The Savior of Italy, 104-98

During the last quarter of the century, Germanic peoples - chiefly the Cimbri, Teutoni, and Ambrones - had been migrating south and west to Gaul. In eight years (113-105), they encountered six Roman forces and annihilated each, most resoundingly two armies under the consul Cn. Mallius Maximus and the proconsul Q. Servilius Caepio in 105 near Arausio in the Rhione valley. Panic spread in Italy, and made the conqueror of lugurtha the man of the hour. Yet for the next two years, the Germans tried their luck in Spain, until in 102 they resolved to visit Italy. In an unprecedented move, Marius was reelected consul year after year. He used this time to reorganize the Roman army (see also Chapter 13).

For their attack on Italy, the Cimbri chose to march across the Alps; the Teutoni and Ambrones down the Rhitne and along the coast. At Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) in fall 102, Marius destroyed the latter two; his colleague, Q. Lutatius Catulus, having succeeded to a consulship with Marius’ help (after a record three electoral defeats), failed to stop the Cimbri in the Alps, and they proceeded to plunder Cisalpine Gaul. Marius was reelected for 101, Catulus prorogued, and both combined their forces. Negotiations with the Cimbri produced nothing but an agreement to fight a battle at Vercellae in the lower Po valley on July 30; the Romans won. Hailed as the savior of Italy, Marius insisted that Catulus be allowed to share his triumph. Soon afterwards, he was elected to a sixth consulship - equaling a record set in 299; yet no man had ever held the office five times in a row (Plut. Mar. 11-28; Livy Per. 65-7; Val. Max. 2.3.2).23

The convictions under the Mamilian quaestio, by all-equestrian juries, in 109 had painfully chastised the Senate’s handling of the Jugurthine War. In 106, the consul Q.

Servilius Caepio responded with a law requiring jurors of all the courts to be drawn from the extortion court’s panel, restructured to comprise both senators and equestrians, in unknown proportion.24 Yet the following year’s disaster at Arausio, largely blamed on Caepio, forced him into exile and opened the doors to a string of attacks on the Senate’s hold on government. In (probably) 104 the tribune C. Servilius Glaucia restored the all-equestrian jury to the extortion court, eliminating thus - in consequence of Caepio’s general regulation - senators from the law courts altogether, and in 103, the tribune L. Appuleius Saturninus set up a permanent court, allequestrian, for charges of treason (quaestio de maiestate).25 Saturninus, from a midlevel senatorial family, was closely allied with Marius; by another law he provided land in Africa for the veterans of the Jugurthine War. He and Glaucia shared a personal grudge: during a grain shortage in 105, the Senate had relieved Saturninus from his duties as quaestor at Ostia,26 and in 102, Metellus Numidicus as censor attempted, unsuccessfully, to expel him and Glaucia from the Senate. For 100, Saturninus was elected to a second tribunate, Glaucia to the praetorship (Plut. Mar. 14.11-14, 28.729.1; App. B Civ. 28).27

Again Saturninus took care of Marius’ interests (Plut. Mar. 29-30; App. B Civ. 2933):  his lex agraria provided for colonies in Gaul, Corsica, Sicily, Greece, and

Macedonia; it authorized Marius to grant Roman citizenship to three persons in each colony, and, significantly, reserved a majority of allocations to Italian allies. Urban proletarians felt much resentment against that last provision (Appian 29-31).29 When Saturninus ignored a move to force the assembly’s dismissal on augural grounds (thunder had been heard30), opponents armed with clubs attempted to drive him off; but his supporters - many veterans of Marius - prevailed in the melee.

The law produced an unexpected windfall. It required all magistrates and senators to take an oath to uphold it. Confronted in the Senate with charges that it had been enacted by violence and against religious obstacles, Marius took the oath but added the proviso, ‘‘insofar as the law is valid.’’ All followed suit - except Metellus Numidicus, who went into exile.

In the fall, Saturninus was reelected to a third tribunate, for 99. Sensing momentum, he and Glaucia resolved to consolidate their influence by having the latter made consul. Yet Glaucia, being praetor, could not legally run for the consulship until 98, for 97 - and Marius disallowed his candidacy. Useful as the two had been to him, he had no intention of handing virtual control of the government to them for all of next year. On election day, the resourceful murder of Glaucia’s principal competitor caused elections to be postponed indefinitely. Saturninus now occupied the Capitol, intending to hold an assembly there so as to exempt Glaucia from the laws governing consular candidacies.31 The Senate voted the ‘‘last decree’’: but this time, unlike Opimius in 121, the consul was instructed to take action not against private citizens engaged in armed insurrection, but against incumbent magistrates, in particular a sacrosanct tribune of the plebs conducting an assembly thereof. No wonder Marius, like most newcomers more deeply attached to the traditional rules and values of the group attained - be it nobility, club, or country - than those born into it, is said to have hesitated; but swayed by Aemilius Scaurus, he called citizens to arms, and they obeyed. Cut off from the Capitol’s water supply and unprepared for resistance,

Saturninus and his followers accepted the consul’s offer of safe custody until trial; taken to the Senate house, they were soon lynched by a mob that stormed the building. Glaucia, caught hiding in a friend’s house, was executed on the spot (Cic. Brut. 224; cf. [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 73.10; Oros. 5.17.9).

The year 100 thus saw Gaius Marius at the height of his career, the savior both of Italy and the res publica. Almost immediately, he squandered much of his political capital when he opposed moves to recall Metellus Numidicus from exile; with Saturninus gone, it was a fight he could not win. The defenders of traditional oligarchic government by the nobility, referring now to themselves as boni (‘‘good ones’’) or optimates (‘‘those best qualified’’), while dismissing as populares (‘‘popularity seekers’’) those within the ruling elite who would use the assemblies to bypass Senate resistance to their agenda, were in full control. Metellus returned in 98, and Marius had to abandon hopes for a censorship (Plut. Mar. 31).