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In our previous video we discussed the reforms implemented and institutionalised into Rome’s
military by Gaius Marius to adapt to the changing situation it found itself in. However, these
reforms ended up being more than just a tactical benefit, and they had profound effects that
would not only weaken, but would eventually destroy the Roman Republic which had existed
since 509 BC, and replaced it with the Roman Empire. Welcome to our second video on the
Marian reforms, and how they impacted and shook the Res Publica to its core.
The individual reforms instituted and codified by Marius do not, at first glance, seem so
significant as to transform the whole army. However, the sum of their impact was greater
than that of their component parts put together. These reforms brought permanent standard of
quality to the legions, and therefore generated a greater camaraderie and loyalty to a soldier’s
unit than ever before. Legionaries now had a very strong feeling of pride in the history
and collective accomplishment of their unit, and even had a positive series of rivalries
with other units in the same army. In addition, Marius reversed the declining and less efficient
trends of the previous decades, and laid the foundation for the professional army by doing
so. However, all was not well in the Republic.
As addressed in our last video on the Marian reforms, the demographics of the Roman legions
changed as a result of the Marian reforms. The discarding of a property requirement fundamentally
shifted the army from a limited militia army drawn from those in the society with material
bonds to the state, to a mass peasant army with little property of their own. The militia
legionaries saw their participation in the defence of the state as their civil duty,
responsibility and as a privilege. To these patriotic legionnaires, the idea of marching
on Rome to conquer it would have been equivalent to sacrilege. Subsequently, the legionaries
after the Marian reforms usually had more material goals, even if that meant attacking
their own capital. It is this shift, combined with the granting of land to retired veteran
soldiers, which would eventually exacerbate the severe issues which would destroy the
Republic. Marius himself seemed blissfully unaware of the problems his reforms would
cause for the state, and initially of the opportunities such conditions would present
for an ambitious Roman General such as himself. He never took advantage of the state of affairs
he had brought about. But others would, including a former subordinate of Marius - Lucius Cornelius
Sulla. His actions in using the legions as a political weapon would create a ripple effect,
leading directly to the fall of the Republic. From the very first days of Rome’s existence,
the society admired and held up the citizen-farmer as a character to be emulated. The great general
Cincinnatus was found by the senate ploughing his humble seven-acre farm when they came
to implore him to become dictator and save Rome from the Gallic invasion. In this vein,
many of the earlier Roman legionaries were propertied, citizen farmers who would harvest
and tend their crops, and then go off on campaign. Campaigning seasons were relatively short
and usually took place entirely within the Italian Peninsula, but this was soon to change.
After the Punic Wars, Rome gradually began shipping forces overseas to campaigns which
were multiple years long, and many of the legionaries found that their small family
farms would be destitute upon their return; their families having been unable to maintain
the work required to sustain it. In this post-Hannibalic period, a great many slaves and a significant
amount of wealth flooded into Rome from Carthage and the Greek world. This wealth was largely
monopolised by a few select families, who began to purchase vast tracts of land from
the small citizen farmers, replacing the scattered small farms of Italy with massive slave-run
plantations run for profit, rather than the benefit of the state. This economic shift
towards the large slave farms prompted those small families to now enter the capite censi
class and migrate to Rome for greater opportunities. An attempt to reverse this trend occurred
around three decades before Marius, with the rise and fall of the Gracchi brothers; Gaius
and Tiberius. Tribune of the Plebs Tiberius was the elder, and was concerned with a land
reform which was designed to increase the amount of Roman land-owning citizens, in an
attempt to reverse the homogenization of Italy’s land by massive slave farms. His proposal
was moderate and yet met bitter opposition from the Senatorial propertied classes. To
bypass the Senate, Tiberius attempted to use the people’s assembly to pass the law, but
the Senate arranged for another Tribune Marcus Octavius, to use his veto to halt the entire
thing in its tracks. This obvious and unprecedented corruption worsened the situation even more
and eventually Tiberius and his followers were killed after he was accused of seeking
the kingship. His brother Gaius, continued on his brother’s footsteps and once again
attempted to solve Rome’s burgeoning problems. However, the senate viciously opposed these
reforms, as well as another Tribune named Marcus Livius Drusus the Elder, who undermined
Gaius’ attempted reforms at every step. When the senate essentially offered a bounty
for the head of Gaius, he was killed. These was the first occasions of the political violence,
which would become occur more often in the decades to come, as the Senate, which was
putting off problems rather than solving them, had increased the legitimacy of the populist
politicians. This would have key consequences in the events to come and would prove to be
one of the first episodes leading to the fall of the Republic.
Thirty years after his father’s opposition to the reforms of Gaius Gracchus, Marcus Livius
Drusus the younger would also attempt his own series of reforms which this time had
the support of some leading senators. He proposed a grain law, agrarian legislation overhauls
and the transfer of jury courts to the senators, however when he, seeing that the Italics were
not happy with Rome, proposed the extension of citizen rights to all inhabitants of Italy
he was viciously opposed. He launched this attempt with the cooperation of multiple allied
leaders; such as the Marsi leader Quintus Pompaedius Silo, who would become a Roman
enemy in the upcoming Social War. However, Drusus was mysteriously assassinated and that
made the Social War inevitable. Rome managed to eventually secure victory in the struggle.
We are going to talk about this conflict down the line, but in short this war prompted the
Senate to give the Italics citizen rights. With the destruction and replacement of Italy’s
rural smallholdings, a vast amount of capite censi legionnaires now had nothing to go back
to when their military term in the was over. The landless needed help from the State in
the form of retirement benefits, which usually came as a plot of land to farm. The question
would become who would took up the role of soldier’s champion: senate or their commander?
Unfortunately, the conservative senate was set in its ways and did not want to change
the law to give land to the veterans, possibly because the land could otherwise be used as
part of their profitable plantations. This unwillingness of the Roman Senate to function
as the benefactors of their own veterans, and their own citizens as a whole, prompted
the legionaries to instead look to their commanders for compensation. This lethal mixture of policies
was exploited by Sulla in the midst of the Mithridatic Wars. Marius and Sulla, who had
at first been comrades were now bitter enemies. In 88 BC, Marius attempted to take his erstwhile
friend’s command of the war against Pontus, and Sulla, who was not going to take it, escaped
from Rome and appealed to the veterans who had been settled in the region. Eventually,
perhaps afraid that Sulla’s loss of command would mean a loss of Pontic war loot for them,
six Sullan legions marched on Rome for the first time in centuries. Interestingly, it
was the rank and file soldiers who came to the capital with Sulla whereas the officers
who were wealthier and more invested in the Republic would not do it, which highlighted
the key role of Marius’ enlistment of the Capite Censi in the crisis.
Unlike Marius it seems that after his actions, Sulla noticed the damage he had caused to
the Republic, which explains why he worked so hard afterwards to strengthen it. He attempted
to create a constitution designed to prevent a recurrence of his own behavior of marching
on Rome, making it treason if a governor did not step down within 30 days of their successor’s
arrival, if a governor led an army outside of their province, entered an allied kingdom
or started a war without the senate’s consent. Sulla may have believed he was the only one
who could prevent it from going into further decline. This would also explain why he became
dictator, strengthened the power of the republican senate by doubling its size and why he gave
up his dictatorship after his strengthening reforms were in effect. However, instead of
fixing Rome’s problems, Sulla’s reign instead showed other ambitious commanders
how to use their army to their own gain. Again, he attempted to stop this. Realising he might
be imitated, he settled his own veterans in Italy as a safeguard force to defend the senate
against the new usurpers of power. Unfortunately, this would later backfire and further cripple
the republic. Despite his various attempts to reform the Roman Republic, Sulla’s dictatorship
had ended the days of loyalty to the state. Rome, with the senate at its head, could no
longer command the allegiance of the Romans. Granting veterans land might also not have
been the best possible pension plan, both for the individual soldiers and the Roman
state. Many of the veterans who were granted land for farming would have had no experience
of agriculture, and Sulla’s veterans who were settled in Etruria went into debt due
to this inexperience. Moreover, the simple presence of these individuals in Italy became
a danger in itself. Due to their days fighting against Pontus in Asia, many of the Sullan
veterans had gained a taste for extravagance and luxury and now could not sustain that
lifestyle as mere citizen farmers and functioned as a ticking time bomb. During the next political
danger in the year 63 BC; the Catiline conspiracy, disaffected Sullan veterans joined the attempted
usurpation of the Roman state in an attempt to regain their lost wealth and, though the
attempt failed due to the intervention of Cicero, it just showed how vulnerable Rome
had become to instability. This was the situation in the Roman republic by the time Gaius Julius
Caesar gained the governorship of Gaul, using his triumvirate with Gnaeus Pompey and Marcus
Licinius Crassus.
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