The Man Who Crossed the River
In a quiet field in southern Italy, a block of carved stone still stands where Roman surveyors planted it over two thousand years ago. The Latin letters cut into its face mark a property line. Between 133 and 129 BC, Rome handed out about 3,268 square kilometers of public land — roughly 1,262 square miles, larger than the whole state of Rhode Island. A stone in a field does not look dangerous. Yet the fight over who owned that land would, within a single lifetime, tear apart a government that had stood for 482 years.
Key Terms
- Tiberius Gracchus
- A tribune who proposed a 133 BC law capping public land at 500 iugera per man, then was clubbed to death by senators on the Capitoline Hill.
- Ager Publicus
- Public land Rome won in war that wealthy families used slave labor to seize, pushing small farmers off their own fields.
- Optimates
- Traditional aristocrats in the Senate who fought to keep power in their own hands and resisted reformers who appealed straight to the people.
- Gaius Marius
- A general who in 107 BC opened the Roman army to landless citizens for the first time, changing who soldiers served.
- Capite Censi
- The poorest Roman citizens, owning no property at all, whom a general first recruited into the legions in 107 BC.
- Marius’s Mules
- The nickname Roman soldiers earned for marching about 18 miles a day while carrying 60 Roman pounds of gear lashed to a forked pole.
- Silver Eagle
- A sacred standard Marius gave to every legion to carry into battle, starting in 104 BC.
- Lucius Cornelius Sulla
- A general who, after rivals tried to strip away his command, marched his loyal legions straight through Rome’s own gates.
- Battle of the Colline Gate
- An 82 BC battle where roughly 50,000 men died, enough to fill a large modern football stadium.
- Proscriptions
- Lists posted in the Forum naming enemies who lost their citizenship and property, with a reward offered to anyone who killed them.
- Julius Caesar
- A Roman general who spent ten years conquering Gaul, building an army that followed him out of devotion rather than fear.
- Vercingetorix
- A Gallic leader whose army held out inside a hilltop fortress in 52 BC before being trapped between two walls and starved into surrender.
- Siege of Alesia
- A 52 BC siege where soldiers built about 36 kilometers of double ring fortifications in just 42 days to trap a Gallic army.
- Crassus
- Caesar’s wealthy partner who died leading a Roman army to disaster against Parthia in 53 BC, breaking Rome’s balance of power.
- The Rubicon
- A small, cold river marking the legal edge of a general’s command, which Caesar crossed with his soldiers in January of 49 BC.
- Battle of Pharsalus
- A 48 BC battle where Caesar’s hungry, outnumbered 23,000 veterans defeated a rival army of more than 41,000.
- Dictator Perpetuo
- A title meaning "dictator for life" that Caesar took after Pharsalus, breaking Rome’s long-standing 6-month limit on that office.
- Ides of March
- March 15, 44 BC, the day a group of senators surrounded a Roman general and stabbed him 23 times.
- Brutus
- A senator who took part in surrounding and stabbing Caesar, later having a coin struck to mark the killing.
- EID MAR Denarius
- A silver coin weighing just 3.80 grams, struck by Caesar’s killers to show two daggers and the soft cap that marked a freed slave.