The Storm Before the Storm полностью

Down in the south, Sulla finally emerged with an independent command. He was ordered to march down the coast through Campania to return wayward towns to the fold. Sulla ended up outside the gates of insurgent Pompeii ^* and laid a siege. An Italian army rushed to the aid of Pompeii and defeated Sulla in their first encounter. But Sulla regrouped and sent the Italians running to the safety of nearby Nola. For his heroics during this campaign, Sulla’s men awarded him the prestigious grass crown for saving a legion in battle. Now brimming with confidence, Sulla led his forces back to Pompeii and captured it. Then he turned and plunged into the territory of the Hirpini. After using a massive bonfire to torch the principal city of Aeclanum, the rest of the Hirpini surrendered and Sulla moved into Samnium, where he took the city of Bovanium. It was a run of success that made Sulla hugely popular in Rome just in time for the consular elections.⁶¹

BY THE END of 89, the Social War was winding down, but the two years of conflict had devastated the population of Italy. Though ancient numbers are almost always inflated, allegedly three hundred thousand people died in the conflict, Romans and Italians being indistinguishable after funeral pyres turned their bodies to ash.⁶²

Economically, the war was a disaster and crippled Italian productivity even more than the invasion of Hannibal. The lands of rich and poor alike were ruined by either plunder, neglect, or intentional destruction. Senators were cut off from their Italian estates—which would have been seized and ransacked by insurrectionary Italians. Every corner of Italy reported grain shortages and famine by the spring of 88, a famine compounded by the plebs urbana in Rome who, “like an insatiable stomach that consumes everything and yet remains always hungry… more wretched than all other cities that she was making wretched, left nothing untouched and yet had nothing.”⁶³

The chaos of the Social War also triggered a monetary crisis. As the war progressed counterfeit coins flooded the market and led families to hoard coins they knew to be good, steadily reducing the amount of good money in circulation. With the monetary market tightening and their interests in Asia threatened, the publicani bankers called in debts. But creditors were unable to meet their debts because their estates had been ruined in the war. Even the Republic itself was short of cash and forced to auction off land known as the “treasures of Numa,” which had been set aside to fund the high priesthoods.⁶⁴

In the midst of this crisis, a praetor named Asellio sought to ease the burden of debt for the dispossessed upper classes. He allowed debtors to sue creditors, and in the flurry of lawsuits, ruined debtors started securing exemptions from repayment. The publicani bankers, now facing ruin themselves, blamed Asellio for their misfortunes. One day, while he was offering a sacrifice in the Forum, a small gang started throwing rocks at him. Asellio fled into a nearby tavern but was cornered. An assassin slit his throat. Appian said of the incident: “Thus was Asellio, while serving as praetor, and pouring out libation, and wearing the sacred gilded vestments customary in such ceremonies… slain in the midst of the sacrifice.” Nothing was sacred anymore.⁶⁵

AS ACTIVE HOSTILITIES became limited to a few remaining rebel strongholds, the rest of Italy began to see what the Lex Julia meant in practice. A censorship coincidentally arrived in 89 but there had not been enough time to think through the details of who would be enrolled and who would not. This was a huge decision, as the number of incoming Italians would potentially double the citizen population. If the Italian population was distributed evenly into the thirty-five tribes they would swamp Roman voices in the Assembly. The Senate already kept the plebs urbana and all freedmen buried in the four urban tribes, with the rural tribes easily dominated by rich citizens who could afford to travel to Rome for elections. It wouldn’t take much for the Italians to seize control of the Assembly if only a few motivated new citizens endured the expense of travel to Rome to participate in politics. So the censors “accidentally” broke a religious rite necessary to ratify the census. It had to be tossed out.⁶⁶