Social War

So I mean, we start off with, um, Marius and Sulla.

So we, uh, the, the Ninth Legion's first referenced in the context of the Social War.

So this is when you have the rebellion of Rome's Italian allies against the Romans themselves.

In the 80s BC, the Romans, Romans Italian allies want to be Roman citizens.

The Roman Senate don't want them to be Roman citizens, because it might cost them a lot of money, and they might lose their own revenue.

So there's a rebellion, the Social War, eventually put down broadly by Sulla, and it's in the context of that that we have the Ninth Legion appearing, probably raised by Sulla, actually.

Right.

Yeah.

Then they set fire to the fields nearby so that it became necessary for the Ligurians to withdraw to defend their own territory, thereby releasing the Romans shut up at the pass.

In the Social War, Lucius Sulla, surprised in a defile near Isernia by the army of the enemy under the command of Duilius, asked for a conference but was unsuccessful in negotiating terms of peace.

Noting, however, that the enemy were careless and off their guard as a result of the truce, he marched forth at night leaving only a trumpeter with instructions to create the impression of the army's presence by sounding the watches and to rejoin him when the fourth watch began.

In this way he conducted his troops unharmed to a place of safety with all their baggage and engines of war.

The Carthaginians also often did the same thing in their battles against the Romans.

The Volscians having on one occasion pitched their camp near some brush and woods, Camillus set fire to everything which would carry the conflagration up to their entrenchments and thus deprived his adversaries of their camp.

In the same way Publius Crassus in the Social War narrowly escaped being cut off with all his forces.

The Spaniards, when fighting against Hamilcar, hitched steers to carts and placed them in the front line.

Amid these victories, unrest boiled at home.

In ninety-one BCE, Rome faced the Social War, so named not for domestic discord, but for its allies, socii, in Italy.

For centuries, allied communities had fought alongside Rome in war, bled for Rome's triumphs, and paid Roman taxes, yet they remained excluded from full citizenship.

Their frustration erupted in rebellion, a war that scarred the peninsula from ninety-one to eighty-eight BCE.

Thereupon Marius was very angry, and tried to have the figures taken down.

But others were minded to aid Sulla in opposing this, and the city was all but in flames with their dispute, when the Social War, which had long been smoldering, blazed up against the city, and put a stop for the time being to the quarrel.

In this war, which proved of the greatest moment and most varied fortunes, and brought innumerable mischiefs and the gravest perils upon the Romans, Marius was unable to render any great service, and proved that military excellence requires a man's highest strength and vigor.

Sulla, on the other hand, did much that was memorable, and achieved the reputation of a great leader among his fellow citizens, that of the greatest of leaders among his friends, and that of the most fortunate even among his enemies.

For whereas he expected much annoyance from him as a colleague in office, he found him much obliging.

And still further, in the dedication of his memoirs to Lucullus, He advises him to deem nothing so secure as what the divine power enjoins upon him in his dreams.

And he relates that when he was dispatched with an army to the Social War, a great chasm in the earth opened near Laverna, from which a great quantity of fire burst forth, and a bright flame towered up towards the heavens.

Whereupon the soothsayers declared that a brave man of rare courage and surpassing appearance was to take the government in hand and free the city from its present troubles.

And he knew this area and idealized it in his early writings.

This area as he was growing up was already a scarred place, and it was about to become more scarred, because about 38 years before Julius Caesar crossed that Rubicon, before he put that nail into the coffin of the Roman democracy, the Social Wars had done a lot of damage to the Italian countryside, particularly to the farming community.

Many farms had been left to ruin when their owners had been forced into serving in the military, or their homes had been destroyed by different factions of armies raiding throughout the country.

This was about 38 years prior, but the peninsula was still reeling from the effects of the Social Wars when Julius Caesar essentially brought in another wave of chaos.

Oh, Julius Caesar, what were you thinking? [mysterious music]

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Getting back to this quote, re-quote, "Hatred and fear of civil war is powerfully expressed by both Virgil and his contemporary Horace.

The key to a proper understanding of the Augustan Age and its poets lies indeed in a proper understanding of the turmoil that had preceded the Augustan peace." So anyway, let's break this down a little bit.

At all events, for the provincials the Italians had no fellow-feeling, and a proposal for a repartition of the soil could only have filled them with alarm.

There had been a time when Professor Beasley's comparison of the relations of Pym or Hampton and the Scotch insurgents would have aptly illustrated the connection of a Roman reformer with the Italians of whose cause he was the champion, the time when Drusus made himself the mouthpiece of the men who afterwards fought Rome in the Social War.

Now there was but one bond of union between the conspirators at Rome and their correspondents throughout the country districts, and this was the general indebtedness.

To an Italian municipality it could make little difference whether Crassus or Pompey were dictator at Rome, but it was everything to them if they could free themselves from the omnipresent money lender.

For we do not know who was the first man to bribe her people or her courts of law.

Whereas at Athens, Anytus the son of Anthimion is said to have been the first man to give money to jurors, when he was on trial for the treacherous failure to relieve Pylos during the close of the Peloponnesian War, a time when the pure race of the golden age still possessed the Roman forum.

End of Caius Martius Coriolanus, Part 1 Part 6 of Volume 4 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

And when Dionysius the tyrant sent his daughters some costly tunics of Sicilian make, he would not receive them, saying he was afraid they would make his daughters look more ugly.

But a little later, when he was sent as ambassador to the same tyrant from the same city, and was presented by him with two robes and ordered to choose which of them he would and carry it to his daughter, he said that she could choose better herself and went off with both of them.

The Peloponnesian War had now been carried on for a long time, and after their disaster in Sicily, it was expected that the Athenians would straightway lose their control of the sea and presently give up the struggle altogether.

But Alcibiades, returning from exile and taking the command, wrought a great change and made his countrymen again a match for their enemies by sea.

Then they set fire to the fields nearby so that it became necessary for the Ligurians to withdraw to defend their own territory, thereby releasing the Romans shut up at the pass.

In the Social War, Lucius Sulla, surprised in a defile near Isernia by the army of the enemy under the command of Duilius, asked for a conference but was unsuccessful in negotiating terms of peace.

Noting, however, that the enemy were careless and off their guard as a result of the truce, he marched forth at night leaving only a trumpeter with instructions to create the impression of the army's presence by sounding the watches and to rejoin him when the fourth watch began.

In this way he conducted his troops unharmed to a place of safety with all their baggage and engines of war.

The Carthaginians also often did the same thing in their battles against the Romans.

The Volscians, having on one occasion pitched their camp near some brush and woods, Camillus set fire to everything which would carry the conflagration up to their entrenchments and thus deprived his adversaries of their camp.

In the same way, Publius Crassus, in the Social War, narrowly escaped being cut off with all his forces.

The Spaniards, when fighting against Hamilcar, hitched steers to carts and placed them in the front line.

When Cicero was a child, the Republic was still dealing with the consequences of the reforms and deaths of the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.

During his adolescence, Rome fought the Social War from 91 to 87 BC, where many of Rome's Italian allies rebelled after demanding Roman citizenship.

Cicero briefly served in the military during this conflict, apparently under the command of Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great.

Military life, however, was not where Cicero's talents lay.