The Siege of Rome in 87 B. C.
IN THE year 88 B.C. Sulla had regained the coveted command against Mithridates by leading four legions to Rome and capturing the city by armed force'-a first in Roman history, surprising even to old Marius. This march aroused hostility to Sulla among all classes, even the many senators who shared the political profits of the march: the elimination of Marius and Sulpicius, the denial of equal suffrage to the Italians who had secured citizenship through the Social War, and the re-establishment of the ancient senatorial probouleutic power (App. BC 1. 59. 265-66). After Sulla's departure for the eastern war in early 87, one of the consuls of the year, Cinna, revived the Sulpician bill to distribute the novi cives among all the tribes, instead of restricting them to a limited number of tribes which voted last (in comitia with consecutive voting). Cinna perceived that bearing the banner of the irate novi cives as well as proposing recall of the exiles, including Marius himself, could pay high political dividends. His colleague, Octavius, however, took a staunch optimate line in defense of Sulla's arrangements, protecting the extremely oligarchic status quo. A bloody clash occurred between the followers of the two. Seeing the defeat, indeed, the slaughter of his partisans, Cinna fled the city. Soon afterward, the senate deposed Cinna from office (an unprecedented and illegal act) and his place was taken by Cornelius Merula, the flamen dialis. Cinna assumed the role of (live) martyr for the novi cives and champion of the people's rights (as a consul deposed without a vote of the people [App. BC 1. 65. 296-66. 300]). He easily collected money and men, including even the legion left behind by Sulla. The exiled Marius, long awaiting an opportunity for action (App. BC 1. 62. 281), joined Cinna in the attempt to repeat Sulla's military coup. Meanwhile, the regime in Rome, threatened by these activities, had been compelled to appeal to Pompeius Strabo,2 the only commander in Italy with a large regular armv; for, in general, the plebs urbana was an infrequent and unsatisfactory source of soldiers.3 Strabo had resumed control of his army in late 88, following the murder of the consul Pompeius Rufus, who had briefly superseded the proconsul. Although Strabo and the regime viewed each other with suspicion and distaste,4 he nevertheless brought his formi-
Political history, 146–95 b.c.
Roman morality and political harmony were at their height, wrote Sallust, between the Second and Third Punic Wars. After this came the evils that accompany prosperity – strife, greed, ambition and the pursuit of ascendancy by powerful men. The inadequacies of this kind of explanation and of the precise dividing line drawn here by Sallust were discussed in chapter 1 (pp. 7–9). In spite of this there is no doubt that the razing of Carthage introduced an era of political crisis, whose antagonisms recalled the dimly remembered struggles of the early Republic and brought into question the stability of the constitution which Polybius admired. Polybius thought that the common people were wronged through the greed of some men and given a false sense of importance through the ambitions of others. These exploited the truculence and recklessness of the poor in order to dominate the constitution and created what was in name democracy but was in fact mob-rule. Modern scholars are in general reluctant to recognize so dramatic a change, at least in Polybius' lifetime. The present writer has argued in an earlier book that the violence of the late Republic should not be regarded as the result of a sudden reversal of Roman values but the re-emergence of long-standing attitudes and conflicts, which had been temporarily suppressed by political prudence and the profits from success abroad. On the other hand, it is not excessively superficial to look to the personalities of men like the Gracchi and see in their imagination and resolve the initial moment of a new political process.
High‐precision U‐Pb zircon age calibration of the global Carboniferous time scale and Milankovitch band cyclicity in the Donets Basin, eastern Ukraine
High‐precision ID‐TIMS U‐Pb zircon ages for 12 interstratified tuffs and tonsteins are used to radiometrically calibrate the detailed lithostratigraphic, cyclostratigraphic, and biostratigraphic framework of the Carboniferous Donets Basin of eastern Europe. Chemical abrasion of zircons, use of the internationally calibrated EARTHTIME mixed U‐Pb isotope dilution tracer, and improved mass spectrometry guided by detailed error analysis have resulted in an age resolution of <0.05%, or ∼100 ka, for these Carboniferous volcanics. This precision allows the resolution of time in the Milankovitch band and confirms the long‐standing hypothesis that individual high‐frequency Pennsylvanian cyclothems and bundles of cyclothems into fourth‐order sequences are the eustatic response to orbital eccentricity (∼100 and 400 ka) forcing. Tuning of the fourth‐order sequences in the Donets Basin to the long‐period eccentricity cycle results in a continuous age model for the Middle to Late Pennsylvanian (Moscovian‐Kasimovian‐Ghzelian) strata of the basin and their record of biological and climatic changes through the latter portion of the late Paleozoic Ice Age. Detailed fusulinid and conodont zonations allow the export of this age model to sections throughout Euramerica. Additional ages for Mississippian strata provide among the first robust radiometric calibration points within this subperiod and result in variable lowering of the base ages of its constituent stages compared to recent global time scale compilations.