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By the 2nd century BC, equestrians and Italian allies felt excluded from their rightful place in the political system of the Roman Republic, and far too many citizens remained landless and dependent upon what amounted to welfare. The army, deprived of an adequate number of recruits, grew steadily weaker. Although not the time for foreign adventures, in 111 B.C. the Senate reluctantly declared war on Numidia. The African kingdom had been engulfed by a succession struggle during which the Romans backed the losing candidate. The winner, Jugurtha, celebrated his victory by murdering a number of Roman businessmen. Because most of the victims were equestrians, a tremendous outcry arose in the plebeian assembly, and the Senate was forced to give way.

For nearly four years the war went badly. The plebeian assembly and its equestrian allies knew that the senators disliked the war and began to suspect that some of them were taking Numidian bribes. In 107 B.C. they elected Gaius Marius consul. Like Cato before him, Marius (c. 157-86 B.C.) was a "new man" who came to politics with the support of an old senatorial family. To gain the votes of the assembly, he turned against his patrons. If his ethics were questionable, his military abilities were not. He defeated Jugurtha without capturing him and then turned his attention to the north where two Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, threatened the Roman settlements in Gaul. His quaestor Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 B.C.), was left to track down the Numidian and destroy him in a hard-fought guerrilla campaign that made his reputation and infuriated Marius, who thought that the younger man had taken too much credit for the victory.

War on two fronts when social dislocation had reduced the pool of eligible recruits made keeping the legions up to strength virtually impossible. Marius felt that he had no choice but to reform the army by admitting volunteers even if they owned no land. Recruits were to be paid in cash as they had always been. Marius also promised them a plot of land in Gaul or Africa when they retired.

To thousands of slum dwellers and landless peasants, the Marian reforms offered an escape from grinding poverty, but the recruitment of proletarians created a new danger for the state. Lacking property of their own, the men became wholly dependent upon their commander for pay and, more important, for the security of their old age. Though land and money came ultimately from the Senate, neither could be obtained without the influence of the consul or proconsul who requested them. The troops, in short, became the clients of their general who could use military force to threaten the government. Rome was at the mercy of its own armies.

The implications of this change became evident after the Italian wars of 90-88 B.C. For decades the Italian allies had sought Roman citizenship to no avail. Their patience exhausted, they abandoned Rome and decided to form an independent confederation. Belatedly, the Romans extended citizenship to all who returned to their allegiance, but two years of fighting were required to reach a final settlement.

Sulla, whose reputation as a soldier had grown greater during the Italian wars, was elected consul in 88 B.C. with the support of the Senate. His services were needed in the east, where Mithradates, King of Pontus, had annexed parts of Asia Minor and invaded Greece. The aged Marius came out of retirement and convinced the plebeian assembly to appoint him commander instead. His action, based in part on personal resentment of Sulla, provoked a lengthy crisis. Sulla, ostensibly to defend the Senate, marched on Rome and drove out Marius. When Sulla left for Asia, Marius returned with his own army and conducted a bloody purge of his opponent's senatorial friends. Finally, in 83 B.C. Sulla returned and established a dictatorship. To do so he had to conclude a compromise peace with Mithradates and fight a civil war on Italian soil against the followers of Marius, who had died of a stroke three years before.

Sulla's dictatorship was unlike any that had yet been declared. It lasted four years and was intended to reform the state from within, not to protect the state from outside enemies. To do this, Sulla launched a reign of terror by proscribing or outlawing his opponents, his personal enemies, and the rich, whose only crime was that their property was needed to pay his troops. He then passed a series of laws intended to strengthen senatorial power and improve the criminal justice system. Some of these changes survived his retirement in 79 B.C. Although Sulla was in theory a conservative who sought only to preserve the traditional system, his career marked the end of constitutional government. For almost a decade Roman soldiers had been used repeatedly against Roman citizens and against each other. Power now rested with the legions and those who commanded them, not with the Senate or the assemblies. . .

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