121—83 BC

 

Although the Gracchi were not of aristocratic lineage on their father’s side, their paternal descent was, at any rate, distinguished, and their mother was of the bluest blood. The two brothers were both men of culture and refinement, who supported the Comitia rather than the Senate because they believed the latter to be a corrupt and self-seeking body far less fit than the People’s Assembly to promote the true interests of the nation. But in 119 BC, two years after the death of Caius Gracchus, another famous Tribune of the People, this time a genuine working man, made his bow to the restless Roman audience. His name was Caius Marius.

He was born in 157 BC in a village near the little town of Arpinum (Arpino) in the rugged Volscian Mountains, his parents being people of small means and no importance; but after a hard-working youth he had the good fortune to come under the notice of Cecilius Metellus, a man of ancient and illustrious plebeian family, but of aristocratic sympathies and high standing in the Senatorial party, who, in 133 BC persuaded him to join the army, and sent him with a letter of introduction to Scipio Africanus the Younger, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, then commanding the Roman forces fighting in Spain. Scipio took a fancy to, and rapidly promoted, the young man, whose bravery, abstemiousness, and devotion to duty caused him to be generally respected in spite of his rough manners and his habit of speaking his mind; and once, so the story goes, when a staff-officer flatteringly asked where Rome would ever find another Scipio, that general put his hand on Marius’s shoulder, and said “Possibly here”.

When the war was over and Marius had come back home with a considerable reputation for efficiency, and an unbounded belief in himself, both Scipio and Metellus helped him to fulfill his ambition to enter political life as a Tribune of the People, although the fact that he was a poor speech-maker, halting and tactless, was likely to tell against him. In 129 BC Scipio was murdered, perhaps, as many people thought, by his wife Sempronia, the sister of the Gracchi, because of his violently aristocratic prejudices which led him too often to make rude remarks about the late Tiberius Gracchus; but Metellus continued to keep a guiding hand upon Marius, and it seems evident that he hoped to train him to be a useful member of the conservative or republican party—the party, that is to say, which upheld the rigid constitution of the old Republic against the restless pressure of the new democracy.

To his disgust, however, Marius conceived an overwhelming dislike for the nobility, whom he regarded as nincompoops and voluptuaries; and as soon as he became Tribune, he proposed in the Comitia a law in regard to the suffrage which had as its object the curtailing of the powers of the aristocrats’ vehicle, the Senate. The Consul Cotta led the senators in their opposition to this bill, and arrogantly sent for Marius to explain his conduct before the House; but to everybody’s astonishment the Tribune marched into the Senate, followed by some officers of the Comitia, and told Cotta that unless he allowed the bill to pass, he, Marius, would have him thrown into prison for obstructing the People’s wishes. The Senators gasped; and when Marius then turned to his former patron Metellus and angrily asked him what he was going to do about it, Metellus, greatly shocked at such insolence in his protégé, declared that he, too, would oppose the bill, whereupon Marius called up his officers and said “Arrest that man!”  At this the nervous senators, supposing that another revolution was upon them, hastily expressed their willingness to reconsider the matter; and Marius marched out of the House again in triumph.

A few days later, however, his delighted supporters proposed another law in the Comitia; this time in regard to the distribution of corn; and when the senators opposed it Marius risked his popularity with the masses by upholding the objection, for the simple reason that he did not regard the measure as serving the public good. Both parties realized then that that current phenomenon, an honest patriot, had once more appeared in the democratic ranks.

From Tribune Marius rose at length to the high magisterial office of Praetor; and so influential did he become that Caius Julius Caesar, who later was the father of the great dictator, and who was one of the heads of the proudly aristocratic Julian family, willingly gave him his sister, Julia, in marriage.

At about this time the Romans found themselves involved in a war against King Jugurtha of Numidia in North Africa, an attractive young man who, as a prince, had served under Scipio in Spain, and was well-known to Marius. He had been a great favorite with the general, both as a dashing officer and as a sportsman, and had gone back to Numidia with such high recommendations that his royal father had made him his heir over the heads of his two other sons, with the result that a family quarrel had ensued, and Jugurtha had been obliged to kill off one of his rivals and make war against the other.

Jugurtha at length came himself to Rome to try to obtain the patronage of the Republic; and, being both rich and charming, he soon managed to win the support of the patrician senators, and did not hesitate to cement his friendship by the lavish distribution of bribes. The discovery of these payments, however, caused a tremendous scandal in the city; and the Comitia, apparently at the instigation of Marius, took sides against him, and ordered him to leave the country, which he did with a sneering remark implying that everything was a question of money in Rome, and that if only he had been richer he could have bought the whole Republic. So greatly were the People incensed with him that, in 109 BC, they decided to drive him from his throne by force; and Metellus, who was Consul for that year and was one of the few nobles who had not accepted Jugurtha’s money, was ordered to lead an expedition against him, with Marius, whom the Comitia could trust, as his second-in-command.

During the many months of indeterminate fighting which ensued, Marius won great military renown at the expense of his somewhat incompetent superior officer, and became extremely popular with the troops, whose every hardship he shared. Metellus, on the contrary, was a man who believed only in strict discipline, and inflicted punishments which were too inhuman even for Roman taste. For example, his treatment of certain Greek and Italian deserters who had been surrendered to him by the enemy was savage almost to the degree of lunacy: he buried them up to their armpits, used them as targets for his arrows, and then, alive or dead, made little bonfires over them. At last Marius decided by hook or by crook to go back to Rome, get himself elected Consul for the year 107 BC, and ignoring in the public interest the probable charge of ingratitude, make an attempt to supersede Metellus in the supreme command. Metellus, very naturally, was not willing at first to give him leave of absence, and, quite apart from other and obvious considerations, could not stomach the idea of a common and uneducated man becoming Consul; but at last, twelve days before the date of the consular elections, he magnanimously released him, whereupon Marius made a dash for home, and arrived just in time to secure election by bluntly telling the Roman People that this war was a man’s job which could never be brought to a successful conclusion by an elegant personage such as Metellus, backed by a lot of emasculated senatorial nonentities.

“My fellow citizens”, said Marius to the Comitia, “compare me, a self-made man, with these arrogant nobles. What they have but heard or read, I have seen or done. What they have learnt from books, I have acquired in the field. They despise my humble birth: I despise their imbecility, for I consider that all men are equal by birth and that only he who works hard is noble. But if these patrician gentlemen justly despise me, then let them also despise their own ancestors whose nobility, like mine, had its origin in merit. And if they envy me the honors I have received, let them also envy me my hard work, my abstinences, and the perils by which I obtained these honors. It is true that I cannot boast of ancestral portraits nor of the deeds of my forefathers; but if it be necessary I can show you my military rewards and the scars of my wounds. These are my family heirlooms, these my nobility—honors not inherited, like theirs but acquired amidst innumerable toils and dangers”.

“My speech, they say, is inelegant”, he went on; “but I have never thought that of much importance. Nor can I speak Greek; for I have never had a wish to learn a language which adds nothing to the valor of those who know it. They jeer at me as being unpolished, because I have but little skill in getting up an entertainment, and do not give my cook higher wages than my steward. I admit it, for I learnt from my father that vain indulgences belong to women, and work to men. Let the nobility, if they wish, pursue the pleasures which are so dear to them; let them devote themselves to licentiousness and luxury; let them pass their lives in revelry and feasting,...