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The Flight and Exile of Marius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

It must occur to anyone who reads Plutarch's account of Marius' flight and exile to wonder how much of this thrilling and romantic tale is historically true. There is indeed much to cause disquietude. Historiography of Plutarch's day had no distinct genre for the romantic novel, as Perrin so well points out, and consequently included much that history proper would exclude. Incidents in the flight and exile have in fact been described as ‘fairy-tale-like’ and ‘out.of the Arabian nights’. The debating points of the schools of rhetoric have had their influence too, involving Marius in several dilemmas which seem to have been invented for suasoriae (e.g. Marius and the slave-herdsmen, 36. 3; and the shipowners, 37. 2; and the old fisherman, 37.4; and Sextilius' envoy, 40. 3–4; the deliberations before the grove of Marica, 39. 4, are another example).

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1961

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References

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page 109 note 4 Planc. 10. 26.Google Scholar

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page 110 note 1 Of Jupiter; cf. Livy, xxvii. 37. 2.Google Scholar Jupiter had a similar tabooed grove in Spoletium: I.L.S. 4911.Google Scholar

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page 110 note 6 Cf. my article, ‘The Death of Marius’, Acta Classica, i (1958), 119–20.Google Scholar

page 110 note 7 Marita 39. 1 f.Google Scholar

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page 111 note 4 Cf. the discussion above, which is substantiated by the misgivings of Weynand and Valgiglio.

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page 113 note 2 Plut. Marius 40. 5.Google Scholar

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page 114 note 3 Orosius (v. 19. 8) intimates that Marius secured the release of his son by pressure. This seems unlikely in view of Marius' lack of organized support at this time. Orosius' account here is faulty in other respects (e.g. he has the younger Marius imprisoned in Utica, which must be incorrect), and he probably is confused, as Gsell states (op. cit. vii. 278, n. I). At all events, Plutarch (Marius 40. 6)Google Scholar and Appian (B.C. i. 62. 5)Google Scholar both state that the Marian prisoners outwitted Hiempsal and escaped.

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page 115 note 5 Marius 41. 3Google Scholar; this is unlikely in view of Bocchus' hostility.

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