When we think of great men of the last century of the Roman Republic that rose to be placed on a pedestal above mortals in their own time or even our own, we will always think of great military leaders. Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, and lastly Augustus (although I’m pretty sure that Agrippa may take some of the credit there). Some may point to Cicero as a leading example of how a military career wasn’t the only way to secure your legend in Ancient Rome. However, we should probably point out that along with his speeches, he famously executed citizens of Rome, so his toga isn’t exactly clean of the bloodstains of his countrymen.
What if I told you that there was another way of being placed up there among those men, not through bloodstains and oratory but through careful reform to currency? Enter Marcus Marius Gratidianus, a nephew of Marius he served briefly in the civil war between Marius and Sulla in the 80s BCE.
After a short stint in the army, he took the role of Praetor, an important role that meant he would have overseen many aspects of Roman public life. Of particular need was economic reform. It came to be that the Roman currency was extremely debased, the currency was too often forged, inflating prices of just about everything and putting a real squeeze on the poorest. He along with several colleagues undertook to reform the currency. There is debate about what he did, some say he merely reinstated an old exchange rate between silver and bronze currency, while others say he in fact managed to make the currency harder to forge.
Either way whatever he did seems to have worked, Cicero (there he is again) who happened to be Gratidianus’ cousin wrote that as a result of these popular reforms he was subject to statues of his likeness all over Rome and at street corner shrines people burnt incense and candles in his honor. A sure-fire sign of his elevation beyond that of a mere mortal man.
(A street corner shrine typical of those where Gratidianus could expect to be praised Credit: Author)
So what happened to this Gratidianus chap? Well, he was murdered 3 years after his popular reforms and his elevation to ‘somewhat more than a man’ which became more and more popular over the next 40 years culminating in Julius Caesar becoming a full-blown god in his own lifetime (or shortly after death. His currency reform took place in 85 BCE and he was killed in 82 BCE. A victim of civil war violence, there are interpretations that his murder was something of a sacrifice. He was apparently dragged off to a tomb, his limbs were broken, eyes gouged out and then finally put out of his misery in a tomb of a man whose death he was linked to, perhaps a human sacrifice to appease the spirits of the restless dead.
Moreover, what his murder does indeed say is that he was a hugely important, and popular figure and some sort of figurehead. His death was non-negotiable to the conservative Sullan faction who were attempting to return to power, perhaps his semi-divine aura was a reason for this. A seemingly rapid rise and fall, the rise to quasi-divinity based on something as mundane as economic reforms which earned him a rather large target on his back. A cult-like status and a "must be got rid of" ending, a bit like someone a touch more famous, Julius Caesar. One has to wonder how many other men got a cult-like following in their own life for the mundane that isn’t mentioned in our sources and how much of an inspiration Julius Caesar took from people like the relatively unheard-of Gratidianus.
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