The warmest welcome of all, however, was reserved for a warlord even younger and more glamorous than Crassus. Sulla had crossed to Italy and was advancing northwards when news was brought to him that another private army had been raised on his behalf and was marching south to meet him. Since the roads were blocked by a variety of Marian forces, Sulla was nervous that the reinforcements might be wiped out, but just as he was pressing forward to their rescue there came further news: the tyro general had won a series of brilliant victories; a consular army had been put to flight. Now the army was waiting for Sulla on the road ahead, drawn up in full formation, arms glittering, faces glowing with success. Sulla, as he was meant to be, was duly impressed. Approaching the tent of the novice general, he dismounted from his horse. A young man stood waiting, his golden hair swept up in a quiff, his profile posed to look like Alexander’s. He hailed Sulla as ‘Imperator’ – ‘General’ – and Sulla then greeted him as ‘Imperator’ in turn. This was an honour that it usually took even the most accomplished soldier many years to earn. Gnaeus Pompeius – ‘Pompey’ – was barely twenty-three.
Precocious swagger, a genius for self-promotion and an almost childlike relish for the perks of success: these were to be the defining characteristics of Pompey’s rise to glory. Sulla, who indulged his protégé’s vanity with an inscrutable cynicism, had his measure from the very start. He was perfectly content to flatter the young man if it helped to ensure his support. Pompey both merited and required courting. From his father, the perfidious Pompeius Strabo, he had inherited not only the largest private estate in Italy, but an aptitude for switching sides. Unlike Crassus, Pompey had no personal feud with the Marian regime. Before Sulla’s arrival he had been spotted sniffing round Cinna’s camp. Evidently the spectacle of its collapse into mutiny had persuaded him that Sulla would be the better man to back. Pompey always had a nose for where the richest opportunities might lie.
What he and Crassus had both realised was that civil war transformed the rules of the political game. The most ruthless and clear sighted of the younger generation had been presented with an unparalleled opportunity to leapfrog their elders. Sulla, who regarded the younger Marius as his deadliest foe, commented ruefully that as he aged his enemies grew younger. So too did his supporters. Pompey, in particular, led his army with the insouciance of a schoolboy handed a toy. To the Romans, the passions of youth were violent and dangerous, and only discipline could tame them. Pompey, however, had been given his head. ‘Adulescentulus carnifex’, his enemies labelled him: ‘teenage butcher’.2 Not having had to master either custom or law during his short career, Pompey could kill without respect for either.
One man could have reined him in, of course – yet the example provided by Sulla himself was of a savagery which put even that of the ‘teenage butcher’ in the shade. Deliberately, it seems, he provoked one final uprising from the Samnites, massacring them whenever he had the opportunity, as though to cast himself not as a warlord but as the defender of Rome. Once again Samnium and Campania were pillaged mercilessly, and once again, for the last time in history, the Samnites strapped on their gorgeous armour and high-crested helmets and marched down into the plains. They joined a Marian cause already on the point of collapse. By 83, after a year of civil war, one consul had already fled Italy for Africa, and the other, the younger Marius, was bottled up in the hill town of Praeneste, some twenty-five miles east of Rome. The Samnites, shadow-boxing with Sulla, first attempted to march to Marius’ relief, but then, with the sudden realisation that Rome lay unprotected in their rear, swung round abruptly and marched on the capital. Sulla, taken by surprise, pursued them at frantic speed. As the Samnites appeared within sight of Rome’s walls, their commander ordered them to wipe out the city. ‘Do you think that these wolves who have preyed so terribly upon the freedoms of Italy will ever vanish until the forest that shelters them has been destroyed?’3 he cried. But even as the Samnites began to mass before the Colline Gate, the wails of women sounding in their ears from the terrified city beyond, Sulla was drawing near. Already by noon his vanguard of cavalry had begun to harass the enemy lines, and by late afternoon, against the advice of his lieutenants, Sulla was ready to throw his exhausted army into battle. All evening, and long into the night, the struggle ebbed and flowed. Crassus shattered the Samnite left wing, but Sulla found his own wing being broken and his troops in danger of being crushed against the city gates. Yet still his fortune held. Praying to the gods who had always been his protectors, he rallied his men and by dawn, when the news of Crassus’ success finally reached him, the victory was his.
The bloodbath of the Colline Gate was decisive. His enemies had no more armies left in Italy with which to continue the war. As the Samnite prisoners began to be rounded up Sulla was the absolute, unquestioned master of Rome.
Sulla Felix
Three thousand prisoners were taken at the Colline Gate. A further three thousand, the Samnite reserves, surrendered on Sulla’s promise of safe conduct. No sooner had they emerged from their stronghold, however, than they were rounded up and led off to join the other Samnite captives. These had already been imprisoned on the Campus Martius, the flood plain that stretched north beyond the walls of the Capitol. Even in defeat the Samnites were kept out of Rome.
Sulla’s scrupulousness in this matter was ironic. Until his own legions had broken the taboo in 88 BC the only men in arms ever to have entered the city had been citizens marching in triumphal parades. Otherwise, Rome had always been off limits to the military. Since as far back as the time of the kings civilians had first had to gather on the Campus Martius – the Plain of Mars – before taking the oath that transformed them into soldiers. Here they had been ranked according to their wealth and status, for in war, as in peace, every citizen had to know his place. At the summit of the hierarchy there had been those rich enough to afford their own horses, the equites; below the equestrian class were five further classes of infantry; at the bottom of the heap were citizens too poor to buy even a sling and a few sling-stones, the proletarii. These seven classes had in turn been divided into further units, known as ‘centuries’. This allowed status to be calibrated with exquisite precision. Long after ‘classes’ and ‘centuries’ had ceased to provide the basis of their army the Romans could not bring themselves to abandon so eminently satisfying a system. Instead, it remained at the heart of their political life.
Naturally, there were few citizens who did not dream of clawing themselves up the ladder, century by century, towards the uppermost rung. The higher a Roman climbed, the more fresh vistas emerged, to tempt him on further. Become an equestrian, for instance, and membership of the Senate became a sudden possibility; join the Senate and the tantalising prospect of a senior magistracy, a praetorship or even consulship, might hove into view. It was typical of the Republic that the greatest privilege it could grant one of its citizens was the chance to put himself to the vote of his fellows, and win even greater glory. Typical also that the mark of failure was to lose the class inherited from one’s father.