Res Publica: A Quest of Ancient Rome

Gaius Marius (b. 157 BC), at the time the game begins, is the most powerful man in the Roman world, with over half a century of legendary achievements to his name. Seven times consul, hailed as the Third Founder of Rome and the second Romulus, he is beloved by the legions and the common man. He is, bar none, the most influential person in Atellus' world. Marius was, without a doubt, the prototype for Caesar and the emperors who followed after him, and no understanding of the final days of the Roman Republic is complete without an understanding of Marius.

Born into a lower-class family in the north of Italy, Gaius was a novus homo, a New Man. He had no storied line or distinguished lineage -- all he accomplished in Rome, he accomplished on his own merits . There is a tale which says that as a young man, Marius discovered an eagle's nest with seven eggs nestled within. This, he would later claim, was a sign from the gods that he would hold the consulship an unprecedented seven times, and that he was destined for mighty things.

In youth, he served under the grandson of the great Scipio Africanus in an expedition to Spain, where he first learned of war. As military tribune in the army of one of Rome's most powerful generals, Marius was well set on his way up the cursus honorum. History says that the success he enjoyed here allowed him to run as plebian tribune in 120 BC, supported by the Metelli, one of Rome's more powerful families. He quickly angered his optimate patrons, however, by passing a law known as the Lex Maria which sought to prevent the wealthy from using their influence to sway votes. Having thus angered the Metelli, Marius lost a powerful ally in Rome, and gained a dangerous enemy, one that would hobble him in all future elections.

Despite this, however, he was able to secure election as a praetor and was sent to Spain in 114 BC. Here, he gained the wealth and prestige that allowed him, upon return to Rome, to marry into a powerful and noble family of ancient lineage -- the Julii Caesares. Their line had fallen on hard times, and by marrying one of Rome's rising stars, they could ensure the connection of their name to Marius' for all time, while Marius gained the prestige of being married into the Julii.

His rise to power began when he was sent to serve as legatus under the Consul Quintus Metellus in the Jugurthine Wars against the upstart African King Jugurtha. During this war, he saved Metellus' armies from certain destruction, winning him a reputation as a skilled general and a Roman hero. With this injection of fame, he turned fully against his old patrons the Metelli, and wrote back to Rome claiming that the elder Metellus' indecision and weakness would lead to a defeat against Jurgurtha. With public support behind him, Marius quickly returned to Rome for a landslide election as consul -- the first of seven -- then back to Africa, where he took over Metellus' command.

To facilitate the sure victory against Jugurtha which he had promised the Senate and the people, Marius began the reforms which would later bear his name. He lifted the property requirements for men to serve in the Roman armies -- any Roman, should they be a citizen, was now able to die for his city. His armies swelled with Rome's poor, legions of men who would come to love the man who lifted them from poverty and put a sword in their hands. These Marian legions, however, proved unable to perform against Jugurtha's lightning-quick guerrilla tactics, and Marius suffered several near-defeats at his hand. It was only after a young staff officer under his command convinced Jugurtha's allies to betray the tyrant that Marius captured the upstart king-- a fact the general omitted during his letters back to Rome.

A victorious Marius returned back to Rome, where he received a mighty triumph in his honor, during which the African king Jugurtha was marched through the streets of Rome before Marius' horse, prophesying death and destruction for the city with every breath. Marius had won where the high nobility could not, and glory and laurels were heaped on him -- but no glory was given to the staff officer responsible for his victory, a young optimate by the name of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who bore a grudge against Marius from that day onwards.

But Marius was soon to win a victory on his own merits. While he was in Africa, the Gallic tribes known as the Cimbri and the Teutones had stormed into Roman Gaul and defeated two consular-led armies in humiliating battles. With the interior of Italy itself threatened, the People's Assembly unanimously (and illegally) elected Marius, their hero, consul for the second time in three years, and twice again in succeeding years, out of fear of the Cimbri.

Newly returned from Africa, the mighty general assumed control of the Cimbrian war almost immediately after his triumph. He raised an army of some 30,000 men, levied, again, from among Rome's poor, and began in earnest the reforms which would be his lasting legacy. Instead of levied armies, Rome would have standing legions organized into cohorts raised from among the city's poor, who would serve for a minimum of fifteen years. The livelihoods of these poor would depend entirely on if their general was able to convince the Senate to pay them properly and grant them land for their families in the provinces. Thus, the love of the army would rest not on the Senate, but on their general, who fed them, clothed them, and armed them.

In 102, what the Romans had so feared came to pass: the barbarian hordes of the Teutones, the Cimbri, and the Ambrones invaded Italy, dividing their forces into two and attacking both sides of Italy, threatening Rome herself. In the first display of his new Marian legions at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, Marius destroyed the first of these divisions, utterly annihilating the armies of the Ambrones and the Teutones, a force some 200,000 strong, with six legions roughly 40,000 strong. Marius' co-consul could not overcome the forces of the Cimbri and was forced to fall back. On the heels of his defeat and Marius' victory, Marius was elected to a fifth consulship in 101 BC to deal with the Gallic threat once and for all.

Marius marched quickly north to face the Cimbri. It is said they sent a messenger who taunted him by telling him that even as they spoke, the Teutones and the Ambrones fell upon Rome -- to which Marius supposedly replied: "The Teutones are no more." What followed was the Battle of Vercellae, the most resounding Roman victory of the century. Eight legions under the command of Marius and his cavalry officer Sulla stood against a force well over 200,000 strong, and emerged triumphant. The Cimbri were decimated, with casualties in the hundreds of thousands, and the survivors were chained and brought back to Rome as slaves. The surviving Gauls fled back into Gaul, never again to bear arms against Rome.

Marius marched his defeated enemies through the streets of Rome in his second triumph, and amidst all the pomp and splendor of his victory, was elected as consul a sixth time. Hailed as the savior of the Republic and unquestionably the first man in Rome, none lived who could challenge Marius at his height.

None, save Sulla.

The optimates had grown to fear Marius -- a new man and a populare, he was everything they feared, and more. Beloved by the masses, untouchable on the battlefield and in the political field, he was the dictator they had so long feared, the Gracchi in new flesh. If they would elect him consul six times, then might they make him king in Rome? To dispel these ideas, Marius had Lucius Saturninus, a radical populare who advocated many policies Marius himself supported, lynched by mob in the streets of Rome -- to no avail. Marius was the arch-radical, and any action on his part could not dispel the fear the Senate had of this man who was a king in all but name.

When Saturninus' supporters across Italy exploded with rage and declared rebellion against Rome, beginning the Social War, Marius no doubt expected a seventh consulship and command of the war against the Socii. However, the Senate granted the command to another man, one who had once served under Marius and now served above him: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix. Sulla and his optimate allies burned a path of destruction through Italy, defeating the Samnites and the Socii and winning glory that Marius saw as rightfully his.

In the blink of an eye, Marius' star had began to fade and Sulla's was ascendant. When the Pontic King Mithridates rose up in the east, Sulla, again, was appointed the command. And now, Marius thought, he would go east, best the deadliest foe Rome had seen since Jugurtha, and cement himself as Marius' superior, his better, his successor?

No.

Marius' allies, at his behest, called an impromptu popular Assembly which unanimously selected Marius, a man holding no position in the state, as the general who would go to Pontus and beat Mithridates. Upon receiving this news, Sulla rallied his armies and did something even Marius could not have foreseen: he marched on Rome. Marius desperately rallied a force of slaves and ex-Marian legionnaires to try and hold him back, but Sulla's legions smashed them aside. Marius and his allies were proscribed and exiled, their lands and holdings stripped, their names struck from all records. Marius could walk in no Roman lands under pain of death.

That, Sulla must have believed, was the end of his old enemy. And for a time, it seems, Marius must have believed it too. It is said he fled to the ruins of Carthage, and there sat broken and despondent, a wreck of a man amidst the wreck of a city. But fate works in strange ways.

The ambitious Marian consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, elected consul at Sulla's behest to make peace with the Marian faction, had come into conflict with Gnaeus Octavius, his co-consul. Forced to flee the city after Octavius' thugs threatened his life, he rallied ten legions from among the cities of Italy. Seeing his chance, Marius returned quickly to Italy with an army he had raised in Africa and joined Cinna. Seeing this overwhelming force, the Senate surrendered on Cinna's promise not to kill any Romans.

Marius had promised nothing.

At the head of an army of exiles and slaves, he ran rampant through Rome, slaughtering his old enemies and their supporters, a purge that was stopped only when the Marian general Sertorius threatened to turn his legions on Marius' if the slaughter did not cease. As the streets ran red with blood, he seized the Senate house and forced an immediate re-election of the consulate, with two candidates: Marius and Cinna. Democracy died to thunderous applause as Marius fulfilled the destiny he had waited a lifetime for, and was elected consul for the seventh time.

Now, as the game begins, he is the unquestioned master of Rome, and side-by side with Cinna, Sertorius, and the Marian faction, seek the final defeat of his once-protege Sulla. But age weighs even on the greatest of men, and Marius has been the titan of Rome for over half a century. Can the will and ambition that have carried him to the heights of Rome triumph against death itself? Can the old lion beat the rising star of Sulla?

This is the world into which a young Quintus Cingulatus Atellus emerges, a Rome bathed in blood and ruled by an old man and his sychophants, a man revered as a god, and little more besides...Marius. He is the sun of his age and the greatest man of his time, and while he lives, all Rome is in his shadow.