The Storm Before the Storm полностью

Given the state of the historical record, it is hard to know exactly which of his reforms Drusus managed to enact. We know he carried the land bill and grain bill, as well as the jury reform. But either because it never made it to the rostra or was voted down, the Italian citizenship bill never materialized. It appeared that the Italians were about to have their prize snatched away. Again. The Italian veterans who had served together under Marius got together with the disgruntled Equestrians who had been kicked out of Rome in 95. Their mutual grumbling turned awfully seditious.²⁴

Even before the bill was dropped, a violent splinter faction of Italians formed a plot to assassinate the consul Philippus and his colleague Sextus Julius Caesar ^* at the Latin Festival. Drusus successfully warned the consuls in advance and they left the festival alive, but it raised the uncomfortable question of how Drusus had come to hold such dangerous knowledge in the first place—who was he in league with? But as late as September 91, it seemed like Drusus still had the support of most of the Senate; the steady hands of Scaurus and Crassus kept most of the senators with him.²⁵

While they kept a firm hand on current events, a group of optimate grandees met at Crassus’s villa in September 91 to discuss loftier subjects. Among the small party were Crassus’s old friends Antonius and Scaevola along with two promising students: Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Old Scaurus was not present, but as fit his persona, he was known to be off at his own estate, “somewhere in the vicinity.”²⁶

We know about this dinner party because it is the setting of one of Cicero’s most important dialogues, On the Orators. Cicero learned of the gathering years later from one of the participants and used it as the setting for a wide-ranging dialogue on the history, theory, and practice of oratory. Fascinating as the details of this discussion are, the more relevant point is why Cicero chose that time and place to set his dialogue. Cicero enjoyed placing characters at the moment of maximum experience and wisdom—the moment before death. And death hung over the men gathered at Crassus’s villa. Within a few years, nearly every one of them would be dead. Cicero did not just set On The Orators at the end of his heroes’ lives; he set it on the brink of a civil war that, unbeknownst to all of them, was just weeks from breaking out.²⁷

The only one of the group not to die violently was the host, Lucius Crassus, who had the good sense to die before any of the fighting started. With Philippus once again raising hell in the Senate about annulling Drusus’s laws, Crassus rose in defense and delivered yet another long and eloquent address that returned the Senate to its senses. But likely already sick from some unspecified ailment, the exertion of the speech drove Crassus to bed, and a week later he died. He was not yet fifty. Cicero said of Crassus’s sudden death:

This was a melancholy occurrence to his friends, a grievous calamity to his country, and a heavy affliction to all the virtuous part of mankind; but such misfortunes afterwards fell upon the commonwealth, that life does not appear to me to have been taken away from Lucius Crassus by the immortal gods as a privation, but death to have been bestowed on him as a blessing. He did not live to behold Italy blazing with war, or the senate overwhelmed with popular odium, or the leading men of the state accused of the most heinous crime… or, finally, that republic in every way disgraced, in which, while it continued most flourishing, he had by far the preeminence over all other men in glory.²⁸

With his rivals distracted by the death of their friend, Philippus pounced. He induced the Senate to nullify Drusus’s laws, either on a religious pretext or for the violence inflicted on Philippus personally at the Assembly. And though he is often cast along with the other radical tribunes in Roman history, Drusus was not ready to take the same plunge as his predecessors Saturninus and the Gracchi brothers. He accepted his fate and did nothing to veto the annulment. Though he did say: “Although I have the power to oppose the decrees of the senate, I will not do so, because I know that the guilty will soon receive their punishment.”²⁹