Caius Marius

“ For they do not so much admire those that confer honors and riches upon them, as those that partake of the same labor and danger with themselves; but love them better that will vouchsafe to join in their work, than those that encourage their idleness.
Marius thus employed, and thus winning the affections of the soldiers, before long filled both Africa and Rome with his fame, and some, too, wrote home from the army that the war with Africa would never be brought to a conclusion, unless they chose Caius Marius consul. All which was evidently unpleasing to Metellus ”

“ The Roman commanders soon perceived the design, but could not contain the soldiers; for one happening to shout out that the enemy fled, they all rushed to pursue them, while the whole barbarian foot came on, moving like a great ocean. Here Marius, having washed his hands, and lifting them up towards heaven, vowed an hecatomb to the gods; and Catulus, too, in the same posture, solemnly promised to consecrate a temple to the "Fortune of that day." They say, too, that Marius, having the victim showed to him as he was sacrificing, cried out with a loud voice, "the victory is mine." ”

“ Another interesting monument found there is that to Calpurnia, daughter of Caius Marius. Probably she died from the exposure and roughness of life camping out, when the barbarian hordes rolled west, and all the inhabitants of the towns were obliged to fly before them to the hills. I shall in a future chapter tell the story of Caius Marius and his great victory at Pourrières over the Teutons, having first thrashed the Ambrons near Aix. ”

“ The bas-reliefs on the four sides of the base represent a Roman triumph, and there seems little doubt that this noble monument was erected to commemorate the great victory of Caius Marius over the barbarians, on the spot where he had first met them. It was erected by Julius Cæsar, the nephew of Marius, and the two figures represent the great general himself, and Catullus, his colleague in the consulship, when their combined forces crushed the Cimbrians upon the Raudine Plain. ”

“ An aunt of Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having entered politics, had become the first general of his time, had been elected consul six times, and had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutons. The self-made man had become famous and rich, and in the face of an aristocracy proud of its ancestors, had tried to ennoble his obscure origin by taking his wife from an ancient and most noble, albeit impoverished and decayed, patrician family. ”

“ However, he did not do so, but triumphed together with Catulus, being desirous to show his moderation even in such great circumstances of good fortune, besides, he was not a little afraid of the soldiers in Catulus's army, lest, if he should wholly bereave their general of the honor, they should endeavor to hinder him of his triumph.
Marius was now in his fifth consulship, and he sued for his sixth in such a manner as never any man before him, had done, even for his first; he courted the people's favor and ingratiated himself with the multitude by every sort of complaisance ”

“ In the city he had neither riches nor eloquence to trust to, with which the leading men of the time obtained power with the people, but his vehement disposition, his indefatigable labors, and his plain way of living, of themselves gained him esteem and influence; so that he made an honorable match with Julia, of the distinguished family of the Caesars, to whom that Caesar was nephew who was afterwards so great among the Romans, and, in some degree, from his relationship, made Marius his example, as in his life we have observed. ”

“ Metellus would have finished the war, but in 106 the command was taken from him by Caius Marius the consul. This Caius Marius was a man of low birth, but a good soldier. He had risen in war by his bravery, and had held magistracies in Rome. He was an officer in the army of Metellus, and was very much liked by the common soldiers, for he was a rough man like themselves, and talked with them, and lived as they did. ... Marius left Africa and went to Rome to try and be made consul in 106. He found fault with Metellus before the people, and said that he could carry on the war better himself. ”

“ XXII Soon after, Caius Marius made his entry into the city, an entry fatal to his countrymen. Nothing could have surpassed his victorious irruption in cruelty, had not that of Sylla speedily followed. Nor was the licentious barbarity of the sword inflicted only on the middling ranks; but men of the highest stations, and most eminent characters, were destroyed under various kinds of sufferings; among these the consul Octavius, a man of the mildest disposition, was slain by order of Cinna. ”

“ While Caius Marius, son of Caius Marius, was made consul [y. r. 670. b. c. 82] by force, before he was twenty years old, Caius Fabius was burned alive in his tent, in Africa, for his avarice and extortion. Lucius Philippus, Sylla’s lieutenant-general, having overthrown and killed the prætor, Quintus Antonius, took Sardinia. Sylla made a league with the states of Italy, lest he should be suspected of intending to deprive them of their constitution and the right of suffrage, which had been lately conceded to them. ”

“ But in that case, if they attempt to make war upon us, we must summon up Caius Marius from the shades below, in order that he may be equal in war to that great man, that threatening and arrogant Induciomarus. Cnaeus Domitius and Quintus Maximus must be raised from the dead, that they may again subdue and crush the nation of the Allobroges and the other tribes by their arms; or, since that indeed is impossible, we must beg my friend Marcus Plaetorius to deter his new clients from making war, and to oppose by his entreaties their angry feelings and formidable violence ”

“ Marius, in return for this piece of service, was forced to connive at Saturninus, now proceeding to the very height of insolence and violence, and was, without knowing it, the instrument of mischief beyond endurance, the only course of which was through outrages and massacres to tyranny and the subversion of the government. Standing in some awe of the nobility, and, at the same time, eager to court the commonalty, he was guilty of a most mean and dishonest action. ”

“ Beneath the figures is an inscription no longer legible. It is possible that this monument may represent Caius Marius and his wife Julia. A somewhat lively French imagination has taken the figure of the man to be Martha with her staff and mitre, but I examined the sculpture under a favourable light, and satisfied myself that this figure is that of a man. The face was apparently struck by the crowbar, which has broken off a film of the limestone, and destroyed the nose. ”

“ Thus it was decided; and Marius, bringing over his legions out of Africa on the very first day of January, which the Romans count the beginning of the year, received the consulship, and then, also, entered in triumph, showing Jugurtha a prisoner to the people, a sight they had despaired of ever beholding, nor could any, so long as he lived, hope to reduce the enemy in Africa; so fertile in expedients was he to adapt himself to every turn of fortune, and so bold as well as subtle. ”

“ For many that envied Marius, attributed the success wholly to Sylla; and Sylla himself got a seal made on which was engraved Bocchus betraying Jugurtha to him, and constantly used it, irritating the hot and jealous temper of Marius, who was naturally greedy of distinction, and quick to resent any claim to share in his glory, and whose enemies took care to promote the quarrel, ascribing the beginning and chief business of the war to Metellus, and its conclusion to Sylla; that so the people might give over admiring and esteeming Marius as the worthiest person. ”

“ From which Marius drew his conclusion, and said, that the fates designed him safety, rather by sea than land, because the ass neglected his dry fodder, and turned from it to the water. Having told Fannia this story, he bade the chamber door to be shut and went to rest.
Meanwhile the magistrates and councilors of Minturnae consulted together, and determined not to delay any longer, but immediately to kill Marius; and when none of their citizens durst undertake the business, a certain soldier, a Gaulish or Cimbrian horseman, (the story is told both ways,) went in with his sword drawn to him. ”

“ By her he had three children, Caius Julius, Sextus Julius, and a daughter named Julia. Caius Julius married Aurelia, perhaps a member of the consular family of the Cottas, and was the father of the Great Caesar. Julia became the wife of Caius Marius, a mésalliance which implied the beginning of a political split in the Caesar family. The elder branches, like the Cromwells of Hinchinbrook, remained by their order. The younger attached itself for good or ill to the party of the people.
Marius by this marriage became a person of social consideration. His father had been a client of the Metelli ”

“ He thus became very odious to all the nobility; and, above all, he feared Metellus, who had been so ungratefully used by him, and whose true virtue made him naturally an enemy to those that sought influence with the people, not by the honorable course, but by subservience and complaisance. Marius, therefore, endeavored to banish him from the city, and for this purpose he contracted a close alliance with Glaucia and Saturninus, a couple of daring fellows, who had the great mass of the indigent and seditious multitude at their control ”

“ But whatever it be, which interferes to prevent the enjoyment of prosperity ever being pure and sincere, and still diversifies human affairs with the mixture of good and bad, whether fortune or divine displeasure, or the necessity of the nature of things, within a few days Marius received an account of his colleague, Catulus, which as a cloud in serenity and calm, terrified Rome with the apprehension of another imminent storm. ”

“ For, when the vote had been taken, every man not having a vote had been expelled from the city, and forbidden to come within five miles of it till the voting was over. Caius had come to live in the Forum instead of on the Palatine when he returned to Rome, among his friends as he thought; and still even in little matters he stood forward as the champion of the poor against the rich. There was going to be a show of gladiators in the Forum, and the magistrates had enclosed the arena with benches, which they meant to hire out. ”

“ The election coming on, and his colleague being dead, he left the command of the army to Manius Aquilius, and hastened to Rome, where, several eminent persons being candidates for the consulship, Lucius Saturninus, who more than any of the other tribunes swayed the populace, and of whom Marius himself was very observant, exerted his eloquence with the people, advising them to choose Marius consul. ”

“ Yet they reject their present success, as though it did not concern them, and do nothing but dream of future uncertainties; not indeed unnaturally; as till men have by reason and education laid good foundation for external superstructures, in the seeking after and gathering them they can never satisfy the unlimited desires of their mind.
Thus died Marius on the seventeenth day of his seventh consulship, to the great joy and content of Rome, which thereby was in good hopes to be delivered from the calamity of a cruel tyranny ”

“ The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. He was not greater than but only like his brother in his bravery, in his culture, in the faculty of inspiring in his friends strong enthusiasm and devotion, in his unswerving pursuit of a definite object, and, as his sending the son of Fulvius Flaccus to the Senate just before his death proves in the teeth of all assertions to the contrary, in his willingness to use his personal influence in order to avoid civil bloodshed. ”

“ The rich, the noble, and the city mob united against him; and when he seized the Capitol, it was to defend himself against all three. In the year 100 B.C. Marius was consul for the sixth time, Glaucia was praetor, and Saturninus was a second time tribune. A triumvirate so powerful might, if united, have overthrown the Constitution. But the vanity and vacillation of Marius were the best allies of the optimates; and it was no grown man, but Caius Julius Caesar, a child born in that same year, who was destined to subvert their rule. [Sidenote: The Lex Servilia. The equites and the judicia.] ”

“ As soon as he arrived again in Africa, Metellus, no longer able to control his feelings of jealousy, and his indignation that now when he had really finished the war, and nothing was left but to secure the person of Jugurtha, Marius, grown great merely through his ingratitude to him, should come to bereave him both of his victory and triumph, could not bear to have any interview with him ”

“ The men, for want of trees, tied themselves, some to the horns of the oxen, others by the neck to their legs, that so pricking them on, by the starting and springing of the beasts, they might be torn and trodden to pieces. Yet for all they thus massacred themselves, above sixty thousand were taken prisoners, and those that were slain were said to be twice as many.
The ordinary plunder was taken by Marius's soldiers, but the other spoils, as ensigns, trumpets, and the like, they say, were brought to Catulus's camp ”