The Historians' History of the World 05

Treason was at work within the city. For a moment Rome was opened to Marius, and he well-nigh succeeded in effecting his entrance by a gate on the side of the Janiculum, from which he was repulsed after a sharp engagement. Mutiny broke out in Strabo’s camp, which he had advanced almost to the walls. His soldiers seem to have personally detested him; a conspiracy was formed against his life, and defeated only by the devotion of his son, who threw himself on the ground and declared that the mutineers should pass over his body before they reached the object of their fury. The young Pompey was already beloved by the soldiers, and this spirited defiance saved the life of the father. But famine and pestilence quickly followed. The populace of the city were swept off in great numbers, nor were the soldiers, on either side, exempt from the contagion. The consuls, abandoning the unwholesome districts round the walls, withdrew their legions to the Alban mount. Strabo himself fell a victim to the disease, or, as some accounts relate, was killed by lightning. It is not improbable that he was actually assassinated.

This last blow paralysed the resistance of the senate. A first deputation was sent to Cinna, to arrange terms of accommodation. When these were refused, a second was only charged to solicit an amnesty. Cinna received it seated in his curule chair, with the ensigns of the consular office which he claimed to bear. Marius stood by his side, squalid and unshorn, and clothed in the black rags of an exile and an outlaw, and his gloomy silence interpreted, in the worst sense, the ambiguous reply which Cinna vouchsafed the deputation. But no further time was allowed for parley. The senate hastened to invite her conquerors within the walls.

Then, at last, Marius opened his mouth with bitter words: “An exile,” he exclaimed, “must not enter the city.” The restoration of Cinna to his consulship, of his associate to his dignities and privileges, may have saved Rome from being delivered to the Samnites for destruction; but the victorious generals had still their own soldiers to satisfy, and they did not shrink from surrendering the city to plunder and massacre. They had pledged their words for the safety of the consul Octavius, and the augurs whom he had consulted had ventured to assure him of his security. Fortified by these assurances he had repelled the entreaties of his friends to effect his escape, and had declared that as consul he would never desert his country. He had betaken himself with a small retinue to the Janiculum, and there seated himself in his curule chair, with the ensigns of his office around him. Here he soon learned that neither the dignity of his office nor the promises of the victors would command respect. But he refused to rise from his place, and when a band of assassins approached him, calmly offered himself to the sword.[90] His head was severed from his body, and carried to Cinna, by whose order it was suspended before the rostra. This, it is said, was the first instance of the public exhibition of these horrid trophies of civil war, and the custom, which became but too frequent in the subsequent contests of the Roman factions, was thus inaugurated in the person of the highest magistrate of the city. As the massacre proceeded, the bodies of the knights and meaner citizens were cast out for burial, but the mangled heads of the senators were reserved for exhibition in the Forum. The thirst for vengeance or plunder was succeeded by a savage delight in the horrors which accompanied it, and the populace itself, debauched and degraded, learned to gloat upon the blood of the victims. In the list of slain are included many of the noblest names of Rome. P. Crassus, who had been both consul and censor, either slew himself or was killed by the assassins. M. Antonius, celebrated at the time, and long afterwards remembered as one of the greatest of Roman orators, was murdered by the leader of a body of soldiers, whom he had almost moved by his eloquence to spare him. Two of the Julii, kinsmen of Julius Cæsar, the future dictator, suffered. Some were caught and murdered in the act of flying; others, who ventured to throw themselves upon the mercy of Marius, were coldly repulsed and cruelly slaughtered.

Marius himself seldom condescended to answer their entreaties; but his followers were instructed to spare those only to whom he held out his hand to kiss. The swords of the hired assassins were directed, in the first instance, against the adherents of Sulla and the aristocratic faction, the special objects of the conqueror’s vengeance; but their numbers were speedily swelled by slaves and Italians, who sacrificed men of every party to their indiscriminate fury.