Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

Marius and Sulla set out to find 20,480 infantrymen, 5,120 noncombatant freemen, 4,000 noncombatant slaves, 2,000 cavalry troopers, and 2,000 noncombatant cavalry support men. "I'll do Rome; you can do Latium," said Marius, purring. "I very much doubt that either of us will have to go as far afield as Italy. We're on our way, Lucius Cornelius! In spite of the worst they could do, we're on our way. I've conscripted Gaius Julius, our father-in-law, to deal with arms and armor manufactories and contractors, and I've sent to Africa for his sons we can use them. I don't find either Sextus or Gaius Junior the stuff true leaders are made of, but they're excellent subordinates, as hardworking and intelligent as they are loyal." He led the way into his study, where two men were waiting. One was a senator in his middle thirties whose face Sulla vaguely knew, the other was a lad of perhaps eighteen. Marius proceeded to introduce them to his quaestor. "Lucius Cornelius, this is Aulus Manlius, whom I've asked to be one of my senior legates." That was the senator. One of the patrician Manliuses, thought Sulla; Marius did indeed have friends and clients from all walks. "And this young man is Quintus Sertorius, the son of a cousin of mine, Maria of Nersia, always called Ria. I'm seconding him to my personal staff." A Sabine, thought Sulla; they were, he had heard, of tremendous value in an army a little unorthodox, terrifically brave, indomitable of spirit. "All right, it's time to get to work," said the man of action, the man who had been waiting over twenty years to implement his ideas as to what the Roman army ought to be. "We will divide our duties. Aulus Manlius, you're in charge of getting together the mules, carts, equipment, non-combatants, and all the staples of supply from food to artillery. My brothers-in-law, the two Julius Caesars, will be here any day now, and they'll assist you. I want you ready to sail for Africa by the end of March. You can have any other help you think you may need, but might I suggest you start by finding your noncombatants, and cull the best of them to pitch in with you as you go? That way, you'll save money, as well as begin to train them." The lad Sertorius was watching Marius, apparently fascinated, while Sulla found the lad Sertorius more fascinating than he did Marius, used as he was by now to Marius. Not that Sertorius was sexually attractive, he wasn't; but he did have a power about him that was odd in one so young. Physically he promised to be immensely powerful when he reached maturity, and maybe that contributed to Sulla's impression, for though he was tall, he was already so solidly muscular that he gave an impression of being short; he had a square, thick-necked head and a pair of remarkable eyes, light brown, deep-set, and compelling. "I myself intend to sail by the end of April with the first group of soldiers," Marius went on, gazing at Sulla. "It will be up to you, Lucius Cornelius, to continue organizing the rest of the legions, and find me some decent cavalry. If you can get it all done and sail by the end of Quinctilis, I'll be happy." He turned his head to grin at young Sertorius. "As for you, Quintus Sertorius, I'll keep you on the hop, rest assured! I can't have it said that I keep relatives of mine around doing nothing." The lad smiled, slowly and thoughtfully. "I like to hop, Gaius Marius," he said.

The Head Count flocked to enlist; Rome had never seen anything like it, nor had anyone in the Senate expected such a response from a section of the community it had never bothered to think about save in times of grain shortages, when it was prudent to supply the Head Count with cheap grain to avoid troublesome rioting. Within scant days the number of volunteer recruits of full Roman citizen status had reached 20,480 but Marius declined to stop recruiting. "If they're there to take, we'll take them," he said to Sulla. "Metellus has six legions, I don't see why I ought not to have six legions. Especially with the State funding the costs! It won't ever happen again, if we are to believe dear Scaurus, and Rome may have need of those two extra legions, my instincts tell me. We won't get a proper campaign mounted this year anyway, so we'll do better to concentrate on training and equipping. The nice thing is, these six legions will all be Roman citizen legions, not Italian auxiliaries. That means we still have the Italian proletarii to tap in years to come, as well as plenty more Roman Head Count." It all went according to plan, which was not surprising when Gaius Marius was in the command tent, Sulla found out. By the end of March, Aulus Manlius was en route from Neapolis to Utica, his transports stuffed with mules, ballistae, catapults, arms, tack, and all the thousand and one items which gave an army teeth. The moment Aulus Manlius was landed in Utica, the transports returned to Neapolis and picked up Gaius Marius, who sailed with only two of his six legions. Sulla remained behind in Italy to get the other four legions outfitted and into order, and find the cavalry. In the end he went north to the regions of Italian Gaul on the far side of the Padus River, where he recruited magnificent horse troopers of Gallo-Celtic background. There were other changes in Marius's army, above and beyond its Head Count composition. For these were men who had no tradition of military service, and so were completely ignorant of what it entailed. And so were in no position to resist change, or to oppose it. For many years the old tactical unit called the maniple had proven too small to contend with the massive, undisciplined armies the legions often had to fight; the cohort three times the size of the maniple had been gradually supplanting it in actual practice. Yet no one had officially regrouped the legions into cohorts rather than maniples, or restructured its centurion hierarchy to deal with cohorts rather than maniples. But Gaius Marius did, that spring and summer of the year of his first consulship. Except as a pretty parade-ground unit, the maniple now officially ceased to exist; the cohort was supreme. However, there were unforeseen disadvantages in fielding an army of proletarii. The old-style propertied soldiers of Rome were mostly literate and numerate, so had no difficulty recognizing flags, numbers, letters, symbols. Marius's army was mostly illiterate, barely numerate. Sulla instituted a program whereby each unit of eight men who tented and messed together had at least one man in it who could read and write, and for the reward of seniority over his fellows, was given the duty of teaching his comrades all about numbers, letters, symbols, and standards, and if possible was to teach them all to read and write. But progress was slow; full literacy would have to wait until the winter rains in Africa rendered campaigning impossible. Marius himself devised a simple, highly emotive new rallying point for his legions, and made sure all ranks were indoctrinated with superstitious awe and reverence for his new rallying point. He gave each legion a beautiful silver spread-winged eagle upon a very tall, silver-clad pole; the eagle was to be carried by the aquilifer, the man considered the best specimen in his whole legion, exclusively clad in a lion skin as well as silver armor. The eagle, said Marius, was the legion's symbol for Rome, and every soldier was obliged to swear a dreadful oath that he would die rather than allow his legion's eagle to fall into the hands of the Enemy. Of course he knew exactly what he was doing. After half a lifetime under the colors and being the kind of man he was he had formed firm opinions and knew a great deal more about the actual individual ranker soldiers than any high aristocrat. His ignoble origins had put him in a perfect position to observe, just as his superior intelligence had put him in a perfect position to make deductions from his observations. His personal achievements underrated, his undeniable abilities mostly used for the advancement of his betters, Gaius Marius had been waiting for a very long time before his first consulship arrived and thinking, thinking, thinking.