Anthony Everitt - The Rise of Rome

Marius standardized uniforms and weapons and, to foster esprit de corps, introduced the aquila , a silver eagle carried on a pole. It symbolized the legion, and its capture by the enemy conferred lasting shame on all its soldiers.

An ingenious technical device helped make survival on the field of battle a better bet. The heavy javelin, or pilum , was an essential part of the legionary’s armory. But when he threw it at his opponents, they often picked it up and hurled it back. Its iron head was attached to a wooden pole by two metal rivets. One of these was now replaced by a wooden dowel, so that the head was bent or snapped off entirely when the pilum reached its target or fell to the ground. This meant that it could not be reused.

Marius reduced the number of camp followers, making individual legionaries more self-reliant. In addition to their weapons, they had to carry on their backs emergency food rations and essential equipment for cooking and entrenching. With their bent, ungainly gait, infantrymen looked like beasts of burden. They were nicknamed Marius’s mules.

A TERRIBLE THREAT to Rome’s very existence suddenly materialized. Every Roman remembered the horror story of the Battle of the Allia and the capture and looting of their city by the Celts in the fourth century. Barbarian hordes pressing down from the dark forests of central Europe into the sunlit lands of the Mediterranean remained figures of nightmare, lurking just beyond the direct field of vision.

Every now and again, the Celts reappeared. In 279 they invaded Greece, reaching as far as Delphi before being repulsed. Immigrant Celts settled in Galatia (in what is today’s central Anatolia). Rome did what it could to reduce the risk of further incursions into Italy by creating buffer territories. In 120, southern France became the province of Gallia Transalpina, later Narbonensis. Over the years, many consular armies marched north to reduce the Celtic communities in the Po Valley; eventually, in the first century, the region became the province of Cisalpine Gaul.

Alarming reports reached Rome in 113 that two Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, were emigrating en masse with their women and children southward from their homelands in or near Jutland. The record of incompetence and corruption in Rome’s political class continued; somewhere in the eastern Alps, a consul crashed to defeat at the hands of the tribal wanderers. Most fortunately for the Republic, they turned westward toward Gaul, which they reached in 110.

A succession of consuls suffered further routs, culminating in 105 at Arausio (modern Orange, not far from Avignon), in Rome’s greatest military disaster since Cannae, with a reported loss of eighty thousand men. Italy lay at the invader’s mercy. Men under the age of thirty-five were forbidden to leave the country. Rome prepared for the worst.

Marius was still in Africa when the news of the catastrophe reached Rome. On a wave of popular enthusiasm, he was reelected consul in absentia for the following year. This was against all the conventions, but the Assembly had had enough of hopeless aristocrats and wanted a commander who had a chance of repulsing the Celts.

The Celts were in no hurry to do anything in particular and rambled around the Gallic countryside. This gave Marius breathing space, during which he introduced his military reforms (or refined earlier ones) and honed his troops into an efficient fighting force. He went on being elected consul for six years in a row. This was unprecedented, but it was evidently more sensible to keep the Republic’s most able general in place than to insist on an annual change of command just for the constitutional principle of the thing.

The Celts split their forces into two. The Teutones (alongside a fellow tribe, the Ambrones) intended to enter Italy via the seacoast, while the Cimbri would descend on the peninsula through the Brenner Pass. Marius was waiting for the former, but did not immediately give battle. The Celts were a terrifying sight, and their vast numbers covered the plain. The Romans stayed in their camp and watched them pass by; if we are to believe Plutarch, this took six days.

Marius shadowed the enemy until he found a suitable site for a battle. A skirmish led to a successful engagement, and on the following day the Roman army deployed for battle. A force of three thousand men hid in ambush behind the Celts. In the face of an onslaught by the Teutones, the legions more than held their ground; astounded by an attack on their rear, the enemy panicked and fled.

The bodies of the Celtic dead were left where they were. They fertilized the ground, and the people of Massilia used their bones to fence fields. For some years, it was said that the grape harvests were unusually rich.

Marius quickly joined the consular army confronting the Cimbri in the Po Valley, and in 101 the combined forces met the enemy outside Vercellae (today’s Vercelli, in Piedmont) on a hot midsummer’s day. The armies raised such a cloud of dust that at the beginning they missed each other. The Celts were unused to the sweltering temperature and were soon cut to pieces. Their disgusted womenfolk killed any fugitives who came their way, and many of them strangled their children and cut their own throats.

Rome had outfaced an external challenge, but it was to have no peace. Now it was to risk destruction from enemies within.

MARIUS WAS NOT much of a politician. A man without grace, he was happier giving orders to troops than compromising with civilians. While serving his successive consulships and campaigning against the Celts, he needed political support in the Forum. He found it, unwisely, in an embittered and daring tribune, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, a nobleman who turned against his class and became a popularis after being sacked from his job as quaestor in charge of managing Rome’s grain supply at the port of Ostia.

A fine public speaker and a clever fixer, Saturninus was elected tribune in 103. His policy was uncomplicated: it was to be as disobliging as possible to the Senate. He entered into a partnership with Marius and on his behalf passed a law settling the general’s veterans from the war with Jugurtha on land in the province of Africa. He had no qualms about using violence. When a fellow tribune tried to interpose a veto, Saturninus got his followers to drive him off with a hail of stones. He also helped Marius win his fourth consulship in 102.

After his victories over the Celts, Marius returned to Rome and entered into a new compact with Saturninus. The tribune and the consul shared a hatred for Metellus, who had not only patronized Marius in Africa but also tried to remove Saturninus from the Senate on the grounds of immorality. They laid a trap for him.

A proposal was put to the Senate that all soldiers, Latins as well as Roman citizens, demobilized after the defeat of the Cimbri and the Teutones, should be given allotments in Transalpine Gaul and colonies in various places across the Mediterranean. A controversial clause was added that each senator should swear to observe the new law. Everyone knew that for Metellus this was an unconstitutional infringement of senatorial independence.

Marius assured all and sundry that he would never bind himself in this way. Then, a few days later, just before the legal deadline for taking the oath, he unexpectedly convened the Senate and said that because of popular pressure he had changed his mind. But he had worked out an ingenious formula that would address Metellus’s objection. He would swear to obey the law “insofar as it was a law.” A nervous Senate followed his lead, except for Metellus. He was outmaneuvered and isolated, but, having taken a stand, he refused to backtrack. His punishment was exile.

Marius, although cussed, was no revolutionary and could see that the populares were running out of control. Saturninus won a third term as tribune, and a colleague of his ran for consul. When a leading rival for the consulship was beaten to death in public, it was clear that a line had been crossed. Popular support for Saturninus evaporated.