Section eleven of the grochy Marius and Sulla by A. H. Beasley. This librovox recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami, Chapter nine Sulpicious, the terrible disintegration which the social war had brought on Italy was faithfully reproduced in Rome. There too, every man's hand was against his neighbor, creditor and debtor, tribune and consul, Senate and anti senate fiercely confronted each other.
Personal interests had become so much more prominent, and old party divisions were so confused by the schemes of Italianizing politicians aristocratic in their connections, but cleaving to part at least of the traditional democratic program, that it is very hard to see where the views of one faction blended with those of another, and where they clashed. Still harder
is it to dissect the character of individual rules. To decide, for instance, how far a man like Sulpicius was swayed by disinterested principles, and how far he fought for his own hand. We need not make too much of the fact that he appealed to force, because violence was the order of the day, and submission to the law simply meant submission to the law of force. But there are some parts of his career apparently so inconsistent as almost to defy explanation, which in any case can be little
more than guess work. Publius Sulpicious Rufus was now in the prime of life, having been born in one twenty four b c. He was an aristocrat, an orator of great force and fire, and a friend of Drusus, whose views he shared and inherited. Cicero speaks of him in no grudging terms. Of all the speakers I have heard, Sulpicious was the grandest, and so to speak, most tragic.
Besides being powerful, his voice was sweet and resonant. His gestures and movements, elegant though they were, had nothing theatrical about them, and his oratory, though quick and fluent, was neither redundant nor verbose. The year before his tribunet had been a turbulent one at Rome. The social war and
Asiatic disturbances had brought about a financial crisis. Debtors, hard pressed by their creditors, invoked obsolete penalties against Jusury in their defense, and the creditors, because the praetor Islia attempted to submit the question to trial, murdered him in the open forum. The debtors responded by a cry for tabulaoi, or a sweeping remission of all debts. Of these debtors,
many doubtless, would belong to the lower orders. But from a proposal of Sulpicious made the next year, it appears probable that some were found in the ranks of the Senate. War had made money tight, to use the phraseology of our modern stock exchange, and reckless extravagance could no longer be supported by borrowing. Sulpicious inherited the policy of Drusus, which was to reconstruct the senatorial government on an Italian basis. Like Drusus, he had to conciliate prejudices in order to
carry out his design. Plutarch says that he went about with six hundred men of the Equestrian order, whom he called his anti Senate. No doubt it was to please these equitais, who would belong to the party of creditors, that he proposed that no one should be a senator who owed more than two thousand dinari e. No doubt, too, he would have filled the vacancies thus created by the expulsion of reckless anti Italian optimists from the ranks of
these equities, just as Drusus had done. Just like Druces, too, he had to court the proletariat, and this he did by proposing to enroll freedmen in the tribes. This, as they were generally dependent on men of his own order, he could do without prejudice to the new modeled aristocracy which he was attempting to organize. He also proposed to grant an amnesty to those who had been exiled by the Lexvaria, hoping no doubt to gain more by the adherents who would return to Rome than he would lose
by the return of men like Varius himself. He had opposed such an amnesty before, but on such a point he might have easily changed his views, especially if a strong cry was being raised by the friends of the exiles. He had a personal feud with the Julian family because he had opposed Caesar's illegal candidature for the consulship. That having fortified himself by such alliances, he proceeded to carry out the main design of Drusus, namely the complete enfranchisement
of the Italians. This perhaps would be especially distasteful to the Julie as superseding the Lex Julia and the Lex Plotia Papiria, which to them no doubt seemed ample and more than ample concessions. Sulpicious, on the other hand, in the minority of the Senate which sided with him, saw that under the cover of clemency, a grievous wrong was
being done. For not only were the Italians who had submitted since the terms of the Lex Plaudia took effect without the franchise, but from the fact of their rebellion they had lost their old privileges as allied states. Even those who had benefited by these concessions had benefited only in name. As they voted in new tribes, their votes were valueless and often would not be recorded at all, for a majority on most questions would be assured long
before it came to their turn to vote. Two statesmen imbued with the views of Drusus, such a distribution of the franchise must have seemed impolitic trickery, and like Drusus, Sulpicious resorted to questionable means in order to gain the end on which he had set his heart. Rome was thus broken up into two camps, not as of yore, broadly marked off by palpable distinctions of rank, property, or privilege,
but each containing adherents of all sorts and conditions. Though in the Senate the opponents of Sulpicius had the majority, when Sulpicius proposed to enroll the Italians in the Old Tribes, the consuls proclaimed astacium, or suspension of all public business for some religious observances. It is said by some modern writers that the object of Sulpicious in proposing to enroll the Italians in the Old Tribes was to secure the
election of Marius to the command against Mithridatees. It is certain, indeed, that Marius longed for it. Daily he was seen in the campus Marcius exercising with the young men, and, though old and fat, showing himself nimble in arms and active on horseback, conduct which excited some men's good humored sympathy, but shocked others, who thought he had much better go to Bayi for the baths there, and that such an
exhibition was contemptible. In one of his years, Sulpicius may have thought Marius quite fit for the command, and was warranted in thinking so by the events of the social war. But there is no more ground for supposing that the election of Marius was his primary object than for considering
Plutarch's diatribe a fair estimate of his character. He was the friend and successor of Drusus, and his alliance with Marius was a means to the end, which, in common with Druces, he had in view, and not the end itself. This consideration is essential to a true understanding of the politics of the time, and just makes the difference whether Sulpicius was a petty minded adventurer or deliberately following in the lines laid down for him by a succession of statesmen.
To the maneuver of the consul. He replied with a violent protest that it was illegal. Rome was being paraded by his partisans, three thousand armed men, and there was a tumult in which the lives of the consuls were in danger. One pompeious Rufus escaped, but his son was killed. The other Sullah annulled the g justicium, but is said to have got off with his life only because Marius
generously gave him shelter in his own house. In these occurrences, it is impossible not to see that the consuls were the first to act unfairly. Sulpicius had been intending to bring forward his laws in the regular fashion. They thwarted him by a trick. Whether he, in anger gave the signal for violence, or whether, as is quite as likely, his Italian partisans did not wait for his bidding, the blame of the tumult lay at the door of the
other side. In such cases, he is not guiltiest who strikes the first blow, but he who has made blows inevitable. The laws of Sulpicius were carried, Sulah fled to the army, And perhaps it was only now that Sulpicius, knowing or thinking that he knew that Sellah would march on Rome, carried a resolution in the popular Assembly for making Marius commander in the east. Two tribunes were accordingly sent to the camp at Nola to take the army from Sellah.
His soldiers immediately slew them and burning for the booty of Asia, and attached to their fortunate leader. They, when, without venturing to hint at the means by which he could avenge it, he complained of the wrong done to him, glamorously called on him to lead them to Rome. All his officers except one choist door left him, but he set out with six legions and was joined by Pompeius. On the way, two priters met him and forbade his advance.
They escaped with their lives, but the soldiers broke their foscuse and tore off their senatorial robes. A second and a third time the Senate sent to ask his intentions to release Rome from her tyrants was the grim reply. Then he vouchsafed an offer that the Senate, Marius and Sulpicious should meet him in the campus marshes to come to terms. If this meant that he would come with his army at his back, it was an absurd proposal. If it meant that he would come alone, it was
a falsehood. In either case, it was a device to fritter away time. For all the while that he was bandying meaningless messages, he continued his onward marks he had sacrificed, and the soothsayer Posthumius, when he saw the entrails, had stretched out his hands to him and offered to be kept in chains for punishment after the battle if it
was not a victory. He too, had himself seen a vision of good Omen Bologna or another goddess had he dreamed put a thunderbolt in his hands, and, naming his enemies one by one, bidden him strike them, and they were consumed to ashes. Again, envoys came from the Senate forbidding him to come within five miles of Rome. Perhaps they still felt as secure in the immemorial freedom of the city from military rule as the English parliament did
before Cromwell's coupd'etat. Again he amused them, and no doubt himself, also with a falsehood and professing compliance, followed close upon their heels. With one Lesion he occupied the Chilian gate, with another under Pompeius, the Colleen Gate, with a third the pan Sublikius, while a fourth was posted outside as a reserve. Thus, for the first time a consul commanded an army in the city, and soldiers were masters of Rome.
Marius and Sulpicius met them on the Escolne, and, pouring down tiles from the housetops, had first beat them back, but Sullah, waving a burning torch, bade his men shoot fiery arrows at the houses and drove the Marians from the Escoline Forum. Then he sent for the legion in reserve, and ordered a detachment to go round by the Siburah and take the enemy in the rear. In Vain, Marius made another stand at the temple of Tellus. In Vain, he offered liberty to any slaves that would join him.
He was beaten and fled from the city. Thus Sullah, having by injustice provoked disorder, quelled it by the sword and began the civil war. So Ppecius, Marius, and ten others were proscribed, and Sullah is said to have still further stimulated the pursuit of Marius by setting a price
on his head. Sulpicius was killed at Laurentum, and according to Wileus Petterculus, Sollah fixed up the eloquent orator's head at the Rostra, a thing not unlikely to have been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly congenial. He evinced it on this occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Ugo his episode of Lantanac and the Gunner. He gave the slave who betrayed Sulpicius his freedom, and then had him hurled
from the Tarpeian rock. After this he set to work to restore such order as would enable him to hasten to the east. Various explanations have been offered to account for his moderation at this conjuncture, and for his leaving Italy precisely when his enemies were again gathering for an attack, But the true one has never yet perhaps been suggested. Who was it that had made him supreme at Rome? The army? What had been the bribe which had won it over a campaign in Asia? Under the fortune at Sullah.
Without that army he was powerless, may he was a dead man. Therefore, it was absolutely necessary to execute his pledge to the army, which would have no keen desire to encounter its countrymen in Italy. No doubt he coveted the glory and spoil of the Asiatic command, But it is absurd to suppose that he would have quitted Italy now of his own free will. He had no choice
in the matter. He was bound hand and foot by his promises to the soldiers, and all that he could do was by plausible moderation to win as many friends, conciliate as many foes as possible, throw on Sinna, whom he could not hope to keep quiet the guilt of perjury, and trust to fortune for the rest. This is a probable and consistent view of what now took place at Rome, and every other account makes out Sulah to have been either inconsistent, which he never was, for he was always
uniformly selfish or patriotic, which he never was. If patriotism consists in sacrificing private to public considerations, or indifferent, which he was in principle but never in practice, unless where his own interests were not threatened and only the sufferings of others involved. His first measure was to annul the Sulpician laws. Secondly, to relieve the debtors, some colonies were established and a law was passed about interest, the terms
of which we do not know. Thirdly, the Senate, thinned by the social war in Navarian law was recruited by three hundred optimates. Fourthly, because Sulpicious had resisted the proclamation of a giustiqi, that device by which the Senate had virtually, though not legally, retained in its own hands the power of discussing any measure before it was submitted to the people. Therefore, for the future, no measure was to be submitted to the people till it had been previously discussed by the Senate.
In other words, the Senate was now confirmed by law in a privilege which it had hitherto only exercised by the employment of a fiction. Fifthly, the votes were to be taken not in the Committee a Tributa, but in the Committee of Centuries. Sixthly, the five classes were no longer to have an equal voice, but the first class was, as in the Serbian constitution, to have nearly half the votes. As the first class consisted of those who had an
estate of one hundred thousand sasterces. This ordinance changed the democracy into a democracy, transferring the power from the people generally to the wealthier classes. But considering how voting had been manipulated of late, it was perhaps a measure due to the Senate quite as much as to Sullah. On the whole, he legislated as little as he could and proscribed as few as he could, but he tried to get two of his partisans, Servius and Nonius, elected consuls
for the year eighty seven. Instead of them, however, Lucius Cornelius Sinna, a determined leader of the Papulares, was elected, and though Nius Octavius, his colleague, was one of the optimates. He was not Sullah's creature. In another quarter, his arrangements
were thwarted even more unpleasantly. He had got a decree framed by the people, giving the army of the North to his friend Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and recalling Nius Pompeius Strabo, but the latter procured the assassination of the former, and remained at the head of the army. Still Sullah showed
no resentment. A tribune named Virguineus was threatening to prosecute him, but he contented himself with making Sinna ascend the capital with a stone in his hand and throwing it down before a number of spectators, solemnly swear to observe the new constitution. Then, leaving Metellusensamnium and Appius Claudius at Nola, he hurried on to Coppua, and, embarking at Brundusium, felt no doubt that if he must pay his debt to the army before the army would commit fresh treasons for him.
It was not unpleasant now to be forced away from the wasp's nest, which he had stirred up round him at home, and so making a virtue of necessity, he sailed with a light heart from the chance of assassination at Rome to fame and fortune in the east end of Section eleven.