031a - Marius

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 30a, Marius. Last week, we ended with the death of Gaius Gracchus, the popular reformer who was driven to suicide in 121 BC. This week, we will take up the career of a man who, coincidentally, served as tribune of the plebs the very next year. He would not make his name in that office or that year, but twenty years later, he would be known to history as the great remaker of the Roman legions, and the man who was consul five times in a row. What the Gracchi had started by flouting the laws against consecutive terms, Marius took to a higher office for an even longer stay.

Gaius Marius was born in 157 BC in southern Latium. His hometown had been conquered by the Romans in the fourth century BC, and since that time, they had been citizens of Rome without voting rights. It wasn't until about thirty years before Marius' birth that his people were granted status as full Roman citizens. The story goes that Marius was the son of a simple farmer. But this myth of humble origins was an invention after the fact to help the poor of Rome identify with Marius, the great general and politician. His father was certainly involved in farming, but he was likely a major landowner who had numerous familial and commercial ties to the nobility in Rome. There is no other way to explain how Marius was able to get his foot in the door to high Roman office.

The other great myth of Marius' early years was that as a teenager, he came across an eagle's nest with seven chicks inside. Eagles were seen by the Romans as sacred animals looked after by Jupiter himself. Though again, this myth did not begin making the rounds until years later, especially after Marius began running for his seventh consul ship, and it was impressed upon the people that it had all been preordained by Jupiter himself. Elect Marius, he once saw seven baby eagles, and he's only been consul six times. Get it? You don't want to go messing around with the universe, do you?

When Marius came of age, he volunteered for service in the army and was placed as an officer. Though this placement hints that his family was well connected, he was never truly accepted by his noble peers. To them, he would always be novus homo, or a new man, meaning that none of his ancestors had ever served as consul. Despite all the power, wealth, and fame he acquired over his career, to the old guard he would always be a new man, much the way that in England, no matter what Margaret Thatcher did, said, or achieved, she will always be just a grocer's daughter to the aristocratic class. Some ceilings simply cannot be broken through. Though this very status as a new man would solidify Marius' near sainthood in the eyes of other ambitious young men who could not trace their family trees back to Romulus.

As a young man, Marius was stationed with Scipio Aemilianus in, wait for it, Numantia, just like our old friends the Gracchi brothers. In 134 BC he ran for and was elected one of 24 military tribunes for the Spanish legions. He was an unknown candidate, but had a stellar service record to present. Unable to trade on his name, Marius traded on his skills and accomplishments. What a concept! This began Marius' slow and sometimes agonizing climb up the Roman political ladder. At each rung he was resisted by the old guard, who were never quick to embrace new men. So unlike many other great figures in Roman history, his elections were never a foregone conclusion.

In 120 BC, though, the year after Gaius Gracchus' turbulent final term in office, Marius was elected a tribune of the plebs. He was able to do this by securing the blessing of a noble named Quintus Metellus. Though only three years older than Marius, the Marii family had long been clients to the Metelli family, and the old client-patron dynamic played out. Once in office, though, Marius infuriated his patrons by helping pass an election reform law the Metelli opposed. The bill, and I am not making this up, required a narrowing of the passageways electors walked down on their way to the ballot box to prevent harassment by partisans for one side or the other. The lofty ideals of democracy are often reliant on such micromanagement. The price of freedom, it seems, is eternal vigilance over the width of hallways.

His relationship with Metellus strained, Marius' career stalled. Though after a few years, he stepped up another rung and managed to get elected praetor, despite charges of ballot fraud. I guess it doesn't matter how narrow a passageway is if the man walking down it is going to cast 50 votes. Marius served in Spain with some distinction for a few years, and then returned to Rome, where he married the aunt of yet-born Julius Caesar. I have to apologize for conflating Marius with Cinna at the end of last week's episode. Marius was Caesar's uncle-in-law, not father-in-law. The marriage was a boon to Marius' career and earned him a whole host of new allies amongst the elite, and around 110 BC, he even patched things up with his old patron, Metellus.

At this point, I would like to shift gears before we move into the next stage of Marius' life and give a little background on where he and Metellus are headed. In 119 BC, the son of Masinissa, the old Numidian ally of Rome from the Punic Wars, passed away. He left the kingdom to his two sons and a third adopted son named Jugurtha, who was technically the dead king's nephew. All three were grandsons of the great Masinissa. Jugurtha did not like to play nice with the other children, though, and immediately set about running the other two out of town. He assassinated one, but the other escaped and fled to Rome.

Concerned at the power struggle in their client state and the economic disruptions caused, the Romans sent a delegation to find out what the trouble was all about. When he was a young man, Jugurtha served in Spain as a cavalryman alongside the Romans and had noticed the most glaring weakness of the legions, the ease with which commanders could be bribed. Cavalry commanders at this time, no longer fighting for survival, were clearly in it for the money and prestige, and saw no important distinction between plundering by force and accepting bribes not to plunder. In fact, the latter seemed far more cost effective. Of course, to the Romans the idea of bribery was officially morally reprehensible, but this fact had little impact on commanders in the field.

So when the Roman commission came to adjudicate the budding civil war in Numidia, Jugurtha bribed them handsomely to decide the issue in his favor, which they promptly did, being men of honor. Left alone and in control of half the kingdom, Jugurtha set about attacking his cousin brother to win the other half. In this struggle, the Italian merchants and citizens came down almost universally against Jugurtha, who was causing a lot of trouble and disrupting trade. In retaliation, Jugurtha took the provocative step of executing a number of Italians in his custody.

The Senate could not stand by and let this go, so they sent an army to deal with the upstart. But the Roman armies were able to do little against Jugurtha, suspiciously little. At once, an investigation was undertaken into accusations of bribery, and Jugurtha, still technically a client of Rome, was summoned to account for himself. But a few well-placed bribes later, Jugurtha was on his way back to Numidia, free as a bird and no finding of fault being handed down on anyone. You gotta hand it to him, there is something poetic about bribing your way out of charges of bribery. But the Roman people were still up in arms about the barbarian king, and in 109 BC, the consul for the year, Marius' old patron Metellus, was sent to Numidia to put down what had become a full-fledged rebellion. He took along Marius to serve as chief lieutenant.

The campaign was frustrating for both sides. Metellus was too honest to be bribed, and realizing this, Jugurtha kept to the mountains and away from the invading legions. The Numidians took a page from old Fabius the Daler, and embarked on a war of attrition with the Romans. Metellus was never able to pin the African prince down, and his troops and the public back home began to lose patience. Accusations of bribery were hurled at Metellus, and though innocent, his own perceived failure became damning evidence. Marius watched with frustration equaling that of the Roman people. He thought Metellus far too cautious, and began to get the idea that he could do a better job. To curry favor with the troops, he relaxed discipline in camp, and began letting it be known that if he were in charge, this war would be over in a week. Troops and traders both began to write home praising Marius to the sky, and a groundswell of support began to coalesce around the confident lieutenant.

Marius asked permission to return home and stand for the consulship. Metellus disapproved of the idea, but knew the troops were getting restless, and it wouldn't do anyone any good to have Marius sulking around camp stirring up trouble, so the consul let him go. Marius came back to Rome and campaigned on a platform denouncing the slow pace of Metellus's strategy. He spoke confidently of his plan for victory, which involved aggressive scorched-earth tactics. The public, wary of corrupt officials prolonging the war, swept Marius into his first consulship in 107 B.C.

The Senate was not exactly pleased at the do-gooder Novus Homo, who was about to spoil all their fun, and while accepting his election, attempted to deny his appointment to command of the Numidian legions. The People's Assembly, however, countered the move by invoking a little-known clause that gave them final say over a consul's placement in the field. Marius was given Numidia and tasked simply with following through on his promise to end the war. To accomplish this goal, Marius asked permission to raise his own legions. This permission was granted, but then Marius asked for an exemption from the rules governing recruitment. The number of men who qualified under the old census rules had dwindled to a bare few, even after the property qualifications had been lowered and lowered again until they practically did not exist. The army Marius raised for the Numidian campaign, while the logical conclusion of years of rewriting the rules, nonetheless marked a clear break with the past. There would be no property qualifications this time. Any citizen was eligible, landowner or not. The floodgates were open, and the poor citizens of Rome flocked to join Marius' new army. Though the move was supposed to be a temporary measure that affected only this specific levy, there was no turning back. Henceforth, the ranks of the legions would be filled by the poorest of the poor, not the richest of the rich.

The elites had grown tired of the burden of military service anyway. They had plush estates and Greek philosophy to read. Let the rabble risk their lives in the provinces. It might clear off some of the excess population, and besides, it gave the poor something to do besides railing against the injustice of their lot in life, which was becoming such a bore. Let the beggars be soldiers, whatever. It was a fateful moment that greatly accelerated the path to military dictatorship and imperium. From here on out, poor citizens became career soldiers, promised a salary while they served and a plot of land when they retired. To most it seemed too good to be true, and in many cases it was, as the state reneged on land grants and was often slow with paychecks. Soon enough, the interests of the soldiers no longer aligned with the interests of the state, and generals who could deliver land and pay gained the loyalty of the men who now looked at the Senate as a bunch of crooked old liars. And we all know where that road will take us.

But the immediate issue was the war in Numidia. Marius took his newly minted soldiers to Africa and promptly delivered on his promise, though it wasn't scorched earth brute force that carried the day, but rather a little backroom treachery of his own. After finding it was not as easy to bottle up Jugurtha as he thought, Marius dispatched one of his lieutenants to a neighboring kingdom to convince the local king, the father-in-law of Jugurtha, to betray the rebellious prince. Through a mixture of bribery and cajoling, the young lieutenant was able to pull it off, and the king delivered Jugurtha to the Roman delegation in chains. Their general captured, the Numidian army surrendered. Because he held imperium over the war, Marius received all the credit for his lieutenant's actions. There was nothing really improper or unprecedented about this, but it did stick in the craw of the young officer, who Marius failed often to even mention as he described how he won the war. The incident would mark the beginning of a rift between Marius and the young officer, a man named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. That rift would soon open up into a chasm, and the two men would stand for years on opposite sides of a bitter and often bloody conflict that presaged the full-blown civil wars of the following generation.

But while Sulla's star was still on the rise, Marius was burning at its absolute brightest. Next week, he would check off baby eagles two through six and break every prohibition in the book doing it, serving his consul an unprecedented five consecutive years. In that time, he would fundamentally reshape the organization and composition of the legions, turning them from a part-time army into a fully professional fighting force. All the drilling and conditioning Marius put his armies through was essential as, to the north, an old menace was rising again. Suddenly, the complacent Romans, who had spent the better part of a century fighting wars of choice and conquering the Mediterranean with ease, suddenly found themselves facing a war of extinction. The Gallic nightmare, long dormant, was back with a vengeance, and it would take everything the Romans had just to hold them at bay, let alone conquer anything.