It was while he corresponded with Bocchus that Metellus was hit with a broadside from Rome. Not only had Gaius Marius been elected consul, but the Assembly had voted to override the Senate’s decision to keep Metellus in command of Numidia. Marius would soon be on his way to take over the job. Crushed and angry, Metellus was “more affected by this news than was right or becoming, neither refraining from tears nor bridling his tongue; although he had the other qualities of a great man, he showed little fortitude in bearing mortification.”44
MARIUS’S CAMPAIGN FOR the consulship marked the culminating blow against the optimates in the Senate. What had begun with Memmius’s attacks in 111, and then continued through the Mamilian Commission corruption trials in 109, now climaxed with the consular campaign of a proudly defiant novus homo. For Marius this day had been a long time coming.
Marius campaigned with a thunderous fury. In yet another clear break with mos maiorum, Marius routinely denounced Metellus for his conduct during the war. It was unheard of for a subordinate to criticize his general so openly, but Marius refused to be a slave to tradition—especially after Metellus tried to block him from the consulship. Above all, Marius made a single forthright promise: “If they would make him consul, he would within a short time deliver Jugurtha alive or dead into the hands of the Roman People.” Not surprisingly, Marius was elected.45
After his victory, Marius’s attacks on the Senate only intensified. He denounced the old nobles as men of lineage but not merit: “I personally know of men, citizens, who after being elected consuls began for the first time to read the history of our forefathers and the military treatises of the Greeks!” He said if they made mistakes that “their ancient nobility, the brave deeds of their ancestors, the power of their kindred and relatives, their throng of clients, are all a very present help.” He himself could not “display family portraits or the triumphs and consulships of my forefathers; but if occasion requires, I can show spears, a banner, trappings and other military prizes as well as scars on my breast. These are my portraits.” He then ended by saying triumphantly of the Senate that he had “wrested the consulship from them as the spoils of victory.”46
But his election alone did not guarantee that he would take over the Numidian campaign. Indeed, the Senate had already determined Numidia would remain Metellus’s province for another year. But as they had previously done for Scipio Aemilianus, the Assembly overrode the Senate and made Numidia Marius’s province. The bonds of mos maiorum loosened still further.47
As he prepared to raise new legions, Marius ran into the same problem that had plagued Rome for a generation. As more and more families were pushed off their land, fewer and fewer men met the minimum property requirement for service in the legions. But while the consuls were forced to scrape the bottom of a very dry barrel looking for potential legionaries, tens of thousands of young men sat idle. The only mark against them was that they did not own land. So to fill his legions, Marius took a fateful step in the long history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic—he requested exemption from the property qualification. Of this request to recruit from among the poorest plebs, Sallust says: “Some say that he did this through lack of good men, others because of a desire to curry favor… As a matter of fact, to one who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, since he has no regard for his property, having none, and considers anything honorable for which he receives pay.” Any man, no matter how poor and destitute, could now serve in the army. With the promise of plunder and glory dangled before their eyes, poor men from across Italy rushed to sign up for Marius’s open legions.48
Emergency suspension of the property requirements was not without precedent. An ancestor of the Gracchi had even led a legion composed of slaves and gladiators during the darkest days of the Second Punic War. But what makes this moment so important is that it marked a permanent transition from temporary armies conscripted from among the free citizens to professional armies composed of soldiers who made their careers in the army—whose loyalties would be to their generals rather than to the Senate and People of Rome. But Marius wasn’t thinking about the grand sweep of history. For the moment, he just wanted to raise an army of men to go fulfill his promise to win the war.49
Eager to begin, Marius sailed for Africa before his new army was completely assembled. New cohorts of cavalry were still in the process of being raised, so Marius left his newly elected quaestor to finish the job. That quaestor’s name was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
