12 - Gracchi, Marius and Sulla by A. H. Beesly

to get necessary provisions. Young Marius was overtaken by daylight before he could get to his father in law's farm and pack the things up, and was nearly caught by those on his track. But the farm bailiff saw him in time, and, hiding him in a cartful of beans, yoked the team and drove him to Rome. There, young Marius went to his wife's house, and, getting what he wanted, set out at nightfall for Ostia and finding a ship starting for Africa. When aboard, his father had not waited

for his return. He too, had embarked at Ostia for Africa with his son in law. But now in his old age, the sea was not so kind to him as when in his bold and confident youth he had sailed to Sue for his first consulship from the very land to which he was now flying. A storm came on and the ship was blown southwards along the coast. Marius begged the captain to keep clear of Tarracina, because Gminius,

a leading man there, was his bitter foe. But the storm increased, Marius was sea sick, and they were forced to go to shore at kir k e E Monte Ciurchello. Some herdsmen told him that horsemen had just been there in pursuit. So they spent the night in a thick wood,

hungry and tortured by anxiety. Next day they went to the coast again, and Marius implored the men to stand by him, telling them that when he was a child, an eagle's nest fell into his lap with seven young ones in it, and the soothsayers had said that it meant that he should attain to the highest honors seven times. About two miles and a half from MINTURNAEI, they spied some horsemen making toward them, and plunging into the sea,

they swam towards some merchantmen near the shore. Two slaves swam with Marius keeping him up, and he got into one ship, and his son in law into the other. While the horsemen shouted to the crew to put ashore or throw Marius overboard. The captains consulted together in a terrible moment it must have been for the fugitives, but the spell of the Kimbric victories was potent still, and the captains replied that they would not give up Marius.

So the soldiers rode off in a rage. But the sailors, having so far acted generously, were anxious to get rid of their dangerous guests, and, landing at the mouth of the Lerius, on pretense of waiting for a fair wind, told Marius to go ashore and get some rest, and while he was lying down, sailed away. Half stupefied. He scrambled through bogs and dikes and mud till he came to an old man's cottage and begged the owner to shelter a man who, if he escaped, would reward him

Beyond his hopes. The man told him that he would hide him in a safer place than his cottage, and showing him a hole by the riverside, covered him up in it with some rushes, but he was soon rudely disturbed. Gaminius was on his trail, and Marius heard some of his emissaries loudly threatening the old man for hiding an outlaw. In his terror, Marius stripped and plunged into the river, and so betrayed himself to the pursuers, who hauled him out, naked and covered with mud, and gave him up to

the magistrates of Minternei. By these he was placed under a strong guard in the house of a woman named Fania. She, like Gminius, had a personal grudge against him, for in his sixth consulship he had find her for Drachmas for ill conduct. But now when she saw his misery, she forgot her resentment and did her best to cheer him. Nor was this difficult, for the stout heart of Marius

had never failed him. He told Fania that as he was coming to her house, an ass had come out to drink it a neighboring fountain, and, fixing its eyes steadily on him, had brayed aloud and frisked vivaciously. Whence he augured that he would find safety by sea. The magistrates, however, had resolved to kill him and sent a Cimbrian to do the deed, for no citizen would do it. The man went armed with a sword into the gloomy room where Marius lay, but soon he ran out, crying, I

cannot slay Marius. He had seen eyes glaring in the darkness, and had heard a terrible voice say, darest thou slay Caius Marius. His heart had failed him. He had thrown down the sword and fled. Either the magistrates now changed their minds, or the people forced them to let Marius go,

or perhaps Fania contrived his escape. Plutarch says that the people escorted him to the coast, and when they came to a sacred grove called the Mauritian Grove, which no man might enter, but which it would take a long time to go round, an old man had led the way into it, saying that no place was so sacred, but that it might be entered to save Marius. In some way. He reached the coast, where a friend had secured a vessel, and, being driven by the wind to

ainaria Ischia. He there found his son in law and sailed for Africa. Want of water forced them to put in at Eriks on the northwest of Sicily, but the Roman christor there was on the lookout, and killing sixteen of the crew, nearly took Marius. Landing at Meninx Jerbah, the fugitive heard that his son was in Africa too, and had gone to Haempsal, king of Numidia, to ask for aid, upon which he set sail again and landed at Carthage. The Roman governor there sent to warn him

off from Africa. Marius was dumb with indignation, but on being asked what answer he had to send, replied, so ran the story go and say you have seen Gaius Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage. He am Sau meanwhile, had been keeping young Marius in the sort of honorable captivity, but, according to his story, similar to that told of Thomas A Beckett's father, a damsel of the country had fallen in love with his handsome face and helped him to escape.

Father and son now retired to Kirkina Kerkenna, where news soon reached him which brought him back to Italy. Hardly had Sulla left Brundusium when the truce which he had patched up was broken. Sinna, being bribed, as was said, probably without foundation, with three hundred talents, had demanded that the Italians lately enfranchised should be enrolled in the old tribes.

We do not know very much about Sinna, but we do seem to gather that he was bold, resolute, not ungenerous or bloodthirsty, and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, like Saturninus and Sulpicius and Drusus, he was only demanding justice. Octavius opposed him, and, hearing that Sinna's partisans were threatening the tribunes in the Forum, he charged down the Via Sacra with a band of followers and dispersed them, and a great number of Sinna's followers were slain.

On this Sinna left Rome, and, joined by Sertorius, whom we shall hear of again, went round the towns mustering his friends. The Senate declared his consulship to be void and elected Lucius Cornelius Marilla in his place. Sinna, with characteristic audacity, instantly hastened to the army in Campania, and rending his clothes and throwing himself on the ground so worked on the pity of the soldiers that they lifted him up and told him he was consul still and

might lead them where he pleased. Then, visiting the Italian towns, he obtained many recruits, and, hearing that Marius had landed in Etruria, perhaps on his invitation, he agreed to act in concert with him in spite of the opposition of Sertorius. Meanwhile, Octavius and Merolla had fortified the city, had sent for troops from sis Alpine Gaul, and had summoned the proconsul Pompeius from Piquenum. Pompeius came and halted at the Colline gate. It was suspected that he was waiting to join the

successful side. With him was his son, afterwards called the Great, who now showed of what stuff he was made by putting down a mutiny against his father and baffling a plot for his own assassination. Marius, with a band of moors and the slaves whom he had collected from the Etrurian field gangs, was admitted by treachery into Ostia and sacked the town. Sinna marched to the right bank of

the Tiber, opposite the Juniculum. Sirtorius held the river above the city, and a corps was sent to Ariminum to prevent any help coming from North Italy. At this crisis, the tenant sent Metellus and tried to obtain the aid of the Samnites, who, as we have seen, joined Marius

and Sinna. The treachery of a tribune in command of the Juniculum gave the Marians admission to the city, but they were driven out again, and might even have been dislodged from the Juniculum, had not Pompeius persuaded Octavius to check the pursuit. Pompeius was playing a waiting game, ready to join the strongest or crush both parties as he saw his chance, and now within the city starvation set

in and a pestilence spread. Marius had blocked up the Tiber and occupied the outlying towns on which the communications of the capital depended. Nor could the Senate trust its own troops. Pompeius was killed by a thunderbolt not less suspicious than that which slew Romulus, and his body had been torn from the bier and dragged through the streets by the people. The soldiers of Octavius, cheered Sinna when he marshaled his troops opposite them near the Alban Mount. Moreover,

the leaders themselves were at variance. Octavius, seeing the humor of his men, was afraid to fight, but would concede nothing. Metellus wished for a compromise. Both armies were now outside the city, the pestilence probably having driven the Marians to withdraw, but Marius had command of the Via Appia, the Tiber and most of the neighborhood, and the famine became soreer in Rome. The soldiers wished Metellus to take the command from Octavius, and on his refusal, deserted in crowds to

the enemy. So also did the slaves, to whom Octavius would not promise freedom, as Sinna gladly did. At last, the Senate sent to make terms with Sinna, but while they were stickling about acknowledging his title of consul, he advanced to the gates. Then they surrendered at discretion, only

begging him to swear to shed no blood. Sinna, refusing to be bound by this condition, promised that he would not voluntarily do so, for he saw by his side the grim figure of the man to whom he had given proconsular powers, who had already taunted him with weakness for conferring with the Senate at all, and in whose sullen, unshorn face he read a craving for vengeance which nothing

but blood would satisfy. When Sinna entered the city, Marius, with savage irony, said that an outlaw had no business within the walls, and he would not come in till the sentence had been formerly rescinded by a meeting of the people in the forum. But the gates, when once he had passed them, were closed, and for five days and five nights Rome became a shambles. Appian says that Marius and Sinna had both sworn to spare the life of Octavius, but Marius was never a liar, and the

story is false on the face of it. For just before this, Appian relates how when Sinna had promised to be merciful, Marius would make no sign. Octavius is said to have seated himself in his official chair, dressed in his official robes, on the guiniculum, and to have awaited the assassins there. His head was fastened up in front of the rostra in emulation of the ghastly precedent set

by Sullah. He was an obstinate, dull man, and if this burlesque of the conduct of the senators when the Gauls took Rome was really enacted, the theatrical display must have been cold comfort for those of his party on whom his incapacity brought ruin. Among the latter were the brother Caesar Gaius, who had sought to be consol before he was brighter and had been denounced for it by Sulpicious and Lucius, the conqueror at a care and author

of the Julian Law. Publius Crassus, consul in ninety seven and one of Caesar's lieutenants in the social war, fled with his son, and when overtaken, first stabbed his son and then himself. Marcus Antonius, the great forensic orator, was so odious to Marius that the latter, on hearing that he was taken, wished, so the story runs, to go

kill him with his own hand. Antonius was in hiding and was betrayed by the indiscretion of a slave who, being questioned by the wine cellar why he was buying more or better wine than usual, whispered to him that it was for Marcus Antonius, on the soldier's coming to kill him. He pleaded so eloquently for his life that they wept and would not touch him. But their officer, who was waiting below, impatiently came up and cut off his head with his own hand. Lucius Merola opened his

veins and so bled to death. His crime was that he had been made console when Sinna was deposed. His last act seems odd to us, but pathetically bespoke the man's piety and recalls the last scene in the life of Demosthenes. He wrote on a tablet that he had taken off his official cap when opening his veins, so as to avoid the sacrilege of a flomen of Jupiter

dying with it on his head. Marius had behaved generously once to Quintus Lutatious Catullus, his old colleague against the Kimbri, but Catullus had helped to drive him into exile, and there was to be no second mistake of that sort. He must die, he said, when the relatives of Catullus pleaded for his life. It is not unlikely that disease and drinking, and his late hardships had made the old man insane. He had been occasionally good natured in former days.

Now he sees to gloat in carnage for every sneer casted him, for every wrong done to him in past years. He took a horrible revenge. When Sinna had summoned him, he had said that he would settle the question of enrollment in the tribes once for all. He wished not to select victims, but to massacre all the leading Optimists. Sertorius begged Sinna to check the slaughter. Sinna did try to curb the outrages of the slave fans, but he dared not break with Marius, whom he named his joint

council with himself for the year eighty six. But as soon as his colleague was dead, he and Sertorius surrounded the Ruffians and killed them to a man. Marius did not live much longer. He had had his revenge. He had gained his seventh consulship. It is said that telling his friends that after such vicissitudes, it would be wrong to tempt fate further, he took to his bed, and after seven days died. He drank hard, was seized with pleurisy,

and in his last hours became delirious. He fancied that he was in Asia, and by shouts and gestures, cheered on the army of his dreams, and with such a stern and iron clashing clothes. Died January thirteenth or seventeenth. He was more than seventy years old, and had enjoyed

his seventh consulship for either thirteen or seventeen days. Lucius Valerius Floccus succeeded Marius as consul and passed a law making one fourth of a debt legal tender for payment of it, and probably in the same year, the denarius was restored to its standard value. A census was also held, which would include the new Italian citizens and Philippus, whose opposition to Drusus on this very question had helped to

kindle the social war with Cansoor Sinna. As he was pledged to do so, must have carried some measure for enrolling the Italians in the old tribes, but we can only conjecture what was actually done. Sulpicius had already carried such a measure, but it had been probably revoked by Sulla before he left Italy in eighty four just before his return, the Senate, it is said, gave the Italians the right of voting and distributed the libertini or freed

slaves among the thirty five tribes. Perhaps this was a formal ratification of what had been passed before under Cinna's coercion. Sinna was now all powerful at Rome. For four successive years eighty seven to eighty four BC he was consul, and with the exception of Asia, Macedonia, Greece and Africa, where Mattellus had escaped and was in arms, the whole Roman world was at his feet. But he did not

know how to use his power. He may have removed the restrictions on grain and did proclaim Sullah and Mattellus outlaws, But though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sullah's return, he did worse than nothing, and instead of Sertorius sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus. The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the

next chapter. When Sinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and that either he must act promptly or Sullah would be in Rome. He hastened to Ancona, where he sent one division of the army across to the opposite coast, But the second division was driven back by a storm, and the soldiers then dispersed, saying that they would not fight against their own countrymen. On this the rest of the army refused to embark. Sinna went to harangue them, and one of his lictors,

in clearing away struck a soldier. Another soldier struck him. Sinna told his lictors to seize this second mutineer, and in the tumult that arose, Sinna was slain. Plutarch says that the troops murdered him because he was suspected of having killed Pompeius, and that when he tried to bribe a centurion with a signet ring to spare him, the centurion replied that he was not going to seal a bond,

but slay a tyrant. But Sinna probably died as he lived a brave man, and one who could not have held ascendancy for so long and over men like Sertorius, had he not been an able as well as a brave Man. End of section twelve,