of Rutilius, and there is therefore no evidence of incompetence on the part of Messala which demanded his replacement by Caesar. 9 Salmon, argued in the place cited above. 10 See Map 1. 8

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the strategically important city of Asculum. Finally, Caesar’s trek might also conceivably have brought him within range of Amiternum, yet there is no mention of a move made by the conquering Poppaedius Silo to strike at the Romans; Silo would therefore be guilty of the same tactical inactivity as Scato. Thus, if Caesar took a direct path from Sora to Asculum, his route took him deep into enemy territory past a city desperate for relief which he did not bring to it, along which he slipped past what may have been three enemy armies (Scato’s, Silo’s, and the besiegers of Alba) without engaging a single one of them, which is difficult to believe.11 Alternatively, Caesar could have taken Messala’s army, retreated to the Via Latina, taken that road all the way to Rome, and then around the city before going up the Via Salaria all the way to Asculum (and defeating the Paeligni somewhere in the process). This would explain why he did not move on Alba, and why he encountered no opposition along the way from Scato or Silo (even though, theoretically, the Via Salaria might have been within striking distance of both. But there remains the fact that Caesar eventually arrived at Asculum in time to press the siege there in relief of Pompeius, who went home to run successfully for consul. This would mean that Pompeius would have had time to be relieved, make it all the way back to Rome, and canvass for votes before the elections in November, a scenario which in turn demands that Caesar would have been able to cross a good portion of Italy—even the direct path between Sora and Asculum is well over 100 miles over mountainous and hostile territory; the indirect path adds much more distance—and defeat the Paeligni in order to arrive to give Strabo time to do this. The very earliest point at which Caesar could have won his victory was the middle of June, since the Periochae places it after the defeat of Rutilius on the eleventh of that month (see chapter 5). This would give the proconsul less than four months to accomplish everything he is said to have done to give Pompeius his relief before November. 11 And this says nothing of the terrain of the area, which becomes extremely mountainous in the neighborhood of Carseoli and difficult to traverse even in modern times; see below.

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Given the distance and the various tasks involved, this feat does not seem particularly likely. Laying aside for a moment the extraordinary circumstances which almost certainly must have attached to a northward journey from Sora, it is also held that the very fact that Caesar is said to have fought the Paeligni is a support for his takeover of the legion of Messala, since in no other way could these two opponents have come to grips with each other: since on the one hand Picenum had been temporarily freed of Romans (by the combined actions of Scato, Vidacilius, and Lafrenius to defeat Pompeius near Firmum and then bottle him there), and on the other because the Tolenus area was already occupied with activity against Rutilius and then Marius, there is no reason why Paeligni would have been in either place.12 Thus, if Caesar had not come from Sora with Massalla’s army—if, for example, he had come from Rome with auxiliaries and taken the Via Salaria towards Picenum instead—he would have had no occasion to run into the Paeligni, who (it is argued) simply would not have had any reason to be in the neighborhood. Where they could have been found, this assertion continues, was in the Liris valley near Sora. In fact, the argument runs, it appears the Paeligni they were for the express purpose of attacking the proconsul, and that his defeat of them was in a battle they had instigated. Yet this construction, too, admits a great deal of skepticism. In the first place, an argument stating that the Paeligni attacked Caesar runs cleanly counter to Appian, who says the exact opposite occurred. In addition, even if it is granted that the Paeligni had attacked, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that Picenum could not have offered them a place to do battle; there is, in fact, ample reason to think that the Paeligni were closer to the area where they had been last seen, especially as Silo might have needed their support as he was engaged in his gambit with Caepio at Amiternum. Finally, even if it is accepted that the Paeligni had attacked and that they had done so near Sora, then the problem of Sextus Caesar’s long march to Asculum through enemy territory past enemy armies after this victory still remains, unless he then 12

By Domaszewski, loc.cit.

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took the time to double back to the Via Latina as described above, with all the problems attendant on that course of action. Finally, the underpinning of any attempt to have Caesar take over the division of Messala is the evidence of the bullets from Legio XV near Asculum. These bullets do not, however, inexorably demand that Sextus Caesar would have had to have relieved Messala: the bullets found at Asculum could have dated from later in the war, such as from the climactic battle of the following year. It is at the very least possible that soldiers from the southern theater were present at that battle, having been loaned briefly to the newly-minted consul Pompeius Strabo at the beginning of 89 (for which possibility, see chapter 6). Indeed, some soldiers from the area of Arpinum may have been sent to take part, which would explain how Cicero could claim to have served in the south under Sulla and at the same time to have been at Asculum to witness the conversation between Pompeius and Scato that he narrates in the Phillippics (12.27; see, again, chapter 6). Since, then, the bullets from Legio XV near Asculum need not have been slung in 90, but could have been launched at a later time, and since it is possible that soldiers from that legion were sent to Asculum at a later time, there is no epigraphic requirement for Messala’s loss of command. Since there is not, it may well be that he retained his commission.13 If, in turn, Caesar did not replace him, then there is no reason why the proconsul would ever have needed to be near Sora at all. In fact, it is certainly within reason to assume that Caesar’s soldiers could have been brought by him from his province, or drawn from the many reinforcements which Appian says the Romans were continually sending to commanders (καὶ αὐτοῖς οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ ἑτέρους ὡς ἐς μέγαν ἀγῶνα ἔπεμπον ἑκάστοτε; 1.5.40). Caesar could therefore either have assembled his forces in Rome and then departed from there, or simply set off from the capital with the men already under his command. From the metropolis he then could easily have led them towards Asculum by means of the Via Salaria, on which route he could thus just as easily have encountered Paeligni sent from the region of Alba 13 See Chapter 5 and Appendix K for other reasons to assert that Messala kept his command.

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Fucens or even from Corfinium. It is for these reasons, then, that Caesar is held to have done just such a thing in chapter 5.

APPENDIX K: MARIUS, SULLA, MESSALA, AND THE BATTLE OF THE VINEYARDS, 90 BCE One of the few victories achieved by the Romans during the first full year of the Allied War was one which C. Marius won against the Marsi in an unnamed location, probably in the neighborhood of Sora. The proximity of the battlefield to some vineyards (through which the Marsi would later try to escape) has led to it to be referred to in this essay—perhaps somewhat unimaginatively— as “The Battle of the Vineyards”. This battle is described in chapter 5, but it must be observed that its appearance there is much different than the form it takes in some other modern accounts,1 both in its timing2 and in some of the personnel involved. Perhaps the most notable variation in the description in that chapter as opposed to that found elsewhere is the role which is attributed to L. Cornelius Sulla, who is held to have been a factor—and maybe even the very one which determined Roman victory—in other accounts, but does not appear in the discussion of the battle in chapter 5 at all. Why Sulla is held to have been involved in the action at the Vineyards by these other works is due to narrative of Appian, which directly states that Sulla took part (1.6.46). However, in following Appian and putting Sulla at this event, a great strain is placed by these scholars on the timing and chronology of other battles and maneuvers in the war; in some cases, this leads to constructions about the overall bellum which make little sense in light of the ancient evidence and which not infrequently seems to transgress the bounds of simple good military sense. In light of these difficulties and due to what can be derived from the sources, in addition to and including Appian, Sulla’s participation is omitted in the discussion of the Vineyards in chapter 5. However, since this deletion not only signals a departure from other interpretations of this battle, and but it also seems to risk the considerable peril of 1 Specifically those of Alfred von Domaszewski in his Bellum Marsicum, E. T. Salmon in his Samnium and the Samnites, and Arthur Keaveney in his Rome and The Unification Of Italy,. 2 See Appendix I for the reordering of Appian’s text.

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flying in the face of Appian’s authority, a brief account of what factors led to the interpretation presented in this essay seems suitable, and will follow in the pages to come rather than add yet another aside or lengthy footnote in the narrative of chapter 5. By way of starting, Appian’s account would have it that Marius and Sulla cooperated to defeat an attack of the Marsi which seems to have come in Marsic territory. According to the interpretation of the disposition of troops which is generally agreed upon by most sources, the lands of the Marsi are held to have been part of the Northern theater under the command of Rutilius.3 Yet Sulla was not stationed in the Northern theater under Rutilius, but—according to the direct testimony of Appian (1.5.40)—was posted to the the Southern as a legate to L. Caesar instead. If the Marsi were indeed defeated in Marsic lands, then for Sulla to have been able to take part in this battle them at all, he would have had to have been close enough to the southern end of the Northern theater that he could cross into it to form the anvil against which the Marsi were struck by the hammer blows of Marius. However, this runs counter to the accepted construction of where he was placed, which was not terribly near the northern territory but was rather closer to Allifae. It is from this region that Sulla could have most easily executed the only action of 90 which any sources other than Appian attribute to him, id est the final assault on Aesernia. Likewise, Sulla may have taken part in an earlier operation which is not directly attested but is speculated for him in chapter 5, where it was suggested that Sulla may have accompanied L. Caesar on an earlier assault on that city. Appian seems to make it clear that Caesar made such an attack with more men than the two legions he is held to have kept under his personal command. It was theorized that Caesar took men from a nearby subordinate, which would either have been either Lentulus or Sulla.4 Sulla’s position at the 3

24).

See chapter 5, derived from the evidence of Domaszewski (p. 23–

4 Domaszewski, loc. cit. and p. 26. In the latter place he asserts that Caesar must have taken the soldiers from Lentulus, but he gives no evidence for this whatsoever; quite probably it was the only conclusion which he could have reached based on Appian 1.6.46 (more below).

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Allifae and thus his proximity to Caesar (who is speculated to have been in the neighborhood of Teanum, a base from which he could strike at Aesernia, and, later, Acerrae) as well as his proven command ability would likely have recommended him as a good man to have on this assault. In addition, by taking Sulla instead of Lentulus, Caesar would not have denuded the northern boundary of the Southern theater as he would have by taking the legion of Lentulus and thereby sidestepped the possibility of being flanked from the Samnites from the north (Didius at Capua—see chapter 5—would have protected the assault from being flanked from the south). Taking Sulla along for this mission would also have given that subordinate the lay of the land and would make him the logical choice to send on a third expedition against Aesernia, which is precisely what Caesar would do, probably at the same time as the consul himself was defeating Papius at Acerrae or shortly after. Yet the only way Sulla could have been available for this expedition would be if he were close reasonably close to Teanum and Aesernia. Allifae is within twenty five miles of Teanum; Marsic territory, over sixty miles away. If in fact Sulla did accompany Caesar on his ill-fated expedition against Aesernia, then he would not have been near enough to the Northern theater to act as Appian said that he had, and in fact would have had plenty with which to occupy his time in the south.5 5 Keaveney (1987, p. 134–140) suggests otherwise, however. In the first place, in his exertion to describe the events of 90 as having transpired in the order in which they appear in Appian’s narrative, Keaveney places the second attempt on Aesernia (leading to Caesar’s defeat in the defile) as having occurred after Acerrae rather than before (for the rearrangement of Appian see chapter 5 and Appendix I). Additionally, according to Keaveney Caesar did not take Sulla and his men with him on this second try at Aesernia, but instead sent him north as he was launching the assault to aid Marius, and in fact to rescue him (see below). However, this deputation would depend upon three circumstances, and each of them is unlikely (and this does not even factor in the chronological problems with this construction). In the first place, if Acerrae came before Aesernia, it would mean that Caesar would leave an enemy army—one which had been beaten but not destroyed after his victory—under Papius to his back as he got underway for Aesernia, and another under Lamponius in what is

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As has been seen thus far, then, in order for Appian’s placement of Sulla at the battle of the Vineyards to be correct, first and foremost that officer would have needed to be close enough to where the battle was fought that he could have joined in it. The unlikelihood of that closeness has just been dicussed. Additionally, Sulla’s participation would fairly demand that there be no other Roman commanders in the neighborhood who could be summoned by, or be sent to, Marius instead; had there been presumed to be same the area, with only Didius left to ward off an attack. In the second, by sending away Sulla, Caesar would diminish his available troop strength just at the moment he was about to assault Aesernia; in spite of the military unsoundness of this maneuver, it also disagrees with the evidence of Appian, which suggests Caesar had more soldiers, rather than less. Finally, it would mean that Caesar would have sent Sulla on this task rather than send Lentulus on it, even though the accepted interpretation is that Lentulus was closer to the land of the Marsi. As to these last two points, it could be answered that the soldiers which augmented Caesar’s forces (as per Appian) were those of Lentulus rather than those of Sulla. Yet unless this meant that the two legions merely swapped commanders, and thereby put both men under troops with which they were unfamiliar, then both men would be required to take their legions on a march of some distance—close to sixty miles, in fact—only to change places with each other. Secondly, it would mean that at some point while they were on this redeployment Caesar’s northern flank would be exposed. Lastly, Keaveney argues that the last assault on Aesernia, one which Sulla definitely led, happened after the Vineyards. This would have to mean that Caesar’s northern flank, which had been denuded of men for both the Vineyards and the battle culminating in Caeasar’s defeat in the defile, then that flank would be completely in the air when Sulla moved out of Marsic territory to head to Aesernia, as Keaveney asserts that he did shortly after the Vineyards. This would have been the case even though the Marsi apparently still had a great deal of fight in them after the Vineyards and could easily have charged through the opening in the line to strike the consul (and it is argued was what they had been attempting to do this very thing in the days leading up to the Vineyards, taking advantage of the consolidation of the legions of Marius and Rutilius after the Tolenus river which may have left an opening between Marius and Messala). For these reasons, Keaveney’s attempt to conserve Appian’s account fails to persuade, and has been abandoned accordingly.

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anyone else closer by than Sulla, he would likely have represented a better choice. This is not necessarily due to the hatred of Marius for Sulla, although that loathing was well known and so intense that according to Plutarch—admittedly, a by no means unbiased source—a Civil War between the two was on the verge of erupting when the Allied War struck (Mar. 32; see also chapter 7). As much as Marius detested him, if Sulla represented the only means by which a victory could be won, it is difficult to see how Marius would refuse to summon him in spite of their enmity (or how Caesar would fail to send him). But if another Roman were closer, than due to the combination of inimicitia and distance to be covered, it would make more sense logistically that such a commander would be called upon by, or sent to, Marius. As it turns out, according to the accepted arrangement of the Roman armies for 90, there were two of these who would have been closer to him than Sulla would have been. One was Lentulus, the legate of L. Caesar’s who was posted at the very northern edge of Caesar’s oversight.6 Almost nothing is heard of Lentulus throughout the war, which probably means he saw little direct action himself.7 It could be that this was because it was with his soldiers, and not Sulla’s, that L. Caesar reinforced himself for the second assault on Aesernia. However, as this ran the risk of opening a gap in Caesar’s northern flank, it is suggested above that such a course of action was unlikely.8 If Lentulus had not been summoned south to reinforce Caesar, he would have been available to aid Marius at the Vineyards, and would have been closer, making him a far better choice than Sulla irrespective of the latter’s abilities. An even better choice than Lentulus, however, would have been the other Roman commander who would have been closer to Marsic territory still. This was Valerius Messala, who was—as it is generally agreed upon—placed at the southern end of the defensive See earlier note for additional reasons why Sulla would not be substituted for Lentulus. 7 For more on the difficulties with Lentulus, including the possibility that Appian may have confused P. Lentulus for Q. Catulus, see Domaszewski (p.20), and Keaveney (1987, p. 208–209). 8 See, again, earlier note. 6

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line of the northern theater by Rutilius. Messala would have had the advantage of propinquity, and, what is more, was attached to the northern theater whose command Marius had inherited (as was not the case for either Lentulus or Sulla, both under the command of Caesar). However, many modern scholars state that this would have been an impossibility due to the fact that Messala (or so they argue) was no longer there: rather, he had been removed and the men under him taken over by Sextus Julius Caesar. This was either because Messala had been beaten by Scato at the opening stages of the latter’s march up the Liris valley which culminated in Battle of the Tolenus, or simply due to the proconsul’s greater need for Messala’s men for his march to Asculum.9 However, neither Messala’s defeat nor Caesar’s takeover of his command (for whatever reason) is mentioned in the sources, and it is quite probable that neither occurred.10 If it did not, and if the speculation about Lentulus is correct, then it is by no means impossible that both men were in fact in the positions where it is speculated they had been since the beginning of the war, namely guarding (respectively) the flanks of Caesar and—eventually—of Marius. This removes any need for Sulla to be anywhere in the area, allowing him to remain in the south where he would eventually be found storming Aesernia. As far as who would be dispatched to aid Marius at the Vineyards, Massala would have fallen under the imperium of Marius after the death of Rutilius and Caepio (see chapter 5), making him a preferable assistant in the coming battle than Lentulus. Indeed, if the Marsi were making the sort of effort that chapter 5 argues that they were—namely, an attempt at an end run around Marius—then the general’s move to stop them by summoning Messala would make far more sense if Lentulus were in position. By remaining in position, Lentulus could in essence Domaszewski (p. 25–26) imputes no blame to Messala but simply assumes the loss of command had been out of necessity to give soldiers to Sex. Caesar; Salmon (1967, p. 354) also states that Messala had lost his men to Caesar, but believes that his failure to stop Scato as well as Caesar’s need for men had dictated the decision. 10 For a further discussion of these matters, see Appendix J. 9

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defend both Caesar’s assault to the south and the endeavor to trap the Marsi to the north against reinforcement or flanking attacks from either direction. There is, as has been seen, little reason to suggest that Marius could not have done precisely this, id est summon Messala. There is, however, one substantial reason to claim, irregardless of whether he could have summoned Messala with Lentulus in position to protect against flanking maneuvers, that he nevertheless did not do so, and that is the abovementioned statement of Appian that Sulla was there. Appian’s text is unambiguous as to Sulla’s presence, and seems to provide the barricade at which point the hitherto-offered conjecture ought to stop. Nevertheless, Appian’s testimony is not entirely above doubt. In the first place, it is fairly odd that he is the only source to mention Sulla’s role in the Vineyards. Among those other sources which describe the battle, none mention Sulla’s alleged part in it. These sources include the Periochae of Livy (73) and Orosius (5.18.15), which neither take note of Sulla’s fighting, although the latter immediately mentions him in the next sentence describing the last assault on Aesernia. This would seem to suggest that Livy, from whom both of these descend, likewise did not have a record Sulla at the battle. More remarkable still is the fact that Plutarch similarly does not observe Sulla’s presence at the Vineyards in either his Marius or his Sulla. It is known that Plutarch made use of Sulla’s memoirs for both of these biographies (see chaper 1). It is staggeringly difficult to imagine that the Dictator would not have written extensively of his role in such a great victory had he actually been there, and had he done so, it is almost as difficult to believe that what he wrote would not have relayed by Plutarch in one or the other lives (see, for example, his description of Sulla at Aquae Sextiae, where both men certainly fought). That Plutarch goes into great detail about the Vineyards in his life of Marius, but leaves Sulla out of it, suggests that Sulla does not have anything to say about the episode. This at least allows room to doubt where Sulla really was there at all. Sulla’s absence might also explain why it is that his run for the consulate was delayed until 89. During the elections in 90 the Romans were apparently desperate to elect men of military promise, resulting in the return of Pompeius Strabo and L. Porcius Cato. Presumably, Strabo’s recovery from Firmum and assault on

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Asculum seems to have been enough to win him election, as does Cato’s Etruscan expedition. If Sulla had in fact been present at the Vineyards and had either actually done much to secure victory there or could reasonably feign that he had (something with which he had had experience, as the events following the Jugurthine War illustrates; see chapter 7), then surely he could have attempted a run at the chief magistracy based on these credentials: his record would have stood favorably against that of Strabo, and perhaps even that of Cato, as well. Instead, he delayed his run until late 89, after a string of undoubted successes. This implies that Sulla did not run in 90 because he had taken part in no pugna for which he deserved, or could arrogate, credit for victory, compelling him to wait until he could acquire some. Admittedly, all of these arguments are e silentio, and it may be that they are not strong enough to overturn an explicit statement by Appian. Yet there is an aspect of Appian’s work which leaves a final avenue for doubt. As is well known, Appian occasionally errs; throughout book one of the Civil Wars, he routinely confuses Sex. Julius Caesar (cos. 91) for L. Julius Caesar (cos. 90), and indeed correctly identifies L. Julius Caesar but one time (1.8.72, mentioning his death at the hands of Cinna and Marius in 87; see chapter 8). It is at least possible that Appian has mistaken Sulla for someone else here, and it should be noted that the cognomina “Sulla” and “Messala” are fairly similar. Perhaps Appian confused them. Indeed, since Sulla would go on to play such a prominent role in the campaigns of 89 and Messala would disappear from the accounts,11 the likeness of their names and the relative importance of the two may have led Appian to err by adding to Sulla’s victories in the following year recognition for an action actually undertaken by Messala, who was otherwise a nonentity.12 And indeed from history; no more offices or honors for this man are found, according to Broughton (vol. 2, p. 30 and note 19; likewise vol. 3, p. 212). 12 That Appian could have made such an error is speculated by Haug, p. 229; Keaveney does not take note of this, although he believes Appian could have made a similar error regarding Lentulus/Catulus (see earlier note). 11

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If Appian’s evidence should be reconsidered in this fashion and brought into line thereby with the other sources, then it also seems fitting to clear both Marius and Sulla of charges of incompetence which have sometimes been attached to them by some modern accounts. For example, one rendition of the battle13 holds that Marius had essentially got himself trapped in the southern edge of the Northern Theater, drawing on the references in the Periochae that Marius had fought unsuccessfully with the Marsi (C. Marius cum Marsis dubio eventu pugnavit; 74) and that of Plutarch Marius that he had been “hemmed in with trenches” (περιταφρευόμενος ἠνέσχετο καὶ χλευαζόμενος καὶ καλούμενος οὐ παρωξύν ; 33). From this snare, it is argued, Sulla had rescued him, after first defeating the forces of Herennius in the Liris and driving him north to the Vineyards.14 By way of response, it should be noted in the first place that Marius needed no such rescuing, as the same passage of Plutarch makes abundantly clear; rather, he had extricated himself from whatever straits into which he had fallen. In the second, the evidence discussed above readily yields the inference that Sulla was not in the position he would have needed to occupy to undertake this rescue even if one had been needed.15 Finally, it was seen in chapter 5 that Herennius may have come to the aid of Silo by means of the road going through Aesernia from Venusia, avoiding the Liris altogether and thus the need for anyone, Sulla or otherwise, to come to grips with him there.16 Moreover, the suggestion in that modern account that Marius had gotten himself into such a fix by going on the offensive is most unlikely, as Marius had consistently proven reluctant to attack until completely ready (see, for example, his posture at the Tolenus as described in chapter 5). Equally dubious is its claim that the vignette in Diodorus, in which a battle between Marius and Silo 13 That of Keaveaney (1987, p. 139), whose antipathy to Marius might well be expected of a biographer of Sulla. 14 For Herennius at the Vineyards, see chapter 5. 15 Indeed, Keaveaney himself argues that there is no reason to believe that Valerius Messala had been relieved of his command (1987, note 38 p. 148–149), though Messala is nowhere to be found in his interpretation of the Battle of the Vineyards. 16 For this route see chapter 5.

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collapses (see chapter 5), more properly belongs before the battle of the Vineyards rather than afterwards, due to the fact that after the Vineyards, the Romans would not be “reluctant to engage an enemy they had defeated once before”. Countless examples throughout history can be dredged up to show just such a reluctance, especially when coupled with exhaustion after a long campaign. The fraternization found in Diodorus may have occurred before the Vineyards, but it could just as easily have happened afterwards, and the battle became a non-starter because of the lateness of the season and fatigue (so chapter 5). On the other hand, if Sulla cannot be shown to have rescued Marius (nor that the latter needed rescue at all), than neither can Marius be claimed to have undone any negligence or ineptitude of Sulla’s, which is claimed by a different scholar.17 According to this rendition, Sulla was put in charge of containing the force of Marsi, who had slipped past him and had to be dealt with by Marius. Thus, this account would have it, it had been Sulla and not Marius who had demonstrated poor generalship by allowing the Italians to get as far as Marsic territory. Although Marius had restored the situation, this version continues, Sulla later lied about this in his Memoirs, from which the source of Appian drew his narrative. Based on many of the reasons already cited, the part of this construction which concerns Sulla should also be discarded. Other elements of the account of the engagements surrounding the Vineyards are more plausible, such as its additional claim that Marius fought a defensive campaign, which is almost certainly correct. This account, too, would have it that the fraternization between the armies of Marius and Silo described in Diodorus took place to the early summer, before the Vineyards;18 again, this is not impossible, but it is no more plausible than that it took place afterwards (as asserted in chapter 5). Indeed, it may be that the account presented in chapter 5 does perhaps explain the behaviors of the soldiers a little better, and it similarly preserves the account of Periochae 73–74. In that source it is stated that after the battle in Specifically, Salmon (1967, p. 355–356). Salmon, loc. cit. See also p. 363 note 3, where doubt is cast upon whether Marius and Silo discussed the citizenship at this conference. 17 18

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which the Marsi were routed, Marius cum Marsis dubio eventu pugnavit; this “doubtful outcome” might easily have been because battle did not take place, under which circumstances a “draw” in which neither side won or lost would have transpired. For all of these reasons, the account of the campaign of Marius—one which culminated in the Battle of the Vineyards, whose sequel was the abortive battle in which the soldiers took to embracing over fighting—departs from other accounts. Due to the improbability of his appearance there, the claim of Appian that Sulla fought and played a crucial role in the battle is abandoned, and both he and Marius are absolved from any danger brought about by poor leadership from which the one needed to save the other.

APPENDIX L: THE NATURE AND TIMING OF LEGES CALPURNIAE AND THE LEX JULIA

As chapter 6 illustrates, there are many difficulties which beset an attempt to discover the exact process by which the Romans began to concede the franchise to some non-citizens in the year 90. One of these has to do with the timing of the adoption of the lex Julia: while it can be stated with close to perfect certainty that it was passed by L. Julius Caesar and therefore must have been voted on at some point in the year 90, what is less certain is precisely when in the year 90 this occurred. Another involves the intended recipients of this offer. It was speculated in chapter 5 that it was primarily designed in order to keep the Latins from joining the Alliance and to get them to contribute the soldiers they had hitherto withheld, and to secure the same from those Etruscans and Umbrians who had not revolted while helping pacify those who had. There nevertheless remains the question as to whether other Allies may have been involved in this offer, and if they had been, how it affected the rest of the course of the war. Finally, whetever the precise dating and specifications of the lex Julia may have been, it was apparently not the only law dealing with Allied enfranchisement and its effects which can be dated to around the year 90. Evidence for this statement can be drawn from two fragments from the now-lost work of L. Cornelius Sisenna, both referring to legislation involving citizenship, and both from part of Sisenna’s text which seems to deal with the year 90. One of these fragments (120) describes how a lex Calpurnia conceded the citizenship to non-Roman soldiers as a reward for exceptional service, and the other (17) seems to indicate that L. Calpurnius Piso created two new tribes.1 As mentioned, the reports come from The actual fragment reads in full L. Calpurnius Piso ex senati consulto duas novas tribus, and therefore has no verb is associated with it. It could easily be the case that the missing verb might have indicated something other than that Piso created these tribes. The text does not allow for certainty, but in its absence, scholarly consensus is for Piso’s creation of the tribes. This theory will be followed here. 1

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fragments of Sisenna, whose surviving words are too few to allow for a precise determination as to what these initiatives exactly circumscribed, and, importantly, exactly when they were passed. Since both of these (apparent) laws are described nowhere else in the ancient sources, neither of these problems with them is easily solved; in fact, given the state of the sources, it is probably impossible to arrive at a permanent and uncontestable solution to them. Pinpoint accuracy about the exact date and scipe of the lex Julia cannot be acquired, nor can absolute clarity be had on precisely what these would-be leges Calpurniae were, when they were passed, and what role they may have played in enfranchising Allies in the year 90. Nevertheless, since all of these elements touch on matters of great significance for understanding both the events of the Allied War and, ultimately, for what transpired in the rest of the decade, even solutions which may leave themselves open to question should be attempted. Such have been suggested in Chapter 6. However, the full rationale behind the interpretations given in that chapter for the chronology and extent of the lex Julia, and for the true nature of the laws which Sisenna’s fragments describe, have been left out of that chapter. Given the importance of these laws and their provisions, and since the speculations made about them is sometimes at variance with scholarly consensus, it seems inappropriate simply to leave that complete explanation out of this essay. It has therefore been relegated to the pages to follow, so that the various scholarly opinions which went into that interpretation could be given a full hearing, and the decisions made about the evidence be justified. Moreover, and since it was argued in chapter 6 that the Calpurnian laws and the Caesar’s measure are related, they will be considered together here. In the first place, what is certainly known of the lex Julia is that it gave the citizenship to those Italian communities who either had either never joined the rebellion or who had withdrawn from it prior to a date which was almost certainly specified in the law itself, but which is not known now (see chapter 6)2. Interestingly, a lex 2 Based on the conjecture—commonly accepted by the modern scholarship—that the lex Julia mentioned in Cicero (Pro Balbo 21) and

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Calpurnia also allowed for something like this: fragment 120 of Sisenna states that someone (presumably a commander) was allowed to give the citizenship to soldiers, almost certainly individually, as recompense for merit by means of a Calpurnian law (milites ut lex Calpurnia concesserat virtutis ergo civitate donari). As can be seen, this fragment reveals nothing alse about the law, and among the missing particulars are when the law was passed, and when it was in effect. Since Sisenna is the only source ever to mention it, no further enlightenment about this lex Calpurnia can be found anywhere else. However, textual evidence involving what can be known about the work of Sisenna suggests that the book from which this fragment came dealt with the period of around the year 90 (more below). If this is so, then the lex Calpurnia would have existed around that year. As a consequence, there seem to have been two laws which existed in or around the year 90 which bestowed the civitas on persons who did not have it, and the exists at least the possibility that they did the same thing. It would seem odd that the Romans would have two laws with identical provisions in being at the same time; one of them, obviously, would be redundant. Yet this situation would make sense if the two laws were different to each other; it would make even more sense if they did similar things, but one was more expansive than the other, and was passed at a different time. Evidence can be found to suggest that this last was actually the case with these leges, and that the earlier law was the lex Calpurnia. In the first place, lex Julia seems to have far more sweeping terms than those which are known of the lex Calpurnia: the latter is only mentioned as being able to give the franchise to soldiers, while the former seemed to have been able to give the franchise to entire communities. Because a law which would enfranchise entire communities would also give it to the soldiers within them, it Aulus Gellius (4.4.3) is to be identified with the unnamed law described by Appian (1.6.49) as giving the citizenship to the Allies who had remained loyal (more below), and likewise to be identified as the first of the two equally-unnamed laws mentioned by Velleius Paterculus which not only gave the civitas to the Allies who remained loyal and those who had lain aside their arms maturius. See chapter 6 for more on this identification.

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makes little sense that the more limited law would have been passed after the more expansive one. Rather, it is much more easily believed that a larger lex Julia would be passed to broaden and extend a fairly limited lex Calpurnia, which had come before it. That it did so may be discerned in an inscription (ILS 8888) which describes individual soldiers—in this case some Spanish—cavalry being given the citizenship by Gn. Pompeius Strabo based on the powers given him ex lege Iulia (see below), but not ex lege Calpurnia. The inscription’s mention of the lex Julia, as well as its reference to Pompeius as imperator (a status he likely could only have had as a commander with imperium, such as a consul, rather than as a subordinate) places the year in which the bequest occurs as 89.3 The fact that Pompeius was not giving the franchise to the entire communities from which the cavalty came, but gave it to the horsemen alone, clearly indicates that the lex Julia allowed both communities and individuals to be enfranchised by it. From this, the inference can readily be drawn the lex Julia did everything the lex Calpurnia did and more besides, making the latter a better candidate for having been the earlier of the two, with the former building on and extending it. Furthermore, there is also evidence that Roman commanders had the ability to grant the citizenship to individuals before the passage of the lex Julia, as an anecdote from the life of the very man who draughted the law shows. As was seen in chapter 5, during his time in the field Caesar could be shown offering the citizenship to a Cretan in exchange for military information (Diod., 37.18). Since it is overwhelmingly probable that Caesar was kept away from Rome by responsibilities in the field for the entirety of his consulate (more below),4 and probably also never made it back into the field once he returned to the capital, then this offer must have been made before he had passed the lex Julia which would give him the power to make it. This, in turn, means he either made

For more on this point, see Stevenson p. 95. See also chapter 5 and 6, as well as Appendix I for the chronology in Appian which might otherwise throw doubt on this. 3 4

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the offer illegally, or that he was given the right to do so by an earlier law, which was probably the lex Calpurnia.5 Of course, an objection can be raised to this construction based on the fact that the fragment describing this lex Calpurnia had evidently been taken from book IV of Sisenna, a book which was apparently mostly concerned with the year 89. Nevertheless, in the first place it has been noted that book IV might well have included events from the summer and fall of the previous year.6 If that is so, then the lex Calpurnia could be asserted to have existed in 90, at least. In the second, even if the lex was mentioned in the context of events happening in 89, the use of the pluperfect concesserat means that it could be describing a law which had been passed earlier,7 and possibly earlier by far. For these reasons, there can be little doubt that the lex Calpurnia antedated the lex Julia, which superseded it. Firmer dating of this lex Calpurnia is not possible; indeed, it may have dated to before Asculum. However, what does seem certain is that it had been passed at some point prior to the late fall of 90, when it would have been rendered obsolete by the lex Julia. It remains to be answered whether this lex Calpurnia is to be connected with the L. Calpurnius Piso who was responsible for the creation of two new tribes mentioned in fragment 17, as described above. This is a possibility: indeed, it might be that this tribal creation was a part of his law which took care of how those milites so enfranchised would vote. On the other hand, it hardly seems possible that a law granting citizenship to a few soldiers would make two new tribes necessary. Such a measure would be See also chapter 6 for more on this point. So Mouritsen (1998, p. 155–156), and Haug (p. 215), depending on how neatly the books were divided. According to Mouritsen, Sisenna’s third book only extended through the summer of 90, which would mean that book IV would have to begin with either the late summer or the fall of that year. On the other hand, Haug woild have it that Book III included references to the fall of Aesernia, which proably took place in the autumn of 90 (see chapter 5); if book III ended there, then book IV would have begun with late autumn of 90. Either way, these scholars allow that book IV may have included events from 90. 7 Brunt 1988, p. 133. 5 6

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appropriate instead only on a mammoth influx of new citizens.8 For this reason, it may be that the fragment discusses an action more properly to be connected with the lex Julia than with the lex Calpurnia of the other fragment. Indeed, this second fragment may be discussing a law by which those who were beginning to be enfranchised by the lex Julia were given their tribal designations, as argued in chapter 6. Thus, while the first lex Calpurnia very probably antedated Caesar’s law, the second may have been passed shortly afterwards.9 Having postulated that the leges Calpurniae were different measures, of which one came before the lex Julia and the other quite probably came afterwards, it remains to be seen when the lex Julia itself was passed. It has been argued in chapters 5 and 6 that this initiative was passed in the late fall of 90 following the revolt of Etruria and Umbria, and that it was indeed partly passed in response to that event. Such a circumstance would be consistent This is the stance taken by Keaveney (1987, p. 170) and Mourtisen (p. 155), and is convincing enough. 9 There are also objections which could be raised to this construction, however, which are based on Sisenna. Fragment 17 is held to have come from book III, and (as mentioned in an earlier note) book III seems to have ended with either the summer of 90 or the fall of that year. If the former, it seems impossible to date this second lex Calpurnia to after the passage of the lex Julia (more below); if the latter, it becomes possible, but still difficult. However, the ambiguity of the fragment makes it such that certainty cannot be vouchsafed: the verb which is missing may be in the future tense, which means that fragment 17 may refer to something done by L. Calpurnius Piso in early 90, the same man who presently (id est, by the end of 90 or even later) would go about creating new tribes. As farfetched as this suggestion may be, it illustrates that even if it can be guessed what the chronological parameters of Sisenna’s lost books may have been, the incompleteless of the two fragments in question cannot be positively taken to refer to events within those parameters. Thus, the pluperfect used in reference to the lex Calpurnia of fragment 120 may suggest that the law itself had been passed much earlier than 89, the year alleged to have been covered in the book from which that fragment was taken, and likewise the lack of the verb in fragment 17 may mean that it foreshadowed an event which happened later than early 90, the year held to have been described in the book from which that fragment was taken. 8

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with what has been theorized about the chronology of the year 90,10 according to which L. Julius Caesar spent the almost the entirety of that period either planning, fighting, or recovering from battles: so busy was the consul that he proved unable to return to Rome to name a suffect after the death of his colleague at the Tolenus river (Appian 1.6.44). By the fall of 90, however, things had quieted down enough in the south after Caesar’s victory over Papius near Acerrae that the consul could afford to leave the army under a subordinate (perhaps L. Cornelius Sulla) and return to Rome to preside over the elections of his successors.11 That one of these would ultimately be L. Porcius Cato strongly suggests that the campaign against the Etruscans and Umbrians had already been concluded, allowing for Cato to capitalize on his victories and parley them into electoral success (just as his colleague, Cn. Pompeius Strabo, would capitalize on his recovery of the situation near Asculum). On the other hand, there has been the suggestion that Caesar had arrived a little earlier and passed his lex Julia while these campaigns were still being waged, thus helping to pacify the region, and this is not impossible.12 Either way, the picture emerges of a lex Julia being passed towards the end of 90 rather than in the See chapter 5 and Appendix I. According to Nicolet (1988, p. 238), at this time consular elections were held in Rome around the beginning of November, which aligns well with a notice in Sallust that in the previous decade consuls had been elected shortly after news of Arausio (fought on October 6 th) had come back to Rome. Caesar would very likely have been able to have made it back to Rome by then. Appian’s assertion that he had not been able to go home to hold elections pertained to the election of a suffect following the death of Rutulius on June 11th, and thus need not necessarily mean—as Brunt (1988, p. 133) would have it—that Caesar could not return for the usual consular elections and thus had to wait until very late in the year. Rather, as things became stable (as they had after the Vineyards and Acerrae), Caesar could afford to absent himself from his troops to hold elections and, perhaps, pass laws. 12 So Keaveney (1987, p. 138, 142, 170, and 177 note 24). Mouritsen’s objections—namely, that the laws were passed in the summer and the Etruscan/Umbrian revolt occurred even afterwards—have already been encountered in chapter 5, while the views of Brunt (loc. cit.) are discussed in the note directly above. 10 11

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middle of it, which allows one lex Calpurnia to have been passed either in early 90 or before, while another could have been passed at the same time or later. If the conjectures above are correct, then the timing of the lex Julia can be settled: it was passed around the time of elections in Rome, which is to say November, in the year 90. Likewise, its relationship to the leges Calpurniae, which were two laws and not one, can be discerned. The lex Julia replaced the first lex Calpurnia, a law which already existed but was now rendered unnecessary, and it inspired the second, which allocated the citizens created by the lex Julia into two new tribes. The only mystery which remains involves the specific Allies who were made cives by Caesar’s law. According to Appian, the lex Julia bestowed the franchise on those Italians who had “adhered to the alliance”. (Ἰταλιωτῶν δὲ τοὺς ἔτι ἐν τῇ συμμαχίᾳ παραμένοντας ἐψ φίσατο εἶναι πολίτας; 1.6.49). “Adhered to the alliance” was apparently so loosely defined that it included the Latins, who may not have fought against Rome but—as is speculated in chapter 5—may not have contributed their soldiers to the armies of the Commonwealth either. Velleius Paterculus is more precise in that regard, as his claims that the law gave the civitas to the Allies who “had not taken up arms” (qui arma aut non ceperant). It also apparently made this bequest to those who had resorted to fighting but had desisted from it maturius. However, there is some controversy concerning this last provision mentioned by Velleius: did it only give the franchise to those who had surrendered by a certain point before the law had been passed (the position taken in chapter 5 and 6),13 or did it contain a period in which those who wanted to surrender on the basis for the franchise might do so after the law was enacted? There certainly have been those who have argued for the latter proposition,14 and some evidence is found to support it in the vocabulary used by Velleius: it would be unusual, the argument 13 That position of Chapters 5 and 6 is also advocated by Brunt (1988, p. 108, 132) and Salmon (1967, p. 360–361, where his comments are slightly different than they way they are portrayed by Mouritsen, 1998, p. 153), and seems also to be held by Keaveney (1987, p. 142, 170). 14 It is most notably asserted by Sherwin-White, p. 148.

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runs, for this author to employ the word maturius in describing of the applicability of the law to those who had surrendered in the past (id est, before the law had been approved), and all the more so since other adverbs better suited to that meaning were available to Velleius. Such usage, along with the statement in Appian that this law encouraged those Allies still in arms to hope for similar treatment (καὶ τῇδε τῇ χάριτι ἡ ουλὴ … τοὺς δὲ πολεμοῦντας ἐλπίδι τινὶ τῶν ὁμοίων πραοτέρους ἐποί σεν; loc. cit.), encourages the inference that the law contained a provision which allowed for those who surrendered after it was adopted to be enfranchised.15 However, such an assertion is vulnerable on several points. In the first place, no people are actually mentioned as having surrendered to take advantage of this provision, either in the account of Appian or anywhere else. If it is to be accepted that the Allies had ultimately taken up arms because the citizenship had been denied to them,16 then it becomes strange that none of them would have availed themselves of the opportunity to get it in this fashion.17 Additionally, the contention rests on an interpretation of Appian’s sentence which is quite tenuous. A much stronger impression from the line is that the law gave hope to those Allies still in arms that a 15 Sherwin-White, loc. cit; Badian (1958, p. 226) seems to believe likewise, holding that the lex Julia was the only franchise law. 16 As Sherwin-White (and indeed Velleius) suggests. 17 Sherwin-White’s additional claim that the Allies were fighting for independence will not resolve this quandary; he, like almost all the other scholars with the exception of Mouritsen who claim that the Allies did indeed fight for this purpose, further notes that they did so only after the civitas had been consistently denied to them, and that independence was really the second prize to the more precious object which was the franchise; it seems like the very height of folly that they would now adhere to the less valuable commodity when the more valuable one was suddenly made available to them. Indeed, events at Asculum (see Chapter 6) show that the Allies still wanted the citizenship in 89 after the passage of the law; if that law had decreed that all they had to do to get the franchise was surrender immediately, it seems apparent that they would have done so rather than continue prosecuting the war (and, it should be pointed out, an immediate surrender would have prevented the battle to come, whose outcome was at that point of course still unknown but whose violence and magnitude might easily have been guessed.

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future law might eventually be passed to give them the citizenship too, strongly indicating that they were not included in the lex Julia and would not be. Finally, the weakness of the verbal argument is apparent: Velleius might have chosen that particular “peculiar” word for any number of reasons—as an expression of his style, for example, or from personal fondness for the word—which may have had nothing to do with the actual content of the law he was describing. For these reasons, the argument that the lex Julia contained the possibility for Allies in arms to gain the citizenship through surrender fails to persuade. The idea that the lex Julia only applied to those not currently in arms—either because they had never been taken up or because once taken up they were put away swiftly before the law was passed—is far more convincing, for the reasons cited above and for the additional reason that a limited grant would be far less disruptive than a broader one: if the Romans could enfranchise some, get their soldiers, and crush the remaining Allies in arms, the political, social, and financial repercussions described in chapter 4 would be far less. Therefore, it is this latter interpretation which has been adopted in chapters 5 and 6.

APPENDIX M: THE BATTLES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF ASCULUM, EARLY 89 BCE In most of the Appendices attached to this essay, the reasoning for various interpretations presented in the main body of the project— interpretations which are at substantial variance with those found in other scholars of this period—are reported at great length in the attempt to show why the opinions of these other scholars have been modified or rejected. Frequently these issues are of fairly broad significance, and since often more than one construction depends upon the same line of reasoning, a certain degree of indulgence is begged for what amounts to a digression. However, in the case of this particular Appendix matters which are only of military importance are discussed. The matter in question involves the way two battles from early 89 are postulated as having been fought, a postulate which is most unlike the way these battles are presented in other works. Such a matter may be of slight importance for the overall picture of the 80s BCE, but it is included here because it is a weakness of many scholars writing on the Allied war that they frequently offer accounts of military matters which seems to disagree with the sources but provide no explanation for why that disagreement exists. It has been the aim of this project to provide such an explanation when a similar departure from modern sources or apparent variance from the ancient authors seems to arise. In chapter 6 Gn. Pompeius Strabo is described as having defeated an Allied army on the way to Asculum, a defeat in which he inflicted horrific losses on the enemy as a prelude to a much larger battle which would soon transpire outside that city. This description involves the use of four sources, which all tell of battle that took place between Pompeius and the Allies in early 89; three of them add the additional observation that such battle took place at, near, or en route to Asculum. First and foremost, the Periochae mentions this combat in all of a single sentence which is fairly bereft of specifics (Cn. Pompeius cos. Marsos acie vicit; Per. 74). This sentence confirms that Pompeius defeated the Marsi, and that he did so as consul and thus in the year 89 (of which year it is the first event which can be so specified, thus allowing the impression that it happened fairly early on). It does not pin down where or how 785

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many times he did so—acie might mean “in a battle” or “in battle”, which could mean more than one—is not pinned down by the remark. Appian, for his part, mentions only one such battle taking place in the winter of 89, connecting it with the Etruscan and Umbrian insurrection which the Allies had sent forces to support (1.6.50). His account is mostly followed in chapter 6, albeit with some deviations (more directly). Velleius also mentions one battle, and only one, which was fought near Asculum (2.21). He he describes it as being vast in scope, involving 75,000 Romans and 60,000 Allies. Finally, Orosius mentions two battes, or rather two separate engagements as part of the same battle: in the narrative of that author, Pompeius first defeats the Marsi, and then on the same day (eadem die) the Picentes sally forth and are also conquered (5.18.18–21). Orosius does not identify the Roman general who defeated the Picentes, merely noting that they congressi and then capti sunt. However, his text seems to imply that the battle won by Pompeius was fought close enough to Asculum that the Picentes could engage him alongside the Marsi, and thus that Pompeius fought and defeated both peoples. Because the number of battlefield deaths and the ultimate fate of some of the survivors of the encounter described by Appian bears striking similarity to the number of battlefield deaths and ultimate fare of some of the survivors of one of the battles asserted as having taking place on the same day in Orosius, it is easily inferred that the same event is described by both men. Likewise, the complex two-day affair in Orosius might have involved the gigantic numbers of combatants depicted in Velleius. Hence, the temptation is to connect Velleius, Orosius, and Appian assume they all refer to one battle, the same as that described by the Periochae. All four sources have one other thing in common, as well, which is that the battle that is described in each is last major engagement fought around Asculum; subsequent to it, that city eventually capitulated to the siege by which it had been pressed since late 90. Several modern historians attempt to describe this one battle by combining the sources just mentioned in various ways. One of them combines the account of the Periochae and Orosius, although details from Velleius are not included in his rendering, and while he

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draws upon Appian to suggest that the battle involved an army sent to relieve the Etruscans and Umbrians, he neither cites that authority nor draws any other details from him.1 According to his account, soldiers sent from Allied communities on the Adriatic attempted mount a winter campaign and “thread their way through the Apennine passes to the Umbrians and Etruscans”, to whom they were bringing support. These suffered a shattering defeat by Pompeius, who then “sealed off the passes”. This compelled the survivors to attempt to return home “over the snow-clad heights of the Gran Sasso”, during which retreat many Allies perished. This construction of the battle gives rise to several problems, mostly involving location. In the first place, the clear implication is that the Allied relief army was encountered by Pompeius just as it had finished crossing the Apennines headed northwest towards Etruria and Umbria. Having been beaten, they were forced back across the mountains and, whose passes were “sealed”, and they made their retreat by the Gran Sasso. This would seem to demand that the battle was fought on the western side of the Apennines near the Gran Sasso, and thus near Amiternum.2 The sources cited in this recounting do not necessarily make such a placement impossible, yet the evidence of Orosius seems to make it very difficult. As was seen, that author appears to state that on the same day as the Pompeius was winning his victory, Picentes sallied forth and were conquered. If, as was speculated above, the text of Orosius is to be read that they joined in the battle alongside the others, then they would have had to cover quite a bit of distance to do so: the Gran Sasso alone is over thirty miles from that city, and Amiternum further still.3

Salmon, 1967, p. 362–363. See map 1. 3 As it turns out, Salmon makes no mention of the Picentes taking part in the battle in the main body of the text, mentioning only in a footnote that Orosius claims that some of the men defeated were from Asculum. This claim Salmon neither explicitly accepts nor explicitly rejects, thus sidestepping the problem of Asculum and the distance its men would have to cover to take part in any sort of battle fought where he places it. 1 2

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Additionally, this account would have it that the Allies were driven back over the Apennines by Pompeius upon their defeat, many of whom perishing in the cold of the mountains. Yet if Orosius is correct and the Picentes did take part in this defeat, it is to be wondered why it is that the Allies went back by way of the Gran Sasso, rather than fall back on that city. It may be assered in response that, according to that scholar, Pompeius had “sealed off the passes”, thus preventing a retreat to the north to Asculum. It is difficult to see how Pompeius could have done this, but what is more important is that it appears that he did not do so even if he had been able. For one thing, Asculum would apparently still have enough men to continue its resistance for some time. Orosius mentions a lengthy siege, and it is commonly accepted that Asculum held out until November,4 since the inscription whereby Pompeius enfranchised soldiers honoris causa5 at Asculum shows that he did so on November 17th. Due to the fact it was apparently the customary practice to give out honors only after the successful conclusion of operations,6 Asculum must have fallen at that time or before. If, in fact, the Picentes from that city had contributed large numbers of men for this battle (as Orosius asserts),7 then some of the Picentes must have fallen back on that city to enable it to last for so long, which means the route there must have been open. This fact implies that that Pompeius had not been able or had elected not to “seal off the passes”, and thus leaves unanswered the question as to why those miserable men who chose the retreat that led to their deaths in the snow did so rather than join the flight to Asculum. On the other hand, another construction8 (which is slightly more convincing than the one given above) also holds that there was but one battle, and that Appian, Orosius, Velleius, and Periochae are all describing that single event in their texts. This account draws So Badian 1964, p. 78; Domaszewski, p. 31; Salmon 1967, p. 365; Keaveney 1987, p. 155–156. 5 See Chapter 6 and Appendix L. 6 For which see Stevenson, p. 95. 7 And, again, Salmon mentions the possibility of their playing a role without further comment about it. 8 Domaszewski, p. 28–29. 4

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details from all of these sources. As this interpretation would have it, Pompeius was met in early 89 by an army aiming to relieve Asculum—which, following Orosius, is specifically named as consisting of Marsi—and by another consisting of Picentes under C. Vidacilius. Both attacked Pompeius Strabo on the same day as something of a two-pronged assault, a sort of maneuver strongly hinted at by Orosius. This occurred somewhere near Ad Aquas on the Via Salaria, and in numbers like those reported by Velleius; thus, 75,000 Romans against 60,000 total Allies. Upon the victory of Pompeius, 15,000 of those who were not killed or captured fled to their nightmarish deaths in the cold in the mountains of Umbria, as per both Orosius and Appian (who both mention their fate, if not the place where they met it). These did not include Picentes: according to this account, Vidacilius had not led the Picentes out of Asculum to fight in this battle, having never made it to his hometown in 90. Instead, he was headed north from Apulia (where he was seen operating in 90; see chapter 5) towards that town when he ran across Pompeius. Vidacilius then hit Pompeius from the south while the Marsi hit him from the west. In defeat, Vidacilius was able to make it to Asculum and then to make it inside, taking advantage of the loosening of the cordon around that city due to the major fighting at ad Aquas. Once he had made it in, Vidacilius fell into despair over his belief that he could not withstand the siege, and committed suicide shortly thereafter (so Orosius, who mentions the suicide but not the cause in the passage cited; the despair is found in Appian, 1.6.48). This rendition includes evidence from more of the sources and does not postulate impossible distances to be covered by the Allies, nor some the other difficulties entailed by having Pompeius “seal off the passes” of the Apennines. Yet it, too, is not without difficulties. Most of these revolve around the way it chooses to ignore evidence from Appian’s account. In the first place, it follows the numbers of Velleius and holds that 60,000 Allies fought, four times the number Appian gives. In the second place, it holds that the army of relief was not sent to bolster the Etruscans and Umbrians, but to relieve Asculum; in support of this claim, it cites a passage of Appian that says nothing of the kind (1.6.46). Furthermore, it claims that these relievers were Marsi, following Orosius. Appian, however, explicitly states that this relief was sent from those on the Adriatic (οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον; 1.6.50), clearly

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implying the coastal socii like the Frentani. The Marsi were not on the Adriatic, making it difficult to believe these were the men Appian meant. The most significant drawback to this construction involves Vidacilius. If he was—as is claimed by this version of the battle— south of Asculum headed northeast, and therefore hit Pompeius on the Via Salaria in concert with the relief army, then it seems that at some point Vidacilius could have gained access to a road which led straight to Rome with no one between him and that city. Why, then, would he head north to engage Pompeius, rather than simply move on Rome instead? By way of reply, it could be noted that Vidacilius was clearly concerned for the safety of his city (Appian makes this clear: πατρὶς δ᾽ ἦν Οὐιδακιλίου τὸ Ἄσκλον, καὶ δεδιὼς ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς ἠπείγετο, 1.6.48). Yet his city’s safety could be guaranteed if a lightning strike on Rome met with success and forced the Romans to terms. There was, then, a chance to the capital without an army to defend it, and even if Pompeius turned around to deal with this threat, he would have to be drawn away from Asculum. The Marsic relief army, if such there were, could then hit Pompeius from the other direction, or could ignore him completely and provide succor to Asculum. Instead of this plan, one of Alliance’s best generals—one known for his audacity— decided not to attack a Rome which must have been fairly denuded of defenders, and instead moved to close with a much larger force, which then repulsed him and the other army and pushed a fourth of its men into the frozen snows of Umbria. Of course, for Vidacilius to have had and squandered this golden opportunity, he would have to have been south of Pompeius in the first place. But Appian clearly states that Vidacilius made his way into Asculum by 90, and may indicate that he was dead by the time this battle was fought (1.6.48). Admittedly, the chronology in that particular section of the narrative is flawed, and the passage can certainly be read in such a way as to allow that Vidacilius lived through 90 and took part in battle in early 89. Still, whether alive or dead in 89, Vidacilius was almost certainly in Asculum in that year, if Appian’s testimony is to be believed. If alive, he may well have taken part in this battle with Pompeius, but he must have broken out of the envelopment first, having already broken into it the year before.

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For all these reasons, this second reconstruction of the battle raises so many difficulties that it is not compelling.9 There is, however, a better way to reconcile the evidence. In the first place, it is indeed likely that Appian and Orosius refer to the same occasion; even the numbers agree, if it is assumed that Orosius did not say 18,000 men died, but rather 8000 men did (and a simple copyist’s error might have led to this higher figure). If so, then the total number of Allies engaged would be 15,000 (8000 dead, 3000 captured, 4000 frozen), the exact number Appian mentions the Allies brought. The 4000 mentioned as having died would square with Appian’s estimate that half of the survivors died (slightly more than half, if there were 7000 survivors; slightly less, if there were 10000). Of course, this does not square precisely with Appian’s figure of 5000 men dead, so perhaps one of the two authorities were in error about the exact number of battlefield losses. This variance notwithstanding, it seems reasonable to connect the engagement described in Appian with that mentioned by Orosius. Moreover, it can also be possible that Orosius and Velleius are also describing the same event, a huge battle involving an attack of the Romans from without and within Asculum. It is known from both Appian and the Periochae that that at some point a great engagement was fought between Pompeius and the Marsi (Appian, 1.6.52; Per. 74). It is also known from Cicero that Pompeius and Vettius Scato were encamped close enough to each other that they could engaged in a parley witnesses by Cicero, and that this happened during 8910 What may be in error is the statement in Orosius that the attack happened eadem die, id est, that both happened on the same day. If instead there was more than one operation which happened relatively close in time and place to each other, then Appian, Velleius, and Orosius can align: they are describing two battles waged fairly in near physical and Likewise that of Mouritsen (1998, p. 155), which states that there was only one battle—that which is reported in Orosius—and that Appian’s details were to be applied to that battle; as he often does, Mouritsen calls for Appian’s account to be rejected out of hand, an outcome which is unsatisfying. 10 Cn. Pompeius, Sexti filius, consul me praesente; Phil. 12.27 9

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chronological proximity to each other, one on the way to Asculum, and the other slightly later just outside that city’s walls. In the first engagement, men sent from the Adriatic coast sent a relief force towards Etruria and Umbria, which was beaten by Strabo. Strabo then proceeded to Asculum, where a short time afterwards a large army of Marsi under Scato arrived in the attempt to lift the siege (an arrival not mentioned by Orosius). These then fell to battle, with Picentes from within Asculum breaking out of it to try and help their own case. Such This arrangement seems more logical than yet another interpretation which also posits two battles but believes that both ended with thousands of men dead in the ice of the winter.11 Therefore, a conjecture which would divide the fighting in Orosius into separate engagements along the lines listed above seems to be the most convincing, and it forms the center of the argument which is unfolded in chapter 6, even though it agrees with practically none of accounts of the modern scholarship on the Allied war.

11 Keaveney 1987, p. 142, 151, and 159 notes 2–3; in the latter place he also asserts his belief that the men first encountered by Pompeius were not coming to aid Asculum, and that they were led by Scato, for which see chapter 6.

APPENDIX N: CINNA, CAECILIUS CORNUTUS, AND METELLUS PIUS Chapter 6 describes how the year 89 opened with a grand battle at Asculum, in which the huge numbers of Allies under Vettius Scato and Vidacilius were defeated by an even larger force under the consul Gn Pompeius Strabo.1 Having defeated Scato, Pompeius resumed the siege of Asculum, but at some point he decided to leave a subordinate in charge of the envelopment and take the war into the territory of Vestini. There he achieved some victories and won the surrender of some cities before returning to Picenum to resume direction of the siege. It seems that Pompeius was encouraged enough by the outcome of this excursion into enemy ground to undertake some more of them, even if he himself would not lead them personally. He therefore dispatched a number of his subordinates towards that end. At least one of these—held to be Caecilius Cornutus in chapter 6—probably conducted a campaign in the territory of the Paeligni, and this campaign is narrated in the chapter mentioned. However, such a campaign is not explicitly described in the sources. As a result, the account of it in chapter 6 is based on a number of conjectures, some of which encompassing broader issues than the military operation to which they are attached. One involves its commander. By naming Caecilius Cornutus as its leader, chapter 6 distinguishes this man from Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius, the man who the Epitomator of Livy seems to suggest was operating in the vicinity (specifically, in the territory of the Marsi). To put it another way, the “Caecilius” named in that source as “Caecilius Pius” (Marsi quoque a L. Cinna et Caecilio Pio legatis aliquot proeliis fracti petere pacem coeperunt; Per. 76, with emphasis added) is held in this essay not to be Caecilius Metellus, but rather Caecilius Cornutus instead. The account provided in Chapter 6 is therefore in apparent contradiction with the Periochae. The reason for this divergence is that the evidence of other sources involving the career of Q. 1 See also Appendix M for further discussion of the circumstances surrounding this battle.

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Metellus Pius makes it improbable that he was the lieutenant of Pompeius who engaged in this enterprise. This in and of itself seems to warrant further explanation, especially of the nature of this evidence. Moreover, those aspects of the career of Metellus Pius which provide the basis for the disagreement are also important for other campaigns occurring both in 89 and later, supplying yet another reason to make explicit the reasoning behind placing Caecilius Cornutus in the area of the Paeligni and taking Metellus Pius out of it. Finally, the campaign in which Cornutus is substituted for Metellus Pius as described in chapter 6 also involves L. Cornelius Cinna, and in the process chooses but one of several possibilities offered by modern scholars as to what that man’s role in the Allied War had been. Such a role may have been of considerable influence on Cinna’s later career, such as his election to the consulate in 88. Some justification for having him do what it it claims he did in 89–88 therefore also seems proper. For all of these reasons, a closer look at Caecilius Cornutus, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius, L. Cornelius Cinna, and what is known of their political and military careers during the Allied War seems like an appropriate exercise. Since such an analysis would otherwise involve a digression (or a series of them) in chapter six, it seemed better not to overburden that chapter with asides and instead offer the necessary exploration in the pages to come. In the first place, while it is not stated explicitly in the sources that Pompeius Strabo dispatched any of his subordinates into the territory of the Paeligni, it is hard to imagine that he did not do so. This difficulty draws upon information from two authorities which seems to support such an expedition. One of these sources is Diodorus (37.2.9), who notes that Corfinium would eventually have to be abandoned after repeated Roman blows which started to fall on the Italians in increasing sharpness “after Cosconius was sent to command affairs in Apulia” (ἐπολέμ σαν δ᾽ οὗν καὶ ἔτι ἀλλὰ Γαΐου Κοσκονιου εἰς Ἰαπυγίαν στρατ γοῦ ἡττ σαν), an expedition known to have been launched in 89 (based on Per. 75). Pompeius would certainly be in an excellent position to deliver these blows to the Allies in the area of Corfinium, either by electing to strike them himself, or by means of having them struck by subordinates sent into that region from Asculum. It is more likely that he did the latter than the former after his defeats of the Vestini, especially in light of the fact that he seems to have sent his subordinate Servius

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Sulpicius Galba against the Marrucini (see chapter 6).2 C. Cosconius, who was sent against the Apulians, was also almost certainly under his command (see, again, chapter 6). If Pompeius had sent two legates south against the Marrucini and the Apulians, and he himself had taken care of the Vestini, then it stands to reason that he would also want to see to the Paeligni. But the distance between the lands of the Paeligni and where Pompeius was operating in Picenum would preclude him from doing it himself, as Asculum is about a hundred miles from Corfinium. Pompeius may have allowed himself to drift as far afield from Asculum as Pinna (itself over sixty miles away), it seems difficult to believe that he could both manage the siege at Asculum and still range much further than that into the territory of the Paeligni. Hence, if he wanted the Paeligni neutralized, he would need to send a subordinate to accomplish this. Alongside Diodorus, there is the statement of the Periochae, which mentions that in 88 the Paeligni and whatever Vestini had remained in the field would surrender to the proconsul Pompeius (Cn. Pompeius procos. Vestinos et Paelignos in deditionem accepit; Per. 76). For him to accept their surrender suggests either that he personally had beaten them in battles for which there are no other record, or (as is more probable) that the generals who had done so were under his overall imperium. The evidence from these sources allow it to be asserted with some certainty that Pompeius authorized an offensive into the territory of the Paeligni, and it is likewise almost certain that the target of this expedition would be the center of Alliance, Corfinium. It also seems likely that the Alliance would want to preserve this city, and probably dispatched their best commanders and much of their available forces left in the north to see to its defense. If Pompeius had indeed ordered such an assault on Corfinium, then the logicl jumping-off point for it would be Asculum, and thus that it would be coming from the northwest. Vettius Scato—assuming he was still alive at this point, as chapter 6 argues he was—would 2 See also supporting notes of Chapter 6 and Appendix R for why the Sulpicius legatus mentioned in Per. 76 and Orosius 5.18.25 is Ser. Sulpicius Galba, as opposed to P. Sulpicius Rufus.

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be a sensible choice to defend against it. Earlier that man had been mauled at Asculum, and it is not improbable that he had fallen back from there to Corfinium along the same path that the legate of Pompeius had taken. In fact, he may have still been on that path, and thus in a position to fend off the Romans. If that was the case, then Scato was therefore probably tasked with keeping the legate dispatched by Pompeius at bay and defending the Allied base, and did so within in the territory of the Paeligni. To accomplish this, it is probable that Scato had some Paeligni under his command, even though as he was Marsic himself, the majority of his men were probably Marsi.3 Of course, there may have been another commander besides Scato who was available for the defense of Corfinium and was possibly in the neighborhood. This is Q. Popppaedius Silo, who was last seen being defeated by C. Marius and Valerius Massala in the southern part of Marsic territory.4 After this defeat, Silo might well have marched north and shielded Corfinium. But it is more probable that he was busy in the defense of Corfinium from the other direction, as speculated by chapter 6. At any rate, it is reasonably clear that he was tied up in the lands of the Marsi early on in 89, as it is most likely that it was he who led those Marsi that were initially defeated by L. Porcius Cato in that year until Cato’s death in battle.5 Cato, as has been seen, had likely taken charge of all the forces south of Asculum as consul, probably lending some to Pompeius at the start of the year. The men of whom Cato almost certainly took direct command were almost certainly those led by C. Marius in 90, as Orosius explicitly states (Porcius Cato consul Marianas copias habens; 5.18.24). If so, then Cato may also have inherited the opponent of Marius, as well, and thus fought against Silo just as his predecessor had. But whereas Marius had maneuvered south to keep Silo from marching on Rome, so it now See also Appendix H. See chapter 5 and Appendix K for more about this battle and its captains. 5 See chapter 6; that Cato died in combat with the Marsi is attested by the Periochae: L. Porcius cos. rebus prospere gestis fusisque aliquotiens Marsis, dum castra eorum expugnat, cecidit (emphasis added; Per. 75). 3 4

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seems that Silo moved north to keep between Cato and Corfinium, as there can be little doubt that this was his ultimate objective. It is probable that Cato had been pressing northeastward towards Corfinium when he died, and just as probable that whatever commander took over the legions that had been directly under Cato’s command after the consul’s death continued along this line. This disposition of both Scato and Silo corresponds well with the notice in the Periochae (76) that the Marsi were beaten by two commanders until they were compelled to seek terms. It could then very well be that one of these commanders defeated the Marsi under Poppaedius Silo, who was attempting to bar the approach to Corfinium from the Romans headed in that direction through Marsic territory; as Silo was also Marsic and fought in Marsic lands, the Marsi doubtless comprised the greatest part of his forces. The other Roman commander defeated Vettius Scato, who was defending the aforementioned Paelignian city in Paelignian lands, but very likely with a significant number of Marsi alongside the the Paelignian troops. As was seen above, the Roman captains who defeated the Marsi are named in that source: they are L. Cinna and Caecilius Pius, who were also specifically observed to be legati. If all the previous assumptions accurately reflect what the situation actually was, then it is fairly easy to come to the conclusion that one or both of these men were legates of Pompeius. This would also accord well with a notice in Appian to the effect that Pompeius was responsible for subjecting the Marsi, as well as the Vestini and Marrucini (Γναῖος δὲ Πομπ ιος ὑπ γάγετο Μάρσους καὶ Μαρρουκίνους καὶ Οὐ στίνους, 1.6.52). Just as one of his subordinates had taken out the Marrucini, so, too, does it seem that another had taken out the Marsi, and it may well have been that this subordinate had done so in the process of working towards a larger aim, which was capturing Corfinium. Nevertheless, if one of these two men who bested the Marsi was a legate of Pompeius, it may well have been that both of them were not. It is also probable that at least Cinna was in fact initially the legate of L. Porcius Cato instead. It is known from Cicero (Pro Font. 43) that he had seen service as a legate under one of the four consuls of 90–89, and that it had not come with under Rutilius or Caesar can be intuited from his lack of mention in Appian 1.5.40, which describes the Roman commanders of 90. It would therefore seem that he fought under the command of either Pompeius or

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Cato in 89. Since Cato had been operating in Marsic territory until his death (as chapter 6 described), and since Cinna is next shown in the passage in the Periochae which has just been cited defeating the Marsi, it is conceivable that his role in defeating the Marsi was performed in Marsic territory. If that was the case, then it seems likely that Cinna had been attached to Cato rather than Pompeius6. It is also quite probable that it was Cinna who took over the legions under the direct command of Cato when he died. No other subordinate is named as doings so, and it is almost certain that those forces were not disbursed among the other commanders then engaged. Such a course might have been dangerous: if, upon the death of Cato, his men were sent south to Sulla, or north to Pompeius, then a gap would open, allowing for a Marsic counterattack that might have been able to gain the Via Valeria and move directly on Rome. Thus, just as Sulla would eventually do for those forces of the western department which were operating further to the south, so probably Cinna did for Cato’s forces to the north (as speculated in chapter 6). A snarl then appears to emerge. On the one hand, it is likely that Pompeius would want to crush the Paeligni, but could not afford to move too far away from Asculum to do it himself. Just as he certainly had with the Marrucini and probably had with the Apuli and Frentani, Pompeius may have entrusted that task to a legate, or perhaps more than one. The move against the Paeligni, whose ultimate objective was the capture of Corfinium, may have had the added bonus of overwhelming the Marsi, who were cooperating with the Paeligni in that city’s defense. Since Caecilius Pius and Lucius Cinna are are mentioned as legates overthrowing the Marsi, these might have been the deputies sent to attack Corfinium, allowing Pompeius to be credited with the defeat of both the Paeligni (as he is in Per. 76) and the Marsi (as he is in Appian, 1.6.52). But even though Cinna is specifically mentioned as playing a part in reducing the Marsi, there is other evidence to 6 Lovano (p. 17) argues that Cinna had served under Cato and not Pompeius, though the latter as is speculated by Broughton (vol. 2, p. 36) and Salmon (p. 365); Keaveney (1987, p. 154–155, 210–211) allows for either possibility.

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point to his service under Cato. How can all this evidence be reconciled? One a way out of this maze is to combine the various possibilities. Since it is clear from Appian that the Pompeius was responsible for overwhelming the Marsi, then one of the legates mentioned by the Periochae as having helped to do this did so under his authority. This legate was Caecilius, and based on the evidence of Diodorus to the effect that the string of the events that led to the abandonment of Corfinium started around 89, Caecilius would have been sent by Pompeius against the Paeligni in 89. His objective was Corfinium, and in the drive towards that city, he defeated enough of the Paeligni that by 88 that surrendered to Pompeius, his superior officer. These Paeligni were commanded by Vettius Scato, last seen leading—and losing—large numbers of men to Pompeius at Asculum. Upon his defeat, he and the remnants of his men—of whom large numbers could have been Marsi—fell back southwards towards Corfinium, ending up in the territory of the Paeligni to the north of that city. They then moved to intercept Caecilius, suffering losses at his hands in sufficient quantity that the Marsi, too, were sent reeling and brought to the point of considering surrender. What finally tipped the Marsi towards capitulation was what was going on to the south and west of Corfinium while Caecilius was battering Vettius Scato northast of it. Upon the death of L. Porcius Cato, the men under his direct command could almost certainly not be removed from their position defending the approach to Rome over the Via Valeria. It therefore would have made sense that Pompeius would leave command of them in the hands of on of Cato’s legates. Since L. Cornelius Cinna was known to have been a legate in 89 (so Cicero, in the place cited above), and since he is next seen battering the Marsi, it is probable that he was the man who succeeded the dead consul. With these men under his command, Cinna apparently decided that a good offense would serve as an excellent defense, so rather than remain static and monitor the Marsi, he continued Cato’s attack on them instead. Thus, he also drove towards towards Corfinium in the opposite direction, inflicting so many losses on the Marsi trying to stop him that they succumbed to the need to yield in the following year.

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It is certain that no source explicitly mentions or even hints at the commissions of either Ceacilius or Cinna, and so the conjecture that they each were legati of different men engaged in something of a joint operation for the purpose of capturing Corfinium is precisely that: pure conjecture. Yet none of the sources make this an impossibility, either. Furthermore, a venture of this kind may shed some light on some other developments from 89, 88, and beyond. One of these involves the campaign undertaken by Ser. Sulpicius Galba against the Marrucini, a people he seems to have had no problem in defeating and knocking out of the war. Part of this may be explained by Galba’s skillful leadership, of course, but that may have been helped by an enemy which was separated from outside assistance. The Vestini were certainly in no position to aid the Marrucini due to their defeat by Pompeius himself, and thanks to the actions of Cosconius, the Frentani and Apulians were likewise unable to lend a hand. If the Paeligni were tied up in defending Corfinium from an incursion by another legate of Pompeius, then the Marrucini could be isolated completely and much more easily crushed, as it seems they were. Further, as he was making his spectacularly successful coastal run, Cosconius was apparently quite unmolested by any other Allies save the Samnites. This lack of interference from the Marrucini can be explained by the exploits of Galba; that of the Paeligni, by their distractions trying to hold Corfinium. Finally, such a combined effort against Corfinium suggests that the men making it may have been in close cooperation, and perhaps to have developed a working relationship that may have even bordered on amicitia. On the other hand, the push towards the Allied headquarters may have been less of a collaborative and more of a competitive one, perhaps in the manner of the muchcelebrated—and probably exagerrated—contest between George S. Patton and Bernard Montgomery in Sicily during the Second World War. Such a competition may well have led to antagonism and even hatred, and if the Caecilius listed as Cinna’s counterpart in this endeavorby the Periochae was indeed Q. Metellus Pius, than Cinna’s hostility to him in 87 may be better explained (see chapter 8). If such a construction—one which the sources do not make impossible at least—is to be employed, then the role of L. Cornelius Cinna in the Allied war becomes clear: he started as an officer of L. Porcius Cato, took command of the men directly

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under that consul when the latter was slain in battle, and used them to beat those Marsi trying to keep him from Corfinium into submission. It may even have been he who finally captured the city, as chapter six argues, even though the surrender of the Marsi was credited to Pompeius, and the surrender of the Paeligni was made directly to him. Cinna’s approach to Corfinium and his defeat of the Marsi in his way was mirrored by that of Caecilius, the legate of Pompeius, who encountered so many Marsi in defense of the city that his actions helped bring about the surrender of both peoples, even if the gloria went to his superior. As mentioned, the Periochae clearly states that the Caecilius in question was (Quintus) Caecilius (Metellus) Pius. Yet a number of factors call this identification into question, and that the other legate who toppled the Marsi was a different man altogether. It is to these sources of doubt that attention must next be turned. In the first place, if Metellus Pius was a legate to Strabo or anyone else in 89, a service which extended into 88 (and the passage of the Periochae just cited above makes it clear that the person it names was in fact a legate),7 then it seems highly improbable that he would be holding any sort of magistracy in 89. Yet it is known from Cicero that Metellus Pius held the praetorate at some point subsequent to the passage of the lex Plautia Papiria, a law in whose operation he took part (pro Arch. 3.7–5.9 and 12.31, about which more below). Unfortunately, there is ambiguity in the exact date for that passage. As is discussed elsewhere,8 it is reasonably certain that one of the men responsible for this lex Plautia Papiria is a M. Plautius Silvanus. Asconius mentions this man as having passed a judicial law while Cato and Pompeius Strabo were consuls (M. Plautius Silvanus tribunus plebis Cn. Pompeio Strabone L. Porcio Catone coss.; 79). Such a dating very strongly implies that the tribunes took office in late 90 and served the majority of their post in 89, when Cato and Pompeius Strabo were consuls. If Carbo and Silvanus were elected in 90, as they probably were, then it would theoretically be possible for them to have have 7 That he was not a legate in 90 can be derived from that passage in Cicero’s defense of Fonteius which is cited above. 8 See Appendix P.

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passed their law as early as the final days of that year. Metellus could therefore have played the role he had in the enactment of the law in the last few hours of the year 90 as praetor for that year. If this was the case, he would have been in office in 90, would have left it in 89, and could therefore have served as the legate of Pompeius whom the consul would send to sieze Corfinium and in the process crush the Marsi.9 Yet this eventuality hinges on the ability of Carbo and Silvanus to pass a law between their election on December 10 and the end of the year.10 Given that a law required between seventeen and twenty-four days between its announcement and the day when voting could occur,11 the so-called tres nundinae mentioned in Cicero (Phil. 5.8) and Macrobius (Sat. 1.16.35), a legislative enactment whose rapidity beggars the imagination. Rather, it is far and away more probable that the law could not be enacted until 89. If that was so, then for Metellus Pius to have played a role in administering it, he would have to have been Praetor in that year, and to have spent 89 in Rome undertaking the judicial duties of that office. This, in turn, would have made it impossible for Metellus to have been a legate to Pompeius in 89, and to have been sent against the Paeligni by him. It can, perhaps, be offered in response that praetorian office did not necessarily prevent Metellus from serving as a commander in 89, and to have fought in such a way as to have defeated the Marsi. It could have been instead that the lex Plautia Papiria was indeed enacted in 89, and that Metellus spent the first few months in Rome before accepting a praetorian field command against the Marsi, one which was prorogued until 88, when that people began to sue for peace according to Livy’s Epitomator (Per. 76). But objections to this construction appear immediately. For one thing, for Metellus to have fought as a sitting praetor in the war would have been so unusual as to consist of an isolated case, as there is no record of any other praetor holding a field commission during the

In fact, Domaszewski (p. 31) argues for this very outcome. For the terms of tribunes, see Appendix C. 11 See Smith, p. 815–816. 9

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Allied War.12 For another, it seems odd that the Senate would give a sitting praetor a command which would put him in the field fairly close to where the sitting consul was also conducting operations. That it may have done so as a special case due to the fact that Cato had died, and that it therefore dispatched Metellus to take over his men in Marsic territory, fails to convince. There is no evidence of any kind that he actually replaced Cato, and no other praetor seems to have been sent to assume control of Cato’s other legions, such as those in Campania, Lucania, and Samnite territory. These were taken over by his legates, and it is far more likely that the legions in the land of the Marsi were, as well. Such a procedure also corresponds to the precedent set by what had happened in the similar case of Rutilius in the previous year. Finally—and most importantly—a praetorian command for Metellus exercise against the Marsi directly contradicts the Periochae, as such would mean that Metellus was not a legate, as that source explicitly says he was. Further, it becomes impossible to see how whatever success against the Marsi that would have befallen Metellus could redound to Pompeius, credit which Appian clearly assigns. Thus, if Metellus Pius did hold the praetorate in 89, as the dating of the lex Plautia Papiria (under whose terms he discharged a legal responsibility) denotes, then he would not be a legate, as per the Periochae, and would lead no men against Corfinium at the order of Pompeius in that year and along the way overwhelm the Marsi. If he instead held an independent praetorian commission (for which there is no evidence), then he still would not be a legate, as per the Periochae, and his accomplishments wielding such a command would be his own, and not those of Pompeius. Clearly Pius did fight in the Allied War, but he probably did so as the holder of a promagisterial command in 88.13 This could have 12 See Haug, p. 204, for the improbability of sitting praetors holding line commands in the Allied War. 13 That Metellus saw service holding a a promagisterial command beginning in 88 would, of course, first require that he was not already in the field in another capacity earlier than this. As it happens, no source mentions any battlefield activity on his part prior to that year, so no objection can be raised on this account. Furthermore, it would tend to require that the migistracy he had held first—specificallty, the

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praetorate—would have concluded by either the end of 90 or 89. As has been seen, the almost insuperable obstacles to the lex Plautia Papiria having been passed before the end of 90 means that, due to actions Metellus is recorded as having taken after the passage of that law as praetor (see Appendix P), he almost certainly could not have held such an office in 90. As a consequence, he would have to have held this position later. That the praetorate of Metellus came in 89 is almost certain, but not completely thus. It is possible that he became praetor later than that year, and that he was elected in 88 instead. As has been seen, there is a notice in Cicero stating that Silvanus, one of the men responsible for passing the lex Plautia Papiria, was tribune when Cato and Pompeius Strabo were consuls. The logical way to interpret this report is that Silvanus was elected in December of 90 to serve the majority of his year in office in 89, but that is not the only way that passage can be read. It is possible that Silvanus was elected in December of 89, while Cato and Pompeius were consuls, and therefore served the majority of his term in the following year. Such a dating of a tribunate to the consulate which expired within weeks is so unusual as to be called a “solecism” by David Stockton (p, 94–95, speaking of a different set of tribunes; see Appendix C), but that does not make it impossible. Such a tribunate would date the lex Plautia Papiria to 88, and the praetorate of Metellus to that same year. Yet the military events of 88 in which Metellus took part speaks against this chronology. Under the terms of the lex, a citizenship law more amply desribed elsewhere (see Chapter 6 and Appendix P), those who were eligible to be made cives by it had to appear before the praetor within sixty days of its passage to take advantage of the offer. Metellus is known to have registered at least one person under its terms, and the inference to be drawn is that Metellus had to make himself available for such regsitration during this two month period. However, it will be discovered above that Metellus was also in the field in 88 and in Apulia, far from Rome. This voyage may have been just possible if the law were passed in early 88, allowing Metellus to depart from Rome in the spring and make it to Apulia and the command he held there by autumn or thereabouts. In this case, Metellus would hold his command as a sitting praetor, a circumstance for which there may be evidence: Metellus is mentioned by Appian as having succeeded Cosconius ἐπὶ τὴν στρατ γίαν, while the de viris illustribus states that Metellus defeated Silo as a praetor (praetor bello sociali Q. Popedium Marsorum ducem interfecit; 63). In response, it should be observed that Appian’s use of στρατ γία could simply be employed to mean “command” (he uses it once in such a

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enabled Pius to go to Marsic territory in the beginning of the year and, alongside Cinna, deliver a sharp enough series of blows against the Marsi to make them sue for peace before headed south to Apulia, where he would next be seen (see chapter 6). Furthermore, the timing of this event in the Periochae suggests that this humbling of the Marsi had cause them to sue for peace at a time when Pompeius Strabo could be called proconsul, hence in the year 88. But, again, whatever actions undertaken by Metellus as a promagistrate would be his own, and not devolve upon Pompeius. Laying this objection aside, there is the additional one of timing. Appian states that Metellus was in Apulia, probably in relief of Cosconius (see chapter 6) before the death of Poppaedius Silo, in which he participated (1.6.53). This event, following the chronology presented in the Periocha of Livy’s book 76, dates to before the end of 88. Diodorus Siculus (37.2.10) also places Metellus in Apulia at a time before the death of Silo, and hence before the end of 88. Metellus would therefore have had to fight hard enough to defeat the Marsi so badly that they considered surrender, and then travel half the length of Italy, in the space of a few months. Such a speed of movement is not an impossibility, but it strains credulity. way with the Samnite ὕπατος Papius Mutilus), while the de viris illustribus, for its part, is notorious for errors of fact. There is, again, also the fact that no sitting praetor is known to have held a commission during the Allied War, as mentioned above. These facts may, perhaps, be enough to conclude that dating the lex Plautia Papiria and thus the praetorate of Metellus to 88 is so unlikey as to be discarded, and if it is, then the command Metellus held in 88 would have been either propraetorian or proconsular. Appian suggests this latter (1.9.80; see chapter 9), and that his proconsular assignment was that of bringing the war to its conclusion, since he was dispatched to fight in areas that would still be in arms during the spring campaign season of 88: most of the communities in the north had surrendered by that point or were on the verge of doing so, as chaper 6 describes. Yet whether the command of Metellus was praetorian or pormagisterial, it seems reasonable to assume that he was not the Caecilius mentioned in the Periochae, and that a better candidate for the man named as such in that source is at hand; for this identity, see above.

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For all these reasons, it seems unlikely that Metellus Pius fought against the Marsi, independently or under the command of either Cato or Pompeius Strabo, in either 89 or 88. Furthermore, while it is almost certain that Metellus did hold held a promagisterial command in 88, that commission was for the replacement of Cosconius, as is discussed in greater detail in chapter 6. This would seem to suggest that the Periocha of 76 is to be rejected outright, a possibility which is always to be approached with caution. Nevertheless, it may not be that the Epitomator got it completely wrong. There is a Caecilius, specifically M. Caecilius Cornutus, who is mentioned by Cicero as having done service as a legate in the Allied War in 89 (Pro Font. 43). It may therefore have been he who was the “Caecilius” who fought and defeated the Marsi in that year. If he was, then it might help shed some light on the identity of a Cornutus who is mentioned as having been marked for execution and hunted, unsuccessfully, in the year 87 when Marius and Cinna took Rome, for reasons which are not reported (Appian, 1.8.73, and Plutarch, Mar. 43; see also chapter 8). This Cornutus might have been the same man as the legate of 89. If he was, then as a legate of Pompeius in 89 and 88, he might have remained with that general in 87 and fought under him against Cinna and Marius. Thus support of the wrong side during the Bellum Octavianum may have earned him his unfulfilled sentence of death. Alternatively, Cornutus may have drifted into inimicitia with Cinna during their race to Corfinium, causing Cinna to wish him put out of the way in 87; or he may have impressed Cinna so much with his skill that Cinna continued him too dangerous to live. For this is so would, of course, require attributing an error to Livy’s Epitomator: namely, that he had gotten the wrong Caecilius. However, this would not be the first occurrence of an error in the Periochae,14 and in this case the mistake is very small. This aspersion on the accuracy of the Periochae is not overly troublesome to some

14 See Appendix J concerning Sextus Caesar and Servius Sulpicius Galba, for example.

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modern scholars, who are willing to accept that it was Caecilius Cornutus who took part in the overwhelming of the Marsi.15 For all these reasons, then, a two-pronged attack aimed at Corfinium, led by legates Cinna in Marsic territory and Cornutus in that of the Paeligni, seems possible. Both sides of this attack would have involved defeating the Marsi, leading to their surrender and those of the Paeligni in the following year shortly before the abandonment of Corfinium. This is the sort of attack which is described in chapter 6. As for Metellus Pius, his role was something different, a campaign against the Apulians waged in 88 under his own authority that would become something else entirelty in the next years, as described in Chapter 7.

15 Broughton (p. 28–36 and especially p. 31 note 13) and Keaveney (1987, p. 155, 210) accept that it was Cornutus, and not Pius, who was legate in this year.

APPENDIX O: SOME DETAILS ABOUT SULLA’S MARCH THROUGH SOUTHERN ITALY, 89 BCE Chapter 6 describes the enormously successful campaign conducted by L. Cornelius Sulla through southern Italy. This enterprise was in no small part the result of the death of first L. Porcius Cato, consul of 89, and then later that of T. Didius, a man of consular rank who was likely Cato’s immediate replacement in the lower half of the western department. These casualties had put Sulla in charge of the all the men in that area. It seems likely that, once in command, Sulla launched his expedition with the aim of taking Aesernia: other than whatever emotional significance this may have had for Sulla, who had been involved in at least one and possibly two earlier unsuccessful attempts to capture that city (see chapter 5 and Appendix K), it would also have the additional strategic benefits of taking from the Allies a powerful stronghold. It would also have led to an opening of the road headed to the Italian capital of Corfinium. If, in fact, this was Sulla’s goal from the beginning, then he would doubtless have recognized from painful experience that it would be better to take a direct path towards Aesernia, rather than attempt to get at it by going through the mountains in such a way that both L. Julius Caesar and he himself seem to have done in the previous year. Such a direct path existed, and it is overwhelmingly likely that Marcellus had used it in his own unsuccessful stab at the city in 90.1 By the middle of 89, however, it seems that it was no longer as accessible to the Romans as it had been in 90, due to the fact that Beneventum, which commanded it, had almost certainly had been taken by the Alliance in the interim. For this reason, it seems Sulla had elected to go around Beneventum to the south by means of an anabasis through the territory of the Hirpini before turning east and heading to that city, or very nearly to it, on the Via Appia. Such an expedition may have been tactically necessary for a number of reasons. One of these may have come from recongition that, while Beneventum would have to be forced eventually, 1

See discussion in chapter 5 and supporting notes.

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attempting to do so directly from the west would have left eastern path of the Via Appia unobstructed to the Allies. These could continue to use this road to bring reinforcements and supplies westward to ward off assault, assistance which might have made an assault on Beneventum lengthy and, what is more, costly. However, if Sulla could first reduce the Hirpini and gain access to the Via Appia, he could shut off any aid from the west along that route before making his run on Beneventum. This plan involved risks, to be sure, as it would remove many of the soldiers in the area to the west of Beneventum and potentially leave it open to Allied counterattack, but Sulla seems to have been inclined to take that risk. He was probably influenced in this attitude by the Roman presence at of Catulus2 in the Liris valley, which would not leave the Via Latina and a path to Rome completely clear to the Allies, and by the continuing siege at Nola. Roman positions to the west of the Allied front would mean first and foremost that if the Allies attempted to go north on the Via Appia towards Teanum, then the besiegers at Nola would be at their back. If they instead went south to attempt to lift the siege at Nola, then Catulus would be at their back; and all the while, either path might diminish their own defenders at Beneventum. This would in turn allow Sulla the opportunity to overwhelm the garrison or even go around it and gain a foothold on the Aesernia road, an outcome which may have been very much to Sulla’s liking. As it turns out, the Allies did not take the bait, and as a result Sulla had to attack them more directly to effect the opening of the road; this action is described in chapter 6. Such a construction, however, is somewhat at variance with the description of Sulla’s campaign found in other scholarship,3 which attributes to the future Dictator movements that seem to suggest neither that Beneventum was in Allied hands in 89, nor that his aim was Aesernia. These renditions do not deny Sulla’s march through the lands of the Hirpini, which is well-attested in the sources, but it does rob those movements of the significance attached to them above, reducing Sulla’s strategy by implication to 2 3

For whom see chapter 6. That of Keaveney (1987, p. 156).

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one designed merely to inflict hurt and loss on the Allies. That Sulla may have lacked an overall scheme beyond this last is not impossible, of course, but the way it is suggested that he went about it in other accounts seems to involve a great deal of wasted time and energy for the Romans and an increased risk to them. For this reason, the way in which the other accounts describe Sulla’s campaign will be analyzed, and the reasons for departing from those other narratives will be noted. In the process of so doing, it will also take a look at another small controversy in which the interpretation of chapter 6 is compelled to take a side, offering an explanation for why the side which was taken seemed to be most consistent with the evidence and thus was adopted in this essay. According to the text of Appian (1.6.51), after Sulla tore through the lands of the Hirpini he found a way to attack the Samnites under their marshal, Papius Mutilius, from a direction not anticipated by the latter, who is described as “guarding the roads” (οὐχ ᾗ Μοτίλος, ὁ τῶν Σαυνιτῶν στρατ γός, τὰς παρόδους ἐφύλαττεν). It is argued in chapter 6 that the place where Mutilus was on this vigil was at Beneventum, since from there he could guard the road to Aesernia from either the eastbound or westbound track of the Via Appia. Such a posture would be useful in light of where Sulla had been operating just before this battle, and even if Sulla did not come, such a station would perhaps have served as an added precaution against Cosconius if it had turned out he had been able to penetrate further than he did, or from Gabinius should he also turn northwards (see chapter 6). It is then further suggested in chapter 6 that the “other, unexpected flanking [route]” (ἑτέραν ἀδόκ τον ἐκ περιόδου) must have been from the east, having been discovered by means of Sulla’s detachment from the Via Appia just before landfall of Beneventum. However, there is another interpretation4 which instead suggests that Sulla instead started from the neighborhood of Capua and approached from the west, thus hitting Papius between Aesernia and Bovianum, where the latter is held to have been stationed (on which see below). It is possible to explain in this way how Sulla was able to surprise Papius, but in the first place such a route would also have involved 4

That found in Keaveney, 1987, p. 156.

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taking an enormous amount of time. As was seen in chapter 6, Sulla had ultimately managed to range as far into the lands of the Hirpini as Aeclanum, whose investment by Sulla had ended messily. To be able to approach where Papius is claimed to have been struck and surprise him from the west, a return march from Aeclanum would have involved. This would have taken some time even if the direct path to Capua from Aeclanum by the Via Appia had not been blocked at Beneventum. However, if—as argued above—the road at Beneventum had been blocked, something which Sulla’s very march through the lands of the Hirpini suggests, then a return to Capua would have essentially meant that Sulla would have had to have gone all the way back the way he came before launching his assault. Laying this difficulty aside for a moment, having Sulla emerge at a point between Aesernia and Bovianum, where it was argued that Papius was stationed, and then turn to the south to attack Bovianum makes little sense. If Papius were in Bovianum, that would almost certainly mean that there would be no armies standing between Sulla and Aesernia. With the huge army he now had under his command, the obvious question becomes why Sulla would not have moved directly against Aesernia itself instead of making a detour to face Papius. For one thing, if Papius was in force to the south, it might very well have been that Aesernia would be relatively lacking in defenders, and by taking it Sulla could then proceed to Corfinium. Even if he could not make it to take the latter city, Sulla must have known pressure was being put on it (see chapter 6 and Appendix N), and by taking Aesernia he could deprive the Allies of a major city which could be—and was, as it turned out—used as a base for further resistance after Corfinium’s fall. Of course, it could be answered in counter that Sulla was in fact headed towards Aesernia on this path when Papius sallied from Bovianum and attacked him, but Appian quite clearly states that it was the latter who was surprised and not the former. Alternatively, it may be argued that Sulla was determined to rid himself of the menace to his rear by defeating Papius first and then moving on Aesernia. This would definitely make strategic sense. Upon defeating Papius, however, Sulla did not in fact move north towards the heart of Allied resistance. He proceeded to take Bovianum instead, even though the path to Aesernia would now have been free (according to such a construction) and the threat to

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his back had been destroyed (Appian, loc. cit.). This interpretation would seem to suggest that Sulla’s goal was the capture of Bovianum in the first place. In response, this course of action seems to make little sense strategically, although more will be offered on this point momentarily. Moreover, there returns the difficulty of the return from Aeclanum. If Papius was at Bovianum and not Beneventum, which seems to be suggested by this construction, then the track from Aeclanum to Capua by means of the Via Appia would be unimpeded. If that was the case, why would Sulla have come all the way back to Capua at all, when he could have taken the—apparently unblocked—direct road from Beneventum to Bovianum, if the latter city was his objective anyway? Finally, there also exists the problem of the aftermath of the battle. According to Appian, Papius was wounded and took refuge with some followers in Aesernia. However, if Sulla had attacked in the way which was hypothesized, then his army would now lay between Aesernia and Bovianum. This begs the question as to how the Samnite marshal could get there with the Roman army in the way. Based on all these considerations, it is far more likely that Sulla’s progress was not overland from Capua, but rather from the Via Appia. This would require a battle be fought against the Samnites, either at Beneventum (if they were positioned there guarding the roads, as Appian strongly infers) or between Beneventum and Bovianum, which was Sulla’s next destination. Such a battle was fought, forcing a wounded Papius to retreat overland to Aesernia and leaving Sulla to attack Bovianum next. This, according to Appian, is precisely what he did, overcoming the difficulties to its capture posed by its three strong citadels. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that a Bovianum (modern Boiano, sometimes referred to by its imperial name of Bovianum Undecimanorum) lay directly between Sulla and Aesernia, it has been argued that the “Bovianum” in question was not this city but rather the so-called Bovianum Vetus,5 a site commonly identified

5

Specifically Domaszewski, p. 30.

APPENDICES

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with the modern city of Pietrabbondante.6 Unfortunately, the scholars who make such an argument give no real reasons for why Pietrabbondante should be preferred to Boiano; while it is true that this city does have the required three citadels, many cities in the region do also, including the other Bovianum.7 Indeed, “Bovianum Vetus” lay quite far off the main road to Aesernia and Corfinium, if the latter two cities had in fact been Sulla’s objective. Admittedly, Appian’s account does not make an assault on Bovianum Vetus impossible, and it must be allowed that Sulla might have had quite a different strategy in mind than one mentioned above. It may be that Sulla pushed north from Aeclanum and penetrated deep into Samnite territory, and that Appian’s testimony to the effect that he struck Papius from an unforeseen place may be interpreted to mean that Sulla hit the Samnites much further north than either Beneventum or Bovianum Undecimanorum. This does beg the question of just what roads Papius was guarding if not the obvious ones just mentioned, but there could easily have been some of these these over which he had set himself. Sulla may have then attacked Papius somewhere to the immediate east of Aesernia, to which Papius would be compelled to retreat. Sulla could then continue to sack Bovianum Vetus, and then head immediately northwest from there towards Corfimium.8 Such a path is, again, by no means impossible, but speaking against it in the first place is the fact that Bovianum Vetus appears to have been a city seems to have no strategic value (although see more on this point below), as opposed to Aesernia. Furthermore, such a path up Samnium would require Sulla to leave Aesernia, untaken, to his rear. Since such a city could apparently hold a great deal of men and material, as its successful stand against three separate attempts to besiege it in the previous year makes clear, it 6 Among those to make this identification is Salmon, who does so fairly often throughout Samnium and the Samnites in spite of the fact that on p. 12–13 he provides evidence for why such an identification might be invalid. 7 A fact which is not noted by Domaszewski, but is supplied by Salmon (op. cit., p. 357). 8 This would also explain why there is no record of him taking Saepinum, which also lay between Beneventum and Aesernia.

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would be a dangerous thing for Sulla to have at his back. Nor would it be merely a danger to Sulla; it would also be dangerous to the Roman cause, due, again, to its ability to serve as a fallback position upon the siezure of Cornfinium, a role it would ultimately come to play (see chapter 6). Finally, an untaken Aesernia would remain a reminder of his failure from the year before, and it would be well within Sulla’s personality to have that blunder expunged. All of these reasons make it far more likely that Sulla would take a route that would lead him to Aesernia, as the road which connected with the Via Appia at Beneventum would have. However—as mentioned above—Bovianum (Undecimanorum) stood between Beneventum and Aesernia, compelling Sulla to fight there, as he did. Such a view, at least, is shared by many scholars,9 although at least one of them10 has an additional conjecture about Bovianum (Undecimanorum) which might make it a worthwhile objective for more than just the barrier it posed on the road to Aesernia. According to this historian, Bovianum had by this point become the new headquarters of the Alliance. Such a reading is based on the report of Appian (loc. cit.), which notes that this was “a place where there was a common council for the insurgents” (ᾗ τὸ κοινο ούλιον ἦν τῶν ἀποστάντων) at the time when Sulla moved on it. That Bovianum had acquired such a status is, however, doubtful. First of all, Diodorus (37.2) mentions that Corfinium was abandoned only after the Marsi had capitulated, which would have been in early 88 rather than 89 (Per. 76; see also chapter 6). By this time Sulla would have already taken Bovianum, as this action was completed in 89. Secondly, from a military standpoint the choice of Bovianum would have meant that the Allies would have elected to bypass Aesernia to go south in spite of the (apparently) great strength of the latter. Aesernia had probably suffered some damage during the first siege which had led to its fall to the Allies, and may 9 These scholars include Haug (p. 210) and Keaveney (1987, p. 153), although in the latter case due to his belief that Sulla had taken the route from Capua through Teanum. 10 Salmon (loc. cit.), who here and elsewhere (1958, p. 178) refers to a “Bovianum phase” of the Allied War.

APPENDICES

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have suffered some more during the attempts on it launched by Marcellus, Caesar (if he had ever gotten close enough to it), and Sulla during 90, but it was apparently undamaged enough after the first siege (which the sources report had ended due to starvation, not to frontal assault or breach) to resist three subsequent Roman attempts to take it. Therefore, it seems almost certain that Bovianum had not been the Allied capital before Sulla stormed it. That it may have become the capital later—in other words, that it became the capital after the fall of Corfinium in 88 but before Aesernia was selected (after Sulla himself had departed)—also seems most unlikely. In the first place, while it has the advantage of retaining the line in Appian and not rejecting it entirely, but it does assume that the line is wrong in its timing. Further, movement of Allied headquarters to Bovianum after 89 would, again, have meant that Aesernia would have been deliberately overlooked after the fall of Corfinium in favor of a move even further south, and unlike Aesernia, Bovianum definitely had been taken by assault in 89 (by Sulla, as has been seen) and likely had suffered all the damage that such would have entailed. Finally, the report in Appian can be read to mean, not that Bovianum had become the capital of the Alliance, but rather had been a city of singular importance to the Samnites11. The last remaining option—that it was the capital before Sulla took it, was evacuated after, and then became the capital again later—begins to delve into the realms of the ridiculous. It is therefore improbable that Bovianum (Undecimanorum) had ever been an Allied capital,12 and while Sulla seems to have taken it, it was likely as part of a plan—ultimately unsuccessful, due to the lateness of the year—to capture first Aesernia, and then probably Corfinium.

As Salmon himself notes (op. cit., p. 81). See also Keaveney (1987, p. 156), whose arguments along these lines are convincing. 11 12

APPENDIX P: THE ACQUISITION OF THE CIVITAS BY THE REST OF THE ALLIES AND THE LEX PLAUTIA PAPIRIA In chapter 6 a construction is offered for the process by which the rest of the Italians, the ones not enfranchised through the lex Julia, finally came by the civitas. Such a construction is based on a number of assumptions drawn from what seems to be the evidence of the sources. The most fundamental of these is that the remaining Allies did indeed acquire the citizenship. It seems fairly safe to draw this initial inference based in the first place on the Periochae, which claims that in or by the year 871 the Romans had given the citizenship to Italian peoples by order of the Senate (Italicis populis a senatu civitas data est; Per. 80). This notice is not terribly specific, either in the scope of this bequest nor when exactly it was made, but what it seems to be suggesting is that all Italians had been given the civitas in or before the year 8. Thus, the Latin should be read “citizenship was given to [all the] Italian peoples”, as opposed to “citizenship was given to [some unnamed] Italian peoples”. The former reading corresponds well with what is narrated by Appian and Velleius Paterculus, who claim that—save for those Italians who were still actively in arms against Rome, specifically the Samnites and the Lucani—all the others had been accepted into the civitas (Appian, 1.6.53: ἕως Ἰταλία πᾶσα προσεχώρ σεν ἐς τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν [emphasis added]; Velleius 2.17: Romani victis ... universis civitatem dare maluerunt [emphasis added]). Thus, the evidence derived from these authors in the passages just named makes it reasonable to assert that the citizenship was, in fact, actually given to the remaining Allies (save for a few holdouts), and chapter 6 makes such an assertion. But if—based on the evidence presented above—it is possible to claim with some certainty that the remaining socii were actually given the citizenship, it is less easy to claim certainty about other aspects of this enfranchisement. One such difficulty concerns when this endowment occurred. As has been seen above, the notice of 1 It comes after summary of chapter 79, in which L. Cornelius Cinna is referred to as consul, id est 87.

816

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the Periochae only goes so far as to state that this had happened by 87. Nevertheless, the aforementioned passages of Appian and Velleius seem to allow a slightly more definite chronology. Appian notes that this enfranchisement had happened after the death of Poppaedius Silo which occurred, according to the Periochae, in 882. Velleius, for his part, states that it occurred in the year in which Q. Pompeius and L. Cornelius Sulla were consuls (Romani … universis civitatem dare maluerunt, consulatum inierunt Q. Pompeius et L. Cornelius Sulla), also in 883. Based in these notices, it seems fairly clear that at some point in 884, and certainly by 87, all the Allies save those who 2 The placement of this event in the Periochae (id est, in the summary of Book 76) comes after the point at which Cn. Pompeius Strabo is referred to as “proconsul” and before L. Cornelius Cinna coukd be referred to as “consul”; thus 88. 3 This dating is not necessarily contradicted by the evidence of the Periochae cited above: if it is to be assumed that the notice in the Periocha simply meant that the Italians had been given the citizenship by 87, and not that it was given to them in that year, then it actually supports the claims made by the other authors. 4 However, a problem to this dating does seem to exist in the form of the very next thing which Appian reports. According to his text, “at the same time as” (ᾧ ταῦτα προσέκειτο) this legislation was being passed, the praetor Asellio was murdered at the height of the debt crisis with which Rome was then beset, killed because he decided too debt cases in favor of the debtors (1.6.54). Livy’s Epitomator fixes this murder towards the beginning of 89 (Per. 74, where the sentence immediately preceding this report notes that Pompeius Strabo was consul). As a consequence, it appears that one of these reports must be wrong. If so, the question then becomes which one: is the Periocha of book 74 in error, placing an event in early 89 which should have been placed later? Or is Appian in error, either by placing the citizenship law in 88 which should have been put in 89, or by putting Asellio’s murder in 88 which should have been put in 89? There is no way to be certain which of these authors is mistaken (assuming any one actually is), but several ways to unknot the problem do appear, each of which might actually save the accuracy of both sources. In the first place, the death of Asellio is the only domestic event other than consular elections which is reported in the Periochae between early 89, which was about the time when Pompeius had been elected consul and was about to fight his winter battle at Asculum, and sometime in mid-88, when the disturbance of P. Sulpicius Rufus is narrated (in Per. 77, after the

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ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

summary of the book 76 has already explicity mentioned Pompeius Strabo as proconsul). It might very well be that the death of Asellio was an event from late 89 or mid-spring of 88 which had been removed from its proper time and placed in the context of early 89 in Livy’s original book so that the historian would not otherwise have to interrupt his continuous battle narrative, perhaps with a disclaimer to that effect. It is to be observed that a financial crisis is mentioned in Orosius (5.18.27–29) and is presumably the same financial crisis in which Asellio persistently decided suits against the creditors, as is described in Appian. In Orosius, that crisis is reported as having come to a head after the sack of Asculum, and thus to be placed in late 89. If, therefore, the enabling law which gave the franchise to the Allies had been passed in late 89 to take effect in 88, at the same time that a debt crisis beset Rome in which creditors killed the praetor, then Appian is correct: the law had been passed ᾧ ταῦτα προσέκειτο as the murder of Asellio but was executed a little later, with the murder having been moved to slightly earlier in Livy for stylistic reasons. Alternatively, perhaps Appian had made such a stylistic rearrangement in his own account. His report on Asellio comes after his account has concluded its description of all the battles remaining in the Allied War, so perhaps Asellio is mentioned at the place in the text where he appears in that author (hard by the events of 88, as opposed to earlier in late 89, where he properly belongs) lest Appian himself otherwise have to interrupt his continuous own battle narrative. In this way, the ᾧ ταῦτα προσέκειτο in Appian is thus to be interpreted as “at the time while this combat (and its aftermath) was occurring” without specifying which combat from all three years of it is meant, but intending it to be that of late 89. That this is what Appian did—finish his account of the major operations of the Allied War before returning to an event he had been compelled to pass over, and as a result making it such that the place where appears in that author cannot be used to indicate when the law was passed—seems to make better sense of the evidence than can be derived from following Domaszewki’s admittedly cunning arguments explaining why Asellio’s murder took place in January of 89 (p. 29). Finally, it may have been that both Appian and Livy made alterations of this kind: perhaps Asellio’s death ought to be placed in late 89 (Domaszewski notwithstanding), after where it is mentioned in the Periochae and before where it is placed by Appian. This would also allow for the passage of the law in late 89 but for its execution in 88. If any of these propositions are true, however, then the apparent chronological difficulty caused by the notice on the death of Asellio is untied, and nothing stands in the way of an unnamed law going into effect in 88

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persisted in fighting the Romans were enfolded as citizens into the Republic. A more definite dating than this proves elusive. Furthermore, and if these sources go only so far in their description of when the (now, ex-) socii came by this commodity, they are silent about the mechanism by which it came. It is beyond reasonable doubt that the civitas was granted by legislation, but which law or laws effected this state of affairs, the initiative’s author(s), what terms may have been found in such legislation, and the specific set of circumstances which led to its (or their) passage5 cannot be discerned. This paucity of details on when, and the fairly complete absence of details on both the legal vehicle by, and the circumstances under which, the Allies acquired the citizenship, leaves several fairly important questions unanswered. One of these is obvious: why is it that the Romans decided to make such a present to the Allies, especially since—as has been seen—the latter were pretty much defeated by the end of 89? A rather equally obvious response to it is hand: they had hoped by so doing to bring about or preserve peace in Italy. However, as chapters 7 through 10 illustrate, peace was not the result, and if this was the intention on the part of the Senate, it seems to have miscalculated badly. Indeed, not only did warfare not end in 88, but it would resume as hot as ever in 87 and be re-ignited after a lull in 83, with many of the very men supposed to have been pacified by this gift taking part in the fighting. If it can be assumed that the bequest of the civitas to the defeated Allies was designed by the Romans to usher in a lasting peace, why did it so utterly fail to do so? Chapter 6 also attempts to offer some (highly hypothetical) answers to these questions. According to the interpretation there, beginning in 88 the Romans proposed the citizenship to various Allied communities which had not yet surrendered, but were granting the franchise to the Italians which was either passed in that year or in the previous fall. 5 There is a suggestion in the Rhetorica ad Herennium (3.2) that the Senate had debated giving the citizenship to the Allies at some point, but that source is silent on when this occurred and its outcome, and it is therefore not terribly useful in terms of its ability to supply answers to the questions asked above.

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ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

nevertheless beaten, as a way of acquiring their submission. Thus, the offer was indeed designed to buy immediate and lasting peace. It must be admitted that such an offer does hint at a demeanor taken by the Romans which seems to be quite at variance with the great resistance to giving the franchise to the Allies attributed to them in chapter 4. On the other hand, the mounting monetary and military costs of the war eventually made it imperative to have them stop, and to prevent the conditions under which they might a return. This impulse was probably enough to quiet any hesitation about enfranchisement based on worries over its effects on the treasury and the legions. As far as those whose opposition had been based on chauvinistic concerns about preserving Romanitas from pollution from non-Romans, or from active dislike of thse, the valor and toughness displayed by the former Allies may changed some minds in this regard. Finally, the political repercussions seem to have been greatly diminished by means of the tribal restrictions of new citizens to which the Romans resorted after the passage of the lex Julia, restrictions which were almost certainly built into the later enfranchisement laws as well. Therefore, the Republic seemed to have come to the conclusion that accepting the Allies as citizens with these limitations would be easier than continuing to fight. The Romans, then, may have been persuaded by these considerations. As far as the Allies went, it cannot be denied that this brand of the civitas was not that for which (it has been argued) they had fought. Still, for those who had already given up this diluted citizenship would be better than nothing, and to those who were on the brink of doing so it probably seemed good enough, especially if in their current position—defeated in every way but name—they could not envision being able to force anything more generous from the Romans. Therefore, all of the Allies took the deal except, it would appear, the Samnites and the Lucani. These were either in better shape than their erstwhile confederates or were simply more stubborn, and they continued to hold out in the belief—a correct one, as it turned out—that they could eventually acquire more. Of course, none of the sources explicitly state that this is what either the Romans or the Allies had in mind, but none of them explicitly state that this mindset did not exist. Therefore, chapter 6 uses the evidence of the sources first to speculate that the former Allies were given the citizenship. It then

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continues by adding to that first speculation the additional one that such a gift was offered to the socii (and accepted by most of them) by mid-88, although it is not impossible and is perhaps even likely that the law which had authorized such an offer may have been enacted in 89. Finally, a conjecture is made as to why this offer was made, which was to secure the capitulation of those Italian communities which, though defeated, nevertheless had not given in and therefore perhaps threatened to be a nuisance for some time, and the permanent surrender of those which had. The citizenship which was offered lacked certain rights, however, and this lack was a key to why the grant of it ultimately failed to provide for a lasting peace. Eventually the novi cives were courted by Roman statesmen who promised to furnish the missing rights in exchange for support both in the comitia and in the battlefield, and the former Allies proved receptive to such promises. In fact, if it was the case that the offer of the civitas was extended to purchase peace, its lack of success at doing so was fairly total, since the continued operations launched by the Samnites and Lucani show that and end to the fighting was accomplished neither in the short nor, as hinted at above, the long run. Yet the fact that enfranchisement failed in this aim does not mean that this was not, in fact, what the Romans hoped to accomplish with it. Beyond its existence, its timing, and its purpose, one final guess is made about the law through which the remaining Italians were offered the franchise. As has been discussed, it is surmised in chapter 6 that the unnamed law which did this as mentioned in Appian and the similar law which is mentioned in Velleius were probably one and the same, based on its chronological position in the respective texts and some similarities in the language used to describe it in both authors. What chapter 6 does not do is attempt to pinpoint precisely when this law was made and by whom, contenting itself instead leave it without a name, and to place this unnamed law amongst of series of enactments which gave the franchise to some of the Italian allies over the period between 90 and 88. This series included the lex Calpurnia and the lex Julia, and it also included a law known to modern scholars as the lex Plautia Papiria. This latter is definitely known to have granted the citizenship to some Italians, and it was apparently passed in the neighborhood of mid-89 to early 88. In fact, these well-attested features of the lex Plautia Papiria have led some scholars to assume

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that this was itself the very law which completed the enfranchisement of Italy.6 After all, the lex Plautia Papiria was a franchise law and was passed at the appropriate time, so not only would it be easy to make such an assumption, but Occam’s razor seems to urge that it be made. Yet such a conclusion is not reached in chapter 6, which prefers instead to hold that the bestowal of the civitas on those Italians who had not been given it by the lex Julia came by an unnamed law which distinct both from the lex Julia7 and from the lex Plautia Papiria. Since such a construction seems to run counter to the opinions of several scholars8 and adds a law which might appear unnecessary, it seems appropriate to cite the reasons for why it has been made. These mostly revolve around difficulties squaring what is known of the lex Plautia Papiria with what the sources above seem to indicate about the enfranchisement of the remaining Italians. Therefore, in the pages below such difficulties and the ways by which their reconciliation can be effected by the insertion of the aforementioned unnamed law will be described. First and foremost, chronology speaks against the identification of the unnamed franchise law with the lex Plautia Papiria. According to Cicero, whose speech in defense of the poet Archias the only ancient source for the law,9 one of the terms of For example, Gabba assumes that the lex Plautia Papiria performs this function and somewhat imperiously dismisses further debate on the subject as unnecessary (1976, p. 89–92); Keaveney believes likewise (1987, p. 170–171). For some other scholars who have taken that the lex Plautia Papiria enfranchised the Allies as “an article of faith”, see Badian 1973, p. 128 note 43. 7 There is an overwhelming scholarly consensus on this point, id est that the law which gave the citizenship to all of the Allies was not the lex Julia, which was insted more limited in scope. 8 Although it does have the support of Brunt, who argues directly that it was not the lex Plautia Papiria which enfranchised the remaining Allies in one place (1988, p. 107–109) and pointedly avoids mention of it his discussion of the enfranchisement of all of Italy in another (1971, p. 168). 9 Whatever credibility any “evidence” coming from the Scholiast of Bobbio (p. 175) once may have had has been effectively destroyed by the penetrating analysis of Badian (op. cit., p. 125–135). 6

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what he calls the lex Silvani et Carbonis which gave the citizenship to some residents of Italy was that anyone who wished to claim the franchise had to appear before a praetor within sixty days of the passage of the law (Pro Arch. 4.7). One of the praetors in question is named by that speech as Q. Metellus Pius. Since this man was later in the field as a commander in mid-to-late 88 in Apulia (see chapter 6), a command which suggests that he was at least of praetorian rank by that time, it seems logical to assume that this law of Silvanus and Carbo had been passed—or at the very least went into effect—in, around, or at the very least by early 88. As it turns out, Asconius (79) mentions a Silvanus enacting a judiciary law as tribunus plebis Cn. Pompeio Strabone L. Porcio Catone coss, and this Silvanus is almost certainly the same man who passed the citizenship law described in the Pro Archia. For him to be named tribune in the consulate of Cato and Pompeius Strabo means that he would either have been elected in December of 90 for 89 or in December of 89 for 88, which means that the law he passed with Carbo could conceivably date to any point between late December of 90 and December of 88. Thus far there is no conflict: as has been seen, the sources say the remaining Allies were given the civitas by 88, and the lex Plautia Papiria seems to have been passed at that time, especially if Silvanus was tribune for the period between December 89 to December 88. Admittedly, the law would still have to have been passed or had its terms go active early in the year, in order for Metellus to have registered those who were made citzens by it within sixty days of its passage and then have time for his military service in mid-88 on the other end of Italy.10 This is not impossible, but it does involve an unusual use of language for Cicero: to date a tribunate from a consulate which would expire three weeks into it would be so strange as to be assessed by one scholar has called a solecism.11 Common sense—and common usage—would be to connect a tribunate with the consulate with which it shared most of the year, See also Appendix N. See also Stockton (p. 94–95) and Appendix C for an episode of similar irregulatity involving dating tribunes to soon-to-be-expiring consulates. 10 11

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and thus if Silvanus was “tribune while Gn. Pompeius Strabo and L. Porcius Cato were consuls”, it would make far more sense that he was elected in December 90 to serve until December 89. The military service of Metellus seems to make it reasonable to assert that the lex Plautia Papiria could not have been passed later than early 88. The dating by Cicero would seem to indicate that it was passed even earlier, as its authors were tribunes for the majority of 89 (though perhaps the law had a provision which made it effective on the first of the new year). But if the evidence suggests that the law could not have gone into effect before early 88, there is nothing in them which conclusively rules out that law’s passage earlier than 88, and it very probable that this was in fact the case. As mentioned above, if it can be assumed that Silvanus and Carbo served most of their terms in 89, their citizenship law could have been passed as early as late 90, the year in which they were elected. Yet dating the law to that earliest possible point also presents problems. In order for this to have occurred, Silvanus and Carbo would have to have put the law forward immediately upon their election and had it passed before the end of December, with all the procedural hurdles this might entail.12 This does not mean it could not have been passed in 90, but it is much more plausible that the lex Plautia Papiria was passed over the course of 89. The chronological parameters just mentioned render possible that the lex Plautia Papiria was passed at any point between December of 90 to December of 88, but far more likely that it was passed in 89. If that is so, then it then becomes difficult to ascribe the enfranchisement of all of Italy to this lex. In the first place, if it had been passed in the earlier range of dates—December 90 to spring of 89, for example—then it would indicate Rome’s desire to give the civitas to all of Italy by this point. If such a willingness existed, there might just as easily have terms to this effect in the lex Julia, which was probably passed just a few short weeks earlier. As has been seen, the evidence of Cicero, Appian, and Velleius makes clear it that enfranchisement of all the Italians was not a part of

12

See also Appendix N for these.

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that law.13 Appian makes it clear that the offer of the citizenship in the lex Julia had been inspired by anxiety over the very real prospect of losing the war and being surrounded, but it is clear that this anxiety was not enough to induce the Romans to include all of Italy in the bequest. The overall quiet that descended on peninsula during the winter makes it unlikely that the Romans were persuaded to broaden the scope of enfranchisement due to a worsening military situation in the month that elapsed between the passage of the lex Julia in November of 90 and the assumption of office by Silvanus and Carbo on December 10 of that year. Nor did matters in the field change that much as the tribunate of Sivanus and Carbo progressed: as late 90 became early 89, hostilities resumed with a lopsidedly enormous Roman victory at Asculum. Thus, the fear inspired by the course of the war that impelled the Romans to give some of the Italians the citizenship in late 90 would not have been augmented by battlefield losses in early 89. As the year 89 continued, the Allies continued to suffer greater and greater losses: victories at Canusium and Pompeii could not have even begun to offset such losses as Teaté, Cannae, and the successful campaigns of Cosconius, Gabinius, and Sulla. By the 13 As has been cited at several points in this essay, Cicero describes witnessing the Cn. Pompeius Strabo—and thus in 89—in parley with P. Vettius Scato shortly before the battle outside of Asculum; the subject of their conversation was the citizenship, which Scato sought, not to snatch from the Romans, but that it be given freely by them (non enim ut eriperent nobis socii civitatem, sed ut in eam reciperentur petebant). That Scato might still be seeking such a bequest in 89 makes it practically certain that it had not already been extended to him in 90. Furthermore, Appian mentions that the lex Julia inspired the hope of similar concessions amidst those still in arms, implying that there were those still in arms which were not enfranchised by it (τοὺς δὲ πολεμοῦντας ἐλπίδι τινὶ τῶν ὁμοίων πραοτέρους ἐποί σεν; 1.6.49). Additionally, Velleius mentions that the law gave the civitas to Allies who “had not taken arms or had not been slow to lay them down again” (deinde recipiendo in civitatem, qui arma aut non ceperant aut deposuerant maturius), allowing for the reasonable inference that there were some socii who fit neither description and thus not included in the provisions of the lex Julia. Finally, both of the latter sources explicitly mention the remainder of the Italians being enfranchised later (and thus not by the lex Julia), as will be discussed directly above.

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end of 89 the Alliance was clearly defeated. In spite of that obvious fact, it continued in arms into the following year. Very probably the persistence of the Allies proved so wearisome that the Romans bowed to the necessity of gaining peace by the franchise as indicated above. Vellius suggests as much, indicating that the Romans only acquiesced to give the franchise to the rest of the Italians when their enemies were beaten to their knees and they themselves were substantially weakened (Romani victis adflictisque ipsi exarmati quam integri universis civitatem dare maluerunt; 2.17). That state of affairs did not exist in 90 or early 89, though it more accurately describes conditions slightly later. What the evidence cited above seems to suggest can be summarized as follows. By the middle of 87, the only socii who had ever taken up arms against Rome in the Bellum Italicum who had not yet become Roman citizens were the Samnites and the Lucanui; once they were enfranchised, all of the quondam Allies had become Roman citizens. Some of the others had been given the civitas by the lex Julia in late 90; everyone else must have acquired it between late 90 and 87, and Velleius and Appian state that it happened in 88. This probably coincided with the series of surrenders in the Periocha of Livy’s Book 76 and with the surrender of Ausculum also noted in that source, id est in late spring of that year (and thus after Metellus had already left Rome to go south; see chapter 6). These sources do not mention the precise date of the extension of the citizenship, nor by what laws this was effected. At first glance, a likely candidate may seem to be the lex Plautia Papiria, a law known to given the citizenship to some people and to have been passed between the end 90 and the end of 88. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons this law was probably passed in mid-to-late 89, which seems to make it earlier than the point at which Appian and Velleius suggest the enfranchisement occurred. Thus, the chronology of the sources, flawed though it is, tends to rule out the mass enfranchisement coming as the result of the lex Plautia Papiria. In addition to the problems with the timing, there are other aspects of this law which seem to make it unlikely as the vehicle by which the socii became cives. In the first place, the provisions of the law are described by Cicero, and nowhere in his description of these is it directly stated that the lex Silvani et Carbonis was designed to enfranchise all the Italians. The fact that Cicero took such pains to spell out precisely who benefitted from the lex Julia makes it

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difficult to believe he would pass over such an important component of the lex Plautia Papiria, if, indeed, there was such a component. Added to this (admittedly weak) argument e silentio are the stipulations which are listed that were incumbent on those who wanted to claim the civitas which the law offered. Such individuals apparently had to show that they were residents of Allied cities, that they maintained a residence in Italy, and that they had made the aforementioned appearance before the praetor within sixty days of the law’s enactment. Of these, the third is the most significant point against the lex Plautia Papiria being the law which enfranchised Italy. This is because if all Italians not already made citizens by the lex Julia were to be enfranchised by the lex Plautia Papiria, the sheer numbers of those to be involved in this grant of the civitas would be enormous. Even accounting for casualties suffered over the course of the war, it seems quite probable that the Allies—id est all those who were still in arms after the year 90— would have had at least 150,000 men who would be eligible for registration under such a law.14 All of these men would have to go to Rome to appear before six praetors for registration within two months of the law’s passage.15 Given the very small size of the Roman government at this time (see chapter 3), it is difficult to believe that these praetors would have had anything like a bureaucracy in their employ, and indeed Cicero’s account shows that at least one praetor had had such a direct oversight of his cases that he could later complain 14 Factored by means of taking the data presented in Brunt (1971, p. 3–99 and especially the table on p. 54) and subtracting 100,000 battlefield deaths; this is, of course, a very conservative estimate of the numbers of men who would be left alive, which could have been much, much higher. 15 See chapter 10 for the number of praetors before 83. Of course, it could be responded that perhaps the praetors went to the Italians, and the text of the pro Archia (loc. cit.) does not rule out that they did so. But this would effectively denude Rome of all its judicial officers for the two months, something to which it seems difficult to believe Rome would acquiesce. At any rate, there is no evidence for praetors travelling into Italy to perform registrations. In light of these facts, it seems more likely that the praetors remained in Rome.

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about an erasure in a name (the praetor was Metellus himself; Pro Arch. 9). Therefore, it is likely that each praetor met with every registrant in person, asked him the necessary questions and obtained proof of the necessary data, and then had each return recorded. If this process took merely two minutes per person (which would be astonishingly rapid and efficient), then one praetor and presumably his scribe working uninterrupted for twelve hours could perhaps enroll as many as 360 men in a day; all six praetors on the same relentless schedule could handle—all told—2160 men per diem. Working at that rate, even the determined labor of two months would only get to 130,000 men, and this assumes that there would be no holidays in the interim. The limitations of the apparatus of Roman government and of human beings in general would make a mere two months far too small a window of time to register all those who would have been eligible.16 Moreover, such a process would have required a massive influx of Italians into the city of which there is no record, which would hardly have been a desirable outcome in an age before a standing police force.17 Nor would insufficient law enforcement have been the only concern, either for the current Romans and those travelling the city to obtain the franchise. Others would have included finding places for the Italians to stay during the slow, slow process of becoming enrolled, as well as places to eat (and the victuals themselves). There would also of necessity be a complete halt to any judicial business in the city, assuming all the praetors were at work on this undertaking (and if they were not, that drops the number of those who could potentially be registered by onesixth). The logistical nightmare of such a mass registration, one required by the lex Plautia Papiria if the terms in it described by Cicero were to be considered binding on all who wished to register, And this says nothing of the hardships imposed on the Italians themselves, who at the very least would have had to travel across war-torn Italy in two months to take advantage of the offer. 17 See Wilfried Nippel’s Public Order in Ancient Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), especially p. 35, for a discussion of such an absence. 16

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renders it difficult to believe that it was the law of Silvanus and Carbo was that which gave the citizenship to the rest of the Allies. When combined with the chronological difficulties already encountered, such a belief practically becomes an impossibility. If, then, the lex Plautia Papiria was not enacted to give the franchise to the Allies, then it may well be asked on the one hand what that law was designed to do, and on the other which law did give them the franchise. As far as the latter, it is impossible to tell. The best that can be done is to suggest that probably what occurred is that a law was enacted giving field officers the ability to register entire peoples either at the point of surrender or afterwards. Possibly this unknown edict had been passed before the fall of Asculum, and may have proved an inducement to that city finally to give in. This is hardly satisfying, but the sources allows for nothing better to be gotten. On the other hand, it is much easier to come by answers to the former question as to the true purpose of the lex Plautia Papiria. Very likely the intention of that law was to extend the franchise to those who lived in communities which were eligible for enfranchisement by means of the earlier lex Julia but were not natives to such communities,18 such as non-Italians who had moved into and accepted citizenship from them. This was, in fact, the exact circumstance of Archias, the poet whom Cicero was defending: a Greek originally from Antioch, he had migrated to Heraclea, made it his home, and had became a citizen there, but when the opportunity for Roman franchise became available, he took it. Possibly also it was meant to include individuals whose towns had been eligible for mass enfranchisement under the lex Julia but had refused it or had been slow to ratify the acceptance of the gift.19 If that was in fact what the lex Plautia Papiria had been designed to do, then the restrictions described by Cicero make far greater sense. In the first place, in order to prevent fraudulent 18 Such is the interpretation of Sherwin-White (p. 151–152), Badian (loc. cit.), Brunt (1988, p. 107–108), and Mouritsen (1998, p. 167). 19 A condition which Cicero claims had obtained in Heraclea itself (Pro Balb. 8.21); see chapter 6.

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claims of the franchise, steps would have to be taken to show that these individuals coming forward to claim the civitas really were citizens in those eligible communities. By being compelled to demonstrate to the praetor that they both lived in and were citizens of such places before the time of the law’s passage, those who would attempt to sneak into the Roman citizenship by means of buying a house in the Allied city or bribing an official to give testimony of citizenship there would be frustrated. This registration itself would be far more manageable even for Rome’s small government, since it is to be assumed that the law only pertained to the relatively few individuals whose circumstances were similar to those of Archias (that is, men who had been given citizenship in an Italian community but who had been born elsewhere, of whom numbers would probably not be large). For all these reasons, the lex Plautia Papiria seems a most doubtful candidate for the legislation by which the vast numbers of Italians to be given the citizenship. Instead, it was probably enacted for a far more restricted purpose, probably in early to mid-89, when individuals worthy of the franchise but for some reason could not be given it by the lex Julia and lex Calpurnia had been discovered. The law or laws which did accomplish Allied enfranchisement, however, are unknown, and that is the position which is taken in chapter 6.

APPENDIX Q: THE UNUSUAL CONSULAR CANDIDACY OF C. JULIUS CAESAR VOPISCUS According to a series of notices which come either from Cicero or from a commentary on Cicero, at some point between 89 and 88 BCE one Caius Julius Caesar Vopiscus attempted to gain the Senate’s permission to run for the office of consul in spite of the fact that he had never been elected praetor.1 Such a dispensation was apparently strenuously—and, it seems, violently—opposed by the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus. In this, Sulpicius was almost certainly motivated by what were his pronounced Optimate sensibilities, althought he vehemence of his opposition seems to have alienated him from the boni. Having deserted or been deserted by his one-time factio, Sulpicius soon found himself in partnership with Caius Marius; the fateful consequences of this alliance are narrated in Chapter 7. The ultimate results of this unusual candidacy are well-known, yet remaining unclear is the reasoning behind why it came into being in the first place. Why is it that Caesar had to run for office before he was eligible to do so? In spite of what is sometimes construed as a clear indication of what this motivation was, there is actually no unambiguous answer given in the sources as to why Caesar could not adhere to the cursus honorum. In fact, there has been quite a bit of scholarly debate on this subject, but in spite of many cunning arguments made in these disputes, the speculation offered in chapter 7 as to what impelled to Caesar seek the office when he did does not really conform to any of them. Because that is true, it seems appropriate to summarize the conculsions reached by modern scholarship in a fairly comprehensive manner and spell out why this essay has departed from them, and to do so away 1 That this was the illegality may be inferred from the Phillipics, in which a man who attempts to run for consul inspite of having failed to become praetor is referred to as alter Caesar Vopiscus (11.11). Cicero therefore hints at what Asconius says explictly: in his commentary on Cicero’s Pro Scauro (25), he refers to the two Julii Caesares, of whom Caius Gaius aedilicius quidem occisus est. Having only achieved the rank of Aedile before he died, sperabat et id agebat [Caius] Caesar ut omissa praetura consul fieret.

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from the main narrative. Such a summary will follow in the pages below. Most of the modern scholars who attempt to locate the reason for Caesar’s candidacy find it in the war that was to be fought against Mithridates. Specifically, many scholars have suggested that Caesar’s impatience to win the consulate stemmed from his thirst for command of that war.2 Their suggestions are grounded in a passage from Diodorus Siculus, one which implies that the leadership for the war in Asia was sought by many prominent men, and that Marius and Caesar were “pitted against each other” for the consulate that would bring it (ἀντιποιουμένων πολλῶν ἐνδόξων τυχεῖν τῆς κατὰ Μι ριδαάτου στρατ γίας διὰ τὸ μέγε ος τῶν ἐπά λων. Γάιός τε γὰρ Ἰούλιος καὶ Γάιος μάριος ὁ ἑξάκις ὑπατεύσας ἀντεφιλονείκουν; 37.2.14). Since Caesar is thus described as being

opposed to Marius over the Pontic command, and since he known from other sources to have sought the consulate although not qualified for it, the inference becomes that he sought a consulate for the command it would bring, and was opposed by Marius in the process because he, too, wanted the post (see chapter 7). However, there are other possible readings of the language used by Diodorus. In the first place, all Diodorus says is that Marius and Caesar were opposed to each other over who should have the Mithridatic command. That could mean that Caesar wanted it for himself, and that Marius opposed him because he objected to Caesar’s leadership. It could in theory also mean that Caesar did not himself want it, but rather wanted it to go to someone else, a person whom Marius found objectionable. It could further mean that Marius wanted it to go to a specific candidate, to whom Caesar for some reason objected; finally, it could mean that Marius wanted it, and that Caesar objected to the leadership of Marius. Some of these possibilities are admittedly more far-fetched than others, but the Greek allows for all of them and does not explictly point to any one over the others.

2 This has been asserted by Badian (1964b, p. 151; 1970, p. 13–14), Spann (p. 26), Mitchell (p. 197–201), and Lintott (p. 446–451).

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This having been acknowledged, several other sources explicitly state that Marius was himself interested in the post.3 This would tend to speaking against the idea that Marius and Caesar were at odds over rival candidates each man may have supported. Thus, if the modern speculation that Caesar’s candidacy is connected to the Mithridatic War is correct, then it is almost certainly the case that he and Marius were opposed either because Caesar wanted the command for himself, or did not but did not want it to fall to Marius. Of these possibilities, a few curious facts exist which cast doubts on it being the former of them, id est that Caesar wanted the legions for himself. In the first place, Caesar’s career up to this point seems to have included no military commands of any kind. Instead, it is most notable for its oratory, wit, and cultivation of literary pursuits, in which there is revealed little that would suggest either ability at, or zeal for, combat leadership.4 Of course, there may have been the idea in Rome that the war would be an easy one. Appian seems to suggest that Marius thought as much (Μάριος δὲ τὸν πόλεμον εὐχερῆ τε καὶ πολύχρυσον ἡγούμενος; 1.7.55), and it indeed may have been for someone of his abilities.5 Caesar, however, was no Marius, and even an easy war may have been more than a little daunting for an inexperienced general. Unlike a later C. Julius Caesar who was both a man of action and a man of letters, this one seems to have been far more the latter than the former. Secondly, it seems that Caesar made his bid for ambitio in 88 and not 89. This can be gathered from the testmomony of Cicero, who notes in the Brutus that Caesar’s attempt to run for consul was opposed by speeches given by both P. Antistius and P. Sulpicius, who were then colleagues in the tribunate (Coniunctus igitur Sulpici aetati P. Antistius fuit ... in tribunatu primum contra C. Iuli illam consulatus petitionem extraordinariam veram causam agens est probatus; et eo magis quod 3 These include Orosius (5.19.4), Plutarch (Mar. 34; Sull. 7), and Appian (1.7.55); see also chapter 7. 4 This was noted by Luce (1970, p. 192–193). 5 Although Sulla would certainly have a time of it; see chapters 8 and 9.

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eandem causam cum ageret eius conlega ille ipse Sulpicius, hic plura et acutiora dicebat [emphasis added]; Brut. 226). As the other sources make clear, Sulpicius was during the majority of 88, and thus was elected in December of 89. Since Caesar’s petitio was opposed by Sulpicius as tribune, that petitio had to have been made in 88, as the elections of 89 for one of the consulates of 88 would have already occurred by the time Sulpicius took office in December of that year.6 By 88 the command against Mithridates had already been assigned to Sulla, and while there was apparently no love lost between these two (see below), it seems most unlikely that Caesar had in mind superseding him in his province and finishing the war Sulla had started.7 After all, when Marius had done the same thing to Q. Caecilius Metellus in 107, a sympathetic Senate awarded him both a triumph and the cognomen of “Numidicus” (Velleius, 2.11), and it was this selfsame Senate that Caesar was now petitioning to be given the right to run for Consul. For these reasons, it seems that Caesar did not seek to be allowed to run for the consulate so as to secure leadership of the Asian expedition. If Caesar did not burn for command against Mithridates, there still remains the possibility that Caesar wanted to run for the office to keep the war against Mithridates out of the hands of Marius. If the latter was indeed running for consul, Caesar may have run himself in the belief that his election was the best means to keep Marius from securing the appointment. Precisely why Caesar would be so adamant about blocking Marius cannot be known, if indeed he did feel this way. Perhaps Caesar’s opposition came from the fact that, as a nobilis, he would have been reluctant to see Marius get either the office or the command, lest the general gain yet another chance for popularity and martial success which could be translated into the establishment of a tyranny. If so, it is

Badian (1964, p. 77–79) suggests that consular elections may have been held later than usual in 89, allowing Caesar to run in what would have been the early part of the tribunate of Sulpicius, but he is fairly successfully refuted by Mitchell (p. 201). 7 Contra Lintott (loc. cit.) and Powell (p. 452–453), who suggest Caesar aimed to do that very thing. 6

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not impossible that Caesar would have gone to fairly considerable lengths to prevent it. However, it seems that Marius never actually did run for consul, either in 88 or 87.8 Instead, he seems to have looked instead to have Sulla’s proconsular command transferred to himself by means of a plebiscitum, as Appian explicitly states (loc. cit.)9. If this was indeed the case, than Caesar could not have run to keep Marius out the office, because the general was not actually seeking it. If it was also the case that Caesar did not seek the commission in Asia for himself, then his run for the consulate would have had as its aim neither the winning of the ability to fight Mithridates, nor the prevention of the same going to Marius. Why, then, did Caesar seek approval for his candidacy, if not for these purposes? And what is to be made of the passage of Diodorus, which directly states that there was a conflict between Marius and Caesar concerning the Mithridatic War? An answer to the latter may be found in the timing of the plebiscitum of Sulpicius which sought to give the proconsular assignment to Marius. Although the passage in Plutarch’s Sulla concerning this transfer is far from biased (as it almost certainlyhad as its source Sulla’s Memoirs),10 his indication seems to be that the transfer was proposed after Sulpicius was already well known for having advanced a series of laws of surpassing wickedness (about which, see chapter 7). This suggests his tribunate was already somewhat far along. If his opposition to Caesar’s candidacy had come earlier, then it may be that Caesar opposed it out of nothing more than revenge, given the fact that that opposition had apparently been both nasty and violent. Caesar may then have attempted to thwart the plebiscitum, not because it proposed to invest Marius with proconsular imperium for the war in Asia, but simply to frustrate Sulpicius. Alternatively, Caesar may have objected equally both to Marius and to the man proposing to give him the east-bound legions, and set himself against the law for For the seemingly contradictory evidence of Orosius, see chapter 7. Plutarch agrees, though he states that this proconsulate was the idea of Sulpicius (Mar. 34). 10 Sull. 8; see chapter 1 for Plutarch’s use of Sulla as a source. 8 9

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both purposes. In this way, Caesar and Marius would have come into conflict over the Mithridatic War, but not because they were competitors either for the command itself or for the consulate. A final enigma remains, which is why Caesar would want to run for the consulate at all. Chapter 7 speculates that Caesar may merely have sought to do so because he sensed an opportunity: 90 and 89 had been relatively good years for the Julii Caesares, as Lucius, brother of Caius, had become consul and censor in those years, respectively. Furthermore, another Julius Caesar, Sextus, had been elected consul the year before Lucius in 91, and had won some renown in the later war. Perhaps Caius sought to strike while the iron was hot and not wait for the intermediate steps of the cursus, which might diminish the newfound luster on his family name. Admittedly, there is no clear statement to this effect in any of the sources, but there is no explanation for his desire to be given the privelege of an early campaign at all. Further, the theory put forth in chapter 7 does have the advantage of not resting on a putative hunger for a military command for which his Caesar’s career and personality would seem to make him somewhat unsuited.

APPENDIX R: THE MILITARY CAREER OF P. SULPICIUS RUFUS Very little is known about the public life of P. Sulpicius Rufus before his tribunate. Included in the knowledge that is missing are details about his military career, if he had had one. It is often assumed that he had served in the Allied War, but it cannot be certain that he did so, or in what capacity. Obviously this uncertainty bespeaks of a lack of extensive mention of Sulpicius in a martial capacity in the sources, from which it can be inferred that any service he may have done must not have been of great importance. Yet modern scholarship has attempted to fill in the details in ways that have bearing on some of the events of that war, and on some of the events which followed; particularly, the behavior of Pompeius Strabo on the approach of Sulla (see chapter 7) has been sometimes attributed to his relationship with Sulpicius. Therefore, it is perhaps not entirely inappropriate to investigate what can be known about Sulpicius Rufus and his record in the war, and to see what conclusions can be drawn from such an investigation. Cicero claims Sulpicius Rufus had been a legate in the Bellum Sociale (Erat Hortensius in bello primo anno miles, altero tribunus militum, Sulpicius legatus [emphasis added]; Brut. 304).1 For this reason, it has sometimes been speculated that it was he who was the Sulpicius referred to in the sources as having helped break Pompeius out of the siege at Firmum,2 and likewise the Sulpicius described as having defeated the Marrucini (see chapters 5 and 6, respectively).3 However, doubt can be cast on this assumption for a number of reasons. In the first place, Sulpicius Rufus is not 1 Actually, this work claims that a Sulpicius was a legate in a war. However, the war in question is said to have put an end to the Varian trial, making it certain that the Allied War is meant, and the Sulpicius in question would be noted as having both become tribune in the consulate of Sulla and having lost his life in that year, making it clear the P. Sulpicius Rufus is meant. 2 So Keaveney (1987, p. 141; also p. 209–210 and notes 22 and 24, p. 213). 3 Keaveney (loc. cit.), as well as Domaszewski (p. 30).

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recorded as having held a high office before his tribunate nor ever to have led men in battle, and for this reason, it seems difficult to believe that such a man would have been assigned to any important military duties by Pompeius. Appian certainly does not mention him as among the main commanders of 90 (1.5.40), nor does Cicero list Sulpicius amongst the men singled out for notice in a passage of the Pro Fonteio which list other luminaries from that war (43). Additionally, another Sulpicius—Sulpicius Galba—seems to have been praetor already, and if he had not necessarily covered himself in glory during his year in office (see chapter 4),4 he was nevertheless a man of ex-praetorian rank, a status which seems to have been attained by most of the men who received any sort of command in this war.5 To be sure, Galba may have had no more leadership experience than Sulpicius Rufus had had: praetorian rank did not necessarily imply familiarity with or even ability in the leading of men, as the case of the unfortunate Q. Servilius Caepio in 90 perhaps illustrates (see chapter 5). Furthermore, Galba is likewise also unmentioned as having led men in the passages of Cicero and Appian just cited. However, he had attained a superior magistracy, making it more likely that important service would have devolved upon him. Secondly, while the Periochae does not allow the time in which the Marrucini had been defeated and surrendered to be stated with pinpoint accuracy, it does seem to indicate that it had occurred after Sulla had gone back to Rome to run for the consulate. It had probably therefore occurred either before or at the same time as Pompeius could be described as proconsul (in other words, either in late 89 or early 88).6 During this time Sulpicius Rufus would have had to have been back in Rome to run for and serve as tribune, making him the unlikely conqueror of the Marrucini. Sulpicius Galba, by contrast, was under no such restraint, and it could well have been he who had beaten them. If both of these premises are to be accepted, it would seem more likely that Galba and not Rufus was the legate of Pompeius See also appendix F. As observed by Haug, p. 204; see also Appendix N. 6 See also Appendix G for the dating in the Periochae. 4 5

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from 90–88, and that this it was he who was responsible for the actions at Firmum as well. This is the position taken in chapters 5 and 6.7 Yet this does not necessarily completely rule out that Q. Sulpicius Rufus had seen service in the Allied War as a legate completely, as there seems no good reason to hold that Cicero was simply wrong on this point. After all, Cicero does not say in what year, under whom, and in what capacity Sulpicius served. It may well have been that he did indeed hold a legate’s commission, perhaps involved in administrative service and involved in no significant operations. Under whom is a different matter. The hypothesis of one modern scholar is that the commanders of 90 were essentially split into the boni and Mariani.8 If that was in fact the case, then—given his optimate connections which are described in chapter 6—Sulpicius Rufus might very well have served in that year under the command of L. Caesar, due to the latter’s connections with the optimates. He might then in turn have been one of the officers discharged by Cato in early 89, allowing him to go back to Rome and run for the tribunate of 88 (for which, see, again, chapter 6). Either way, it seems very likely that Sulpicius had no particular connection to Pompeius Strabo, contrary to the assertions of some scholars that Strabo was in danger of prosecution due to his 7 E. T. Salmon also believes that it was Sulpicius Galba who was the legate of Pompeius and therefore played the significant role at Firmum in 89 (1967, p. 356), and that it was also he who overwhelmed later the Marrucini (op. cit., p. 365). The former proposition agrees with the opinion of Domaszewski (p. 27), who likewise holds at it was Sulpicius Galba at Firmum, but parts company with Domaszewski’s interpretation of the Marrucinian campaign, which is asserted to have been conducted by Sulpicius Rufus (p. 30, as noted above). Keaveney, for his part, believes that Sulpicius Rufus was responsible for both of these actions (op. cit., p. 136–141), while Sulpicius Galba fought the action in 90 against the Paeligni which is usually attributed to Sex. Julius Caesar by most scholarly accounts, including this one (see chapter 5 and Appendix J). For more on the service of Ser. Sulpicius Galba, and his potential earlier employment into the Allied coniuratio as an investigator, see chapter 4 and Appendix F. 8 So Badian (1964, p. 55).

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connection with Sulpicius9 and thus did nothing to halt Sulla’s march on Rome, perhaps hoping thereby to make some sort of arrangement to avoid it. Pompeius certainly had his reasons for holding back from Sulla’s March on Rome, but whatever they were, it does not seem that some sort of trouble due to connection to P. Sulpicius as a one-time subordinate was one of them, since it seems that neither the service together nor the attendant loyalty existed.

9

For this see Stevenson, p. 98

APPENDIX S: THE CHRONOLOGY FOR THE END OF THE TRIALS CONDUCTED BY CINNA AND MARIUS As chapter 8 describes, after returning to Rome from the exile which had been imposed upon them and defeating the armies raised to stop them from doing this very thing, Marius and Cinna found themselves in control of the city, which was now been forcibly occupied for the second time in less than two years. The two men apparently then decided to liquidate those members of the optimates towards whom they either bore a personal grudge or whom they believed to be dangerous, men who would very likely these would be the same people. The evidence suggests that Marius and Cinna decided that these men would be best removed after being tried and convicted of some offense, rather than have them simply dispatched in a more direct but less formal manner. As mentioned in chapter 9, the Periochae, Appian, Velleius, Orosius, Florus, and Lucan all indicate that the executions had ceased before the election of Marius and Cinna to the consulate of 86. There were, however, probably some exceptions to this, and at least one is known: on the Kalends of January a senator named Sextus Lucilius—a former tribune, according to Velleius—was thrown from the Tarpeian rock (2.23). The Periochae and Plutarch, whose accounts also contain notices concerning the death of this man, both state this was done at the orders of Marius,1 and in this way such a deed may be related to an anecdote reported in Dio (frg. 102) in which the son of Marius is claimed, amidst such other offense as having deprived two praetors of fire and water and killed a tribune with his own hands, to have had a tribune thrown from the rock. Since the Commenta Bernensia on Lucan 2.125 mentions a tribune named Caelius who was ordered to that place on the Kalends of January and then hurled from it, presumably at the same time that Lucilius met the same end (an event also mentioned in that source), it seems likely that all the ancient sources refer to the same event. 1 Per. 80, where he is called Lucinius; Mar. 45, where he is named Lucinus.

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But in working out the specifics of it some problems with the chronology of 87 and 86 present themselves. Since these also touch on more important matters from that year, it does not seem a useless effort to try and untie some of these knots. Following the logic applied to the untangling of other minor but important problems throughout this essay, this task will not interrupt the current of the main narrative, nor encumber it with yet another lengthy footnote of the sort that, it may be argued, is present in too great a quantity anyway. Rather, it will be presented here. As has been seen, it is hard to reconcile the statement in the sources that the executions stopped before the elections of the consuls for 86 (and thus November of 87) with this other, and possibly more besides, transpiring with what appears to be official sanction several months later. This difficulty may be surmounted by simply noting that there were exceptions to the cessation of executions, ones that are not mentioned in the sources which declared their ending but which others note. Less easily dispensed with is the indication that individual held personally and directly responsible for this deed actually appears to have had the authority to carry it out. In November of 87 this authority seems to have resided only with consuls, praetors, and tribunes, but Marius the Younger was none of these in 87 or 86. On the other hand, it has been seen that Marius Gratidianus was tribune in some part of 87, as it was he who as, tribune, prosecuted Q. Catulus on charges whose punishment was apparently so horrible that the latter first pleaded for exile and then ultimately committed suicide to evade them (for which see chapter 8). Marius Gratidianus could therefore have legally thrown these men from the Tarpeian rock, and indeed there has been some speculation that it was he who did so.2 But for this to be the case, his tribunate would have to be moved from December 88 to December 87 to December 87 to December 86. Such a rearrangement creates additional problems, of which one it that it would compel the indictment of Catulus to late December of 87 at 2 By Rawson (1987, p. 169–170, 175), who holds that Dio and apparently the Commenta Bernensia had confused Gratidianus for Marius the Younger.

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the earliest. It is difficult to believe that the trial to accompany it would have taken place in less than three weeks, so it would have continued into January.3 As it turns out, there is at least one source which suggests that precisely this occurred. Florus states that all of the deaths decided upon by Marius and Cinna had happened between the Kalends and Ides of January 86 (Haec tot senatus funera intra kalendas et idus Ianuarii mensis septima illa Marii purpura dedit; 2.9). This is often considered an error of the grossest osrt, and indeed it is almost certainly is partly mistaken: the other sources clearly indicate that most of the executions happened before Marius was elected consul. Yet if a few happened afterwards, the notice in Florus can be partly rehabilitated: perhaps what his source told him was that the death of Lucilius and Catulus happened in January of 86, and he mistakenly assumed all the others had, as well. Furthermore, that a few deaths happened after November of 87 would make sense of a curious detail Appian passes along about the slaying of Ancharius (described in chapter 8). That author says Ancharius was killed while trying to reconcile with Marius during the latter’s sacrifice on the Capitoline, which is held to be a consular activity and thus not to be undertaken until January.4 Likewise, it also rescues from error a statement by the Commenta Bernensia that the head of Antonius (see, again, chapter 8) had been put on the table of Marius on the Kalends of January. The principal problem with this construction, however, is that all the other sources strongly indicate that the slayings had stopped before the consuls of 86 were chosen, which would be in November of 87. Moreover, the tribunate of Gratidianus would, again, have to have been for the majority of 86, and that the praetorates held by Gratidianus would come directly after his tribunate without anything like a biennium, if the widely-accepted date of his first praetorate was indeed 85. Although this was a minor enough law to break in a period of greater lawlessness, it may be wondered if there is some way to explain all the various divergences without assuming such misdemeanors. Is there a better 3 4

As Rawson argues (loc. cit.). Auc. cit., p. 167.

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way to describe this trial and execution while simultaneously retaining the evidence of the sources about the officeholding of Gratidianus and the testimony that the trials had ended before November 87? One (extremely hypothetical) way to do so might be to assume that this Lucilius had been convicted in 87, but like several others who had been prosecuted in that year, he had fled. He was subsequently caught by an officer dispatched for that very purpose. It seems that Marius the Younger had been an officer under his father in 90 and under Cato in 89, and presumably had been made a legate again by his father during the advance to Rome. It may have been that he was the one sent after Lucilius and caught him late in December of 87, perhaps hiding in the home of the newlyelected tribune Caelius. This latter might then also have been prosecuted for aiding the fugitive by his colleague, fellow-tribune Publius Laenas, whereupon Marius the Younger brought both of them under guard to the rock, from which Laenas threw Lucilius (so Velleius 2.24).5 If Caelius then resisted, Marius may have killed him outright and then completed the sentence by having Laenas throw the body, thereby providing the basis for the statement of Dio. It might also be that the two unnamed praetors also mentioned in that passage had also in some way helped the fugitive, for which they were denied fire and water. Marius then may have done what he did as a soldier authorized to oversee the carrying out of the sentence. Thus would allow Gratidianus to have served as tribune in 87 with a biennum before his praetorate in 85, and, finally, preserve the chronology asserted by the sources: the trial did in fact take place before November of 87 (Caelius was brought up on a different charge), but due to flight the execution had to wait until the Kalends of January. It is sometimes thought that Velleius errs here and attributes the death of Lucilius to the eve of Sulla’s return, as he says the execution took place “at the same time” as that return. Yet earlier in the passage Velleius makes reference to Fimbria’s slaying of Valerius Flaccus and defeat of Mithridates (see chapter 9). That happened in 86, and it is not improbable that the execution of Lucilius took place eodem anno as Fimbria’s adventures (86) rather than eodem anno as the return of Sulla (83). 5

APPENDIX T: CINNA AND HIS UNREDEEMED PROMISE TO THE FORMER ALLIES, 87–86 An assumption crucial to much of chapters 8 and 9 is that Cinna was not able immediately to redeem his pledge to the former Allies to effect their redistribution into all the tribes, one which he had attempted before his expulsion from Rome in 87 and which had almost certainly promised to those Italians who would aid him on his return to the city. This inability is agreed upon by a great number of modern scholars,1 who all draw upon a cryptic notice in the Periochae suggesting that sometime in 85–84 the new citizens were given the right to vote (novis civibus S.C. suffragium datum est, Per. 84). Since, however, the new citizens already had the right to vote (or, at least, had the rights to vote in the comitia tributa), the passage has been interpreted to mean, not that the vote was given at this time, but that it was the point at which the redistribution was finally achieved. Such is the consensus, although this interpretation has not been without challenges. At least one scholar reads that same passage differently, and argues that Cinna had not waited until 85 or 84 but had accomplished the redistribution as early as 86.2 This understanding is not entirely without support in the other sources; there is, for instance, the notice in Appian which indicates that the “laws enacted during Sulla’s consulate were repealed” immediately upon the re-entry of Cinna into the capital (ἀνατροπαὶ τῶν ἐπὶ Σύλλα τε έντων νόμων; 1.8.73).3 Since this would presumably reinstate the redistribution enacted by Sulpicius, then Appian may well claim that redistribution was effected earlier than 85. Nor would this compromise another notice in the Periochae in which Sulla promises to respect the rights recently won by the Italians. The words used there—nuper datum—are hardly precise: “recently” 1 Including Spann (p. 330), Lovano (p. 61–63), Badian (1964, p. 223), and Keaveney (1982, p. 121; 1982b, p. 506–507). 2 Frank (1924, p. 335–336). 3 Frank did not actually seek corroboration there, but Salmon makes precisely such an argument (1967, p. 375–377).

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could mean “since Sulla’s eastern expedition”, in which case it would pertain to anything passed between when Sulla left in early 87 and early 82, which is the time in which this agreement between Sulla and the Italian peoples is claimed to have been struck. The entirety of 86–84 falls well within this timespan. The irregularities in the account have led one scholar4 to postulate that what was meant by the Periochae and other sources was that Cinna did in fact effect such a redistribution in 87, but that it was not sealed and made legal until the census of 86/85, which assigned the Italians to their proper places (see chapter 8). The census returns were ratified by the Senate in 85, hence the placement in the Periochae (the chronology does allow for such a dating; see chapter 9). The connection between redistribution and census is logical enough: when would be a better time to rearrange the Italians then when they were being registered? Yet this argument, too, is not airtight: a census could easily still have been taken under the earlier tribal restrictions, and thus need not have pointed to changed circumstances, such as redistribution. In fact, it has been persuasively argued5 that the fairly limited census of 86 displays a continued reluctance to give the Italians equal rights which might have mirrored on the part of the censors the general senatorial obstruction of the redistribution laws. Indeed, the argument continues, this reluctance has no better face than L. Philippus, one of the censors of this year who as consul had opposed the measure of Drusus to grant the civitas (as has been seen) and regretted enfranchisement still in 776. It is highly likely that Philippus he would not have wanted to distribute them in such a way as to give them the equality which he seemed determined to have kept from them. Thus, it seems most unlikely that a redistribution brought about in 87 would have been formalized by the census conducted under such an opponent of the rights of the one-time socii. Finally, a redistribution would

Brunt (1971, p. 92–93). By Harris (1971, p. 232–236). 6 So Harris, loc. cit.; the regret of Philippus is probably based on his speech to the Senate in the fragments of Sallust’s Histories (1.65–67) 4 5

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essentially bring about full voting rights in the comitia tribute,7 which would not have been dependent upon a census.8 The census could have been conducted under the voting restrictions, or under the removal of the, equally well, and thus cannot confrim when redistribution took place. In the face of such arguments and given all the contradictory data, it seems not unreasonable to assume that what had actually transpired is that the redistribution law—which would have been most objectionable to the Senate—had been put off until later than 87, since Cinna would have to use all of his available political capital to see to the passage of the debt legislation of Flaccus (see chapter 7). In the meantime (and, perhaps, in a not entirely unrelated maneuver), Cinna did appoint censors to register the Italians, such that he could claim that he was working in the interests of extending their rights. In this manner he could win their continued electoral support, since he could not use their votes to get himself re-elected in the absence of a census, while holding out the redistribution to keep themselves bound to him. How much later is another question: the passage in the Periochae could be read to imply that distribution happened at any time between 85– 84, and thus may have been effected while Cinna lived or after he had died. Yet based on the other chronological indicators, it also seems reasonable to assume that it happened later rather than sooner, and that Cinna was himself not responsible for the measure but rather Carbo was; reasons for this are discussed in chapter 9. Either way, it seems fairly safe to assert that in neither his first or second consulates was Cinna able to come through for the Allies, which may have been exasperating for both consul and former socii but did have the effect of keeping them close, as chapter 9 shows that they were still on the eve of the Civil War.

7 8

So also Keaveney 1982b, loc. cit. See chapter 7 involving the census of 88.

APPENDIX U: ANCONA AND THE SENTIMENTS OF THE NOVI CIVES A significant component of the way the Civil War of 83–81 is described in this essay is the contention that the former Italians, ones enfranchised between 90–87, overwhelmingly sided for the government of Rome against L. Cornelius Sulla. For confirmation of this sentiment amongst the former Allies the specific testimony of Appian and other sources has been invoked, as may be discerned in the reading of chapter 9. As is claimed there, the support of the novi cives was not only present, but was also fervent and active, translating itself into strenuous military action against the future Dictator. The ferocity with which they fought Sulla and his army would seems to furnish irrefutable evidence to their willingness to cross swords even with the men who were in theory now their fellow Romans. Yet such a willingness is not entirely accepted by all modern scholars, and a challenge to it has been located in the circumstances surrounding the death of L. Cornelius Cinna in 84. Due to the importance placed on the backing of Cinnan government by the Allies, a closer investigation to this challenge to it appears warranted, and such will be provided in the pages below. The episode in question is the mutiny in Ancona, during which the Cinna was killed. Although it is probable that there were many causes for that affair, there are some who have discerned in it reasons to doubt the enthusiasm of the Italians for the government’s cause. Based, perhaps, on the comment of Appian that those soldiers who survived shipwreck dispersed because they “did not relish the prospect of fighting their fellow-citizens”,1 Ancona is believed to be symptomatic of a larger phenomena, which is that there was a general lack of a desire to do battle, not just with fellow-Romans, but with Sulla specifically.2 This reluctance is in part held to be a product of skillfully crafted propaganda which had been employed by Sulla in the guise of his 1 εὐ ὺς ἐς τὰς πατρίδας διεδίδρασκον ὡς οὐ στρατεύσοντες ἑκόντες κατὰ πολιτῶν; Appian, 1.9.78 2

Keaveney 1982, p. 121–122; 1982b, p. 506–509.

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letters to the Senate,3 propaganda to which the Italians were particularly susceptible. This unwillingness to fight (this argument continues) ultimately led to an insurrection amongst Cinna’s men, and to the death of the man who intended to lead them into battle, their hesitation notwithstanding. One of the inferences drawn by this theory is that the mutiny at Ancona was primarily the doing of the ex-socii. This is somewhat puzzling, as neither Appian nor any other source singles them out for culpability. Indeed, Appian’s words can be read to suggest that he was in fact indicating that it was veteres who were to blame for what occurred.4 Nevertheless, Ancona, along with other developments (such such as the fact that later Carbo would feel the need to secure hostages from the Italians, and the lack of opposition encountered by Sulla upon his landing at Brundisium and his subsequent trek to Capua)5 are all held to be illustrations of the wavering demeanor of the former Allies in the face of the returning commander.6 Such arguments are vulnerable in several areas, not the least of which in the very ones which are supposed to give it strength. For example, the taking of hostages may indeed represent an attempt to diminish the effects of divided loyalties in those cities wherein there was some doubt; certainly not all Italians supported Carbo, just as not all Italians had supported each other during the Allied War. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that Carbo is recorded as having actually demanded any hostages from only one place, Placentia, where there seems to have been unpleasantness in the bellum Octavianum of the sort that indicated wavering loyalty to the government (Valerius Maximus 4.7.5, 6. 2.10; see also Chapter 8). It is likely that Carbo would have asked for hostages from other Frier, p. 588–593. A reluctance to fight “fellow citizens” might be more expected from men who had been “fellow citizens” for centuries, rather than from some who had just come to share that parity within the last five years. Badian, for his part, does not mentioned the Italian components of Cinna’s army at all in his discussion of this episode (1964, p. 226–228). 5 As related in Chapter 9. 6 Frier, p. 598. 3 4

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cities had he thought they might give him difficulties, and the fact that he had no cause to do so may be telling. Additionally, it is true that Sulla was not opposed at Brundisium. Yet the simple common sense of that city in itsa decision not to hold out against an army of five legions need not be taken as indicative of an overall tendency amongst all Italians not to want to fight him. The Brundisi had made their decision out of a desire to survive, and as they were later rewarded with a remission of customs duties it might be that self-interest was sweetened with bribery in this case (Appian 1.9.79). It is also a fact that Sulla was not impeded in his march along the Via Appia. However, he was not ravaging territory either (Velleius 2.25), so it may well have been the Italians along his line of march were perfectly content to let him pass as he proceeded towards the army which was waiting for him in Capua. If these occurrences are not necessarily indications of an uncertain Allied resolve, there nevertheless remains Ancona, and the apparent lack of volition on the part of the Cinna’s men to fight Sulla which seems to be illustrated by what happened there. In response, it should be acknowledged that the entire strength of this interpretation is based on apparent qualms against combat which is only recorded in Appian, and he (as was noted) does not specify that this hesitation was exclusively, or even partially, one felt by Italians. Admittedly, Appian is not the only author to take note of a disinclination to sail to Liburnia. The Periochae also mentions an unwillingness a reluctance to take to ship to go against Sulla, one which led to Cinna’s murder when he did not take heed of it (Cinna ab exercitu suo, quem invitum cogebat naves conscendere et adversus Sullam proficisci, interfectus est; Per. 83). Yet the Latin used here only states that the army was unwilling to board and set out against Sulla. This is not the same thing as stating that the army was unwilling to fight Sulla under any circumstances. Rather, it specifies that the army did not with to advance against him by ship. It may well have been that embarkation, and not battle, was the source of the objection: if the sea near Ancona was still prone to storms due to the season (as Appian states it was), the latter might easily be the more proper explanation for the recalcitrance of Cinna’s men. His army may have been perfectly willing to test conclusions with Sulla, but were less sanguine for a fight against an angry Neptune.

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Nevertheless, although the hostages, Brundisium and the march to Capua, and Ancona might not be the best possible illustrations for it, it might very well be that there were in fact some reservations on the part of the Allies when it came to taking part in this conflict against Sulla. Reasons for why it might have existed include a natural desire to continue in the calm and restfulness of the triennium sine armis and continue repairing the enormous losses inflicted on the men and the land in one-time Allied areas. Neutrality at first may very well have been sought by many Italians, if for no other reason than as an avenue to remain in the quiet of the previous months. Moreover, there may have been the fear that, by fighting Sulla, they might lose: there was the distinct possibility that a proven captain at the head of experienced veterans might very well win, and that taking “unalterable stands against him too early” might be unwise.7 There was also Sulla’s promise to restrain his enmity to those who were ἐχ ροί, which may have led some who did not believe themselves in that number to eschew combat and escape any unpleasantness. Such considerations might have obtained to anyone in Italy; with the former socii especially, there was Sulla’s assertion that he had never opposed the redistribution of the novi into all the tribes, but had simply set himself against the transfer of his Mithridatic command. Vacating this would require declaring Sulpicius hostis, and in the process vacating all of the leges Sulpiciae, including the redistribution laws.8 The letter sent to the Senate by Sulla (Appian 1.9.11) seems to have promised to leave the new rights of the Allies alone, and as one scholar would have it, “since [Sulla] was a man who prided himself on keeping his word, few doubted that, despite his earlier bitter opposition to redistribution, he would fully redeem his pledge”.9 All of those reasons might well have obtained, but there is no evidence that any or all of them gained any particular traction with the the Italians. Moreover, the evidence which does exist (particularly in the form of Appian’s repeated statements of it) is that not only the majority of Italians but even the majority of As Frier notes, p. 590. So Salmon, 1967, p. 377–379. 9 Keaveney 1982, p. 121–122. 7 8

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Romans were against Sulla upon his return, and thus after Ancona. Such indications as there are show that Cinna and Carbo had, in fact, no problems recruiting Italians, which they did in large quantities. Since their purpose in raising men was only that of fighting Sulla, a lack of wanting to do so is not easy to detect, probably because it did not exist. For all these reasons, it is perhaps appropriate to discard the occasional claims that the Italians had no urge to fight Sulla. If the sources are to be believed, the Italians did have precisely that impulse, and they apparently acted upon it in great numbers.

APPENDIX V: Q. SERTORIUS AND THE AFFAIR OF SUESSA AURUNCA As was described in chapter 9, according to a report found in Appian (1.10–85–86; 1.13.108)—and, it should be pointed out, it is found in Appian alone—Sulla and the consul L. Scipio were engaged in negotiations to try and end the nascent civil war near Teanum when Sulla abruptly broke off peace talks broke off due to what deemed to be treachery on Scipio’s part. The offense which led Sulla to this action had been the capture of Suessa Aurunca—a town friendly to Sulla which lay between Teanum on the Via Latina and the Via Appia—by Scipio’s apparent legate Q. Sertorius. Sertorius had done this while being dispatched to bear the results of negotiations between Sulla and Scipio to Capua and the other consul of 83, C. Norbanus. Because Sertorius was Scipio’s lieutenant, Sulla could claim that the capture was the fault of the consul. When upbraided by Sulla, Scipio did not give answer to accusations of false dealing “either because he was party to the plan or because he did not know how to account for the bizarre act of Sertorius”,1 id est that Sertorius had perpetrated this act without his knowledge. In their interpretation of this event, a number of modern scholars seem far more willing to believe the second of the two options which Appian presents about this action, which is that Scipio was speechless because he had been caught unawares by this unauthorized action which Sertorius had undertaken it sua sponte, than the first, which is that it had been done with his knowledge.2 Of course, the offer of such an opinion is first and foremost predicated on their willingness to believe that the capture of Suessa Aurunca had actually taken place at all, even though there is only one source for it, unless Cicero’s comment about the talks between Scipio and Sulla, that non tenuit omnino colloquium illud fidem, is meant 1

εἴτε τῷ γενομένῳ συνεγνωκὼς εἴτε ἀποκρίσεως ἀπορῶν ὡς ἐπὶ ἀλλοκότῳ δὴ τῷ Σερτωρίου ἔργῳ, Appian, 1.10.85. 2 Keaveney (1982, p. 132–133), Spann (p. 35–37), and Salmon (1967 p. 382 note 3) all believe the capture was the idea of Sertorius undertaken without consulting Scipio.

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to be a reference to this deed of Sertorius (Phil. 12.27, about which passage more below). If Cicero is not so referring, than Appian is the only author to mention this episode, although he does so in two places. Silent on the matter is Cicero himself, who hints at, but never mentions, this treachery on the part of Sertorius. Likewise, Plutarch also omits it, despite the fact that he composed biographies of both Sulla and Sertorius in which the story appears nowhere; since his life of Sulla was in no small part drawn from the subject’s own Memoirs, it is especially puzzling that this offense would not be mentioned in that Life, at least. Velleius, too, says nothing about it, even though he takes very special pains to show how reasonable Sulla was during this whole period, a task for which this anecdote might have helped considerably. This would tend to suggest that some skepticism may be in order here, and is perhaps enough to give rise to doubt whether this event ever happened. Yet this alternative to accepting the story—that is, simply rejecting it as untrustworthy—has rarely been considered.3 In this, at least, modern scholarship is probably justified; as has been mentioned often throughout this essay, Appian sometimes gets his facts wrong, but he is not exactly known for simply inventing stories out of wholecloth. Having thus decided to retain the story, these scholars tend to assume that Scipio was sincere in his negotiations and that Sulla was, as well. One scholar presents the image of both Scipio and Sulla as earnest peacemakers whose “well-meaning efforts” were ruined by Sertorius, who was dead-set on disrupting the peace talks and did so by means of this appalling insubordination.4 In the words of another, the assault on Suessa was a “foolish action” but for which “full-scale civil war might even at that late stage have been avoided”.5 Spann (loc. cit.) is probably correct in that it would have been hard to have invented this tale, and at any rate the silence of other sources is hardly compelling enough to overturn a direct statement in the one where it is mentioned 4 Keaveney, loc.cit. 5 So Salmon in the passage cited above, an opinion which Spann (loc. cit.) believes to be “not unjustified”. 3

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In spite of these interpretations, the account of the negotiations between Sulla and Scipio, the affair of Suessa Aurunca, and the actions of Sertorius are presented in a completely different way in Chapter 9. The reasons for this departure from modern scholarship are several, and since that is the case, a brief discussion as to what those reasons might be seems suitable, one which seems most appropriately conducted out of the main current of the narrative. It will therefore be presented here. In the first place, the modern scholarship which assumes that Sertorius did what he did without the authorization, and even knowledge, of Scipio, tends to stress the point that the consul and his adversary really were trying wok out a settlement in good faith. This gives Sulla a far greater measure of good faith than the sources indicate he deserves, as Cicero hints that he was plotting against Scipio’s army (loc. cit.), and Appian and Plutarch explicitly state that such was the case (Appian, 1.10.85–86; Plutarch, Sull. 27). In so doing, Sulla was attempting a maneuver that he had tried before against Fimbria (see chapter 9). It is distinctly probable that Scipio knew precisely what Sulla’s game was, although the modern narratives do not give him credit for his insight. Instead, they generally paint Scipio as an oblivious naïf whose lack of insight into his adversary borders on stupidity. These depictions do not seem to be commensurate with his actual qualities, ones that included the ability to decieve and therefore probably the ability to detect deception (see chapter 5 and Scipio’s flight from Aesernia). But Scipio is not just viewed by modern scholars as a man hoodwinked by his craftier enemy. He is also seen as a commander completely taken in by his own subordinate, who was able to pull off a non insubstantial military maneuver without Scipio’s awareness of what he was doing. It becomes increasingly difficult to imagine that Scipio would be incognizant of the movement of the thousands of men necessary for this venture. Nor can this difficulty be resolved by assuming that these men were given to Sertorius as some sort of bodyguard for his trip to Capua6 before 6 This is to say nothing of the improbability of Scipio’s having given responsibility for conveying the proceedings of the investigation to Norbanus, given that Sertorius had strenuously opposed these

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he turned them to nefarious ends, as it beggars the imagination that Scipio would have granted more than a few men at most for this venture.7 Yet the modern scholars assume that Sertorius would have been able to assemble enough men to assault and take a town, that he did so in complete secrecy from his commander, and that he managed to fool that commander and his enemy into thinking he was headed to Capua before doubling back and initiating his attack.8 Finally, the modern reports seem to assume that Sertorius was capable of a military infraction of the most grotesque kind, in spite of a career that up to this point had shown no evidence for such a thing. Obviously, men do things that are out of their character from time to time, and perhaps the long history Sertorius had with command stupidity had pushed him into acting in the face of the negotiations.9 Furthermore, his hatred for Sulla was apparently profound, and may have been enough to push him into insubordination in and of itself. Still, there is nothing in the sources to suggest that Sertorius had ever been anything but a model soldier to this point, nor anything that would show him being driven to recklessness due to his passions before and after this. This personality assessment may not be airtight, but it is at least enough to allow it to be questioned whether Sertorius really had done what he did unbidden. For all these reasons, it can be wondered whether Appian may not have misreported what happened at Suessa, not in the sense that he passed along an event that never happened at all, but that it may have transpired in a way different to the way he reported it. negotiations and personally despised Sulla, a feeling which was shared. For more on this point, see chapter 9. 7 Furthermore, even if Scipio had acquiesced to his request for men, it would almost certainly have raised the alarm of Sulla if Sertorius would have taken them by the only obvious route to Capua, which was by the Via Latina. For more on this point, see, again, chapter 9. 8 Doubling back, because Suessa was not on the Via Latina, but was some distance from it and in the opposite direction; see previous note. 9 For his certainly-attested service under Q. Servilius Caepio the Elder at Arausio, and his possible service under Q. Servilius Caepio the Younger at Amiternum, see chapter 9.

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Perhaps that variation involved the way that the assualt on Suessa was decided. This would seem to give rise to a question: was it relly that Sertorius took the town unasked by and unbeknownst to Scipio? Or was it possibly the case that Sertorius tooks Suessa by Scipio’s command? Chapter 9 holds that the latter was the case. In so doing, it takes not of the strategic significance that Suessa might have held for a seasoned commander. In Appian, the only value displayed by Suessa was that as a goad: since it have gone over to Sulla ( ἣ τὰ Σύλλεια ᾕρ το; loc. cit.), its seizure could impel him to fight. Yet as a town friendly to Sulla, Suessa represented a source of danger to Scipio: if negotiations were to fail and battle commence, Suessa could deny the consul the Via Appia, and there was even the possibility that Scipio could be enveloped by Sullani from the front and right rear flank.10 This possibility would vanish if Suessa were taken. Furthermore, if Sulla himself were worsted in battle against Scipio, he would be denied a place to which he could have retreated. Without Suessa, Sulla could only have retreated eastward into Samnium, which the reception he would have received can be guessed, or back down the Via Appia to a waiting Norbanus. These facts would almost certainly have been recognized by a commander as competent as Scipio had become in the years since 90. In fact, Scipio could easily have had something more ambitious in mind. Rather than attack and see what shook out or let Sulla do the same, Scipio may have intended to pin Sulla near Teanum under guise of negotiations. He could then send for Norbanus through the messenger ostensibly carrying the terms of the armistice and have him attack Sulla from the rear. Scipio might then have been able to trap Sulla between his army and that of Norbanus (and possibly surround him on three sides with the held of the Samnites from Aesernia, who might well have come in to aid an army fighting Sulla). If successful, Sulla could be annihiliated between three armies; if not, then, Scipio himself could escape to Suessa, regroup, and remain a menace in Sulla’s back as he resumed his path to Rome along the Via Latina.

10

Spann (p. 36–37) recognizes this possibility but dismisses it.

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All of this, however, would likely have been depended on the capture of Suessa conducted with the utmost of secrecy, which would provide two distinct advantages: in the first place, Sulla would obviously not know about it until too late, and therefore could not stop it; in the second, Scipio could retain plausible deniability later, should his strategy fail to yield results. Blame could be shifted to Sertorius under such circumstances, and Sulla, whose inimicitia with Sertorius was likely well-known, might—it is hoped—have believed the latter capable of such perversity. Even if he did not, it would give him a convenient way to seem that he did. As it happens, Sulla was able to make much of the capture of Suessa—far more, certainly, than Scipio did—and used it as the final reason to seduce Scipio’s men from him. His subsequent treatment of Scipio (see Chapter 9) strongly suggests that he did not think him culpable for the double-dealing, or at least publicly let it be known that Scipio was not to be held accountable. Scipio, for his part, probably wisely refrained from disclosing his authorization. Furthermore, Scipio might have continued this denial in Rome itself, leading to a cloud hanging over Sertorius that might well have influence the Senate’s decision to allow him to go to Spain and, ultimately, to immortality. Either way, the blame for the continuation of the Civil War should almost certainly be taken from Sertorius, who almost certainly acted upon orders and only disrupted a parley which was merely a ploy of Sulla from the beginning.

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MAPS AND FIGURES

Map 1: Central Italy.

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Map 2: Northern Italy.

MAPS AND FIGURES

Figure 1: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia above the mutilated inscription reading Mutilus in Oscan (obverse); Castor and Pollux, presumably lending support to the cause above the name Papius, also in Oscan (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 2: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia, identified as such in Latin (obverse); Italia sitting on shields crowned by the Goddess Victory (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

869

870

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Figure 3: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia (obverse); Italia in a triumphal car (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 4: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia (obverse); eight Allies, weapons extended, swear an oath of friendship and mutual support (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

MAPS AND FIGURES

Figure 5: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia, or possibly the god Mars, with the inscription Italia in Oscan (obverse); four Allies, weapons extended, swear an oath of friendship and mutual support above the name C. Papius f. C., also in Oscan (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 6: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia with the inscription Mutilius Imperator in Oscan (obverse); two Allies, weapons extended, swear an oath of friendship and mutual support above the name C. Papius f. C., also in Oscan (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

871

872

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Figure 7: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia (obverse); two Allies swear an oath of friendship and mutual support near the prow of a ship (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 8: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia with the inscription Italia in Oscan (obverse); Allied soldier with the bull, a sacred Italian symbol, looking on (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

MAPS AND FIGURES

Figure 9: Allied coin with an image of the head of the god Bacchus (obverse); the bull, a sacred Italian symbol, goring the Roman wolf over the inscription Italia in Oscan (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 10: Allied coin with an image of the head of personified Italia with the inscription Italia in Oscan (obverse); Allied soldier with the bull, a sacred Italian symbol, looking on, over the inscription Ni. Luvki, also in Oscan (reverse). © Trustees of the British Museum

873

INDEX 125 BCE, lessons for Allies taught by year: 73, 89, 174–175, 179–182, 191 and note 88, 203, 221, 230, 232, 234, 236, 241, 274 Acerrae defeat of C. Papius Mutilus by L. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 303, 305–306 and notes 35–36, 331, 339, 353, 368, 750 note 2, 751, 766 and note 5, 781 Acilius, Lucius Roman investigator into Allied war preparations (91 BCE): 250, 731–732 and note 6 defense of Aesernia by (with L. Cornelius Scipio) (91 BCE): 249–250, 297 and note 19, 731–732 and note 6 Aeclanum capture of by L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 256 note 45, 390–391 capture of, treachery employed by L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 390–391 Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus (cos. 78) enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla: 494 note 25 revolt of: 673–674 Aemilius Lepidus, Mamercus (cos. 77) continues siege of Nola (88 BCE): 404, 407 defeats Q. Poppaedius Silo, who dies in battle, in Apulia (88 BCE): 407– 408 and note 99, 494 note 25 relieved at Nola by L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 458 resumes siege of Nola when L. Cornelius Sulla marches on Rome (88 BCE): 464 replaced at Nola by Ap. Claudius Pulcher (88 BCE): 494 note 25 probably relieves Cn. Cornelius Dolabella at Norba (82 BCE): 619 note 92 captures Norba, whose inhabitants commit suicide (82 BCE): 628, 638, 666 Aesernia siege of (91–90 BCE): 249–250

875

876

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE falls to Allies (90 BCE): 328, 366, 419 assaults on by L. Julius Caesar and subordinates (90 BCE): 94–298 and supporting notes, 302, 306 and note 36, 307 note 40, 313 note 48, 326, 341, 353, 390, 419, 740, 750–751 and note 2, 765–766 and supporting notes, 808 becomes headquarters of Alliance after abandonment of Corfinium (88 BCE): 406, 811, 813–815 and supporting notes

Aesis river I Carrinas defeated by Q. Metellus Pius and Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 614 Aesis river II Cn. Papirius Carbo defeated by Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 614 and note 84 Agamemnon (archpirata) service on behalf of Allies: 302–303, 329–330 and note 76–77, 746 and note 17 ager publicus definition of: 144 terms of legal use of before 133 BCE and consequences for violating: 144–146 and supporting notes and connection with citizenship laws: 56 note 69, 70 note 5, 169–170, 173, 175, 177–181 and supporting notes, 185–186, 194, 202, 207 and note 115, 215–216, 218 and note 144, 219, 220–221, 224, 240, 276–277, 333–334, 479, 493, 693–702 and supporting notes, 709, 719, 726–727 importance of (extralegal) use of to socii: 142–143, 152–155 and note 27, 159 and note 36, 165, 170, 188, 218 and note 144, 220, 333 importance of use of to Romans: 99 note 59, 149–150 and especially note 24, 151, 153, 159 and note 36, 173, 185, 276–277, 283 Alba siege of (91–89 BCE): 249 and note 35, 376 attempts to relieve: 312 and note 45, 393 successful relief of by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 394 and note 76 Alban Hills P. Licinius Crassus is defeated by C. Flavius Fimbria before rescue by Q. Metellus Pius (87 BCE): 519–520, 556 Allied embassy to Rome after massacre at Asculum (late 91 BCE): 247–248 and note 32, 251, 255, 266, 268, 269–271, 274, 276, 284, 683–693 alleged terms presented by: 251, 269–270 and note 74, 276, 683–693

INDEX

877

as evidence of Italian desire for independence: 247–248 and note 32, 269, 683–693 Allied enfranchisement Roman reactions to: 136 and note 131, 200, 202, 210, 225, 235–236, 238, 269–283 and supporting notes, 411, 473, 479, 708–709, 724, 819 repercussions on Roman politics: 280–281 and note 83, 359–365 and supporting notes, 411, 479, 820, 821 repercussion on use of public facilities in Rome: 197 and note 98, 279, 411 Allied wish for “partnership” in Roman empire: 70–71 and notes 4–6, 90, 138, 139, 417 Allied soldiers importance to Romans: 86 and note 34, 88, 89, 97, 104 and note 70, 128 note 119, 131, 244, 257, 272–274 and note 78, 278 and note 80, 340, 342, 359 treatment of by Romans general maltreatment: 110, 479 commanded by Roman officers: 110 and note 83, 118 division of battlefield spoil: 114–118 and supporting notes, 119, 124, 134, 136, 675 high rate of casualties: 113–114 and note 90, 118, 134, 274, 278, 286, 675 military discipline: 111–113 and supporting notes, 118, 131, 134, 136, 196, 200, 277–278, 340 Allied War names of: 3 and note 2 as a “civil war”: 55–59 and especially notes 70 and 72, 676 and note 2 preparations for by socii: 226, 228–229, 231–234, 236–237 and supporting notes, 240–241, 257–268 and supporting notes, 723–724 and supporting notes, 728 preparations for by socii as evidence of desire for independence: 226, 228–229, 258–267 and supporting notes Roman investigation of: 241–242 and note 23, 271–272 and note 77, 285, 730–735 Roman lack of preparation for: 244–246 and supporting notes, 251–254, 285 timing of outbreak of: 74, 210, 233–286 and supporting notes, 722–729 and supporting notes cooperation amongst Italian commanders and armies during: 288 and note 1, 289–290, 723

878

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE initially not taken seriously by Romans: 254–255, 269, 291 Italian commanders of: 287, 288 note 2, 741, 743 tendency to operate outside of their home territory: 289–290, 723 Italian strategy for before Asculum: 243–247 and supporting notes, 254, 257, 268 Italian strategy for war after Asculum (91–89 BCE): 257, 268, 285, 290, 368, 340, 379, 751 Italian strategy for in 88 BCE and change in command structure: 404 and note 92 Roman strategy for: 290–291, 308, 751 possible modifications to in 89 BCE: 365 finally comes to an end (87 BCE): 516–518 and note 66

Amiternum ambush, defeat, and death of Quintus Servilius Caepio near at hands of Quintus Poppaedius Silo: 318–319, 320, 323, 341, 366, 415 note 107, 419, 426, 593, 752, 756, 759, 760–761, 838 Ancona mutiny of soldiers under L. Cornelius Cinna which leads to his death (84 BCE): 576–577 and notes 38–39, 848–852 and supporting notes Annaeus Florus, Lucius as contemporary of Appian: 58 note 72 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 51–53 sources of: 49, 53 and notes 59–60, 70, 86, 141 Antonius, Marcus (cos. 99) sent by Cn. Octavius along with his Q. Lutatius Catulus and his son to summon Q. Metellus Pius back to Rome (87 BCE): 515 and note 63 possibly brought up on charges of perduellio for role in summoning Q. Metellus Pius back to Rome (87 BCE): 528–529 attempts to flee and goes into hiding to escape prosecution (87 BCE): 528–529 discovered and decapitated (87 BCE): 529 and note 82 head placed on the rostra (87 BCE): 529–530 and notes 84–85 Appian and explanation of cause for Allied War as desire for citizenship: 9, 21, 55–58 and note 67, 684, 686 trustworthiness of: 271, 684–693, 854 and the “Alternative Tradition”: 55–58 and note 67, 70

INDEX

879

tendency towards error: 59, 271 and note 76, 291 note 7, 756, 771 and notes 11–12, 854 as contemporary of Florus: 58 note 72 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 55–61 and especially pages 59– 61, chronology used by: 60 and note 74, 305 note 34, 306 note 38, 307 note 40, 310 note 43, 311 note 44, 320 note 63, 750–755, 757, 766 note 5 personal value of Roman Citizenship: 21, 55–56 and note 69, 57 purpose of work: 55–59 sources of: 37, 38 and note 15, 39 note 18, 49 and note 48, 56 note 69, 57–61 and supporting notes, 70, 693 and note 9, 750 and note 1 Appuleius Saturninus, Lucius association with Caius Marius: 204 and note 111, 424 Apuli as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 Arretium citizenship possibly taken from by L. Cornelius Sulla (81–79 BCE): 667– 668 and note 61 Asculum and connection with uprising at Fregellae: 176 and note 67, 178 massacre of Romans in (91 BCE): 233, 243, 419, 451, 684, 730, 731 unplanned: 240, 243–247, 251 strategic importance of (90–89 BCE): 309, 366–367, 759–760 expedition against by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and defeat by T. Lafrenius, C. Vidacilius, and P. Vettius Scato near Falerio, close to (90 BCE): 294, 301–302 and note 28, 309–311 and notes 42–44, 321 and note 63, 366, 751, 752, 753, 761 second attack against by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and siege (90–89 BCE): 311 note 44, 339, 368, 419, 751, 752, 753, 770–771 Fraucus defeated and killed in battle against Cn. Pompeius Strabo near (89 BCE): 370–371 and note 35, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4 P. Vettius Scato and C. Vidacilius defeated by Cn. Pompeius Strabo (89 BCE): 373, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4 falls to Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (late 89 BCE): 400–401 and notes 86–88, 403 note 91, 419, 752 looted upon capture (late 89 BCE): 400–401 and notes 86–88, 513 note 60 Asinius, Herius commander of the Marrucini (90 BCE): 289, 744 and note 10

880

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE fights under Q. Poppaedius Silo against Marius at Battle of the Vineyards (Sora), dies in battle: 324–336 and note 71 succeeded by Obsidus as commander of the Marrucini, (89 BCE): 376– 377

Asinius Pollio, Caius as source for Appian: 56 note 69, 60–61 and notes 76, 77 Ausculum captured by C. Cosconius (88 BCE): 402–403 and note 91, 826 Bacchic cult, Roman suppression of in Italy (186 BCE): 127–128 and note 119 Bardyaei bodyguard of freed slaves employed by C. Marius (87 BCE): 523 and note 72 excesses of and slaughter by Q. Sertorius (87 BCE): 533–536 and supporting notes Baebius, Caius succeeds Sex. Julius Caesar on latter’s death besieging Asculum (89 BCE): 369, 372 Bellum Octavianum (87 BCE): 493–521 and supporting notes Beneventum strategic importance of (90–89 BCE): 294 note 14, 366–367, 391–392, 808–809 C. Papius Mutilus defeated and wounded in battle against L. Cornelius Sulla near (89 BCE): 391–392, 810–812 Bovianum (Undecimanorum) captured by L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 392, 396, 407 note 98, 811–815 and supporting notes alleged second headquarters of Alliance (88 BCE): 406 note 96, 814–815 and supporting notes Brundisium offers no resistance to L. Cornelius Sulla’s landing (83 BCE), for which it is later rewarded: 589, 658, 849–850 Caecilius Cornutus probably not the officer responsible for defeating the uprising of the Salluvii (90 BCE): 245 note 28, 330 note 78 legate of Cn. Pompeius Strabo (89 BCE): 396 and note 80, 806

INDEX

881

sent by Cn. Pompeius Strabo into territory of Paeligni, possibly against Corfinium and P. Vettius Scato (89–88 BCE): 375–376, 396 and note 80, 397, 482, 793, 806, 807, 811 reasons for attempted execution of (87 BCE): 532 and note 91, 806 fakes own death and evades execution (87 BCE): 532 Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, Quintus (cos. 109) exile of (100 BCE): 677 Caecilius Metellus Pius, Quintus (cos. 80) serves as praetor and plays role in the operation of the lex Plautia Papiria (89 BCE): 801–804 and notes 7–13, 823–824, 827–828 replaces Caius Cosconius on Adriatic coast (88 BCE): 402–403 and notes 90–91, 407, 803–806 and note 13, 808 assaults, besieges, and captures Venusia (88 BCE): 407 alleged role in defeat and death in battle of Q. Poppaedius Silo (88 BCE): 407–408 and note 99 directed by agents of Cn. Octavius to make peace with Samnites and Lucani and return to defend Rome from the forces of L. Cornelius Cinna: 516 does not accede to demands of Samnites and Lucani, and leaves legate Plautius to carry on war with them: 516 returns to Rome, but refuses leadership of the defense of Rome in deference to Cn. Octavius: 516, 518 unsuccessfully advises Cn. Octavius to make terms with L. Cornelius Cinna before Alban Hills (87 BCE): 519 rescues P. Licinius Crassus from defeat by C. Flavius Fimbria at Alban Hills (87 BCE): 520 alleged attempt to prolong war at Alban Hills by poor performance in order to win consulate (87 BCE): 521 note 69 alleged maneuvers to defect to L. Cornelius Cinna before Alban Hills (87 BCE): 521 note 69 member of party sent to convey restoration of citizenship and office to L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 520 is perhaps responsible for attempting to get L. Cornelius Cinna to vow not to conduct a massacre (87 BCE): 520 carries response and warning of L. Cornelius Cinna to Octavius and falling out with latter (87 BCE): 520–521 and note 69 heeds warning of L. Cornelius Cinna and goes into exile (87 BCE): 520– 521 and note 69, 522 raises a small army in Africa and is briefly joined by M. Licinius Crassus (87–84 BCE): 581

882

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE defeated by Pro–Cinnan governor of Africa C. Fabius Hadrianus, and makes his way to join L. Cornelius Sulla (83 BCE): 581 joins L. Cornelius Sulla in Italy, where he is hailed as proconsul and given both respect and a command (83 BCE): 589–590 and note 53 sent to northern Italy with a navy and makes little initial progress until the arrival of Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 613–614 defeats Carrinas near the Aesis River with Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 614 besieged by Cn. Papirius Carbo at an unknown location before latter disengages (82 BCE): 614 defeats an army of Cn. Papirius Carbo and receives defection of five cohorts south of the via Aemilia (82 BCE): 614–615 separates from Cn. Pompeius Magnus and heads north (82 BCE): 615 unsuccessfully besieges Ariminum and seizes Ravenna (82 BCE): 615 heavily defeats Cn. Papirius Carbo and C. Norbanus at Ravenna (82 BCE): 622–623

Caelius / Coelius Caldus (?), Caius suppresses uprising of Salluvii (90 BCE): 245 note 28, 330–331 and note 78, 344 Calpurnius Piso, Lucius creates two new voting tribes (ca. 89 BCE): 361–362 and notes 18–22, 365 Campani as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 Cannae captured by C. Cosconius (89 BCE): 378 Trebatius defeated by C. Cosconius near (89 BCE): 378–379 Canusium unsuccessfully besieged by C. Cosconius C. Cosconius attacked there and defeated by Trebatius, causing retreat (89 BCE): 378, 825 place of retreat by Trebatius after his defeat at Cannae by C. Cosconius (89 BCE): 378 Carrinas defeated by Q. Metellus Pius and Cn. Pompeius Magnus near the Aesis River (82 BCE): 614 defeated and surrounded by M. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Pompeius Magnus at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622

INDEX

883

escapes investment of M. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Pompeius Magnus at Spoletium and returns to Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 622 left along with C. Marcius Censorinus with remnants of army by flight of Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 625 attempts at final relief of Praeneste with C. Marcius Censorinus and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 625 falls back on Rome after unsuccessful final relief of Praeneste with C. Marcius Censorinus and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus (82 BCE): 625 defeated with C. Marcius Censorinus and Pontius Telesinus at the Colline Gate, taken prisoner, and beheaded (82 BCE): 627 head taken to Praeneste, where it helped induce surrender to Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 627–628 Carseoli devastated by Allies: 317, 366 Casilinum C. Norbanus defeated by L. Cornelius Sulla near (83 BCE): 590–591 and notes 55–56 Cassius Dio, Lucius utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 61–62 and supporting notes census, Roman lack of in 92 BCE: 469–470 and note 79 lack of in 89 BCE: 470–471 and notes 82–83, 545 deficiencies in that of 86/85 BCE and reasons for: 542–545 and supporting notes, 660, 846–847 and note 6 lack of from 82–70 BCE: 484, 660 significance for novi cives: 660–661, 666 chauvinism, Roman: 173, 177 and note 69, 281–283 and notes 84–86, 423 as held by L. Cornelius Sulla: 472 note 86, 658 and note 47, 671 note 69 Cirta massacre of Romans and Italians during the Jugurthine War (112 BCE): 59, 114 note 114, 547 civitas sine suffragio: 76 note 10, 82–85 and supporting notes, 92 civitas advantages of for Allies vs. independence: 73–74, 135–138 and supporting notes, 223–224 Allied desire for: 223–334

884

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE as cause for war: 7–9 and supporting notes, 17–18 and notes 25 and 26, 25–26, 30–33, 43 and note 28, 69–70, 70–71, 74, 76, 91, 135, 138, 139, 142, 181, 200, 220, 221, 225, 226–227 and note 6, 240– 241, 247–248 and note 32, 252 note 41, 357–358, 417, 633, 683, 782 and note 16 reasons behind: 70–74 and note 9, 90 and note 41, 135–138, 167–168, 191 and note 88 evidence in the sources: 43 and note 28, 70–71 and notes 3–4, 73, 90, 91, 135, 142, 169, 173–174, 225, 228–232, 247–248 and note 32, 252 note 41, 306 note 37, 327, 349 note 100, 357–358, 372 and note 37, 397, 417, 633, 762, 773 note 18, 791 and note 10, 825 note 13

Claudius Marcellus, Marcus legate to L. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 292–293 and note 10 positioned near Beneventum (90 BCE): 292–293 and note 10, 294 and note 14, 367 assault on Aesernia (90 BCE) defeat and capture there: 294 and note 14, 297–298 and note 23, 367 Claudius Pulcher, Caius (cos. 177): 117 and note 99 Claudius Pulcher, Appius (cos. 79) relieves Mam. Aemilius Lepidus in command of siege at Nola: 494–495 and note 25 deprived of imperium by L. Cornelius Cinna and goes into exile: 496–497 and notes 28–29 removed from Senate during census of 86/85 by his own nephew L. Marcius Philippus: 541 Cleppius, Tiberius commander of Lucani under Q. Poppaedius Silo (88 BCE): 404 and note 92 Cluentius, Lucius commander of the Campani: 289, 385 note 62, 748–749 and note 27 attempts to relieve siege of Pompeii (89 BCE): 384 successfully attempts to lure L. Cornelius Sulla into battle outside of Pompeii (89 BCE): 384 and note 60, 591 narrowly defeated by L. Cornelius Sulla at Pompeii (89 BCE): 384–385 receives reinforcements from the Salluvii (89 BCE): 384–385 and note 61 defeated in battle by L. Cornelius Sulla at Pompeii, driven back to Nola, and dies in combat (89 BCE): 385 and notes 61–62, 386 note 64

INDEX

885

Clusium L. Cornelius Sulla fights Cn. Papirius Carbo to a draw near (82 BCE): 621 and note 96 Cn. Pompeius Strabo defeats an army of Cn. Papirius Carbo’s soldiers near (82 BCE): 625 coins, Allied: 66, 226, 258, 263–264 and note 59, 265–268 and supporting notes, 516 note 66. See also plates. coins, Roman sole currency in Italy: 132 and note 125 Colline Gate high numbers of casualties inflicted by L. Cornelius Sulla in (82 BCE): 618 note 90, 627 and note 100 narrow victory of L. Cornelius Sulla over Pontius Telesinus, C. Marcius Censorinus, and Carrinas (82 BCE): 625–627 Compsa capture of by L. Cornelius Sulla (90 BCE): 390 consuls (ὕπατοι), Allied: 258, 262––265 and supporting notes, 287, 288 note 2, 741, 743 Corfinium as headquarters of Allied war effort (90–88 BCE): 257–260 and notes 50– 51, 262–263, 396 maneuvers against by Caecilius Cornutus (89–88 BCE): 396 and note 80, 397 maneuvers against by L. Cornelius Cinna (89–88 BCE): 395–396 and note 80, 397 ultimate abandonment of by Alliance (88 BCE): 396 and note 80, 398– 399, 406 possibly falls to L. Cornelius Cinna (88 BCE): 406 and note 97 not destroyed in fall to Romans (88 BCE): 406 and note 96 Cornelius Cinna, Lucius (cos. 87) early career of: 481 as legate to L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 382 and note 56, 395 and note 79, 482, 483 note 7, 576, 797–798, 800–801 succeeds to command of soldiers directly under L. Porcius Cato upon his death (89 BCE): 482 and note 4, 573, 797–798, 800–801 defeats Marsi, possibly under Q. Poppaedius Silo (89 BCE): 395–396 and note 80, 397, 796–799, 800–801

886

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE possible maneuvers against Corfinium in concert with Caecilius Cornutus (89–88 BCE): 395–396 and note 80, 397, 482, 796–799, 800–801, 806–807 possibly captures Corfinium (88 BCE): 406 and note 97, 477, 482 receives surrender of Marsi (88 BCE): 406 and note 97 returns to Rome to run for consul: 403, 406 and note 97, 481, 482 elected consul for 87 BCE: 403, 406 and note 97, 477, 482–484 enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla: 477, 482–483, 484 note 8 as partisan of C. Marius before 87 BCE: 483, 488 scheme to redistribute novi cives into all the voting tribes (87 BCE): 32, 483 and note 7, 485, 486, 487–490 and supporting notes alleged attempt to have L. Cornelius Sulla prosecuted (87 BCE): 483–484 and note 8, 485–486 and note 10, 496–497 and notes 28–29 compelled to vow to support L. Cornelius Sulla’s arrangements (88 BCE): 484 and note 9, 485, 523 and note 71 alleged violation of vow to support L. Cornelius Sulla’s arrangements (87 BCE): 487–488 scheme to bring back C. Marius and supporters from exile (87 BCE): 487– 489 and notes 11, 12 expelled from Rome and declared a hostis by Cn. Octavius (87 BCE): 32, 457 note 64, 487 note 11, 490–493 and supporting notes raises an army for a march on Rome: 493–500 and supporting notes alleged trip to Africa (87 BCE): 498 note 35 overcomes initial reluctance and joins forces with C. Marius (87 BCE): 499–500 shares command of his army with Q. Sertorius, C. Marius, and Cn. Papirius Carbo (87 BCE): 500 and note 40, 507 rebuffs negotiations with Cn. Pompeius Strabo (87 BCE): 506 as supreme commander of his faction’s forces in 87 BCE: 507 and note 51 and 53 begins investment of Rome (87 BCE): 507 captures Ariminium and Placentia (87 BCE): 507 and note 53 counterattacked by Cn. Octavius and Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Janiculum with C. Marius (87 BCE): 510 reopens negotiations with Cn. Pompeius Strabo (87 BCE): 512–513 and notes 60–61 alleged attempt to have Cn. Pompeius Strabo and Cn. Pompeius Magnus murdered by their own troops during siege of Rome (87 BCE): 513 and note 61

INDEX

887

directs C. Flavius Fimbria to accept terms of peace with Samnites and Lucani, who are made citizens in the process (87 BCE): 516 and note 66, 546, 550 negotiates with Senate and has his rights and office restored (87 BCE): 520, 539 makes vow not to harm any Roman personally upon return to Rome, perhaps to Q. Metellus Pius (87 BCE): 520, 524 issues warning to Cn. Octavius and his followers to avoid the Forum upon return to Rome (87 BCE): 521 obligation to novi cives to redistribute them in all the tribes: 522, 538, 539 obligation to novi cives to redistribute them in all the tribes– difficulties fulfilling: 538, 539–541 and note 111, 546, 549, 564–569 Rome not sacked by (87 BCE): 522 and note 70 restores Marius to his status as citizen (87 BCE): 523 and note 71, 538, 539 decides with his followers to eliminate chief men of the opposition (87 BCE): 523–524, 538, 841 severity of “massacre” ordered by (87 BCE): 525–526 and notes 76–77, 533–536 and supporting notes possible use of prosecutions to condemn enemies (87 BCE): 526–527 and note 77, 841 orders the slaughter of Bardyaei (87 BCE): 535–536 and note 100 puts an end to executions by November of 87 BCE: 536, 841–844 and supporting notes re-elected consul amidst rumors of the return of Sulla (87 BCE): 537 and note 104, 551 works with L. Valerius Flaccus to pass law to ease debt crisis (86 BCE): 540 calls for appointment of censors (86 BCE): 541, 547, 847 re-elected consul a third time with Cn. Papirius Carbo (86 BCE): 541 declares L. Cornelius Sulla a hostis (87 BCE): 536 and note 102 not sent as proconsul against Mithridates: possible reasons for (86 BCE): 553–553 possible grand strategy against L. Cornelius Sulla and Mithridates (86 BCE): 553–556 and supporting notes, 562–564, 573 probably orders C. Flavius Fimbria to east with L. Valerius Flaccus (86 BCE): 556 and note 12 begins making preparations for the return of L. Cornelius Sulla (85 BCE): 567–569, 572 and note 33 re-elected consul a fourth time with Cn. Papirius Carbo (85 BCE): 567 note 27, 572

888

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE possible strategic limitations of: 573 gathers men at Ancona to embark for Illyria, possibly as a training exercise before attacking L. Cornelius Sulla (84 BCE): 573, 574–576 and supporting notes difficulties in crossing from Ancona leads to mutiny amongst his soldiers and to his murder (84 BCE): 576–577 and notes 38–39, 848, 850 ultimate failure to redistribute novi cives into all the voting tribes: 32, 569, 577, 633, 845–847 and supporting notes

Cornelius Dolabella, Gnaeus (cos. 87) right hand to L. Cornelius Sulla during his trek from Campania (82 BCE): 613 and note 82 possible role in defeat of C. Marius the Younger at Setia alongside L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 615–616 and note 87 probably involved in unsuccessful attempt to take Norba (82 BCE): 616, 619 possibly replaced at siege of Norba by Mam. Aemilius Lepidus (82 BCE): 619 note 92 role in defeat of C. Marius the Younger by L. Cornelius Sulla at Sacriportus (82 BCE): 616–618 and notes 88–91 Cornelius Lentulus, Publius legate to L. Julius Caesar, possibly his uterine brother (90 BCE): 292 and note 9, 531 as possible Roman commander defeated at Venafrum by Marius Egnatius (90 BCE): 295 and note 15, 366, 750 note 2 as possible legate to L. Julius Caesar in his second assault on Aesernia (90 BCE): 295–296 and note 16, 765–766 and notes 4–5, 768–769 dismissed by L. Porcius Cato (88 BCE): 380–381 and note 52 hunted down and killed by C. Flavius Fimbria (87 BCE): 531 and note 88, 556 Cornelius Merula, Lucius (cos. 87) appointed consul to replace L. Cornelius Cinna by Senate (87 BCE): 492 and notes 20–21, 520 resigns consulate, which is restored to L. Cornelius Cinna by Senate (87 BCE): 520 commits suicide to escape prosecution, possibly on charges of maiestas (87 BCE): 528 note 81 Cornelius Rufinus, Publius (cos. 290) ancestor of L. Cornelius Sulla: 442 successes of in politics, Samnite Wars: 442

INDEX

889

downfall of 442 and notes 42–43, 671 note 68 tale well known amongst Romans: 442 and notes 42–43, 445 Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, Publius (cos. 147) and Italian Allies: 112–114, 160 and note 41, 162 note 45 and Tiberius Gracchus: 160 and note 41, 162 and note 45, 165–166 and Caius Marius: 445 Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, Lucius (cos. 83) Roman investigator into Allied war preparations (91 BCE): 250, 731–732 and note 6 defense of Aesernia by (with L. Acilius) (91 BCE): 249–250, 297 and note 19, 588, 594–595, 731–732 and note 6, 599–600, 855 elected consul (84 BCE): 588 meets L. Cornelius Sulla and negotiates with him at Teanum over the advice of his legate Q. Sertorius (83 BCE): 592 possible unsuccessful secret plan to entrap L. Cornelius Sulla near Teanum, involving capture of Suessa Aurunca by Q. Sertorius (83 BCE): 594–597 and supporting notes, 598–599 and note 63, 856–858 and supporting notes army deserts to L. Cornelius Cinna, who lets Scipio go after failing to induce him to desert as well (83 BCE): 598–600 and note 64, 858 possibly remnants of army of deserts and rejoins the government forces later (83 BCE): 602 given a second command, and is defeated by Cn Pompeius Magnus in Picenum (83 BCE): 600 and note 65, 603–604 and note 71 goes into exile at Massilia: 622 and note 97, 629 Cornelius Sisenna, Lucius and L. Cornelius Sulla: 24, 37 note 10, 38 and note 13, 40 and the “Alternative Tradition”: 23–25 apparent pro-Italian bias of: 34 note 2, 38 and note 14 as a Roman, not Italian, source: 34 note 2 as combatant in Allied War: 23, 38 and note 13 as source for Appian: 37, 38 and note 15 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 23–25, 36–38 and supporting notes as source for Livy: 37 and note 12 as source for Valerius Maximus: 37 as source for Velleius Paterculus: 37 Cornelius Sulla, Lucius (cos. 88) lost Memoirs of: 23–24, 38–39 and notes 16–18, 40, 854

890

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE and L. Cornelius Sisenna: 24, 37 note 10, 38 and note 13 and the “Alternative Tradition”: 23–25 and note 32 as source for Plutarch: 38–39 and notes 16–18, 63, 448 and note 54, 449 and note 56, 770, 854 and use of ‘compromised’ men and defectors: 384, 458, 459–460, 557, 562, 563, 643–645 recklessness of: 384 and note 60, 591 attitude towards socii: 23, 32 as novi cives: 18, 23, 465, 472–474 and notes 86 and 89, 633, 657–661 and supporting notes, 670–672 and supporting notes descendant of P. Cornelius Rufinus: 442 family’s lapse of nobilitas due to fate of ancestor P. Cornelius Rufinus: 442–443 aware of and motivated by fate of ancestor P. Cornelius Rufinus: 442, 671 note 68 early poverty of: 458, 599–600 initially kept from military career due to poverty: 443 and note 45, 646 possible marriage connections with Julii: 443 and note 46, 444, 445, 449– 450 inheritances and successful run for questor (108 BCE): 443–444 and notes 46–48 assigned to general staff of C. Marius (107 BCE): 444–445 and note 50 service on general staff of C. Marius (107–102 BCE): 445–446 role in ending Jugurthine War (106 BCE): 445–446 and note 51, 451, 555 enmity with C. Marius: 254, 440–442, 446–452, 768 reasons for: 446 and notes 51–52, 449, 555 enmity with Q. Sertorius: 476 note 93, 494 and note 23, 592, 593–594, 595, 599, 855–856 note 6, 858 service under Q. Catulus during Cimbric Wars (102–101 BCE): 446, 447– 448 and note 54 electoral difficulties during the 90s BCE: 450 service as praetor of: 244–245 and note 27, 450, 451, 731 and note 5 enmity with C. Marcius Censorinus: 450–451 and note 57 enmity with C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus: 450 relationship with optimates during late 90s BCE: 451–452 alleged defeat in the Liris Valley by Titus Herennius (90 BCE): 334 note 68 possibly the commander defeated by Marius Egnatius at Venafrum (90 BCE): 295 and note 15, 366, 750 note 2 as possible second–in–command to L. Julius Caesar in second assault on Aesernia (90 BCE): 295–296 and note 16, 594, 765, 808

INDEX

891

leads assault on Aesernia (late 90 BCE): 297–298 and notes 22–23, 305 and note 36, 326, 341, 594, 765–766 and note 5, 769, 808 leads assault on Aesernia (late 90 BCE), trickery employed against Lucilius/Duillius there: 297, 390 alleged role in the Battle of the Vineyards (90 BCE): 763–774 and supporting notes probably given command of L. Julius Caesar’s forces when latter returns to Rome (late 90 BCE): 307, 328, 353 retained as legate by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 382, 808 southern campaign of (89 BCE): 382–392 besieges Pompeii with aid of Aul. Postumius Albinus (89 BCE): 383, 392 does not prosecute murderers of Aul. Postumius Albinus (89 BCE): 383– 384 and note 58, 458–459, 643–644, 650 note 24 takes over land forces of Aul. Postumius Albinus at Pompeii (89 BCE): 383–384 and notes 58–59, 387–388 and note 65, 390 successfully lured into battle against L. Cluentius at Pompeii (89 BCE): 384 and note 60, 59 narrowly defeats L. Cluentius outside Pompeii (89 BCE): 384–385 defeats L. Cluentius, who is driven back to Nola and dies in battle, outside Pompeii (89 BCE): 385 captures and destroys Stabiae (89 BCE): 386 note 64, 387 unsuccessfully besieges Nola (89 BCE): 385, 390 and note 69, 404 takes over command of southern elements of L. Porcius Cato's army after death of Titus Didius (mid–89 BCE): 808 captures Pompeii (89 BCE): 386 and note 64 defeats C. Papius Mutilus, who is wounded and evacuated to Aesernia, near Beneventum (89 BCE): 391–392, 810–812 captures Compsa (89 BCE): 390 captures Aeclanum (89 BCE): 390–391, 811 treachery employed by in capture of Aeclanum (89 BCE): 390–391, 550 captures Bovianum (Undecimanorum) (89 BCE): 392, 407 note 98, 811– 815 and supporting notes receives surrender of Hirpini (89 BCE): 391, 396, 402 returns to Rome to run for consul (89 BCE): 392 blocks election of Q. Sertorius for tribunate of 88 (89 BCE): 476 note 93, 595–596 elected consul for 88 BCE (89 BCE): 402, 441, 451 assigned war with Mithridates as proconsul: 440, 451–452, 544 resumes siege of Nola (88 BCE): 452 and note 59 marital connection with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 443 note 46, 455

892

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE declares feriae to end voting on laws of P. Sulpicius Rufus with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 453 reasons for: 453–454 and note 61 threatened with arrest with Q. Pompeius Rufus by P. Sulpicius Rufus unless he suspends feriae (88 BCE): 454–455 flees violence after P. Sulpicius Rufus declares feriae illegal and is harbored by C. Marius (88 BCE): 455–456, 466 declares end to feriae (88 BCE): 456 departs Rome and returns to Nola (88 BCE): 456 and note 63, 458 Mithridatic command of transferred to C. Marius by P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 31, 457, 461, 677 persuades/is persuaded by men to march on Rome (88 BCE): 31, 460, 544, 563, 677 reasons given for march on Rome (88 BCE): 640 and note 6, 647 does not prosecute soldiers under his command for murder of military tribunes sent to lead them to C. Marius (88 BCE): 460 deserted by all officers save L. Lucullus during March on Rome (88 BCE): 460 and note 69 property of supporters of allegedly plundered by P. Sulpicius Rufus and C. Marius (88 BCE): 460 deceives deputation sent from Senate during march on Rome (88 BCE): 463, 550 burns houses near the Esquiline forum to halt maltreatment of men during march on Rome (88 BCE): 463 narrowly defeats C. Marius in Esquiline Forum (88 BCE): 463–464 declares P. Sulpicius Rufus, M. Junius Brutus, and C. Marius outlaws (88 BCE): 466, 477 undoes laws of P. Sulpicius Rufus with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 32, 466, 486 note 10, 490 note 15 proposes end of tribune’s ability to make laws, with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 466–467, 544–545, 612, 652 and note 32 proposes no laws be proffered without Senate’s approval with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 466–467, 544–545, 651–652 proposes to adlect 300 men into the Senate with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 467–468, 660 reasons for: 467–474 and supporting notes possible pressure of upon L. Julius Caesar and P. Licinius Crassus not to complete census (88 BCE): 472–475, 545 probably unable to pass laws proposed with Q. Pompeius Rufus save restoration of proconsular commands (88 BCE): 467 and note 76, 486 note 10, 646, 648, 651–652

INDEX

893

hated by people of Rome after march on city (88 BCE): 476–477 employment of bodyguards by (88 BCE): 476, 477 holds elections for 87 BCE (88 BCE): 475–476 favored candidates rejected: 476–477 and notes 93–94, 482 alleged attempt to strip Cn. Pompeius Strabo of proconsular command and veto of (88 BCE): 475 note 91, 476 enmity with L. Cornelius Cinna: 477, 482–483, 484 and note 8, 9 alleged prosecution of (87 BCE): 483–484 and note 8, 485 compels consuls of 87 to vow to support his arrangements (88 BCE): 484 and note 9, 485–486 and note 10 departs for war against Mithridates in the East: 485, 544 enmity with M. Aemilius Lepidus: 494 note 25 declared a hostis by L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 536 and note 102 receives refugees from L. Cornelius Cinna (87–82 BCE): 536–537, 561 rumors of imminent return from East (87 BCE): 537, 551 and the rights of the novi cives: 549–550, 570, 587, 851 receives into his army vanguard of L. Valerius Flaccus (86 BCE): 557, 558 prevented from doing battle with L. Valerius Flaccus (86 BCE): 557 similarities to C. Flavius Fimbria: 558–559 and note 14 receives surrender of Mithridates (85 BCE): 560–561 and note 20, 563 vast resources put at his disposal from surrender of Mithridates (85 BCE): 560 note 20, 562–563 confronts C. Flavius Fimbria and besieges his camp (85 BCE): 561–562 receives deserters from C. Flavius Fimbria’s army (85 BCE): 561–562, 855 alleged attempt to have assassinated by C. Flavius Fimbria (85 BCE): 562 alleged promise of safe conduct made to C. Flavius Fimbria (85 BCE): 562 allows burial rites to C. Flavius Fimbria upon his suicide (85 BCE): 562 takes command of soldiers of C. Flavius Fimbria (85 BCE): 562, 563 return from East lack of preparations for in Italy in 86–85 BCE for return of: 564–565 sends a dispatch to Rome discussing his victory and the terms of it (85 BCE): 565–567 and especially notes 25–25, 848–849 and note 3 sends second dispatch to Rome vowing only to harm his enemies (85 BCE): 569–572, 848–849 and note 3 vows to respect rights of novi cives (85 BCE): 570, 612–613 and note 81, 851 concern with public persona as law-abiding proconsul (88–82 BCE): 562 and notes 21–22, 571–572, 586 note 47, 599–600, 620, 636, 640 and notes 6–7, 647–648 and note 18, 649 and note 24, 651, 653 and note 34

894

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE receives counteroffer offering to revoke his outlawry for forestall war (85 BCE): 572 and note 31, 581 spends a quiet winter of 85 and tarries in Greece for the rest of 84: 573, 574–576, 580–581 sends third missive to Rome asking only for restoration of his rights and those of exiles, but vowing to keep the army together (85 BCE): 581– 583 and supporting notes hears of death of L. Cornelius Cinna and recruiting activities of Q. Metellus Pius, Cn. Pompeius Magnus, and M. Licinius Crassus (84 BCE): 583–584 joined by M. Licinius Crassus (83 BCE): 584, 589 encounters no opposition upon landing at Brundisium and subsequent trek to Capua (83 BCE): 589, 658, 849–850 is joined by Q. Metellus Pius, whom he gives a command and respect as a fellow proconsul (83 BCE): 589–590 and note 53 is joined by L. Marcius Philippus, to whom he gives a naval command, and other nobiles (83 BCE): 590 and note 54 unsuccessfully attempts to persuade C. Norbanus to join his side, and then defeats him in battle near Casilinum (83 BCE): 591 leaves men to watch C. Norbanus at Capua, then continues north towards Teanum (83 BCE): 591 pretends to negotiate with L. Cornelius Scipio while trying to seduce his army at Teanum (83 BCE): 592, 597, 855 able to complete seduction of L. Cornelius Scipio’s army (83 BCE): 597– 598, 858 tries to win over L. Cornelius Scipio, and lets him go when unsuccessful (83 BCE): 598–600, 858 probably never defeated and caught Q. Sertorius after Suessa Aurunca, nor let him go afterwards (83 BCE): 600, 601 note 67 turns south to face C. Norbanus, but avoids him for the rest of the year, ravages territory, and goes into winter quarters in Campania (83 BCE): 600–601 receives Cn. Pompeius Magnus, and returns salute of “Imperator” by the latter (83 BCE): 604 supporters declared public enemies (83 BCE): 606 sends M. Licinius Crassus to recruit from the Marsi (83 BCE): 609–610, 658 dispatches men against Q. Sertorius in Spain and L. Marcius Philippus to Sardinia, who wins the island for him (82 BCE): 610–611 begins trek northwards from Campania on via Appia and via Latina (82 BCE): 613 and note 82

INDEX

895

sends both Q. Metellus Pius and Cn. Pompeius Magnus north (82 BCE): 613–614 probably played secondary role in defeat of C. Marius the Younger by Cn. Cornelius Dolabella at Setia (82 BCE): 615–616 and note 87 defeats C. Marius the Younger at Sacriportus (82 BCE): 614, 616–618 and notes 88–91 massacres surrendered soldiers of C. Marius the Younger and Samnites after Sacriportus at Praeneste (82 BCE): 618 and note 91 enters Rome unopposed (82 BCE): 620, 635 defeats enemy under an unnamed commander near Saturnia (82 BCE): 621 defeats Cn. Papirius Carbo in a small engagement near the river Glanis (82 BCE): 621 fights Cn. Papirius Carbo to a draw in a major engagement at Clusium (82 BCE): 621 and note 96 defeats relief army sent by Cn. Papirius Carbo to aid Carrinas at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622 returns to help press siege at Praeneste (82 BCE): 621 and note 96 thwarts attempt to relieve Praeneste by M. Lamponius, Pontius Telesinus, and Gutta (82 BCE): 624 thwarts attempt to relieve Praeneste by C. Marcius Censorinus, M. Junius Brutus Damasippus, and Carrinas (82 BCE): 625 sends cavalry north against C. Marcius Censorinus, M. Junius Brutus Damasippus, and Carrinas, and follows with his army (82 BCE): 625– 626 summons Cn. Pompeius Magnus and M. Licinius Crassus south against C. Marcius Censorinus, M. Junius Brutus Damasippus, and Carrinas (82 BCE): 626 narrowly achieves victory at the Colline Gate over Pontius Telesinus, C. Marcius Censorinus, and Carrinas (82 BCE): 626–627 receives and mocks the head of C. Marius the Younger (82 BCE): 628 and note 101, 641, 662 and note 55 subdues Nola and Volaterrae: 628–629 and note 102 orders the massacre of the Samnites after the Colline Gate and the prisoners from Praeneste (82 BCE): 636–637 and note 1, 645–646, 666, 670 causes hysteria in Rome by promising to destroy his enemies but not naming them in a speech in the Senate (82 BCE): 637–638 and notes 2–3 introduces proscriptions (82 BCE): 526, 638–639 and notes 4–5

896

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE desecrates the graves and monuments of his enemies (82 BCE): 641 and note 9 distances himself from M. Licinius Crassus due to latter’s purchase of property from proscribed men: 643 and note 13 named dictator (82 BCE): 570–571, 649–650 reasons for (82 BCE): 648 irregularities in (82 BCE): 649–650 and supporting notes laws passed as dictator (82–79) construction projects, special courts, and sumptuary legislation: 650– 651, 654 prohibits sons of proscribed men from holding office: 651 and note 30, 653, 657 possibly attempted to pass legislation forbidding any new laws that lacked approval of the Senate: 651–652, 654, 666 removes ability of tribunes to make laws: 652 and note 32, 660, 665 removes ability of former tribunes to run for higher offices: 652–654, 665 regularizes the cursus honorum and increases the numbers of quaestors: 656 and note 42, 662 and supporting notes, 663–664 and notes 55–56 increases the number of praetors, extends the pomerium: 662 and supporting notes adlects large numbers of men, mostly from those with the property rating of equites, to the Senate: 484, 654–656 and supporting notes, 660 does not alter Cn. Papirius Carbo’s redistribution of the novi cives (82–79 BCE): 658–659 functionally freezes novi cives from political power (82–79 BCE): 657–661 and especially note 51, 664–666 possible concern about extended promagistracy (82–79 BCE): 662 and note 54 orders death of Q. Lucretius Ofella when latter attempts to run for consul without first having been made praetor (82 BCE): 664 and note 57 no record of census exists from time control is taken of Rome until well past death of (82 BCE): 484, 660 and office of censor: 438 and note 88, 660 confiscates massive amounts of land from and demolishes defensive works of Italians towns: 667–668 and note 60 reasons for: 668–670 and supporting notes possibly removes citizenship from Arretium and Volaterrae: 667–668 and note 61 practically exterminates the Samnites: 670–672 and supporting notes

INDEX

897

retirement of: 673 endurance of the “Sullan system”: 669–670, 673–674, 676 cremated upon death: 641 and note 9 changes made to Roman government by (82–79 BCE): 571 and note 30, 646–673 Cosconius, Caius legate of Gn Pompeius Strabo (89 BCE): 376 and note 44, 403 note 1, 794–795 Adriatic coastal campaign of (89 BCE): 376 –380 and supporting notes, 390, 794, 800 ravages territory of Larinum (89 BCE): 377–378 and notes 47–48 defeats Marius Egnatius, who dies in battle, at Larinum (89 BCE): 377– 378 and notes 47–48 sacks and burns Salapia (89 BCE): 378 captures Cannae (89 BCE): 378 unsuccessfully besieges Canusium, and retreats upon defeat there by Trebatius (89 BCE): 378, 825 defeats Trebatius at Cannae (89 BCE): 379 remainder of coastal campaign of after Cannae (89 BCE): 379 captures Ausculum (88 BCE): 402–403 and note 91 replaced on Adriatic coast by Q. Metellus Pius (88 BCE): 402–403 and notes 90–91, 407 de viris illustribus utility as source for the events of 91–77: 63–64 biases of: 64 sources of: 64 and note 86, 216 note 140 thematic arrangement of: 63–64 dictatorship (Romans) long disuse of in 82 BCE: 649 and note 22 usual mechanism for election of: 648–649 and note 24 usual duration of office: 649 Didius, Titus (cos. 98) Spanish campaigns of (96 BCE): 244 legate to L. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 292 and note 10 positioned near Capua (90–89 BCE): 292 and note 10, 766 and note 5 captures Herculaneum (89 BCE): 304, 387 retained as legate by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 382 probably takes over command of L. Porcius Cato’s southern troops upon Cato’s death (89 BCE): 387 and note 65

898

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE killed in battle (89 BCE): 387 possibility of being succeeded in command of L. Porcius Cato’s southern troops upon death by Aulus Gabinius (89 BCE): 388 probably succeeded in command of L. Porcius Cato’s southern troops upon death by L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 387–388 and note 65, 390

dilectus cancellation of by consuls or tribunes: 82, 103 and note 68, 150 and note 23, 160 note 38 Diodorus Siculus and ‘anti–Roman’ bias: 42–43 and notes 25, 27 Italian outlook found in: 43 as potential eyewitness to events of 91–77 BCE: 40–41 and note 22 sources of: 39 and note 19, 41, 70 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 40–43 and supporting notes Domitius Ahenobarbus, Gnaeus (cos. 96) censor in 92 whose quarrels with colleague L. Licinius Crassus prevents completion of census: 469–470 and note 79 Duilius, commander of the Hirpini: see “Lucilius” Egnatius, Marius commander of the Samnites (90 BCE): 289, 747 and notes 19–20 defeats Romans (possibly commanded by L. Cornelius Sulla) at Venafrum (90 BCE): 294, 295, 366, 750 and note 2 defeats L. Julius Caesar near Aesernia (90 BCE): 295–296 and notes 16– 18, 307 note 40, 341, 353, 750 and note 2, 754–755 and supporting notes, 808 defeated and killed in battle against C. Cosconius at Larinum (90 BCE): 377–378 and notes 47–48 enfranchisement law(s) of 88 BCE that described in both Appian (1.6.53) and Velleius Paterculus (2.17): 409– 411 not ‘lex Plautia Papiria’: 821–829 and supporting notes not lex Julia: 410–411, 822 and note 7, 824–825 and note 13 reasons for: 411–414 and supporting notes, 819–821, 824–826 and supporting notes timing of: 414, 819–821 allowed Roman commanders to grant civitas to whole communities as basis for surrender: 414–415 grants civitas to Italians not otherwise eligible under lex Calpurnia or lex Julia: 410, 414–415

INDEX

899

groups new citizens into separate voting tribes which vote last: 18, 25, 30, 415, 417, 436: eventual dissatisfaction with: 416–417, 436–437 Etruscans as a people known to have written about their own history: 33 note 1 late entry into Allied war: 89 note 40, 255, 344 reasons for: 333–338 and supporting notes campaign of L. Porcius Cato against (90 BCE): 256, 331–333 and supporting notes, 356, 370, 392, 419, 752, 771,781, 786–787, 789, 790 difficulties of: 332 and note 82, 343 note 91 effect of lex Julia on: 334–335, 337–338 and note 89, 355, 356, 365, 360, 775, 781 contribute money and materiel to C. Marius and L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 499 role in the revolt of M. Aemilius Lepidus (78 BCE): 673–674 role in the revolt of L. Sergius Catilina (63 BCE): 674 role in the resistance of Q. Sertorius in Spain (82–72 BCE): 674 expulsion laws, Roman: 133 and note 128, 136, 157 note 34, 167, 169, 174, 219, 279, 346–347, 675, 720. See also “Lex Junia”, “Lex Fannia”, and “Lex Licinia Mucia”. Exsuperantius, Julius utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 62 note 80 Fannius, Caius (cos. 122) initial amity with C. Sempronius Gracchus and departure from: 192, 194, 197 and note 98, 279 passes expulsion law: 198–199. See also “Lex Fannia” Faventia Cn. Papirius Carbo and C. Norbanus heavily defeated by Q. Metellus Pius near: 622–623 Fidentia Quinctius, a legate of either C. Norbanus or Cn. Papirius Carbo, defeated by M. Lucullus near: 624–625 and note 99 Firmum siege of Gn Pompeius Strabo within by T. Lafrenius (90 BCE): 302, 311– 312, 321, 366, 513 note 60, 751, 760 defeat and death of T. Lafrenius against Cn. Pompeius Strabo outside (90 BCE): 321–322 and notes 64–65, 331, 419, 751, 770–771

900

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Flavius Eutropius utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 53–54 sources of: 49, 53, 686 as source for Orosius: 54 Flavius Fimbria, Caius successfully concludes peace with Samnites and Lucani, who are made citizens in the process, at behest of L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 516 and note 66, 546, 549, 556 probably a subordinate to C. Marius in Bellum Octavianum (87 BCE): 516 note 66 defeats P. Licinius Crassus at Alban Hills before rescue of latter by Q. Metellus Pius (87 BCE): 520, 556 catches P. Licinius Crassus, who kills son and commits suicide to avoid execution (87 BCE): 530, 556 hunts down and kills L. Julius Caesar, P. Lentulus, and C. Julius Caesar Stabo Vopiscus (87 BCE): 530–532 and notes 88–89, 556 attempted murder of Q. Mucius Scaevola (86 BCE): 526, 556, 558 note 14 sent with L. Valerius Flaccus against Mithridates, probably on order of L. Cornelius Cinna (86 BCE): 556 and notes 11–12 favored by soldiers of L. Valerius Flaccus, and prevents them all from defecting to L. Cornelius Sulla (86 BCE): 558 quarrels with L. Valerius Flaccus (86 BCE): 558–559 as possible killer of L. Valerius Flaccus (86 BCE): 559 and note 16, 844 note 5 takes command of the soldiers of L. Valerius Flaccus on the latter’s death (86–85 BCE): 559 and note 16 successes against the forces of Mithridates and near capture of him (86 BCE): 559–560 and notes 17–18, 563, 844 note 5 similarities to L. Cornelius Sulla (86 BCE): 558–559 and note 14 alleged overtures of surrender by Mithridates made to (85 BCE): 560 note 20 bidden to relinquish his command by L. Cornelius Sulla and besieged in camp (85 BCE): 561–562 desertion of army of to L. Cornelius Sulla (85 BCE): 561–562 alleged attempt to have L. Cornelius Sulla assassinated (85 BCE): 562 alleged promise of safe conduct made by L. Cornelius Sulla to (85 BCE): 562 commits suicide and is conspicuously allowed burial by L. Cornelius Sulla (85 BCE): 562 and notes 21–22

INDEX

901

foedera definition of: 77 differences between: 77–78 notes 11–12, 80, 82, 83 and note 27, 84 and note 30 lack of specifics about in extant sources: 78 and note 14 permanence of: 78–79, 88 did not remove independence from signatories: 81–82, 85, 88, 126, 128 and note 119 advantages of for Allies: 87, 114, 126, 126–127 and notes 116–118 military contributions demanded by: 79–81 and supporting notes, 85, 88, 92–93, 97, 102 and note 64, 125, 276–278 Allied numbers in Roman army: 81 and note 21, 86 and note 34, 87 note 37, 88, 89, 92 note 47, 104 and note 70, 244 and note 25, 246 and notes 29–30, 272–274 and note 78, 278 and note 80, 340, 342, 344– and note 92 costs in money: 86, 88, 93–97 and supporting notes, 99 note 59, 101, 104, 107–108 and notes 76–77, 114, 125, 134, 136 and note 131, 165, 278–279 and notes 80–81, 411 extensive overseas service and economic results: 98–99 and notes 56– 58, 101, 108 and note 78, 134 extensive overseas service and effect on manpower: 99–101 and supporting notes, 102–107 and supporting notes, 108–109, 114 possibly not met by volunteers: 107–108 and notes 76–77 Roman reprisals for non–compliance: 87 note 35, 95 n 52, 103 and note 67 foedus Cassianum: 78 and note 13, 79–81 and note 18, 115, 117 note 98 Fraucus commander of the Frentani: 289, 370, 744, 746–747 and notes 18–19 leads expedition to Asculum, perhaps to aid Etruscans and Umbrians (89 BCE): 256, 370, 378 note 45, 786–787, 789, 790 heads to Asculum to attempt to relieve siege (89 BCE): 370, 378 note 45, 785–792 and supporting notes defeated and killed in battle against Cn. Pompeius Strabo near Asculum (89 BCE): 370–371 and note 35, 378 note 45, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4 freedmen enrolled into Roman army for coastal duties (90 BCE): 330, 335, 338 note 89, 752

902

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Fregellae, uprising against Rome at (125 BCE) possible reasons for uprising: 176–179 and supporting notes timing behind: 176 and notes 64–65, 177, 179 Latin Role in: 177–178 and note 70, 203 note 109, 347, 349 note 100 not supported by other Italians: 176 and note 67, 177–178 and note 70, 271–272 and note 77 crushed by L. Opimius (125 BCE): 73 and note 8, 176 and note 66 and C. Sempronius Gracchus: 183 connection to insitution of ius civitatis per magistratum adipiscendae: 717–718 and notes 4 Frentani as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 Fulvius Flaccus, Marcus (cos. 125) as supporter of the Gracchi and the lex Sempronia agraria: 168 proposed enfranchisement law of (125, 122 BCE): 169–175 and supporting notes, 177–179, 181, 184, 186, 191–192 and note 88, 193, 195–198 and supporting notes, 199 and note 99, 199 and note 101, 200, 201–202, 207, 479, 703–713 and supporting notes, 715, 719 proposed enfranchisement law of only restricted to Latins (125, 122 BCE): 170–172 and supporting notes, 177–179, 199 and note 99, 201, 203 note 109 Fulvius Flaccus, Quintus (cos. 179): 129–130 and note 12 Gabinius, Aulus replaces P. Licinius Crassus as legate to L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 380 operations in Lucania (89–88 BCE): 380, 388 and note 66, 390, 396, 399, 739, 810 possible successor to command of L. Porcius Cato’s southern soldiers after the death of T. Didius (mid–89 BCE): 388 captures Grumentum (89 BCE): 300 note 25, 389 lays waste to Nuceria (89 BCE): 388 and note 66, 825 destroys Picentia (89 BCE): 388–389, 825 death of (late 89–early 88 BCE): 389 Gellius, Aulus as source for the events of 91–77: 65 Glanis river minor battle in which L. Cornelius Sulla defeats Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 621

INDEX

903

Granius Licinianus utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 62 note 80 Grumentum defeat of P. Licinius Crassus by Marcus Lamponius (90 BCE): 292 note 10, 312 note 45, 341, 366, 389 note 67, 419, 472, 751, 753 city not destroyed by: 299–301 and note 25, 389 note 67 falls to Allies (90 BCE): 300–301, 366 captured by Aulus Gabinius (89 BCE): 300 note 25, 389, 399 Gutta attempt to relieve Praeneste with M. Lamponius and Pontius Telesinus thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla: 624 Herculaneum joins Alliance (90 BCE): 304 and note 32, 388 note 66 capture of by Titus Didius (mid–89 BCE): 304 and note 32, 387 Herennius, Titus commander of the Venusini: 289, 749 and notes 28–29 possible role in Battle of the Vineyards (Sora) under Q. Poppaedius Silo (90 BCE): 324, 772 Hirpini surrender of to L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 391, 396, 402 Iegius, Manius possible commander of Samnites in 88 BCE: 404 note 93 possible diplomat sent to seek aid from Mithridates (late 89– early 88 BCE): 405 and note 94 Independence, advantages of for Allies vs. enfranchisement: 72–73, 137, 231, 232 alleged Allied desire for: 8–9 and note 11, 21–26 and supporting notes, 177, 225–227 and notes 1–5, 338 note 89, 349 note 100, 683, 782 note 17 alleged Allied desire for in the “Alternative Tradition”: 8–9 and note 11, 21–26 and supporting notes, 70 note 2, 72 and note 7, 226 Italia significance of name: 258, 259, 267 Italian negotiatores mercantile activity increases dramatically after Second Punic War: 119 and note 101

904

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE likely consisted in large part of former soldiers in Rome’s armies: 199–120 and note 102, 124 eventually allowed to bring charges of repetundae: 123 ineligibility for fulfillment of Roman contracts: 121–122 and notes 106– 108, 124–125, 134, 136, 191 and note 88, 279 no voice in making of Roman foreign policy: 122 and notes 109–110, 124, 136 protected by Roman governors in the East: 121 and note 105, 124 victimised in the East by rapacity of Roman publicani: 123–124, 125, 675

ius latii rights included in: 83–85 and notes 28–35 timing of: 84 note 28 ius civitatis per magistratum adipiscendae provisions of: 201, 282–283, 720–721 and notes 9–12 timing of addition to ius latii: 201, 347 and note 95, 716–721 and supporting notes as alternative to civitas: 200–201, 347 and note 95, 719, 726 ius provocationis as alternative to civitas: 170–172 and supporting notes, 199 Janiculum, battle of (87 BCE) timing of and participants in: 509–510 Julius Caesar, Caius (cos. 59) inaugurates Civil War (49 BCE): 677, 679 Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, Caius enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla: 450, 834 attempts to run for consulate of 87 without first having held praetorate (88 BCE): 432, 831 and note 1 reasons for: 432,435 note 34, 831–836 timing of: 432, 833–834 and note 7 use of violence against P. Sulpicius Rufus during: 433–434, 835–836 opposition to C. Marius and possibility of Mithridatic command for him (88 BCE): 457, 832–833 and notes 2–3, 834–836 and supporting notes may have led violence during opposition to voting on laws of P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 452–453, 457 hunted by C. Flavius Fimbria, probably for opposition to C. Marius and P. Sulpicius Rufus in 88 (87 BCE): 530–531, 556 betrayal, capture, and possibly gruesome death of (87 BCE): 531–532 and note 88

INDEX

905

head sent to rostra (87 BCE): 532 Julius Caesar, Lucius (cos. 90) attitude towards Allies: 471–472 and note 85 attitude towards novi cives: 471–472 and note 85 commands southern theater (90 BCE): 291–292 and note 8 legates of: 292–293 and supporting notes first assault on Aesernia and defeat by P. Vettius Scato (90 BCE): 294 and note 12–13, 302, 353, 740, 751, 754–755 and supporting notes, 808 second assault on Aesernia and defeat by Marius Egnatius (90 BCE): 295– 296 and notes 16 and 18, 307 note 40, 341, 353, 750 and note 2, 754– 755 and supporting notes, 808 defeats C. Papius Mutilus at Acerrae (90 BCE): 303, 305–306 and notes 35–36, 339, 353, 368, 419, 750 note 2, 751, 753, 766 and parley with Cretan: 43, 306 note 37, 357–358, 778–779 unable to return to Rome to elect a suffect after death of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 781 and note 11 holds consular elections in Rome (late 90 BCE): 307, 338 note 89, 353, 781 holds consular elections in Rome, timing of return for (late 90 BCE): 307 and notes 39–40, 316, 353, 781 passes lex Julia: 307, 353–354 and note 4, 432, 472, 781 becomes censor (89 BCE): 419, 432, 467 irregularities in being able to be elected and reasons for: 469–470 and notes 79–81 brevity of mention of service as censor in sources and reasons for: 468– 469 and notes 77–78, 470–471 accomplishments as censor with P. Licinius Crassus (89–88 BCE): 469 unable to complete census as censor with P. Licinius Crassus (88 BCE): 470–471 and notes 82–83 reasons for: 471–474 and supporting notes hunted for unknown reasons by C. Flavius Fimbria and killed, with head sent to rostra (87 BCE): 531–532 and note 88, 556 Julius Caesar, Sextus (cos. 91) Allied plot to murder foiled by M. Livius Drusus (91 BCE): 219, 238 and note 19, 242 and note 23, 347, 544 given a command against the Allies in mid–90 BCE: 319–320 and note 61 alleged placement in command of northern theater (late 90 BCE): 319 note 60 alleged replacement of Valerius Massala (90 BCE): 313 note 61, 758–762 and supporting notes, 769 and notes 9–10

906

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE defeats P. Praesentius on via Salaria (90 BCE): 291 note 7, 319–320 and notes 61–62, 321 note 64, 327, 331 relieves Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Asculum (90 BCE): 291 note 7, 323, 327, 328 death during siege of Asculum (89 BCE): 291 note 7, 319–320 and notes 61–62, 756–763 and supporting notes

Julius Frontinus, Sextus utility as source for the events of 91–77: 65 Junius Brutus Damasippus, Marcus defeated by Cn. Pompeius Magnus in Picenum: 603–604 and note 71 slaughters political enemies of C. Marius the Younger: 619–620 and note 93–94 left in charge of Clusium (82 BCE): 622 unsuccessfully leads two legions to relieve Praeneste (82 BCE): 624, 625 attempts at final relief of Praeneste with C. Marcius Censorinus and Carrinas thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 625 makes way to Sicily, where he is caught by Cn. Pompeius Magnus and commits suicide (81 BCE): 629 Junius Brutus, Marcus as Praetor, sent by Senate to ask Sulla’s intentions during March on Rome (88 BCE): 462–463 exiled with C. Marius by L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 466 gathers forces in Spain and returns to join C. Marius and L. Cornelius Cinna: 499 joins the revolt of M. Aemilius Lepidus (78 BCE): 673 Junius Pennus, Marcus date of election to tribunate: 703, 707–709, 711–712 expulsion law of (126 BCE): See “lex Junia” Lafrenius, Titus commander of the Vestini (90 BCE): 289, 743 and note 6, 745 cooperates with C. Vidacilius and P. Vettius Scato in defeating Cn. Pompeius Strabo at near Falerio, close to Asculum (90 BCE): 294, 301–302 and note 28, 321 and note 63, 366, 752, 753, 761 besieges Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Firmum (90 BCE): 302, 311–312, 366, 513 note 60, 751, 752, 753, 761 defeated by Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Firmum and killed in battle (90 BCE): 321–322 and notes 64–65, 331, 368, 419, 752, 756, 770–771 possibly succeeded as commander of Vestini by Caius Pontidius (90–89 BCE): 374

INDEX

907

possibly succeeded as commander of Vestini by “Ventidius” (90–89 BCE): 374 and note 41 Lamponius, Marcus commander of the Lucani (90 BCE): 289, 749 and note 30 may have supplied troops to C. Papius Mutilus on his advance towards Acerrae (90 BCE): 305 and note 34 defeats P. Licinius Crassus near Grumentum (90 BCE): 292 note 10, 299 – 301, 305 note 34, 312 note 45, 341, 366, 389 note 67, 419, 472, 751, 753 continues fighting against Romans under Q. Poppaedius Silo (88 BCE): 399, 404 and note 92 unsuccessful siege of Isiae with C. Papius Mutilus (87 BCE): 408 and note 100 defeated with C. Papius Mutilus by Caius Norbanus at Rhegium (87 BCE): 408–409, 497, 588 probably defeats Plautius, legate of Q. Metellus Pius, with C. Papius Mutilus (87 BCE): 516 and note 66, 517–518 attempt to relieve Praeneste with Pontius Telesinus and Gutta thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 624 Larinum Marius Egnatius defeated and killed in battle against C. Cosconius near (89 BCE): 377–378 and notes 47–48 latifundia effects on Italians: 153, 169 Latins early arrangements of alliance with Rome: 78 and note 13, 79–81 and note 18, 83–85 and notes 28–35, 87 as those to be given full citizenship in the proposed enfranchisement laws of M. Fulvius Flaccus, C. Sempronius Gracchus, and M. Livius Drusus (125, 122, 91 BCE): 170–172 and supporting notes, 177–179, 199 and note 99, 201, 203 note 109, 215–216 and notes 137–138 possible lack of participation in Allied War throughout 90 BCE: 338 note 89, 342–352 and supporting notes 356, 371, 427, 718–719, 721, 775 internal divisions over remaining loyal to Rome: 347 and note 95, 351, 356, 721 and lex Julia: 354 and note 6, 356, 360, 371, 719, 775, 782 lex Calpurnia provisions of: 245 note 28, 338 and note 89, 357 and note 12, 776–777

908

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE timing of relative to lex Julia: 338 note 89, 357, 776–779, 782 enfolded into lex Julia: 358, 777–779, 782 probably described in L. Cornelius Sisenna fragment 120, but different to what is described in Sisenna fragment 17: 245 note 28, 357, 361–362 and notes 18–22, 365, 775 and note 1, 779–780 and notes 8–9

lex Fannia (122 BCE): 198–199, 200, 235 lex Julia (90 BCE) as citizenship law mentioned in Appian 1.6.49 and Velleius Paterculus 2.16.4: 354 and note 7, 355, 776 note 2 reasons for: 334–335, 337–338 and note 89, 348, 354 and note 6, 356–357, 358, 360, 436 general provisions of: 18, 354, 480 eligibility for: 337–338 and note 89, 354–355 and note 6, 348, 356, 358, 776, 782–784 and supporting notes, 824–825 and note 13 enfolds provisions of lex Calpurnia into: 358, 777–779, 782 voluntarily accepted: 355 and note 8 enrolled whole communities: 355–356 grouped new citizens into separate voting tribes: 18, 25, 30, 360–361 and notes 16–17, 414–414, 436, 480 mandated creations of, but did not create, new voting tribes: 361–362 and notes 18–21, 364–365, 414–414, 436 specified that new voting tribes for novi cives would vote last: 18, 25,30, 362–365 and notes 22–25, 414–414, 436, 480 timing of: 307 and notes 39–40, 316, 337–338 and note 89, 353–354 and note 7, 775, 778–779, 781–782 and notes 11–12 eventual dissatisfaction with amongst novi cives: 362–365 and notes 20–25 not enfranchisement law of 89 BCE: 410–411 Allied reaction to (89 BCE): 368, 373 and note 38, 436–437 lex Junia (126 BCE) terms of: 167–168, 169, 235, 703, 712–713 timing of and causes for: 133 and note 128, 235, 703–707 connections to the activities of M. Fulvius Flaccus: 169, 703–713 and supporting notes, 715 alleged opposition of C. Sempronius Gracchus to: 703–707 and supporting notes lex Licinia Mucia (95 BCE) as cause for Allied War: 210, 235–236 and note 13, 241 reason for: 209 and note 119, 712–713 terms of: 208 and supporting notes, 209 and note 120, 235

INDEX

909

lex Plautia Papiria (“lex Plautia Papiria”) (88 BCE): 410 note 102, 801–806 and supporting notes, 821–830 and supporting notes lex Sempronia agraria (133 BCE) effects on Allies: 130–131, 136, 152–163 and supporting notes, 164–165 and note 48, 168–169, 202, 224, 695–696 and note 4 inclusion of Allies in distribution: 151–152 and notes 25–26, 154 and note 28, 693–702 and supporting notes motivations behind: 99 note 59, 101, 148–152 and supporting notes terms of: 146–148 and supporting notes, 152 leges Sulpiciae: see “Sulpicius Rufus, Publius” lex Varia (90 BCE) terms of: 252 note 41, 505 and note 50 lex Valeria on debt (86 BCE) terms of: 540 Licinius Crassus, Lucius (cos. 95): 208, 244, 469 as censor in 92, quarrels with colleague Gn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and does not complete census: 469–470 and note 79 Licinius Crassus, Marcus (cos. 70) evades capture by C. Flavius Fimbria and flees to Spain: 584 recruits an army in Spain and plunders Malaca before joining Q. Metellus Pius in Africa (84 BCE): 584 quarrels with Q. Metellus Pius and joins L. Cornelius Sulla (83 BCE): 584, 589 sent by L. Cornelius Sulla into the lands of the Marsi, where he successfully recruits men for Sulla’s cause (83 BCE): 609–610, 658 ravages Tuder in Etruria: 620 defeats and surrounds Carrinas with Cn. Pompeius Magnus at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622 evaded by Carrinas at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622 summoned with Cn. Pompeius Magnus south against C. Marcius Censorinus, M. Junius Brutus Damasippus, and Carrinas by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 626 completely defeats the Samnites on L. Cornelius Sulla’s right at the Colline Gate (82 BCE): 626 enthusiasm for purchase of property of proscribed men alienates L. Cornelius Sulla (82–81 BCE): 643 and note 14, 645 restores all traditional powers of the tribunate with Cn. Pompeius Magnus (70 BCE): 676

910

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Licinius Crassus, Publius (cos. 97) attitude towards Allies: 472 attitude towards novi cives: 472 once gave citizenship to a citizen of Heraclea: 472 as legate of L. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 292 and note 10, 468 military operations in Campania (90 BCE): 292 and note 10, 298–299, 303 defeated by Marcus Lamponius near Grumentum (90 BCE): 292 note 10, 299, 312 note 45, 341, 389 note 67, 366, 419, 472, 751, 753 becomes censor for 89 BCE (90 BCE): 292 note 10, 301, 380, 419, 467 irregularities in being able to be elected and reasons for: 469–470 and notes 79–81 brevity of mention of service as censor in sources and reasons for: 468– 469 and notes 77–78, 470–471 accomplishments as censor with L. Julius Caesar (89–88 BCE): 469 unable to complete census as censor with L. Julius Caesar (89–88 BCE): 470–471 and notes 82–83 possible reasons for: 471–474 and supporting notes succeeded as legate to L. Porcius Cato by Aulus Gabinius (89 BCE): 380 sent forward by Cn. Octavius in unsuccessful attempt to destroy the forces of L. Cornelius Cinna at Janiculum and recalled by Cn. Pompeius Strabo (87 BCE): 510–511 and note 58, 519 dissuades Cn. Octavius from making terms with L. Cornelius Cinna, and advises attack at the Alban hills instead (87 BCE): 519–520 defeated by C. Flavius Fimbria at Alban Hills, before rescue by Q. Metellus Pius (87 BCE): 519–520, 556 advises Cn. Octavius to negotiate with L. Cornelius Cinna after Alban Hills (87 BCE): 520 flight to escape execution, possibly for maiestas (87 BCE): 530 and note 86 caught by C. Flavius Fimbria and kills eldest son and self to escape execution (87 BCE): 530 and note 86, 556 head taken to rostra (87 BCE): 530, 556 Licinius Lucullus, Lucius (cos. 74) only one of L. Cornelius Sulla’s officers not to withdraw from him during March on Rome (88 BCE): 460 and note 69 role in near capture of Mithridates by C. Flavius Fimbria: 559–560 and notes 17–18 Liris river strategic importance of (90 BCE): 290, 308

INDEX

911

Livius Drusus, Marcus (cos. 112): 196–198 and note 96, 199 and note 101, 201, 212, 214 Livius Drusus, Marcus bias of Livy against: 45–47 and notes 35, 40, 50 motivated by extortion trial of Publius Rutilius Rufus (pre–91 BCE): 212– 213 and notes 130 and 133 friendship with P. Sulpicius Rufus (pre–91 BCE): 431 connection with Q. Poppaedius Silo: 202, 216 and note 139, 237–241 and supporting notes, 243, 318, 725, 727 enmity with Q. Servilius Caepio: 212 and note 131, 318 and note 56 legislative programme of (91 BCE): 71 note 4, 212–217 and supporting notes, 480, 654 note 36, 725–725 and notes 6–7 proposed law for Italian enfranchisement (91 BCE): 215–216 and notes 137–138, 141 and note 4, 217 and note 141, 218–219 and note 146, 237–238, 240–241, 347, 480, 724–728 and supporting notes proposed law for Italian enfranchisement (91 BCE), reasons for: 726–727 manner of death (91 BCE): 219 and note 145, 234, 333, 480 time of death (91 BCE): 723 and note 5 death as cause for outbreak of Allied War: 141–142 and note 5, 233, 235, 240 and note 22, 243, 247, 419, 722–729 and supporting notes Livius, Titus utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 43–45 and especially page 47 alleged alterations of history made to suit Augustus: 44 note 30, 688–689 biases and prejudices of: 39 note 20, 45–47 and notes 35, 40, 50 lack of involvement in politics: 46 and notes 36–37 lack of knowledge of geography: 46 and notes 38–39 lack of military expertise: 45–46 and notes 33–35 sources of: 37 and note 12, 45 and note 32, carelessness with: 44–45 and notes 29–31 Epitomes of: see “Periochae” as source of de viris illustribus: 64 and note 86, 216 note 140 as source for Appian: 49 and note 48, 56 note 69, 58–61, 70, 693 and note 9 as source for Aulus Gellius: 65 as source for Cassius Dio: 61–62 and supporting notes as source for Eutropius: 49, 53, 686 as source for Florus: 49, 53, 70, 141, 686 as source for Frontinus: 65 as source for Orosius: 49, 54, 140, 686 as source for Pliny: 65–66

912

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE as source for Plutarch: 62 as source for Velleius Paterculus: 49 and note 18, 50–51 and notes 53–54, 686

Lucani as member of the Alliance in 91 BCE: 248, 255, 285 continue fighting until 87 BCE: 415–416, 418, 820–821 reasons for: 415–416 and note 108, 515–516 and note 66, 820–821 exorbitant terms made to Q. Metellus Pius to bring about peace, which are rejected (87 BCE): 515–516 conclude terms and receive civitas from L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 356 and note 9, 409, 416, 515–516 and note 66, 546, 549, 826 defeat Plautius, legate of Q. Metellus Pius, probably under M. Lamponius (87 BCE): 516 and note 66, 517–518 Lucanus/Lucceius lieutenant of Caius Cosconius (89 BCE): 377–378 and notes 47–48 Lucilius commander of the Hirpini (90 BCE): 289, 748 and note 26 deceived by L. Cornelius Sulla near Aesernia (90 BCE): 297–298, 341, 390 Lucretius Ofella, Quintus oversees siege of Praeneste and repulses attempts of C. Marius the Younger to escape (82 BCE): 618–619, 624 uses heads of generals from Colline Gate to induce Praeneste to give in, and loots (82 BCE): 628 and note 101 killed by order of L. Cornelius Sulla when he attempts to run for consul without completing earlier steps of cursus honorum (82 BCE): 664 and note 57 Lucullus, Marcus: see “Terentius Varro Lucullus, Marcus” Lutatius Catulus, Quintus (cos. 102) initial amity with C. Marius: 447, 448 served by L. Cornelius Sulla as legate during Cimbric Wars (102–101 BCE): 446, 447–448 and note 54 military incompetence of: 447–448 enmity with C. Marius: 448–449 and note 55, 673 as possible legate during Allied War: 380–381 and note 52, 809 sent by Cn. Octavius along with his son and M. Antonius to summon Q. Metellus Pius back to Rome (87 BCE): 515 and note 63 possibly brought up on charges of perduellio for role in summoning Q. Metellus Pius back to Rome (87 BCE): 527 and note 78

INDEX

913

possibly tried by M. Marius Gratidianus (87 BCE): 528 note 80, 642, 842 commits suicide when C. Marius refuses to let him to go into exile to escape execution (87 BCE): 449, 527–528 and note 80, 842 Lutatius Catulus, Quintus (cos. 78) role in suppression of the revolt of M. Aemilius Lepidus (78 BCE): p. 673 sent by Cn. Octavius along with his father and M. Antonius to summon Q. Metellus Pius back to Rome (87 BCE): 515 and note 63 role in invention of proscription list by L. Cornelius Sulla (82–81 BCE): 639 note 4 murders and dismembers M. Marius Gratidianus for latter’s role in death of his father with L. Sergius Catilina (82 BCE): 528 note 80, 639 note 4, 642 and note 13 March on Rome, Sulla’s (88 BCE): timing of: 475 and note 90 persuasion of Sulla’s soldiers to engage in: 31, 460 utter novelty of: 31, 461, 477 met with incredulity in Rome: 460–462 recruits gained for during: 460 deputation sent by Senate to: 460, 462–463 maltreatment of: 463 deception of: 463 lack of initial preparation to resist: 462 Marcius Censorinus, Caius partisan of C. Marius: 450–451 and note 57, 524–525 enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla (early 90s BCE): 450–451 and note 57, 524–525 sent by L. Cornelius Cinna to dislodge Cn. Octavius from the Janiculum, killing him in the process (87 BCE): 524–525 and note 75 probably commander defeated by Cn. Pompeius Magnus on the Adriatic coast, likely at Sena Gallica (82 BCE): 615 and note 85, 623 sent by Cn. Papirius Carbo to relieve Praeneste, but ambushed and defeated in a defile near Via Flaminia by Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 623–624 trapped on a hilltop by Cn. Pompeius Magnus and escapes, but is deserted by all by seven cohorts (82 BCE): 624 retreats back to Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 624 left along with Carrinas with remnants of army by flight of Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 625 attempts at final relief of Praeneste with Carrinas and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 625

914

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE falls back on Rome after unsuccessful final relief of Praeneste with Carrinas and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus (82 BCE): 625 defeated with Carrinas and Pontius Telesinus at the Colline Gate, taken prisoner, and beheaded (82 BCE): 627 head taken to Praeneste, where it helped induce surrender to Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 627–628

Marcius Philippus (cos. 91) Allied plot to murder foiled by M. Livius Drusus (91 BCE): 219, 238 and note 19, 242 and note 23, 347, 544 defends Cn. Pompeius Magnus in a criminal case (86 BCE): 501 and note 42 staunch opponent to Allied enfranchisement and rights of novi cives: 544, 846 and note 6 named censor and completes both review of the Senate and census with M. Perperna, passing up his own uncle App. Claudius Pulcher in the process (86/85 BCE): 544 joins the cause of L. Cornelius Sulla and receives a naval command from him (83 BCE): 590 and note 54 wins over Sardinia for L. Cornelius Sulla (83 BCE): 611 Marius, Caius (cos. 107) lost memoirs of?: 39 note 18 and Italian Allies: 113, 203–207 and notes 111–114, 317 and note 53, 237 note 18, 324 note 67, 440 as novus civis: 206 n. 113 and novi cives: 464–465 and note 74 calls for volunteers among capite censi (107 BCE): 105–107 and supporting notes hostility of Senate towards: 105–107 and note 75, 203, 206 note 113, 290, 420–427, 430, 451, 456, 461 reasons for: 105–107, 203 note 110, 205 note 112, 420–427 use of tribunes to gain commands and other considerations: 205 note 112, 423, 431 and note 27, 440, 452 use of men deemed undesirable by Senate: 445 assigned L. Cornelius Sulla as quaestor: 444–445 and note 50 L. Cornelius Sulla on staff of (107–102 BCE): 445–446 enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla: 254, 440, 441–442, 446–452, 768 reasons for: 446 and notes 51–52, 449 initial amity with Q. Catulus: 447, 448 enmity with Q. Catulus: 448–449 and note 55, 673 service of Q. Sertorius during the Cimbric Wars: 446 note 52, 592, 593

INDEX

915

desire to lead war against Mithridates: 427–429 and supporting notes, 440, 552, 833 and note 3 association with C. Marcius Censorinus: 450–451 and note 57, 524–525 association with L. Apuleius Saturninus: 204 and note 111, 426 constraints put on by Senate during Allied War (90 BCE): 291, 316–317 and notes 52–53 and 55, 426, 751 as legate to P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 292 note 10, 308–309 and note 41, 425 positioned on the via Valeria (90 BCE): 312 note 47, 314 given command of soldiers under Perperna after defeat of latter by P. Praesentius (90 BCE): 312 quarrels with P. Rutilius Lupus: 246 note 29, 313–314, 341, 392, 429, 559 unsuccessfully attempts to dissuade P. Rutilus Lupus from giving battle against P. Vettius Scato at the Tolenus River (90 BCE): 314, 315 note 51, 429 assumes command against P. Vettius Scato after death of P. Rutilius Lupus at the Tolenus River (90 BCE): 315–316 and note 50, 419–420, 511, 751 compelled to divide command of northern army with Q. Servilius Caepio after death of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 317 and note 55, 426, 751 alleged subordination to Sex. Julius Caesar after the death of Q. Servilius Caepio (90 BCE): 319 note 60 placed in command of northern army after death of Q. Servilius Caepio at Amiternum (90 BCE): 319 and note 60, 426, 752, 769 maneuvers against Q. Poppaedius Silo in the Tolenus Valley (90 BCE): 323–324, 393, 761, 769 fights Q. Poppaedius Silo to a draw in the Tolenus Valley (90 BCE): 323– 324, 393, 761 defeats Q. Poppaedius Silo at the Battle of the Vineyards near Sora (90 BCE): 325–326 and notes 69 and 71, 331, 339, 368, 393, 430, 751, 752, 753, 763–774 and supporting notes faces Q. Poppaedius Silo in abortive skirmish after the Battle of the Vineyards (Sora) (90 BCE): 237 note 18, 326–327, 331, 368, 752, 772– 773, 796 dismissed as legate by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 381, 420 reasons for: 381–382 and notes 53–54, 420, 427 enmity with L. Porcius Cato: 394–395 and note 77, 427 and note 16 illness of (90–89 BCE): 317 and note 54, 420, 427 recovery from: 427, 441 desire for seventh consulate (88 BCE): 429–430 and notes 22–23, 537 and note 105

916

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE putative candidacy for seventh consulate (88 BCE): 429–430 and notes 22–23, 832–836 and supporting notes opposition to C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus (88 BCE): 832–836 and supporting notes association with Publius Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 440, 441, 455–456 and note 63, 465, 831 reasons for: 440 kept hidden until Spring: 441 harbors L. Cornelius Sulla during latter’s flight from violence surrounding the declaration of the illegality of his feriae (88 BCE): 455–456 command of Mithridatic War transferred to by Publius Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 457 prepares for Mithridatic War (88 BCE): 462 possibly recruits heavily from novi cives: 462, 464–465 and note 74 caught by surprise by Sulla’s March on Rome (88 BCE): 461–462 prepares to resist Sulla’s March on Rome (88 BCE): 462 enrolls freedmen: 462 attempts to include slaves: 462, 464 includes men recruited to be sent east: 462, 464–465 and note 74 includes men recruited to be sent east, possibly large numbers of novi cives: 462, 464–465 and note 74 narrowly defeated by L. Cornelius Sulla at Esquiline Forum (88 BCE): 463–464, 552 flight of after defeat by L. Cornelius Sulla at Esquiline Forum (ends up in Africa; 88 BCE): 464, 465, 466 and note 75, 475 and note 90 declared outlaw by L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 466, 477 relative of Marcus Marius Gratidianus: 476 note 93 recruitment of men in preparation for return to Rome (88–87 BCE): 498– 499 and notes 36, 388 joins forces with L. Cornelius Cinna and refuses proconsular insignia, but accepts one of the four commands of L. Cornelius Cinna’s army (87 BCE): 499–500 and note 40, 522–523 sends cavalry to attack Rome, which is defeated by Cn. Pompeius Strabo (87 BCE): 506 begins investment of Rome from the southwest (87 BCE): 507 mildness in treatment of defeated enemies: 499 and note 39, 508–509 begins campaign south and east of Rome to starve city of supplies: 508 and note 54 assaults and sacks Ostia: 508–509

INDEX

917

breaks off southern and eastern campaign for battle at Janiculum (87 BCE): 509–510 receives betrayal of one Appius Claudius at Janiculum (87 BCE): 510 and note 57, 511 counterattacked by Cn. Octavius and Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Janiculum with L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 510 resumes southern and eastern campaign after battle at Janiculum (87 BCE): 511 captures Antium, Lanuvium, Aricia, and seizes control of both Via Appia and Via Latina (87 BCE): 511–512 and note 59 restored to his full rights as citizen by L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 523 and note 71, 538, 539 employs a bodyguard of freed slaves called “Bardyaei” (87 BCE): 523 and note 72 refuses to let Q. Lutatius Catulus go into exile (87 BCE): 527 abuse of the head of M. Antonius (87 BCE): 529–530 and supporting notes excesses of bodyguards of, and their execution (87 BCE): 533–536 and supporting notes declares L. Cornelius Sulla a hostis (87 BCE): 536 and note 102 re-elected consul amidst rumors of the return of Sulla (87 BCE): 537 and note 104, 551 dies a few weeks into his final consulate (86 BCE): 537 and notes 105–106 grave desecrated by L. Cornelius Sulla: 641 and note 9 Marius the Younger, Caius (cos, 82) legate to L. Porcius Cato and enmity with (90–89 BCE): 394–395 and note 77, 844 alleged murder of L. Porcius Cato (90–89 BCE): 394–395 and note 77 evades sentence of outlawry and joins father in Africa (88 BCE): 466 and note 75 stores treasure in Praeneste (83–82 BCE): 605, 618 elected consul with Cn. Papirius Carbo: 606 defeated, probably by Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, at Setia (92 BCE): 615–616 and note 87 retreats from Setia to Sacriportus (82 BCE): 616 and note 88 defeated at Sacriportus by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 614, 616–618 and notes 88–91 besieged at Sacriportus by Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 618–619, 621 and note 96 orders the slaughter of political enemies in Rome by L. Junius Brutus Damasippus (82 BCE): 619–620 and note 93–94

918

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE repulsed in numerous attempts to break out of Praeneste by Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 624 commits suicide to avoid capture by Q. Lucretius Ofella when Praeneste opens its gates to him (82 BCE): 628, 650 note 24 head taken to L. Cornelius Sulla, who mocks it (82 BCE): 628 and note 101, 641

Marius Gratidianus, Marcus relative of C. Marius: 476 note 93 elected tribune for 87 BCE: 528 note 90, 841–844 and supporting notes possibly prosecuted Q. Lutatius Catulus (87 BCE): 528 note 80, 842 as praetor, passes coinage reform (85 BCE): 541 and note 110 death of at the hands of Q. Lutatius Catulus the Younger and L. Sergius Catilina (82 BCE): 528 note 80, 639 note 4, 642 and note 13 monument to destroyed by L. Cornelius Sulla: 641 note 10 Marrucini as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 surrender of (89 BCE): 377, 403, 800 Marsi tendency to refer to all Allies despite their actual origins as in Roman authors: 744 note 14, 746 note 17 as members of Alliance in 91 BCE: 255 surrender of to L. Cornelius Cinna (88 BCE): 406 and note 97 successful recruitment of some to join the cause of L. Cornelius Sulla by M. Licinius Crassus (83 BCE): 609–610, 658 military service, Roman resentment towards and reluctance to undertake: 99 note 59, 103–105 and supporting notes, 150 and note 23, 160 note 38, 244, 257, 272–273 and note 78, 277 Minucius Thermus, Quintus (cos. 193): 129 and note 12 Mucius Scaevola, Quintus (cos. 95): 208, 210–211 and notes 123–125, 526, 556, 558 note 14, 619–620 and note 93–94 Mithridates Allied Embassy to seek aid from, possibly led by Minius Iegius (late 89– early 88 BCE): 405–406, 408, 547 slaughters Italians and Romans in Asia (88 BCE): 405 and note 95, 547– 548 Mommsen, Theodor sympathy for Appian’s explanation for the Allied War: 57 and note 70 nomen Latinum: see “ius Latii”

INDEX

919

Nola siege of by Allies (91–90 BCE): 250, 732–737 and supporting notes not lifted by P. Licinius Crassus or any other Roman general in 90 BCE: 298–299 capture of by C. Papius Mutilus (90 BCE): 303, 732 and note 8, 733, 735– 737 and note 14, 751, 753 survivors of defeat of L. Cluentius at Pompeii by L. Cornelius Sulla take refuge, besieged in (89 BCE): 385 unsuccessfully besieged by L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 385, 390 and note 69, 809 unsuccessful siege continued under Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus (89 BCE): 407–408 and note 99, 494 note 25 siege directed by Appius Claudius Pulcher, replacing Mam. Aemilius Lepidus (88 BCE): 494–497 and supporting notes siege lifted when legions surrounding it join L. Cornelius Cinna’s March on Rome (87 BCE): 494–497 and supporting notes, 498 falls to L. Cornelius Sulla (81 BCE):628–629 and note 102 Norba unsuccessfully attacked, probably by Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (82 BCE): 616 siege continued under Mam. Aemilius Lepidus (82 BCE): 619 and note 92 falls to Mam. Aemilius Lepidus, but inhabitants commit mass suicide (82 BCE): 628, 638, 666 novi cives perhaps heavily recruited by C. Marius for Mithridatic War (88 BCE): 464–465 and note 74 extensive support for C. Marius (88 BCE): 464–465 and note 74 extensive support for L. Cornelius Cinna in Bellum Octavianum and later (87–82 BCE): 494 and note 24, 496, 501, 518, 521, 547, 568–569, 577, 580 note 43, 634, 819, 821, 847 plans of L. Cornelius Cinna to redistribute into all the tribes and difficulties encourered with: 483 and note 7, 487–490, 522, 538, 539– 541 and note 111, 546, 549, 564–569 redistributed in all the tribes by Cn. Papirius Carbo (84 BCE): 32, 569, 578–579 and note 40, 587, 847 extensive support for Cn. Papirius Carbo and the government against L. Cornelius Sulla in the Civil War (83–82 BCE): 577, 580, 847–852 and supporting notes, 586 and note 48, 602, 609, 611, 633, 819, 821 redistribution in all the tribes by Cn. Papirius Carbo (84 BCE), arrangement not undone by L. Cornelius Sulla: 658–660 and note 48

920

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE functionally kept from much political power by the legislative programme of L. Cornelius Sulla as dictator (82–79 BCE): 657–661 and especially note 51, 664–666 mass confiscation of lands of, and city defense demolished by, by L. Cornelius Sulla as dictator (82–79 BCE): 667 and note 60 reasons for: 668–670 and supporting notes very few have become members of the Senate by Cicero’s time: 657 and note 44, 661 and note 51

Norbanus, Caius (cos. 83) defeats M. Lamponius and C. Papius Mutilus at Rhegium (87 BCE): 408– 409, 497, 588 elected consul for 83 BCE (84 BCE): 588 unsuccessfully courted by L. Cornelius Sulla to change sides, then defeated in battle near Casilinum (83 BCE): 590–591 and notes 55–56 retreats to Capua (83 BCE): 591 advances from Capua, possibly upon summons from L. Cornelius Scipio so as to entrap L. Cornelius Sulla (83 BCE): 597 turns north to face L. Cornelius Sulla, but avoids him for the rest of the year, ravages territory, and returns to Rome (83 BCE): 600–601 travels into the Cisalpine with Cn. Papirius Carbo (82 BCE): 622 heavily defeated with Cn. Papirius Carbo by Q. Metellus Pius at Faventia (82 BCE): 622–623 betrayed by a legion of Lucani, which butchers his officers (82 BCE): 623 flees to Rhodes (82 BCE): 623 suicide of (81 BCE): 629 Nuceria forced to join Alliance (90 BCE): 304 and note 32, 388 note 66 territory ravaged by Aulus Gabinius (89 BCE): 304 note 32, 388 and note 66 Obsidus succeeds Herius Asinius as commander of Marrucini (late 90 BCE): 376– 377 defeated and killed in battle against Ser. Sulpicius Galba at Teaté (89 BCE): 376–377 and note 46, 378 note 48, 825 Otacilius Roman naval commander (90 BCE): 329–330 replaced by Aulus Postumius Albinus (89 BCE): 329 note 75, 380 and note 50

INDEX

921

Octavius, Cnaeus (cos. 87) elected consul for 87 (88 BCE): 477 compelled to vow to support arrangements of L. Cornelius Sulla: 484 and note 9, 487 expels L. Cornelius Cinna from Rome and declares him a hostis (87 BCE): 457 note 64, 487 note 11 preparations of for the return of L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 495, 501 and note 41, 506 summons Cn. Pompeius Strabo to help defend the city (87 BCE): 501 and note 41, 506 stupidity and obstinacy of: 501 and note 41, 506, 520–521 successful counterattack against C. Marius and L. Cornelius Cinna at Janiculum with Cn. Pompeius Strabo (87 BCE): 510 sends P. Licinius Crassus forward in unsuccessful attempt to destroy the forces of L. Cornelius Cinna at Janiculum (87 BCE): 510–511 rebuffs suggestion of Cn. Pompeius Strabo to open negotiations with L. Cornelius Cinna during siege of Rome: 512 assumes direct command of Cn. Pompeius Strabo’s soldiers upon death of their general (87 BCE): 515 dispatches M. Antonius, Q. Lutatius Catulus, and son to bring back Q. Metellus Pius to help defend Rome (87 BCE): 516 rules against suggestion of Q. Metellus Pius to make terms with L. Cornelius Cinna before the Alban hills at advice of P. Licinius Crassus (87 BCE): 519 sends P. Licinius Crassus to attack at the Alban hills, where he is defeated by C. Flavius Fimbria before rescue by Q. Metellus Pius (87 BCE): 519–520 advised by P. Licinius Crassus to negotiate with L. Cornelius Cinna after Alban Hills (87 BCE): 520 falling out with Q. Metellus Pius over latter’s negotiations with L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 520–521 refuses to heed warning of L. Cornelius Cinna and vows to fight to the last (87 BCE): 520–521 occupies Janiculum and is slain by C. Marcius Censorinus on order of L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 524–525 and note 73 head placed on the rostra after death (87 BCE): 530 and note 83 Opimius, Lucius (cos. 121) suppresses uprising at Fregellae (125 BCE): 73 and note 8, 176 and note 66, 179–181 and note 71, 198, 274, 717–718 elected consul: 199

922

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Orosius, Paulus utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 54 and note 64 sources of: 49, 54, 141, 686 Oxynta: 302–303, 306, 344 Paeligni as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 Papirius Carbo, Gnaeus (cos. 85) succeeds Aulus Gabinius at latter’s death in Lucania (late 89–early 88 BCE): 389 and note 68, 497 and notes 32–33, 567 joins L. Cornelius Cinna for march on Rome with troops in Lucania (87 BCE): 389 note 68, 497 and notes 32–33, 567 adherence to L. Cornelius Cinna: possible reasons for: 497, 567 accepts one of the four commands of L. Cornelius Cinna’s army, possibly initially as a subordinate to Cinna himself (87 BCE): 500 and note 40 redistributes novi cives into all the voting tribes (84 BCE): 32, 569, 578–579 and note 40, 847 joins the battle at the Janiculum (87 BCE): 510, 567 elected consul with L. Cornelius Cinna (86 BCE): 541, 567–568 and note 27 begins making preparations for the return of Sulla (85 BCE): 567–569, 572 and note 33 re-elected consul a second time with L. Cornelius Cinna (85 BCE): 567 note 27, 572 assumes command of all Roman forces in Italy on death L. Cornelius Cinna (84 BCE): 577 brings back troops from Ancona and continues recruiting (84 BCE): 578 pressured to name a suffect consul upon death of L. Cornelius Cinna (84 BCE): 567 note 27, 578 unsuccessful attempt to elect a suffect consul (84 BCE): 578, 579–580 and note 42 re-elected consul a third time with C. Marius the Younger (83 BCE): 606 receives reinforcements from Cisalpine Gaul (82 BCE): 611 and note 80 heads north to shore up Adriatic coast and besieges Q. Metellus Pius somewhere close to the river Aesis (82 BCE): 614 defeated by Cn. Pompeius Magnus on the river Aesis (82 BCE): 614 and note 84, 620 defeated by Q. Metellus Pius south of the Via Aemilia (82 BCE): 614–615, 620 heads back towards Rome pursued by Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 620–621

INDEX

923

defeated in a minor engagement near the river Glanis by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 621 fights L. Cornelius Sulla to a draw at Clusium (82 BCE): 621 and note 96 sends soldiers under C. Marcius Censorinus to relieve Praeneste (82 BCE): 621 sends soldiers to relieve Carrinas (82 BCE): 622 receives Carrinas and the remnants of the relief army at Clusium (82 BCE): 622 sends more soldiers to help relieve Praeneste (82 BCE): 622 leaves Clusium in the hands of L. Junius Brutus Demasippus (82 BCE): 622 heads to the Cisalpine with C. Norbanus (82 BCE): 622 heavily defeated with C. Norbanus by Q. Metellus Pius at Faventia (82 BCE): 622–623 heads back to Clusium after defeat at Faventia (82 BCE): 623 receives C. Marcius Censorinus and remnants of his army (82 BCE): 624 abandons Rome for Africa (82 BCE): 625 makes way to Sicily, where he is caught by Cn. Pompeius Magnus and executed (81 BCE): 629–630 and note 104, 650 note 24 Papius Mutilus, Caius Allied ‘consul’ (90 BCE): 287, 741, 743 theater of command (90 BCE): 287–288 and note 1 captures Nola (90 BCE): 303, 732 and note 8, 733, 735–737 and note 14 defeated by L Julius Caesar at Acerrae (90 BCE): 303, 305–306 and notes 35–36, 339, 353, 368, 750 note 2, 751, 766, 781 remains quiescent after Acerrae (90 BCE): 306–307 and notes 38–40, 328, 353, 781 defeated and wounded in battle at Beneventum against L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 391–392, 810–812 continues war against Romans under overall command of Q. Poppaedius Silo (88 BCE): 404 unsuccessfully besieges Isiae with M. Lamponius (87 BCE): 408 and note 100 defeated with M. Lamponius by C. Norbanus at Rhegium (87 BCE): 407– 408 and note 99, 497, 588 probably defeats Plautius, legate of Q. Metellus Pius, with M. Lampoinus (87 BCE): 517–518 proscribed by L. Cornelius Sulla, commits suicide when refused admission to his house by his wife (82–81 BCE): 666

924

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE

Periochae chronological peculiarities of: 250–251 and note 38, 738–740 and note 1 brevity of: 48 and notes 44–45 Perperna, Caius (Marcus?) as legate of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41 positioned south of Reate (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41 defeated by P. Praesentius, possibly near Alba Fucens (90 BCE): 312 and note 45, 313 note 48, 320, 323, 744, 754, 756, 759 cashiered and troops transferred to Caius Marius (90 BCE): 312, 323 Perperna, Marcus (cos. 92) possibly legate of P. Rutilius Lupus who was defeated and cashiered in 90 BCE: 312 note 45, 544 named censor and completes both review of the Senate and census with L. Marcius Philippus (86 BCE): 544 long lifespan of: 541–542, 544 and Italians/novi cives: 544 Perperna, Marcus governor of Sicily, provides safe harbor to Cn. Papirius Carbo and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus (82 BCE): 629 evades Cn. Pompeius Strabo, sent by L. Cornelius Sulla against him, and goes into hiding (82 BCE): 629 joins the revolt of M. Aemilius Lepidus (78 BCE): 673 murder of Q. Sertorius (72): 674 Picentes as members of Alliance in 91 BCE: 255 surrender to Gn. Pompaeus Strabo (89 BCE): 406 Picentia forced to join Alliance (90 BCE): 305 destroyed by Aulus Gabinius (89 BCE): 305 Pinna siege of (91 BCE): 250, 366 falls to Allies (90 BCE): 328 note 74 Plautius, Aulus, see “Plotius, Aulus” Plotius, Aulus campaign against Umbrians: 256, 331–333 and supporting notes, 356, 370, 752, 781, 786–787, 789, 790 difficulties of: 332 and note 81

INDEX

925

Plutarch and prejudice against Caius Marius: 63 and note 83 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 62–63 sources of: 38–39 and notes 16–18, 62–63, 854, 770 Pompeii membership in Alliance (91 BCE): 303–304 and note 32, 388 note 66 as naval base for Allies (90 BCE): 330 and note 77, 383 capture of (89 BCE): 304 note 32, 386 and note 64, 825 timing: 825 put under siege by L. Cornelius Sulla and Aul. Postumius Albinus (89 BCE): 383 siege of (89 BCE): 383–384 L. Cluentius narrowly defeated by L. Cornelius Sulla outside (89 BCE): 384–385, 591 L. Cluentius defeated a second time outside of, driven back to Nola, and killed in battle against L. Cornelius Sulla (89 BCE): 385, 386 note 64 Pompeius Magnus, Gnaeus (cos. 70) popularity amongst soldiers of his father Cn. Pompeius Strabo (89–87 BCE): 513 and note 61 attempted murder of by soldiers of his father at the alleged behest of L. Cornelius Cinna and role in foiling the plot (87 BCE): 513 and note 61 defended in a criminal trial by L. Marcius Philippus (86 BCE): 501 and note 42 alleged role in the mutiny against L. Cornelius Cinna at Ancona (84 BCE): 576 note 38, 577 note 39 begins recruiting soldiers for the coming war (84–82 BCE): 577 note 39, 584 and note 46 probably inspires a law making the raising of private armies illegal (84–82 BCE): 585–586 and note 47 defeats armies sent against him under L. Junius Brutus Damasippus and L. Cornelius Scipio in Picenum (83 BCE): 603–604 and note 71 decides to join L. Cornelius Sulla, and greeting of “Imperator” is returned by same (83 BCE): 604 sent north by L. Cornelius Sulla to aid Q. Metellus Pius at latter’s request (82 BCE): 613–614 defeats Carrinas near the Aesis River with Q. Metellus Pius (82 BCE): 614 defeats Cn. Papirius Carbo near the Aesis River with Q. Metellus Pius (82 BCE): 614 and note 84, 620 defeats an army probably commanded by C. Marcius Censorinus on the Adriatic coast, likely at Sena Gallica (82 BCE): 615 and note 85

926

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE separates from Q. Metellus Pius and heads down the Via Flaminia (82 BCE): 615 defeats and surrounds Carrinas with M. Licinius Crassus at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622 evaded by Carrinas at Spoletium (82 BCE): 622 ambushes and defeats C. Marcius Censorinus in a defile near Via Flaminia (82 BCE): 623–624 traps C. Marcius Censorinus on a hilltop, but is evaded (82 BCE): 624 defeats army of Cn. Papirius Carbo at Clusium (82 BCE): 625 summoned with M. Licinius Crassus south against C. Marcius Censorinus, M. Junius Brutus Damasippus, and Carrinas by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 626 dispatched by L. Cornelius Sulla to hunt down M. Junius Brutus Damasippus and Cn. Papirius Carbo, who are both soon dead (82 BCE): 629–630 and note 104 triumph of: 645 and note 15, 650 note 24, 664 role in suppression of the revolt of M. Aemilius Lepidus: 674 restores all traditional powers of the tribunate with M. Licinius Crassus (70 BCE): 676

Pompeius Rufus, Quintus (cos. 88) elected consul for 88 (89 BCE): 402 one-time amity with P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 434 enmity with P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 434 marital connection with L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 443 note 46, 455 assigned province of Italy (89 BCE): 482 note 4 declares feriae with L. Cornelius Sulla to end voting on laws of P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 453 reasons for: 453–454 and note 61 threatened with arrest with L. Cornelius Sulla by P. Sulpicius Rufus unless he suspends feriae (88 BCE): 454–455 loses son in violence which erupts after P. Sulpicius Rufus declares feriae illegal (88 BCE): 455, 461 flees Rome after death of son (88 BCE): 455 consulate allegedly voided by P. Sulpicius Rufus (88 BCE): 457 note 64 joins L. Cornelius Sulla’s march on Rome (88 BCE): 463 declares P. Sulpicius Rufus, M. Junius Brutus, and C. Marius outlaws with L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 466 proposes no laws be proffered without Senate’s approval with L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 466–467, 544–545, 651–652 proposes end of tribune’s ability to make laws with L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 466–467, 544–545, 612, 652 and note 32

INDEX

927

proposes to adlect 300 men into the Senate with L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 467–468 reasons for: 467–474 and supporting notes probably unable to pass laws proposed with L. Cornelius Sulla save restoration of proconsular commands (88 BCE): 467 and note 76, 486 note 10, 646, 648, 651–652 persuaded to go to province and relieve Cn. Pompeius Strabo (88 BCE): 475–476 timing of: 475 and note 91 killed by soldiers of Cn. Pompeius Strabo (88 BCE): 476, 513 note 60 Pompeius Strabo, Gnaeus (cos. 89) as legate to L. Julius Caesar: 308–309 and note 41 detached from line of L. Julius Caesar and sent into Picenum: 308–309 and note 41 defeated at Falerio near Asculum by T. Lafrenius, C. Vidacilius, and P. Vettius Scato (90 BCE): 294, 301–302 and note 28, 309–311 and notes 42–44, 321 and note 63, 366, 752, 760 besieged by T. Lafrenius at Firmum (90 BCE): 302, 311–312, 321, 366, 513 note 60, 752, 760 defeats T. Lafrenius, who is killed in battle, at Firmum (90 BCE): 321–322 and notes 64–65, 331, 368, 419, 752, 756, 770–771 launches second assault on Asculum, puts it to siege (90 BCE): 339, 368, 513 note 60, 752, 759, 770–771 attacked by C. Vidacilius near Asculum (late 90 BCE): 322–323 and note 66, 368 relieved at Asculum by Sex. Julius Caesar (late 90 BCE): 291 note 7, 323, 328, 759 elected consul for 89 (late 90 BCE): 323, 369, 419, 781 returns from election to Asculum (89 BCE): 369–370 and note 33, 371, 786, 817 note 4 possibly lent soldiers from the southern army for assault on Asculum (89 BCE): 371, 372 note 37, 375, 380, 392, 383, 762, 796, 817 note 4 defeats Fraucus, who dies in battle, near Asculum (89 BCE): 370–371 and note 35, 378 note 45, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4 engages in parley with P. Vettius Scato before battle outside Asculum (89 BCE): 22, 35 note 6, 372–373 and notes 37–38, 397, 501–502, 762, 782 note 17, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4, 825 note 13 defeats P. Vettius Scato and C. Vidacilius outside Asculum (89 BCE): 373, 397, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4

928

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE continues siege of Asculum after defeating P. Vettius Scato and C. Vidacilius (89 BCE): 373–374, 513 note 60, 785–792 and supporting notes wages brief but succcessful campaign into the territory of the Vestini (89 BCE): 375, 387, 793 returns from foray against the Vestini to press siege of Asculum (89 BCE): 375, 380, 793 captures Asculum (late 89 BCE): 400–401 and notes 86–88, 752, 786 receives surrender of Paeligni and Vestini (88 BCE): 406, 739, 795 receives surrender of Picentes (late 89 BCE): 406, 795 allows soldiers to loot Asculum (late 89 BCE): 400–401 and notes 86–88, 513 note 60 allegedly falls into disfavor in Rome for not donating spoils from Asculum to the treasury (89–88 BCE): 400–401 and notes 86–88, 503, 505–506 and note 50 celebrates triumph for capture of Asculum (late 89 BCE): 180 note 71, 400–401 and notes 86–88, 503 holds elections in Rome (late 89 BCE): 402 alleged desire for second consulate (88–87 BCE): 402, 503, 504–505 and note 48 prorogued for 88 (89 BCE): 402, 464, 482 note 4 enfranchises Spanish cavalry per lex Julia (89 BCE): 358, 501, 778 Senatorial displeasure towards: 503 and note 44, 505 does not attempt to halt L. Cornelius Sulla’s March on Rome (88 BCE): 503–505 reasons for: 503–504 to be relieved by Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 475–476, 503–504 timing of: 475 and note 91 displeasure at being superseded by Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 475– 476 and note 92 resumes charge of his men after their murder of Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 476, 503–504 not prosecuted for murder of Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 476 possibly charged for maiestas for murder of Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 476, 505–506 and note 50 possible attempt of L. Cornelius Sulla to have him removed from command vetoed (88 BCE): 475 note 91, 476 slowness in responding to summons of Cn. Octavius (87 BCE): 501 reasons for: 501–506 and thoughts on extending the civitas to the Allies: 502–503

INDEX

929

relationship with P. Sulpicius Rufus: 504 and notes 45–46, 505–506 and note 50, 837–840 and supporting notes attempts to negotiate with L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 506 arrives at Rome and wards off a cavalry attack by C. Marius (87 BCE): 506 successful counterattack against C. Marius and L. Cornelius Cinna at Janiculum with Cn. Octavius (87 BCE): 510 recalls P. Licinius Crassus in the dying light of the battle at Janiculum, allegedly for sinister purposes (87 BCE): 510–511 and note 58, 519 general popularity of amongst soldiers: 513 note 60 erosion of morale of soldiers during siege of Rome (87 BCE): 513 mutiny against and attempted murder of during siege of Rome, allegedly at behest of L. Cornelius Cinna: 513 and note 61 suggests negotiating with L. Cornelius Cinna during siege of Rome, and conducts these personally when his suggestion is refused: 512–513 and note 61 death of (87 BCE): 504 note 47, 514–515 and note 62 soldiers of whom upon his death taken over by Cn. Octavius (87 BCE): 515 Pontidius, Caius succeeds to command of the Vestini upon death of T. Lafrenius (90–89 BCE): 374 and notes 40–41, 743–744 and notes 8–9 defers command of resistance of siege of Asculum to C. Vidacilius (90–89 BCE): 374 resumes command of resistance of siege of Asculum upon suicide of Vidacilius (89 BCE): 374 Poppaedius Silo, Quintus as a major organizer of the Alliance: 237–241 and supporting notes, 243, 409, 415 note 107 connections with M. Livius Drusus: 202, 216 and note 139, 237–238 and supporting notes, 239–240, 725, 727 alleged march to Rome in response to the lex Licinia Mucia: 209 and note 121, 238–239 and notes 20–21 as Allied ‘consul’ (90 BCE): 287, 741, 743 theater of command (90 BCE): 287–288 and note 1 pretended defection to Q. Servilius Caepio (90 BCE): 318, 323, 341, 752 ambushes and defeats Q. Servilius Caepio at Amiternum, leading to Caepio’s death (90 BCE): 318–319, 320, 341, 366, 405 note 107, 419, 426, 751–752, 756, 759, 760–761, 838 maneuvers against C. Marius in Tolenus Valley (90 BCE): 323–324, 393, 761, 769

930

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE fights C. Marius to a draw in Tolenus Valley (90 BCE): 323–324, 393, 761 defeated by C. Marius at Vineyards (Sora) (90 BCE): 325–326 and notes 69 and 71, 331, 339, 368, 393, 426, 751, 752, 753, 763–774 and supporting notes faces C. Marius in abortive skirmish after Vineyards (Sora) (90 BCE): 237 note 18, 326–327, 331, 368, 752, 772–773, 796 possible defeat by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 796–797 possibe maneuvers against L. Cornelius Cinna, and defeat by him (89–88 BCE): 796–797 continues fight against Romans as overall commander of remaining Allies (88 BCE): 398–399, 404 reasons for: 415 note 107 recaptures Bovianum Undecimanorum and celebrates triumph for it (88 BCE): 407, 408 note 99 defeated and killed in battle against Mam. Aemilius Lepidus (88 BCE): 407–408 and note 99, 494 note 25, 817 and note 2

Porcius Cato the Younger, Marcus: 216 and note 139, 237 and note 18 Porcius Cato, Lucius (cos.89) campaign against Etruscans (90 BCE): 256, 331–333 and supporting notes, 356, 370, 392, 419, 752, 771, 781, 786–787, 789, 790 difficulties of: 332 and note 81, 343 note 91 elected consul for 89 (late 90 BCE): 380, 419, 781 poor quality of soldiers under in 89 BCE: 246–247 and notes 29–30, 342– 343 and note 91, 393 and note 74 replaces legates inherited from L. Julius Caesar (89 BCE): 380–381 and notes 49–52, 796 possible enmity with C. Marius: 394–395 and note 77, 427 and note 16 perhaps lent soldiers to Cn. Pompeius Strabo for Asculum campaign (89 BCE): 371, 372 note 37, 375, 380, 383, 392, 762, 796 takes up position on the Tolenus River (89 BCE): 381 and note 56 mutiny of soldiers under (89 BCE): 343 note 91, 393–394, 576 launches campaign to relieve Alba Fucens (89 BCE): 393 successfully relieves Alba Fucens (89 BCE): 394 and note 76 successful campaigns of (89 BCE): 394, 796 and note 5 death of (89 BCE): 387, 394–395 and notes 77–78, 796 timing: 386 note 64 soldiers under direct command of led by L. Cornelius Cinna after death of (89 BCE): 395 soldiers south of Alba Fucens taken over by T. Didius upon death of (89 BCE): 387

INDEX

931

Posidonius and theme of moral degeneracy: 39 and note 20, 40, 42 note 25 as eyewitness of events of 91–77: 39–40 as source for Appian: 60 and note 75 as source for Livy: 37, 39 and note 19 as source for Diodorus Siculus: 39 and note 19 as source for Strabo: 66 lost work as source known to have covered the events of 91–77: 39–40 and supporting notes Postumius Albinus, Lucius (cos. 174): 129 and note 12, 250 Postumius Albinus, Aulus (cos. 99) replaces Otacilius as legate over Roman navy (89 BCE): 329 note 75, 380 and note 50, 383 note 57 helps L. Cornelius Sulla besiege Pompeii (89 BCE): 383 murdered by his own men at Pompeii (89 BCE): 383, 387, 459 timing: 386 note 64 Postumius, Lucius diverted from Cilician command to defend Nola, and death at the hands of C. Papius Mutilus (91–90 BCE): 732–737 and supporting notes as alleged Roman investigator into Allied war preparations (91 BCE): 732– 737 and supporting notes Praeneste C. Marius the Younger stores treasure in (82 BCE): 605, 618 besieged by Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 618–619, 621 and note 96 unsuccessful attempts to relieve by Cn. Papirius Carbo and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus (82 BCE): 621, 622, 624 unsuccessful attempts by C. Marius the Younger to break out of (82 BCE): 624 attempt to relieve by M. Lamponius, Pontius Telesinus, and Gutta thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 624 attempt to relieve by Carrinas, C. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Junius Brutus Damasippus thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 625 opens gates to Q. Lucretius Ofella, who loots town (82 BCE): 628 prisoners from ordered butchered by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 636 and note 1, 666, 670 Praesentius, Publius commander of the Paeligni (90 BCE): 289, 744, 745–746 defeats Caius (Marcus?) Perperna (90 BCE): 312 and note 45, 313 note 48, 320, 323, 744, 753, 756, 759

932

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE defeated by Sex. Julius Caesar on the via Salaria (90 BCE): 291 note 7, 319–320 and notes 61–62, 321 note 64, 327, 756–763 and supporting notes

praetors (στρατηγοί), Allied: 258, 262–265 and supporting notes, 288 and note 2, 741 commanded men from their own communities: 288, 741 and note 3 prisoners enrollment into Allied army: 302–303, 305 and note 33 proscription Sulla’s invention of: 526, 639 reasons for: 639–646 and supporting notes terms of in regards to property: 642 note 12, 643 Quinctius legate either of C. Norbanus or Cn. Papirius Carbo defeated by M. Lucullus at Fidentia (82 BCE): 623, 624–625 and note 99 Ravenna Cn. Papirius Carbo and C. Norbanus heavily defeated by Q. Metellus Pius (82 BCE): 622–623 Rhegium defeat of C. Papius Mutilus and M. Lamponius by C. Norbanus (87 BCE): 408–409, 497 Rhetorica ad Herennium and the “Alternative Tradition”: 22 utility of as source for the events of 91–77: 64–65 and notes 87–88 roadbuilding, Roman: 127 note 118 Roman involvement in Italy: 126–131 and supporting notes, 134, 164, 334 Roman use of Allied towns as safe havens/prisons: 128 and note 120, 302–303 Romans and Allied requests for aid: 126–127 and notes 116–117, 334 as “guardians of Italy”: 87 and note 37, 114, 137–138 as peacekeepers within Italy: 86–87, 114, 126, 206 and note 113, 236 note 14, 334 Rome siege of by forces of L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 507, 511–512 debt crisis in (89–86 BCE): 434, 539–546 and supporting notes, 817 note 4

INDEX

933

“Romanization” of Allies: 73, 85, 131–132, 134–135 Rutilius Lupus, Publius (cos. 90) commander of the northern Roman forces (90 BCE): 308 legates of (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41 quarrels with C. Marius (90 BCE): 246 note 29, 313–314, 341, 392, 429 lured into battle at the Tolenus River by P. Vettius Scato (90 BCE): 313– 315, 323, 384 defeated and killed in battle at the Tolenus River against P. Vettius Scato (90 BCE): 315–316 and notes 50–51, 338 note 89, 341, 419, 751, 753 Rutilius Rufus, Publius (cos. 105): 123 note 112, 210–211 and notes 124–126, 212 extortion trial of as motivation for Marcus Livius Drusus (91 BCE): 212– 213 and notes 130 and 133 Sacriportus location of: 616 note 88 defeat of C. Marius the Younger by L. Cornelius Sulla in (82 BCE): 614, 616–618 and notes 88–91 Salapia burned by C. Cosconius (89 BCE): 378 Salernum forced to join Alliance (90 BCE): 305 Sallustius Crispus, Caius as source for Exsuperantius: 62 note 80 as source for Florus: 53 note 60 deference to L. Cornelius Sisenna: 37 and note 10, 38 note 13 Salluvii revolt of suppressed by C. Caelius/Coelius Caldus (?) (90 BCE): 245 note 28, 330–331 and note 78, 344, 385 and note 61 send reinforcements to Allies (89 BCE): 344, 385 and note 61 Samnites tendency to refer to all Allies despite their actual origins as in Roman authors: 385 note 62, 744 note 14 as a people known to have written about their own history: 33 note 1 as members of Alliance in 91 BCE: 255 not observed in the sources as varying from the other socii and instead desiring independence: 228 and note 5 continue fighting until 87 BCE: 415–416, 418, 820–821 reasons for: 415–416 and note 108, 515–516 and note 66, 820–821

934

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE exorbitant terms made to Q. Metellus Pius to bring about peace, which are rejected (87 BCE): 515–516 conclude terms and receive civitas from L. Cornelius Cinna (87 BCE): 356 and note 9, 515–516 and note 66, 546, 549, 826 defeat Plautius, legate of Q. Metellus Pius, probably under C. Papius Mutilus (87 BCE): 517–518 as soldiers fighting under C. Marius the Younger, massacred by L. Cornelius Sulla after Sacriportus (82 BCE): 618 and note 91 soldiers butchered by L. Cornelius Sulla after the Colline Gate (82 BCE): 636–637 and note 1, 645–646, 666, 670 practically driven to extinction by L. Cornelius Sulla (82–79 BCE): 670– 672 and supporting notes

secessio Allied War as a type of: 229–233, 234, 240–241, 243, 285–286, 342 Second Punic War (218–202 BCE) effects on Italy and Italians: 98, 119 and note 101 Sempronius Asellio, Aulus murder of (89 BCE): 539 and note 109, 817 note 4 Sempronius Gracchus, Caius bias of Livy against: 45–47 and notes 35, 40, 50 alleged opposition to the lex Junia (126 BCE): 703–707 and supporting notes early career of (126–124 BCE): 167, 182–184 and supporting notes trial of for alleged involvement with Fregellae (124 BCE): 183 and Italian enfranchisement (123–122 BCE): 184–186, 188 and note 82, 191–192 and note 88, 193–195 and note 91, 195, 198–199 and note 101, 200, 201–202, 479, 699 note 2, 703–707 and supporting notes, 714–715, 719 legislative programme of (123–122 BCE): 123 and note 111, 127 note 118, 188–192 and note 82 and 88, 211 and notes 127–128 necessity of winning broad appeal for (123 BCE): 184–188 and supporting notes, 438 Sempronius Gracchus, Tiberius bias of Livy against: 45–47 and notes 35, 40, 50 activities a cause for Allied War: 130, 142, 224 passes the lex Sempronia agraria (133 BCE): 146 and concern for the Italian Allies (133 BCE): 142, 148, 151–152 and notes 25–26, 154 and note 28, 693–702 and supporting notes death of (133 BCE): 160, 167, 199

INDEX

935

Sena Gallica probably location for defeat of C. Marcius Censorinus by Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 615 and note 85, 623 ‘senate’, Allied: 258, 260–262 and supporting notes, 263–264 Senate, Roman and tactics used by to obstruct legislative bills of which it disapproved: 186–187 and note 80, 190, 193 note 89, 297 and note 97 hostility to C. Marius: 105–107 and note 75, 290, 381 and note 53, 420– 427, 430, 456, 461 membership greatly diminished between 87–82 BCE: 642 and note 13 Sergius Catilina, Lucius role in the murder and dismemberment of M. Marius Gratidianus (82 BCE): 642 and note 13 revolt of (63 BCE): 674 Sertorius, Quintus early career of: 593, 856 service under C. Marius during Cimbric Wars (103–101 BCE): 446 note 52, 592, 593 possible service under Q. Servilius Caepio and presence at Amiternum: 593 and note 58, 856 recruits aid from Gauls during Allied War: 344 enmity with L. Cornelius Sulla: 476 note 93, 494 and note 23, 592, 593– 594, 595–596, 599, 855–856 note 6, 858 candidacy for tribunate of 87 blocked by L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 476 note 93, 595–596 joins L. Cornelius Cinna in exile and subsequent march on Rome: 493– 494 cautions L. Cornelius Cinna against employment of C. Marius (87 BCE): 499 and note 39 accepts one of the four commands of L. Cornelius Cinna’s army (87 BCE): 500 and note 40 begins investment of Rome from the northwest (87 BCE): 507 joins the battle at the Janiculum (87 BCE): 510 slaughters the Bardyaei (87 BCE): 535–536 and note 100 as legate to L. Cornelius Scipio, unsuccessfully advises him to avoid negotiating with L. Cornelius Sulla at Teanum (83 BCE): 592, 595, 855 note 6

936

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE captures Suessa Aurunca, possibly on order of L. Cornelius Scipio as part of a plan to entrap L. Cornelius Sulla at Teanum (83 BCE): 594–597 and supporting notes, 853–858 and supporting notes probably not defeated, captured and released by L. Cornelius Sulla after Suessa Aurunca (83 BCE): 600, 601 note 67 possibly becomes disgruntled at the government (83 BCE): 607–609 and note 78 accepts a propraetorian command in Spain (83 BCE): 606 and note 77 carries on resistance in Spain (82–72): 674 murder by M. Perperna: 674

Servilius Caepio, Quintus (cos. 106): 211 note 127, 318–319, 425–426, 492, 593, 855 Servilius Caepio the Younger, Quintus enmity with M. Livius Drusus: 212 and note 131, 318 and note 56 alleged friendship with C. Marius: 426 battlefield inexperience of (90 BCE): 425–426 and note 12, 838 as legate to P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41 positioned near Reate (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41 besieged by Allies and escape (90 BCE): 317 divided command of northern army with C. Marius after death of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 317 and note 55, 419, 426, 751 ambushed, defeated, and killed in battle against Q. Poppaedius Silo near Amiternum (90 BCE): 318–319, 320, 323, 341, 366, 415 note 107, 419, 426, 593, 752, 756, 759, 760–761, 838 Servilius, Quintus investigator into Allied activity in 91 BCE: 242, 730 and note 3 murder at Asculum with his legate Fonteius (91 BCE): 242, 730, 731 Servilius Vatia, Publius (cos. 79) possible Cilician command of in place of L. Postumius (90 BCE): 245 note 28, 734–735 unsuccessful run for consul (88 BCE): 476–477 and note 94, 734–735 Setia defeat of C. Marius the Younger, probably by Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (82 BCE): 615–616 and note 87 slaves enrollment into Allied armies: 302–303, 341, 395 and note 33, 407 socii ways Allies became: 79

INDEX

937

grievances with Rome before 91 BCE: 20, 74–75, 88–134 and supporting notes, 139, 164–165, 170, 208, 210, 219–220, 223–225, 280, 333–334, 479, 675 identity with Romans in the Greek East: 120–121 and note 104, 124, 131, 134–135, 547–548 élites and Rome: 125 and note 115, 137, 153, 202 mechanisms for selecting soldiers for Roman army: 82 and note 25, 102 and supporting notes, 104, 164–165, 244, 675 mistreatment by Roman magistrates: 129–130 and note 12, 137, 170, 675 internal divisions about going to war with Rome (91–87 BCE): 69–70 and note 1, 236 note 14, 249–250 and supporting notes, 256–257 and notes 45–47, 292 note 10, 302–305 and supporting notes, 334–338 and supporting notes, 358 and note 15, 385–386 and note 63, 849 and L. Cornelius Sulla: 23, 32 sources for the Allied War lack of those composed by Italians themselves: 33–34, 69, 163, 232, 285 Spoletium defeat and investment at of Carrinas by M. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Pompeius Magnus (82 BCE): 622 Stabiae forced to join Alliance (90 BCE): 305, 388 note 66 captured and destroyed by L. Cornelius Sulla (mid–89 BCE): 386 note 64, 387 Strabo utility as source for the events of 91–77: 66 Suessa Aurunca town loyal to L. Cornelius Sulla captured by Q. Sertorius, perhaps as part of a plan of L. Cornelius Scipio to entrap L. Cornelius Sulla near Teanum (83 BCE): 594–597 and supporting notes, 853–858 and supporting notes Sulpicius Galba, Servius Roman investigator into Allied activity (91 BCE): 248–249 and note 34, 730–731 and note 4 rescue of (91 BCE): 249 as subordinate to Cn. Pompeius Strabo instead of P. Sulpicius Rufus as his subordinate: 383 note 45, 837–838 and note 1 subordinate to Cn. Pompeius Strabo also investigator into Allied War preparations in 91 BCE: 321 and note 64, 838 and note 4

938

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE role in defeat of Titus Lafrenius by Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Firmum (90 BCE): 321–322 and notes 64–65, 368, 756, 837 subordinate of Cn. Pompeius Strabo (89 BCE): 321, 794–795 and note 2 defeats Obsidus, who dies in battle, at Teaté (89 BCE): 376–377 and note 46, 378 note 48, 739, 794–795 and note 2, 800, 825, 837 relieved in 88 BCE: 403

Sulpicius Rufus, Publius friends with M. Livius Drusus (pre–91 BCE): 431 one-time staunch optimate (pre–88 BCE): 431–432 and note 28, 480, 831 and service in the Allied War: 321 note 64, 383 note 45, 757 note 2, 837– 839 one-time friendship with Q. Pompeius Rufus (pre–88 BCE): 434 opposes C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus in his run for consulate (88 BCE): 432, 433, 440, 831–836 used violence to oppose C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus in his run for consulate (88 BCE): 433, 434, 831 break from optimates (pre–88 BCE): 434–439, 452, 461, 480, 831 reasons for: 433–434, 831 timing of: 434–439 enmity with Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 434 association with C. Marius (88 BCE): 440, 831 reasons for: 440 kept secret until spring of 88: 441, 455–456 and note 63 employs bodyguards (‘Anti–Senate’) (88 BCE): 440–441 and note 39, 453– 454 and note 60 role of in murder of son of Q. Pompeius Rufus: 455 debt law of (88 BCE): 434, 438, 440, 452–453, 466–467 law to recall exiles (88 BCE): 434–435 and note 34, 438, 440, 452–453, 466–467 law to redistribute novi cives into all voting tribes (88 BCE): 32, 436–437, 438, 440, 452–453, 453–454, 465, 466, 475, 480, 488, 490 also included freedmen: 438 and note 37, 462 opposed by L. Cornelius Sulla: 32, 466–467 law to remove proconsular commands from L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 466–467 legislative programme of reasons for (88 BCE): 480, 488, 490 need to gain popular support for (88 BCE): 438–439 Senate’s opposition to (88 BCE): 480 attempts to pass met with violence (88 BCE): 452–453, 835–836

INDEX

939

voting on halted by feriae declared by L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 453 reasons for: 453–454 passed upon lifting of feriae (88 BCE): 439–441, 457 legality of passage (88 BCE): 457–458 and note 66, 461 declares feriae enacted by L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus illegal and threatens to arrest them unless ended (88 BCE): 454–455 declaration of illegality of feriae met with violence (88 BCE): 455, 461 allegedly passes legislative programme through vis (88 BCE): 457–458 and note 66 allegedly voids consulate of Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 457 note 64 transfers Mithridatic command from L. Cornelius Sulla to C. Marius (88 BCE): 457–458 allegedly plunders property of supporters of L. Cornelius Sulla with C. Marius (88 BCE): 31, 460 declared outlaw by L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus (88 BCE): 466, 477 relationship with Cn. Pompeius Strabo: 321 note 64, 383 note 45, 504 and notes 45 and 46, 837–840 and supporting notes murder of: 466, 480 Surrentum forced to join Alliance (90 BCE): 305 Teanum as base of operations for L. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 294 and note 12 and 14, 766 Teaté Obsidus defeated and killed in battle against Ser. Sulpicius Galba (89 BCE): 376–377 and note 46, 378 note 48, 825 Telesinus, Pontius a possible commander of the Samnites (88 BCE): 404 note 93, 408 note 100 attempt to relieve Praeneste with M. Lamponius and Gutta thwarted by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 624 breaks through passes at Praeneste and heads north towards Rome (82 BCE): 626 exhorts men to “kill the wolves by destroying their lair” at the Colline Gate (82 BCE): 24 note 32, 266 note 68, 626 defeated with C. Marcius Censorinus and Carrinas at the Colline Gate, and dies in combat (82 BCE): 627

940

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE head taken to Praeneste, where it helped induce surrender to Q. Lucretius Ofella (82 BCE): 627–628

Terentius Varro Lucullus, Marcus (cos. 73) sent into the Cisalpine by L. Cornelius Sulla (82 BCE): 621 defeats Quinctius, a legate of C. Papirius Carbo or C. Norbanus, at Fidentia (82 BCE): 623, 624–625 and note 99 Titius/Titinnus, Caius ringleader of mutiny against L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE) 394 and note 75 Titius, Sextus (99 BCE): 207 and note 115 Tolenus River strategic importance of (90 BCE): 290, 308 P. Rutilius Lupus defeated and killed in battle against P. Vettius Scato (90 BCE): 315–316 and notes 50–51, 341, 419, 751, 753 Trebatius commander of the Apuli (90–89 BCE): 289, 301 note 28, 378, 747–748 and notes 21–25 may have supplied troops to C. Papius Mutilus for Acerrae (90 BCE): 305 other speculated actions in 90 BCE: 301 note 28 defeats C. Cosconius at Canusium (89 BCE): 378, 747, 825 defeated by C. Cosconius at Cannae, retreats to Canusium (late 89 BCE): 378–379, 747 Tribunate proposals to diminish powers of offered by Q. Pompeius Rufus and L. Cornelius Sulla (88 BCE): 466–467, 544–545, 612, 652 and note 32 laws to diminish powers of by L. Cornelius Sulla (82–79 BCE): 652–654 and note 32, 660, 665 triumviri ad dividendum agrum creation of (133 BCE): 155 difficulties encountered from and impediments to land adjudication: 156– 158 and supporting notes, 160–163 and supporting notes, 166, 168– 169, 181–182, 184, 185–186, 188, 191–192 and note 88, 200 Tullius Cicero, Marcus (cos. 63) utility as source for the events of 91–77: 21–25 and note 31, 35 and note 8, 64 and the Gracchi: 35 note 8, 697 note 6, 706 and the “Alternative Tradition”: 22–25 and note 31 on the excellence of L. Cornelius Sisenna’s work: 37 and note 10

INDEX

941

role in the Allied War: 22, 35 note 6, 372–373 and notes 37–38, 501–502, 762, 782 note 17, 785–792 and supporting notes, 817 note 4, 825 note 13 unwritten history of: 34–36 and supporting notes Umbrians late entry into Allied War: 89 note 40, 255, 344 reasons for: 333–338 and supporting notes campaign of Aulus Plotius against (90 BCE): 256, 331–333 and supporting notes, 356, 370, 752, 781, 786–787, 789, 790 difficulties of: 332 and note 81 effect of lex Julia on (90 BCE): 334–335, 337–338 and note 89, 355, 356, 360, 775, 781 Valerius Flaccus, Lucius (cos. 100) may have been behind attempt to bestow a “pocket commission” on L. Cornelius Sulla if necessary (86 BCE): 554–555 and supporting notes has Senate send a counteroffer to L. Cornelius Sulla offering to revoke his outlawry for forestall war (85 BCE): 572 and note 31 named interrex and bidden by L. Cornelius Sulla to name him dictator (82 BCE): 648–650 and note 21 Valerius Flaccus, Lucius (cos. 86) chosen as suffect consul to succeed C. Marius (86 BCE): 537–538, 551 passes law to ease debt crisis (86 BCE): 540 military inexperience of: 552 sent as proconsul against Mithridates (86 BE): 552 possible reasons for (86 BCE): 552–553 probable intent to avoid combat with L. Cornelius Sulla in the East, rather than to fight him (86 BCE): 553–556 and notes 5–10, 557, 564, 573 initial difficulties of Mithridatic campaign (86 BCE): 557 and note 13 becomes detested by his men (86 BCE): 557–558 quarrels with subordinate C. Flavius Fimbria (86 BCE): 558–559 killed in a mutiny, possibly by C. Flavius Fimbria (86 BCE): 559 and note 16, 563 Valerius Massala as legate of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41, 426 and note 15 positioned on the southernmost flank of the army of P. Rutilius Lupus (90 BCE): 308–309 and note 41, 380 note 51, 426 and note 15, 768–769

942

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE alleged defeat of by P. Vettius Scato and replacement by Sex. Julius Caesar (90 BCE): 294 and note 12–13, 313 note 48, 758–762 and supporting notes, 769 and notes 9–10 role in Battle of the Vineyards (Sora) (90 BCE): 43, 295 note 15, 325–326 and note 70, 426 and note 15 763–774 and supporting notes dismissed as legate by L. Porcius Cato (89 BCE): 380–381 and note 52

Valerius Maximus utility as source for the events of 91–77: 65 and note 89 sources of: 37 as contemporary of Velleius Paterculus: 50 and note 52 Varian trials (91–90 BCE): 21, 237 note 18, 252–254 and note 41, 435 Velleius Paterculus utility as source for the events of 91–77: 49–51 and the “Alternative Tradition”: 51 and note 55 apparent sympathy towards Allies: 34 note 2, 51 and note 55 as a Roman, not Italian, source: 34 note 2 as contemporary of Valerius Maximus: 50 and note 52 comments about L. Cornelius Sisenna: 37 sources of: 37, 49 and note 48, 50–51 and notes 53–54, 70, 140, 686 Venafrum defeat of Romans by Marius Egnatius (90 BCE): 366, 750 and note 2 Ventidius alleged successor to T. Lafrenius (90–89 BCE): 374 and note 41 Venusia as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255, 347 joins Alliance in part due to actions of C. Vidacilius (90 BCE): 302, 347, 348–349 and note 99 besieged and captured by Q. Metellus Pius (88 BCE): 405, 407 Vestini as members of Alliance in 90 BCE: 255 surrender of (88 BCE): 377, 793, 795 Vettienus, Caius: 252 note 41, 339–340, 367 Vettius Scato, Publius commander of the Marsi: 289, 298 note 83, 399 note 85, 744–745 and notes 14–15

INDEX

943

cooperates with T. Lafrenius and C. Vidacilius against Cn. Pompeius Strabo near Asculum (90 BCE): 294, 301–302 and note 28, 309–311 and notes 42–44, 321 and note 63, 366, 761 defeats L. Julius Caesar at Aersenia (90 BCE 294 and note 12–13, 302, 313 note 48, 353, 750 and note 2, 754–755 and supporting notes, 808 alleged defeat of Valerius Massala (90 BCE): 294 and note 12–13, 313 note 48, 759 note 8 lures P. Rutilius Lupus into battle of the Tolenus River (90 BCE): 313– 315, 323, 384 defeats P. Rutilius Lupus, who is killed in combat, in battle of the Tolenus River (90 BCE): 315–316 and notes 50–51, 341, 751, 753, 759 leads relief expedition to Asculum (89 BCE): 370–371 confers with Cn. Pompeius Strabo outside Asculum (89 BCE): 22, 35 note 6, 372–373 and notes 37–38, 797, 501–502, 762, 782 note 17, 817 note 4, 825 note 13 is defeated, with C. Vidacilius, by Cn. Pompeius Strabo outside Asculum (89 BCE): 373, 397 retreats after defeat by Cn. Pompeius Strabo outside Asculum (89 BCE): 373, 397, 795–796 defends Corfinium, probably against Caecilius Cornutus (89 BCE): 397, 795–799 capture of by Romans (89 BCE): 375–376, 378 note 48, 396–397, 397– 400 timing of: 39–399 and notes 83–85 handed over to Romans by his own soldiers (89 BCE): 397–400 and notes 83–85 death of (89 BCE): 400 Vidacilius, Caius commander of the Picentes (90–89 BCE): 288–289, 743 and note 5 cooperates with T. Lafrenius and P. Vettius Scato against Cn. Pompeius Strabo near Asculum (90 BCE): 294, 301–302 and note 28, 309–311 and notes 42–44, 321 and note 63, 366, 752, 761 operations in Apulia (90 BCE): 301–303 and note 28, 320 note 63, 322 note 65 may have supplied troops to C. Papius Mutilus for Acerrae (90 BCE): 305 and note 35 may have lent troops to T. Lafrenius for siege of Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Firmum (90 BCE): 322 note 65, 366, 752 unsuccessfully attacks Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Asculum (90 BCE): 321– 322 and notes 64–65, 368 and note 20, 789, 790

944

ROMANS, ALLIES, AND THE STRUGGLE joins the besieged at Asculum and assumes direction of resistance to siege (90–89 BCE): 322, 368–369 and note 32 is defeated with P. Vettius Scato by Cn. Pompeius Strabo outside Asculum (89 BCE): 374, 785–792 and supporting notes returns to Asculum after defeat by Cn. Pompeius Strabo (89 BCE): 374 commits suicide in Asculum (89 BCE): 374 allegedly succeeded to direction of resistance to siege of Asculum upon death by Ventidius (89 BCE): 374 and note 41 probably succeeded in direction of resistance to siege of Asculum upon death by C. Pontidius (89 BCE): 374

Vineyards (Sora), Battle of C. Marius defeats Q. Poppaedius Silo (90 BCE): 325–326 and notes 69 and 71, 331, 339, 368, 393, 751, 752, 753, 763–774 and supporting notes Volaterrae taken by assault by L. Cornelius Sulla (81 BCE): 628–629 and note 102 citizenship possibly removed from by L. Cornelius Sulla (81–79 BCE): 667–668 and note 61 voting tribes, Roman distribution of novi cives in: 361–362 and notes 18–22, 413–414, 819 number of those created by lex Julia and enabling laws: 361–362 and notes 18–22, 819