Once Lucius Cornelius Sulla had cast his spell (as Young Caesar had put it) upon Cato the Consul and banished him to fight the Marsi, Sulla proceeded to take steps to recover all Rome’s territories from the Italians. Though officially he still ranked as a legate, he was now in effect the commander-in-chief of the southern theater, and he knew there would be no interference from Senate or consuls—provided, that is, he produced results. Italia was tired; one of its two leaders, the Marsian Silo, might even have contemplated surrender were it not for the other one; Gaius Papius Mutilus the Samnite, Sulla knew, would never give up; therefore he had to be shown that his cause was lost.
Sulla’s initial move was as secret as it was extraordinary, but he had the right man for a job he couldn’t do himself. If his scheme succeeded, it would spell the beginning of the end for the Samnites and their allies of the south. Without telling Catulus Caesar in Capua why he was detaching the two best legions from Campanian service, Sulla loaded then at night aboard a fleet of transports moored in Puteoli harbor.
Their commander was his legate Gaius Cosconius, whose orders were explicit. He was to sail with these two legions right around the foot of the peninsula and land on the eastern coast somewhere near Apenestae, in Apulia. The first third of the voyage—down the west coast—didn’t need to be out of sight of land, as any observer in Lucania might suppose the fleet to be going to Sicily, where there were rumors of uprisings. During the middle third the fleet could hug the coast and put in to revictual in places like Croton and Tarentum and Brundisium, where the tale would be that they were going to put down trouble in Asia Minor—a tale the troops themselves had been given to believe. And when the fleet sailed out of Brundisium on the last third of the voyage—the shortest third—all Brundisium had to be convinced it was on its way across the Adriatic to Apollonia in western Macedonia.
“Beyond Brundisium,” said Sulla to Cosconius, “you dare not make a landfall until you reach your final destination. The decision as to exactly where you come ashore I leave to you. Just pick a quiet place, and don’t strike until you’re absolutely ready. Your task is to free up the Via Minucia south of Larinum and the Via Appia south of Ausculum Apulium. After that, concentrate on eastern Samnium. By the time you’re doing that, I should be driving east to meet you,”
Excited because he had been singled out for this vital mission and confident he and his men were formed of the right stuff to make a success of it, Cosconius concealed his elation and listened gravely.
“Remember, Gaius Cosconius, take your time while you’re at sea,” Sulla cautioned. “I want no more than twenty-five miles a day from you on most days. It’s now the end of March. You must land somewhere to the south of Apenestae fifty days hence. Land too soon, and I won’t have time to complete my half of the pincer. I need these fifty days to take back all the ports on Crater Bay and drive Mutilus out of western Campania. Then I can move east— but not until then.”
“Since successful passage around the foot of Italy is very rare, Lucius Cornelius, I’m glad to have fifty days,” said Cosconius.
“If you have to row, then row,” said Sulla.
“I will be where I am supposed to be in fifty days. You can count on it, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Without the loss of a man, let alone a ship.”
“Every ship has a fine captain and an even finer pilot, and the logistics of the voyage encompass every possibility any of us can think of. I won’t let you down. We’ll get to Brundisium as quickly as we can and we’ll wait there as long as we have to—not one day more, nor one day less,” said Cosconius.
“Good! And remember one thing, Gaius Cosconius— your most reliable ally is Fortune. Offer to her every single day. If she loves you as much as she loves me, all will go well.”
*
The fleet bearing Cosconius and his two crack legions left Puteoli the next day to brave the elements and lean most heavily upon one particular element—luck. No sooner had it gone than Sulla returned to Capua and marched then for Pompeii. This was to be a combined land and sea attack, as Pompeii had superb port facilities on the Sarnus near its mouth; Sulla intended to bombard the city with flaming missiles launched from his ships anchored in the river.
One doubt huddled in the back of his mind, though it was nothing he could rectify; his flotilla was under the command of a man he neither liked nor trusted to follow orders—none other than Aulus Postumius Albinus. Twenty years before, it had been the same Aulus Postumius Albinus who had provoked the war against King Jugurtha of Numidia. And he hadn’t changed.
Sent orders from Sulla to bring up his ships from Neapolis to Pompeii, Aulus Albinus decided he should first let his crews and his marines know who was in charge—and what would happen to them if they didn’t jump smartly to attention whenever he snapped his fingers. But the crews and the marines were all of Campanian Greek descent, and found the things Aulus Albinus said to them intolerable insults. Like Cato the Consul, he was buried under a storm of missiles—but these were stones, not clods of earth. Aulus Postumius Albinus died.
Fortunately Sulla wasn’t far down the road when news of the murder was brought to him; leaving his troops to continue their march under the command of Titus Didius, Sulla rode on his mule to Neapolis, there to meet the leaders of the mutiny. With him he took Metellus Pius the Piglet, his other legate. Calm unimpaired, he listened to passionate reasons and excuses from the mutineers, then said coldly,
“I am afraid you are going to have to be the best sailors and marines in the history of Roman naval warfare. Otherwise, how can I forget you murdered Aulus Albinus?”
He then appointed Publius Gabinius admiral of the fleet, and that was the end of the mutiny.
Metellus Pius the Piglet held his tongue until he and Sulla were on their way to rejoin the army, at which time his burning question found voice: “Lucius Cornelius, do you not intend to give them any kind of punishment?”
Sulla deliberately tipped the brim of his hat back from his brow to show the Piglet a pair of coolly amused eyes. “No, Quintus Caecilius, I do not.”
“You should have stripped them of their citizenship and then flogged them!”
“Yes, that is what most commanders would have done— more fool they. However, since you are undoubtedly one such foolish commander, I shall explain why I acted as I did. You ought to be able to see it for yourself, you know.”
Holding up his right hand, Sulla told off the points one by one. “First of all, we can’t afford to lose those men. They trained under Otacilius, and they’re experienced. Secondly, I admire their eminent good sense in getting rid of a man who would have led them very poorly—and perhaps would have led them to their deaths. Three, I didn’t want Aulus Albinus! But he’s a consular and he couldn’t be passed over or ignored.”
Three fingers up, Sulla turned in the saddle to glare at the hapless Piglet. “I am going to tell you something, Quintus Caecilius. If I had my way, there would be no place— no place!—on my staff for men as inept and contentious as Aulus Albinus, the late unlamented consul Lupus, and our present consul Cato Licinianus. I gave Aulus Albinus a naval command because I thought he could do us the least harm on the sea. So how could I punish men for doing what I would have done in similar circumstances?”
Up went another finger. “Fourthly, those men have put themselves in a position where, if they don’t do well, I can indeed strip them of their citizenship and flog them—which means that they have no choice but to fight like wildcats. And fifthly”—he had to use his thumb—”I don’t care how many thieves and murderers I have in my forces—provided they fight like wildcats.” Down went the hand, chopping through the defenseless air like a barbarian’s axe.
Metellus Pius opened his mouth, thought better of what he had been going to say, and wisely said nothing at all.
At the point where the road to Pompeii divided, one branch going to the Vesuvian Gate, the other to the Herculanean Gate, Sulla put his troops into a strongly fortified camp. By the time he was settled in behind his entrenchments and ramparts, his flotilla had arrived and was busy firing blazing bundles over the walls into the midst of Pompeian buildings faster than the oldest and most experienced centurion had ever seen; frightened faces looking down from the walls revealed that this was one kind of warfare nobody had counted on, and one which made everyone very uneasy. Fire was worst.
That the Samnites of Pompeii had sent frantic messages for help became clear the next day when a Samnite army larger than Sulla’s by a good ten thousand men arrived, and proceeded to halt not more than three hundred paces from the front of Sulla’s camp. A third of Sulla’s twenty thousand soldiers were absent on foraging excursions, and were now cut off from him. Looking his ugliest, Sulla stood on his ramparts with Metellus Pius and Titus Didius listening to the jeers and catcalls borne on the wind from the city’s walls—noises he did not appreciate any more than he did the advent of a Samnite army.
“Sound the call to arms,” he said to his legates.
Titus Didius was turning to leave when Metellus Pius reached out to grasp Didius by the arm, and detained him.
“Lucius Cornelius, we can’t go out to fight that lot!” the Piglet cried. “We’d be cut to pieces!”
“We can’t not go out and fight,” said Sulla, curtly enough to indicate his anger at being questioned. “That’s Lucius Cluentius out there, and he intends to stay. If I let him build a camp as strong as ours it will be Acerrae all over again. And I am not going to tie up four good legions in a place like this for months—nor do I need Pompeii’s showing the rest of these rebel seaports that Rome can’t take them back! And if that isn’t sufficient reason to attack right now, Quintus Caecilius, then consider the fact that when our foraging parties return, they’re going to trip over a Samnite army with no word of warning—and no chance to survive!”
Didius gave Metellus Pius a contemptuous look. “I’ll sound the call to arms,” he said, and wrenched his arm away.
Crowned with a helmet rather than his usual hat, Sulla climbed to the top of the camp forum tribunal to address the almost thirteen thousand men he had available.
“You all know what’s waiting for you!” he shouted. “A pack of Samnites who outnumber us by nearly three to one! But Sulla is tired of Rome’s being beaten by a pack of Samnites, and Sulla is tired of Samnites owning Roman towns! What good is it being a living Roman if Rome has to lie down before Samnites like a fawning bitch? Well, not this Roman! Not Sulla! If I have to go out and fight alone, I am going! Am I going alone? Am I? Or are you coming with me because you’re Romans too, and just as tired of Samnites as I am?”
The army answered him with a mighty cheer. He stood without moving, until they were done, for he was not done.
“They go!” he sang out, even louder. “Every last one of them must go! Pompeii is our town! The Samnites within its gates murdered a thousand Romans, and now those same Samnites are up there on Pompeii’s walls thinking themselves safe and sound, booing and hissing us because they think we’re too afraid to clean up a pack of dirty Samnites! Well, we’re going to show them they’re wrong! We’re going to take everything the Samnites can dish out until our foraging parties return, and when they do return, our war cries will guide them to the battle! Hear me? We hold the Samnites until our foragers return to fall on their rear like the Romans they are!”
There came a second mighty cheer, but Sulla was already off the tribunal, sword in hand; three ordered columns of soldiers moved at a run through the front and both side gates, Sulla leading the middle column himself.
So swift was the Roman deployment that Cluentius, not expecting a battle, barely had time to ready his troops for the Roman charge. A cool and daring commander, he stood his ground and remained among his own front ranks. Undermanned, the Roman assault began to falter when it failed to break the Samnite line. But Sulla, still leading, refused to move back an inch, and his men refused to leave him there alone. For an hour Romans and Samnites fought a hand-to-hand engagement without let, mercy, retreat. Of truly confrontational battles there had been few; both sides understood that the outcome of this one must inevitably affect the outcome of the war.
Too many good legionaries fell in that hour marking noon, but just as it seemed Sulla must order his troops to fall back or see them die where they stood, the Samnite line trembled, shook, began to fold in on itself. The Roman foraging parties had returned, and were attacking from the rear. Shrieking that Rome was invincible, Sulla led his men back into the fray with renewed vigor. Even so Cluentius gave ground slowly. For a further hour he managed to hold his army together. Then when he saw that all was lost, he rallied his troops and fought his way through the Romans in his rear to retreat on the double toward Nola.
Regarding itself as the talisman of Italian defiance in the south—and knowing Rome was aware it had starved Roman soldiers to death—Nola could not afford to jeopardize its safety. So when Cluentius and over twenty thousand Samnite’ soldiers reached its walls a scant mile ahead of the pursuing Sulla, they found themselves locked out. Leaning over those lofty, smooth, stoutly reinforced stone bastions, the city magistrates of Nola looked down on Lucius Cluentius and their fellow Samnites, and refused to open the gates. Finally, as the Roman front ranks approached the Samnite rear and prepared to charge, the gate below which Cluentius himself stood—not one of the city’s bigger gates—swung wide. But more than that one minor gate the magistrates would not open, plead though the floundering Samnite soldiers did.
Before Pompeii it had been a battle. Before Nola it was a rout. Stunned at Nolan treachery, panic-stricken because it found itself enclosed by the out-thrust corners of Nola’s northern section of walls, the Samnite army went down to utter defeat, and died almost to the last man. Sulla himself killed Cluentius, who refused to seek shelter within Nola when only a handful of his men could do the same.
It was the greatest day of Sulla’s life. Fifty-one years of age, a general in complete charge of a theater of war at last, he had won his first great battle as commander-in-chief. And what a victory! Covered so copiously in the blood of other men that he dripped it, his sword glued by gore to his right hand, reeking of sweat and death, Lucius Cornelius Sulla surveyed the field, snatched the helmet from his head and threw it into the air with a scream of sheer jubilation. In his ears was a gigantic noise drowning out the howls and moans of dying Samnites, a noise inexorably swelling, revealing itself as a chant:
“Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor!”
Over and over and over his soldiers roared it, the final accolade, the ultimate triumph, the victor hailed imperator on the field. Or so he thought, grinning broadly with sword above his head, his sweat-soaked thatch of brilliant hair drying in the dying sun, his heart so full he could not have said a word in return, had there been a word to say. I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a man as able as I am can learn what isn’t in his bones—and win the hardest battle of this or any other war! Oh, Gaius Marius, just wait! Crippled hulk that you are, don’t die until I can get back to Rome and show you how wrong your judgment was! I am your equal! And in the years to come I will surpass you. My name will tower over yours. As it should do. For I am a patrician Cornelius and you no more than a rustic from the Latin hills.
But there was work to be done, and he was a patrician Roman. To him came Titus Didius and Metellus Pius, curiously subdued, their bright eyes looking upon him with awe, with a shining adoration Sulla had only seen before in the eyes of Julilla and Dalmatica as they had gazed at him. But these are men, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! Men of worth and repute—Didius the victor over Spain, Metellus Pius the heir of a great and noble house. Women were unimportant fools. Men mattered. Especially men like Titus Didius and Metellus Pius. Never in all the years I served Gaius Marius did I see any man look at him with so much adoration! Today I have won more than a mere victory. Today I have won the vindication of my life, today I have justified Stichus, Nicopolis, Clitumna, Hercules Atlas, Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Today I have proven that every life I have taken in order to stand here on the field at Nola was a lesser life than my own. Today I begin to understand the Nabopolassar from Chaldaea—I am the greatest man in the world, from Oceanus Atlanticus all the way to the River Indus!
“We work through the night,” he said crisply to Didius and Metellus Pius, “so that by dawn the Samnite corpses are stripped and heaped together, and our own dead prepared for the pyre. I know it’s been an exhausting day, but it isn’t over yet. Until it is over, no one can rest. Quintus Caecilius, find a few reasonably fit men and ride back to Pompeii as fast as you can. Bring back bread and wine enough for . everyone here, and bring up the noncombatants and set them to finding wood, oil. We have a veritable mountain of bodies to burn.”
“But there are no horses, Lucius Cornelius!” said the Piglet faintly. “We marched to Nola! Twenty miles in four hours!”
“Then find horses,” said Sulla, manner at its coldest. “I want you back here by dawn.” He turned to Didius. “Titus Didius, go among the men and find out who should be decorated for deeds in the field. As soon as we burn our dead and the enemy dead we return to Pompeii, but I want one legion from Capua posted here before the walls of Nola. And have the heralds announce to the inhabitants of Nola that Lucius Cornelius Sulla has made a vow to Mars and Bellona—that Nola will look down to see Roman troops sitting before it until it surrenders, be that a month of days from now, or a month of months from now, or a month of years from now.”
Before Didius or Metellus Pius could depart, the tribune of the soldiers Lucius Licinius Lucullus appeared at the head of a deputation of centurions; eight senior men, primi pili and pili priores. They walked gravely, solemnly, like priests in a sacred procession or consuls going to their inauguration on New Year’s Day.
“Lucius Cornelius Sulla, your army wishes to give you a token of its gratitude and thanks. Without you, the army would have been defeated, and its soldiers dead. You fought in the front rank and showed the rest of us the way. You never flagged on the march to Nola. To you and you alone is due this greatest victory by far of the whole war. You have saved more than your army. You have saved Rome. Lucius Cornelius, we honor you,” said Lucullus, stepping back to make way for the centurions.
The man in their midst, most senior centurion of them all, lifted both arms and held them out to Sulla. In his hands lay a very drab and tattered circlet made of grass runners plucked from the field of battle and braided together haphazardly, roots and earth and blades and blood. Corona graminea. Corona obsidionalis. The Grass Crown. And Sulla stretched out his own arms instinctively, then dropped them, utterly ignorant as to what the ritual should be. Did he take it and put it on his own head, or did the primus pilus Marcus Canuleius crown him with it on behalf of the army?
He stood then without moving while Canuleius, a tall man, raised the Grass Crown in both hands and placed it upon that red-gold head.
No further word was spoken. Titus Didius, Metellus Pius, Lucullus and the centurions saluted Sulla reverently, gave him shy smiles, and got themselves away. He was left alone to face the setting sun, the Grass Crown so insubstantial he scarcely felt its weight, the tears pouring down his bloodstained face, and no room inside himself for anything beyond an exaltation he wondered if he had steel enough to live through. For what was on its other side? What could life possibly offer him now? And he remembered his dead son. Before he had had time to truly relish the infinite extent of that joy it was vanished. All he had left was a grief so profound he fell to his knees and wept desolately.
Someone helped him to his feet, wiped the muck and the tears from his face, put an arm about his waist and helped him walk to a block of stone beside the Nola road. There he was lowered gently until he sat upon it, then his rescuer sat alongside him; Lucius Licinius Lucullus, the senior tribune of the soldiers.
The sun had set into the Tuscan Sea. The greatest day of Sulla’s life was coming to its end in darkness. He dangled his arms down between his legs limply, drew in great breaths, and came to ask himself the old, old question: Why am I never happy?
“I have no wine to offer you, Lucius Cornelius. Nor water, for that matter,” said Lucullus. “We ran from Pompeii without a thought for anything except catching Cluentius.”
Sulla heaved an enormous sigh, straightened himself. “I’ll live, Lucius Lucullus. As a woman friend of mine says, there is always work to do.”
“We can do the work. You rest.”
“No. I am the commander. I can’t rest while my men work. A moment more, and I’ll be right. I was right until I thought of my son. He died, you know.” The tears came back, were suppressed.
Lucullus said nothing, just sat quietly.
Of this young man Sulla had seen little so far; elected a tribune of the soldiers last December, he had gone first to Capua and only been posted to command his legion days before it marched for Pompeii. Yet though he had changed enormously—grown from a stripling to a fine specimen of man—Sulla recognized him.
“You and your brother Varro Lucullus prosecuted Servilius the Augur in the Forum ten years ago, am I not right?’’ he asked.
“Yes, Lucius Cornelius. The Augur was responsible for the disgrace and death of our father, and the loss of our family fortune. But he paid,’’ said Lucullus, his long homely face growing brighter, his humorous mouth turning up at the corners.
“The Sicilian slave war. Servilius the Augur took your father’s place as governor of Sicily. And later prosecuted him.”
“That is so.”
Sulla got up, extended his right hand to take the right hand of Lucius Licinius Lucullus. “Well, Lucius Licinius, I must thank you. Was the Grass Crown your idea?”
“Oh no, Lucius Cornelius. Blame the centurions! They informed me that the Grass Crown has to come from the army’s professionals, not the army’s elected magistrates. They brought me along because one of the army’s elected magistrates must be a witness.” Lucullus smiled, then laughed. “I suspect too that addressing the general formally isn’t quite in their line!. So I got the job.”
*
Two days later Sulla’s army was back inside its camp before Pompeii. Everyone was so exhausted even decent food had no lure, and for twenty-four hours a complete silence reigned as the men and their officers slept like the dead they had burned against the walls of Nola, an insult to the nostrils of the flesh-famished inhabitants.
The Grass Crown now resided within a wooden box Sulla’s servants had produced; when Sulla had the time, it would be put in the hair of the wax mask of himself he was now entitled to commission. He had distinguished himself highly enough to join the imagines of his ancestors, even though he had not yet been consul. And his statue would go into the Forum Romanum wearing a Grass Crown, erected in memory of the greatest hero of the war against the Italians. All of which hardly seemed real; but there in its box lay the Grass Crown, a testament to reality.
When, rested and refreshed, the army went on parade for the awarding of battle decorations, Sulla put his Grass Crown upon his head and was greeted with prolonged and deafening cheers as he climbed upon the camp tribunal. The task of organizing the ceremony had been given to Lucullus, just as Marius had once given the same task to Quintus Sertorius.
But as he stood there acknowledging the army’s adulation, a thought occurred to Sulla that he didn’t think had ever crossed the mind of Marius during those years in Numidia and Gaul—though perhaps it had while he commanded against the Italians. A sea of faces in parade order, parade dress—a sea of men who belonged to him, to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. These are my legions! They belong to me before they belong to Rome. I crafted them, I led them, I have given them the greatest victory of this war—and I will have to find their retirement gratuity. When they gave me the Grass Crown, they also gave me a far more significant gift—they gave me themselves. If I wanted to, I could lead them anywhere. I could even lead them against Rome. A ridiculous idea; but it was born in Sulla’s mind at that moment on the tribunal. And it curled itself up beneath consciousness, and waited.
Pompeii surrendered the day after its citizens watched Sulla’s decoration ceremony from their walls; Sulla’s heralds had shouted the news of the defeat of Lucius Cluentius before the walls of Nola, and word had come confirming it. Still being relentlessly bombarded with flaming missiles from the ships in the river, the city was suffering badly. Every fiery breath of wind seemed to carry the message that the Italian and Samnite ascendancy was crumbling, that defeat was inevitable.
From Pompeii, Sulla moved with two of his legions against Stabiae, while Titus Didius took the other two to Herculaneum. On the last day of April Stabiae capitulated, and shortly afterward so too did Surrentum. As May reached its middle, Sulla was on the move again, this time heading east. Catulus Caesar had bestowed fresh legions upon Titus Didius before Herculaneum, so Sulla’s own two legions were returned to him. Though it had held out the longest against joining the Italian insurrection, Herculaneum now demonstrated that it understood only too well what would happen if it surrendered to Rome; whole streets burning as the result of a naval bombardment, it continued to defy Titus Didius long after the other Italian-held seaports had given in.
Sulla moved his four legions past Nola without a sideways glance, though he sent Metellus Pius the Piglet to the commander of the legion sitting before it with a message to the effect that the praetor Appius Claudius Pulcher was not to shift himself for any reason short of Nola’s complete submission. A dour man—and recently widowed—Appius Claudius merely nodded.
At the end of the third week in May, Sulla arrived at the Hirpini town of Aeclanum, which lay on the Via Appia. The Hirpini had begun to mass there, his intelligence sources had informed him; but it was not Sulla’s intention to allow any further concentrations among the insurgents of the south. One look at the defenses of Aeclanum caused Sulla to smile his deadliest smile, long canines on full display—the town walls, though high and well built, were wooden.
Well aware that the Hirpini had already sent to the Lucanian Marcus Lamponius for help, Sulla sat his forces down without bothering to put them into a camp. Instead, he sent Lucullus to the main gate to demand Aeclanum’s surrender. The town’s answer came in the form of a question: please, would Lucius Cornelius Sulla give Aeclanum one day to think things over and come to a decision?
“They’re playing for time in the hope that Lamponius will send them reinforcements tomorrow,” said Sulla to Metellus Pius the Piglet and Lucullus. “I’ll have to think about Lamponius, he can’t be allowed to run rampant in Lucania any longer.’’ Sulla shrugged, looked brisk, got back to the business of the moment. “Lucius Licinius, take the town my answer. They may have one hour, not more. Quintus Caecilius, take as many men as you need and scour every farm around the town for firewood and oil. Pile the wood and oil-soaked rags along the walls on either side of the main gates. And have our four pieces of artillery positioned in four different places. As soon as you can, set fire to the walls and start lobbing flaming missiles into the town. I’ll bet everything inside is made of wood too. Aeclanum will go up like tinder.”
“What if I’m ready to start burning in less than an hour?” asked the Piglet.
“Then start burning,” said Sulla. “The Hirpini aren’t being honorable. Why should I be?”
As the wood of which they were composed was aged and dry, Aeclanum’s fortifications burned fiercely, as did the buildings inside. All the gates were thrown open in a panic and the people streamed out crying surrender.
“Kill them all and sack the place,” said Sulla. “It’s time the Italians understood they’ll get no mercy from me.”
“Women and children too?” asked Quintus Hortensius, the other senior tribune of the soldiers.
“What, not got the stomach for it, Forum advocate?” Sulla enquired with a mocking look.
“You mistake the intent of my question, Lucius Cornelius,” said Hortensius evenly in his beautiful voice. “I have no feelings to spare for Hirpini brats. But like any other Forum advocate, I like everything clarified. Then I know where I stand.”
“No one must survive,” said Sulla. “However, tell the men to use the women first. Then they can kill them.”
“You’re not interested in taking prisoners to sell as slaves?” asked the Piglet, practical as always.
“Italians are not foreign enemies. Even when I sack their towns, there will be no slaves. I’d rather see them dead.”
From Aeclanum, Sulla turned south on the Via Appia and marched his contented troops to Compsa, the second Hirpini stronghold. Like its sister town, its walls were made of wood. But news of the fate of Aeclanum had spread faster than Sulla had moved; when he arrived, Compsa was waiting with all its gates open and the magistrates outside. This time Sulla was inclined to be merciful. Compsa was spared a sack.
From Compsa the general sent a letter back to Catulus Caesar in Capua and told him to send two legions under the brothers Aulus and Publius Gabinius into Lucania. Their orders were to take every town off Marcus Lamponius and free up the Via Popillia all the way to Rhegium. Then Sulla bethought himself of another useful man, and added a post scriptum that Catulus Caesar should include the junior legate Gnaeus Papirius Carbo in the Lucanian expedition.
In Compsa, Sulla received two messages. One informed him that Herculaneum had finally fallen during a strongly contested attack two days before the Ides of June, but that Titus Didius had been killed during the fighting.
“Make Herculaneum pay,” wrote Sulla to Catulus Caesar.
Sulla’s second message came across country from Apulia, and was from Gaius Cosconius.
After a remarkably easy and uneventful voyage, I landed my legions in an area of salt lagoons near the fishing village of Salapia exactly fifty days after leaving Puteoli. All went precisely as planned. We disembarked at night in complete secrecy, attacked Salapia at dawn and burned it to the ground. I made sure every person in the vicinity was killed so that no one could send news of our arrival to the Samnites.
From Salapia I marched to Cannae and took it without a fight, after which I forded the Aufidius River and advanced on Canusium. Not more than ten miles further on, I met a large Samnite host led by Gaius Trebatius. Battle could not be avoided. Since I was very much outnumbered and the ground was not favorable to me, the engagement was a bloody one, and costly to me. But costly to Trebatius as well. I decided to fall back on Cannae before I lost more men than I could afford, got my soldiers into good order and recrossed the Aufidius with Trebatius on my tail. Then I saw what my ploy should be, pretended we were in a panic, and hid behind a hill on the Cannae bank of the river. The trick worked. Sure of himself, Trebatius began to ford the Aufidius with his troops in some disarray. My men were calm and eager to continue the fight. I wheeled them at a run through a full circle, and we fell on Trebatius while he was still in the river. The result was a complete victory for Rome. I have the honor to inform you that fifteen thousand Samnites died at the Aufidius crossing. Trebatius and the few survivors fled to Canusium, which has prepared for a siege. I have obliged it.
I left five cohorts of my men, including the wounded, in front of Canusium under the command of Lucius Lucceius, then took the fifteen cohorts remaining to me and headed north toward Frentani country. Ausculum Apulium surrendered without a fight. So did Larinum.
As I write this report, I have just received news from Lucius Lucceius that Canusium has capitulated. Following his orders from me, Lucius Lucceius has sacked the town and killed everyone, though it would appear Gaius Trebatius himself escaped. As we have no facilities to cope with prisoners and I cannot afford to have enemy soldiers running loose in my rear, the destruction of all in Canusium was my only alternative. I trust this does not displease you. From Larinum I shall continue to advance toward the Frentani, awaiting news of your own movements and further orders.
Sulla laid the letter down with great satisfaction and shouted for Metellus Pius and his two senior tribunes of the soldiers, as both these young men were proving excellent.
Having given them Cosconius’s news and listened with what patience he could muster to their marveling (he had told no one of Cosconius’s voyage), Sulla proceeded to issue new orders.
“It’s time we contained Mutilus himself,” he said. “If we do not, he’ll fall on Gaius Cosconius in such numbers not one Roman man will be left alive, and that’s scant reward for a brave campaign. My sources of information tell me that at the moment Mutilus is waiting to see what I do before he decides whether to go after me or Gaius Cosconius. What Mutilus hopes is that I turn south on the Via Appia and concentrate my efforts around Venusia—which is strong enough to occupy all my attention for a considerable length of time. Once he hears positive confirmation of this, he’ll look for Gaius Cosconius. So today we pull up stakes and we set off to the south. However, with darkness we reverse the direction of our march and leave the road completely. It’s rough and hilly country between here and the upper Volturnus, but that’s the way we’re going. The Samnite army has been encamped halfway between Venafrum and Aesernia for far too long, but Mutilus shows no sign of moving. We have almost a hundred and fifty miles of very difficult marching before we reach him. Nevertheless, gentlemen, we’re going to be there in eight days, and fit to fight.”
No one attempted to argue; Sulla always pushed his army unmercifully, but such was its morale since Nola that it felt itself—and Sulla—equal to anything. The sack of Aeclanum had done wonders for the soldiers too, as Sulla had held nothing back out of the meager spoils for himself or his officers save a few women, and not the best women at that.
The march to Mutilus, however, took twenty-one days, not the original estimate of eight. Of roads there were none, and the hills were crags which often had to be skirted tortuously. Though inwardly Sulla fretted, he was wise enough to turn a cheerful and considerate face toward legionaries and officers both, and made sure his army maintained a certain degree of comfort. In certain ways the winning of his Grass Crown had made a tenderer man of Sulla, ways all aimed at his ownership of his army. If the terrain had been as easy as he had thought it was going to be, he would have pushed them; as it was, he could see the necessity of keeping them in good spirits and accepting the inevitable. If Fortune still favored him, he would find Mutilus where he expected to find him; and Sulla thought Fortune was still on his side.
Thus it was the end of Quinctilis when Lucullus rode into Sulla’s camp, face eager.
“He’s there!” cried Lucullus without ceremony.
“Good!” said Sulla, smiling. “That means his luck has run out, Lucius Licinius—because mine hasn’t. You can pass that message on to the troops. Does Mutilus look as if he’s planning to move soon?”
“He looks more as if he’s giving his men a long holiday.’’
“They’re fed up with this war, and Mutilus knows it,” said Sulla contentedly. “Besides which, he’s a worried man. He’s been sitting in the same camp for over sixty days, and every fresh piece of news he gets only makes his decision as to where to go next more difficult. He’s lost western Campania, and he’s in the process of losing Apulia.”
“So what do we do?” asked Lucullus, who had a natural martial streak and was loving his learning from Sulla.
“We make smokeless camp on the wrong side of the last ridge leading down to the Volturnus, and there we wait. Keeping very quiet,” said Sulla. “I’d like to strike as he’s preparing to move. He must move soon, or lose the war without another fight. If he were Silo, he might elect that course. But Mutilus? He’s a Samnite. He hates us.”
Six days later Mutilus decided to move. What Sulla couldn’t know was that the Samnite leader had just received word of a terrible battle outside Larinum between Gaius Cosconius and Marius Egnatius. Though he had kept his own army idle, Mutilus hadn’t permitted Cosconius to use northern Apulia like a parade ground. He had sent a big and experienced army of Samnites and Frentani under Marius Egnatius to contain Cosconius. But the little Roman force was in high fettle, trusted its leader completely, and had got into the habit of deeming itself unconquerable. Marius Egnatius had gone down in defeat and died on the field together with most of his men, appalling news for Mutilus.
Not long after dawn Sulla’s four legions issued out of the concealing ridge and fell on Mutilus. Caught with his camp half dismantled and his troops in disorder, the Samnite stood no chance. Badly wounded himself, he fled with the remnants of his army to Aesernia, and shut himself up inside. Once more this beleaguered city girded itself to withstand a siege—only now it was Rome on the outside, Samnium within.
While he was still dealing with the aftermath of the rout, Sulla was informed of the victory against Marius Egnatius by letter from Cosconius himself, and looked exultant. No matter how many pockets of resistance remained, the war was over. And Mutilus had known it for over sixty days.
Leaving a few cohorts at Aesernia under the command of Lucullus to keep Mutilus locked up, Sulla himself marched to the old Samnite capital of Bovianum. This was a formidably fortified town, possessing three separate citadels connected by mighty walls. Each citadel faced in a different direction, built to watch one of the three roads at the junction of which Bovianum sat, deeming itself invulnerable.
“You know,” said Sulla to Metellus Pius and Hortensius, “one thing I always noticed about Gaius Marius in the field—he was never enamored of the mechanics behind taking towns. To him, nothing mattered except pitched battle. Whereas I find taking towns quite fascinating. If you look at Bovianum, it appears impregnable. But make no mistake—it will fall today.”
He made his word good by tricking the town into thinking his entire army was sitting below the citadel facing the road from Aesernia; in the meantime, one legion sneaked through the hills and attacked the citadel looking south to Saepinum. When Sulla saw the huge column of smoke arising from the Saepinum tower—his prearranged signal—he attacked the Aesernia tower. Less than three hours later Bovianum submitted.
Sulla quartered his soldiers inside Bovianum instead of putting them into camp and used the town as his base while he scoured the countryside for miles around to make sure southern Samnium was properly subdued—and incapable of raising fresh troops.
Then, leaving Aesernia besieged by men sent from Capua, and with his own four legions reunited, Sulla conferred with Gaius Cosconius. It was the end of September.
“The east is yours, Gaius Cosconius!’’ he said cheerfully. “I want the Via Appia and the Via Minucia completely freed up. Use Bovianum as your headquarters, it makes a superb garrison. And be as merciless or as merciful as you see fit. The most important thing is to keep Mutilus penned up inside Aesernia and prevent any reinforcements from reaching him.”
“How are things to the north of us?” asked Cosconius, who had heard virtually nothing since he had sailed from Puteoli in March.
“Excellent! Servius Sulpicius Galba has cleaned up most of the Marrucini, Marsi and Vestini. He says Silo was on the field, but escaped. Cinna and Cornutus have occupied all the Marsic lands, and Alba Fucentia is ours again. The consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo has reduced the Picentes and the rebel parts of Umbria to ruins. However, Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Baebius are still sitting in front of Asculum Picentum—which must surely be at death’s door from starvation, but continues to hold out.”
“Then we have won!” said Cosconius in tones of awe.
“Oh, yes. We had to win! An Italy without Rome in total command? The gods wouldn’t countenance that,” said Sulla.
Six days after the beginning of October he arrived in Capua to see Catulus Caesar and make the necessary arrangements for the wintering of his armies. Traffic was flowing once more down the Via Appia and the Via Minucia, though the town of Venusia held out stubbornly, powerless to do more than watch Roman activity on the great road running alongside it. The Via Popillia was safe for the passage of armies and convoys from Campania to Rhegium, but was still unsafe for small parties of travelers, as Marcus Lamponius clung to the mountains still, concentrating his energies now upon sorties little more impressive than brigand attacks.
“However,” said Sulla to a happy Catulus Caesar as he prepared to leave for Rome at the end of November, “by and large, I think we can safely say the peninsula is ours again.”
“I’d prefer to wait until Asculum Picentum is ours before I say that,” said Catulus Caesar, who had worked indefatigably for two years in a thankless job. “The whole business started there, Lucius Cornelius. And it’s still holding out.”
“Don’t forget Nola,” said Sulla, and snarled.