The General Who Made Rome Invincible

Tom Holland (0:08)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Rest Is History bonus. And this week is a Roman week because we are telling the epic and blood-stained story of the great rivalry between Marius and Sulla, the first great civil war in the history of the Roman Republic.

And in the series, we focus very much on the great swirl of events and personal rivalries. But we have slightly parked what is currently a very big debate among historians of the Roman Army, which is the degree to which Marius was responsible for a revolution in Roman military practice. And for many years, he has been conventionally seen as the man who creates the legions that Pompey and Caesar and in the long run, Augustus will be commanding. But that has come under fire in recent years. And anyone who is interested in this debate and is online will probably have come across the blog of the guest that we've got on the show today. And this is Bret Devereaux, who is a very engaged figure on debates on all kinds of aspects of classical history online. But this perhaps in particular, he's at NC State. He has a book of Arms and Men coming out sometime next year, perhaps, and his blog collection of Unmitigated Pedantry.

It's not pedantry. It's absolutely gripping stuff. If you have any interest in Roman history, it's well worth having a look at. Bret, welcome to The Rest Is History and thanks so much for joining us. Great to have you.

Bret Devereaux (1:54)

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Tom Holland (1:56)

Bret, let's just give a resume of Marius' career. I mean, he does deserve his reputation, doesn't he? As one of the great generals in the history of the Roman Republic, do you think?

Bret Devereaux (2:08)

He's certainly highly capable as a military commander. It leaves a little more to be desired as a politician.

Gaius Marius comes from outside. He comes from a wealthy family, outside the traditional Roman aristocratic class.

You can always tell this, folks. If the guy only has two names, he's not a patrician. This is certainly true with Gaius Marius. He makes a name for himself as a junior officer in military service. He serves with Scipio Emiliaeus in Spain, and then with Quintus Caecilius Metellus in Africa. He gets dissatisfied with his boss in Africa and decides to run for high office himself. He gets it in 107, and then essentially takes Metellus' job.

Tom Holland (2:50)

That's the war against Jugurtha, and then there's this great apocalyptic crisis brewing in the North. These barbarians who are threatening to flood down and do what the Gauls had done a couple of centuries earlier and sack the city.

Bret Devereaux (3:05)

It will actually be relevant in a second that the early stages of that crisis are happening while Marius is commanding in North Africa. That the Romans are losing battles against the Kimberri and the Tutones while that's happening. It's going to explain why he has an exciting time getting reinforcements for his army, which is going to explain some of his decisions. But he's able to defeat Jugurtha.

A clever ruse by one of his own junior officers, a Lucius Cornelius Sulla results in Jugurtha's capture. So he wins and he gets back to Rome in 105, just at the point where this conflict in the north with the Kimberri and the Tutones has swallowed several large Roman armies.

There's a real panic and so the Roman voters are like, we need a guy who can get things done and here's Marius coming back from his successful prosecution of another war. So somewhat unprecedentedly, they re-elect him consul. You're supposed to have a longer interval between periods in office, but whatevs, and sent him off. He adopts a pretty methodical approach to the Kimbri and the Teutones. And so there had been earlier in that war an issue of who had authority between a pro-consul, so a former consul who had been in command in the field with a better aristocratic pedigree and a consul with less of one. And the Roman voter appears sincerely worried that this will happen again. And so to fix that problem, they just keep re-electing Gaius Marius' consul to be clear, like, this is the guy that we want making the calls. And Marius is very successful. He smashes the Kimbri, he smashes the Teutones. He then returns to Rome in 101, and then he gets one more consulship for 100, where he's going to kind of settle out the legislative side of the affairs for the two large wars he's now fought. And as I imagine you've talked about elsewhere in the series, that year goes very badly.