Any chance of restoring some harmony to the state and respect for the senate was hindered by the continued expansion of the empire. In 133 alone, there had been the capture in Spain of Numantia and the bequest of a whole kingdom, Pergamum, now the province of Asia. In the north Roman businessmen were expanding across the Alps into Gaul. Roman administration had to follow to protect them and by 120 a network of roads and towns, many of them colonies, stretched along the coast towards Spain and inland up rivers such as the Rhone, making up the new province of Transalpine Gaul. In the south, across the Mediterranean, the province of Africa was being settled by Italians for the first time. Aerial surveys show an extensive area, 160 kilometres broad, which appears to have been set aside for land division in these years.
It was unlikely that Roman rule over these vast territories would remain without some challenge. There was as yet no consistency in Rome’s approach to conquered territory. The emphasis had been on holding coastlines to ensure that shipping could travel freely, trade expanded, and legions moved. Roman merchants now had the resources and confidence to penetrate new markets, often beyond conquered territory, but the inland boundaries of the empire remained undefined and so they were vulnerable to the hostility of unsubdued tribes. No one could be sure whether the state would move in to protect them if they found themselves in trouble.
Even in annexed areas the status of conquered rulers in relation to the Roman state was unclear. Some were given client-state status, allowing them to rule themselves but always under the watchful eye of Rome. It was uncertain what kind of initiatives by these clients might provoke Rome, especially as Rome’s responses would be muddled by the machinations of competing political factions and rival commanders in search of personal glory. Crises were inevitable but it was the way they became entwined with the deteriorating political situation in Rome that makes this such an unstable period in the history of Rome (and yet one of the most fascinating for the historian).
A new crisis came in 111 and it raised all these unresolved issues. The throne of Numidia, a client state of Rome that neighboured the province of Africa, had been seized by a usurper, Jugurtha. In the struggle some Italian businessmen had been massacred and their supporters in the equestrian class demanded action from the senate. The senate’s response was hesitant, largely, said the historian Sallust (whose History of the Jugurthine War adopts a high moral tone on the matter), due to massive bribes distributed by Jugurtha among Roman senators. However, it is also likely that the senate was reluctant to initiate a war in a distant and unknown territory. It was only when it was clear that Jugurtha had little respect for Roman authority that war was joined in earnest (110).
So Rome had stumbled into another war, yet this time it went slowly and frustration with the senate’s handling of it grew both among the equestrian class and the people as a whole. In 107 the assembly presented their own candidate for the consular elections, Gaius Marius, an equestrian, now nearly 50 years old, with a solid
Record of military and public service. Marius not only won but, following the precedent established by Scipio Aemilianus in 147, he secured the command in Africa, where he had already served, using the popular assemblies. Thus he bypassed the senate that traditionally allocated provincial commands. Then, instead of going through the normal procedures of conscription, he called for volunteers for his army and, in a break with the convention of centuries, was prepared to take men without property. By 105 Marius had defeated Jugurtha and celebrated his triumph in Rome by having Jugurtha following his chariot in chains.
Africa was not the only part of the empire under threat. In 113 news came of two Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and Teutones, who had embarked on a long and seemingly unfocused migration from central Europe to France which intruded from time to time into Roman territory. Each time they met a Roman army they defeated it. After the final catastrophe, at Arausio in 105, Italy lay completely open to invasion and was only saved by the failure of the Germans to follow up their advantage. Marius seemed the only hope. In 104 he secured a second consulship and then, in defiance of all precedent, another four successive consulships. In two great battles, Aquae Sextia in Provence (102) and Vercelles in northern Italy (101), he defeated the Germans. Now even the senate accepted him as the saviour of the nation.
Marius’ problem was the settlement of his troops. Those without land to return to could not simply be disbanded, and he gained the help of one of the tribunes for 103, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, in securing land for them in Africa. Saturninus had his own plans for using the issue to gain public support (and so restore the influence of the tribunes lost after the crushing of the Gracchi) and, with Marius’ veterans called into Rome to overawe his opponents, forced laws through the concilium plebis which would have given Marius’ men, including those from the allied communities, access to land in Italy as well. The laws were bitterly opposed by the senate. Disorder increased and Saturninus was killed by a lynch mob. Marius’ men never got their land in Italy and Marius himself went into exile, now a somewhat discredited figure. Once again violence had infiltrated the political system.
Marius’ career had shown that the rules allowing a man only one consulship could be subverted by a determined concilium at a time of crisis and the senate could do little to prevent it. Marius’ new-style army also marked an important development. If soldiers were without land they were totally dependent on their commanders to look after them after their campaigns had ended. The commander might be encouraged to use them to force land from the state, as Saturninus had attempted to do on Marius’ behalf. The failure of the senate to recognize this problem and deal with it was a serious one. Repression of tribunes whenever they attempted reform simply left the underlying tensions unresolved.
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