The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

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Cinna and Marius now began to reorganise the government of the state. Not deigning even to summon the assembly of the tribes, they nominated themselves by their own authority to the highest magistracy. Marius became consul for the seventh time. At the age of seventy, with his health broken and strength failing, which had borne him through so many fatigues, he reached the summit of his aspirations and accomplished the prediction, the assurance of which had nerved his courage in such dire vicissitudes. Nevertheless, while Cinna reserved for himself the administration of affairs in Italy, the old general was destined to resume the command of the legions, and wrest from Sulla the conduct of the war against Mithridates.

Sulla, indeed, it was already reported, had driven the king of Pontus to sue for peace, and was about to return and measure himself once more with the usurpers of the commonwealth. Marius, upon whom the auguries of his young rival’s ultimate success had made no less impression than the prognostications of his own triumphs, shuddered at the approaching contest, in which he felt himself doomed to be worsted. Harassed by terrific dreams, or worn out by nightly watchings, he sought escape from his own thoughts by constant intoxication.[91] Wearied with life, he could hardly wish to protract the existence which had become so intolerable a burden to him. One evening, it was related, while walking with some friends after supper, he fell to talking of the incidents of his life, beginning with his boyhood; and after enumerating his triumphs and his perils, no man of sense, he said, ought to trust fortune again after such alternations; upon which he took leave of his friends, and keeping his bed for seven days successively, thus died. We are tempted to suspect that, impelled by disgust and despair, he shortened his last days by suicide. The deceased consul’s obsequies were celebrated with pomp, and accompanied, if we may believe the story told us, with a frightful ceremony. In ancient times, according to tradition, it had been customary to slaughter slaves or captives on the tomb of the departed hero; but if any such usage had actually prevailed among the Romans, it had been long softened at least into an exhibition of gladiatorial combats.

On this occasion, however, the tribune Flavius Fimbria determined to immolate a noble victim to the manes of the dead. He therefore caused the venerable Mucius Scævola, the chief of Roman jurists, to be led before the pyre, and bade the sacrificer plunge a sword into his bosom. The wounded old man was allowed to be carried off and tended by his friends, under whose care he recovered. But when Fimbria heard that he still lived, he brought him to the bar of judgment, and being asked what charge he had against him, coldly replied, “Having escaped with life.” The story thus told by Valerius Maximus is founded, perhaps, on a misapprehension of a passage in Cicero, who only says that Fimbria required Scævola to be wounded.[92] If the tribune had intended to make a sacrifice, he would hardly have suffered it to remain incomplete. Only eleven years before, human sacrifices had been abolished by a decree of the senate. But in many expiatory and lustral rites, the shedding of a drop of blood was retained as a type of the ancient usage with which it has been frequently confounded. It may be added, that the historians have passed over this shocking occurrence in total silence; and the actual death of Scævola will be related at a later period.b

IHNE’S ESTIMATE OF MARIUS

“The judgment pronounced on Marius by posterity is not, like that on many other eminent men, wavering and contradictory. He is not one of those who to some have appeared heroes, to others malefactors, nor has he had to wait for ages, like Tiberius, before his true character became known. Disregarding the conscious misrepresentations of his personal enemies, we may say that he has always been taken for a good specimen of the genuine old Roman, uniting in his person in an exceptional degree the virtues and the faults of the rude illiterate peasant and the intrepid soldier. No one has ever ventured to deny that by his eminent military ability he rendered essential service to his country. Nobody has doubted his austere virtues, his simplicity and honesty, qualities by which, no less than by his genius for war, he gained for himself the veneration of the people. On the other hand, it is universally admitted that as a politician he was incompetent, and that he was only a tool in the hands of those with whom he acted. But morbid ambition and revengeful passion urged him at last to deeds which make it doubtful whether it would not have been better for Rome if he had never been born. He has, therefore, neither deserved nor obtained unmixed admiration; but as his darkest deeds were committed in moments when he was half mad from sufferings and indignities he had endured, and when perhaps he hardly knew what he was doing, he may, in the opinion of humane judges, gain by comparison with Sulla, who acted from reflection and in cool blood when he consigned thousands to death and enacted the horrid spectacle of the proscriptions.”e

Cinna now chose for his colleague Valerius Flaccus, the same who, as consul fourteen years before, had aided Marius to crush the conspiracy of Saturninus; an appointment which seems to betoken considerable respect for the usages of the state; for Flaccus, though formerly both consul and censor, had taken much less part in the recent contest than either Carbo or Sertorius, whose inferior rank counterbalanced their higher services. Cinna was now actively engaged in fulfilling his pledges to his allies. Censors were elected on purpose to effect the complete emancipation of Italy by suppressing the ten Italian tribes, and enrolling the new citizens of the Plautian law among the thirty-five tribes of the city. Whether this inscription was based upon a principle of numerical equalisation, or of geographical distribution, or whether it was attempted to combine the two, we have, perhaps, no means of determining; but thus the last remaining distinction between the Romans and Italians was effaced, for as many at least of the latter class as chose to avail themselves of the proffered privilege. The Samnites, Lucanians, and others still scorned to accept it. Another measure, undertaken by Flaccus, was more delicate, and more generally interesting. The consul ventured to enact an adjustment of debts, and relieve the accumulating distress of the poorer citizens, by enabling all obligations to be cancelled by the payment of one-fourth of the principal. He exchanged, as the Romans phrased it, silver for coppers; for the copper coin called the as was made equivalent for the purpose to the silver sesterce, which at this time was of four times its intrinsic value. After so long a series of wars and revolutions, and the fatal changes which had long been operating in the possession of property, it is possible that this measure was adopted as a necessary expedient. But whatever the urgency of the occasion may have been, the stroke was of fearful augury for the future, and did not fail to kindle criminal hopes in the dissolute and discontended for more than one succeeding generation. Having accomplished this important measure, Flaccus placed himself at the head of the legions destined for the Pontic War, and proceeded to the East to watch the movements of Sulla.