Part 31

The devastation of Gaul took place at the time when Metellus was conducting the war against Jugurtha; the expedition into Spain happened during Marius’ second and third consulships. For the reverses which had befallen the Roman arms, had now caused Marius to be made consul for the third time; even his enemies wished him to be chosen, as they saw that no one else could save the state. Every army but that of Numidia had been annihilated; and to train the new soldiers, was the great task which Marius alone was able to achieve, he being himself as thoroughly practised a soldier as he desired every one to be. Marius is beyond all doubt the author of the great change in the Roman tactics, as may be known from Cæsar: this supposition is already to be found in those who have written before us, Colonel Guichard in particular. And moreover this change could only have been the work of a man who always adapted his system to the wants of his age. Down to Marius’ days, even during the Numidian wars, we read of _principes_, _triarii_, and _hastati_; of Marius’ time itself we have indeed no history of any note, written in Latin, though we have an exact knowledge of Cæsar’s legion, in which there are neither _hastati_, nor _principes_, nor _triarii_, but only _pilani_; the lance is done away with, and the _pilum_ and sword alone are used; the men are no more drawn up in maniples, the legion being now formed in a line which was ten deep, with a proportionate reserve; and when there are several lines of battle, these do not affect the disposition, as they likewise were not placed in maniples, _en échelons_, but in parallels, one behind the other. The legion is divided into sixty centuries (not as in the earliest times, into five cohorts, each having thirty centuries of thirty men); and its strength besides is raised from 4,500 to 6,000 men. The light troops are detached, the legion being no longer a brigade, but a very strong regiment, all of the same arm; and the cavalry is not a part of the legion. Another, and very essential difference, is, that Marius--and he was very much blamed for it--in levying the troops did not now follow the old system by which all who had less than 12,500 _asses_, and more than 4,500, were set aside for the reserve; nor yet the later plan by which every one who had even 1,000 sesterces (400 _denarii_), was enlisted in the line, and those who were below that standard could only serve in the fleet; but he took every able-bodied man, although he might not be above beggary. This was indeed very bad according to the notions of the old times, when there were good reasons for employing in the defence of the country none but those who might be deemed to have an interest in upholding the constitution. But in those days, there were no standing armies; whereas, when once these began to be kept, it was less hard for a man who had nothing to remain for years in the provinces, than it was for an only son who possessed property: thus what had formerly been quite right, had ceased to be so, now that circumstances were changed. On the whole, though I am by no means blind to the grievous faults of Marius,--nay, if you will, to his vices,--it certainly shows a want of sense, to speak of him as if it had been better for the republic that he had never been born. That he was worthy of his high renown, is undeniable; and though his cruelties are not to be excused, he was indeed a great man, and one ought to try to understand and account for his failings. Two such different men, as Cicero and Cæsar, had a great fondness for Marius: Cæsar, when a boy, loved with all his soul the husband of his aunt Julia; and Cicero, even in spite of his party, felt proud of being, as an Arpinate, the countryman of Marius.

Marius now employed his second and third consulships in forming a new army. Happily for Rome, the Cimbri were all this while in Spain. Eleven years had now passed since their first appearance; so that we see how quickly the tide of emigration which no bounds could hitherto stay, set in towards the west: had they succeeded in Spain, it is very possible that they would have gone to Africa. Marius had to find soldiers as he best could: what was left of the old army, was shattered and demoralized, all but the troops which had returned from Numidia; he was therefore obliged to train his raw levies for the field, by mingling them with the few veterans who had won many a battle: in his fourth consulship, his army was formed. In the third already, he had been in the south of France near the Rhone, probably on the frontiers of Provence and Dauphiné, between Arles and Avignon; and that part of the country, which was as near the enemy as could be, he had chosen as his exercising ground, that he might force his men to keep with all their might on the alert: those who were not able to stand the work, sank under it; the rest were so much the better soldiers. As the Rhone, like all the rivers of the Mediterranean, has its mouth choked up with silt, he dug in all haste a canal to open a free communication with the sea. During his fourth consulship he advanced towards the spot where the Isere and the Rhone meet, expecting that the Cimbri and Teutones would return from Spain: it was thought that they would cross the Alps, and follow the same road which Hannibal had once chosen. All feelings of hatred in the Gauls, had of course died away. If it be true that Marius was obliged to use intrigues to get this consulship, it is a very bad case, and a proof of the blind infatuation of the oligarchy.

The barbarians had no wish to attack Marius, and so they separated: the Cimbri went round the northern range of the Alps, that they might invade Italy from the other side, where it was more easily entered; the Teutones remained in Gaul. For what reason Marius should have now retreated from Valence to Aquæ Sextiæ, our scanty sources do not tell us: probably it was for the purpose of getting provisions. The Cimbrians passed with jeers by the camp of Marius, and went round Switzerland: for between the Pennine and the Tridentine Alps, there was not yet at that time any practicable road for such hosts of men with their waggons and baggage: the only way was that across the little St. Bernard, which they could not take on account of the Romans; single troops may have gone by the St. Gotthard and the Splügen. The Romans had opposed to them, near Trent in Italian Tyrol, another army under the command of the consul Q. Lutatius Catulus, a man who was the very opposite of Marius, as he was one of those persons of high rank in that day who had had a Greek education: according to Cicero, he was even a fair author, and he left behind him memoirs in Greek, as was then much the fashion among people of refinement at Rome, Latin prose not being yet cultivated by great writers; just as Frederic the Great wrote his memoirs in French. Incalculable is the loss to us of the books of Livy which treat of this period, as we do not know any thing more about it than we do of earlier centuries; in fact, we know less of the gigantic struggles against the Cimbri and Teutones, than we do of the national emigrations and the wars against the barbarians in the beginning of the fifth century. Here we find Orosius on the whole an unadulterated source, and now and then we have to make shift with Florus; all the epitomizers, however, as Orosius, Eutropius, Florus, are full of discrepancies when compared together, though they every one of them drew from Livy. Quite independent of these is the account of Plutarch, which is the most detailed narrative we have of the Cimbric war.

When the Cimbri were gone away, the Teutones and Ambrones followed in the track of Marius: whither the Tigurini went, we cannot tell. To judge from an expression of the epitomizers, the barbarians--a fact which Plutarch does not mention--must have taken the camp of Marius; but this could not have been the one near the ground where the battle was fought, as from the march towards it, and the whole of Marius’ disposition, we may see that he had been stopped when retreating. He had therefore to encamp in a spot where there was no water, and the soldiers were obliged to go out armed and fetch it from a distant well; so that they asked to be led out to fight. Marius wished first to entrench himself, as his foes were quite close, and everything was against him; yet he could not carry out his intention, the distress being so great that the camp-followers in despair went to some water which was in the neighbourhood of the enemy. Here the Ambrones attacked them, on which the soldiers came to their help: the Ligurians first set out, and then cohort after cohort hastened up, without any orders from Marius. Thus an engagement was brought on, in which, strange to say, the Teutones took no share whatever: perhaps they had not yet come up. Even in this conflict, a brilliant victory was gained, most of the Ambrones being destroyed; notwithstanding which, the Romans, who were without entrenchments, now passed an anxious night in which they were busily throwing up works. The next battle was not fought on the following day, as had been expected, but on the day after; most likely because the Teutones and the rest of the Ambrones had only just now arrived. Marius laid all his plans with the talent of a true general, and he sent M. Claudius Marcellus--a man whose family was always distinguished, he being undoubtedly a grandson of that worthy Marcellus so well known in the Iberian war, who had five times been consul--with a division of allies, as it would seem, to attack the enemy’s rear. Yet even before this, the fury of the Teutones had spent itself in vain against the steadfastness and dogged resolution of the Romans, and the more so as it was summer: for the men of the South, owing to their more muscular frame, are able to stand both heat and frost better than others: the Italians in Napoleon’s Russian campaign, suffered much less than the northern nations did. And therefore, as one might easily believe, the natives of Rome bore the glowing heat of the sun much better than the Teutones. The Romans, who were posted on a hill, awaited the onset of the barbarians; these were beaten back, and when they were endeavouring to rally in the plain, Marcellus fell upon them from behind. Part of them tried to make their escape, and were overpowered and slain by the Gallic tribes. The prince of the Teutones was taken prisoner by the Sequani, and the remnant of his army retreated within their rampart of waggons; but the Romans now broke in, and nearly the whole of the nation was destroyed, some very few only being made slaves.

Half of the danger was now warded off. Soon afterwards, the Cimbri burst upon Italy through Tyrol and the Alps of Trent; and this was not from any fault of Catulus, but it was altogether owing to their overwhelming numbers, and the terror which they spread far and wide. The account in Florus of the manner in which the Cimbri opened the way for themselves, is quite childish; just as if these had been the dullest of savages, and had wanted to stop the tide of the Adige with their hands: this shows what a _homo umbraticus_ that writer was. There are indeed some fords in the Adige, and in passing such a river one makes the cavalry cross higher up, and somewhat lower down a close column of infantry, which will break the force of a moderate stream. This the Cimbri may also have tried to do, thinking perhaps that with their huge bodies they would be able to stem the flood; but in the Adige, as it is near Legnano, such a thing is impossible. Afterwards they are said to have thrown trees into the river to dam it up; which is also incredible. They wished rather to have a bridge and to destroy that of the Romans by means of their floats of timbers, and this they succeeded in doing. The Romans being posted at each end of the bridge, on both sides of the stream, one of their two divisions was cut off from the other, and was obliged to surrender to the Cimbri; but these, with unwonted humanity, let it go free. This, however, is true, that in crossing the most impassable parts of the Alps, they glided on their large shields, as on sleighs, down the steepest declivities. At this irruption, Catulus fell back as far as the Po, or yet beyond it: the whole country north of that river was laid waste; the towns of Mantua, Verona, Brescia, which were left to the protection of their walls, defended themselves; but the open places were destroyed. From the winter to the following summer, the Cimbri most unaccountably remained on that side of the Po.

Marius heard in Gaul of the irruption of the barbarians, and he ordered his army to march to Genua in Liguria (as it would seem), and went himself to Rome. Here every one was now full of admiration for him; and the feeling that he was the only man who could save the country, was become so general, that even the oligarchs were for his being made consul for the fifth time. People were so eager to gain his goodwill, that they offered him a triumph; but this he declined until he should have destroyed the Cimbri, and his assurance communicated itself to every one. He accordingly united his army with that of Catulus, who had remained in command as proconsul. They both of them now passed the Po with somewhat more than fifty-two thousand men. It is said that the Cimbri knew nothing of the defeat of the Teutones; which is a downright absurdity, as it is impossible that from autumn to the end of July, they should not have got any news. It was surely for this very reason, that they asked Marius for land and places of abode, as they felt that half of their power had been overthrown: if they also demanded this for their brethren, these must have been the Tigurini. Whether the Cimbri now wished to secure the passes to Gaul, that they might keep the road over the little St. Bernard open for any emergency, and this was why they came to Vercellæ, is uncertain; yet notwithstanding all the variations in the readings, there seems to be no doubt that a battle was fought near Vercelli on the declivity of the Alps: for one cannot see how any body should have thought of placing it in this corner of Lombardy. Writers call the spot _Campi Raudii_. The battle, contrary to the Roman custom, was announced three days beforehand, and on the third day before the calends of the Sextilis (July 29th as the calendar was then), it was fought. So much time had the Cimbri spent in their ravages since the beginning of winter, in this unwholesome aguish country, where the water is so bad: epidemics also had already broken out among them. On the day of the battle, Marius put the army of Catulus in the centre, disposing his own on the two wings: the account of it, which is found in Plutarch only, is so confused, that nothing distinct can be made out of it. It is incredible that the Cimbri should have formed a great square, each side of which was three-quarters of a (German) mile long, the men in the outside ranks having, as we are told, their girdles linked together with chains: such a mass would amount to many millions of men. Marius is said to have so placed his troops that the sun and the wind were in the faces of the barbarians; such a thing may be history, or it may be fiction. Catulus had to stand the brunt of the battle; at least the fight was hottest where he was: and yet it was only a proof of party spirit, when people disputed whether it was to Marius or to Catulus that the victory was due; for it seems beyond all doubt that Marius decided the battle in the wings, and thus had the chief merit of it. The Cimbrians fled within their rampart of waggons, where even the women and children fought, and killed themselves at last: a great many were taken prisoners, as the Alps blocked up their retreat. In short, every thing belonging to the Cimbri which had crossed these mountains, was cut off, all but the tribe of the Aduatici, who had settled hereabouts,[84] on the Lower Rhine, where they must therefore have had fixed abodes at one time.

As a reward for his unexampled achievements, Marius had now his sixth consulship given him. He led the most brilliant triumph which any general had ever had; but even then he already showed how much his head was turned, as he entered the senate in his triumphal garments. There was a belief that some one before him had been six times consul; but this can no longer be ascertained, as the ancients themselves could not tell. Perhaps Valerius Corvus was six times consul; it may, however, have been, that in what is accounted his sixth consulship, one of his family was mistaken for him. Marius was called the third founder of Rome after Romulus and Camillus. But this consulship, although Marius at last became useful to the state, had such dismal consequences, as to make one wish that he had died on the day of his triumph: then his memory would have been glorious and blessed, and he would have thrown even Scipio into the shade.

MARIUS’ SIXTH CONSULSHIP. L. APULEIUS SATURNINUS. C. SERVILIUS GLAUCIA.

Marius was not the man who could play his part well in quiet, peaceful times; and yet Rome was hastening towards dissolution in a way which compelled him to act. There are very many kinds of courage, as the greatest men have owned; there is a courage with regard to danger, which either looks death in the face with indifference, or forgets it altogether in the excitement of action. This is a fine quality in itself; but it does not follow, that the motive for its display should be as noble: he alone in whom this constancy is allied to a pure mind, and who is conscious of a lofty aim, will enjoy with it the full sense of personal freedom, and be enabled to achieve great things. Many are wanting in this sort of prowess, who yet possess a determined moral courage, owing to which they hold themselves above the opinion of those around them, it being all the same to them whether they be misjudged or not; others, who in the hour of danger show the courage of lions, are exceedingly timid in this respect, and afraid of acting up to a conviction which has been branded by the world’s anathema. It was in this latter sense that Marius was weak; for if one was to say that he let himself be used as a tool by the men who exercised such influence during his sixth consulship, this would be making him out to have been a most pitiful wretch; whereas it is the clue to his conduct, that he was at one time afraid of the demagogues, and at another of the senate, a deplorable, although partial, weakness of a great man who had no greatness of character.

Marius had joined himself with a sad knave, to get his sixth consulship. This was L. Apuleius Saturninus, who, undeservedly enough, is often named with the Gracchi, although there cannot be a wider interval than that between them and Saturninus. He was a man like Catiline, one indeed of whom the like is seldom seen; for though one can understand how ambition will lead people blindfold into acts of dangerous daring, yet how a man could have taken in his head to be so mad, is all but incomprehensible. It would seem that his was a revolutionary mind; that he formed no clear notion of what things would come to, being utterly regardless of institutions and government, and only thinking of violence and confusion. He had sprung from one of the richest and most eminent plebeian families; just as in the French revolution, men of the first nobility put themselves at the head of the rabble. I do not recollect whether it is of him, or of Servilius Glaucia, that Cicero says, that no one had been gifted with a more malignant wit:[85] it was by this means that they managed the people. He had started in life as an aristocrat. There were at that time eight quæstorships, which were given partly to consulars, and partly to other persons. They were places with an income attached to them, one of them being the _quæstura Ostiensis_, which had the charge of the granaries at Rome. Saturninus had, as quæstor, availed himself of the privilege of _peculatus_ taken by the men of rank; but when the tables were suddenly turned, and the oligarchs were no longer able to screen the sins of their own body, owing to an honest party having been formed from both factions under the lead of the straight-forward C. Memmius, he got liable to the punishment of being deposed, and so he threw himself into the arms of the mob: it was a conspiracy of the dregs of the upper and middle classes. He now became a tribune of the people, and behaved in the most savage manner towards the very first men, for instance, the censors and others. When, on his standing the second time for the tribuneship, another candidate, A. Nonius was set up against him, he so hounded on the rabble against that unfortunate man, that they murdered him; and thus he made himself by force a tribune again. The magistrates had no more any authority; those who had the power, did just what they liked.