XIV.End as of 4/10/95
1. Livius Drusus (tr.) tried to bleed off the pressure, either deservedly or undeservedly got the "aiming at regnum" treatment, d. 90.
2. Open Warfare: The Italian Federation vs. Rome, 90-85
a) New Capital, Corfinum, new coinage
b) Samnites back in it, back in the mountains
c) Sulla does pretty well (and Marius is sidelined) BUT
d) ROME LOSES!
(1) Grants citizenship to anyone who will come in and get it, Lex Plautilia-Papiria of 89
(2) Lincoln tried the same technique in the ACW.
(3) New tribes, but pretty gerrymandered, Samnites stayed fighting until 85.
(4) Still, full jury rights, when in doubt, sue
(5) New blood eligible for election to office or for jobs abroad
A. Meanwhile, back in the East
1. Aristonicus's revolt in 131 had destroyed the old Pergamene infrastructure, which the tax-farmers had kept from being rebuilt by draining off capital
2. International overland commerce was in tatters due to poverty and brigandage
3. Rhodes and her navy kept the pirates from stopping the grain trade, but people were still going hungry as
a) The Pergamene fields lay idle
b) Egypt was being torn to pieces under an oppressive tax code and revolts of the fellahin
c) Mithridates VI of Pontus had gotten control of the Ukraine.
4. Mithridates had watched Rome destroy Macedonia and Syria, and turn on Pergamon--one way or the other, he'd have to fight
a) Conquered areas producing food and naval stores
b) Could threaten Greece with either fleet or starvation
c) Once again, an old-style (Non-Marian) Roman army bites the dust in 88.
d) Careful preparation in all Three Wars, cf. Plu. 1.665
e) The Vespers: 80,000 Roman and Italian men, women, and children dead all over Greece and Asia EXCEPT FOR
f) RHODES
(1) Mithridates launches all-out siege and naval attack
(2) Rhodians engage and disengage at will (Damagoras), troop transports
(3) Vast grain reserves
(4) Defenses of Rhodes anvil, navy hammer
(5) Launch surprise attack on Mithridates at Caunus
(6) Mithridates turns over much of his fleet to pirates
5. Sulla cos. 88
a) "Don't send a boy," Marius rises again, BUT
b) Marian Army depends on Sulla, not Marius, and has sworn to obey him
c) Sulla first general to march on Rome, Marius in the Swamps
d) Then off to Asia
(1) Athens starved, besieged (still find ammunition), reduced
(2) Rhodians and Lucullus collect fleet, destroy remnant of Mithridates huge force at Heracleia
(3) Sulla signs peace in 85 to go home and mend fences after Marius's return and Cinna
(4) Starr's Class Warfare (p. 521): peace at a price, Sulla's indemnity of 20,000 T, still more poverty
6. Back to Rome, revenge
a) Dictator rei publicae constituenda: Sulla, the terrible reformer: Hell hath no fury like a determined idealist, cf. the Khmer Rouge
b) Cinna dies in Mutiny, Marius and Carbo started settling old scores and killing, making promises to Italians
c) Sulla joined by Pompey, Catiline, slaughters Samnites at the Colline gate, 85
d) The Proscriptions
(1) The Mechanics
(2) The Numbers: 40 Senators, 1600 Equestrians, then thousands
(3) The Anecdotes
e) Because he was an idealist, he wanted the good old days, and threw in with the Senate and the Optimates
(1) Knights off the juries
(2) No more welfare (grain dole)
(3) Tribunate emasculated
(a) No other office
(b) Once every 10 years
(4) Senate gets (and loses!) a veto
(5) Regularization of praetors/consulares to provinces
(6) Resigned in 79, died in 78
(7) Caesar's remark: "Sulla non litteras gnoscit." Who died in his bed? And not alone!
7. The Verdict of History: Sulla could correct every problem facing Rome except his own example:
a) Lepidus's revolt of 78-76
b) Sertorius in Spain from 80 to 71
(1) Guerrilla war in the very place the term was invented: ask Napoleon
(2) Rump Senate: joke
(3) Catering to Spanish sensibilites, superstition
(4) Perpena's treachery and defeat
c) Spartacus from 73 to 71
(1) Spartacus vs. followers
(2) Crassus vs. Pompey, 71
(3) slaves on the Appian Way
d) Pompey and Crassus 500 lb. Gorilla the Consulship
(1) M. Licinius Crassus Dives
(a) Clients, fire brigades
(b) Allies: bankrolled Julius Caesar's aedileship, Catiline's bids for power
(2) Pompey the Vulture or the Competent, whichever you Prefer
(a) Uses Rhodian ships and tactics in brilliant anti-piracy campaign, 67-66, Lex Gabinia of 66
(b) Takes over Lucullus's Campaign against Mithridates in 66
(i) Mithridates kills himself in 63
(ii) Pompey's sweep through Asia, Syria, and Palestine until 62
(c) Incredible wealth and prestige
XIII. Marius and Sulla: Other things broken than Precedent
A. Next problem: the Roman Army continued to decline
1. 2nd Macedonian War: 200-194
a) Romans try and fail to bring Philip to decisive battle until Cynoscephale in 197
b) Rhodians and Pergamenes weak Philip at Chois (201), pin him down with Roman fleet at sea
2. Syrian War
a) Rome had declared Greece free in 196 but remember patron-client relationship then established
b) Antiochus III had reconquered to the East and South, tried to reassert himself in Greece
c) Romans first tried to sell out Rhodes and Pergamum, until Antiochus invades Greece in 191
d) Corycus, 191, Rhodians at Side, 190; Rhodians save Roman fleet at Myonessus, Scipio at Magnesia in 189
3. 3rd Macedonian War
a) Roman navy negligible, plunders allies and enrages Greeks
b) Roman army badly led, fumbles from 171-168
c) Perseus finally breaks at Pydna, 168
d) The Hornet's Nest, 166
4. Other Signs of Weakness
a) Excessive brutality of Achaean War, Corinth, 146
b) Three Years for Carthage
c) Nine years for Numantia in Spain, 144-133.
5. The Jugurthine War, Courtesy of Sallust
a) Romans massacred by Jugurtha, prince of Numidia, at Cirta in 112;
b) Jugurtha summoned to Rome in 111 (after Bestia gets nowhere), assassinates rival Massiva, buys a tribune, "city for sale."
B. Note on the Papers: Bibliographies and footnotes required in final drafts.
a) Aulus Albinus, left in charge by his brother the consul, suprised and sent under the yoke at Suthul in 110 with 40,000 men
C. There's Nothing Like Military Weakness to topple a government: The Ins vs. the Outs
1. The Optimates: The Ins, the Consular families: for a fifty year period, twenty families had supplied all but two of the consulships
2. The Populares: The Outs (when the labels got applied), using the Gracchi's methodology of exploiting popular resentment against the ruling families, which to some extent had already turned on each other.
a) Impoverished or discredited patrician families could use their status and clients to turn the lowers upon the others: the Caesars, the Claudii Pulcheres, the Antonii
b) "New Men" could use the resentment, at least, for their own advance, which brings us to...
D. Gaius Marius cos. VII
a) Most dominant at this period was the united family of the Caecilii Metelli, the Optimates' optimates.
(1) After the failure of the Albini in Numidia, Q. Caecilius Metellus assumed command in 109
(2) He first restored discipline to the army, which was not a good way to win votes
(3) Began long and slow traditional and effective anti-guerrilla campaign.
b) From Arpinum, they had a client
(1) Among other things, Marius also demonstrates how the client system was falling down--he'd been a client of the Herennii, but they hadn't done enough for him
(2) Made it to praetor in 115, barely, seems to have acquired some copper mines in Southern Spain and acquired considerable wealth thereby
(3) Scipio Aemilianus had noticed his talent--Plu. 1.550
(4) The Caesars decided to marry money and ability, hence Marius's wedding with Julia
(5) Marius saw how long the war was going to take, asked Metellus for leave to run for consulship--"You can run with my son," in 20 years
(6) Returns to Rome, allies with
(a) Equestrians, who lost opportunities for rips-offs in the provinces to Senatorial governors out to build clients and make their own pile
(b) The Populares, out to show that the current government was weak on defense
1. Marius promised to win the war and won it
a) Centuriate Assembly elects him, Tribal Assembly throws out Metellus, who returns to become an Optimate martyr
b) Marius takes an impoverished aristocrat of his own as a client, L. Cornelius Sulla as quaestor
c) Sulla, also good officer, hunts down Jugurtha and convinces Bocchus, father-in-law, king of Mauretania, to betray him in 104
d) Marius himself destroys Jugurtha with his new army
(1) Senate had had the idea of allowing proletarii (no property) into the army--probably their own clients
(2) Marius allowed thousands of proletarii into the army, who then BECAME his clients
(3) Better yet, Marius also got a great many people out of the draft, more votes
(4) Tactical reforms
(a) Cohorts (10/legion, 500 each), Eagles, Starr, p. 518
(b) Marius's Mules: 80 lbs. equipment, 40 miles/day.
(c) Pila, gladii, standardized (copper-containing!) equipment,
2. Meanwhile, the subject of Army reform had acquired a certain pressing urgency...
a) Invasion from the North: The Cimbri and the Teutones
(1) Nations on the March: Massilia starts screaming and thanking heaven they'd built Demetrius-proof walls
(2) Carbo attacks at Noreia in 113 and finds out about cornered rats and weekend warriors
(3) Wander around for 4 years trying to find SOME place to survive, get hit by a second Roman army at 109
(4) Continued disasters under incompetent and greedy senatorial commanders, feud between Maximus and novus homo Mallius (yet another sign of discontent) and proconsul Caepio leads to loss of TWO armies at Arausio, 104, 80, 000 dead, and, incidentally, the reputation of the citizen-army (Who NEEDS an assault pilum?).
b) The Cimbri and the Teutones were still more interested in survival than in conquering Rome, and by the time they realized that those were related, Marius had had time to get his new army ready for them.
(1) The Teutones at Aquae Sextiae--they asked for land, 102!
(2) Patrician Catulus nearly lets the Cimbri in, but at Vercellae in 101 Marius annihilates them.
(3) Sulla drives off the Tigurini, allied Swiss, in the Alps
3. Politics makes strange bedfellows, who tend to fall out. . .
a) Marius had left Glaucia (pr.) and Saturninus (trb.) behind in Rome to keep him in the consulship from 104-100
b) These men had their own agenda
(1) Marius veterans would need land if they were going to vote for him
(2) Glaucia and Saturninus got the laws through, but the result was Gracchus-style rioting
(3) Marius stayed within the system and suppressed his allies under the S.U.C., but wiped himself out with the voters from 100 to 87
E. A Great Many of those slaughtered at Arausio had been allied Italians, who had never had even the chance to vote against the incompetent slobs who killed them.
XV. Lucullus & Cicero: The Last Efforts to Play within the Rules
A. Lucullus: Scion of an old and distinguished family
1. Sulla's Protege:
a) Raised a fleet after desperate voyage to Rhodes in 87
b) Brought Rhodes into the war as a Roman ally by 86
c) With Damagoras, defeated Mithridates' fleet at Tenedos, Heracleia in 85
d) Left behind in Asia when Sulla went back to Rome, began restoring Asian economy with sound reparations policies (Plu. 1.663), there until 80--true aristocrat.
e) Dedicatee of Sulla's memoirs
2. Standard cursus:
a) Sulla's quaestor, Murena's proquaestor in "2nd Mithridatic War," abortive counterattack from 83-82, cancelled by Sulla.
b) Aedile 79, praetor 78, consul 74
c) Mithridates launches 3rd War from 74-66
(1) Immediate counterattack, Rule 101 again, Cyzicus and then the counter-invasion
(2) Hearts and Minds campaign--used his imperium to order off tax-farmers from 73-70, debt remission
(3) Abandoned his supply lines (cf. Grant at Vicksburg), destroys Mithridates' untrained army at Cabira in 73
d) Endgame vs. Mithridates, invasion of Armenia
(1) No authorization, 16,000 soldiers
(2) Battle of Tigranocerta: "too few for an army, too big for an embassy" in 69
(a) Cut heavy cavalry from infantry
(b) Routed part of line, pursued rout
(c) Mithridates prevails with "scorched earth" campaign that exhausts Lucullus's troops, mutiny in 68
e) Decline and Fall:
(1) Enraged equites, back in power thanks to Lepidus attack his unauthorized campaign
(2) Troops withdrawn for Pompey's anti-pirate campaign in 66
(3) Pontic counterattack, Lucullus's Last Stand at the Halys valley, and Pompey gets the bones by 63, Lex Manilia
f) Lucullan feasts, etc
(1) Explain Epicurean vs. Stoic renunciation
(2) Cicero and Pompey story
B. Cicero: The Conservative Parvenue
1. Upper Class Decay: Starr slightly off
a) Between Marius and Sulla, an entire political generation on either side had been exterminated
b) The survivors were the prudent members of "the fishpond set," people who had property they didn't want to lose
c) Having something to lose, however, meant that they could be intimidated, hence Cicero's contempt, but it was his own weakness, and he knew it.
2. Still dealing with the consequences of the Social War
a) Italians realizing they'd been gerrymandered
b) Spartacus's revolt and the economic damage therefrom
c) Sulla's veterans
(1) Settled by units on Italian land as emergency land
(2) Sulla had obtained these lands by proscriptions
(3) His soldiers did not make good farmers, hence more economic trouble and banditry
3. Pompey's dilemma: Need for Italian lands for HIS troops in 70, 63
a) Alliance with Crassus's voters and political machine
b) Alliance with this up and coming young Lawyer from Arpinum
(1) Quaestor in Sicily in 75
(2) Prosecution of Verres, devastating, in 70-69
(3) Aedileship in 69 BUT
(4) Novus homo--no precedent in the consulship
(5) Cicero's recorded political speech: Pro Manilia
C. Cicero to watch affairs (and Crassus) in Rome while Pompey in the East, Cicero consul in 63
1. Crassus's and Caesar's effort to try the Gracchi bit with the Lex Rullia, purchase and distribute land
2. Cicero opposes
3. Sergius Catilina: debt relief or open revolt
a) Cicero points out, devastatingly, that he's plotting a coup
(1) Catilina obliges by running,
(2) Raising army in Etruria, where Sulla had settled his veterans whom Catiline had once commanded,
(3) Gets slaughtered
(4) Cato and Cicero vs. Caesar on getting the conspirators in Rome executed
4. Cicero's own program, Concordia Ordinum
a) Harkens back to Opimius's temple after the purge of 121
b) "Cahoots" under the Sullan constitution restored by Pompey and made law by him
c) Rights and property of the Equestrians protected
d) Lower classes protected from civil wars by stable government
e) Italians included too.
XVI. XVI.What really happened
A. The 1st "Triumvirate"
1. Pompey returns in 62
a) Conquered everything from Armenia to Syria (64)
b) Through Palestine (63), where he established the Herods, up to the Egyptian Frontier
c) Disbands army and petitions Senate for land and ratification of settlements in the East
2. Crassus and Lucullus (the Licinii!!) get even!
a) Crassus mad about Cicero's opposition to the Lex Rullia
b) Lucullus getting even for what Pompey had done to HIS army
c) Pompey's own political weakness made clear when his pet tribune blows it in the Assembly
3. Caesar brings Crassus and Pompey together in mutual self-interest
4. Julius Caesar: The newest approach
a) Marius had used the system
b) Sulla had overthrown the system and then tried to put it back together
c) Lucullus had tried to work within it and gotten nowhere; Cicero was never consul again
d) Pompey had made the system give him what he wanted, until 62
e) Caesar's approach: to hell with the System! Sulla's observation about Marius's nephew
5. Caesar's political career
a) Julii well-known but poor family, although Marius had helped, public reminded by public commemoration of Marius's past victories, Populares
b) Maiden commission to Bithynia, close relationship in 81 with King Nicomedes
c) Education with Apollonius of Rhodes, 75-4, 2nd Best Orator in Rome, best General
d) Pirate story
(1) Captured, promise
(2) Unauthorized seizure of provincial mini-fleet
(3) Gain to reputation
e) Aedileship in 65
(1) Borrowed huge amounts from Crassus to stage most magnificent games ever held in Rome
(2) Incidentally, gave Crassus a stake in furthering Caesar's career
(3) Sound legislation: traffic ban
End as of 4/17/95