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Carthage
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Cato, conservative Roman politician.
Charming for some.
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Gaius Marius, Roman military man,
politician, popular and mediocre
Cornelius Sulla
While India was being invaded from Bactria, and while China was at peace and growing in prosperity, Rome was sending armies across the Adriatic Sea to Greece and beyond. In Greece, popular movements had been raising the old demand that land be redistributed and debts be canceled, and men of wealth in Greece -- tradesmen, shipbuilders and landed aristocrats -- sought the help of Rome against the threat of reform or revolution. Some conservative Romans wished that their city avoid entanglements in Greece in order to avoid contacts with fancy philosophies they believed would corrupt their fellow Romans. Some Romans believed that rather than going to Greece it would be best to focus on recovery from the war against Hannibal and other problems in Italy and at home.
Those with rival opinions spoke of Rome's destiny and of its triumphs yet to come. They had become hawkish during the war against Carthage, and they had a heightened concern with security. They wanted the city to use its power to serve what they described as its interests abroad. Among these Romans were a few who sought to advance or acquire military reputations. Some among them believed that Roman military strength backed by their virtues and the power of their gods could improve the world beyond Italy. They saw Rome as more blessed than others and more capable and wise, and they argued for selective intervention beyond Italy as a duty and service to mankind.
An issue that Rome faced involved the king of Macedonia, Philip V -- son of Antigonus II. Philip had been making appeals to the dissatisfied masses in neighboring Greek cities. War broke out between Philip on one side and Rhodes and Pergamum on the other. Greek oligarchs appealed to Rome's Senate, and senators remembered that Philip had sought an alliance with Carthage during Rome's darkest hour. They feared the recent growth of Philip's navy. The senators heard exaggerated reports of Philip's aggressions. They consulted with the council of twenty priests who regulated relations with foreigners, and although Philip did not want war with Rome and Rome could have negotiated a settlement with him, the council of priests chose war.
Rome sent an army of volunteers to Greece that was poorly led and poorly disciplined, and for a couple of years Philip pursed a cautious strategy designed to wear-down the military that Rome had sent his way. The war remained mainly between Rome and Philip, Rome allies, including Rhodes and Pergamum, contributing little to the war effort. Rome's navy was vastly superior to Macedonia's, allowing Roman transport across the Adriatic, and Roman and Macedonian land-forces became equal in size. Then at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, in 197 BCE, Roman legions outmaneuvered and over-powered Philip's army. Rome drew up a settlement that satisfied their purported purpose in going to war: Philip was to stay out of Greece. Philip agreed to pay war damages. The Romans allowed Philip to stay in power, and Rome's troops returned home.
Some Greeks were impressed by what they saw as Rome's selflessness in protecting order in their part of the world. But some other Greeks were left with unpleasant memories of Roman soldiers looting, or with distaste at having been rescued by what they considered a barbarian power. And those Greeks who had feared Philip were upset that Philip was still in power.
Trouble then erupted between Rome and Antiochus III. Antiochus had expanded his rule from Syria and Palestine, and he aimed at absorbing Thrace and Asia Minor, believing as a Seleucid that these areas were rightly his. Feeling threatened by Antiochus, Rhodes and Pergamum requested Rome's help. Rome saw Antiochus' expanding empire as a possible rival to its own power, and it remembered that Antiochus had given refuge to Hannibal. Rome asked Antiochus to leave the autonomous cities of Asia Minor alone and to refrain from expanding from Asia Minor into Europe. Antiochus objected to Rome's interference in the east and asked Rome how it would feel if he began intervening in Italian affairs. He spoke of liberating the Greeks from Rome, and with his army he crossed the straits at Hellespont into Europe, a move that was welcomed by some Greek cities opposed to Rome.
Rome allied itself with Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek cities hostile to Antiochus, and together they defeated Antiochus and his allies in 190. Antiochus agreed to Rome's demand that he withdraw from Asia Minor, and Pergamum gained territory at his expense. Antiochus agreed also that he and his successors would no longer hire Greeks as soldiers. He agreed to surrender Hannibal, and he agreed to pay a great sum to Rome as tribute.
Giving money to Rome broke Antiochus financially, and in 187, when he tried to recoup his financial losses by sacking a temple in Persia, he was killed. Four years later, Hannibal was tracked down by the Romans. But rather than be captured he killed himself.
Those Greek cities that had allied themselves with Antiochus were forced into an alliance with Rome, and they were made to agree to give no aid to forces hostile to Rome or to allow such forces to cross their territory. Looking at some of the Greek cities that had been friends, Rome resented what it saw as a lack of gratitude. Romans had begun to believe that Greeks were insincere, the Roman leader Cato describing them as speaking from their lips while Romans spoke from their hearts. Romans saw contemporary Greeks as a lesser people than the Greeks of former times, and they believed that rather than just helping the Greeks they were justified in pursuing authority over them.
Roman diplomacy had been growing devious and self-serving. Rome favored oligarchies against democrats, its Senate never having approved of the authority of the masses. And Rome had begun to create borders abroad that served its interests by being ill-defined, borders that kept various powers at odds with each other and desirous of maintaining favor from Rome.
And when the people of Sardinia and Corsica rose against Rome in an attempt to re-establish their independence, Rome sent armies against them. Rome did not wish to tolerate any example of defiance. It crushed the uprisings and made slaves of 80,000 Sardinians, glutting its slave market and making "as cheap as a Sardinian" a common expression among the Romans.
After the war against Hannibal, wealthy Romans had begun investing their money abroad, some in mines in Spain and some in vast tracts of land in Sicily and elsewhere, and they turned these lands into slave plantations. Some of them lent money abroad, at high interest rates, and Roman financial operations became greater than that of the Greeks and Near Easterners. The wars in Greece had brought Roman entrepreneurs new wealth from war contracts, Rome spending as much as eighty percent of its budget on its military. There was an increase in fraud, against which the Senate was not always willing to press charges. And those with wealth imported more spices, carpets, perfumes and other luxury goods from the east.
The wars across the Adriatic were a boon also for Romans who volunteered for the military. They brought back money and booty from Greece, which encouraged more Romans to volunteer for military duty. Meanwhile, most freemen who lived in Rome and other Italian cities had no work -- most work being done by slaves. Ambition for most of the freemen was limited to getting enough to eat -- which for most city folk was boiled wheat, or what was becoming a staple diet of baked bread.
Common Romans were packed closely together in rows of jerry-built tenement houses separated by narrow alleyways. People were without protection from fires, and their only heat was the small charcoal brazier they used inside their homes. For a toilet they had a chamber pot. They had to haul their water, which was often polluted. Rome had no theaters or restaurants. Dancing was done only by those thought by others to be insane. Most Romans passed their time on their porches or in the marketplace. There was, however, some makeshift street-corner theater. And the poor were entertained by the occasional circuses and public festivals that included sensational and exciting duels between slaves -- paid for by politicians who sought approval from grateful citizens.
Prostitution and thievery flourished. Outcasts from smaller communities migrated to the big cities, especially to Rome, which had no police force. In Rome, feuds and violence between families were frequent, with the participants calling on friends and neighbors for assistance. There were no medical professionals to attend the injured or the ill or to help combat epidemics. Few Romans lived past the age of forty. The poor who died were buried in common pits in the public cemetery on Esquiline Hill. But most Romans continued to enjoy what they believed was the glory of Rome's position in the world.
Roman excursions east of the Adriatic had increased their interest in that part of the world, which resulted in many Roman men adopting the Greek habit of shaving. The Romans acquired an interest in Greek athletic games, which in Rome were played for the first time in 186. No Romans participate because the athletes were naked and the Romans saw stripping naked as shameful and as a prelude to vice.
Some wealthy Romans began sending their sons to Greece to finish their schooling, to learn rhetoric -- a lawyer's cleverness in oration. The Romans were little interested in Greek literature or other arts, and they were to produce no great plays of their own, or music, or to paint any remarkable pictures. Rome's wealthy families were inclined to leave the adding, reading and music to Hellenized slaves. And they were inclined to reject Hellenist advances in medicine. Most Romans continued to believe that they could get leprosy by passing under a dewy tree. And they continued to seek cures by priestly rituals, including an application of holy water, the "laying on of hands," or by applying salts, herbs, powders, potions, gladiator's blood, human fat or animal dung.
The Romans looked askance at Hellenist advances in astronomy. They saw the idea that the world was round as one of those peculiar, laughable ideas from the east. And they had little interest in Hellenist advances in technology. The Romans kept track of time by the rise and fall of the sun, until they borrowed a water clock from the Greeks, which told time by water dripping from one container into another. The Romans also brought a sundial from Greece, but it took them a hundred years to learn that by having moved the sundial they had to adjust it for the change in latitude.
But Rome's wealthy readily adopted the Greek drinking party and feasting - with the excuse that these were needed to boost morale. In the homes of Rome's wealthy citizens, meals had become elaborate affairs, prepared by professional cooks, served on silver plates, with occasional drinking bouts. Some Romans continued to believe in austerity, which they thought had contributed to Rome's past successes and glory, and some Senate conservatives were concerned about the new extravagances.
No longer was anyone being fined for having too grand a home, but in 182 the Senate passed a law regulating the size of parties. Partying grew, however, with the introduction of a new feast in 173: a celebration at Floralia modeled perhaps after the Greek festival of Aphrodite. The chief attraction at this new Roman festival was dances by prostitutes, dances that ended in a strip tease, which many Romans considered terribly decadent.
Those who had migrated to the cities found the gods they had worshiped in the countryside no longer significant -- gods that had guarded their woods and had made their grasses green. In the cities these folks came into contact with religions that had been imported from the east, religions that had less to do with nature and more to do with bliss, excitement and salvation.
Among these new religions was the worship of the Great Mother, Cybele, the deity that had been imported to save Rome during the war against Hannibal -- a worship that involved begging, self-mutilations, eunuch priests and colorful processions. Another imported religion was the Orphic mysteries from Greece, which claimed that the human soul was of divine origin, that human nature was divided between good and evil, and that one's soul could rise above humanity's inherited evil.
Some Romans worshiped Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Rites of this religion included frenzied, ecstatic trances and self-abandon similar to the worship of Dionysus, the god of wine among the Greeks. Some from Rome's elite families became involved in these gatherings, which were conducted in secrecy. The Senate viewed secret meetings as conspiracies that might foster subversion, and when Rome's Senate finally became aware of the spread of Bacchus worship it became alarmed, outlawed the movement and put to death seven thousand Bacchus devotees.
The Senate also outlawed astrology, seeing this import from the east as subversive. But believing in many gods rather than one jealous god, and remaining confident in Rome's power, state officials saw the worship of most gods as benign, while they continued to foster patriotism by promoting Rome's official gods: the gods that had looked after the welfare of Rome and had made Rome great.
Marcus Porcius Cato (pronounced KAY-toe), was a respected war veteran military leader, a Roman senator, a Consul, and then a Censor -- a position responsible not only for assessing property for taxation and taking the census but also for public morality. While censor he tried to restore what was thought to be the rectitude of the past. Cato believed in honesty and courage. He was frugal, believed in temperance and that luxury corrupted. He lived unostentatiously and ate coarse food, and although he had slaves he did some of his own manual labor. He opposed what he saw as a new decadence among the elite. He passed a law limiting the size of private feasting, and he created a tax on high-priced slaves in order to discourage the purchase of attractive young male slaves for use as pages or concubines. Most of Cato's colleagues saw him as representing the old virtues, the virtues that Cato believed had made Rome superior.
Cato believed that rule was doomed which ignored the collective wisdom of the past. He believed that Rome's republican government was best, that weakness lay in rule by a king or tyrant, that it was better to draw from the wisdom of the many, and he believed that Rome benefited from a balance of power between common people and the aristocracy.
Cato disliked the softer manners of the Greeks. He was fluent in Greek but opposed to Greek literature, poetry and art, and he opposed Greek medicine, claiming that it was poisoning Romans. Cato joined other Roman conservatives in fighting against the spread of Greek sophistication. He was influential in deporting from Rome two Epicureans whom he thought had been sneering at religion, and he played a role in deporting a host of other philosophers and rhetoricians from east of the Adriatic. To keep his children untouched by Greek intellectuality he home schooled his children: Latin grammar, boxing and the history of the great deeds of his forefathers. He wanted to keep Roman youth puritanical. He thought Socrates had been a babbler justly put to death for questioning religious faith and the laws of his city. Rather than all the questions put forth by eastern doubters and philosophers, Cato preferred what he saw as the solid answers provided by Roman tradition.
Cato's solid answers included his belief that by having his wife nurse the infants born to his slaves these infants would grow up loving his own children. Cato wanted to be liked by his slaves, but he believed that his slaves should be either working or sleeping, and when his slaves grew too old to work he sold them, which saved him the cost of feeding them. Never missing a chance to make a little money, he obliged his male slaves to pay him for sleeping with his female slaves. And after he aged and his wife died he had one of his slave women visit him nightly, Cato apparently believing that her compliance was right in the eyes of Rome's gods.
The eldest son of King Philip V of Macedonia, Perseus, succeeded his father in 179, and by the mid-170s Macedonia had recovered from its defeat by Rome two decades before. Perseus allied himself with Thracian and Illyrian chieftains. He gave refuge to reform-minded exiles and those fleeing debt, and across Greece he became known as a champion of the poor.
King Eumenes of Pergamum continued his father's hostility toward Macedonia, and in 172 he delivered a complaint in person to Rome's Senate and convinced the Senate that Perseus was plotting against Rome. The Senate decided that it was in Rome's interest to destroy Perseus. In the autumn of 172 Rome deceived Perseus by granting him a truce. As planned, Rome spent the winter preparing for war. And early in 171, on the pretext that Perseus had attacked some allies of Rome in the Balkans, the Senate declared war against him.
Greek cities whose rulers feared rebellion and domination by Macedonia joined with Pergamum and Rhodes in an alliance with Rome. Perseus won the sympathy of Greeks who favored the poor and those who saw Perseus as an underdog and Rome as a bully, and Perseus won support from a few Greek cities in Boeotia and from the Republic of Epirus, just west of Macedonia. But, as before, Rome had complete control of the seas, and its troops slightly outnumbered those of Macedonia. Rome's elastic military formations and forged steel swords proved superior to Macedonia's rigid formations of pikemen and its cast iron swords. In one great battle in 168, Rome destroyed Perseus' army, and Perseus died in a Roman prison three years later.
The Republic of Epirus had given Perseus no effective help during the war, but because it had allied itself with Perseus, the Romans attacked its towns and villages and carried away 150,000 people whom they sold into slavery. Rome attempted to eliminate Macedonian kings and to weaken Macedonia by dividing it into four republics. Rome forbade the divided areas to have contacts with each other. It demanded half of what the four republics collected in taxes, and Rome took possession of Macedonia's mines and forests. It was the beginning of Roman annexations east of the Adriatic.
With cooperation from wealthy Greeks, Rome moved to extend its authority over the Greeks. Roman sympathizers among the Greeks gave the Romans reports as to who was anti-Roman, and the Romans deported the denounced people in great number. In helping conservativepoliticians in one city, Roman soldiers invaded an assembly and murdered five hundred officeholders who had been reported to be anti-Roman. From Perseus' archives, the Romans discovered letters disclos-ing that he had had secret support from high-ranking officials in the Achaean League of cities in Peloponnesus. In response, the Romans rounded up close to nine hundred Achaean leaders and intellectuals, including the historian Polybius, and shipped them back to Italy, keeping them for a trial that was never held.
Rhodes and Pergamum also suffered. Unhappy with Rhodes and Pergamum for having made a deal with Perseus during the war, Rome let Pergamum's neighbors attack and harass it. And, from Rhodes, Rome took Caria, Lycia and the island of Delos. The trade of Rhodes fell as much as eighty-five percent, which benefited Italian competitors. And the sea-going piracy that Rhodes had successfully repressed as a naval power started rising again.
In 157, Cato, still a senator, visited North Africa and became aware of Carthage's prosperity, and this sparked his belief that Carthage continued to be a menace to Rome. A veteran of the war against Carthage and narrow-minded, Cato still loathed that city. He ended every speech with the words "Carthage must be destroyed."
A neighbor of Carthage, Numidia, took advantage of Rome's hostility to Carthage by making encroachments on Carthaginian territory and then asking Rome for arbitration. Rome failed to act with the impartiality that might have inhibited Numidia from making further encroachments, and after suffering a number of aggressions by Numidia, Carthage lost its patience and retaliated. Rome saw this as a breach of peace by Carthage, and in the year 150 Rome's Senate voted for war against Carthage.
Believing that war against Rome was hopeless, a delegation that Carthage sent to Rome offered Rome surrender in the form of committing Carthage to "the faith of Rome" -- a move understood to mean that Rome could take possession of Carthage but that the lives of the people of Carthage would be spared and that they would not be taken as slaves. Rome's Senate responded by granting Carthage self-rule and the right of the city and its people to keep all their possessions on condition that Carthage send to Rome three hundred of its leading citizens as hostages.
Hoping to save their city from destruction and amid much grieving, the Carthaginians sent their leading citizens to Rome as hostages. No longer wedded to its old concept of honor, Rome had already decided to wipe Carthage from the map. Rome demanded that Carthage surrender all its weapons, and Carthage surrendered its weapons, including two hundred thousands suits of mail and two thousand catapults. Rome demanded that the people of Carthage surrender their city and move ten miles inland. Moving back ten miles meant not only leaving behind their homes but also their docks and quays and their ability to carry on their sea-going trade. The people of Carthage preferred war and refused Rome's demands. Rome responded as it had planned, with military operations, which began in the year 149.
Meanwhile, people in what today is Portugal -- the Lusitani -- were again attempting to free themselves from Roman domination, and so too were peoples in central Spain. Roman legions overwhelmed the Lusitani. Rome offered them peace and land, trapped them, slaughtered 9,000 of them and enslaved 20,000. A new leader arose among the outraged Lusitani and renewed his people's war against the Romans, the Lusitani achieving their first success in the year 147, killing 10,000Roman soldiers.
One response by Rome to the new trouble in Spain was a change in the New Year. To give one of its generals a longer season for campaigning, the Senate moved the date of the New Year from March 15 to January 1.
While Rome was busy with Spain and Carthage, an adventurer named Andricus, who claimed to be the son of Perseus, defied Rome and reunited Macedonia. Rome sent an army to Macedonia that arrived in 148 and drove out Andricus. By the fall of 147, Rome's legions were in control of the countryside around Carthage. Rome had not yet penetrated Carthage's wall, but the possibility of a united effort against Rome by Carthage, Macedonia and the Greeks was over. Rome decided that its presence would be needed in Macedonia to keep the Macedonians in line, and it began a permanent rule and military occupation there, Macedonia becoming the first Roman province east of the Adriatic Sea.
By now, of the 900 or so Achaean leaders and intellectuals that had been shipped to Italy some twenty years before, only 200 were still alive. Rome's Senate allowed them to return home, but resentment against Rome remained strong among Greeks of the Achaean League, and this resentment increased when Rome supported Sparta in a war that erupted between Sparta and other members of the Achaean league. Some in the city of Corinth saw the continuing war between Rome and Carthage and the continuing rebellion in Spain as an opportune time to stand against Rome's pretensions of authority over Greek cities. It was a time of economic distress among the Greeks, and a leader from Corinth named Critolaus traveled from town to town in Greece calling for debt reform and opposition to Rome.
Critolaus described the real enemies of the Greeks as those among them who called for conciliation with Rome. In Corinth, moderate opinion was silenced, and in the spring of 146 Critolaus persuaded the Achaean league to declare war against Rome's presence in their part of the world. The city of Thebes, resenting Roman interference in their affairs, allied itself with the Achaean league. Across Greece, patriotic clubs appeared and denounced Rome. Athens and Sparta stayed out of the war, but elsewhere across Greece men eagerly joined Critolaus' army or another army preparing to fight Rome. Slaves were freed and recruited for the fight, and wealthy Greeks who favored Rome were frightened into contributing jewelry and money to the cause.
In the spring of 146, Roman soldiers were finally able to penetrate Carthage's walls. They swarmed into the city and began fighting street by street. First Carthage's harbor area fell to the Romans, then the market area, and finally the citadel in the city-center. Amid suicides and carnage, the Romans demolished and burned the city. They carried off survivors, selling the woman and children into slavery and throwing the men into prison, where they were to perish. Then the Romans spread salt across what had been Carthage's farmlands, and Carthage was no more.
In Greece, Critolaus' army was defeated by the Roman army sent from Macedonia. Later in 146 a force sent from Rome arrived and defeated an army of Greeks at the city of Corinth. To warn others, the Romans slaughtered all the men they found in Corinth. They enslaved the city's women and children, and they shipped Corinth's treasures to Italy and burned the city to the ground. Greek cities hostile to Rome had their walls demolished and their people disarmed. The Romans found Thebes entirely empty of people, its inhabitants having fled to wander through mountains and wilderness. According to the Greek historian Polybius, people everywhere were throwing themselves "down wells and over precipices."
Rome dissolved the Achaean league and had its leaders put to death. Rome's governor to Macedonia became governor also of the entire Greek peninsula. Rome would now allow only internal rule by Greek cities -- by wealthy elites. Border disputes would remain, but they would be settled by Roman power. It was the beginning of Rome's permanent presence in the region and of a rule by foreigners that was to last two thousand years.
Polybius had fared better than most of the leaders and intellectuals that Rome had taken from Achaea. While a prisoner, he met the head of one of Rome's great families, Scipio (pronounced SIP-ee-oh) Aemilianus. Scipio found Polybius good company and exchanged books with him. He took Polybius with him on military campaigns, and he introduced Polybius to Rome's high society. Polybius remained in Rome after the other captives returned to Greece, and Scipio became his patron while he attempted to write the history of Rome to 146 BCE -- a work that happened to be compatible with the views of his patrons.
Polybius sought to explain how Rome was able to become master over the Greeks. He described the Romans as having moderation, integrity, valor, boldness, discipline and frugality in greater amounts than have other peoples. This, he wrote, enabled Rome to unite and to close ranks when faced with danger. His fellow Greeks, he wrote, were more literate and educated than the Romans but when faced with adversity they had weakened themselves by division and argument.
Polybius described the superiority of Romans as belonging mainly to the aristocrats. Common people, Roman and otherwise, he saw as lightheaded, filled with lawless appetites and inclined toward bursts of anger and fits of temper. He described the recent rebellion of Greece's common people against Rome as insane folly, and he believed that despite its abuses Rome was bestowing upon the Greeks great benefits.
Polybius saw Rome's patriarchal tradition and its religion as serving the cohesion that made Rome successful. Awe of the supernatural, he wrote, helps maintain cohesion. Religion, he wrote, helps to pacify the common man's anarchic temper. And he described Rome's elite and other ruling elites as using religion with this in mind.
Polybius saw Rome's success as partly the result of its willingness to enforce discipline by such punishments as executing a sentry for neglecting his duty or beating a soldier with a cudgel for throwing away his weapon, or beating a soldier for boasting in order to get a decoration, or for homosexuality. He saw strength in Rome's willingness to punish by decimation -- the killing of every tenth man -- in any military unit that had displayed cowardice.
Polybius believed that societies went through cycles of growth, decay and fall. And, believing that low birth rates contributed to decline , he warned Rome's aristocracy about their declining numbers. He wrote of the incorruptibility of the Romans but warned them about their new hedonism and the lack of discipline that was creeping into their army. He warned them about the spread of indifference and a growing influence of the mob.
Polybius wrote that Rome's success was in part the result of its superior institutions and in part the result of its superior people, and at least a few historians in modern times would describe the Romans as having had a genius at making law. Having given Rome's elite credit for Rome's success, would Polybius have blamed them for its decay? After Polybius, Rome's institutions would prove inadequate in channeling the impulses of its citizens, and, despite their so-called genius at law, the Romans would fail to create laws that would improve their institutions and maintain order. Instead, rising in Rome was a new politics of violence.
With the growing supply of slaves, on some days in Rome thousands of men, women and children might be put on the market, forced to stand naked, a placard around their neck to advertise their qualities, their flesh inspected and felt. For a pretty boy or girl a Roman might have to pay more, but a Sardinian, Gaul or Spaniard cost very little -- far less than it cost to breed a slave.
Plantation owners placed male slaves in barracks or housed them in underground dungeons, leaving them separated from their families, which they might never see again. Plantation slaves worked in gangs ordered about by men with lashes. They were chained at night so they could not run away. They could be killed by their master without the master suffering any form of punishment, but, if a slave killed a master, a number of them could be held accountable and any of them put to death.
To appear affluent a Roman family had to have at least ten slaves, and such families had slaves for just about every task. And the power that a master and his family had over their domestic slaves encouraged some slaves to wheedle their way into favor through flattery or sexual favors.
Most Romans saw slavery as a natural part of life, as a result of their being favored by the gods, that defeat and slavery were the fate of inferior peoples. For some Romans slavery was a source of ego enhancement: looking at a creature more wretched than they bolstered their pride, and many Romans made slaves the objects of their ridicule.
Runaway slaves were hunted down, and if they were caught they might be executed. Runaway slaves roamed the countryside, surviving by banditry and making travel dangerous. Slaves sometimes revolted in groups, one of the larger of such revolts coming in 196 BCE, a revolt that ended with the Romans executing seven thousand of them. A generation later the Romans crushed another rebellion, involving around four thousand slaves.
In 135 BCE, about four hundred slaves in Sicily revolted after being encouraged to do so by a slave-priest from Syria named Eunus, who announced the favor of the gods. Historians call this the First Servile War. The slaves massacred most of their masters, sparing only a few who had been most humane to them. This uprising encouraged other slaves in Sicily, and as many as sixty thousand joined the revolt and seized a number of Sicilian towns, and they defeated the first of the armies that Rome sent against them.
In 133, while the slave revolt in Sicily was still alive, Rome acquired its first possession in Asia Minor. This was Pergamum, whose king ruled and received tribute from much of western Asia Minor. Pergamum was a prosperous state, receiving income from state owned, slave powered, textile and parchment workshops and income from cattle raising and agriculture. Pergamum had been allied with Rome and was ruled by an eccentric king named Attalus III. Near death and childless, Attalus willed that his kingdom to Rome. It has been surmised that he did so to prevent a relative, Aristonicus, from succeeding him. At the time, the slave unrest had spread east of the Adriatic. And Pergamum was also shaken by a wider social unrest. Perhaps Attalus believed that only Rome would be able to maintain law and order in his empire. At any rate, Attalus died in 133, and Rome accepted Pergamum as its inheritance.
It was during the slave revolts of the 130s that Tiberius Gracchus was agitating for reform in Rome. Tiberius Gracchus belonged to a distinguished, noble family. His grandfather had been a consul, military leader and hero. His mother was one of Rome's most cultured women. She had had Tiberius educated -- an education that emphasized public duty, the maintenance of godliness and the "divine spark of reason" in men. This was the Stoicism of Tiberius' boyhood tutor, a Greek named Blossius, who remained with Tiberius in adulthood as an advisor.
Tiberius had a reputation as a courageous military leader: he had been a commander in the final war against Carthage and was reputed to have been the first Roman to scale Carthage's wall. In 137 he served with distinction in Spain. And when he returned to Rome he entered politics. He complained bitterly that those who had bore arms for their country enjoyed nothing more than air and light, and he complained that men had fought and many had died to maintain the luxury and wealth of others. He spoke of the restless poor being a threat to political stability, and he expressed his concern that the small farmer, who had been the backbone of the republic, was disappearing. For the safety of all, he said, it was urgent that as many families as possible be restored to the land.
Rome was entering a period of class warfare -- the same warfare that had weakened the Greeks. Tiberius won an enthusiastic following among Rome's urban poor. In 133 he was elected by a Plebeian Assembly as one of its ten tribunes. The Senate had gained more power and prestige during the Punic Wars, and the Plebeian Assemblies (Comitias Plebus) had declined in influence. The Romans had emerged from the Punic wars with the widespread understanding that ultimate authority over the military lay with the Senate, that it was the Senate's job to know, advise and guide, and the Senate's job to decide the question of war or peace and other foreign policy matters. But Tiberius' charisma and call for reforms revived the prestige of the Plebeian Assembly and the office of Tribune. Tiberius raised the issue of the right of tribunes to initiate legislation and of Rome's Constitution not having given legislative powers to the Senate. Senators were unhappy with this sudden questioning of their powers, and they were unhappy too with legislation initiated by Tiberius that called for landless veterans to be settled on public lands that the rich had been using. Tiberius' land reform meant a loss of land among the Senators, but the Senators found another issue to speak to: annoyed with Tiberius' legislation, they complained about what they called his ambition.
The Senate vetoed Tiberius' reforms, and Tiberius moved to override the veto, which the law stated could be done with the backing of all ten of the Plebeian Assembly's tribunes. But a tribune who was a large landowner sided with the Senate. To counter this, Tiberius organized a special election in the Plebeian Assembly that replaced the offending tribune with someone who supported the reforms. The Plebeian Assembly then passed into law a modified version of his reform bill, and Tiberius put himself, his brother Gaius and his father-in-law on the board that was to oversee implementations of the reforms. From the Senate came an anger that Polybius had attributed to the lower classes. The Senate charged that the removal from office of the tribune was a violation of tradition. Tiberius argued that tribunes were sworn to defend the interests of the common people and that by opposing his reforms the tribune in question had broken that trust. Senators accused Tiberius of attempting to usurp the Senate's prerogatives and accused him of being a dangerous revolutionary with tyrannical ambitions, and they attempted to delay implementation of Tiberius' reforms by refusing to vote for its funding. Contrary to the Senate's authority in controlling finances, Tiberius secured funds from the treasury of Pergamum, which had just been willed to Rome.
After serving his one-year term as a tribune, Tiberius sought a second term, finding precedent for doing so from the previous century. A rumor circulated that Tiberius was seeking dictatorial powers. During Tiberius' campaign for re-election a riot broke out between his supporters and his opponents. News of the riot reached the Senate. One of the Senators -who was also Rome's chief priest, the Pontifex Maximus -- quickly gathered a mob that included servants and clients of prominent city leaders. The mob rushed the supporters of Tiberius, clubbing and stoning to death three hundred of them. They found Tiberius, tore his toga from his body, bludgeoned him to death and threw him and the bodies of the other dead men into the Tiber River.
It was the first recorded political murder in Rome in four hundred years. The Senate attempted to legalize the killings: it set up a court that tried surviving supporters of Tiberius, and it posthumously charged Tiberius with having planned an attempt at becoming king. Many Romans viewed the Senators as august and honorable men, and they believed the charges against Tiberius. They reasoned that if Tiberius wanted to become king then he deserved to die. Many others believed the charges against Tiberius were false and that he had died for the common people. The court found some of Tiberius' followers guilty of having supported Tiberius and had them executed. Then, concerned with public opinion, the Senate sent the Pontifex Maximus to the east, ostensibly on business but in fact into exile.
The slave revolt that had spread to western Asia Minor was joined by serfs. Aristonicus, perhaps believing himself the rightful heir to the throne in Pergamum, appealed to slaves and serfs and joined forces with them in a common cause against Roman authority. After Tiberius' murder, his old stoic tutor and aide, Blossius, fled from Rome and joined Aristonicus and his movement. Aristonicus warred against Rome's allies in Asia Minor -- the rulers of Pontus, neighboring Bithynia and Paphlagonia, and Cappadocia - and he easily defeated them. In Sicily, after three years of struggle, the Romans finally broke the back of the slave uprising there, leaving only mopping up operations to carry out. And Roman legions went to Asia Minor where they defeated Aristonicus and isolated him in a region in Caria. Aristonicus surrendered, and the Romans took him and the treasure of Pergamum's ruling family to Rome, where Aristonicus was paraded through the streets, thrown into prison and executed by strangulation. The Romans pursued the remnants of Aristonicus' army, which was fighting a guerrilla war. The Romans poisoned the water wells that local people and the guerrillas depended upon, which brought an end to the war and brought Roman control over much of western Asia Minor.
The reforms of Tiberius Gracchus remained law after his death, and more reforms were made law after the Plebeian Assembly elected his younger brother, Gaius Gracchus, tribune in the years 123 and 122. Gaius Gracchus helped create more colonies for Rome's landless. He sponsored legislation to put people to work building secondary roads. He helped improve conditions within the army and outlawed its recruitment of boys under seventeen. And he increased the capacity of storing grain in Rome, which helped stabilize grain prices.
Enjoying popular support, Gaius (pronounced G-EYE-us) successfully challenged the power of the Senate by passing legislation that outlawed proceedings such as those the Senate had used to persecute his brother's supporters. This new law forbade trials with the power of capital punishment that did not have the approval of the Plebeian Assembly.
Hoping to build opposition against the patricians of the Senate, Gaius encouraged the appetite of the class called the equites: families that had made their wealth from government contracts, finance and trade. He gave jury duty to the equites in place of exclusive jury duty by the patricians. He encouraged the equites to have more say in government, which antagonized the Senate.
Gaius sought Roman citizenship for those Italians who had fought with Rome's armies, and he advocated helping the landless among these veterans by founding a colony where Carthage once stood. Among those opposed to giving citizenship to Italian veterans were Roman businessmen, who feared competition and a lost advantage. Opponents warned Romans that the spread of Roman citizenship would jeopardize their good seats at shows and festivals. They disseminated false rumors about the failure of Gaius' project at Carthage, and they managed to turn enough of Rome's citizens against Gaius that he lost his bid for a third term as tribune.
Taking advantage of a drop in Gaius' popularity, moves were made to repeal some of his and Tiberius' reforms. Gaius rallied his supporters against this, and he gathered bodyguards around himself. A scuffle occurred between his supporters and opponents that left dead the servant of a consul, who was a vociferous enemy of Gaius. The consul used this incident to persuade the Senate to create martial law, which enabled the Senate to create an armed force with which the consul could combat civil unrest.
Knowing they were the targets of the Senate's martial law, Gaius and as many as three thousand of his supporters withdrew to Aventine Hill. The consul's army overran and killed them. A reward had been offered for Gaius' head, and he was decapitated. A soldier, it is said, scooped out the brains and filled the skull with lead and then turned it in for the reward: an equal weight in gold.
In the North African kingdom of Numidia a prince named Jugurtha became king in an old-fashioned way: he murdered family rivals. And he massacred the male population of a city that resisted his taking power, a massacre that included many Italian and Roman businessmen who had been residing there. Many in Rome saw Jugurtha as having violated Rome's dignity. Roman businessmen concerned with trade and investment in North Africa wanted a full-scale war against Jugurtha, but the Senate did nothing. Then one of Rome's tribunes hinted that Jugurtha had used his great wealth to bribe some senators. And, responding to agitation from this tribune and Rome's citizenry, the Senate, in 112, declared war against Jugurtha.
People in Numidia saw the coming of Roman legions as an invasion, and they swung to the side of Jugurtha. For more than two years the Romans fought a guerrilla war in difficult terrain. A Roman cavalry officer named Gaius Marius rose amid the timid and incompetent aristocratic officers in Numidia. Marius was brave, aggressive, blunt speaking, tough and had disdain for the niceties of the educated elite, which put him in good stead with his soldiers. Marius complained about the way the war was being fought, and letters from soldiers to Rome supported him and his views. Those in Rome with business interests in Numidia were losing money as the war dragged on, and they supported Marius.
While on leave in Rome, Marius decided to run for consul, despite his humble origins. The Military Assembly (Comitia Centuriata ) elected him to one of the two consul seats. Moved by Marius' popularity, the Senate voted to transfer command of the armies in Numidia to him. The following year, while Marius was still in Numidia, he won another term as consul -- despite a law against a consul serving more than one term in succession and a law against selecting as consul someone away from Rome.
Marius defeated Jugurtha in the year 106, and he returned to Rome, displaying the soon to be executed Jugurtha in his victory parade. By now, Rome was being threatened by tall, blondish, tribes of Cimbri and Teutons who had been driving from their territory in Jutland and Frisia. Rome had sent armies against them, but these armies were poorly led and fared badly. In one battle the Romans lost as many as 80,000 dead -- Rome's greatest defeat since Cannae. These losses left Italy open to a Cimbri and Teuton invasion. Fear and panic swept through Italy, and in Rome frightened people mobbed and stoned senators. The Cimbri knew and respected the power of Rome and went in the direction of Spain, and the Teutons roamed about southern Gaul. The crisis in the north had ended, but fear of the Cimbri and Teutons remained.
In 104, Marius was again elected consul, and he was elected consul the following year and the year after that, while he was preparing an army for war against the Cimbri and Teutons. Before Marius had taken command, only those from families with property had been conscripted into Rome's army, and they were not eager to serve nor as well disciplined as had been Rome's farmer-soldiers of previous centuries. Landless men had joined the army only as baggage handlers. In the war against Jugurtha, poor discipline had become widespread, with the sons of businessmen especially lacking in discipline and motivation. Disturbed by this, Marius rejected conscription and had begun creating an army of Roman and Italian volunteers from among the landless and the urban poor. He motivated his army with pay, booty and the promise of retirement on a piece of land donated by the state, and he improved the training of his recruits, especially with their swords. With longer service, Marius' volunteers had more time to develop their martial skills. Marius gave his army new equipment and new tactics. He standardized the size of each Roman legion to 6,000 men. He created an army with more esprit de corps. But it was an army more concerned with themselves as a unit than with the interests of Rome.
In 102 the Romans extended their rule abroad to include Cilicia in the southeastern corner of Asia Minor, which had been a pirate base. And that year Marius and his army went north and crushed both the Teutons and the Cimbri. Meanwhile, Rome's governor to Sicily had decided to reduce pressures of slave discontent there by announcing that he would return a few hundred slaves to their homelands. Those who stood to lose slaves protested and persuaded the governor to change his mind. Slaves expecting their freedom responded to their disappointment by revolting, and, as before, other slaves joined in. The new slave revolt overran the whole of Sicily. This was the Second Servile War (103-101), and the revolt took Rome two years of bloody fighting to subdue.
Seen as Rome's savior, Marius was elected consul by the Military Assembly in 100 BCE for the sixth time. With Marius, common Romans felt that a new era had arrived. A tribune named Saturninus and his praetor friend, Glaucia, wished to revive the reforms of the Gracchi brothers. They were political allies of Marius and supplied him with knowledge of the workings of government that he lacked. They made fiery public speeches, and they wrote a program of reforms for Marius. The program called for Marius' Italian veterans to receive Roman citizenship, and his veterans were to receive lands that had been taken from the Cimbri. Also for Marius' veterans, colonies were to be created in Sicily, Macedonia and Greece. And for people in general, there was to be a reduction in the price of grain.
Marius could not easily oppose these reforms, and he introduced them for legislation. From some opposed to reform came a renewed threat of violence, and Marius countered these threats by calling his veterans into the streets. The Senate vetoed the reforms, and one of the tribunes sided with the senators, preventing the Plebeian Assembly from overriding the veto. But by threatening the Senate with Marius' veterans, Saturninus coerced it into changing its position. The reforms were passed. So too was a law that each senator had to take an oath to support the new legislation or surrender his seat, and only one among the frightened senators refused to acquiesce.
Hatreds remained from the period of the Gracchi brothers two and three decades before, and, given the violence that had been used in the past by those opposed to reform, Saturninus, Glaucia and their backers saw their use of violence as appropriate. Marius and the equites gave Saturninus and Glaucia moral support - the equites having sided with the common people against the patricians. But backers of Saturninus and Glaucia went too far in their use of violence: they murdered a recently elected tribune whom they disliked, then during Glaucia's campaign as Rome's other consul they attacked and killed Glaucia's rival. Bloodshed and chaos frightened the equites, who started going over to the side of the patricians and the Senate. Bolstered by this support, the Senate passed an ultimatum and called on Marius to restore order. Marius was shamed by the killings, and he also sided with the Senate. Using his veterans, he had Saturninus and Glaucia and some of their followers arrested and locked in the Senate house for safekeeping. The place was insufficiently safe. A group hostile to Saturninus and Glaucia tore a hole in its roof and stoned the two men and their followers to death.
The reforms that Saturninus and Glaucia had forced upon the Senate were declared invalid, and many common Romans were left disappointed -- disappointed also with Marius. Marius felt humiliated, and to escape from scorn he went on a tour of the empire in the east, hoping that as Rome's most renowned general he might soon again be asked to command its armies. The Senate rejoiced, and in 95 BCE it attempted to punish those who had supported Marius' reforms, many of whom were Marius' Italian veterans. The Senate passed a law that ordered all non-Roman Italians in Rome to move from the city.
Italians, meanwhile, were becoming fed up with the Romans taking advantage of them, as the Romans did in the period of the Gracchi reforms, when Rome confiscated Italian lands for distribution among Romans. And they were becoming fed up with the imperious attitudes of visiting Roman officials, as when the wife of a visiting senior Roman official had all the men turned out of a bath so she could use it and then complained that the bath was not clean.
By now, Italians and Romans had the same customs and spoke the same language. The Italians had fought alongside the Romans in their imperial wars and against the threat from the Germans. They paid taxes to Rome and shared the financial burden of Rome's wars but with no corresponding increase in rewards and without equal protection under Roman law. A Roman soldier could not be summarily executed by an officer, but an Italian soldier could. In warfare, Romans got a greater share of booty, and the Italians were often sent against the tougher enemies. Now the Italians wanted equality, and they wanted their votes to count concerning vital issues decided in Rome. They wanted to be equal partners in what had become a nation.
A Roman senator and tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus II, supported the Italians, but his effort was frustrated by opposition among Romans in general and by most senators, who looked with scorn upon anyone not originally from Rome and not of a Roman noble family. For his trouble, Drusus was assassinated, and when word of his assassination spread through Italy it was a signal to Italians that relief from Rome would not be forthcoming. Various Italian cities increased communications with each other and took steps that to Rome suggested conspiratorial alliances.
Rome sent officials to Italian cities to spy and to persuade. In the city of Asculum, a visiting Roman official berated a crowd. The crowd became enraged and killed him and his aides. Fearing retaliation from Rome, the crowd closed their city's gates, and they hunted down and killed all the Romans they could find. Other Italian cities joined Asculum in an open revolt against Rome. Rome sent its legions against the rebel cities. A civil war had begun, and in the first year of the war, Rome moved to prevent more cities from joining the rebellion, and they did so by extending citizenship to their inhabitants, pretending they were doing so as a reward for their loyalty. What the Romans had resisted before the war, they were now offering because of the war.
In 89, the second year of the war, the Romans gained the upper hand, with Marius having gladly accepted a minor command offered him by the Senate. A Roman army attacked Asculum, and it was written that only a handful of that city's 60,000 people survived. Anxious to end the war, Rome offered citizenship to those cities that would agree to stop fighting, and many cities accepted, and the war began winding down.
But by now the war had damaged Italy's economy. During the war, debt had become more widespread. Uncertain about the future, financiers had begun refusing more loans and demanding payment. Those Romans angered by the money-lenders had begun a movement against usury. A praetor responded favorably to the movement and invoked an ancient law against usury that had long been ignored. This infuriated financiers, and a gang of men mobbed the praetor and cut his throat, and some who had spoken in favor of the praetor and against usury were lynched.
As the war between Rome and the Italians was winding down, wrangling began among Roman politicians as to how the vote should be distributed among Rome's new Italian citizens. A moderate senator and tribune, Sulpicius Rufus, wanted a more equal distribution of voting powers than did conservative senators. Rufus also favored allowing the return of those who had been exiled for siding with the Italians against Rome. And to help curtail the temptation among senators to take bribes, Rufus proposed expelling from the Senate anyone having debt over a certain amount. Some senators bitterly opposed Rufus, and Rufus gathered around him three thousand bodyguards. Rufus sought support from wealthy businessmen, and, believing that Marius would be of help against the Senate, Rufus supported Marius as commander of an army in the east to counter the expansion of a king named Mithridates.
Mithridates was half-Greek, half-Persian, exceptionally bright, and ruler of Pontus, a kingdom on the coast in northeastern Asia Minor. He had spread his power westward in Asia Minor, to the territory that Rome had taken from Aristonicus -- where Roman rule remained unpopular. There Mithridates had inspired a massacre of around 80,000 Roman and Italian residents, many of them businessmen. Then Mithridates sent troops from Asia Minor into Thrace and through Macedonia to Greece, where he inspired more rebellion against Rome.
Instead of choosing Marius to lead the war against Mithridates, the Senate chose one of its two consuls, a man who had become a personal enemy of Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla (pronounced SÜ-lah). Sulla was from an impoverished noble family. He had served under Marius in Numidia, and he had become renowned as a general during the war against the Italians. He viewed the political turmoil in Rome of recent years as did most conservatives: not as the creation of patricians reluctant to accept reforms but as the product of anarchical inclinations among common people. The appointment of Sulla instead of Marius disturbed those who favored reforms. Sulla left Rome to take command of the six legions in Italy that had been readied for the war against Mithridates, and those who supported reforms took to the streets to express their frustrations. In violation of a sacred prohibition against a military leader marching troops into Rome, Sulla returned with his army. From their roof tops, people threw stones at Sulla's army, and Sulla responded by setting their houses afire. Sulla defeated an army of men that Marius had hastily assembled, and he and his troops overwhelmed others who supported Rufus and Marius. Rufus' severed head was nailed up for public display. Marius and others fled the city, and Sulla had them declared outlaws, which allowed anyone to kill them.
Sulla decreed that the Senate would have the power to veto any bill or election it pleased and that tribunes would be unable to initiate legislation. Sulla looked with nostalgia upon his noble ancestry, and he wished a return to what he believed were the principles that had made Rome great. Wishing to establish a legitimate government, Sulla did not run again for consul as Marius had, and in the year 87, the Military Assembly elected one consul who supported Sulla and another consul who was popular among the common people: a man named Cinna. Sulla and his troops were looking forward to going east to combat Mithridates, and before they departed Sulla had Cinna swear that he would not try to subvert the new order.
Soon after Sulla and his troops left for the east, political violence erupted again in Rome. To save himself from conservatives, Cinna fled Rome, and the Senate took away his consulship. Cinna raised an army among Italians, and Marius joined him with a force he had gathered from among his veterans and some local shepherds and runaway slaves. To counter Cinna and Marius, the Senate raised a force, but to no avail. Cinna and Marius marched their armies into Rome and they won control of the city. Marius, almost seventy, sought vengeance for his years of humiliation, and he and Cinna sought to secure their standing against any possible future vengeance. Their troops butchered all supporters of Sulla that they could find. They murdered various senators and nailed their heads up for public display while much of the rest of the Senate fled the city. The violence and disrespect for rule by law that Rome's conservatives had initiated in the days of the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, had come full circle.
Cinna was made consul again, and Marius became the other consul, a consul for the seventh time, as a prophet had told him he would. But the prophesy was apparently only a tease: Marius died after only a month in office. Cinna was left with control of the city, and he enjoyed the support of most the city's plebeians. He repealed Sulla's laws, reduced all debts by seventy-five percent, gave complete equality to Italians, declared Sulla a public enemy, confiscated Sulla's property and persecuted Sulla's family and friends.
During his war against Mithridates, Sulla was popular with his troops, giving them freedom to plunder and to slay officers who had made themselves unpopular - Sulla wishing his officers to lead rather than command. In 86 (the year that Marius died), Sulla sacked Athens, which had joined Mithridates against Rome. And that year, in a brilliant campaign, Sulla won significant victories against Mithridates. In 85 BCE, Mithridates agreed to withdraw from all territories he had conquered, to surrender part of his navy, and to pay Rome an indemnity. Sulla restored various kings that Mithridates had deposed. He punished those Greek cities that had been prominent in their support of Mithridates. Then in 84, Sulla began his return to Rome.
In the spring of 83, Sulla and eight legions landed unopposed at the heel of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula. Many of those who had fled from Marius and Cinna flocked to Sulla's ranks. Cinna sent an army east to remove Sulla from his command, but the troops he sent joined forces with Sulla. Cinna sent another force against Sulla, which met Sulla halfway to Rome. Many deserted to Sulla's side. Sulla defeated Cinna's army. Then in 82 Sulla made his assault on Rome. And with the approach of Sulla's army, a mob in Rome slaughtered numerous aristocrats.
Sulla's army overran Rome and conquered it, and it slaughtered 8,000 Romans that it had taken prisoner. Sulla drew up an enemies list: forty insufficiently conservative or insufficiently loyal senators and a list of sixteen hundred members of the equites. He gave rewards to informers who helped round up the enemies. Men were taken by surprise in their homes, in the streets and in temples. Some were killed outright. Some were dragged through the streets, as frightened spectators dared not protest. Sulla had the property of the executed distributed to his soldiers, which inspired some to accuse and attack anyone with property. And Sulla set free the nearly forty thousand slaves of the executed, giving them his name and winning a new source of support and new recruits for repressing and terrorizing those considered enemies of his rule.
Sulla sought to undo the failings of the previous fifty years. He created a new constitution that he believed would restore the republic and traditional order and dignity to Rome. He founded new laws, each supported by a precedent from the old republic. Believing in firm government by leaders of the upper classes, again he gave more power to the Senate. He reduced the powers of the tribunes and the Plebeian Assembly. But he gave some of its seats in the Senate to members of the equites, believing that they too should be a part of the ruling elite and that this would put the equites in support of the government rather than with "the mob." He reorganized administration of the provinces. He made it law that one had to hold a lower office before being elected to a higher office. He created term limits, making it law that one had to wait ten years before running for another term for the same office. He made it law that consuls were to be at least 42 years-old. He ended the distribution of free grain among Rome's poor, hoping this would encourage some of them to leave the city. He moved against what he saw as subversive religions, prohibiting what he viewed as magic, the performing of nocturnal rites and witchcraft. Those found guilty of performing these were to be crucified or thrown to wild beasts.
In the year 79, just three years after returning to Rome, Sulla surprised the world by retiring. He was around sixty and believed that peace had been established at home and abroad and that Rome's government was functioning as it had in its glorious past. He thought he had set the world right. In his first year of retirement he hunted and fished, he enjoyed the company of friends, he enjoyed seeing comedy plays he had written performed on the stage, and he studied philosophy, and like some other bright men he became a believer in Epicureanism. Then, after this one year of peace and contentment, he died, unaware that the Roman Republic still lacked that which was essential for peace: the political compromise that Cato had believed in, which could come only with more democratic institutions. Rome's senators did not represent any popular constituency, and the Senate was not obliged to accept initiatives by the Plebeian Assembly.
Recommended Books
A History of the Roman World, 757 to 146 B.C. , by H.H. Scullard, 4th Edition, 1991
From Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68, by H.H. Scullard, 1990
Roman Realities by Finley Hooper, 1979
The Rise of the Roman Empire, by Polybius, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert,
The Religions of the Roman Empire by John Ferguson, 1988
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