702. Roman Civil War: The Barbarian Invasion (Part 2)

19:32Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, you did say that.

19:33Tom Holland:And if you do have a second consulship, then at the very least, it should be at a kind of decent distance from the original one. But Marius, you know, he'd be consul in 107. This is only three years later. So that, I think, is the measure of the state of absolute panic that everyone in Rome is feeling, that they haven't really got any choice. Constitutional proprieties don't really count when your city is facing an existential threat. And so it is that as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome in his triumphal robes on his chariot, enjoying his triumph. you've got to wonder you know if that story was true if the the nest full of seven eaglets fell into his arms uh and and it did indeed prophesy that um he was going to have seven consulships i mean is he thinking about that maybe it would be nice to think so yeah although um there is

20:27Dominic Sandbrook:still tension isn't there i mean he is still a self-made man he is still an outsider there must be people in Rome from the old elite who are just like, really this guy, this parvenu again?

20:39Tom Holland:Yeah, for sure. And Marius on the day of his triumph, the day that he also takes up his second consulship, he makes a massive power play because he goes straight to the meeting of the Senate wearing his triumphal robes, which is very much not the done thing. And he apologised for it and goes and changes. But you have to think, you know, he's reminding everybody in the Senate that he is the guy who has already won one war and that they're depending on to win a second one. So it causes indignation, but I think Maris probably felt it was worth the indignation. The Senate doesn't give him sole command.

21:14Tom Holland:So there is still, he's one of two consuls. So Maris's enemies can feel, well, at least his power is not completely preponderant. He still has a colleague at the top. But I think it is a measure of the emergency and of Maris's reputation as Rome's only plausible saviour, that throughout this war against the Cimbri that's going to be fought, and it stretches from 104 BC to 101, he's going to hold consecutive consulships. So that's four consulships on top of his previous one. So that's five consulships. And just to emphasise, this is something completely unprecedented.

21:53Dominic Sandbrook:So this is a little by Franklin D. Roosevelt serving, you know, winning four elections in the 1930s and 1940s. It's unprecedented. It violates not the letter of the constitution, but the spirit of it, but the established tradition. But people see it as a reasonable reaction to times of existential threat, unprecedented in their history. And that's the analogy, I suppose.

22:18Tom Holland:That's the measure, I think, of the threat that Rome feels that it is facing. And also the degree to which Marius is really the one person they feel can sort this out. Now, Marius, it has to be said, is not a flamboyant general. He's not Alexander the Great. He's not even Julius Caesar. He is a guy who is basically all about digging ditches and latrines and routine. That's very much what the Romans in military terms are about.

22:47Dominic Sandbrook:Isn't that what the Scipios had been like, though? Had they not been dogged, resolute, managerial, all of that.

22:54Tom Holland:That is the essence of the Roman military approach. They love, you know, every night they will build a camp. And so Marius goes very much with the grain of this tradition. He bases himself in the Provincia, the future Provence, southern Gaul. And he concentrates on building up Rome's battlefield effectiveness, which essentially means focusing on getting his men practiced with spades as much as with arms. He wants to toughen them up. He wants lots of forced marches, carrying heavy boulders, lots of digging trenches, all of that kind of thing. But also imposing discipline, imposing battlefield techniques, all of this kind of stuff.

23:37Tom Holland:It's often been said that this constitutes a military revolution, what Marius puts his men through in this period. a transformation in how Rome fights wars. And this is now a very contested topic and people who are interested in this matter. And I think it's a matter of interest, not just for those who are interested in military history, but for the whole sweep of Roman history. It's a really live, fascinating topic. We have a bonus this week with Brett Devereaux. Oh, brilliant. Who has very stimulating opinions on the whole question. So don't miss that.

24:12Dominic Sandbrook:I love this subject and I love Brett Devereaux and I shall be tuning in. Great. I mean, I'm a member of the Rest is History Club. Of course. What if people aren't? How would they listen to it?

24:22Tom Holland:They could go to therestishistory.com and sign up there. Oh my gosh. What a lovely organic moment that was in the podcast.

24:28Dominic Sandbrook:I know. So unscripted. Magnificent.

24:31Tom Holland:Anyway, right. Back to the narrative. Yeah. So whether Marius is instituting a revolution or whether he is just doing tried and tested Roman techniques doesn't matter. He is whipping the Romans into shape. And by 102, he feels ready at last to go on the offensive. Not least because by this point, the Teutons and the Kimberi, who previously been traveling in one great kind of amorphous mass, have now gone their own separate ways.

24:57Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, that is a schoolboy error from the Teutons and the Kimberi madness. Yeah. Listen, they're just barbarians.

25:04Tom Holland:They don't know better.

25:04Dominic Sandbrook:Crazy. Insane.

25:06Tom Holland:I have no time for them now. Okay. But the Teutons, who are Marius' first target, they still outnumber Marius' army three to one. And also, they've beaten the Romans nonstop. They don't think there's a problem. And what follows is the kind of classic contrast between Roman discipline and barbarian kind of courage and headstrong charging and all that kind of stuff that anyone who's got into the Romans in their childhood will instinctively remember.

25:39Dominic Sandbrook:It's like the opening scene of Gladiator. That's what this is, isn't it?

25:42Tom Holland:Yes, it absolutely is. I mean, this is basically the kind of contrast that was seared into me when I was obsessed by the Romans when I was about eight. So Marius, he approaches the Teutons and then he builds a big camp. You know, all that digging comes in and he holds it as a kind of basically an impregnable position. And he refuses to answer challenges. And again, this is very gladiator. One of the Teutons comes forward and issues a challenge personally to Marius. and Marius's response is an excellent one. If you want death, find a rope, make a noose and hang yourself. Russell Crowe was born to say that line.

26:23Tom Holland:He really was. Yeah, he was. They missed a trick there. So the Tutons hang around issuing these insults. Marius doesn't answer. The Tutons get fed up. They move on, looting, plundering as they go. Marius up sticks, shadows them, building camps every night so they can't be attacked. And then on the banks of the Rhone, he surprises a huge force of a collection of German allies who are traveling with the Teutons and wipes them out. And then four days later, on a plane near a city called Aquae Sextiae, which is Aix-en-Provence today, he encircles the Teutons. So he does a kind of cannae and completely wipes them out.

27:08Tom Holland:They are utterly slaughtered. And so many corpses are left strewn on the battlefield that for years afterwards, the local vintners, it is said, enjoyed the most superlative of vintages.

27:21Dominic Sandbrook:A lovely Provencal rosé with a hint, just a hint, a little hint of flesh, a rotting Teuton. Delicious. I love a little hint of the German corpse when I drink my fine French wines. Wow. Delicious. This is the Rest is History wine tasting tour that everyone really needed.

27:46Tom Holland:So the Teutons are now gone and basically been turned into fertilizer for grapes. But this still leaves the Kimberi in the field. Yeah. And the Romans will not meet with the Kimberi until the following year. So 101 on the 30th of July. And on that day, they too meet with complete annihilation at the hands of Rome's greatest general. And the battle takes place outside a city called Bercellae in northern Italy. And it's a complete victory for Marius. So the Kimberi are broken. They retreat. They have drawn up all their wagons in their rear, as was always their practice. And that means that they can't escape and they run into the wagons.

28:32Tom Holland:And there, according to Plutarch, they were killed by their own women who were assembled on the line of the wagons. And to quote Plutarch, clad in black, the women killed their own husbands, brothers, fathers. Then they strangled their little children with their own hands and flung them down under the wheels of the wagons or the hooves of the animals. And finally, the women cut their own throats. It's an extreme reaction. Not entirely the kind of behaviour of Danish women today, I would say. Not at all. Times have changed. So that's the Kimbrie gone. And the Roman authors inevitably give absolutely massive casualty figures, you know, kind of 140 ,000 killed, 60 ,000 prisoners taken.

29:12Tom Holland:I mean, we don't probably exaggerate it, but clearly it's a massive monumental victory. And the barbarian invasion is over. Marius has saved Rome. He saved Italy. He's the hero of the hour. And the person, Dominic, who brings the news of the victory to Rome, do you want to reveal who that is?

29:30Dominic Sandbrook:I do. Listeners, brace yourselves. It's none other than Gaius Julius Caesar. Now, if you're thinking that's Julius Caesar, you're wrong. It's actually his father. And only a fool would think it was Julius Caesar himself. Isn't that right, Tom? Yeah, that would be mad. Only a total idiot would get the father and son muddled up. And thank God we're not at home to idiots on The Rest is History. No, it is, Tom. this podcast right so uh julius caesar not the julius caesar but a julius caesar his dad brings the news back to rome and i mean people won't understand why we're laughing but who cares i think they'll probably guess and marius is the hero of the hour and actually there are two interesting indications of this aren't there tom and would you like to talk people through them

30:16Tom Holland:right so the first may seem a little bit obscure but it it um bear it in mind because it's going to have, it's an indicator of things that are to come. So in the wake of the battle, Marius has obviously fought it not just with Roman legions, but with armies of Italian allies, the Sochi. And at the end of the battle, Marius had very impulsively granted citizenship to two cohorts of the Sochi, of these Italian allies. So about a thousand men in total. And this was completely illegal. He had no right to do this. And it was very controversial back in Rome, because obviously the Romans guard their citizenship very jealously.

30:54Tom Holland:But the Senate suck it up. They realise they can't really go against the hero of the hour. The other indication of just what a hero Marius is, he's had these five consulships and four of these have been because he has been in charge of the war against the barbarian invaders. But now that the barbarian invaders have gone, Marius runs for the consulship again and is elected again. So this is a sixth consulship and only one man way back in the mists of time had achieved this. So Marius is now the equal record holder. And just to emphasize, it's a big enough feat for a novice homo, a man who has no pedigree, to get one consulship.

31:36Tom Holland:Marius is now the joint record holder. Six consulships, stupefying. But to be fair,

31:41Dominic Sandbrook:He deserves it. Is he not the goat at this point of Roman history? Jugurtha, stuff in Spain, seeing off the White Walkers. I mean, he's got an unbelievable record of success. And if any man in Roman history deserves six consulships, surely it's Gaius Marius.

32:01Tom Holland:Well, you might say that. But obviously, in a society like Rome's, which is founded on relentless competition between alpha males, the fact that one particular alpha male has done stunningly well for himself isn't necessarily greeted with overwhelming joy and approbation by other alpha males. So the very scale of Marius' success kind of stores up trouble for him. no one in rome like someone who is too much of a winner that's the whole ethos of the republic

32:39Dominic Sandbrook:and there's a class element to this isn't there i mean marius by definition i suppose because of his background because of his plain style and you're sleeping on the ground in a military blanket or whatever he is your classic popularis isn't he he's the man who appeals to the people you know he's the champion of ordinary working people isn't that marius's shtick that is very much his dick yeah and by definition therefore that means that conservatives the patrician types they're going to see him as an as somebody who is not one of them and they're going to look for somebody they're going to look for a champion maris is much too tall a poppy so

33:17Tom Holland:they want to nurture and you know grow other poppies that can yeah kind of measure up to him and the the one that they go for is a guy called quintus lutatius catulus and he had been maris's colleague as consul in 102 BC. So that's the year in which they had defeated the Teutons. And he is everything that Marius isn't. So he's a very old school aristocrat. He's enjoyed a very expensive education. He has amazing connections. He's so not Marius that to be enthusiastic for him is kind of almost pointedly to do Marius down. Now, Catulus initially had made a bit of a hash of things. So in the campaign against the Cimbri, it was his failure to hold defensive positions along the line between Gaul and Italy that had enabled the Cimbri to break through the defences and advance into Northern Italy.

34:12Tom Holland:But he'd redeemed himself. He joined forces with Marius. They'd won the great victory together. Cacullus hadn't. I mean, he's not a great general, but he'd fought with dogged competence. And the Romans, I guess, they love a bit of dogged competence. They don't whole, they see that as a mark in Catulus's favour. And so Catulus had been awarded a triumph alongside Marius, but he's an aristocrat. Marius is an out of towner. Obviously, Catulus is resentful of the fact that Marius is really the one getting all the plaudits, getting all the cheers. And so the rivalry between them over the years that follows is kind of baked in.

34:50Tom Holland:So Marius, for instance, he builds a temple to celebrate the favour that had been shown him by the gods, and Catullus does exactly the same. And so it carries on. And this, no, it's nothing unusual. This is how people tend to behave in the Roman Republic. The great men do tend to dislike each other, to be rivals of one another.

35:11Dominic Sandbrook:But Catullus isn't really a, I mean, he's not a serious threat to Marius, is he? I mean, the way you've described his record. He's a plodder. Yeah, right. He's a mediocrity.

35:20Tom Holland:Yeah, I don't think Marius really feels threatened by him. There is, however, one man who I think does live a bit rent free in his head. And this is another aristocrat, a former lieutenant of his, a soldier, a politician of formidable abilities. We've mentioned him before. This is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. And I think it's time now, we've mentioned him several times already in the series, to have a bit of a closer look at him.

35:50Dominic Sandbrook:The glamour boy of Roman politics, right? I mean, he really is, he has the glamour that Marius perhaps doesn't quite have. He's sophisticated. He is patrician. He is blue-blooded. He's cool. He's ruthless. He's cunning, all of these things. But there are similarities as well as differences, right? Yeah, there completely are.

36:10Tom Holland:So both of them are brilliant soldiers. Both of them have a real talent for politics. Both of them are incredibly ambitious. And both of them, I think, have been very driven to escape what, by the standards of senatorial politics, is a degree of relative poverty. So although Marius, his background is kind of the regional aristocracy, the out-of-town aristocracy, his parents are not wealthy compared to the great senatorial figures of Rome. And Sulla, even though he comes from an ancient patrician family, his background also has been relatively poverty stricken. So his father had died essentially bankrupt and so left Sulla very, very hard up.

36:59Tom Holland:And this means that throughout his youth, Sulla had found his means humiliatingly disproportionate to his ambitions, to his expectations. It's like someone, I guess, who's been given a very expensive education and then the father goes bankrupt. They have to go and get a job in Burger King or something.

37:20Dominic Sandbrook:It's that kind of thing. Does that happen to people? I mean, do they end up working in Burger King? I had a friend who did experience that. Well, it's the classic thing of the person living in the kind of massive country house who can't heat it because daddy spends all the money on hawkers.

37:36Tom Holland:I think it's worse than that because if we can trust Plutarch, and that is quite a big if, but he reports traditions that Salad is hanging out in very kind of seedy lodgings in rough areas of town. He doesn't seem to have had the equivalent of a stately home. And he is hanging out with kind of the demimonde, with bohemians. Right. And these include prostitutes, drag queens, and the very worst of the worst, stand-up comedians.

38:09Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, no. Mime artists, people of that ilk.

38:13Tom Holland:Preetuck is appalled by this. One of the few things you can say is touching about Sulla, that he's very loyal to them throughout his life. Loves a drag queen and a stand-up comic. He literally does love a drag queen, as we will see. He's very keen on stand-up comics and drag queens, and indeed prostitutes. God almighty. I see. We've said how he's a very good looking man. He has this kind of this hair that's so golden that it's almost red, which is very striking in Rome. He has kind of blue eyes, actually, a bit like a Cimbrian. So again, very striking. And he's again, if we can trust Plutarch, he seems to have operated as a bit of a gigolo.

38:48Tom Holland:Both his stepmother, rather sinisterly, and Rome's most famous courtesan are said to have become obsessed by him. And in their wills, both these women leave most of their property to Sulla. So if we can trust these stories, Sulla has essentially been pimping himself out. He is being paid by the estates of the women who've fallen for him. And it is these estates that then kind of in his late 20s, early 30s, enables him to embark on the political career that his contemporaries and peers would have begun in their late teens. Right. So he's a late starter. So he's 30 and suddenly he is able to dream of big things.

39:30Tom Holland:But in a way, as much as Marius, Sulla feels that he is struggling against impediments that had held him back early in his career, I think. And I think those are points of resemblance between them and maybe explains why both of them appear so driven in their respective careers.

39:46Dominic Sandbrook:They're both in a way late developers, aren't they? I mean, Marius was, what was he, not even 40 when he really appears in the history books. And Sulla is 30 by the time he's got all this money and can launch his career. And he, I mean, he's utterly ruthless, isn't he, Sulla? I mean, this is one of his defining characteristics. He will do absolutely whatever is necessary to get ahead.

40:08Tom Holland:Yeah. So this is why he is very content to be Marius's lieutenant. He profits from it, first in Africa, and then he serves with Marius against the barbarians in the north, the Teutons and the Cimbri. But he's also happy in due course when he has to, to turn on Marius as Marius had turned on Metellus, his patron. So we mentioned this ring and how it niggles Marius. He hates this ring kind of showing Sulla getting Jugurtha. In the war against the Cimbri, Sulla begins serving with Marius, and then he switches and joins the staff of Catulus. And by doing that, he's not just broadening his range of military experience.

40:49Tom Holland:He's also identifying himself with the conservative interest in the Senate, because that is the kind of the alignment that Catulus represents. And that is, of course, the faction most opposed to Marius. And so I think Sulla is definitely making a statement with that, that he served his apprenticeship and now he's moving on. He's leaving Marius behind. So in the 90s, in the wake of the defeat of the Teutons and the Cimbri, Salah, I mean, he does well enough. He gets a magistracy here, a magistracy there. He goes on a diplomatic mission. He's the first Roman to establish relations with the Parthians in the Far East, this kind of Iranian power.

41:30Tom Holland:But he doesn't make a tremendous name for himself. And the consulship remains out of his reach. And the problem is that Sulla lacks what Marius had enjoyed, namely the chance to do spectacularly well in a glorious war. But Sulla doesn't despair about this. He's ambitious, but he's also very patient. And even though he's a tremendous cynic, I mean, kind of balefully so, he is simultaneously very superstitious. And Sulla absolutely believes himself to be the favourite of Venus. the goddess of love, the goddess of fortune, the goddess who grants to those who are her particular favourites, sex appeal, which Sulla has, and good fortune, which Sulla is convinced is going to be his in due course.

42:21Tom Holland:So by 91 BC, Sulla is 47. The minimum age by convention that you can run for the consulship is 40. So he's seven years over that threshold. And I reckon by Sulla's own high standards. He has to reckon that that's a bit of a failure. He should have got the consulship by this point. But he remains confident that everything's going to be fine, that he is going to get a consulship in due course, that he is going to become one of the great men of not just in contemporary Roman politics, but in the entire sweep of Roman history, and that he is indeed what the Romans called phalix, which means both fortunate and favoured by Venus.

43:05Tom Holland:And he is not wrong because in due course, he is going to get his chance with absolutely seismic consequences for the Roman Republic.

43:17Dominic Sandbrook:And he will be getting that chance after the break.

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44:36Dominic Sandbrook:Welcome back everybody to the Rest is History. The year is 91 BC and as you look out what you can see is the Bay of Naples the epitome of Roman chic and wealth and luxury and pleasure Naples of course Tom Neapolis a former Greek colony but for the Romans it's become the great sort of tourist destination hasn't it it's the place where they go to get a

45:02Tom Holland:little taste of Greece yeah so you've got these kind of ancient streets basking in the sun and And you can go there and debate with philosophers and have doctors consult you and have affairs with kind of witty, well-read courtesans and all of the things that you would get in Greece. And so unsurprisingly, throughout the 90s, as all this wealth is flooding into Rome and the aristocracy are getting richer and richer, the entire coastline of the bay has become incredibly fashionable, kind of the Saint-Tropez or whatever of ancient Rome. And luxury villas are starting to sprout up along its length.

45:36Tom Holland:So Marius is one of the super rich who's commissioned a villa. Typically, he's had it kind of structured to look like a Roman military encampment stuck out on a promontory.

45:47Dominic Sandbrook:God, he never changes, does he?

45:48Tom Holland:You've got spas. We love a spa on the rest of history. You've got marinas. You've got yachts. You've got oyster beds. So these have been developed by a local entrepreneur called Sergius Arata. Absolutely floods the market with very high-end oysters. And then Arata goes one better and invents the heated swimming pool. So there's something of, I guess, of kind of West Hollywood as well as Saint-Tropez about the whole kind of the whole vibe. And it generates a massive property boom. But it's not just villas that are being developed because a few miles up the coast from Naples is a place called Putiole.

46:23Tom Holland:And this is a one time Greek port that, unlike Naples, has been completely flattened, rebuilt and expanded, complete with these enormous concrete moulds. because the volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, which looms over the Bay of Naples, enables the Romans to make concrete that can be used underwater. And so this enables this kind of huge port to be built. And the significance of Puteoli for the Romans is that it's a deep water port. It's basically the only deep water port they have on the Roman side of Italy that can provide the capital with all these kinds of goods that are starting to flood in across the Mediterranean from all the various parts of the Mediterranean world that Rome now controls.

47:09Tom Holland:So you've got grain, you know, Rome is a city perhaps of half a million people that they need to be fed. You've got slaves to fuel Roman enterprises, in particular what are called the Latifundia, which are these kind of vast, enormous agricultural estates, which are spreading across Italy and have to be worked by slave labor. Gold and silver, of course. And the irony is that what Peru was to 16th century Spain, Spain is the first century BC, Rome. So there are all these enormous complex of mines in Spain, tens of thousands of slaves being worked to death in this kind of great landscape pocked with tunnels and quarries.

47:51Tom Holland:I mean, just hell on earth, fumes so heavy that the chemicals burn the skin. And it said that birds, if they fly over the mines, just drop dead. And to this day, if you get a core of ice from the poles, you can see the chemical trace elements of all the smelting that was going on in this period. So it's a vast kind of industrial scale. And of course, from the Eastern Mediterranean, we talked about this in the previous episode, how the Romans take over this province that they call Asia, the Western seaboard of what's now Turkey. you get these incredible luxuries, sculptures, spices, paintings, exotic plants, celebrity chefs, sex manuals, all these kind of things.

48:32Tom Holland:They're coming to Puttioli and then being taken on to Rome.

48:35Dominic Sandbrook:So presumably as a result of all this, Naples and the surrounding areas, so Campania, and indeed cities like Pompeii, which is just along the coast, these places must be coming enormously rich.

48:45Tom Holland:Yeah. And these at this point are not Roman. So they are absolutely benefiting as well. And I would say the whole of the Bay of Naples and Campania, which is the region that the Bay of Naples is set in, it's becoming probably the single richest area in the world with the exception of Rome. You're having massive inflows of wealth and goods. And if you're an Italian and you belong to the elite and you can speak Latin and you have good business contacts, then the opportunities for making yourself rich, particularly if you have businesses that reach overseas, are the same as those that any Roman merchant has.

49:26Tom Holland:The opportunities are absolutely enormous. And there is this one particular honeypot, which is the province of Asia, what had previously been the kingdom of Pergamum, and which had been left to the Roman people by its last king in his will back in 133 BC. And it's become a province. The Romans call it Asia. And for several generations now, Roman and Italian business interests have been bleeding this province absolutely white. And the most profitable enterprise of all is to set up private companies that can then operate the taxation system and extort taxes out of the wretched locals. And the name of these cartels is Publicani, and it's Publicani because they are operating for the benefit of the Roman public.

50:15Tom Holland:But there is nothing public spirited about them at all. And their scam is basically not just to extort the official tribute that is owed to Rome, but also to strong arm the provincials into essentially paying for the privilege of being fleeced. They have their own private gangs of heavies, and it's absolutely terrible for the poor provincials. And the Italian merchant class has its nose at least as much in this particular trough as the Roman business class does. And so to the people of Asia who feel that this is a plague, Romans and Italians, they see them all as Romeoi, as Romans. They don't really distinguish between them.

51:00Tom Holland:And so I think for Italian businessmen, if they're overseas, it's great. They share all the privileges and advantages of Roman citizenship. They can get just as rich as the Romans. So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that when they come home, they find that they are in Italy still very much second class citizens. And so I think the more successful they are, paradoxically, riding on the Roman coattails, the more they come to resent the romans the more they come to feel that the romans are not cutting them the slack that is their due as people who properly should be roman citizens themselves

51:41Dominic Sandbrook:so the discontent of these italians who've made a lot of money uh in pergamum this has been growing and growing growing for a series of reasons right they have to do military service yeah and that falls disproportionately on them they don't get all the benefits of roman citizenship when they come home so they don't get the vote they don't get the same legal standing they don't get all of this the case of marius is a really good example of the disparity of opportunities so if you're a roman as marius is you can win six consulships if you're from arpinum but if you're from pompeii you you can't win a single consulship right you can't win a single roman office because you you don't have the vote well you described how marius had enfranchised a thousand italians after he'd beaten the white walkers and i guess if he can do that just randomly why can't you enfranchise all of them i mean that is a reasonable question that these italians are asking yeah and obviously the romans don't want to make this concession because to them being roman is special and they want to guard the exclusivity of roman status some of the romans do so there are statesmen in rome who think

52:50Tom Holland:actually, the Italians have a point. And if we make them Roman citizens, then think how much manpower we'll have. They can see that it promises Rome a kind of absolute military preponderance if they do give the Italians the full Roman citizenship. And the guy who takes the lead in pushing this argument is a tribune called Marcus Livius Drusus. And fun fact, Livia, the wife of the Emperor Augustus, so anyone who's seen like Claudius will remember her, she is this guy's adoptive granddaughter so there are family links everywhere in roman history anyway this guy drusus in 91 he brings forward a bill to give the italian allies full roman citizenship and to his opponents this is an existential moment because just as there are very good reasons for allowing the italians to have citizenship so also are there very good reasons not to allow them because the anxiety of the conservatives the anxieties of drusus's opponents, is that Rome is a city state.

53:47Tom Holland:It has these very ancient institutions. And the question they ask is, how are these institutions, how is the civic infrastructure of our city going to cope with the sudden enrollment of millions of new citizens throughout the length and breadth of Italy? I mean, both sides obviously have really good arguments on their side. And so unsurprisingly, the whole city comes to be gripped by the tension of this debate, which has kind of flared up suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. And as it had done back in the period of the Tribunate of the Gracchi, kind of 30 years previously, so now the argument turns violent.

54:25Tom Holland:So amid riots, amid violent demonstrations, Drusus's legislation is defeated. And then a few days later, while Drusus himself is sitting in the kind of the portico of his villa, he is surprised by an assassin and murdered. Whoa. And the news of this murder is greeted across Italy with a great explosion of anger. And this anger will culminate in them turning to open warfare. And this war will be called by historians in English, the social war. Worst name for a war ever. It sounds like it's been organised by the local golf club or something. But this is a very, very brutal conflict. and actually for the Romans, one of the most dangerous wars that they ever fight.

55:13Tom Holland:Because essentially everything that the Romans have created risks being brought down by it. The Italians have been knitted into the fabric of their empire. Without the Italians, they could never have achieved what they've achieved. And now the Italians have turned on them. This is a massively fateful conflict for them.

55:31Dominic Sandbrook:Right. So it's an existential threat for the Romans and it begins in the east, doesn't it? There's an uprising. The murder of Drusus, a massive scandal. There's an uprising in Asculum, in the east of Italy. All the Romans in the city are murdered. They're massacred. The wives of the Italians who don't join the rebellion are tortured and escalped, aren't they? So, I mean, this is a hideously violent occasion.

55:59Tom Holland:I think deliberately to make a statement that the Italians are not messing around, that they seriously mean business. And also, I think, to encourage other Italians to feel, well, these guys really mean business. We'd better pile in as well. So Asculum, which you mentioned, the place where the whole thing explodes, it's in a region called Piscenum on the Adriatic coast, what's now modern day Marche in Italy. But it doesn't take long for the flames of rebellion to spread across the Apennines and reach Campania. So the Bay of Naples, this great gilded golden place. So Pompeii joins the rebellion.

56:38Tom Holland:And inland, there's a city called Nola. Again, like Pompeii, not Roman. This gets captured by the Italian rebels and transformed into a kind of bristling stronghold of the revolt. But actually, I mentioned the Apennines. That is the real focus of the rebellion. That's the real focus of the uprising. Because, of course, it's mountainous and so it's much more difficult for the Romans to reach than the kind of the flat level plains. And the particular focus of the rebellion is a region called Samnium, which lies directly to the east of Campania. Very, very mountainous, very poor trickle down economics from Rome's empire has not reached the Samnites.

57:19Dominic Sandbrook:And the Samnites, I mean, they're a pretty remarkable people, aren't they? The Romans regard them as backward, which I think is very cruel, cultural snobbery. So to give people a sense of the Samnites' interesting traditions, they like witchcraft, they wear rings of iron around their necks, and they shave their pubic hair, not just privately, but am I not right in saying they shave their pubic hair in public?

57:41Tom Holland:And the Romans, for some unfathomable reason, find this revolting.

57:44Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, mad from the Romans.

57:46Tom Holland:One thing the Romans do like about the Samnites is their armour, which is very fancy and beautiful. And in fact, in due course, Samnite armour will be the armour that is worn by one of the particular kinds of gladiator, which I think is both a mark of respect and of contempt, because you're basically putting the Samnite to fight for you, for your entertainment in an arena. But just to say, I mean, the Samnites are a very proud people. A proud, rugged people. They're a proud, genitally smooth people. Mountain people. Yeah. who centuries before, they had fought a great war that went on for many decades against the Romans.

58:25Tom Holland:They'd only been defeated with great difficulty. And I think they have not forgotten their ancient glory, even though centuries have passed since that happened. And they dust down their armor, they dust down their swords, they have a nice quick shave, and then they're off to create havoc down in the plains. And the Romans are taken completely by surprise. and it's rather as though I think the sense of shock they feel it's as though I don't know you're in Godalming or Tunbridge Wells and suddenly you find you're being attacked by Jacobites or something it's just so unexpected it's like these soldiers have risen from a pass that you thought was completely dead and buried

59:04Dominic Sandbrook:yeah that's a hell of a twist

59:06Tom Holland:and there is the inevitable bad start Roman wars always seem to begin with a bad start so there are various defeats There is a consul is slain. But the Romans do still have immense reserves of manpower, even though they've lost all the Italians. And they do have three top generals. And one of these three top generals, of course, is Marius, who is now in his 60s. And by this point, he has become, I think it's fair to say, a man of size. And his critics say that this is what comes of having a luxury villa on the Bay of Naples. Inevitably. However, despite his bulk, he's still got it. He's still got his talent for winning battles.

59:47Tom Holland:And actually, he had been serving as a deputy to the consul who got killed. And Marius had been downriver and he saw corpses starting to float by him, realized what had happened. And he went around the back of the Italians and captured their fort. and this was a kind of consolation victory that cheered everybody up and kept Marius' name on the lips of the Romans. But he's not the top general. So at number two, there is the guy who's the chief landowner in Piscenum on the east flank of Italy where the uprising had begun. And this is a guy called Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. And he's widely mistrusted in Rome, partly because he has a very shady character.

1:00:30Tom Holland:He's always stabbing people in the back. And partly because he has a squint, which in Latin is Strabo, that's what it means. And the Romans tend to view people with squints as being untrustworthy. So Strabo is seen as a person who is a dangerous character. However, he is very effective and he catches the rebels in Pisceanum in a pincer attack. And he then moves you know, the birthplace of this revolt, and he puts it under siege and it looks like it's going to fall. So this is very good. So he's number two in the hit parade. But number one, the breakout Roman star in the social war is Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

1:01:11Tom Holland:And he is the guy who is operating on the western flank of Italy, just as Strabo is operating on the eastern half. And this means that Sulla has responsibility for prosecuting the war in Campania, the Bay of Naples and Samnium. He advances it across Campania, capturing all the rebel strongholds, including Pompeii. And if you go to Pompeii today and you look at the walls, you can see the marks left on those walls by his artillery, by the stones fired by his catapults. Captures Pompeii. He then invades Samnium. He ambushes the Samnite army in a mountain pass, and then he storms the Samnite capital in an incredibly brutal three-hour assault.

1:01:56Tom Holland:And by this point, there is only one rebel-held stronghold left in Campania, and this is the city of Nola, which we mentioned had been captured early on in the conflict and turned into the great center of rebel resistance. And so Sulla moves up to its walls with his six legions that he's by this point got, and he puts it under siege and he's looking to finish off the revolt in Campania in the theatre of war for which he has responsibility. He himself, however, he doesn't stay there. He heads back to Rome. And this is a bit like Marius coming back from Africa to Rome because Sulla has his eye on the ultimate prize.

1:02:39Tom Holland:He thinks, I've made this tremendous name for myself. I'm now Rome's top general, this is my opportunity at last to get the consulship. And so he's going back to Rome to stand in those consular elections. And does he get it? He does. He wins it very easily. And the fact that he wins the consulship is manifestation of the fact that he is now seen by the Roman people as a person who has put all his peers, including Marius in the shade. He is a very, very significant player now in Roman politics. So he is celebrated as a master of tactics, of strategy, of siege warfare, of ambushes, of diplomacy.

1:03:21Tom Holland:He's been given this special award by his men, which is only ever given to a general who has saved his army from a position of extreme danger. So it's evident that his men think he's fantastic too. Meanwhile, Marius, the Sullust delight, is being widely mocked for being fat and old. He's 68. So he's basically decrepit. Harsh. And we said that he was out in the field, but he's given up. He's fallen ill. He's gone to his villa and he's just sitting there eating. Oh, Marius. And he seems yesterday's man. God. And so for Sulla, when he becomes consul on the 1st of January, 88 BC, it's an incredibly sweet moment.

1:04:02Tom Holland:And it's made all the sweeter by the fact that his consulship promises him the opportunity to win even more victories, even greater glory, an even juicier prize. And this is because while the Romans have been busy slogging it out in Italy, fighting the Sochi, fighting the Italian allies, another disastrous war has broken out, this time on the easternmost flank of the Roman Empire in Asia, in that hapless province that has been bled white by Roman and Italian businessmen.

1:04:41Dominic Sandbrook:But of course, a really important place for the Romans, right? Because it represents wealth, the eastern Mediterranean, richer than the west. So this, I mean, it's actually been provoked by the Romans themselves, is it not? Completely, yes.

1:04:54Tom Holland:So the guy responsible, he's a man called Manius Aquilius, and he's a very close associate of Marius. And this may or may not be a coincidence. He had served Marius as a legate and as his consular colleague against the Cimbri. So the year that they defeat the Cimbri. And in 90, he had been sent to Asia as part of an official commission charged by the Senate to sort out kind of various border disputes that had that were kind of rumbling between rival kings in what is now northern Turkey. And there was one kingdom in particular that Roman businessmen had been casting kind of greedy eyes on for quite a while.

1:05:37Tom Holland:And this is a place called Pontus on the coast of the Black Sea. And Aquilius, with what turns out to be completely fatal complacency, had sponsored an invasion of Pontus by a kind of client Roman king. And why he had done this is a bit of a mystery because he's doing this while the social war is raging. So you'd think the Romans had their hands full enough. Maybe he does it because he's been bribed by the business interests.

1:06:07Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

1:06:07Tom Holland:Or maybe he's trying to provoke a war that Marius can then take command of. So maybe he's doing it to serve his old boss. I mean, both or neither may be possible. We can't be sure. But either way, I mean, it turns out to be a really foolish thing to have done because Rome is fighting this desperate war back in Italy. And the king of Pontus turns out to be much more formidable than Aquilius had anticipated. And the king of Pontus is a guy called Mithridates, and he's very bold, very cunning, and as it turns out, incredibly vindictive. And he very easily swats aside the invasion of his kingdom. And then he takes an astonishing step, which is to invade the province of Asia.

1:06:56Tom Holland:I mean, a jaw-dropping step. And it's jaw dropping because for over a century now, no king in the Eastern Mediterranean has dared to provoke a war with Rome. They know what follows. They know that it's absolute curtains if you do that. But Mithridates had done it. And so people may be wondering, well, why has he taken this bold step? It's partly because he's been preparing for it for a very, very long time. He's massively beefed up his offensive capabilities. He has an army that is, well, actually, it's literally shiny new because his elite troops all have kind of beautiful jewelry on their armor and their swords are embossed with gold.

1:07:43Tom Holland:So it creates a tremendous spectacle. But also Mithridates, he's a very cunning man. And even while he likes flamboyant soldiers, he likes a spot of espionage himself. Yeah, he's got good intelligence. He'd personally gone undercover in Asia and he'd talked to the Greek communities there. And he'd realised just how much the locals loathed the Romans, how desperate they were to see the back of the Romans, and also how weak Rome's defences are. And he thinks, actually, maybe Rome's empire in Asia is a bit of a straw tiger. If I invade, maybe I can pull it off. And so he takes the plunge and he's not wrong because everything goes brilliantly for him.

1:08:25Tom Holland:In a matter of weeks, Roman power in Asia completely collapses. Aquileus flees to the island of Mytilene, just off the Aegean coast, and Mithridates himself arrives with his army on the shoreline of the Aegean. So unbelievable. Rome has lost the province of Asia to an Oriental king. Unbelievable humiliation.

1:08:50Dominic Sandbrook:And yet the reaction back home is quite complicated, isn't it? So for the business class who've invested in Asia or who have dealings with Asia, this is obviously an absolute disaster because a lot of them are bankrupted. And for the Italians, let's call them, so the people who are fighting against the Romans, they relied on these business links to fund their war, didn't they? So this is a massive shock. But the interesting thing, I think it's so interesting that the Romans actually think, well, this is going to be an absolute walkover because Easterners, Orientals, are completely given over to luxury sex manuals and celebrity chefs.

1:09:28Dominic Sandbrook:They fight like women. This is because they're so rich. So basically, their wealth will cripple them and we'll be able to defeat them and then we'll be able to take all their money. Yeah, so absolutely brilliant.

1:09:39Tom Holland:It's a massive win for us. And so all the leading men in Rome, all the nobles, they want a piece of the action. But the man who is in pole position because he's consul is Sulla. And sure enough, shortly after he's become consul, so early in 88 BC, he is officially confirmed as the man who is going to lead the expedition against Mithridates. And he couldn't be happier. And so he heads back to Nola to continue the siege there. A very, very happy man. His plan is he will capture Nola. He will serve his term as a consul and then he will fulfill the commission by leading his men eastwards to attack Mithridates, win tremendous glory for himself and just as importantly, become fabulously rich.

1:10:23Tom Holland:However, he has reckoned without his old commander and bitterest rival, Marius, who feels that the command in the war against Mithridates should properly be his. And remember, we floated the possibility that Aquilius had actually started this war with Mithridates with the aim of giving Marius the chance to do this. We don't know whether that's true, but it is certainly the case that in the early weeks of Sulla's consulship, Marius is absolutely on manoeuvres. So we mentioned how he has become slightly overweight. He starts to go out onto the campus marshes, the great kind of open space outside Rome where people go and do their exercises.

1:11:05Tom Holland:And he starts doing gym work, very public workouts, running, riding, weapon training. And crowds start turning up to watch him, this great veteran working off his fat, turning it back into muscle, cheering him on. And simultaneously, Marius starts building a political alliance to try and undermine Sulla and have the command against Mithridates transferred from Sulla to himself, to Marius. And the key ally that Marius gets is a guy called Salpicius. And Salpicius is a tribune who is very committed to the idea that all the Italians should be given the citizenship. He thinks this is the best way to end the war.

1:11:51Tom Holland:And by this point, actually, he has a lot of support in this opinion. Lots of Romans have come to this conclusion. And they're starting to give Italians who haven't rebelled or Italians who are laying down their arms the chance to become full Roman citizens. Wow. But Salpicius wants to push this very far. Sulla is, he's not tremendously enthusiastic about this. He's always dragging his heels on the question of whether the Italians should be given the full citizenship. And so too does Sulla's colleague as consul, a guy called Pompeius Rufus. And so they, both of them had pledged to back Salpicius's policy, but then once they're in power, they go back on it.

1:12:30Tom Holland:And Salpicius feels that he has been portrayed and is absolutely irate about it. So this is why Salpicius decides that he will back Marius's command because Marius in return says, well, I will back your move to see all the Italians enfranchised. The other thing that Salpicius can give Marius is that he's incredibly popular out on the streets of Rome. He's very good at whipping up a mob. And so this is the deal. Marius and Salpicius agree terms. Marius will get the command. And Sulpicius will get Marius' backing for the Italians all getting the vote. And so it is that a fateful political drama is set in train.

1:13:13Dominic Sandbrook:So first thing that happens, Sulpicius reintroduces his bill. So he reintroduces his bill and at the same time his supporters take to the streets. There's rioting in the city, isn't there? It's all kicking off. Sulla is at his camp outside Nola and he gets news and he comes rushing back and he has this meeting with pompeius rufus who is the consular colleague and sulpicius i mean this is an amazing thing sulpicius he is the news that sulla is having this meeting in secret and he sends a gang of um thugs to break it up and tom what happens next

1:13:49Tom Holland:well in the resulting confrontation the son of pompeius rufus the consul is murdered rufus himself barely escapes with his life and sulla i mean this is such a humiliation is forced to take refuge in Marius's house. So massive embarrassment. But it's not the end of Sulla's humiliations, because before he's allowed to return to Nola, he has to acquiesce in Sarpicius's legislation, this bill that he'd previously blocked. And he has to agree that his consular colleague, Pompeo's roofers, be stripped of his consulship. And so Sulla has to agree to all this. He has no choice. Otherwise, you know, he's going to get beaten up.

1:14:25Tom Holland:And so he heads back to Nola, painfully conscious of this great chasm that has been revealed between the show of his power and the reality of it. However, he does have one thing that can console him, and that is that he has this command against Mithridates. It's brilliant. And this is now the key thing that he has. It's the key to all his future prospects, because the damage that's been done to his prestige is such that only a triumphant Eastern war can possibly repair it. So everything for Sulla is dependent on his going off to beat Mithridates and winning a glorious victory. And then Dominic, he's in his camp outside Nola and a messenger arrives from Rome.

1:15:07Tom Holland:And he is one of Marius's staff officers. And he brings news of a plebiscite. And this is a bill that had been proposed by Salpicius. It had been ratified by the people and passed into law. And by terms of this plebiscite, Sulla is demoted from his command against Mithridates. He has it removed from him. And the person who gets the command in Sulla's place inevitably is Marius. And this staff officer has ridden into Sulla's camp, not just to give Sulla this news, but to take command of Sulla's legions, all six of them. Wow. And for Sulla, this is stunning, devastating news because it threatens not just to deprive him of his dreams of a great victory over Mithridates, but essentially to terminate his career in the most humiliating circumstances.

1:16:09Tom Holland:And so the question that now hangs in the air, what is Sulla going to

1:16:16Dominic Sandbrook:do well ladies and gentlemen there is only one way to find out the stage is set for one of the great confrontations in all classical history it is the death match between marius and sulla and on this match the future of rome itself will turn now if you're a member of the rest is history club you can find out what happens next straight away by listening to the next episode if you're not a member of the Rest is History Club, I urge you, I implore you to go to therestishistory.com and sign up and you'll be able to listen to the rest of this series. You'll be able to join our own Battleheart and Legion and you'll be able to find out what happens next in the struggle for the destiny of Rome itself.

1:16:59Dominic Sandbrook:So go to therestishistory.com and your life will be absolutely improved in every conceivable way. So on that bombshell, Tom, thank you very much. This is thrilling stuff we will see you next time goodbye bye