The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

Once again, he was the hero of Rome. He was elected consul for the sixth time in succession – a glorious but illegal achievement, since each of the two consuls – who were together virtually governors of Rome – was only supposed to serve for a year at a time. He joined forces with two popular demagogues, Saturninus and Glaucia, and set out to topple the conservatives and make himself master of Rome. Unfortunately, his talents as a politician were mediocre – his manners were too blunt and harsh. He tried intriguing with both sides at once and lost his friends and allies in the process. The planned ‘revolution’ was a total failure; riots broke out and, as consul, Marius was forced to call out the army against his former allies. They took refuge in the Capitol and were murdered by a mob. Suddenly, the ‘saviour of Rome’ found himself a political has-been. It had all happened so quickly – within a month or two of his victorious return – that he found it difficult to grasp. He had always had an imperious temper; now he became suspicious and paranoid.

But the conservatives had also overreached themselves. There really was an urgent need for reform – not just in Rome but in the whole of Italy. The people needed champions to defend them against the wealthy; but as soon as a champion appeared, he was murdered. When this happened to a reformer named Drusus – another ‘leftist’ -Italy flared into civil war. Once again, Marius was needed. He and his old subordinate ‘Lucky Sulla’ – now his bitter rival – were placed in command of the armies and marched off to slaughter men who had once fought under them – mostly dissatisfied Italians who felt they had a right to become Roman citizens. At this point, a king named Mithridates of Pontus – on the Black Sea – decided to seize this opportunity to acquire himself an empire. He invaded Syria and Asia Minor and sent out secret orders that all Romans living in conquered cities should be put to death. When the day came, more than a hundred thousand men, women and children were dragged out into the streets and massacred.

The people of Rome were shattered by the news – it seemed incredible that Romans could be treated like the inhabitants of Carthage and Corinth – mere cattle. The rich were even more shaken by loss of revenues. The treasury was suddenly empty. The senate decided that, instead of slaughtering the Italians, it might be a better idea to give them what they wanted and then send them to fight Mithridates. So the Italians finally achieved their Roman citizenship.

It might be assumed that, in the face of the Asian threat, Rome would cease its internal squabbles. But the Romans had become too accustomed to quarrelling amongst themselves. To begin with, Marius and Sulla both thought they ought to have the honour of destroying Mithridates. The senate preferred the patrician Sulla. Marius threw in his lot with a popular demagogue named Sulpicius, who appealed directly to the people. They not only voted him command of the army; they also went off looking for Sulla to tear him to pieces. Sulla had to flee from Rome. But he fled to his soldiers – the ones who had helped him to put down the rebellion – and marched on Rome. After some bitter fighting, it was Marius’s turn to flee, together with his friend Sulpicius, who was caught and executed while Marius escaped to Africa. Having settled this little quarrel, Sulla made himself master of Rome, murdered a few hundred of Marius’s supporters, passed some laws, and finally marched off to fight Mithridates.

The moment his back was turned, Marius hurried back to Rome. Paranoid, vengeful, eaten up with jealousy and hatred, he behaved like a maniac. Like Sulla, he had his faithful army – his soldiers liked to call themselves ‘Marius’s mules’ – and he now began a reign of terror such as no great city had ever seen. He had the gates of Rome closed, then ordered his men to kill all his ‘enemies’ – that is, anyone against whom he nursed a grudge. And since a paranoid has a grudge against half the world, thousands of Rome’s most distinguished men died in those few days. When Marius walked through the streets, men hastened to salute him. If Marius looked the other way, it was a sign that the man was one of his enemies, and his soldiers cut him down on the spot.

Marius had become insane, a victim of his own obsessions. Soon he began to find it impossible to sleep, even though he drank himself into a stupor every night. And after being elected consul for the seventh time he fell into a fever and died. All Italy heaved a sigh of relief.

But his death brought no deliverance. When Sulla arrived back in Rome – after forcing Mithridates to make peace – he murdered as many of Marius’s supporters as he could find. Another reign of terror began. Senators and officials were killed by the thousand. And very shortly, the murders ceased to be purely political. For, as all dictators have discovered, it is hard to see the difference between a man you dislike for political reasons and a man you just happen to find dislikeable. After a while, it is not even necessary to dislike a man in order to kill him. If he has a desirable estate, and you want it for one of your friends, it seems natural to regard its owner as a tiresome obstacle. Beginning as the ‘liberator’ of Rome, Sulla ended as its first dictator in the modern sense.

At the end, he lived up to his nickname of Lucky Sulla. Instead of suffering the fate of men who are universally hated and feared, he laid aside the responsibilities of office, retired to his estate and died peacefully in his bed. As an old soldier, he found politics boring. We may also suspect that he felt that these degenerate Romans were not worth the waste of his time. Sulla had been born in the days of the third Punic war, when Rome was still proud, independent and democratic. Now most of the old breed were dead – many of them executed by Marius – and the rest were like sheep. The true ‘decline’ of Rome had begun.

What had happened? We have seen that Rome’s lasting problems began when she set out to conquer the Mediterranean, and became the richest city in the world. But the problem went deeper than that. In the year that the first war with Carthage began – 264 B.C. – a king named Asoka came to the throne in India; and, like most empire builders, he went to war to establish his position. The war was entirely successful, but Asoka was revolted by the slaughter. He decided that he would establish a different kind of empire – a religious empire. It was the faith of Gautama, the Buddha, that made the deepest appeal to Asoka, with its teaching that men’s desires only bring them suffering and that the escape is to lead a life of moderation with the mind directed towards Enlightenment. Asoka’s empire spread like that of Alexander the Great, but by entirely peaceful means.

It is an interesting historical fact that the craving for enlightenment, for salvation or inner wisdom, spread across the civilised world from a number of completely independent points at roughly the same time – the fifth century B.C. In Greece there was Socrates, in Persia, Zoroaster, in Israel, Jeremiah, in China, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Mo Tzu, in India, the Buddha, Mahavira – founder of Jainism – and Vyasa, legendary author of the Mahabharata. It arouses the vague suspicion that great ideas are diffused by a kind of telepathy when the human race is ready for them. All these teachers have in common a certain basic recognition: that although our desires grope instinctively towards physical fulfilment – food, sex, pleasure, security – they can never be fully satisfied by the physical world. They always leave behind a curious craving for something more, something deeper. Like an alcoholic, man seems to be driven by a perpetual thirst; but there is no wine that can slake it. Socrates believed it was a craving for knowledge; the Buddha, a craving for eternity; the Jewish prophets, a craving for God. Yet all have in common the insight that it is a desire for inner peace, a certain access to some inner world, and that our preoccupation with the material world is the result of some kind of confusion.

The Romans seem to have been completely devoid of this insight. Their immense vitality found its highest expression in self-control, self-discipline. They lacked the evolutionary appetite for wisdom or the mystical craving for eternity. Like all ancient peoples, they possessed strong religious beliefs; but these expressed themselves in the form of superstitions: sacrifices to the gods, belief in oracles and omens. To us, these seem to have as little to do with religion as crossing yourself to avert the evil eye has to do with Christianity.