The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Arthur Gilman (story read aloud .txt) 📕

[Illustration: A ROMAN MILESTONE.]

The optimates were of course offended by the acts of the new tribune, who abridged the power of the senate, and in all ways showed an intention of working for the people. He was exceedingly active in works of public benefit, building roads and bridges, erecting milestones along the principal routes, extending to the Italians the right to vote, and alleviating the distressing poverty of the lower orders by directing that grain should be sold to them at low rates. The laws under which he accomplished these beneficent changes are known, from the family to which the Gracchi belonged, as the Sempronian Laws. In carrying out the necessary legislation and in executing the laws, Caius labored himself with great assiduity, and his activity afforded his enemies the opportunity to say falsely that he made some private gain from them.

The optimates soon saw that the labors of Gracchus had drawn the people close to him, and they determined to weaken his influence by indirect means, rather than venture to make any immediate display of opposition.

They according adopted the sagacious policy of making it appear that they wished to do more for the people than their own champion proposed.

They allowed a rich and eloquent demagogue, Marcus Livius Drusus, to act for them, and he deceived the people by proposing measures that appeared more democratic than those of Gracchus, whose power over the people was thus somewhat undermined. The next step was then taken. In the midst of an election a tumult was excited, and Gracchus was obliged to flee, over the wooden bridge, to the Grove of the Furies. Death was his only deliverance. The optimates tried to make it out that he had been an infamous man, but the common people afterward loved both the brothers and esteemed them as great benefactors who had died for them, The fall of the Gracchi left the people without a leader, and the optimates easily kept possession of the government, though they did not yet feel disposed to proceed at once to carry out their own wishes fully, for fear that they might sting the populares beyond endurance. They stopped the assignments of lands, however, allowing those who had occupied large tracts to keep them, and thus the desolation and retrogression which had so deeply moved Gracchus continued and increased even more rapidly than it had in his time. The state fell into a condition of corruption in every department, and office was looked upon simply as a means of acquiring wealth, not as something to be held as a trust for the good of the governed. The nation suffered also from servile insurrections; the seas were overrun with pirates; the rich plunged into vice; the poor were pushed down to deeper depths of poverty; judicial decisions were sold for money; the inhabitants of the provinces were looked upon by the nobles as fit subjects for plunder, and the governors obtained their positions by purchase; everywhere ruin stared the commonwealth in the face, though there seems to have been no one with perceptions clear enough to perceive the trend of affairs.

In this degenerate time there arose two men of the most diverse traits and descent, whose lives, running parallel for many years, furnish at once instructive studies and involve graphic pictures of public affairs. The elder of them was with Scipio when Numantia fell into his hands, and with Jugurtha, a Numidian prince, won distinction by his valor on that occasion. Caius Marius was the name of this man, and he belonged to the commons. He was twenty-three years of age, and had risen from the low condition of a peasant to one of prominence in public affairs. Fifteen years after the fall of Numantia we find him a tribune of the people, standing for purity in the elections, against the opposition of the optimates. Rough, haughty, and undaunted, he carried his measures and waited for the gathering storm to furnish him more enlarged opportunities for the exercise of his strength and ambition.

The opponent and final conqueror of this commoner was but four years of age when Numantia fell, and came into public life later than Marius.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was an optimate of illustrious ancestry and hereditary wealth, a student of the literature and art of Greece and his native land, and he united in his person all the vices as well as accomplishments that Cato had been accustomed to denounce with the utmost vigor.

Marius and Sulla, the plebeian and the optimate, the man without education of the schools, and the master of classic culture, were brought together in Africa in the year 107. Numidia had long been an ally of Rome, but upon the death of one of its kings, Jugurtha, who had gained confidence in himself during the Numantian campaign, attempted to gain control of the government. Rome interfered, but so accessible were public men to bribes, that Jugurtha obtained from the senate a decree dividing the country between him and the rightful claimant of the throne. Not contented with this, he attempted to conquer his rival and obtain the undivided sway. This action aroused the Roman people, who were less corrupt than their senate, and they forced their rulers to interfere. War was declared, but the first commander was corrupted by African gold, and the struggle was intermitted. Jugurtha was called to Rome, with promise of safety, to testify against the officer who had been bribed, and remained there awhile, until he grew bold enough to assassinate one of his enemies, when he was ordered to leave Italy. As he left, he is said to have exclaimed [Footnote: “Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit“—Sallust’s “Jugurtha,”

chapter 35.]: “A city for sale, ready to fall into the hands of the first bidder!” These memorable words, whether really uttered by the Numidian or not, well characterize the state of affairs at this corrupt period.

[Illustration: IN A ROMAN STUDY.]

One general and another were sent to oppose Jugurtha, but he proved too much for them, either corrupting them by bribes or overcoming them by skill of arms. The spirit of the Roman people was at last fully aroused, and an investigation was made, which resulted in convicting some of the optimates, one of them being Opimius, the consul, who had been cruelly opposed to Caius Gracchus. A general of integrity was chosen to go to Africa. He was Cæcilius Metellus, member of a family which had come into prominence during the first Punic war. Marius was with him, and when Jugurtha saw that men of this high character were opposed to him, he began to despair. While the struggle progressed, Marius remembered that a witch whom he had had with him in a former war had prophesied that the gods would help him in advancing himself, and resolved to go to Rome to try to gain the consulship. Metellus at first opposed this scheme, but was finally persuaded to allow Marius to leave. Though but few days elapsed before the election, after Marius announced himself as a candidate, he was chosen consul, and then he began to exult over the optimates who had so long striven to keep him down. He vaunted his lowly birth, declared that his election was a victory over the pusillanimity and license of the rich, and boldly compared his warlike prowess with the effeminacy of the nobility, whom he determined to persecute as vigorously as they had pursued him.

[Illustration: THE ROMAN CAMP]

Marius brought the Numidian War to a close by obtaining possession of Jugurtha in the year 106, but as his subordinate, Sulla, was the instrument in actually taking the king, the enemies of Marius claimed for the young aristocrat the credit of the capture, and Sulla irritated his senior still more by constantly wearing a ring on which he had caused to be engraved a representation of the surrender. Marius did not immediately return to Rome, but remained to complete the subjugation of Numidia, Sulla the meantime making every effort to ingratiate himself with the soldiers, sharing every labor, and sitting with them about the camp-fires as they softened the asperities of a hard life by telling tales of past experience, and making prophesies of the future.

Sulla was not a prepossessing person. His blue eyes were keen and glaring; but they were rendered forbidding and even terrible at times by the bad complexion of his face, which was covered with red blotches that told the story of his debaucheries. “Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with meal,” is the expression that a Greek jester is said to have used in describing his frightful face.

It was the first of January, 104, when Marius entered Rome in triumph, accompanied by evidences of his victories, the greatest of which was the pitiful Numidian king himself, who followed in the grand procession, and was afterwards ruthlessly dropped into the horrible Tulliarium, or Mamertine prison, to perish by starvation in the watery chill. He is said to have exclaimed as he touched the water at the bottom of the prison, “Hercules! how cold are thy baths!”

During the absence of Marius in Africa, there had come over Rome the shadow of a greater peril than had been known since the days when Hannibal’s advance had made the strongest hearts quail. The tumultuous multitudes who inhabited the unexplored regions of Central Europe, the Celts and Germans, [Footnote: The Cimbri, who formed a portion of this invading body, had their original home in the modern peninsula of Jutland, whence came also early invaders of Britain, and they were probably a Celtic people.] had gathered a mass comprising, it is said, more than three hundred thousand men capable of fighting, besides hosts of women and children, and were marching with irresistible force towards the Roman domains. Nine years before (B.C. 113), these barbarians had defeated a Roman army in Noricum, north of Illyricum, and after that they had roamed at will through Switzerland, adding to their numbers, and ravaging every region, until at last they had poured over into the plains of Gaul. Year after year passed, and army after army of the Romans was cut to pieces by these terrible barbarians.

As Marius entered the city he was looked upon as the only one who could stem the impetuous human torrent that threatened to overwhelm the republic, for, in the face of the supreme danger, as is usual in such cases, every party jealousy was forgotten. The proud commoner accepted the command with alacrity, setting out for distant Gaul immediately, and taking Sulla as one of his subordinates. After two years of inconsequent strategy, he overcame the barbarians at a spot twelve miles distant from Aquæ Sextiæ (the Springs of Sextius, the modern Aix, in Provence), (B.C. 102). He collected the richest of the spoil to grace a triumph that he expected to celebrate, and was about to offer the remainder to the gods, when, just as he stood amid the encircling troops in a purple robe, ready to touch the torch to the pile, horsemen dashed into the space, announcing that the Romans had for the fifth time elected him consul! The village of Pourrières (_Campi Putridi_) now marks the spot, and the rustics of the vicinity still celebrate a yearly festival, at which they burn a vast heap of brushwood on the summit of one of their hills, as they shout Victoire! victoire! in memory of Marius.

During this period Sulla gained renown by his valorous deeds, but the jealousy that had begun in Africa increased, and in 103 or