Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/671

REPUBLIC] to be said against the revolution involved in so sudden and enormous an enlargement of the citizen body.

(q.v.), who as tribune gallantly took up the task of reform, is claimed by Cicero as a member of that

party of the centre to which he belonged himself. Noble, wealthy and popular, he seems to have hoped to be able by the weight of his position and character to rescue the burning questions of the day from the grasp of extreme partisans and to settle them peacefully and equitably. But he, like Cicero after him, had to find to his cost that there was no room in the fierce strife of Roman politics for moderate counsels. His proposal to reform the law courts excited the equestrian order and their friends in the senate to fury. The agrarian and corn laws which he coupled with it alienated many more in the senate, and roused the old anti-popular party feeling; finally, his known negotiations with the Italians were eagerly misrepresented to the jealous and excited people as evidence of complicity with a widespread conspiracy against Rome. His laws were carried, but the senate pronounced

them null and void. Drusus was denounced in the senate house as a traitor, and on his way home was struck down by the hand of an unknown assassin. His assassination was the signal for an outbreak which had been secretly prepared for some time before. Throughout the highlands of central and southern Italy the flower of the Italian peoples rose as one man. Etruria and Umbria held aloof; the isolated Latin colonies stood firm; but the Sabellian clans, north and south, the Latinized Marsi and Paeligni, as well as the Oscan-speaking Samnites and Lucanians, rushed to arms. No time was lost in proclaiming their plans for the future. A new Italian state was to be formed. The Paelignian town of Corfinium was selected as its capital and rechristened with the proud name of Italica. All Italians were to be citizens of this new metropolis, and here were to be the place of assembly and the senate house. A senate of 500 members and a magistracy resembling that of Rome completed a constitution which adhered closely to the very political traditions which its authors had most reason to abjure.

Now, as always in the face of serious danger, the action of Rome was prompt and resolute. Both consuls took the field; with each were five legates, among them the veteran Marius and his destined rival L. Cornelius Sulla, and even freedmen were pressed into service with the legions. But the first year's campaign opened disastrously. In central Italy the northern Sabellians, and in the south the Samnites, defeated the forces opposed to them. And though before the end of the year Marius and Sulla in the north, and the consul Caesar himself in Campania, succeeded in inflicting severe blows on the enemy, and on the Marsi especially, it is not surprising that, with an empty treasury, with the insurgents' strength still unbroken, and with rumours of disaffection in the loyal districts, opinion in Rome should have turned in the direction of the more liberal policy which had been so often scornfully rejected and in favour of some compromise which should check the spread of the revolt, and

possibly sow discord among their enemies. Towards the close of the year 90 the consul L. Julius Caesar (killed by Fimbria in 87) carried the lex Julia, by which the Roman franchise was offered to all communities which had not as yet revolted; early in the next year (89) the Julian law was supplemented by the lex Plautia Papiria, introduced by two of the tribunes, M. Plautius Silvanus and C. Papirius Carbo Arvina, which

enacted that any citizen of an allied community then domiciled in Italy might obtain the franchise by giving in his name to a praetor in Rome within sixty days. A third law (lex Calpurnia), apparently passed at the same time, empowered Roman magistrates in the field to bestow the franchise there and then upon all who were willing to receive it. This sudden opening of the closed gates of Roman citizenship was completely successful, and its effects were at once visible in the diminished vigour of

the insurgents. By the end of 89 the Samnites and Lucanians were left alone in their obstinate hostility to Rome, and neither, thanks to Sulla's brilliant campaign in Samnium, had for the moment any strength left for active aggression.

The termination of the Social War brought with it no peace in Rome. The old quarrels were renewed with increased bitterness, and the newly enfranchised Italians themselves complained as bitterly of the restriction which robbed them of their due share of political influence by allowing them to vote only in a specified number of tribes. The senate itself was distracted by violent personal rivalries—and all these feuds, animosities and grievances were aggravated by the widespread economic distress and ruin which affected all classes. Lastly, war with Mithradates VI. had been declared; it was notorious that the privilege of commanding the force to be sent against him would be keenly contested, and that the contest would lie between the veteran Marius and L. Cornelius Sulla.

It was in an atmosphere thus charged with the elements of disturbance that P. Sulpicius Rufus as tribune brought

forward his laws. He proposed—(1) that the command of the Mithradatic war should be given to Marius, (2) that the new citizens should be distributed through all the tribes, (3) that the freedmen should no longer be confined to the four city tribes, (4) that any senator owing more than 2000 denarii should lose his seat, (5) that those exiled on suspicion of complicity with the Italian revolt should be recalled. These proposals inevitably provoked a storm, and both sides were ominously ready for violent measures. The consuls, in order to prevent legislation, proclaimed a public holiday. Sulpicius replied by arming his followers and driving the consuls from the forum. The proclamation was withdrawn and the laws carried, but Sulpicius's triumph was short-lived. From Nola in Campania, where lay the legions commanded by him in the Social War, Sulla advanced on Rome, and for the first time a Roman consul entered the city at the head of the legions of the Republic. Resistance was hopeless. Marius and Sulpicius fled, and Sulla, summoning the assembly of the centuries, proposed the measures he considered necessary for the public security, the most important being a provision that the sanction of the senate should be necessary before any proposal was introduced to the assembly.

Then, after waiting in Rome long enough to hold the consular elections, he left for Asia early in 87.

Sulla had conquered, but his victory cost the Republic dear. He had first taught political partisans to look for final success, not to a majority of votes in the forum or campus, but to the swords of the soldiery. The lesson was well learnt. Shortly after his departure L. Cornelius Cinna as consul revived the proposals of Sulpicius; his colleague, Gnaeus Octavius, at the head of an armed force fell upon the new citizens who had collected in crowds to vote,