Empires: Rome - The Playboy & The General Part Three

The officer informing Sulla of this was one of Marius's men and had come to take command of his army. As Sulla did some quick thinking in his tent, no one except him realized how dangerous this rivalry had become. Sulla had at Nola, 30,000 men under his command, only the legions of Pompeius Strabo, who were finalizing the campaign against the rebels on the other side of Italy had enough men to rival him. Marius, back in Rome didn't have any legions. How had Marius missed this line of thinking in Sulla's mind? Obviously the thought that Sulla would come out of the pen he had been forced into like a raging bull had never crossed Marius's mind. There was a reason for this however. In the history of the Republic, no Roman general had led his men against the city of Rome. What Sulla was thinking was unimaginable to Roman citizens. The Roman army was not the private militia of the general who commanded it, and its loyalty was owed to whoever was appointed to its command by due process of the constitution. What Sulla was pondering was a blasphemy in a way and Marius had no reason to think that the rules had changed.

Sulla had great popularity with his troops and when he broke the news to them from Rome they stoned Marius's envoy to death. Sulla left behind a single legion to continue the siege at Nola and marched northwards to Rome. The news of his decision to take power into his own hands was greeted in Rome with disbelief. However, as he got closer to the city delegations were sent to shame Sulla into stopping his putsch. His only reply to these men had been that he was marching on Rome "to free her of her tyrants." Sulla indeed did the unthinkable when he crossed the pomerium with his legions. The pomerium was the furrow that was said to have been originally ploughed by Romulus himself-the founder of the city-as a kind of sacred boundary. The citizens of Rome threw tiles and such things as they could find at Sulla's soldiers with such ferocity that they started to turn back for a bit until Sulla ordered that fire-arrows be shot at the rooftops, where the barrage of the citizens projectiles was coming from. Flames began to erupt down the length of Rome's highways and Sulla himself rode down the via Sacra-the greatest of them all in triumph. Sulla's men took up positions outside the Senate House. Marius and Sulpicius had fled the city after they had made a failed attempt to raise the city's slaves against Sulla's legions.

The unimaginable had happened. A Roman general had crossed over the sacred pomerium and was now the master of the city. Future generations would see this as a great turning point. This was the time the augurs of the Sibylline prophecies had warned-the passing away of an old age and the beginning of a new. Now that Sulla had besieged his own city, citizens long after his time would think, "It happened once and who might be the next to raise the stakes this high in the pursuit of personal glory and fame?" Very quickly, Sulla forced the Senate into passing sentences against Marius, Sulpicius and ten others. All but Sulpicius, who was betrayed by a slave and murdered, escaped, including Marius's young son. Marius himself would reach the safety of Africa after a series of close calls with death by contract killers.

Sulla was to continually cast his march on Rome and subsequent dictatorship as a defense of her most sacred institutions and ancient traditions. He was anxious to confront Mithridates, but understandably nervous about what might happen in his abscence. If he interfered too blatantly in the annual elections for consulship he would make a joke of his claim that he pulled of his coup to restore the Republic. Sulla's allies did not win election to the consulship in 87 BC. One of the candidates was a conservative as Sulla himself was. However, the other, Cornelius Cinna, had threatened Sulla with prosecution. Sulla decided that before he would agree to their taking office he made them both swear a public oath of loyalty on the sacred hill of the Capitol that they would not overturn his legislation.

To reward an ally, and also thinking it would help secure his own position, Sulla gave the command of Strabo's legions to Pompeius Rufus, his colleague in the consulship of 88 BC. This turned out to have rather unpleasant consequences for Rufus. He arrived at Strabo's camp to take command of his new army with only a bill in his hand. Strabo duly presented Pompeius Rufus to the troops and then left the camp-on business he claimed. The next day Rufus began a ritual sacrifice to celebrate his new command. Strabo's troops turned on him and he ended up being the sacrificial victim instead! Of course, Strabo claimed to be outraged and immediately came back to the camp, but no action was taken against his troops. Later generations would see Rufus's fate as a judgment of Sulla's coup-"there was nothing left which could shame warlords into holding back on military violence-not the law, not the institutions of the Republic, not even the love of Rome." (Appian 1.60.)

Hopefully the next post will be here soon-it is ready to go-just need to get my energy levels back somewhat after feeling so rotten for a few days now. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!