Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (15 page)

The bloodbath of the Colline Gate was decisive. His enemies had no more armies left in Italy with which to continue the war. As the Samnite prisoners began to be rounded up Sulla was the absolute, unquestioned master of Rome.

Three thousand prisoners were taken at the Colline Gate. A further three thousand, the Samnite reserves, surrendered on Sulla’s promise of safe conduct. No sooner had they emerged from their stronghold, however, than they were rounded up and led off to join the other Samnite captives. These had already been imprisoned on
the Campus Martius, the flood plain that stretched north beyond the walls of the Capitol. Even in defeat the Samnites were kept out of Rome.

Sulla’s scrupulousness in this matter was ironic. Until his own legions had broken the taboo in 88
BC
the only men in arms ever to have entered the city had been citizens marching in triumphal parades. Otherwise, Rome had always been off limits to the military. Since as far back as the time of the kings civilians had first had to gather on the Campus Martius – the Plain of Mars – before taking the oath that transformed them into soldiers. Here they had been ranked according to their wealth and status, for in war, as in peace, every citizen had to know his place. At the summit of the hierarchy there had been those rich enough to afford their own horses, the
equites;
below the equestrian class were five further classes of infantry; at the bottom of the heap were citizens too poor to buy even a sling and a few sling-stones, the
proletarii.
These seven classes had in turn been divided into further units, known as ‘centuries’. This allowed status to be calibrated with exquisite precision. Long after ‘classes’ and ‘centuries’ had ceased to provide the basis of their army the Romans could not bring themselves to abandon so eminently satisfying a system. Instead, it remained at the heart of their political life.

Naturally, there were few citizens who did not dream of clawing themselves up the ladder, century by century, towards the uppermost rung. The higher a Roman climbed, the more fresh vistas emerged, to tempt him on further. Become an equestrian, for instance, and membership of the Senate became a sudden possibility; join the Senate and the tantalising prospect of a senior magistracy, a praetorship or even consulship, might hove into view. It was typical of the Republic that the greatest privilege it could grant one of its citizens was the chance to put himself to the vote of his fellows, and win even greater glory. Typical also that the mark of failure was to lose the class inherited from one’s father.

Out on the Campus only a few structures stood on its flat and open expanse. Of these, the largest in area was an enclosure filled with barriers and aisles, of the kind used to pen livestock. The Romans called it the Ovile, or ‘sheepfold’. This was where elections to the magistracies were held. The voters would be herded down the aisles in separate blocs. It was the nature of the Republic to thrive on complexity, and the organisation of these blocs varied confusingly from election to election. To vote for tribunes, for instance, the citizens would be divided into tribes. These were fabulously ancient in origin, and had been tweaked over the centuries in typically Roman manner as the Republic expanded and changed. With the enfranchisement of the Italians, they had been reorganised once again to cope with the influx of new citizens. Every member of every tribe was entitled to his vote, but since this had to be delivered in person at the Ovile the practical effect was to ensure that only the wealthiest out-of-towner could afford to travel to Rome to exercise his right. Inevitably, this served to skew the voting in favour of the rich. To most Romans, this seemed only fair. After all, the rich were the ones who contributed most to the Republic, and so it was generally conceded that their opinions should carry the greatest weight. Disproportionate voting power was yet another perk of rank.

Nowhere, however, was this principle more clearly expressed than in elections to the most senior magistracies of all. It was in these that the original functions of classes and centuries still maintained a ghostly after-life. Citizens assembled to vote for the consuls in the same way that their earliest ancestors had massed to go to war. Just as in the days of the kings, a military trumpet would be blown at daybreak to summon them to the Campus. A red flag would flutter on the Janiculum Hill beyond the Tiber, signalling that no enemies could be seen. The citizens would then line up as though for battle, with the richest at the front and the poorest at
the rear. This meant that it was always the senior classes who were the first to pass into the Ovile. Nor was that their only privilege. So heavily weighted were their votes that they usually served to decide an election. As a result, there was often little point in the other classes even turning out. Not only were their votes worth a fraction of those of the equestrians, but they would only rarely be called on to register them anyway. Since they received no financial compensation for a day spent queuing outside the election pens, most of the poor must have decided that they had better things to do with their time. The equestrians no doubt agreed.

Even so, for those who could afford to succumb to election fever, the tension of voting day was one of the greatest excitements of Roman civic life. The candidates in their specially whitened togas, the milling crowds of their supporters, the tumult of yells and jeers, all contributed to the sense of occasion. Not until late in the day would heralds announce the results – at which point the successful candidates would be greeted with a great roar, and escorted amid further cheering from the Ovile towards the Capitol. Most voters chose to stay and wait for the spectacle of this climax. On a hot day, however, with clouds of brown dust scuffed up by the crowds, this might require some stamina. There were few public amenities on the Campus. Most weary voters tended to head for the Villa Publica, a walled complex of government buildings set just back from the Ovile. Here they could gossip, fan themselves and stay out of the sun.

And here it was too that Sulla, after the Battle of the Colline Gate, ordered his Samnite captives brought. They were penned beyond the arches of the central building, a square, two-storeyed reception hall, its rooms magnificently ill-suited to serve as cells for prisoners of war. The splendour of the statues and paintings that adorned these rooms reflected their decisive role in the life of the Republic, for the Villa Publica was where the hierarchies of Roman
society were maintained and reviewed. Every five years a citizen had to register himself there. He also had to declare the name of his wife, the number of his children, his property and his possessions, from his slaves and ready cash to his wife’s jewels and clothes. The state had the right to know everything, for the Romans believed that even ‘personal tastes and appetites should be subject to surveillance and review’.
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It was knowledge, intrusive knowledge, that provided the Republic with its surest foundations. Classes, centuries and tribes, everything which enabled a citizen to be placed by his fellows, were all defined by the census. Once the raw information had been collated by scribes, it would then be carefully scrutinised by two magistrates, who had the power to promote or demote each citizen according to his worth. The office of these magistrates, the censorship, was the most prestigious in the Republic; even more than the consulship it was regarded as the climax of a political career. So sensitive were the duties of a censor that only the most senior and reputable of citizens could be entrusted with them. The maintenance of everything that structured the Republic depended on their judgement. There were few Romans who doubted that if the census were not conducted adequately, then the entire fabric of their society would fall apart. No wonder that it was universally regarded as ‘the mistress and guardian of peace’.
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By locking up his prisoners of war where he did, then, Sulla was once again demonstrating his taste for irony in even the grimmest of circumstances. The irony was soon to darken further. In the shadow of the Capitol, but within hearing distance of the Villa Publica, stood the temple of Bellona. Sulla sent orders to the Senate to meet him there. As they hurried to obey him, the senators would have glanced up and seen the charred ruins of Jupiter’s temple on the hill high above them. It was Bellona who had warned Sulla to win his victory quickly or see the Capitol destroyed. By choosing her temple as the venue for his address to the Senate, Sulla neatly
reminded his audience that he stood before them as the favourite of the gods, divinely sent to be the saviour of Rome. What this might mean in practical terms was soon to be made brutally apparent. As Sulla launched into his address, describing his victory over Mithridates, the senators began to hear the muffled sounds of shrieking from the Samnite prisoners. Sulla continued, apparently oblivious to the screams, until at last he paused and ordered the senators not to be distracted from what he had to say. ‘Some criminals are receiving their punishment,’ he explained dismissively. ‘There is no need for worry, it is all being done on my orders.’
⁶

The massacre was total. In the cramped conditions of the slaughter-house the bodies piled up high. Once the executions had been completed, the corpses were dragged across the Campus and flung into the Tiber, clogging the banks and bridges with pollution, until ‘at last the river’s currents cut a swath of blood through the azure open sea’.
⁷
The stains on the Villa Publica itself were not so easily removed. The census had been held there only three years previously. Now the rooms in which the rolls had been completed were filthy with gore. The symbolism was shocking and obvious: Sulla rarely made any gesture without a fine calculation of its effect. By washing the Villa Publica with blood he had given dramatic notice of the surgery he was planning to perform on the Republic. If the census were illegitimate, then so too were the hierarchies of status and prestige that it had affirmed. The ancient foundations of the state were unstable, on the verge of collapse. Sulla, god-sent, would perform the repairs, no matter how much bloodshed the task might require.

In its blending of superstition with the flaunting of naked power this was a vintage Sullan performance. There was no one in the Senate willing – or foolish enough – to stand up to it. Even Sulla’s bitterest enemies had little choice but to acknowledge the unprecedented scale of his triumph. To Sulla himself, success had
always been the surest proof of Fortune’s blessing. This was why he chose to downplay his own role in the victory at the Colline Gate, and overplay that of Crassus: not because he was modest, but because, on the contrary, he wished to portray himself as Fortune’s favourite – a man of destiny. Ancient writers were unclear whether to attribute this to conviction or cynicism – although in Sulla’s case the two appear always to have been perfectly compatible. What is certain, however, is that by casting his victory as god-given, the man who had been the first to march on Rome, and who had devastated Italy with ‘war, fire and slaughter’,
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aimed to absolve himself of all blame for the Republic’s woes. This was why Sulla’s exhumation of Marius’ ashes, and his scattering of them into the River Anio, was an act of calculated propaganda as well as petty revenge. The death-struggle with his great rival, the very feud that had brought the Republic to its perilous pass, was reconstituted as a war in the Republic’s defence. In this way alone could Sulla justify the position of supremacy that he had wrested for himself. Even Marius, in the grim insanity of his final months, had taken care to cloak himself in the tattered legitimacy of his seventh consulship. Sulla, however, was too shrewd to attempt a similar sham. He knew that there was no point in picking up the shreds of a conventional magistracy. If he were to conceal the nakedness of his power, then he would have to look elsewhere for a fitting disguise.

Before he could do that, however, he had to make absolutely certain of his victory. Leaving Rome, he headed directly for the neighbouring town of Praeneste, final stronghold of the Marian cause. On the way, the news reached him that the city had surrendered and Marius’ son was dead. Rome was now without consuls. The fact that it was Sulla who had destroyed the two heads of state only served to emphasise the constitutional anomaly of his position. Sulla himself was too exultant with self-belief to care. He celebrated
the scotching of his enemy’s bloodline by awarding himself the title of Felix – ‘The Fortunate One’. This had always been a cherished private nickname, but now Sulla decided to broadcast it publicly. By doing so, he signalled that there would be no herding of voters into the Ovile to validate his rule. Luck had brought Sulla to power, and luck – Sulla’s famous luck – would save the Republic in turn. Until her favourite’s work was done, and the constitution restored, Fortune was to rule as the mistress of Rome.

Her reign would prove to be savage. The casting down of the great, the raising up of the insignificant, these were the dramas in which Fortune most delighted. So too, of course, in its own way, did the Republic. Yet the constitution, subtle and finely modulated as it was, had evolved to restrain any violent change. Not for the Romans the mass executions and asset-stripping of opponents that had periodically engulfed Greek cities. Sulla, capturing Athens, had overthrown a regime dependent on precisely such tactics. Now, having captured Rome in turn, he prepared to copy them. In the practice of political terror as in so much else Athens, ‘the school of Greece’, could still inspire.

The death squads had fanned out through Rome even as the Samnites were being butchered in the Villa Publica. Sulla himself made no attempt to restrain them. Even his supporters, inured to bloodshed, were appalled by the resulting carnage. One of them dared to ask when the murderers would be reined in. Or at least, he added hurriedly, ‘let us have a list of all those you want punished’.
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Sulla, sardonically obliging, duly posted a list in the Forum. It featured the entire leadership of the Marian regime. All were condemned to death. Their properties were declared forfeit, and their sons and grandsons barred from standing for office. Anyone who helped to protect them was likewise condemned to death. An entire swath of Rome’s political elite was summarily nominated for annihilation.