Anthony Everitt - The Rise of Rome

The Roman constitution was a complicated contraption of levers and balances, with obsolete pieces of machinery left in place alongside modern additions. Its management called for sensitivity, imagination, and, above all, an ability to accommodate, to concede, to compromise. For centuries, these qualities among Rome’s politicians had drawn the admiration, reluctant or full-hearted, of friend and foe.

Now, though, the tragic trajectory of the Gracchi exposed the Republic for what it had become, an unstable and uncreative monster. It is no accident that, in his Civil Wars , Appian chose this moment at which to begin his story. He observed:

No sword was ever brought into the assembly, and no Roman was ever killed by a Roman, until Tiberius Gracchus … became the first man to die in civil unrest, and along with him a great number of people who had crowded together on the Capitol and were killed around the temple. The disorders did not end even with this foul act; on each occasion when they occurred the Romans openly took sides against each other, and often carried daggers; from time to time some elected official would be murdered in a temple, or in the assembly, or in the Forum—a Tribune or Praetor or Consul, or a candidate for these offices, or somebody otherwise distinguished. Undisciplined arrogance soon became the rule, along with a shameful contempt for law and justice.

The mother of the Gracchi left Rome after Gaius’s death. She settled in Misenum, a narrow isthmus culminating in a rocky outcrop at the northern end of the Bay of Naples. It had beautiful views and was off the beaten track. However, Cornelia did not hide herself away and made no alteration to the gregarious brilliancy of her lifestyle. Plutarch reports: “She had many friends and because of her love of visitors kept a good table. She always had Greeks and intellectuals as guests, and all the reigning monarchs exchanged gifts with her.”

It made her happy to reminisce about her father’s life and character. Remarkably, she spoke of her sons without any tears or displays of emotion and discussed their careers and sad ends as if she were referring to immemorial statesmen from Rome’s first centuries.

Cornelia survived her lost jewels for more than ten years, dying at the turn of the century. She was lucky not to witness the fulfillment of their legacies.

THE TWO MEN WERE, TO PUT IT MILDLY, UNPROMISing and even distasteful specimens of humanity.

The older one was Gaius Marius. He was born in 157 in a small village near Arpinum, a hill town in Latium of Volscian and Samnite origins, some sixty miles southeast of Rome. He was lucky to be a voting citizen of Rome, for the full franchise had been awarded the town only thirty years earlier.

According to his biographer Plutarch, the boy’s parents lived in very humble circumstances and he is said to have worked for wages as a simple peasant. He may have been a blacksmith for a time. He grew up rough and uncouth and lived frugally. He seems to have been proud of his modest background. When campaigning later in life for public office, Marius certainly made the most of it, and liked to compare himself, a little in the manner of Cato, with effete aristocrats:

These proud men make a very big mistake. Their ancestors left them all they could—riches, portrait busts, and their own glorious memory.… They call me vulgar and unpolished, because I don’t know how to put on an elegant dinner and don’t have actors at my table or keep a cook who has cost me more than my farm bailiff. All this, fellow citizens, I am proud to admit. For I was taught by my father and other men of blameless life that, while elegant graces befit woman, a man’s duty is to labor.

The teenage Marius chose the only escape route from provincial isolation that was open to him, the army. His exceptional ability soon allowed him to shine. It is possible, too, that despite his poverty his social status was higher than he cared to admit and that he came from an equestrian family that had fallen on hard times; if so, that would have helped speed promotion.

He had a fierce temper. Plutarch once saw a statue of him at Ravenna and wrote: “It very well expresses the harshness and bitterness of character that are attributed to him.” Military life suited him. He refused to study Greek literature and never spoke Greek; he could not see the point of having anything to do with the culture of a subject people. Some critics regarded him as a hypocrite who would say anything to get his way and was not above employing blackmail; to their annoyance, Iago-like, he actually won a reputation for honest dealing.

What nobody could deny was Marius’s combination of fortitude and realism. Later in life, he suffered from varicose veins in both legs. Disliking their ugly appearance, he decided to undergo surgery to remove them. Anesthetic had not been discovered, but he refused to be tied down, as was the practice, to keep himself still. He endured the excruciating pain from the knife in silence and without moving. But when the surgeon proceeded to the other leg, Marius stopped him, saying, “I can see that the cure is not worth the pain.”

LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA could not have been more different in background and personality from a bright country lad with rough edges. Nearly twenty years Marius’s junior, he was born into a patrician family of little distinction and less money. His only ancestor of whom anything was known had been expelled from the Senate. He inherited so little from his father that he lived in a cheap ground-floor apartment in an unfashionable part of town.

Sulla loved literature and the arts, and before he had any money he spent most of his time with actors and actresses. He liked a good time and enjoyed drinking and joking with the most indiscreet theater people; once seated at a dinner table, he categorically refused to discuss any serious topic, although when on business he was severe and unyielding.

The young nobleman seems to have got on well with older women; his stepmother loved him as if he were her own son and left him her estate. He fell in love with a wealthy courtesan, a certain Nicopolis, and his charm and youthful grace eventually led her to return his feelings; on her death, he inherited again. In this way, he became moderately well-off. However, Sulla was bisexual and the true love of his life was Metrobius, a celebrated tragic actor who specialized in women’s roles, of whom he remained passionately fond until his dying day.

Sulla’s most remarkable feature was his appearance. He had gray eyes and a sharp and powerful gaze. His face was covered with an ugly birthmark—coarse blotches of red interspersed with white. An Athenian wit wrote a famous verse about him:

Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with barley meal.

Marius and Sulla came to represent two emerging groups in Roman public life. On the one hand, the populares spoke for the People; in the footsteps of the Gracchi, they supported the sovereignty of the Assembly against the authority of the Senate. They were inheritors of the centuries-old campaigners for the rights of the plebs. Then there were the optimates , the soi-disant “best people,” who distrusted democracy and spoke for the predominance of the great families that monopolized the offices of state.

These groups were not disciplined political parties with agreed programs, as in today’s parliamentary democracies. Rather, they were fluctuating factions. Their methods varied; a popularis leader tended to be an individualist who sought power for himself, whereas the optimates defended a collective interest. Although the occasional novus homo , “new man,” such as Marius, was admitted via elections into the ruling class, the membership of both groups was drawn from the aristocracy. Ordinary citizens were allowed to vote, but otherwise their participation in politics did not extend much beyond watching and waiting, receiving bribes from candidates for public office, and, when they lost patience, rioting.