The expansion of Rome's territory continued. In Africa the overthrow, in 106 BC, of Jugurtha, king of Numidia, by the consul Gaius Marius with the assistance of Lucius Cornelius Sulla increased the military renown of the Republic, as did the defeat of the Cimbri and the Teutones in southern Gaul and northern Italy by Marius after his return from Africa.
The Italian communities, the allies of Rome, had felt their burdens increase as their privileges waned, and they demanded their share of the conquests they had helped to achieve. The tribune Marcus Livius Drusus attempted to conciliate the poor citizens by agrarian and corn laws and to satisfy the Italian armies by promise of Roman citizenship. He was assassinated in 91 BC. The following year the Italian armies rose in revolt, their purpose being to erect a new Italian state governed on the lines of the Roman constitution. This war, which lasted from 90 to 88 BC, is known as the Social War, or the Marsian War, from the important part played in it by the Marsians. The Italians were finally defeated but were granted full citizenship by the Romans.
The internal troubles continued; a conflict broke out between Marius, the spokesman and idol of the popular party, and Sulla, the leader of the aristocracy. A war with Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, threw the two leaders into rivalry as to which should command the expeditionary force. With the legions he had commanded in the Social War, Sulla marched on Rome from the south, for the first time bringing Roman legions into the city. The subsequent flight of Marius and the execution of the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus (circa 124-88 BC) left Sulla free to impose arbitrary measures, and, after the consular elections had confirmed him in his command, he set out against Mithridates in 87 BC. In Sulla's absence Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a leader of the popular party and a bitter opponent of Sulla, attempted to carry out the reforms originally proposed by Sulpicius, but he was driven from Rome. He rallied the legions in Campania around him and, joined by the veteran Marius, who had returned from Africa, entered Rome and was recognized as consul, as was Marius, the latter serving for the seventh time. Shortly thereafter, following a brutally vindictive massacre of senators and patricians, Marius died; Cinna remained in power until Sulla, returning from Asia with 40,000 troops in 83 BC, defeated the popular party. As a result of the example set by Sulla, the Republican constitution was thenceforth at the mercy of the strongest leader supported by the strongest troops. After suppressing his enemies by proscription, drawing up and posting in the Forum a list of important men declared to be public enemies and outlaws, Sulla ruled as dictator until his retirement to private life in 79 BC. In addition to proscription, Sulla employed confiscation of lands as a method of suppressing his political enemies. Confiscated lands were either given to the veterans of his legions, who neglected them, or abandoned to become wasteland; Rome's former rich agricultural economy began to decline, and thenceforth more and more of the city's food was imported, Africa becoming the major source of Rome's grain supply.
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In 67 BC the statesman and general Pompey the Great, who had fought the Marian party in Africa, Sicily, and Spain, cleared the Mediterranean of pirates and was then put in charge of the war against Mithridates. Meanwhile his rival Gaius Julius Caesar rose to prominence, and his political ability had full scope during the absence of Pompey. As leader of the popular party Caesar strengthened his hold on the people by avenging the injured names of Marius and Cinna, pleading for clemency to the children of the proscribed, and bringing to justice Sulla's corrupt followers.
In Marcus Licinius Crassus, a man of great wealth, Caesar found a tractable auxiliary. Catiline's conspiracy in 63 BC , exposed and defeated by the famous orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero during his consulship, involved Caesar in the ill will in which the middle classes held popular adventurers. Pompey returned from the east and asked the Senate for the ratification of his measures in Asia and the bestowal of land on his legionaries. His demands met with determined opposition, until Caesar, posing as his friend, formed with him and Crassus the coalition known as the first triumvirate.
The triumvirate in 59 BC fulfilled its compact. Caesar obtained the consulship and the satisfaction of Pompey's demands, conciliated the equestrians, many of whom were wealthy members of the mercantile class, at the expense of the Senate, and had enacted an agrarian law enabling him to reward the troops. His crowning success, however, was his obtaining for five years the military command of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum, and late of Transalpine Gaul, where he could gain glory by military conquests, and from which he could watch every political move in Italy.
The triumvirs renewed their alliance, and Caesar procured his command in Gaul for five years more. Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls for the year 55 BC, and in the following year Pompey received as his province the two Spains, with Africa, while Crassus received Syria. The death of Crassus in 53 BC brought Pompey into direct conflict with Caesar. Rome, in the absence of efficient government, was in turmoil until the Senate induced Pompey to remain in Italy, entrusting his provinces to legates; it elected him sole consul for the year 52 BC and made him its champion against Caesar.
The Senate, wishing to terminate Caesar's military command and defeat his second stand for the consulship in 49 BC, demanded either Caesar's disbanding of his legions, and his presence in Rome at the time of the election, or his continued command and his renunciation of claims to the consulship. Negotiations failed to solve the deadlock, and in 49 BC Caesar with his legions boldly crossed the Rubicon River, the southern boundary of his province, and advanced on the city, thereby beginning the civil war that continued for five years. Pompey and the leading members of the aristocracy withdrew to Greece, allowing Caesar to enter Rome in triumph. Caesar's victory, unlike those of the other generals who had marched on Rome, was not followed by a reign of terror; neither proscriptions nor confiscations took place. A policy of economic and administrative reforms was put into effect, in an attempt to overcome corruption and restore prosperity to Rome. Continuing the war against Pompey, Caesar hurried to Spain, where he was victorious over the powerful armies of Pompey's legates. Returning to Rome, having meanwhile been appointed dictator in his absence, he almost immediately renounced that post and was elected consul. Early in 48 BC he crossed into Greece and dealt Pompey a crushing blow at Pharsalus. Pompey was killed soon after in Egypt, but the Pompeian cause struggled on until 45 BC, when it collapsed at Munda in Spain, and Caesar was made dictator for life.
Caesar's assassination by Republican nobles on March 15, 44 BC, was followed by Cicero's attempt to restore the old Republican constitution, but Mark Antony, who had been appointed consul with Caesar, now, at the head of 17 legions, combined forces with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Caesar's grandnephew, the youthful Octavian, later Emperor Augustus, to form the second triumvirate. The triumvirs began operations by proscribing and assassinating their opponents, including Cicero. A stand made at Philippi by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius, two of Caesar's assassins, was crushed by Octavian and Antony, and subsequently the triumvirs divided the control of the empire, Octavian taking Italy and the west, Antony the east, and Lepidus Africa. Antony, going to the east, was captivated by the charms of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and formerly mistress of Caesar, and with her planned an eastern empire. Lepidus, summoned to Sicily by Octavian to assist in the war against Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey the Great, attempted to seize Sicily for himself and was deprived of his province and his position in the triumvirate. The death of Sextus Pompeius, after the destruction of his fleet in the Mediterranean, left Octavian, who had been sagaciously strengthening his position in the west, with only Antony as rival. After the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the subsequent suicide of both Antony and Cleopatra, the victorious Octavian became, in 29 BC, master of the east also and the undisputed ruler of the entire Roman Empire.
In spite of the series of disastrous civil wars, during the last years of the Republic a remarkable development of literary activity took place. This period, known as the Ciceronian period, extended from about 70 to 43 BC and forms the first part of the so-called Golden Age of Rome's literary development; the remainder of the Golden Age, extending from 43 BC to AD 14, is known as the Augustan period. Caesar and Cicero brought Latin prose to its peak of achievement, and Marcus Terentius Varro was the greatest scholar of the age. The poetry of the period is best represented by the work of Gaius Valerius Catullus and Lucretius.
Octavian received the title of Augustus in 27 BC and began the new regime by an apparent restoration of the Republic, with himself as princeps, or chief citizen.
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