032 - The Social War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 32, The Social War. After his final consulship in 100 BC, Gaius Marius returned to a self-imposed exile, and it appeared that the great general had left the public stage for good. Ten years of relative peace followed, until, in 91 BC, Rome was once again threatened by a hostile enemy, triggering Marius' return to the familiar territory of war and politics. This time, however, he would not be fighting Numidians or Gauls, rather, he would be fighting the very men who helped him to defeat the Numidians and Gauls, some of them anyway. The Roman-led Italian Confederacy, which had endured now for hundreds of years and had stood firm even against the clever might of Hannibal Baracca, whose entire strategy hinged on bringing about its dissolution, was finally breaking apart. The second-class status afforded the Italian allies finally became intolerable, and rather than making obviously just concessions, the tone-deaf Roman Senate took a hard-line stance, initiating what was to become known as the Social War, when a collection of Italian allies would break away and form an independent state. After two years, the Italians would finally be granted their simple request to be treated as equals, but, of course, those were a bloody two years. The war served no one's interests and should have never started, just another example of unnecessary carnage brought about by short-sighted pig-headedness.

Trouble had been brewing for years. The fight for full Italian citizenship had picked up momentum during the tribunants of the Gracchi, but the Senate had always managed to block the extension of suffrage, more concerned with the immediate political expediency of denying the Gracchi and their allies a victory than actually addressing whether or not the policy was right or wrong. In 91 BC, the Flint was sparked again by a tribune named Marcus Drusus. This time, the kindling lit and pretty soon a full-scale bonfire was raging.

In the past, the confederate arrangement between Rome and the allied Italian cities had served everyone well. The Italians were nominally independent, but were required to provide troops to serve in the legions if Rome required it. In return for their troop levies, the Italians had always shared generously in the spoils of war and found their formal taxes kept to a bare minimum, but in recent decades, while their commitment increased, by the turn of the first century BC, fully 65% of the raised legions were composed of non-Roman Italians, war booty was increasingly held by the Roman leadership. This began to irk the Italians, but they had no official way to address the situation and had no say in the election of the consuls who had now grown accustomed to giving their allies the shaft. Their attitude grew steadily worse after Marius eliminated the distinction between Roman and non-Roman legions. Indeed, Marius famously stated that in the din of battle, he could not tell Roman and ally apart. So here they were, literally fighting side by side with the Romans, but taking home an increasingly reduced share of the profits. Many assumed after Marius' reform that citizenship would soon follow, leaving them bitterly disappointed when the Senate refused to take up the issue.

Finally, in 91, a tribune named Marcus Livius Drusus introduced legislation aimed at providing full equality to the Italians. Oddly enough, Drusus was no radical populare. Indeed, his legislation was aimed at diminishing the ability of rabble-rousing tribunes to sway the hordes of Rome against the Senate, who Drusus saw as the true defenders of Republican virtue. By introducing more level-headed, middle-class Italians into the electorate, Drusus hoped to shift power away from the populist demagogues who had only the narrow interests of their constituents at heart. The Senate didn't pick up on the vibe Drusus was laying down, however, and immediately opposed the idea. They were confident in their hold on power and didn't want to introduce an unstable element into the equation. Besides, they might start peeling off some of those riches the Senators had been hoarding for themselves. So oblivious to their own long-term self-interest, a cabal of patricians conspired to put a stop to Drusus. First they killed his legislation, and when that didn't seem to work, they simply killed Drusus. For the Italians watching from the sidelines, the assassination of Drusus was the final straw. They really thought that this time around, the Senate would listen and make them full equals. The dead tribune's body, however, told them everything they needed to know. The time for drastic action had arrived.

One by one, Italian cities began to openly declare that they no longer bore any allegiance to Rome, and henceforth would be completely free and independent. At the vanguard of this movement were the Samnites, one of Rome's oldest foes who had never fully gotten over their final defeat some 200 years earlier. In Rome, the news was greeted with furious disbelief. To them, the issue of who ruled Italy had been solved at the close of the Samnite Wars. But the disbelief did not delay their actions, and legions were immediately raised to put the upstarts back in their place. Across Italy, though, town after town joined with the anti-Roman confederacy. The only region to remain steadfastly in the Roman camp were the Latins. Everyone else, it seemed, was going to take their shot at independence. It did not, however, turn out to be a very good shot.

In the city of Cornfinium, which lay across the Apennines due east of Rome, representatives of the various Italian cities gathered to formalize their alliance. They renamed Cornfinium Italica and declared that it was the seat of a new government based on the Roman model, complete with its own senate and assemblies, but completely free of Roman rule. The immediate business of the new Italian government was the very war their existence had sparked. The Romans were not going to take this rebellion with grace and good humor, so preparations had to be made to withstand the inevitable onslaught.

The Romans, quick with the rod, sent their consular armies out in opposite directions in 90 BC, one north and one south, to put the revolt down. To the north went the consul Publius Retilius, who coaxed out of retirement his famous relative Gaius Marius to act as a military advisor. It didn't do much good, though, as Retilius quickly led his army to a series of blundering, mistake-prone defeats. Finally, the consul made his one positive contribution to the war effort by getting himself killed. After the consul's death, Marius stepped into the leadership vacuum and quickly had the northern Italians on the run.

With the situation in the north for the most part well in hand, the focus of the Romans turned south, where they faced the horrible deja vu of crossing swords with the dreaded Samnites. Lucius Julius Caesar, the consul leading the Romans in the south and the elder relative of a ten-year-old boy named Gaius, found the Samnites no less fierce an opponent than when last they met in battle. Caesar, along with his fellow commander Lucius Cornelius Sulla, watched in vain as the Samnites sacked a number of Roman towns. But they were finally able to halt the advance and keep the Samnites bottled up while Caesar returned to Rome to oversee the consular elections. But before he left office, Caesar laid the political foundation of the war's end. The Senate, understanding now that citizenship was inevitable, passed the Lex Julia, granting citizenship to those Italian cities who would not join the rebellion, and offering it to any Italian currently in revolt who laid down his arms. The vast majority of Italians, to whom independence had been an unwelcome state anyway, jumped at the chance. But the Samnites, and a collection of tribes in the north, continued to hold out.

In 89 BC, Sulla was given full command of the southern troops and showed himself to be a brilliant tactician and leader of men. After saving a besieged legion at the city of Enola, Sulla was awarded the grass crown by the grateful soldiers whose lives he had saved. His fame was growing and, to the people of Rome, Sulla emerged as the clear hero of the social war. This did not sit well with Marius, who had been maneuvered out of his command in the north when the Senate, afraid of the old consul returning to the political arena, gave the north over to Capio, the son of the consul who had left Malleus out to dry during the war against the Gauls. But when Capio fell in battle, Marius was sure he was destined to return to Rome the triumphant hero. But the Senate again thwarted him, and sent the consul Pompey Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great, north to take over. There was little Marius could do, and he was forced to play a subordinate role as Pompey laid a brutal siege to the town of Asculum, which was the last city in the north holding out. Once Asculum fell, the back of the resistance had been broken, and the fight went out of the Italians. By this time, most of them had already given up anyway, content with the fact that they had achieved exactly what they wanted, and would soon be full equals in a united Italy. Sulla wrapped up the last pockets of resistance in the south, and the brief social war was over.

As a footnote, I should mention that during these years, a young noble named Cicero was punching the clock on his brief military career in order to qualify for the political career he really wanted, fighting both under Pompey Strabo and Sulla. Cicero had no taste at all for battle, and never made any secret that he disliked war. In later life, he was given a statue of Mars by a friend to add to his growing collection, and Cicero wrote in reply, why send me a statue of Mars, you know I'm a pacifist. But from 90-88 BC, young Cicero did what he had to do, and slogged around Samnium, knowing that no man in Rome could hope to lead without a few war stories to make him credible.

Another young noble who cut his teeth during the social war was Gnaeus Pompeius, though his attitude towards battle was much more in keeping with the Roman tradition than the book of Cicero. Only 17 at the time, he was called to action in 89 BC to serve with his father in the north, and was presumably present during the siege of Asculum. The young Pompey, if Plutarch is to be believed, already had an air of greatness surrounding him, and his fellow troops made comparisons to young Alexander the Great and Scipio Africanus. Pompey and Cicero had little in common personally, but in 40 years, the two men, all grown up and having reached the pinnacle of the political ladder, would find themselves on the same side of a bitter civil war against a man who at the time of the social war was only 10. I often think that this was about the only time Pompey and Cicero would have proved a match for Julius Caesar, who, in his good time, would both outfight Pompey, Rome's greatest general, and out-politic Cicero, Rome's greatest politician. But how were they supposed to know that? By the time Sulla remarked that in the teenage Caesar he saw many Amarius, it was probably too late. Remember, though, that sometimes the best way to win is to make sure that your opponent is still a child.

The social war was paradoxically both a war of unification and the last time for 70 years the Romans themselves were truly unified. In 88 BC, just as the Italian allies were being officially enrolled as full Roman citizens, Sulla was elected to his first consulship. In itself, it seemed a natural and innocuous choice. He was, after all, the hero of the most recent war, so who better to lead Rome? Besides, in the east, Mithridates, the king of Pontus, was hatching the first of his seemingly endless merry-go-rounds with the Roman legions. Who better, then, to march out and face this new threat in the east than the great Sulla?

Well, according to the aging Marius, he was. And the old general became convinced that it was his destiny to lead the legions in the east. Unfortunately, he couldn't convince anyone else to back him. And why should they? Sure, he had been great in his prime, but it was a different age and it was becoming clear that Marius was borderline senile and clearly unable to wrap his head around the fact that the world was moving on without him. Sulla was young, dynamic, and clearly represented the future of Rome, so he was unanimously chosen to head up the armies headed east. Marius, bitter in defeat, decided that rather than go out quietly, he would order his hardcore partisans to do everything in their power to reverse the decision and place Marius himself back in charge. Sulla was forced to flee the city and made his way to the encamped legions, most of whom were loyal veterans of the Social War. But though he briefly held on to power, Marius' desperate, selfish grab triggered a wholly unprecedented response from Sulla, who did not take his eviction well. Pretty soon, word reached Marius and his partisans that the aggrieved consul was on his way back, at the head of a full consular army. Sulla, it seemed, was marching on Rome.