Fall from power of Gaius Marius

The year 100 saw Marius fail disastrously as a politician. Saturninus was tribune for the second time, and Glaucia was praetor; given the poverty of surviving sources, it is extremely difficult to understand either their political aims or Marius’ relationship to them. The three shared a common hatred of Metellus, who, as censor in 102, had tried to remove Saturninus and Glaucia from the Senate, and in 103 Saturninus had carried a bill, evidently in Marius’ interest, for the settlement of veterans in Africa. Now, with the inevitability of civil disorder—for the Roman populace opposed his measures—Saturninus introduced bills for land distribution of Cimbric territory in the north to Romans living in the country, and probably to Italians, and for the settlement of veterans, evidently including allied troops, in colonies overseas. This bill may have included a powerful command for Marius to supervise the resettlement of the veterans—empowering him to give Roman citizenship to a certain number of the new settlers in each colony.

Marius had already violated the law by granting citizenship on the battlefield to two cohorts of Italians (Camertes) who fought under him against the Cimbri in 101, and conceivably Saturninus and Marius were agreeable to a program of extensive enfranchisement of Italians by means of the new colonial settlements. A breach between them occurred, possibly because Marius, in his jealous way, thought that Saturninus was stealing some of his own thunder or possibly because Saturninus’ lawlessness had reached a pitch that no self-respecting consul could tolerate.

First the land and colonial bill was passed, but with blatant illegality; it required senators to take an oath within five days to observe it. After misleading statements about his own intention, Marius took the oath. Metellus refused, however, presumably because of the way in which the bill had been carried, and, forestalling condemnation in the treason court, he retired to Greece; later he was officially exiled. At the tribunician elections for 99, Saturninus was reelected together with a pretender who, already heavily discredited, claimed to be the son of Tiberius Gracchus. At the consular elections, with Glaucia as a candidate, Marcus Antonius, the orator, was elected, and Gaius Memmius, a man with an excellent popular record, was murdered. In the ensuing pandemonium the Senate passed the “last decree,” calling on the consuls to save the state. Through Marius’ action Saturninus and Glaucia were captured on the Capitol and imprisoned in the Senate house; then a mob stripped off the roof and stoned them to death. Although this was no responsibility of Marius, he was smeared as a man who betrayed not only his enemies but also his friends.

Later years

Rather than attend the inevitable recall of Metellus from exile, Marius went to the east in 99 and there met Mithradates VI of Pontus. He was elected to a priesthood (the augurship) but wisely withdrew his candidature for the censorship of 97. He acted as a background figure in the not fully unraveled politics of the 90s and successfully opposed an attempt in 95 to disenfranchise men to whom he had given citizenship under the terms of Saturninus’ colonial bill, though the law itself had been shelved. In 92 he supported the scandalous prosecution and condemnation of his old associate Rutilius Rufus (in fact a model administrator) for alleged misgovernment of Asia.

Marius was now beginning to show his age. In an Italian rebellion (the Social War) of 90–88, he campaigned under the consul Rutilius Lupus, a soldier far his inferior. In 88, when the tribune Sulpicius Rufus proposed the transfer of the Asian command from the consul Sulla to Marius, presumably on the ground that Marius alone was sufficiently experienced to conduct such a critical war, there was violent public opposition to Sulla in Rome. Sulla went to his army in Campania and marched with it on Rome. Sulpicius’ measures were rescinded, and Marius was exiled.

After a series of near catastrophes, all much embroidered in the telling, Marius escaped safely to Africa. In 87, when Sulla was fighting in Greece, disorder in Rome led to the consul Cinna being dismissed. Marius landed in Etruria, raised an army, sacked Ostia, and, by joining forces with Cinna, captured Rome; both Marius and Cinna were elected consuls for 86, Marius for the seventh time. Hideous massacre followed as Marius ordered the deaths of Marcus Antonius, Lutatius Catulus, Publicus Licinius Crassus, and other distinguished men whom he considered to have behaved with treacherous ingratitude toward him. By this time he was hardly sane, and his death, in 86, was a godsend for enemies and friends alike. If the outcome of his proscriptions was considered to be less disastrous than that of the later proscriptions of Sulla, it was only because they lasted for a shorter time.

Marius’ only son died as consul fighting against Sulla in 82. His widow survived until 69 and received the unusual honour, for a woman, of a public funeral oration by her nephew Julius Caesar, who later won great popularity by restoring to the Capitol Marius’ trophies, which Sulla had removed.

Marius was commemorated by the name Mariana given to Uchi Majus and Thibaris (two African settlements) and to a colony in Corsica, and by the Fossa Mariana, a canal dug by his soldiers at the mouth of the Rhône River.