The Storm Before the Storm полностью

The threat of Glaucia winning a consulship was obvious to all. If he combined consular power with Saturninus’s control of the Assembly, there was no telling what damage they could cause together. Luckily there was a solution. As a sitting praetor, Glaucia’s candidacy was tecÚically illegal, and as consul Marius had the right to disqualify him from the election. Continuing his pullback from his old allies, Marius declared Glaucia’s candidacy invalid. Marius’s move against Glaucia was rich in irony, as he himself had blown through all existing prohibitions during his streak of consulships. But as befitted the age, Glaucia ignored the disqualification and continued to canvass for votes, precipitating a crisis in Rome not seen since the days of the Gracchi.³¹

When election day came, the voters filed through the stalls and dropped their ballots in the urns. As expected, the herald soon announced that Marcus Antonius had secured election to one of the consulships. Voting then continued to fill the second spot. The moment it looked like Memmius was going to win, Saturninus and Glaucia directed a gang of supporters to crash down on the stalls, smash the voting urns, and break up the election. In the ensuing riot, the unfortunate Memmius was cornered on the rostra and beaten to death with an “unshapely bludgeon.” After a life spent attacking the optimates, Memmius was finally done in by the populare he had always courted. The revolution was devouring her children.³²

With the election now thrown into bloody confusion, Marius called the Senate to an emergency session. After a quick debate, the Senate resolved to follow the precedent established a generation earlier. They instructed Marius to do what was necessary to preserve the state. This was the same senatus consultum ultimum they had issued to Opimius during the showdown with Gaius Gracchus. But this latest senatus consultum ultimum came with a troubling new twist. When Opimius marched on the Aventine in 121, neither Gaius Gracchus nor Fulvius Flaccus held a magistracy—they were private citizens being punished by a sovereign consul. But in 100, Saturninus was a sacrosanct tribune and Glaucia a praetor. Could they be dealt with as brutally as the Gracchans?³³

With Rome in chaos and the rule of law already breaking down, Marius did not much quibble over the legality of his orders. Calling on a mix of volunteers from the plebs urbana and his own veterans, Marius prepared to restore order by any means necessary. Now under serious attack, Saturninus, Glaucia, Saufeius, and the faux son of Tiberius Gracchus led a party of armed followers up the Capitoline Hill and occupied the principal citadel of Rome. But Marius did not follow Opimius’s reckless example. Instead, he deployed the same professional competence that had always served him so well. He systematically cut all the water pipes servicing the Capitoline and then told the renegades that they were surrounded, had no hope of escape, and now faced slow death by dehydration. He waited as the heat of the day did its work, and then promised to protect the rebels if they would surrender.³⁴

Saufeius apparently proposed rejecting the offer and burning down the capital and all its sacred temples. But Saturninus and Glaucia refused this last desperate act of destruction. They surrendered. Marius afforded the praetor Glaucia the dignity of being placed under house arrest, but led Saturninus and the rest of his gang into the Senate house and locked them up until he could figure out how best to process them. But the plebs urbana answered the question for him. Whether with Marius’s tacit approval or without (the former far more likely), a mob broke into the Senate house and dispensed exactly the kind of justice Saturninus himself had built a career on. Using roof tiles, the mob stoned the unarmed prisoners to death. Saturninus soon lay dead on the floor of the Senate. Glaucia didn’t fare much better. He was dragged from his home and murdered in the street. So, just like their more noble forbears, the Gracchi, the latest group of populare agitators ended as a bloody pile of bodies being pushed into the Tiber River.³⁵

WITH THE RADICALS safely dumped in the Tiber, the Senate set about picking up the pieces. They knew they could not repeal every piece of legislation that had been voted through during the populare swing of 104 to 100. The land and colonies for Marius’s veterans was left in place. The election of priests would remain, as would the jury pool drawing from the Equestrian class only. But other legislation—including probably the expanded grain dole—was never implemented.