The Rest Is History - 702. Roman Civil War: The Barbarian Invasion (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

What was the ancient city of Rome actually like in the first century BC? Who was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, another great, but aristocratic, Roman general who would clash with Gaius Marius in a totemic struggle termed the Social War? And, who were the terrifying Germanic tribes amassing on the borders of the empire, potentially spelling its doom…? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss Rome’s apocalyptic threat from the North, Marius’ wars in defence of the empire, and the rise of his greatest adversary: Sulla.  *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even citizens found their city confusing. The only way to negotiate it was to memorize notable landmarks, the fig tree perhaps, or a market's colonnade, or best of all, a temple large enough to loom above the maze of narrow streets. Fortunately, Rome was a devout city, and temples abounded. The Romans' reverence for the past meant that ancient structures were hardly ever demolished, not even when the open spaces in which they might once have stood had long since vanished under brick.

Temples loomed over slums or meat markets. They shentered, veiled statues whose very identities might have been forgotten, and yet no one ever thought to demolish them. These fragments of an archaic past preserved in stone, fossils from the earliest days of the city provided the Romans with a desperately needed sense of bearing. Eternal, like the gods whose spirits pervades,

them, they stood like anchors dropped in a storm. Meanwhile, on all sides, amid a din of hammering, rumbling wagon wheels and crashing rubble, the city was endlessly being rebuilt, torn down, and rebuilt again. Now, that's a description of Rome, the great teeming city, the great metropolis of the Mediterranean world. And listeners may be wondering, Which great writer, which master of the English language constructed those sentences? Was it Edward Gibbon? Was it Dan Brown? Well, dear listeners, it was our very own Tom Holland in his book Rubicon, the book that catapulted him to greatness.

So Tom, Rome, 105 BC, biggest city in the Mediterranean. It's not yet the mega city that it will become under the Emperor Augustus 100 years later. It's probably about 400, 500,000 people, max. But to visitors, as your wonderful prose conveyed, it is overwhelming, isn't it? Rather like your prose, actually. I think for visitors, it's experienced as a kind of monstrous city. It's crowded, it's confusing, it's completely chaotic. It has this terrible haze of brown smog which hangs over it and which can be seen, you know,

many, many miles before you actually see the city itself. And then you arrive in the city and it's crammed with teetering, jerry-built apartment blocks. Insuli, they were called islands. They were kind of islands rising above the chaos of the streets below, in which are notorious as death traps. And if there's a fire and you are on the top stories, I mean, that's it. you're burnt to a cinder. And everywhere there are kind of shanties sprouting up. So if there's a fire, the shanties will immediately emerge in the space that's been left. And they're spreading out through the gates along the roads that lead into Rome. And there is also an incredible lack of

the kind of monumental architecture that most people, I imagine, when they think of ancient Rome, would be in their mind's eye. Rome in this period is not the Rome of gladiator. There are no amphitheaters. are no palaces, there's very little gleaming marble. And so Greek ambassadors who are used to exactly that kind of cityscape, things that are elegant, that are planned, that are spacious, that are centrally organized. When they come to Rome, they think this is an absolute dump. I suppose it's like someone from New York going to a third world city, something like that. They think it's backward, they think it's ramshackle, they think it's disorganized.

But the Roman response to this is to say that the chaos of their city is the index of its liberty. The kings can impose urban plans on cities because they are autocrats. But because Rome is a republic and its great men are much too jealous of one another to allow any of them to build kind of pompous imposing monuments, this means that its chaotic, brick-fronted cityscape is an expression of the fact that the Romans are a free people. And it's telling that it's only under the rule of Augustus, the first of the Caesars, the first of the autocrats, that it will start its transformation into a city from brick into marble. He's the Napoleon III of Roman history.

So Napoleon III who transforms Paris. Well, I think Napoleon the third is surely the would be Augustus. Yeah, correct. because also Napoleon III was an absolutely ludicrous man, whereas Augustus was arguably the greatest politician who ever lived. Anyway, that's by the by. So Rome 105 BC. One thing obsesses the city more than anything else,

and that, of course, is politics, because we ended last time with the great political drama of Marius, effectively stabbing his patron, Mattelus in the back. But Marius, you ended last time by saying how worried Marius was about his own lieutenant, Sulla, and we will come on to this. But just give us a sense. So it's a great kind of theatre, isn't it?

It's a theatre for political show. It's a great stage, yes. That's why Romans don't feel that they need to have a kind of cultural cringe towards the Greeks because Greeks are all ruled by monarchs or indeed by Rome. But the Romans are a free people. And it is their right to elect their own magistrates. And so the city is constantly bearing witness to this. Everywhere you go there is graffiti.

If people don't like candidates, then they may, you know, they may literally piss on them. Wow. So, you know, if there are kind of statues of them, they will go and express their contempt for them in the most literal manner. There's a hint for people if they have strong views about Britain's politicians. I suppose they don't tend to have statues, but there might be alternative ways in which they could do that. Yeah. And we said in the previous episode how Marius, while he's in Africa, his agents are busy promoting his name. I mean, this is the chief of which

they're doing it. They're going around writing graffiti, pissing on his rivals, all of that. And so I guess Rome stands supreme as the great theatre of ambitions and dreams. There's nowhere like it anywhere else in the world. This is way you have to be if you want to shape politics. And as a citizen of Rome, you have the opportunity to do that, either by running as a candidate or even if you're, you know, the very poorest of the poor, you have a vote. Your opinion. matters. Right. So, although Rome is the Republic, there is one man in 105 BC who stands head and shoulders above all his rivals, who in a sense is the preenkeps, the top man of the city. And this is Gaius Marius, the protagonist of our first episode. And we tracked his early career in that

episode. So he's an out-of-towner, he's burly, he's uncultured, but he's a natural politician. he's a brilliant soldier. And in 108, he'd been elected consul, so the top magistrate in the Roman Republic, because the voters and the Senate were fed up with a war that had been dragging on in Numidia, in North Africa, what's now Algeria, and they wanted it sorted out. And Maris had been the guy that they had said, go and sort this out. And it is amazing that Marius had ever got the nod, because he is what the Romans called a novice homo,

a man without any consular pedigree, and these things really matter to the voters. So if you're a novice homo and you get elected, it's a massive, massive deal. And it's huge tribute to his reputation because it essentially marks him out as the go-to person if there is some massive military crisis. Yeah. So he has come back to Rome, late 105, and he came back with Jagirtha of Earlobe's fame, the bloke whose earrings were ripped off at the end of the last episode. enemy who grins horribly as he's being chucked into a dungeon.

Right. Or all the baths as cold as this or whatever great banter. Mad banter, Jagertha came out with as he was on his way to his demise. But more importantly, Marius has come back to Rome with his number two. So he's a man who really first featured at the end of the last episode. And this is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. It's the man with whom Marius, in all the history books, is always bracketed. And you described him last time, golden-haired, patrician, daring, swashbuckling, all of this.

And Sulla has made his name during, I mean, he's really made his name, hasn't he, in the campaign against Gagirtha? In a way that Maris finds, his boss finds a little bit unsettling. Yeah, because Gherth had fled to the neighbouring king. And so it required a mission of great daring to get him out from there. And Sulla had gone in, I mean, he might easily have been killed, but he is. He's very brave and he's very diplomatically skilled and he manages to extract Gigertha and bring him back for his horrible death in a dungeon in Rome. And Sulla is enormously proud of this.

The Romans are not people who approve of modesty. And so he has had a signet ring made which illustrates the process by which Gigertha is being handed over by the king who he'd taken refuge with. And this infuriates Marius and we will be hearing more. about Sulla in due course in this episode. But for now, it's all about Marius, because on the 1st of January 104 BC, as we described at the end of our last episode, Marius celebrates this great triumph, this military parade through Rome, in which he's able to display Gigertha, display his treasure, all his legions who'd fought with him on that campaign are cheering him. It's great.

I mean, you couldn't want for anything more if you're a Roman general. It's absolutely brilliant. And he rides in this chariot. He's a raid in triumphal robes. I think the idea that you have a slave who stands behind you and says, remember, you're immortal. It's not 100% validated. But you can absolutely see why that story emerges. There is a sense that this is the greatest kind of experience that any Roman can have. However, even as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome and being cheered by the watching

crowds, there is a mood of panic, maybe even desperation in the city, because Jagurtha may have been defeated. The dignity of the Roman name may have been upheld in Africa, but to the north, beyond the Alps, there is a much more terrifying threat than some African king, massing on the frontiers of Rome's empire. And again, we mentioned. this in the previous episode. Yeah. It's an immense migration of Germans, the Teutans and the Kimbray from Jutland to the frontiers of the Roman world.

So it's almost a kind of proto-viking invasion. Yeah. So in the last episode, to please people who online like to count how often we refer to either the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, I compared them with the white walkers, the people who in the Game of Thrones TV series you see right at the beginning, they're massing all the time. You know, all the internal politics of West Ross is nothing compared with the existential apocalyptic threat that these blokes represent. And actually, I'm going to congratulate myself on my own comparison. I think it's an absolutely superb comparison. Yeah. Because, I mean,

these people, the Teutons and the Kimbray, they're massive, they're terrifying, they look weird, they are an existential threat. They're reputed to be cannibals. Right. This is Plutarch on them. He said they were impervious to cold because they'd been brought up in icebound countries full of forests. I mean, Tom, the parallels are stacking up. You're absolutely right. And also, I think, isn't this also the case with the White Walkers? The Tutans and the Kimbrey accompanied by women and children. Yeah, because some of them are women and children, yeah.

And in fact, actually, in Game of Thrones, the children are the most frightening. There's always something terrifying about a murderous, sinister child. And frankly, if you've ever met a German child, you know, it's the same story. Well, they're Danes, really, aren't they? Yeah, they're the worst. And the women also are very frightening because they're said to fight alongside the men. Of course. And it's an entire people on the move.

So there are tens of thousands of them, according to the Roman sources. I mean, we don't know how accurate they are. But basically, there are loads and loads of them. And they are experienced by the Romans less as an army than as some kind of force of nature. You know, a great flood, a tide, a tsunami, whatever you want to reach for. You know, the news had been brought to them that this monstrous tide of people is advancing towards you. And so they sent an army under a consul into a region called Norikum, which is basically Austria today, in 113 BC. And the consul had set an ambush for these barbarians, and the barbarians had rumbled it and had outsmarted the consul and given him a serious mawling.

And so he'd withdrawn. and he had assumed that the barbarians would pursue him and invade Italy. In fact, they don't. They swing westwards into Gaul, which is a big relief to the Romans. But I think it's also a little bit unsettling because it's clear that the Kimberian and the Teutons are unlike any enemy that they've come up against before. There's no predicting what they'll do. When you're fighting Carthaginians or Greeks or even Gauls, there's a sense in which the Romans understand what makes these people tick. But with these barbarians from the far north, and again, this is maybe the kind of White Walker

comparison, the Romans don't understand what they want, they don't understand what's going to motivate them, they don't understand how they're going to behave. And so that means it's very difficult, I think, for the Romans to devise a strategy to cope with this onslaught. And this becomes manifest in a succession of disastrous Roman attempts to go and be proactive and meet the Tutans and Kimbury and wipe them out beyond the limits of Roman power. Because the barbarians, they're just roaming around Gaul, kind of looting and pillaging and killing and all that kind of stuff.

And the Romans keep going and trying to attack them, and they keep being defeated. So first in 109 BC and then two years later near what today is Bordeaux. And one consul in that battle is killed. And the other one is cornered. And the only way that he can extract himself is to agree that he and his army will go beneath the yoke. Oh, my God. Yeah, ultimate humiliation. You put up, you know, two spears and put another spear across it.

And everyone has to symbolically bend and crawl. Well, not symbolically. I mean, you literally do it. But it's obviously a symbol of humiliation. So that's very bad. And then I had forgotten the full details of this defeat. So it happens in 105. And it's a culminating disaster.

in the Roman attempts to stop the barbarians. It happens outside Arousio, which is the town in Southern Gaul, which gives its name to Orange. So ultimately, to the Orange Order. I mean, that's an amazing thought. And in this battle, the Romans, it said, lose over 100,000 men, which is more than they lose in Can I. Is that plausible, really, that they lost that many?

I mean, these figures are all made up, aren't they, really? I don't think they're made up. It's clearly a massive defeat, and yet it's barely remembered, and you think how much it's written about can I and the impact that it had on the Romans. At the time, it must have just seemed overwhelming. It must have seemed a disaster on par with that. And when the news of it is brought to Rome, there is this terrible mood of panic, and they call it the terror Kimbrichus. And that phrase ever afterwards is applied by the Romans to a kind of mood of civic panic. you know, the kind of the mood of terror that can sweep an entire city.

Right. And everyone, even Marius's old enemies in the Senate, agree that basically, faced with this crisis, there is only one man for the job. Obviously, I mean, this is Marius. So Rousier was 105. Then in 104, Marius has been elected as one of the two consorts, hasn't he, for the year? So this is his second consulship already. You said, remember Plutarch. that he, well, Pluto reported the prophecy that he would get seven. And you said he'd be a big

stretch from to get even worn. You were wrong, Tom. He's now got two. To justify myself, we also said in the previous episode that it is essentially, it's either illegal or massively frowned upon for someone who's had a consulship then to have a second consulship. Yeah, you did. You did say that. And if you do have a second consulship, then at the very least it should be at a kind of decent distance from the original one. But Marius, he'd be consulate 107. This is only three years later. So that, I think, is the measure of the state of absolute panic that everyone in Rome is feeling, that they haven't really got any choice. Constitutional proprieties don't really count

when your city is facing an existential threat. And so it is that as Marius is riding through the streets of Rome in his triumphal robes on his chariot, enjoying his triumph. you've got to wonder, you know, if that story was true, if the nest full of seven eaglets fell into his arms, and it did indeed prophesy that he was going to have seven consulships. I mean, is he thinking about that? Maybe. It would be nice to think so. Yeah. Although there is still tension, isn't there? I mean, he is still a self-made man. He is still an outsider. There must be people in Rome from the old elite who are just like, really this guy? this parvenu again. Yeah, for sure. And Marius, on the day of his triumph, the day that he also takes up his second consulship, he makes a massive power play because he goes straight to the meeting of the Senate wearing his triumphal robes, which is very much not the dumb thing. And he apologised for it and goes and changes. But you have to think, you know, he's reminding everybody in the Senate that he is the guy who has already won one war and that they're depending on to win a second one.

So it causes indignation, but I think Maris probably felt it was worth the indignation. The Senate doesn't give him sole command. So there is still, you know, he is one of two consuls. So Maris's enemies can feel, well, at least he's not, you know, his power is not completely preponderant. He still has a colleague at the top. Right. But I think it is a measure of the emergency and of Maris's reputation as Rome's only

plausible saviour that throughout this war against the Kimbrey that's going to be fought and it stretches from from 104 BC to 101, he's going to hold consecutive consulships. So that's four consulships on top of his previous one. So that's five consulships. And just to emphasize, this is something completely unprecedented. So this is a little by Franklin D. Roosevelt serving, you know, winning four elections in the 1930s and 1940s. It's unprecedented. It violates not the letter of the constitution, but the spread.

spirit of it, but the established tradition. But people see it as a reasonable reaction to times of existential threat, unprecedented in their history. And that's the analogy, I suppose. That's the measure, I think, of the threat that Rome feels that it is facing. Yeah. And also the degree to which Marius is really the one person they feel can sort this out. Now, Marius, it has to be said, is not a flamboyant general. He's not Alexander the Great. He's not even Julius. Caesar. He is a guy who is basically all about digging ditches and latrines and routine. That's very much what the Romans in military terms are about. Isn't that like what the Scipio's had been like, though, had they not been like dogged, resolute, managerial, all of that? That is the essence

of the Roman military approach. Right. They love, you know, every night they will build a camp. And so Marius goes very much with the grain of this tradition. He bases himself, in the Provincia, the future province, southern Gaul. And he concentrates on building up Rome's battlefield effectiveness, which essentially means focusing on getting his men practiced with spades as much as with arms. You know, he wants to toughen them up. He wants, you know, lots of forced marches carrying heavy boulders, lots of digging trenches, all of that kind of thing. But also imposing discipline, imposing battlefield techniques, all of this kind of stuff. It's often been said that this constitutes a military revolution, what Maris puts his men through in this period, a transformation

in how Rome fights wars. And this is now a very contested topic and people who are interested in this matter. And I think it's a matter of interest, not just for those who are interested in military history, but for the whole sweep of Roman history. It's a really live, fascinating topic. We have a bonus this week with Brett Devereaux. Oh, brilliant. Who has very stimulating opinions on the whole question. So don't miss that. I love this subject and I love Brett Devereaux. And I should be tuning in. Great. I mean, I'm a member of the Restis History Club. Of course. What are people at aunt? How would they listen to it? They could go to therestishistory.com and sign up there. Oh, my gosh. What lovely organic moment that was in the podcast. I know. So unscripted.

Anyway, right, back to the narrative. Yeah. So whether Marius is instituting a revolution or whether he is just doing tried and tested Roman techniques doesn't matter. He is whipping the Romans into shape. And by 102, he feels ready at last to go on the offensive, not least because by this point, the Teutons and the Kimbury, who previously been travelling in one great kind of amorphous mass, have now gone their own separate ways. Oh, that is a schoolboy error from the Teutons and the Kimbrie madness. Yeah. Listen, they're just barbarians.

They don't know better. Crazy. Insane. I have no time for them now. Okay. But the Teutons, who are Maris' first target, they still outnumber Maris's army three to one. Okay. And also, they've beaten the Romans nonstop.

They don't think there's a problem. And what follows is the kind of classic contrast between Roman disqualification. discipline and barbarian kind of courage and headstrong charging and all that kind of stuff that anyone who's got into the Romans in their childhood will instinctively remember. It's like the opening scene of Gladiator. That's what this is, isn't it? Yes, it absolutely is. I mean, this is basically the kind of contrast that was seared into me when I was obsessed

by the Romans when I was about eight. So Marius, he approaches the Teutons and then he, he, he approaches the Teutons. And then he builds a big camp, you know, all that digging comes in. And he holds it as a kind of, and basically an impregnable position. And he refuses to answer challenges. And again, this is very gladiator. One of the Teutons comes forward and issues a challenge personally to Marius. And Maris's response is an excellent one.

If you want death, find a rope, make a noose, and hang yourself. Russell Crow was bored to say that line. It really was. Yeah, he was. They missed a trick there. So the Tuchans hang around issuing these insults. Marius doesn't answer. The Tutons get fed up.

They move on looting, plundering as they go. Marius upsticks, shadows them, building camps every night so they can't be attacked. And then on the banks of the Rhone, he surprises a huge force of a collection of German allies who are traveling with the Tutons and wipes them out. And then four days later, on a plane near a city called Acquise 60i, which is Aixon province, today, he encircles the Teutons. So he does a kind of can-eye and completely wipes them out. They are utterly slaughtered. And so many corpses are left strewn on the battlefield that for years afterwards, the local vintners, it is said, enjoyed the most superlative of vintages. A lovely Provencal Rosey with a hint, just a hint. A little hint of flesh. A rotting teuton.

Mmm. Delicious. A little hint of the German corpse. When I drink my fine French wines. Wow. Delicious. This is the rest is history wine tasting tour. Everyone really needed.

So the teutons are now gone and basically been turned into fertilizer. grapes. But this still leaves the Kimbury in the field. Yeah. And they, the Romans will not meet with the Kimbrey until the following year. So 101 on the 30th of July. And on that day, they too meet with complete annihilation at the hands of Rome's greatest general. And the battle takes place outside a city called Berkele in northern Italy. And it's a complete victory for Marius. So the Kimbury are broken, they retreat, they have drawn up all their wagons in their rear, as was always their practice. And that means that they can't escape. And they run into the wagons.

And there, according to Plutarch, they were killed by their own women who were assembled on the line of the wagons. And to quote Plutarch, clad in black, the women killed their own husbands, brothers, fathers. Then they strangled their little children with their own hands and flung them down under the wheels of the wagons. or the hooves of the animals, and finally the women cut their own throats. It's extreme reaction. Not entirely the kind of behaviour of Danish women today, I would say. Not at all. Times have changed.

So that's the Kimbrey gone, and the Roman authors inevitably give absolutely massive casualty figures, you know, kind of 140,000 killed, 60,000 prisoners taken. I mean, we don't. Probably exaggerated, but clearly it's a massive monumental victory. And the barbarian invasion is over. Marius has saved Rome. He's saved Italy. He's the hero of the hour. And the person, Dominic, who brings the news of the victory to Rome, do you want to reveal who that is? I do. Listeners, brace yourselves. It's none other than Gaius Julius Caesar. Now, if you're thinking that's Julius Caesar, you're wrong. It's actually his father. And only a fool would think it was Julius Caesar himself. Isn't that right, Tom? That would be mad. Only a total idiot would get the father and son muddled up. And thank God we're not at home to idiots on the rest is history.

No, it is on this podcast. Right. So Julius Caesar, not the Julius Caesar, but a Julius Caesar, his dad brings the news back to Rome. And, I mean, people don't understand why we're laughing, but who cares? I think they'll probably guess. And Marius is the hero of the hour. And actually there are two interesting indications of this, aren't the Tom?

And would you like to talk people through them? Right. So the first may seem a little bit obscure, but bear it in mind because it's going to have, it's an indicator of things that are to come. So in the wake of the battle, Maris has obviously fought it not just with Roman legions, but with armies of Italian allies, the Sochi. And at the end of the battle, Maris had very impulsively granted citizenship to two cohorts of the Sochi, of these Italian allies.

So about a thousand men in total. And this was completely illegal. He had no right to do this. And it was very controversial back in Rome because obviously the Romans guard their citizenship very jealously. But the Senate suck it up. They realise they can't really go against the hero of the hour. The other indication of just what a hero, Marius, is,

he's had these five consulships, and four of these have been because he has been in charge of the war against the barbarian invaders. But now that the barbarian invaders have gone, Marius runs for the consulship again and is elected again. So this is a sixth consulship. And only one man way back in the midst of time had achieved this. So Marius is now the equal record holder. And just to emphasize, you know, it's a big enough feat for a novice homo, a man from, you know, who has no pedigree to get one consulship.

Marius is now the joint record holder. six consulships, stupefying. But to be fair, he deserves it. Is he not the goat at this point of Roman history? He's, he, Jagirtha, stuff in Spain, seeing off the white walkers. I mean, he's got an unbelievable record of success. And if any man in Roman history deserves six consulships, surely it's Gaius Marius. Well, you might say that.

But obviously, in a society like Rome, which is fantastic, founded on relentless competition between alpha males. The fact that one particular alpha male has done stunningly well for himself isn't necessarily greeted with overwhelming joy and approbation by other alpha males. So the very scale of marriage success kind of stores up trouble for him. No one in Rome like someone who is too much of a winner. That's the whole ethososos. of the Republic. And there's a class element to this, isn't there? I mean, Marius, by definition, I suppose, because of his background, because of his plain style and, you know, sleeping on the ground in a military blanket or whatever, he is your classic popularist, isn't he? He's the man

who appeals to the people. He's a champion of ordinary working people. Isn't that Marius's a schick? That is very much his stick. Yeah. And by definition, therefore, that means that conservatives, the patrician types, they're going to see him as somebody who is not one of them and they're going to look for somebody, they're going to look for a champion. Maris is much too taller poppy, so they want to nurture and, you know, grow other poppies that can kind of measure up to him. And the one that they go for is a guy called Quintus Lutatius Cacculus, and he had been Maris's colleague as consul in 102 BC. So that's the year in which they had defeated the Teutans. and he is everything that Marius isn't.

So he's a very old-school aristocrat. He's enjoyed a very expensive education. He has amazing connections. He's so not Marius that to be enthusiastic for him is kind of almost pointedly to do Marius down. Now, Cautilus initially had made a bit of a hash of things. So in the campaign against the Kimbray, it was his failure to hold defensive positions along the line between Gaul and Italy that had enabled the Kimbury to break through the defences and advance into northern Italy. But he'd redeemed himself. He'd joined forces with Marius.

They'd won the great victory together. Cacchulus hadn't, you know, I mean, he's not a great general, but he'd fought with dogged competence. And the Romans, I guess, they love a bit of dogged competence. They don't hold, you know, they see that as a mark in Cacullus's favour. Yeah. And so Cacullus had been awarded a triumph, a long. alongside Marius. But he's an aristocrat. Marius isn't out of towner. Obviously, Cacchalus is resentful of the fact that Marius is really the one getting all the applauded, it's getting all the cheers. And so the rivalry between them over the years that follows is kind of baked in. So Marius, for instance, he builds a temple to celebrate the favour that had been shown him by the

gods. And Cacchalus does exactly the same. And so it carries on. And this, no, it's nothing unusual. This is how people tend to behave in the Roman Republic. The great men do tend to dislike each other, to be rivals of one another. But Catullus isn't really a, I mean, he's not a serious threat to Marius. Is he? The way you've described his record. He's a plodder. Yeah. Right. He's a mediocrity. Yeah. I don't think Marius really feels threatened by him. There is, however, one man who I think does live a bit rent-free in his head. And this is another aristocrat. a former lieutenant of his, a soldier, a politician of formidable abilities. We've mentioned him before.

This is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. And I think it's time now. We've mentioned him several times already in this series to have a bit of a closer look at him. The glamour boy of Roman politics, right? I mean, he really is, he has the glamour that Marius perhaps doesn't quite have. He's sophisticated. He is patrician. He is blue-blooded.

he's cool, he's ruthless, he's cunning, all of these things. But there are similarities as well as differences, right? Yeah, they completely are. So both of them are brilliant soldiers. Both of them have a real talent for politics. Both of them are incredibly ambitious. And both of them, I think, have been very driven to escape what by the standards of senatorial politics is a degree of relative poverty.

So although Marius, his background is kind of the regional aristocracy, the out-of-town aristocracy, his parents are not wealthy compared to the great, you know, sanatorial figures of Rome. Yeah. And Sulla, even though he comes from an ancient patrician family, his background also has been relatively poverty-stricken. So his father had died essentially bankrupt. And so left Sulla very, very hard up. And this means that throughout his youth, Sulla had found his means humiliatingly disproportionate to his ambitions, to his expectations. Right.

You know, it's like someone, I guess, who's been given a very expensive education and then the father goes bankrupt. You have to go and get a job in Burger King or something. Is that kind of thing? Does that happen to people with expect? I mean, do they end up working Burger King? I had a friend who did experience that. Well, it's the classic thing of the person living in the kind of massive country house who can't heat it because daddy spends all the money on hookers. I think it's worse than that because if we can trust Plutarch, and that is quite a big if.

But he reports traditions that Sulla is hanging out in very kind of seedy lodgings in rough areas of town. He doesn't seem to have had the equivalent of a stately home. And he is hanging out with kind of the demi-monde, with bohemians. Right. And these include prostitutes, drag queens, and the very worst of the worst, stand-up comedians. Oh, no. Mym artists, people of that ilk. Prutuck is appalled by this.

One of the few things you can say is touching about Zala, that he's very loyal to them throughout his life. Loves a drag queen and a stand-up comic. He literally does. love a drag queen, as we will see. He's very keen on stand-up comics and drag queens and indeed prostitutes. God Almighty. We've said how he's a very good-looking man. He has this kind of this hair that's so golden that it's almost red, which is very striking in Rome. He has kind of blue eyes, actually, a bit like a Kimbrian. So again, very striking. And he's, again, if we can trust Plutarch, he seems to have operated as a bit of a gigolo. Both his stepmother,

rather sinisterly, and Rome's most famous cortisans are said to have become obsessed by him. And in their wills, both these women leave most of their property to Sulla. So if we can trust these stories, Sulla has essentially been pimping himself out. He is being paid by the estates of the women who've fallen for him. And it is these estates that then, kind of in his late 20s, early 30s, enables him to embark on the political career that his contemporaries and peers would have begun in their late teens. So he's a late starter. So he's 30 and suddenly he is able to dream of big things.

But in a way, as much as Marius, Sala feels that he is struggling against impediments that had held him back early in his career, I think. And I think those are points of resemblance between them and maybe explains why both of them appear so driven in their respective careers. They're both in a way late developers, aren't they? I mean, Marius was, what was he, not even 40 when he really appears in the history books. And Sulla is 30 by the time he's got all this money and can launch his career. And he, I mean, he's utterly ruthless, isn't he Sulla?

I mean, this is one of his defining characteristics. He will do absolutely whatever is necessary to get ahead. Yeah. So this is why he is very content to be Maris's lieutenant. He profits from it, first in Africa, and then he serves with. Marius against the barbarians in the north, the Teutons and the Kimbury. But he's also happy in due course when he has to to turn on Marius as Marius had turned on Mattelis, his patron.

So we mentioned this ring and how it niggles Marius. He hates this ring, kind of showing Sulla getting Gigertha. In the war against the Kimbris, Sulla begins serving with Marius, and then he switches and joins the staff of Catulus. And by doing that, he's not just broading his rinkethe. range of military experience, he's also identifying himself with the conservative interest in the Senate, because that is the kind of the alignment that Caculus represents. And that is, of course, the faction most opposed to Marius. And so I think Sulla is definitely making a statement

with that that he, you know, he's served his apprenticeship, and now he's moving on. He's leaving Marius behind. So in the 90s, in the wake of the defeat of the Teutons and the Kimbrey, Sala, I mean, he does well enough. He, you know, he gets a magistrate here, a magistrate there. He goes on a diplomatic mission. He's the first Roman to establish relations with the Parthians in the Far East, this kind of Iranian power. But he doesn't make a tremendous name for himself. And the consulship remains out of his reach. And the problem is that Sala lacks what Marius had enjoyed, namely the chance to do spectacularly well in a glorious war. But Sulla doesn't despair about this.

He's ambitious, but he's also very patient. And even though he's a tremendous cynic, I mean, kind of balefully so, he is simultaneously very superstitious. And Sulla absolutely believes himself to be the favourite of Venus, the goddess of love, the goddess of fortune, the goddess who grants to those who are, her particular favourites, sex appeal, which Sulla has, and good fortune, which Sulla is convinced is going to be his in due course.

So by 91 BC, Sulla is 47. The minimum age by convention that you can run for the consulship is 40. So he's seven years over that threshold. And I reckon by Sulla's own high standards, you know, he has to reckon that that's a bit of a failure. He should have got the consulship by this point. But he remains confident that everything's going to be fine, that he is going to get a consulship in due course, that he is going to become one of the great men of not just in contemporary Roman politics, but in the entire sweep of Roman history, and that he is indeed what the Romans called phalics, which means both fortunate and favored by Venus. And he is not wrong because in due course, he is. He is going to get his chance with absolutely seismic consequences for the Roman Republic.

And he will be getting that chance after the break. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Tom throughout history, change has often been driven by businesses and institutions that end up having a massive impact on society as a whole. And there's probably no better example than the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford and his managers revolutionized production through their pioneering assembly lines, and they influenced factories and working practices in countries all over the world. Another example of a business driving technological and social change is Amazon, which is increasing the number of its electric vehicles used for deliveries in Europe

to over 10,000 by the end of this year, 2026. Now, on top of that, over 50% of Amazon deliveries now come with less packaging or sometimes no added packaging at all. It helps to avoid unnecessary waste and it makes recycling at home that much easier. Find out more at amazon.co.com.uk slash sustainability. Welcome back, everybody, to the rest is history. The year is 91 BC. and as you look out, what you can see is the Bay of Naples, the epitome of Roman, chic and wealth and luxury and pleasure.

Naples, of course, Tom, Neapolis, a former Greek colony. But for the Romans, it's become the great sort of tourist destination, hasn't it? It's the place where they go to get a little taste of Greece. Yeah, so you've got these kind of ancient streets basking in the sun, and you can go there and debate with philosophers and have doctors consult you. and have affairs with kind of witty, well-read courtisans and all of the things that you would get in Greece. And so unsurprisingly, throughout the 90s, as all this wealth is flooding into Rome and the aristocracy are getting richer and richer, the entire coastline of the bay has become incredibly fashionable, kind of the Santrapet or whatever, of ancient Rome. And luxury villas are starting to sprout up along its length.

So Marius is one of the super rich who's commissioned a villa. and typically he's had it kind of structured to look like a Roman military encampment stuck out on a promontory. God, he never changes, does he? You've got spars. We love a spa on the rest of history. You've got marinas. You've got yachts.

You've got oyster beds. So these have been developed by a local entrepreneur called Sergis Arata. Absolutely floods the market with very high-end oysters. And then Arata goes one better and invents the heated swimming pool. So there's something of, I guess, of kind of West Hollywood. as well as Santrapay about the whole kind of the whole vibe. And it generates a massive property boom. Right.

But it's not just villas are being developed because a few miles up the coast from Naples is a place called Puttioli. And this is a one-time Greek port that unlike Naples has been completely flattened, rebuilt and expanded, complete with these enormous concrete moles because the kind of the volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, which looms over the Bay of Naples, enaboard. enables the Romans to make concrete that can be used underwater. And so this enables this kind of huge port to be built. And the significance of Puteoli for the Romans is that it's a deep water port.

It's basically the only deep water port they have on the Roman side of Italy that can provide the capital with all these kind of goods that are starting to flood in across the Mediterranean from all the various parts of the Mediterranean world that Rome now controls. So you've got grain, you know, Rome is a city perhaps of half a million people. They need to be fed. You've got slaves to fuel Roman enterprises, in particular, what are called the Latifundia,

which are these kind of vast, enormous agricultural estates, which are spreading across Italy and have to be worked by slave labor. Gold and silver, of course. And the irony is that what Peru was the 16th century Spain, Spain is the first century BC, Rome. So there are all these enormous complex of mines in Spain, tens of thousands of slaves being worked to death in this kind of great landscape pocked with tunnels and quarries. I mean, just hell on earth fumes so heavy that the chemicals burn the skin and it said that birds, if they fly over the mines, just drop dead. And to this day, if you get a core of ice from the poles,

You can see the chemical trace elements of all the smelting that was going on in this period. Right. So it's a vast kind of industrial scale. And of course, from the Eastern Mediterranean, we talked about this in the previous episode, how the Romans take over this province that they call Asia, the Western Sea board of what's now Turkey. You get these incredible luxuries, sculptures, spices, paintings, exotic plants, celebrity chefs, sex manuals, all these kind of things. They're coming to Puttioli and then being taken on to Rome. presumably as a result of all this, Naples and the surrounding areas, so Campania, and indeed

cities like Pompeii, which is just along the coast, these places must be coming enormously rich. Yeah, and these at this point are not Roman. So they are absolutely benefiting as well. And I would say the whole of the Bay of Naples and Campania, which is the region that the Bay of Naples is set in, you know, it's becoming probably the richest, the single richest area in the world with the exception of Rome. You're having massive inflows of well. and goods. And if you're an Italian and you belong to the elite and you can speak Latin and you have good business contacts, then the opportunities for making yourself rich, particularly if you have businesses that reach overseas, are the same as those that any Roman

merchant has. You know, the opportunities are absolutely enormous. And there is this one particular honeypot, which is the province of Asia, what had previously been the kingdom of Pergamum, and which had been left to the Roman people by its last king in his will back in 133 BC. And it's become a province. The Romans call it Asia. And for several generations now, Roman and Italian business interests have been bleeding this province absolutely white. And the most profitable enterprise of all is to set up private companies that can then operate the taxation system and extort taxes out of the wretched locals. And the name of these cartels is publicarni.

And it's publicarni because they are operating for the benefit of the Roman public. Right. But, you know, there is nothing public spirited about them at all. And their scam is basically not just to extort the official tribute that is owed to Rome, but also to strong arm the provincials into essentially paying for the privilege of being fleeced. They have their own private gangs of heavies. and it's absolutely terrible for the, you know, the poor provincials. And the Italian merchant class has its nose at least as much in this particular trough

as the Roman business class does. And so to the people of Asia who feel that they've been, you know, this is a plague. Romans and Italians, they see them all as Romanoi as Romans. They don't really distinguish between them. And so I think for Italian businessmen, if they're overseas, you know, it's great. They share all the privileges and advantages of Roman citizenship. They can get just as rich as the Romans. So what's the problem?

Well, the problem is that when they come home, they find that they are in Italy still very much second-class citizens. And so I think the more successful they are, paradoxically, riding on the Roman coat tails, the more they come to resent the Romans, the more they come to feel that the Romans are not cutting them the slack that is their due as people who properly should be Roman citizens themselves. So the discontent of these Italians who have made a lot of money in Pergamum,

this has been growing and growing, growing for a series of reasons, right? They have to do military service. And that falls disproportionately on them. They don't get all the benefits of Roman citizenship when they come home. So they don't get the vote. They don't get the same legal standing. They don't get all of this. The case of Marius is a really good example of the disparity of opportunities.

So if you're a Roman, as Marius is, you can win six consulships if you're from Arpinum. But if you're from Pompeii, you can't win a single consulship, right? You can't win a single Roman office. Because you don't have the vote. Well, you described how Marius had enfranchised a thousand Italians after he'd beaten the white walkers. And I guess if he can do that just randomly, why can't you enfranchise all of them? I mean, that is a reasonable question that these Italians are asking. Yeah.

And obviously the Romans don't want to make this concession because to them being Roman is special. And they want to guard the exclusivity of Roman status. Some of the Romans do. So there are statesmen in Rome who think, actually, if the Italians have a point, and if we make them Roman citizens, then think how much manpower will have. they can see that it promises Rome a kind of absolute military preponderance if they do give the Italians the full Roman citizenship. And the guy who takes the lead in pushing this argument is a tribune called Marcus Livia's

Drusus. And fun fact, Livia, the wife of the Emperor Augustus, so when I see Nicarld is, will remember her. She is this guy's adoptive granddaughter. So there are family links everywhere in Roman history. Anyway, this guy, Drusus, in 91, he brings forward a bill to give the Italian. allies, full Roman citizenship. And to his opponents, this is an existential moment, because just as there are very good reasons for allowing the Italians to have citizenship, so also are there

very good reasons not to allow them, because the anxiety of the conservatives, the anxieties of Drus's opponents is that Rome is a city-state. It has these very ancient institutions. And the question they ask is, how are these institutions, how is the civic infrastructure of our city? going to cope with the sudden enrolment of millions of new citizens throughout the length and breadth of Italy. I mean, both sides obviously have really good arguments on their side. And so unsurprisingly, the whole city comes to be gripped by the tension of this debate, which has kind of flared up suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.

And as it had done back in the period of the Tribunate of the Gracie, kind of 30 years previously, so now the argument turns violent. So amid riots, amid violent demonstrations, Drusus's legislation is defeated, and then a few days later, while Drus himself is sitting in the kind of the portico of his villa, he is surprised by an assassin and murdered. Whoa. And the news of this murder is greeted across Italy with a great explosion of anger, and this anger will culminate in them turning to open warfare. And this war will be called by historians in English the social war. Worst name for a war ever. It sounds like it's been organised by the local golf club or something.

But this is a very, very brutal conflict. And actually for the Romans, one of the most dangerous wars that they ever fight. Because essentially, everything that the Romans have created risks being brought down by it. The Italians have been knitted into the fabric of their empire. Without the Italians, they could never have. have achieved what they've achieved. And now the Italians have turned on them. This is a massively fateful conflict for them. Right. So it's an existential threat for the Romans and it begins in the east, doesn't it? There's an uprising. The murder of Drus is a massive scandal. There's an uprising

in Asculum. It's in the east of Italy. All the Romans in the city are murdered, they're massacred. The wives of the Italians who don't join the rebellion are tortured and ascalped, aren't they? So this is a hideously violent occasion. I think deliberately to make a statement that the Italians are not messing around, that they seriously mean business. And also, I think, to encourage other Italians to feel, well, you know, these guys really mean business, we'd better pile in as well. So Asculum, which you mentioned, the place where the whole thing explodes. It's in a region called Pisinum on the Adriatic coast, what's now modern-day Marche in Italy. But it doesn't take long for the flames of rebellion to spread across the Apennines and reach Campania.

So the Bay of Naples, this great gilded golden place. So Pompei joins the rebellion. At inland there's a city called Nola, again, like Pompeii, not Roman. This gets captured by the Italian rebels and transformed into a kind of bristling stronghold of the revolt. But actually, I mentioned the Apennines. That is the real focus of the rebellion. That's the real focus of the uprising. Because, of course, it's mountainous, and so it's much more difficult for the Romans to reach

than the kind of the flat-level plains. And the particular focus of the rebellion is a region called Samnium, which lies directly to the east of Campania. Very, very mountainous, very poor, trickle-down economics from Rome's empire has not reached the Samnites. And the Samnites, I mean, they're a pretty remarkable people, aren't they? The Romans regard them as backward, which I think is very cruel, cultural snobbery. So to give people a sense of the Samnites' interesting traditions,

they like witchcraft, they wear rings of iron around their necks, and they shave their pubic hair not just privately, but am I not right in saying they shave their pubic hair in public? And the Romans, for some unfathomal reason, find this revolting. Yeah, mad from the Romans. One thing the Romans do like about the Samnites is their armour, which is very fancy and beautiful. Okay. And in fact, in due course, Sam Knight armour will be the armour that is worn by one of the particular kinds of gladiator,

which I think is both a mark of respect and of contempt, because you're basically putting the Samnites to fight for you for your entertainment in an arena. But just to say, I mean, the Samnites are a very proud people. Right. A proud, rugged people. They're a proud genitally smooth people. Mountain people, yeah. Who centuries before, they had fought a great war that went on for many decades against the Romans. They'd only been defeated with great difficulty. And I think they have not forgotten their ancient glory, even though centuries have passed since that happened.

And they, you know, they dust down their armour. They dust down their swords. They have a nice quick shave and then they're off to create havoc down in the plains. And the Romans are taken completely by surprise. And it's rather as though, I think, the sense of shock they feel, it's as though, I don't know, you're in Godalming or Tumberge Wells. And suddenly you find you're being attacked by Jacobites or something. It's just so unexpected. It's like these soldiers have risen from a pass that you thought was completely dead and buried.

Yeah, that's a hell of a twist. And there is the inevitable bad start. Roman wars always seem to begin with a bad start. So there are various defeats. There is a consul is slain. But the Romans do still have immense reserves of manpower, even though they've lost all the Italians. And they do have three top generals. And one of these three top generals, of course, is Marius, who is now in his 60s.

And by this point, he has become, I think it's fair to say, a man of size. And his critics say that this is what comes of having a luxury villa on the Bay of Naples. inevitably. However, despite his bulk, he's still, you know, he's still got it. He's still got his talent for winning battles. And actually, he had been serving as a deputy to the consul who got killed. And Marius had been downriver, and he saw corpses starting to float by him, realized what had happened.

And he went round the back of the Italians and captured their fort. And this was a kind of consolation victory that cheered everybody up. and Kep Marius' name on the lips of the Romans. But he's not the top generals. So at number two, there is the guy who's the chief landowner in Piscinum on the east flank of Italy, where the uprising had begun. And this is a guy called Nyas Pompeius Strabo. And he's widely mistrusted in Rome, partly because he has a very shady character.

He's always stabbing people in the back. And partly because he has a squint. Oh, no. Which in Latin is Strabo. That's what it means. and the Romans tend to view people with squints as being untrustworthy. So Strabo is seen as a person who is a dangerous character. However, he is very effective and he catches the rebels in Pisinum in a pincer attack.

And he then moves to Asculum, you know, the birthplace of this revolt, and he puts it under siege. And it looks like it's going to fall. So this is very good. So he's number two in the hip parade. But number one, the breakout Roman star in the social war. is Lucius Cornelius Sulla. And he is the guy who is operating on the western flank of Italy, just as Strabo is operating on the eastern half. And that means that Sulla has responsibility for prosecuting the war in Campania, the Bay of Naples and Samnia. He advances it across

Campania, capturing all the rebelholds, including Pompeii. And if you go to Pompey today and you look at the walls, you can see the marks left on those walls by his artillery, by the stones fired by his catapults. Captures Pompeii. He then invades Samnium. He ambushes a Samnite army in a mountain pass, and then he storms the Samnite capital in an incredibly brutal three-hour assault. And by this point, there is only one rebel-held stronghold left in Campania, and this is the city of Nola, which we mentioned had been captured early on in the conflict and turned into the kind of the great centre of rebel resistance. And so Sulla moves up to its walls with his six legions that he's by this point got and he puts it under siege and he's looking to finish off the

revolt in Campania in his in the theatre of war for which he has responsibility. He himself, however, he doesn't stay there. He heads back to Rome. And this is It's a bit like Marius coming back from Africa to Rome because Sulla has his eye on the ultimate prize. He thinks, I've made this tremendous name for myself. I'm now Rome's top general. This is my opportunity at last to get the consulship. And so he's going back to Rome to stand in those consular elections. And does he get it? He does. He wins it very easily. And the fact that he wins the consulship is manifestation of the fact that he is the, he is the now seen by the Roman people as a person who has put all his peers, including Marius in the

shade. He is a very, very significant player now in Roman politics. So he is celebrated as a master of tactics, of strategy, of siege warfare, of ambushes, of diplomacy. He's been given this special award by his men, which is only ever given to a general who has saved his army from a position of extreme danger. So it's evident that his men think he's Fantastic. Two. Meanwhile, Marius, the Salas delight, is being widely mocked for being fat and old. He's 68.

So he's basically decrepit. Harsh. And he had, you know, we said that he was out in the field, but he's given up. He's fallen ill. He's gone to his villa. And he's just sitting there eating. Oh, Marius. And he seems yesterday's man.

God. And so for Sulla, when he becomes consul on the 1st of January, 88 BC, it's an incredibly sweet moment. And it's made all the sweeter by the fact that his consulship promises him the opportunity to win even more victories, even greater glory and even juicier prize. And this is because while the Romans have been busy slogging it out in Italy, fighting the Sochi, fighting the Italian allies, another disastrous war has broken out this time on the east of the East of the East of the East. most flank of the Roman Empire in Asia, in that hapless province that has been bled white by Roman and Italian businessman. But of course, a really important place for the Romans, right? Because it represents wealth, East, Eastern Mediterranean, richer than the West.

So this, I mean, it's actually been provoked by the Romans themselves, does it not? Completely, yes. So the guy responsible, he's a man called Manius Aquilius, and he's a very close associate of Marius. and this may or may not be a coincidence. He had served Marius as a legate and as his consular colleague against the Kimbray, say the year that they defeat the Kimbray. And in 90, he had been sent to Asia as part of an official commission charged by the Senate to sort out various border disputes that were kind of rumbling between rival kings

in what is now northern Turkey. And there was one kingdom in particular that Roman businessman had been casting kind of greedy eyes on for quite a while. And this is a place called Pontus on the coast of the Black Sea. And Aquilius, with what turns out to be completely fatal complacency, had sponsored an invasion of Pontus by a kind of client Roman king. And why he had done this is a bit of a mystery, because he's doing this while the social war is right. is raging. So you think the Romans had their hands full enough. Maybe he does it because he's been bribed by the business interests. Or maybe he's trying to provoke a war that Marius can then take command of. So maybe he's doing it to serve his old boss. I mean, both or neither may be

possible. We can't be sure. But either way, I mean, it turns out to be a really foolish thing to have done because Rome is fighting this desperate war back in Italy, and the King of Pontus turns out to be much more formidable than Aquilius had anticipated. And the King of Pontus is a guy called Mithridates, and he's very bold, very cunning, and as it turns out, incredibly vindictive. And he very easily swats aside the invasion of his kingdom. And then he takes an astonishing step, which is to invade the province of Asia. I mean, a jaw-dropping step. And it's jaw-dropping because for over a century now,

no king in the Eastern Mediterranean has dared to provoke a war with Rome. Yeah. They know what follows. They know that it's absolute curtains if you do that. But Mithridates have done it. And so people are maybe wondering, well, why has he taken this bold step? It's partly because he's been preparing for it, you know, for a very, very long time. He's massively beefed up his offensive capabilities.

He has an army that is, well, actually, it's literally shiny new because, you know, his elite troops all have kind of beautiful jewelry on their armor and their swords are embossed with gold. So it creates a tremendous spectacle. But also, Mithridates, he's a very cunning man. And even while he likes flamboyant soldiers, he likes a spot of espionage himself. Yeah, he's got good intelligence. He'd personally gone undercover in Asia, and he'd talk to the Greek communities there.

And he'd realized just how much the locals loathe the Romans, how desperate they were to see the Romans, the back of the Romans, and also how weak Rome's defenses are. And he thinks, actually, you know, maybe Rome's empire in Asia is a bit of a straw tiger. Maybe we, if I invade, maybe I can pull it off. And so he takes the plunge and he's not wrong because everything goes brilliantly for him. In a matter of weeks, Roman power in Asia completely collapses. Aquilius flees to the island of Mitalene just off the Aegean coast. And Mithridates himself arrives with his army on the shoreline of the Aegean.

So unbelievable. Rome has lost the province of Asia. to an oriental king. Unbelievable humiliation. And yet the reaction back home is quite complicated, isn't it? So for the business class who've invested in Asia or who have dealings with Asia, this is obviously an absolute disaster

because a lot of them are bankrupted. And for the Italians, let's call them, so the people who are fighting against the Romans, they relied on these business links to fund their war, didn't they? So this is a massive shock. But the interesting thing, I think it's so interesting that the Romans actually think, well, this is going to be an absolute walkover. Because Easterners, Orientals, are completely, you know, given over to luxury sex manuals and celebrity chefs.

They fight like women. This is because they're so rich. So basically, their wealth will cripple them and we'll be able to defeat them. And then we'll be able to take all their money. Yeah. So absolutely brilliant. It's a massive win for us. And so all the leading men in Rome, all the noblades, they want a piece of the action.

But the man who is in pole position because his consul is Sulla. And sure enough, shortly after he's become consul, so early in 88 BC, he is officially confirmed as the man who is going to lead the expedition against Mithridates. And he couldn't be happier. And so he heads back to Nola to continue the siege there, a very, very happy man. His plan is he will capture Nola, he will serve his term as a consul, and then he will fulfill the commission by leading his men eastwards. to attack Mithridates, win tremendous glory for himself, and just as importantly, become fabulously rich.

However, he has reckoned without his old commander and bitterest rival, Marius, who feels that the command in the war against Mithridates should properly be his. And remember, we floated the possibility that Aquilius had actually started this war with Mithridates with the aim of giving Marius the chance to do this. We don't know whether that's true, but it is certainly the case that in the early weeks of Sulla's consulship, Marius is absolutely on manoeuvres. So we mentioned how he has become slightly overweight. He starts to go out onto the campus marshes, the great kind of open space outside Rome where people go and do their exercises. And he starts, you know, doing, doing gym work, very public workouts, running, riding, weapon training, and crowds start turning up

to watch him, this great veteran working off his fat, turning it back into muscle, cheering him on. And simultaneously, Marius starts building a political alliance to try and undermine Sulla and have the command against Mithridates transferred from Sulla to himself, to Marius. and the key ally that Marius gets is a guy called Salpicious. And Salpichius is a tribune who is very committed to the idea that all the Italians should be given the citizenship. He thinks this is the best way to end the war. And by this point, actually, he has a lot of support in this opinion. Lots of Romans have come to this conclusion.

And they're starting to give Italians who haven't rebelled or Italians who are laying down their arms the chance to become full Roman citizens. Wow. But Salpichius wants to push this very far. Sulla is, he's not tremendously enthusiastic about this. He's always dragging his heels on the question of whether the Italians should be given the full citizenship. And so too does Sulla's colleague as consul a guy called Pompeius Rufus. And so they, both of them had pledged to back Salkitius's policy. But then once they're in power, they go back on it.

And Salpichis feels that he has been portrayed and is absolutely irate about it. And so this is why Salpichius decides that he will back Marius's command, because Marius in return says, well, I will back your move to see all the Italians enfranchised. The other thing that Salpichius can give Marius is that he's incredibly popular out on the streets of Rome. He's very good at whipping up a mob. And so this is the deal. Marius and Salpius agree terms. Marius will get the command.

Salpicious will get Maris's backing for the Italians all getting the vote. And so it is that a fateful political drama is set in train. So first thing that happens, Solpicius reintroduces his bill. So he reintroduces a bill at the same time his supporters take to the streets. There's rioting in the city, isn't there? It's all kicking off. Sulla is at his camp outside Nola and he gets news and he comes rushing back and he has this meeting with Pompeius Rufus, who is the consular colleague, and Sopichius,

I mean, this is an amazing thing, Sopichius, he is the news that Sulla is having this meeting in secret, and he sends a gang of thugs to break it up, and tell him what happens next? Well, in the resulting confrontation, the son of Pompeius Rufus, the consul is murdered. Rufus himself barely escapes with his life, and Sulla, I mean, this is such a humiliation, is forced to take refuge in Marius's house. So massive embarrassment, but it's not the end of Sulla's humiliations. Because before he's allowed to return to Nola, he has to acquiesce in Sarpikius's legislation, this bill that he'd previously blocked.

And he has to agree that his consular colleague, Pompey's Rufers, be stripped of his consulship. And so Sulla has to agree to all this. He has no choice. Otherwise, you know, he's going to get beaten up. And so he heads back to Nola painfully conscious of this great chasm that has been revealed between the show of his power and the reality of it. However, he does have one thing that can console him, and that is that he has this command against Mithridates.

It's brilliant. And this is now, you know, the key thing that he has. It's the key to all his future prospects, because the damage that's been done to his prestige is such that only a triumphant Eastern War can possibly repair it. So everything for Sulla is dependent on his going off to beat Mithridates and winning a glorious victory. And then Dominic, he's in his camp outside Nola, and a messenger arrives from Rome. And he is one of Marius's staff officers, and he brings news of a plebiscite. And this is a bill that had been proposed by Sarpicius, that had been ratified by the people and passed into law.

And by terms of this plebiscite, Sulla is demoted from his commanding. against Mithridates. He has it removed from him. And the person who gets the command in Sulla's place, inevitably, is Marius. And this staff officer has ridden into Sulla's camp, not just to give Sulla this news, but to take command of Sulla's legions, all six of them. Wow. And for Sulla, this is stunning, devastating news, because it threatens not just to deprive him. of his dreams of a great victory over Mithridates, but essentially to terminate his career in the most humiliating circumstances. And so the question that now hangs in the air, what is Sulla going to do? Well, ladies and gentlemen, there is only one way to find out. The stage is set for one of the

great confrontations in all classical history. It is the deathmatch between Mary and Sulla, and on this match, the future of Rome itself will turn. Now, if you're a member of the Restis History Club, you can find out what happens next straightaway by listening to the next episode. If you're not a member of the Restis History Club, I urge you, I implore you to go to the Restis History.com and sign up, and you'll be able to listen to the rest of this series. You'll be able to join our own Battle Hard and Legion, and you'll be able to find out what happens next in the struggle for the destiny of Rome itself.

So go to the restishistory.com and your life will be absolutely improved in every conceivable way. So on that, Bombshell, Tom, thank you very much. This is thrilling stuff. We will see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Do you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it.

I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.