Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
So what are the actual chances that Marius wins this war? Assuming he doesn't die I mean.
Res Publica: A Quest of Ancient Rome
- Thread starter Telamon
- Start date
- Original Historic
There are way too many factors involved. If we were bff with Pompey we could convince him to put his legions behind someone but really it is going to be up to the gods.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
Us
we can literally rain blessings and inexplicable growth on our boy here
Well I can but you guys get All wierd about using the powers of CHAOS to help humansUs
we can literally rain blessings and inexplicable growth on our boy here
But really I was talking about the dice gods those guys are truly chaos gods.
Roman Histories: The Social War
Telamon
A corvid.
- Location
- Texas
Roman Histories:
The Social War
Perhaps the defining event of the early 1st century BC, and almost certainly one of the defining events of the young Atellus' life, the Social War would set the stage for the expansions and policies of the late Republic and the Empire after it. The Social War, or the Bellum Sociale as the Romans knew it, was the conflict fought between Rome and her Italian allies, the Socii, over their claim to Roman Citizenship. It embroiled all of Italy in conflict, and saw the historical 'last stand' of many cultures and peoples that afterward disappear entirely from the historical record, either from extermination as a result of their aggression during the war, or as a result of their total assimilation into Roman society.
After the defeat of the Samnites in the 2nd Century, Rome was effectively the undisputed master of Italy. The tribes and cities of the Italian peninsula had all been defeated by Rome or, seeing the writing on the wall, allied themselves with her. The Latins, the Etruscans, the Campanians, and even the fierce Samnites -- all, in their turn, had fallen before Rome's might, and now stood as little better than slaves to Rome. This unchallenged dominance was expressed in the form of a system of alliances and oaths of fealty, in which Rome would assume economic, cultural, and diplomatic supremacy over it's new client states. Most importantly, however, the allies would provide auxiliaries for Rome's legions, meaning that the deadly Italic cavalry the Romans had so long struggled against would now ride in their service. In return, the allies were allowed to pretend at independence by governing themselves, administering their own taxes, and settling most matters locally.
This arrangement worked out perfectly for Rome. Her armies swelled by the might of Italy, Rome was capable of meeting her archenemy Carthage on even footing, and for the next half-century, struggled with the Carthaginians for the Mediterranean in the famous Punic Wars. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal threatened the core of Roman military might by calling on several of the Socii to defect and take up arms against Rome. Some did, but far more, cowed by Roman might or Roman coin, did not, and when Hannibal was defeated once and for all, the idea of Italian independence died with Carthage. The allies spoke like Romans, acted like Romans, and talked like Romans.
But they were most pointedly not Romans, a fact which smarted all the more as decade after decade passed and the allies grew more and more vital to the Roman state. The patricians and elite of Rome began to plunder their lands, repeating what they had done in Rome herself by buying up the farms of auxiliaries off at war and amassing the huge amounts of land through proxies. But unlike the Roman citizens, the Socii were wholly disenfranchised -- indeed, they could not even complain legally, for they were not citizens of Rome, and as such had no rights in Rome. This was a point of grievance for many of the Italians, who by now considered themselves Roman in all but name. They fought for Rome, bled for Rome, gave their lives, harvests, and coin to Rome -- why, then, could they not call themselves Roman?
Many Romans agreed, and several prominent populists attempted to curry favor with the crowd by promising citizenship to the allies. Among these were the Gracchi brothers, who both listed Italic citizenship on their long list of liberal reforms. When the Gracchi died, however, their reforms were all rolled back, citizenship among them. The wealthy patricians did not want to let a new batch of voters inclined to populist demagoguery into the Republic. And of course, there was the fact that traditionally, Roman citizens were born in Rome -- not in Samnium or Sicily or Capua. What it meant to be Roman, and whether that meaning could rightfully be extended en masse to those who had once been enemies of Rome, was a heated debate in the waning days of the Republic.
This feeling came to a head in 91 BC, during the tribunate of one Marcus Drusus, a demagogue who began proposing several populist reforms. In order to gain support for what he truly wanted -- land reform -- Drusus added Italian citizenship to his proposed bills, winning him the support of the Socii across Italia. While initially supportive of Drusus, the Senate turned on him when he gained popularity, fearing another firebrand in the mold of the Gracchi. Drusus was murdered in his own home in September of 91 BC, and those who ordered the assassination must have thought the nonsensical idea of Italian equality dead for another generation. If so, they were sorely mistaken.
The Socii had had enough. If Rome would not give them equality, they would have independence, no matter how bloody. Led by the Marsi and the Samnites, those tribes which had been among Rome's staunchest foes since the days of wheel and fire, twelve Italian tribes, along with numerous cities and towns which had tired of the Roman yoke, rebelled against Rome. Calling itself Italia, this confederation adopted a government based on the Roman system, headed by two Consuls who ruled from the city of Corfinium, which they quickly renamed to Italica. The elder of these Consuls was Quintus Pompaedius Silo, a friend of the murdered tribune Drusus and one of the foremost inciters of the Social War. His confederate in the Consulship was one Gaius Papilus Mutilus, a Samnite noble who had raised Samnium to arms.
The two Consuls, together, commanded a force of well over 100,000 men, and the Italian Confederation, at it's height, may have mustered nearly 130,000. The armies of the Allies were composed of former Roman auxiliaries, who had fought and bled for Rome for decades without reward, and now turned their swords to the service of home and hearth. They were led by battle-hardened commanders who had learned of war at the feet of Rome herself, men who had fought beside the legions and knew their tactics, their strategies, and their weaknesses.
Caught off-guard, it was all Rome could do to survive in the first few months after the rebellion began. The Allies inflicted horrific losses on Rome in the first year of the war, seizing cities such as Aesernia and Nola, and conquering much of Campania. Rome desperately struggled to keep allied cities and tribes from slipping away, and in this they largely succeeded -- the Latins, those tribes which had been the first to bend knee to Roman rule, largely remained loyal. Without them, Rome almost surely would have lost against the combined onslaught of the last Italic League. As it stands, however, the Bellum Sociale was without a doubt one of the bloodiest wars fought on Italian soil in living memory, and if not for the rash of civil wars that would plague the Republic until it's death, would surely have been the bloodiest of the First Century. Rome was forced to rely on newly-raised legions from distant provinces such as Spain and Africa simply to survive, as well as the goodwill of it's many client kingdoms.
But though the war began splendidly for the rebels, it was not to be. Though skilled and driven, the Allies were up against some of the finest military minds of not just Roman history, but human history, among them two in particular: Gaius Marius, the famed 'Third Founder' of Rome, who, at the time of the Social War, had been consul six times, and would live to see a seventh, and his erstwhile student and later archenemy, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the later dictator and conqueror of Greece. The aging Marius won some few victories against the allies in the opening days of the war, but the Senate refused to allow him overall command of the Social War, a victory that would no doubt have catapulted his name to meteoric heights and made him a living God in Rome -- just the thing the conservative Senate feared.
Instead, the Senate chose to rely on his former tribune, a skilled young officer by the name of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, newly returned from his governorship in Cicilia. Sulla burnt a path of death and destruction across Samnium, driving the Allies from their strongholds and laying waste to their cities. At his side was Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, the Butcher of Picenium, an infamous sadist possessed of little loyalty or remorse, and Strabo's son, a young boy who even then showed extraordinary talent for the art of war -- Pompey the Younger, the later Pompey Magnus. Pompey gained his first taste of blood as Sulla burned the walls of Bovianum, sacked the Samnite town of Aeclanum, and put town after town of the Samnites to the sword. Even the Butcher's savagery paled before Sulla's methodical onslaught, which crippled the Italian resistance piece-by-piece, defeating armies at Nola and Pompeii, depopulating Samnium, and killing both the Consuls of Italia.
By 88 BC, the majority of the Samnites were massacred, their lands burnt, their farms razed, and their people slaughtered. The last vestiges of Samnite resistance holed up in the cities of Aesernia and Nola, besieged by Roman militia. Their resources strained and their manpower waning, the rest of the allies ceded victory to Rome in exchange for Roman Citizenship -- the very thing they had demanded in the first place. Sulla was hailed as the savior of the Republic and a hero of the city, and awarded the Grass Crown, the City's highest military honor. The war at large was over, but the Samnites, Rome's oldest foes, would continue resisting for much of the 80's BC, until Sulla, victorious in the Civil Wars, returned to wipe them from the face of Italy sometime around 83 or 82 BC.
The consequences of the Social War would echo through Roman history. It saw the rise of Sulla, who would become Consul and lead the first war against Mithridates in the following decade, and the decline of Marius, who, his power in Rome waning, would incite his followers into what would be the first of many Civil Wars in the century to follow. It saw the final, desperate stand of the Italic tribes, who, defeated once and for all, fade from history in the growing shadow of Rome. Lastly, it forced the Senate to concede, once and for all, that Romans could be born outside of Rome, and began the idea of extending the franchise of citizenship en masse to provinces outside Rome proper, an ideal that would save the later Empire.
As the game begins, the shadow of the Social War hangs over Italy. There are few living in the Italian provinces who do not remember when Rome came to slaughter their fathers and their sons, and there are few in Rome who do not bear the scars of those dark years when the Socii rose up to bite the hand that had so long fed them. The Social War planted the seeds of many things that still fester in Rome as Quintus Cingulatus Atellus begins his journey up the cursus honorum, and you would do well to remember that the ire of the people, once raised, can topple kings and raise up gods...
After the defeat of the Samnites in the 2nd Century, Rome was effectively the undisputed master of Italy. The tribes and cities of the Italian peninsula had all been defeated by Rome or, seeing the writing on the wall, allied themselves with her. The Latins, the Etruscans, the Campanians, and even the fierce Samnites -- all, in their turn, had fallen before Rome's might, and now stood as little better than slaves to Rome. This unchallenged dominance was expressed in the form of a system of alliances and oaths of fealty, in which Rome would assume economic, cultural, and diplomatic supremacy over it's new client states. Most importantly, however, the allies would provide auxiliaries for Rome's legions, meaning that the deadly Italic cavalry the Romans had so long struggled against would now ride in their service. In return, the allies were allowed to pretend at independence by governing themselves, administering their own taxes, and settling most matters locally.
This arrangement worked out perfectly for Rome. Her armies swelled by the might of Italy, Rome was capable of meeting her archenemy Carthage on even footing, and for the next half-century, struggled with the Carthaginians for the Mediterranean in the famous Punic Wars. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal threatened the core of Roman military might by calling on several of the Socii to defect and take up arms against Rome. Some did, but far more, cowed by Roman might or Roman coin, did not, and when Hannibal was defeated once and for all, the idea of Italian independence died with Carthage. The allies spoke like Romans, acted like Romans, and talked like Romans.
But they were most pointedly not Romans, a fact which smarted all the more as decade after decade passed and the allies grew more and more vital to the Roman state. The patricians and elite of Rome began to plunder their lands, repeating what they had done in Rome herself by buying up the farms of auxiliaries off at war and amassing the huge amounts of land through proxies. But unlike the Roman citizens, the Socii were wholly disenfranchised -- indeed, they could not even complain legally, for they were not citizens of Rome, and as such had no rights in Rome. This was a point of grievance for many of the Italians, who by now considered themselves Roman in all but name. They fought for Rome, bled for Rome, gave their lives, harvests, and coin to Rome -- why, then, could they not call themselves Roman?
Many Romans agreed, and several prominent populists attempted to curry favor with the crowd by promising citizenship to the allies. Among these were the Gracchi brothers, who both listed Italic citizenship on their long list of liberal reforms. When the Gracchi died, however, their reforms were all rolled back, citizenship among them. The wealthy patricians did not want to let a new batch of voters inclined to populist demagoguery into the Republic. And of course, there was the fact that traditionally, Roman citizens were born in Rome -- not in Samnium or Sicily or Capua. What it meant to be Roman, and whether that meaning could rightfully be extended en masse to those who had once been enemies of Rome, was a heated debate in the waning days of the Republic.
This feeling came to a head in 91 BC, during the tribunate of one Marcus Drusus, a demagogue who began proposing several populist reforms. In order to gain support for what he truly wanted -- land reform -- Drusus added Italian citizenship to his proposed bills, winning him the support of the Socii across Italia. While initially supportive of Drusus, the Senate turned on him when he gained popularity, fearing another firebrand in the mold of the Gracchi. Drusus was murdered in his own home in September of 91 BC, and those who ordered the assassination must have thought the nonsensical idea of Italian equality dead for another generation. If so, they were sorely mistaken.
The Socii had had enough. If Rome would not give them equality, they would have independence, no matter how bloody. Led by the Marsi and the Samnites, those tribes which had been among Rome's staunchest foes since the days of wheel and fire, twelve Italian tribes, along with numerous cities and towns which had tired of the Roman yoke, rebelled against Rome. Calling itself Italia, this confederation adopted a government based on the Roman system, headed by two Consuls who ruled from the city of Corfinium, which they quickly renamed to Italica. The elder of these Consuls was Quintus Pompaedius Silo, a friend of the murdered tribune Drusus and one of the foremost inciters of the Social War. His confederate in the Consulship was one Gaius Papilus Mutilus, a Samnite noble who had raised Samnium to arms.
The two Consuls, together, commanded a force of well over 100,000 men, and the Italian Confederation, at it's height, may have mustered nearly 130,000. The armies of the Allies were composed of former Roman auxiliaries, who had fought and bled for Rome for decades without reward, and now turned their swords to the service of home and hearth. They were led by battle-hardened commanders who had learned of war at the feet of Rome herself, men who had fought beside the legions and knew their tactics, their strategies, and their weaknesses.
Caught off-guard, it was all Rome could do to survive in the first few months after the rebellion began. The Allies inflicted horrific losses on Rome in the first year of the war, seizing cities such as Aesernia and Nola, and conquering much of Campania. Rome desperately struggled to keep allied cities and tribes from slipping away, and in this they largely succeeded -- the Latins, those tribes which had been the first to bend knee to Roman rule, largely remained loyal. Without them, Rome almost surely would have lost against the combined onslaught of the last Italic League. As it stands, however, the Bellum Sociale was without a doubt one of the bloodiest wars fought on Italian soil in living memory, and if not for the rash of civil wars that would plague the Republic until it's death, would surely have been the bloodiest of the First Century. Rome was forced to rely on newly-raised legions from distant provinces such as Spain and Africa simply to survive, as well as the goodwill of it's many client kingdoms.
But though the war began splendidly for the rebels, it was not to be. Though skilled and driven, the Allies were up against some of the finest military minds of not just Roman history, but human history, among them two in particular: Gaius Marius, the famed 'Third Founder' of Rome, who, at the time of the Social War, had been consul six times, and would live to see a seventh, and his erstwhile student and later archenemy, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the later dictator and conqueror of Greece. The aging Marius won some few victories against the allies in the opening days of the war, but the Senate refused to allow him overall command of the Social War, a victory that would no doubt have catapulted his name to meteoric heights and made him a living God in Rome -- just the thing the conservative Senate feared.
Instead, the Senate chose to rely on his former tribune, a skilled young officer by the name of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, newly returned from his governorship in Cicilia. Sulla burnt a path of death and destruction across Samnium, driving the Allies from their strongholds and laying waste to their cities. At his side was Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, the Butcher of Picenium, an infamous sadist possessed of little loyalty or remorse, and Strabo's son, a young boy who even then showed extraordinary talent for the art of war -- Pompey the Younger, the later Pompey Magnus. Pompey gained his first taste of blood as Sulla burned the walls of Bovianum, sacked the Samnite town of Aeclanum, and put town after town of the Samnites to the sword. Even the Butcher's savagery paled before Sulla's methodical onslaught, which crippled the Italian resistance piece-by-piece, defeating armies at Nola and Pompeii, depopulating Samnium, and killing both the Consuls of Italia.
By 88 BC, the majority of the Samnites were massacred, their lands burnt, their farms razed, and their people slaughtered. The last vestiges of Samnite resistance holed up in the cities of Aesernia and Nola, besieged by Roman militia. Their resources strained and their manpower waning, the rest of the allies ceded victory to Rome in exchange for Roman Citizenship -- the very thing they had demanded in the first place. Sulla was hailed as the savior of the Republic and a hero of the city, and awarded the Grass Crown, the City's highest military honor. The war at large was over, but the Samnites, Rome's oldest foes, would continue resisting for much of the 80's BC, until Sulla, victorious in the Civil Wars, returned to wipe them from the face of Italy sometime around 83 or 82 BC.
The consequences of the Social War would echo through Roman history. It saw the rise of Sulla, who would become Consul and lead the first war against Mithridates in the following decade, and the decline of Marius, who, his power in Rome waning, would incite his followers into what would be the first of many Civil Wars in the century to follow. It saw the final, desperate stand of the Italic tribes, who, defeated once and for all, fade from history in the growing shadow of Rome. Lastly, it forced the Senate to concede, once and for all, that Romans could be born outside of Rome, and began the idea of extending the franchise of citizenship en masse to provinces outside Rome proper, an ideal that would save the later Empire.
As the game begins, the shadow of the Social War hangs over Italy. There are few living in the Italian provinces who do not remember when Rome came to slaughter their fathers and their sons, and there are few in Rome who do not bear the scars of those dark years when the Socii rose up to bite the hand that had so long fed them. The Social War planted the seeds of many things that still fester in Rome as Quintus Cingulatus Atellus begins his journey up the cursus honorum, and you would do well to remember that the ire of the people, once raised, can topple kings and raise up gods...
Last edited:
Telamon
A corvid.
- Location
- Texas
While I'm on my phone and can't update for tonight, have a pre-written Roman Histories instead! This should shed some light on the Social War and the results, direct and indirect, of that conflict -- chief among them the very war you now find yourself embroiled in.
- Location
- Classified
Seems the Roman elite have a tradition of violently rejecting clearly needed reforms until people try to kill them.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
... Ok, you know what? I'm sending you the Rider!Atellus sheet. This is just too good an opening.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
We have not yet learn't that lesson to this day.
somnolentSlumber
(Verified Proofreader)
- Location
- hell
>: (
I do enjoy reading these history posts, though.
- Location
- Europe
The worst might be that they already had extended the Roman citizenship to people outside of Rome, even if it was only in Latium.
Cicero for example is a Roman citizen because his ancestors were granted citizenship a century earlier.
Speaking of him, these wars definitely shaped the coming batch of politicians as Cicero, Pompey, Crassus and others served in these legions fighting the civil war.
Edit: I might be wrong about Crassus, but he fought under Sulla in the civil war against the Marians OTL.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was half-suprized this one didn't end with another dramatic curse. It seemed like it was winding up to it.
Roman Histories:
The Social War
Perhaps the defining event of the early 1st century BC, and almost certainly one of the defining events of the young Atellus' life, the Social War would set the stage for the expansions and policies of the late Republic and the Empire after it. The Social War, or the Bellum Sociale as the Romans knew it, was the conflict fought between Rome and her Italian allies, the Socii, over their claim to Roman Citizenship. It embroiled all of Italy in conflict, and saw the historical 'last stand' of many cultures and peoples that afterward disappear entirely from the historical record, either from extermination as a result of their aggression during the war, or as a result of their total assimilation into Roman society.
After the defeat of the Samnites in the 2nd Century, Rome was effectively the undisputed master of Italy. The tribes and cities of the Italian peninsula had all been defeated by Rome or, seeing the writing on the wall, allied themselves with her. The Latins, the Etruscans, the Campanians, and even the fierce Samnites -- all, in their turn, had fallen before Rome's might, and now stood as little better than slaves to Rome. This unchallenged dominance was expressed in the form of a system of alliances and oaths of fealty, in which Rome would assume economic, cultural, and diplomatic supremacy over it's new client states. Most importantly, however, the allies would provide auxiliaries for Rome's legions, meaning that the deadly Italic cavalry the Romans had so long struggled against would now ride in their service. In return, the allies were allowed to pretend at independence by governing themselves, administering their own taxes, and settling most matters locally.
This arrangement worked out perfectly for Rome. Her armies swelled by the might of Italy, Rome was capable of meeting her archenemy Carthage on even footing, and for the next half-century, struggled with the Carthaginians for the Mediterranean in the famous Punic Wars. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal threatened the core of Roman military might by calling on several of the Socii to defect and take up arms against Rome. Some did, but far more, cowed by Roman might or Roman coin, did not, and when Hannibal was defeated once and for all, the idea of Italian independence died with Carthage. The allies spoke like Romans, acted like Romans, and talked like Romans.
But they were most pointedly not Romans, a fact which smarted all the more as decade after decade passed and the allies grew more and more vital to the Roman state. The patricians and elite of Rome began to plunder their lands, repeating what they had done in Rome herself by buying up the farms of auxiliaries off at war and amassing the huge amounts of land through proxies. But unlike the Roman citizens, the Socii were wholly disenfranchised -- indeed, they could not even complain legally, for they were not citizens of Rome, and as such had no rights in Rome. This was a point of grievance for many of the Italians, who by now considered themselves Roman in all but name. They fought for Rome, bled for Rome, gave their lives, harvests, and coin to Rome -- why, then, could they not call themselves Roman?
Many Romans agreed, and several prominent populists attempted to curry favor with the crowd by promising citizenship to the allies. Among these were the Gracchi brothers, who both listed Italic citizenship on their long list of liberal reforms. When the Gracchi died, however, their reforms were all rolled back, citizenship among them. The wealthy patricians did not want to let a new batch of voters inclined to populist demagoguery into the Republic. And of course, there was the fact that traditionally, Roman citizens were born in Rome -- not in Samnium or Sicily or Capua. What it meant to be Roman, and whether that meaning could rightfully be extended en masse to those who had once been enemies of Rome, was a heated debate in the waning days of the Republic.
This feeling came to a head in 91 BC, during the tribunate of one Marcus Drusus, a demagogue who began proposing several populist reforms. In order to gain support for what he truly wanted -- land reform -- Drusus added Italian citizenship to his proposed bills, winning him the support of the Socii across Italia. While initially supportive of Drusus, the Senate turned on him when he gained popularity, fearing another firebrand in the mold of the Gracchi. Drusus was murdered in his own home in September of 91 BC, and those who ordered the assassination must have thought the nonsensical idea of Italian equality dead for another generation. If so, they were sorely mistaken.
The Socii had had enough. If Rome would not give them equality, they would have independence, no matter how bloody. Led by the Marsi and the Samnites, those tribes which had been among Rome's staunchest foes since the days of wheel and fire, twelve Italian tribes, along with numerous cities and towns which had tired of the Roman yoke, rebelled against Rome. Calling itself Italia, this confederation adopted a government based on the Roman system, headed by two Consuls who ruled from the city of Corfinium, which they quickly renamed to Italica. The elder of these Consuls was Quintus Pompaedius Silo, a friend of the murdered tribune Drusus and one of the foremost inciters of the Social War. His confederate in the Consulship was one Gaius Papilus Mutilus, a Samnite noble who had raised Samnium to arms.
The two Consuls, together, commanded a force of well over 100,000 men, and the Italian Confederation, at it's height, may have mustered nearly 130,000. The armies of the Allies were composed of former Roman auxiliaries, who had fought and bled for Rome for decades without reward, and now turned their swords to the service of home and hearth. They were led by battle-hardened commanders who had learned of war at the feet of Rome herself, men who had fought beside the legions and knew their tactics, their strategies, and their weaknesses.
Caught off-guard, it was all Rome could do to survive in the first few months after the rebellion began. The Allies inflicted horrific losses on Rome in the first year of the war, seizing cities such as Aesernia and Nola, and conquering much of Campania. Rome desperately struggled to keep allied cities and tribes from slipping away, and in this they largely succeeded -- the Latins, those tribes which had been the first to bend knee to Roman rule, largely remained loyal. Without them, Rome almost surely would have lost against the combined onslaught of the last Italic League. As it stands, however, the Bellum Sociale was without a doubt one of the bloodiest wars fought on Italian soil in living memory, and if not for the rash of civil wars that would plague the Republic until it's death, would surely have been the bloodiest of the First Century. Rome was forced to rely on newly-raised legions from distant provinces such as Spain and Africa simply to survive, as well as the goodwill of it's many client kingdoms.
But though the war began splendidly for the rebels, it was not to be. Though skilled and driven, the Allies were up against some of the finest military minds of not just Roman history, but human history, among them two in particular: Gaius Marius, the famed 'Third Founder' of Rome, who, at the time of the Social War, had been consul six times, and would live to see a seventh, and his erstwhile student and later archenemy, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the later dictator and conqueror of Greece. The aging Marius won some few victories against the allies in the opening days of the war, but the Senate refused to allow him overall command of the Social War, a victory that would no doubt have catapulted his name to meteoric heights and made him a living God in Rome -- just the thing the conservative Senate feared.
Instead, the Senate chose to rely on his former tribune, a skilled young officer by the name of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, newly returned from his governorship in Cicilia. Sulla burnt a path of death and destruction across Samnium, driving the Allies from their strongholds and laying waste to their cities. At his side was Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, the Butcher of Picenium, an infamous sadist possessed of little loyalty or remorse, and Strabo's son, a young boy who even then showed extraordinary talent for the art of war -- Pompey the Younger, the later Pompey Magnus. Pompey gained his first taste of blood as Sulla burned the walls of Bovianum, sacked the Samnite town of Aeclanum, and put town after town of the Samnites to the sword. Even the Butcher's savagery paled before Sulla's methodical onslaught, which crippled the Italian resistance piece-by-piece, defeating armies at Nola and Pompeii, depopulating Samnium, and killing both the Consuls of Italia.
By 88 BC, the majority of the Samnites were massacred, their lands burnt, their farms razed, and their people slaughtered. The last vestiges of Samnite resistance holed up in the cities of Aesernia and Nola, besieged by Roman militia. Their resources strained and their manpower waning, the rest of the allies ceded victory to Rome in exchange for Roman Citizenship -- the very thing they had demanded in the first place. Sulla was hailed as the savior of the Republic and a hero of the city, and awarded the Grass Crown, the City's highest military honor. The war at large was over, but the Samnites, Rome's oldest foes, would continue resisting for much of the 80's BC, until Sulla, victorious in the Civil Wars, returned to wipe them from the face of Italy sometime around 83 or 82 BC.
The consequences of the Social War would echo through Roman history. It saw the rise of Sulla, who would become Consul and lead the first war against Mithridates in the following decade, and the decline of Marius, who, his power in Rome waning, would incite his followers into what would be the first of many Civil Wars in the century to follow. It saw the final, desperate stand of the Italic tribes, who, defeated once and for all, fade from history in the growing shadow of Rome. It forced the Senate to concede, once and for all, that Romans could be born outside of Rome, and began the idea of extending the franchise of citizenship en masse to provinces outside Rome proper, an ideal that would save the later Empire.
As the game begins, the shadow of the Social War hangs over Italy. There are few living in the Italian provinces who do not remember when Rome came to slaughter their fathers and their sons, and there are few in Rome who do not bear the scars of those dark years when the Socii rose up to bite the hand that had so long fed them. The Social War planted the seeds of many things that still fester in Rome as Quintus Cingulatus Atellus begins his journey up the cursus honorum, and you would do well to remember that the ire of the people, once raised, can topple kings and raise up gods...
- Location
- Norway
OTOH, that's something of a hindsight view that's easy to say after the fact. On the spot there's often several different factions making contradictory demands of "Reform X is needed or we'll get violent", it's impossible to placate them all at once or to see which ones are actually needed at the time, and giving in to threats of violence is generally bad for your government's legitimacy as it encourages more threats.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
on the other hand some threats came into play after the peaceful reforms (or calls for them) were blocked.
- Location
- The Philippines
Is he a Saberface, though? Or is he more like one of the versions of Alexander?
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Actually, yeah. I can't shake my love of the guy who brings an army to a battle between individuals.Or is he more like one of the versions of Alexander?
- Location
- The Philippines
As Atellus is now, he's probably closer to shota-xander than Broskander.
- Location
- Europe
By the way, since @Telamon is writing down the important bits and I have referred to it now several times, I can only recommend listening to the History of Rome podcast.
Personally I would at least listen from episode 5 to 7 as they deal with the changing republic right until the start of Caesar's ascent.
Or, to not have hour long youtube videos: The actual episode list.
They are usually 25 minutes long.
Edit: Oh, and maybe listen to Caesar's stuff, too. It gives you an impression of what can be done, should be done and what shouldn't be done.
Personally I would at least listen from episode 5 to 7 as they deal with the changing republic right until the start of Caesar's ascent.
Or, to not have hour long youtube videos: The actual episode list.
They are usually 25 minutes long.
Edit: Oh, and maybe listen to Caesar's stuff, too. It gives you an impression of what can be done, should be done and what shouldn't be done.
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I feel like this is more or less the situation with the Roman Republic and death-curses right now:
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
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If Sulla is assassinated, his generals will collapse into infighting, right?
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While on the subject of Sulla, we're joining him after this war, right? So we don't die?
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While on the subject of Sulla, we're joining him after this war, right? So we don't die?
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Most likely not, now if Marius is assassinate the Marian's would but Sulla force is discipline, ruthless, and fighting to stop the mob from ruining the republic.
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Otl Pompey and Crassus served under Sulla. Crassus will never join the Marian's forces. They killed his brother, father and forced him to flee Rome. You do forgive or forget that easily.
- Location
- Europe
It probably came out wrong. I meant that the three I mentioned were fighting in the social war (that's the civil war I meant), but I think the wiki says Crassus had fled to Hispania while that was going down.
- Location
- Brazil
Both are lead by very charismatic and ruthless men, who are the main glue of a loose union of highly ambitious, ruthless and arrogant Roman noblemen. And Sulla's party only lasted longer because he died after his main enemies, so he was able to try to solidify his system and allies in the institutions, which promptly fell apart when people (read the Triumvirate) tested it. So yes, if the leader die, the union goes into infighting unless situation is dire enough. It will be a question of time until either Crassus/Pompey/Sertorious/Cinna/Marius the Younger/someone is able to assert himself as the new leader though.