Oddly enough, the issue of provincial citizenship never became a major object of conflict. After the unification of Italy, the other provincial centers in Spain, Greece, and Africa remained merely subjects of Rome. This was a pattern that continued as Rome expanded into Gaul and Syria. But individuals could be awarded citizenship (the legions in particular became a frequently trod path), and soon there were Roman citizens of Spanish, Gallic, African, Greek, and Syrian origin. But mass provincial citizenship was never considered until the third century AD, and even then was imposed from the top down. With many noncitizens exempt from certain taxes, the emperor Caracalla decreed universal citizenship in 211. As the historian Cassius Dio says, “nominally he was honoring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues.” So mass provincial citizenship was only extended once it became a burden rather than a privilege.46
THESE GROUPS REENTERED the historical stream after the death of Sulla and proceeded to get back to the business of jockeying for power. The brief revolt led by the populare consul Lepidus in 78 reminded everyone how volatile the situation remained. The provinces of Spain also remained an open wound. Having escaped Italy, Quintus Sertorius established a base in Iberia and kept up the war against the Sullans even after the heads of all his former compatriots rotted in the Forum. Joined by other Marian exiles fleeing the proscriptions, Sertorius spent ten years keeping the war alive. Both Metellus Pius and Pompey failed to subdue him. When Pompey got sick of being stuck in the Spanish quagmire, he extracted himself by orchestrating the assassination of Sertorius in 72. This was the last fire of a conflagration that had begun with the Social War nearly twenty years earlier.47
Meanwhile, the victorious Sullans fractured. Metellus Pius, Pompey, and Crassus withdrew to their respective corners and pursued their own agendas. Crassus and Pompey, in particular, detested each other. When Spartacus raised the final great slave revolt that consumed Italy in 73–72, Crassus was the one who finally ended the uprising. But to Crassus’s fury, Pompey managed to swing back from Spain, defeat the last remaining cohort of renegade slaves, and take credit for
But between Crassus and Pompey rose an ambitious young noble who would outshine them both: Gaius Julius Caesar. Having survived the proscription, Caesar emerged in the 70s as an ambitious young political talent. In 69, he took the provocative step of openly mourning the death of his aunt Julia—the wife of Gaius Marius. During her funeral procession, Caesar displayed images of Marius for the first time since Sulla’s dictatorship. It annoyed the optimates in the Senate, but it ginned up a wave of populare sympathy for Marius, whom they had once called the Third Founder of Rome. This helped pave the way for the ban on proscribed families being lifted, but those who had felt the indignity of the proscription formed an unspoken bond, and an affinity for populare politics. Caesar skillfully exploited their lingering resentment.49
While the nobles fought, Rome continued to expand. The war with Mithridates had never really ended. Undeterred by his earlier defeat, Mithridates launched a series of major wars against Rome that lasted all the way until his death, at the hands of Pompey the Great, in 63. With Mithridates finally defeated, Pompey took the legions on a grand tour of the eastern Mediterranean, organizing the east into a network of allied client kingdoms. When Pompey returned to Rome, Caesar successfully reconciled Pompey and Crassus and together they formed a secret alliance called the First Triumvirate that would dominate Rome for the next decade. The Triumvirate awarded land to Pompey’s veterans, approved a war in Syria for Crassus, and made Caesar proconsul of Gaul. While Pompey remained in Rome, Caesar successfully conquered all of modern France. Crassus meanwhile was led into an ambush in Syria and died a gruesome death in 53.50
