The History of Rome

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION

When Sulla died in 78 B.C., the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state. However, since it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against numerous secret and open foes. It was not opposed by any single party with clear objectives and acknowledged leaders, but by a mass of diverse elements lumped together under the general name of the popular party, though in reality opposing the restoration on various grounds and with very different objects.

There were the jurists who neither engaged in nor understood politics, but who detested Sulla’s high-handed dealing with the lives and property of citizens. Even during Sulla’s lifetime, when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists had resisted the regent. The Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated in judicial decisions as null and void; and in like manner the courts held that, where a citizen had been made a prisoner of war and sold into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited. There was also the remnant of the old liberal minority in the Senate, which in former times had labored to effect a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and which was now similarly inclined to soften the rigid oligarchic constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares. There were, moreover, the strict Populares, the honest, credulous, narrow-minded radicals, who staked property and life on the current party slogans only to discover with painful surprise after the victory that they had been fighting for a phrase instead of a reality. Their special aim was to re-establish the power of the tribunes, which Sulla had sharply limited rather than abolished, and which exercised over the multitude a still more mysterious charm because the institution was in fact an empty phantom. More than a thousand years later, the mere name of tribune of the people revolutionized Rome.

Most important of all, there were numerous powerful groups whom the Sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whose political or private interests it had directly injured. Among those ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 89 B.C. as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. There were also the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and especially dangerous through their concentration in the capital, who could not bear being reduced by the restoration to their earlier and practically useless suffrage. In the same position stood the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but preserved as usual their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The proletariat of the capital, which equated free bread to true freedom, was likewise discontented, and still deeper exasperation prevailed among the citizen-communities affected by the Sullan confiscations.¹

Finally, the agitation extended to the entire families and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost their lives, or who wandered along the Mauretanian coasts or lived at the court and in the army of Mithradates in all the misery of exile. According to the close family ties governing the political feeling of that age, it was a point of honor that those left behind should try to procure for exiled relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and, in the case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to the latter of their paternal estate. More especially the children of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced to political pariahs, thereby received from the state a virtual summons to rebel against it.

To the opposition might also be added the whole body of ruined men, all the rabble high and low whose means had been spent in refined or vulgar debauchery; the aristocratic lords whose only mark of quality was their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent could make into landholders but not into farmers, and who, after squandering their first inheritance from the vanquished, longed to succeed to a second. All these awaited only the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against the existing order, whatever else might be inscribed on it.

Among the older generation of Optimates the civil wars had left not a single man of repute except the shrewd and eloquent Lucius Philippus (consul in 91 B.C.), who, formerly of popular leanings, then leader of the capitalist party against the Senate, closely associated with the Marians, and lastly passing over to the victorious oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and commendation, had managed to escape between the parties. Among the next generation the most notable aristocrats were Quintus Metellus Pius (consul in 80 B.C.), Sulla’s comrade in dangers and victories; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in the year of Sulla’s death and son of the victor of Vercellae; and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus, the former of whom had fought with distinction under Sulla in Asia, the latter in Italy. But even those four men rose little above the average caliber of the Optimates of this age. Catulus was like his father a man of refinement and honesty, but his talents were limited and he was certainly no soldier. Metellus was of estimable character and an able and experienced officer; and it was because of his recognized ability (rather than his close relations as kinsman and colleague of the regent) that he was sent in 79 B.C. to Spain, where the Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh. The two Luculli were also capable officers—particularly the elder, who combined very respectable military talents with thorough literary culture and leanings to authorship, and appeared honorable also as a man. But as statesmen, even these better aristocrats were not much less shortsighted than the average senators of the time.³

Of the men who were neither ardent partisans nor open opponents of the Sullan constitution, the eyes of the multitude sought out young Gnaeus Pompey (born September 29, 106 B.C.), who at Sulla’s death was twenty-eight years old. The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as for the admirers, but it was natural. Sound in body and mind; a capable athlete who even as a superior officer vied with his soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting; a vigorous and skilled rider and fencer; a bold leader of volunteer bands—the young Pompey had become imperator and triumphator while still too young to qualify for any magistracy or for the Senate, and had acquired an esteem second only to Sulla himself. Indeed, he had obtained from the indulgent regent—half in recognition, half in irony—the surname of the Great.

Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means corresponded with these unprecedented successes. He was neither bad nor incapable; he was a thoroughly ordinary man, created by nature to be a good sergeant, who was called upon by circumstances to be a general and a statesman. An intelligent, brave, experienced, thoroughly excellent soldier, he was even in military matters without trace of any higher gifts. It was characteristic of him as a general, as well as in other respects, to set forth with a caution bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority over his opponent. His culture was the average culture of the time; although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect when he went to Rhodes to admire dutifully and to reward the rhetoricians there. His integrity was that of a rich man who manages his property with discretion. He did not disdain to make money in the usual senatorial way, but he was too cold and too rich to incur special risks, or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace.

It was the vice so common among his contemporaries, rather than any virtue of his own, that gave him the reputation—doubtless comparatively well warranted—of integrity and disinterestedness. His “honest countenance” became almost proverbial, and even after his death he was esteemed as a worthy and moral man. He was in fact a good neighbor, who did not join in the revolting schemes by which the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their domains through forced sales or still worse measures at the expense of their humbler neighbors.

In domestic life he displayed affection for his wife and children; and, to his credit, he was the first to depart from the barbarous custom of putting to death the captive kings and generals of the enemy, after they had been exhibited in triumph. But this did not prevent him from separating from his beloved wife at Sulla’s command, because she belonged to an outlawed family, or from ordering with great composure that men who had stood by him in his hour of need should be executed before his eyes at the nod of that same master. He was not cruel, though he was reproached with being so; but—perhaps worse—he was cold and unimpassioned in good as in evil. In the tumult of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in civil life he was a shy man, whose cheek flushed on the slightest occasion. He spoke in public not without embarrassment, and generally was angular, stiff, and awkward in discourse. With all his haughty obstinacy he was (as most persons are who make a display of their independence) a pliant tool in the hands of men who knew how to manage him, especially his freedmen and hangers-on, by whom he had no fear of being controlled.

For nothing was he less qualified than for a statesman. Uncertain as to his aims, unskilful in his choice of means, shortsighted and helpless in great matters and small, he sought to conceal his indecision under a solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle game, to deceive himself in the belief that he was deceiving others. By his military position and his territorial connections he acquired almost inadvertently a considerable personal following, through which great deeds might have been accomplished. But Pompey was incapable of leading a party, and, if it still kept together, it did so through sheer force of circumstance. In this as in other things he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all artificial great men.⁴

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompey, be reckoned an unconditional adherent of the oligarchy. He was a person highly characteristic of his time. A few years older than Pompey, he too belonged to the circle of the high Roman aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank, and had fought with distinction under Sulla in the Italian war. Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts, literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them by his boundless activity and by the perseverance with which he strove to possess everything and to become all-important. Above all, he threw himself into speculation. Purchases of estates during the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth, but he disdained no branch of gain. He engaged in building in the capital on a great scale; he entered into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings; he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or through agents; he advanced money to his colleagues in the Senate, and undertook when necessary to execute commissions or to bribe the tribunals on their account.

He was far from nice in the matter of making profit. During the Sullan proscriptions a forgery in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla made no further use of him in affairs of state. He did not refuse to accept an inheritance, though the will which contained his name was a blatant forgery. He made no objection when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own. However, he avoided open collisions with criminal justice, and lived like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style.

Through such means Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary senatorial fortune to be the master of wealth which not long before his death, after defraying enormous extraordinary expenses, still amounted to 170,000,000 sesterces. He had become the richest of Romans, and thus a great political power. If, according to his expression, no one might call himself rich who could not maintain an army from his revenues, a man who could do so was hardly any longer a mere citizen.

In reality Crassus aimed at a higher object than the possession of the best-filled money chest in Rome. He grudged no pains to extend his connections. He knew how to salute by name every citizen of the capital. No suppliant was refused his assistance in court. Nature had done little for him as an orator, for his speech was dry, his delivery monotonous, and his hearing poor. But his tenacity of purpose, which no fatigue deterred and no enjoyment distracted, overcame such obstacles. He was never unprepared, and never extemporized. Hence he became a pleader always ready and always in demand, for whom few causes were too bad, and who knew how to influence the judges by his connections as well as by his oratory, and also on occasion by his gold.

Half the Senate was in debt to him. His habit of advancing interest-free “loans” revocable at pleasure made a number of influential men dependent on him, the more so because like a genuine man of business he made no political distinctions, maintained connections everywhere, and readily lent to every one who was able to pay or be otherwise useful. The most daring party leaders, who attacked recklessly in all directions, were careful not to quarrel with Crassus. He was the bull of the herd, whom it was wise not to provoke.

That a man so disposed and so situated could not strive after humble aims is clear; and, in a very different way from Pompey, Crassus knew like a banker the objects and the means of political speculation. From the beginnings of Rome, money had been a political power; this age was such that everything seemed as accessible to gold as to iron. If in a time of revolution a capitalist aristocracy might think of overthrowing the oligarchy, then a man like Crassus might raise his eyes above the consulship and the embroidered mantle of the triumphators. For the moment he was a Sullan and a friend of the Senate, but he was too much of a financier to bind himself to a single party or to pursue anything save his personal advantage.

Why should Crassus, the wealthiest and best-connected man in Rome, and a speculator on the grandest scale, not speculate also on the crown? Alone, perhaps, he could not attain this object. But he had carried out many great transactions in partnership, and it was not impossible that a suitable partner might present himself. It is characteristic of the age that a mediocre orator and officer, a politician who mistook activity for energy and covetousness for ambition, one who at bottom had nothing but a colossal fortune and a trader’s talent for forming connections—that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of cliques and intrigues, could stand on a level with the first generals and statesmen of his day, and contend with them for the highest prize which allures political ambition.

In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives and among the Populares, the storms of revolution had wrought fearful havoc. Among the former, the only surviving man of note was Drusus’ friend and ally Gaius Cotta, banished in 91 B.C. and then brought back by Sulla’s victory to his native land. He was a shrewd man and a capable advocate, but neither the weight of his party nor his personal standing enabled him to play more than a respectable secondary part. Among the rising youth in the democratic party twenty-four-year-old Gaius Julius Caesar (probably born July 12, 102 B.C.) drew toward him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship with Marius and Cinna (his father’s sister had been the wife of Marius, he himself had married Cinna’s daughter); his courageous refusal—unlike Pompey—to divorce his young wife Cornelia at the dictator’s bidding; his bold persistence in the priesthood given him by Marius but revoked by Sulla; his wanderings under the threat of proscription, which was averted with difficulty by the intercession of his relatives; his bravery in the conflicts before Mytilene and in Cilicia, a bravery which no one had expected from the tenderly reared and almost effeminate boy; even the warnings of Sulla regarding the “boy in the petticoat,” in whom more than a Marius lay concealed—all these were precisely so many recommendations in the eyes of the democratic party. But Caesar could only arouse hopes for the future. The men whose age and public position would have called them to seize the reins of the party and the state were all dead or in exile.

Thus the democratic leadership, in the absence of any strong claimant, was open to any one who might pose as the champion of oppressed popular freedom. Thus it fell to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan who from dubious motives deserted to the camp of the democracy. Once a zealous Optimate and a large purchaser of proscribed estates at auction, as governor of Sicily he had so scandalously plundered the province that he threw himself into the opposition to evade the threat of impeachment.

It was a gain of doubtful value. No doubt the opposition thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, and a vehement orator in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet man who did not deserve to lead either in council or in the field. Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him, and the new leader succeeded not only in deterring his accusers from prosecuting him, but also in carrying his election to the consulship for 78 B.C. (In this he was helped not only by the treasures from Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavor of Pompey to show Sulla and the pure Sullans what he could do.) Now that the opposition had found a new leader in Lepidus, who had become the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new revolution in the capital might clearly be foreseen.

But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain. The soul of this movement was Quintus Sertorius. This excellent man, a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was of a soft and tender nature—as shown by his almost enthusiastic love for his mother, Raia—and at the same time of the most chivalrous bravery, as was proved by the honorable scars which he brought home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars. Although untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession of his address. His remarkable talent as military leader and statesman shone by contrast, especially during the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly mismanaged. He was admittedly the only democratic officer who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic leader who opposed with statesmanlike energy the senseless and furious excesses of his party. His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in battle. In reality he reminds us of the great Phoenician by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his adroitness in attracting foreign nations to his interest and making them serviceable to his ends, by his prudence in success and misfortune, by his ingenious quickness in turning his victories to good account and averting the consequences of his defeats.

It is doubtful whether any Roman statesman up to his time can be compared to Sertorius in versatile talent. After Sulla’s generals had compelled him to quit Spain, he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African coasts, sometimes in league and sometimes at war with the Cilician pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains of the roving tribes of Libya. The victorious Roman restoration had pursued him even there. When he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers), a corps under Pacciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help of the prince of the town; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated, and Tingis was taken by Sertorius. On hearing of such achievements the Lusitanians, who despite their pretended submission maintained an effective independence, and annually fought with the Roman governors of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius in Africa inviting him to join them and offering him the command of their militia.

Sertorius, who twenty years earlier had served under Titus Didius in Spain and knew the resources of the land, decided to accept the invitation; he embarked for Spain about 80 B.C., leaving behind a small detachment on the Mauretanian coast. The straits separating Spain and Africa were occupied by a Roman squadron commanded by Cotta. To steal through it was impossible, so Sertorius fought his way through and succeeded in reaching the Lusitanians. No more than twenty Lusitanian communities placed themselves under his orders, and he could muster only 2,600 “Romans,” a considerable part of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus or Africans armed after the Roman style. Sertorius saw that everything depended on organizing his loose guerilla bands around a strong nucleus of troops possessing Roman organization and discipline. To this end he reinforced the band which he had brought with him by levying 4,000 infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion and swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans.

The Roman command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius, who through his absolute devotion to Sulla—well tried amid the proscriptions—had risen from subaltern to propraetor. He was totally defeated on the Baetis, leaving 2,000 Romans covering the field of battle. Messengers hastily summoned the governor of the adjoining Ebro province, Marcus Domitius Calvinus, to check the further advance of the Sertorians, and the experienced Quintus Metellus also soon appeared (79 B.C.), sent by Sulla to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain. But they did not succeed in quelling the revolt. In the Ebro province not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain by Sertorius’ lieutenant Lucius Hirtuleius, but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed the Pyrenees with three legions to help his colleague, was totally defeated by the same brave leader. With difficulty Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence to his province, losing his whole baggage on the march through a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes.

In Further Spain Metellus penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth of the Tagus) in luring a division under Aquinus into an ambush, and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege and to evacuate Lusitania. Sertorius followed him, defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-chief himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy tactician, was in despair at this opponent who obstinately declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.

These extraordinary successes of Sertorius in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant in that they were not merely military in nature. The emigrants as such were not formidable, nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians under this or that foreign leader of much moment. But with great political and patriotic sagacity Sertorius acted, whenever he could, not as a hired leader of a Lusitanian revolt against Rome, but as Roman general and governor of Spain, in which capacity he had in fact been sent by the former rulers. He began to form the principal emigrants into a senate which increased to 300 members, and which conducted its affairs and nominated its magistrates in the Roman fashion. He regarded his army as Roman, and filled the officers’ posts without exception with Romans. He faced the Spaniards as a governor levying troops and other support from them by virtue of his office; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising the usual despotism, sought to attach the provincials to Rome and to himself personally.

His chivalrous character made it easy for him to adopt Spanish habits, and he excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm for the wonderful foreigner whose spirit was so like their own. According to the warlike custom which existed in Spain as among the Celts and the Germans, thousands of the noblest Spaniards swore to stand faithfully by their Roman general unto death; and in them Sertorius found more trustworthy followers than in his own countrymen and party comrades. He did not disdain to make use of the superstition of the ruder Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess.

At all times he exercised a just and gentle rule. His troops, at least so far as his eye and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline. Gentle as he usually was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil. He also sought to better permanently the condition of the provincials. He reduced taxes, and directed the soldiers to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive burden of quartering the troops was removed, and with it a source of unspeakable mischief and annoyance. For the children of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca), in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome, learning to speak Latin and Greek and to wear the toga. This remarkable measure, by no means merely designed to take gently from the allies the hostages that in Spain were inevitable, was a continuation of and an advance on the great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic party for gradually Romanizing the provinces. It was the first attempt to accomplish this Romanization not by extirpating the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants, but by Romanizing the provincials themselves.

The Optimates in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian army, the last of the robber band of Carbo. The sorry taunt recoiled upon its authors. Including the Spanish general levy, some 120,000 infantry, 2,000 archers and slingers, and 6,000 cavalry had been brought into the field against Sertorius. Facing this enormously superior force Sertorius had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts and victories, but had also brought the greater part of Spain under his power. In the Further province Metellus was confined to the districts immediately occupied by his troops, and all the tribes who could had taken the side of Sertorius. In the Hither province, after the victories of Hirtuleius, a Roman army no longer existed. Emissaries of Sertorius roamed throughout Gaul, as there, too, the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began to make the Alpine passes insecure.

Lastly, the sea belonged quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government, since the insurgents’ pirate allies were almost as powerful in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war. At the promontory of Diana (now Denia, between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established a fixed station for the corsairs, where they could lie in wait for Roman ships conveying supplies to the Roman maritime towns and the army, carry away or deliver goods for the insurgents, and provide a means of communication with Italy and Asia Minor. The constant readiness of these men to spread the conflagration excited a high degree of apprehension, especially when so much combustible matter was accumulated throughout the Roman empire.

Unfortunately, the democratic standard in Rome was in no such capable hands. The consul Lepidus, sent out by an incredibly myopic Senate to quell a revolt in Etruria, promptly turned his army against Rome. He was defeated beneath the city’s walls by his co-consul, the Optimate Quintus Catulus. The remnant of Lepidus’ army finally made its way to Spain led by the former praetor Marcus Perpenna.

While the oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus, it found itself compelled by the dangerous turn of the Sertorian war to make concessions which violated the letter as well as the spirit of the Sullan constitution. It was absolutely necessary to send a strong army and an able general to Spain. Pompey showed plainly that he desired, or rather demanded, this commission. The pretension was bold. It was bad enough that the oligarchy had again allowed this secret opponent an extraordinary command, under pressure of the Lepidan revolution. But it was far worse to disregard all the rules instituted by Sulla for the magisterial hierarchy, and to give a man who had filled no civil office one of the most important provincial governorships, under circumstances which made observance of the normal one-year term out of the question.

Thus the oligarchy, quite apart from the respect due their general Metellus, had good reason to oppose earnestly this new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his exceptional position. But this was not easy. In the first place, they had not a single man fitted for the difficult post of general in Spain. Neither of the consuls of the year showed any desire to measure himself against Sertorius; what Lucius Philippus said in a full meeting of the Senate was all too true—that among all the senators of note, not one was able and willing to command in a serious war.

Yet they might have got over this (after the manner of oligarchs when they have no capable candidate) by filling the place with some sort of makeshift, if Pompey had merely desired the command and had not demanded it with the backing of an army. He had already lent a deaf ear to Catulus’ demands that he dismiss his army. It was at least doubtful whether those of the Senate would find a better reception, and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate. The aristocracy itself might well be outweighed, if the sword of a well-known general were thrown into the opposite scale. So the majority resolved on concession. Not from the people (who constitutionally should have been consulted when a private man was to be invested with the supreme magisterial power) but from the Senate, Pompey received proconsular authority and the chief command in Hither Spain. Forty days after he had received it, he crossed the Alps in the summer of 77 B.C.

The new general first found employment in Gaul, where no formal insurrection had broken out, but where serious disturbances had occurred at several places. As a punishment he deprived the cantons of the Volcae-Arecomici and the Helvii of their independence, and placed them under Massilia. He also laid out a new road over the Cottian Alps, and so shortened communications between Gaul and the valley of the Po. Since this work consumed the best season of the year, it was not till late in autumn that Pompey crossed the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile, Sertorius had not been idle. He had dispatched Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep Metellus in check, and had himself tried to follow up his complete victory in the Hither province and prepare to receive Pompey. Those isolated Celtiberian towns still loyal to Rome were attacked and reduced one by one, until at last the strong town of Contrebia (southeast of Saragossa) had fallen. In vain the hard-pressed towns sent message after message to Pompey; he would not be induced by any entreaties to depart from his customary slow advance. With the exception of the maritime towns defended by the Roman fleet, and the districts of the Indigetes and Laletani in the northeast corner of Spain (where Pompey had established himself after crossing the Pyrenees, and had made his raw troops bivouac throughout the winter to inure them to hardships), all of Hither Spain had acknowledged the rule of Sertorius, while the upper and middle Ebro district continued the mainstay of his power. Even the apprehension which the fresh Roman force and its celebrated general excited in the insurgent army had a salutary effect. Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto had claimed an independent command over the force which he had brought from Liguria, was compelled by his soldiers on the news of Pompey’s arrival to place himself under his abler colleague.

For the campaign of 76 B.C. Sertorius again employed the corps of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with a strong army took up his position on the lower Ebro to prevent Pompey from crossing the river, if he should march (as was expected) in a southerly direction to effect a junction with Metellus, and along the coast for the sake of procuring supplies. The corps of Gaius Herennius was assigned to support Perpenna. Farther inland, on the upper Ebro, Sertorius in person sought to subdue several districts friendly to Rome, while holding himself ready to aid either Perpenna or Hirtuleius as circumstances demanded. It was still his intention to avoid any pitched battle, and to annoy the enemy by petty conflicts and supply interruptions.

Pompey, however, forced the Ebro against Perpenna and took up a position on the river Pallantias near Saguntum, from which the Sertorians maintained their communications with Italy and the east. The time had come for Sertorius to appear in person, and throw his superior numbers and genius into the scale against the superior soldiers of his opponent.

For a considerable time the struggle centered around the town of Lauro (on the Jucar, south of Valencia), which had declared for Pompey and was therefore besieged by Sertorius. Pompey exerted himself to the utmost to relieve it. But after several of his divisions had been assailed separately and cut to pieces, the great warrior found himself—just when he thought he had surrounded the Sertorians, and had invited the besieged to observe the capture of the besieging army—suddenly outmaneuvered. To avoid being himself surrounded, he had to witness from his camp the capture and burning of the allied town and the carrying off of its inhabitants to Lusitania—an event which induced several wavering communities in central and eastern Spain to switch to Sertorius.

Meanwhile, Metellus fought with better fortune. In a sharp engagement at Italica (not far from Seville), which Hirtuleius had imprudently risked, and in which both generals fought hand to hand and Hirtuleius was wounded, Metellus compelled him to evacuate the Roman territory proper and throw himself into Lusitania. This victory permitted Metellus to unite with Pompey. The two generals took up their winter quarters in 76-75 B.C. in the Pyrenees, resolving in the next campaign to attack the enemy jointly in his position near Valentia. But while Metellus was still approaching, Pompey offered battle to the main enemy army, hoping to wipe out the stain of Lauro and gain the expected laurels alone. Sertorius joyfully embraced the opportunity of fighting Pompey before Metellus arrived.

The armies met on the river Sucro (Jucar). After a sharp conflict Pompey was beaten on the right wing and was himself carried from the field severely wounded. Afranius conquered on the left and took the camp of the Sertorians, but during its pillage he was suddenly assailed by Sertorius and also compelled to give way. Had Sertorius been able to renew the battle the next day, the army of Pompey might have been annihilated. But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had overthrown the corps of Perpenna ranged against him, and had taken his camp. It was not possible to resume the battle against the united armies.

The successes of Metellus, the junction of the hostile forces, and the sudden stagnation after the victory diffused terror among the Sertorians. As not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies, most of the Sertorian soldiers dispersed. But the despondency passed as quickly as it had come. The white fawn, which represented in the eyes of the multitude the military plans of the general, was soon more popular than ever. In a short time a new army confronted the Romans in the level country to the south of Saguntum (Murviedro), which firmly adhered to Rome, while Sertorian privateers intercepted Roman supplies by sea, and scarcity made itself felt in the Roman camp. Another battle took place in the plains of the river Turia (Guadalaviar), and the struggle was long undecided. Pompey with the cavalry was defeated by Sertorius, and Pompey’s brother-in-law and quaestor, the brave Lucius Memmius, was slain. On the other hand Metellus vanquished Perpenna and victoriously repelled the attack of the enemy’s main army, receiving himself a wound in the conflict.

Once more the Sertorian army dispersed. Valentia, which Gaius Herennius held for Sertorius, was taken and razed to the ground. The Romans probably cherished a momentary hope that they were done with their tough antagonist. The Sertorian army had disappeared, and the Roman troops, penetrating far into the interior, trapped the general himself in the fortress of Clunia on the upper Douro. But while they vainly besieged this rocky stronghold, the insurgent communities assembled their forces elsewhere. Sertorius himself stole out of the fortress, and even before the end of the year was once more a general at the head of an army.

Again the Roman generals had to take up winter quarters with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal of their Sisyphean toils. It was not even possible to winter in the region of Valentia, so important on account of the communication with Italy and the East, but so fearfully devastated by friend and foe. After leading his troops first into the territory of the Vascones (Biscay), Pompey himself spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei (around Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.

The Sertorian war was thus five years old, and still without prospect of termination. The Roman state suffered from it beyond description. The flower of the Italian youth perished amid the exhausting fatigues of these campaigns. The public treasury was not only deprived of the Spanish revenues, but in paying and maintaining the Spanish armies had to lay out very considerable sums which the government hardly knew how to raise. Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the flourishing Roman civilization there received a severe shock. This was to be expected in an insurrectionary war waged with so much bitterness, and which all too often occasioned the destruction of whole communities.

Even the towns which adhered to Rome bore countless hardships. Those situated on the coast had to be provisioned by the Roman fleet, while the situation of the faithful communities in the interior was almost desperate. Gaul suffered hardly less, partly from requisitions of infantry and cavalry, of grain and money, and partly from the oppressive burden of winter quarters, which became intolerable as a result of the bad harvest of 74 B.C. Almost all the local treasuries were compelled to borrow from the Roman bankers, burdening themselves with a crushing load of debt.

Both generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance. The generals faced an opponent far superior in talent, a tough and protracted resistance, and a warfare whose perils were grave and whose successes were both difficult and far from brilliant. It was even asserted that Pompey was scheming to get himself recalled from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command. The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign in which they got only hard blows and worthless booty, and in which their very pay was doled out to them with extreme irregularity. Pompey reported to the Senate, at the end of 75 B.C., that pay was two years in arrears, and that the army was threatening to break up.

The Roman government might certainly have obviated many of these evils if it could have carried on the Spanish war with less slackness, to say nothing of better will. In the main, however, it was neither the government’s fault nor the fault of its generals that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on this petty warfare year after year, despite his numerical and military inferiority, on terrain so favorable to insurrectionary and piratical warfare. With its end so uncertain, the Sertorian insurrection showed every prospect of becoming intermingled with other contemporary revolts—which added to its dangerous character, at a time when the Romans were contending on every sea with the pirates, in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes on the lower Danube, and in the East with Mithradates, who was partly induced by the success of the Spanish insurrection to try once more the fortune of arms.

That Sertorius formed connections with the Italian and Macedonian enemies of Rome cannot be distinctly affirmed, although he certainly was in constant intercourse with the Marians in Italy. With the pirates, on the other hand, he had previously formed an avowed league; and he had also long maintained relations with Mithradates through the Roman emigrants staying at his court. He now concluded a formal treaty of alliance with the Pontic king, ceding to him the Roman protectorates in Asia Minor but not the Roman province of Asia. He promised, moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead Mithradates’ troops, plus a number of soldiers, while the king in turn bound himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3,000 talents. The wise politicians in Rome were already recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip from the east and Hannibal from the west. They predicted that the new Hannibal, like his predecessor, could first subdue Spain; that he could then lead his Spanish armies into Italy sooner than Pompey; and finally that he could, like the Phoenician before him, summon the Etruscans and Samnites to arms against Rome.

This comparison was more ingenious than accurate. Sertorius was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people; and even there he was more and more compelled to renounce the offensive. His admirable skill as a leader could not change the nature of his troops. The Spanish militia retained its character of being as untrustworthy as the wave or the wind, now collecting in masses to the number of 150,000, now melting way to a mere handful. The Roman emigrants likewise remained insubordinate, arrogant, and stubborn. Those types of armed forces which require keeping a corps together for a considerable time, such as cavalry, were of course very inadequately represented in his army. The war gradually swept off his ablest officers and the flower of his veterans; and even the most trustworthy communities, weary of being harassed by the Romans and maltreated by the Sertorian officers, began to show signs of impatience and wavering allegiance.

What is remarkable is that Sertorius, in this respect also like Hannibal, never deceived himself as to the hopelessness of his position. He passed up no opportunity for compromise, and would have been ready at any moment to give up his command on the assurance of being allowed to live peacefully in his native land. But political orthodoxy knows nothing of compromise and conciliation. Sertorius might not recede or step aside, but was compelled inevitably to advance along the path he had entered, however narrow and giddy it might become.

The representations which Pompey addressed to Rome, and which derived emphasis from the behavior of Mithradates in the east, were successful. The Senate sent him the necessary supplies of money as well as two fresh legions. Thus reinforced, the two generals went to work again in the spring of 74 B.C. and once more crossed the Ebro. Eastern Spain was wrested from the Sertorians through battles on the Jucar and Guadalaviar, after which the struggle centered on the upper and middle Ebro around Sertorius’ chief strongholds of Calagurris, Osca, and Ilerda. As in the earlier campaigns, here too Metellus gained the most important successes. His old opponent Hirtuleius, who again confronted him, was completely defeated and killed along with his brother—an irreparable loss for the Sertorians. Sertorius, receiving the unfortunate news just as he was about to assail the enemy opposed to him, cut down the messenger on the spot lest the tidings discourage his troops. But the news could not be long concealed, and one insurgent town after another surrendered.⁵

When the two Roman generals went into winter quarters—Pompey to Gaul, Metellus to his own province—they were able to look back on considerable results. A great portion of the insurgents had submitted or had been subdued by arms. The campaign of the following year (73 B.C.) ran a similar course, with Pompey especially restricting the field of the insurrection slowly but steadily.

The defeats of the insurgents were soon reflected in the feeling in their camp. The military successes of Sertorius became like those of Hannibal, necessarily less and less important. People began to question his military talent; he was no longer, it was alleged, what he had been; he spent the days in feasting or over his cups; he squandered money as well as time. The number of the deserters, both individuals and communities, began to increase. Soon projects formed by the Roman emigrants against the life of the general were reported to him. They sounded credible enough, especially as various officers of the insurgent army, Perpenna in particular, had submitted reluctantly to the supremacy of Sertorius, and the Roman governors had long promised amnesty and a high reward to any one who should kill him.

Sertorius, on hearing such allegations, replaced his Roman guards with select Spaniards. Against the suspects themselves he proceeded with fearful but necessary severity, in some cases condemning various of the accused to death without the advice of his council. Whereupon the malcontents whispered that he was now more dangerous to his friends than to his foes.

A second conspiracy was soon discovered among his own staff, and whoever was denounced had to take flight or die. But all were not betrayed, and the remaining conspirators, especially Perpenna, found in the circumstances a new incentive for haste. In the headquarters at Osca, on Perpenna’s instigation, a brilliant victory was reported to the general as having been achieved by his troops. At the festive banquet arranged by Perpenna, Sertorius appeared as usual with his Spanish retinue. Contrary to former custom in the Sertorian headquarters, the feast soon became a revel. Strong words passed at table, and it seemed as if some of the guests sought opportunity for an altercation.

Sertorius threw himself back on his couch, and seemed anxious to ignore the disturbance. A winecup was dashed on the floor as Perpenna gave the signal. Marcus Antonius, at Sertorius’ table, dealt the first blow. When Sertorius turned and attempted to rise, the assassin leaped upon him and held him down while the other guests at table, all in the conspiracy, threw themselves on the struggling pair and stabbed the defenseless general while his arms were pinioned. With him died his faithful attendants.

Thus ended, in 72 B.C., one of the greatest if not the very greatest man that Rome had hitherto produced, a man who under more fortunate circumstances might perhaps have become the regenerator of his country, done to death by the treason of the wretched band of emigrants whom he was condemned to lead against his native land. History loves not the Coriolani, nor has she made any exception even with this most magnanimous, most gifted, most deserving to be regretted of them all.

The murderers thought to succeed to the heritage of the murdered. After Sertorius’ death Perpenna, as the highest among the Roman officers of the Spanish army, laid claim to the chief command. The army submitted, but with mistrust and reluctance. However men had murmured against Sertorius in his lifetime, death reinstated the hero in his rights, and vehement was the indignation of the soldiers when, on the publication of his testament, the name of Perpenna was read forth among the heirs. A part of the soldiers, especially the Lusitanians, dispersed. The remainder had a presentiment that with the death of Sertorius their spirit and their fortune had departed.

Accordingly, at the first encounter with Pompey the miserably led and despondent ranks of the insurgents were utterly broken, and Perpenna, among other officers, was taken prisoner. The wretch sought to purchase his life by delivering up Sertorius’ correspondence, which would have compromised numerous prominent men in Italy. Pompey, however, ordered the papers to be burnt unread, and handed him over to the executioner along with the other insurgent chiefs. The emigrants who had escaped dispersed, most of them fleeing into the Mauretanian deserts or joining the pirates.⁶

Sulla’s good fortune seemed to cling to his creation after he had been laid in the grave, and to protect it better than its incapable and negligent guardians. The Italian opposition had broken down from the haste and incompetence of its leader, that of the emigrants from dissension within their own ranks. These defeats, although largely the result of the opposition’s perverseness and discord, were nonetheless victories for the oligarchy. The curule chairs were rendered once more secure.

The Sertorian war was not the only threat to the oligarchy, for barbarian pressure was increasing along the Danube; Mediterranean piracy threatened to halt seaborne commerce; the Italian slaves were in open revolt; and relations with the East were deteriorating rapidly. A series of campaigns managed to secure temporarily the Danubian frontier, but it proved extremely difficult to clear the sea of the pirates, now organized into a soldier-state peopled by “the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished parties, everyone that was wretched and daring.” Though Publius Servilius in a three-year campaign destroyed numerous pirate vessels and strongholds along the rugged Asian coast, piracy continued almost unabated by transferring its headquarters temporarily to other spots.

In the same period came the greatest of the Roman slave revolts, led by the gladiator Spartacus. A Roman captive being trained to fight in the public games, he escaped in 73 B.C. to become leader of an outlaw band. By successful encounters first with local militia and then with regular Roman troops, the little band acquired arms and recruits until it swelled to 40,000 men, and spread its ravages from the Po to the Sicilian strait. A two-year campaign led by both consuls was needed to defeat the Spartacists, who still perished primarily because of dissension in their own ranks.

In Asia Minor, the second Mithradatic war began (like the first) not because of intent, but because of each side’s suspicion of the other’s preparations. Mithradates made the first overt move in 74 B.C., and the Senate responded by naming as commander one of Rome’s unsung military geniuses, the consul Lucius Lucullus. Lucullus managed to trap Mithradates’ gigantic army beneath the walls of the city of Cyzicus, which the king was besieging; and he is said to have lost 200,000 soldiers to famine, disease, and Roman arms before fleeing with the remains of his army by sea. Lucullus promptly regained control of the sea with a hastily organized fleet, and by land carried the offensive into Mithradates’ own kingdom of Pontus. The decisive battle occurred in 72 B.C. at the city of Cabira, where a Roman cavalry success led to the pell-mell flight of the whole Pontic army. While scattered cities held out for two years, Lucullus effectively occupied the whole kingdom, Mithradates becoming a near-captive of his son-in-law, King Tigranes of Armenia.

Lucullus next resolved to chastise Tigranes, despite senatorial opposition and the weakness of his own forces—barely 30,000 men, only half of whom could be spared for an Armenian invasion. In 69 B.C. Lucullus crossed the Euphrates and inarched straight for Tigranes’ capital of Tigranocerta, which he besieged. Tigranes soon arrived with a vast army from the interior to lift the siege; and though he had been warned to avoid battle with the Romans, he ignored the warning when he saw that the Roman force ready for battle (the siege of the city continued) numbered scarcely 10,000 men. But a sudden Roman attack on the rear of the Armenian cavalry threw it against its own still unformed infantry, which fled without striking a blow. Mommsen regards Lucullus’ victory before Tigranocerta as “one of the most brilliant” in Roman military history.

Lucullus’ two daring campaigns would have yielded a victorious peace but for the reappearance of Mithradates, who took over command of the war from his fainthearted son-in-law. To nourish the struggle, Mithradates sought with marked success to transform it into a national Asiatic war against the western invader. Militarily, he altered his tactics by using his infantry only defensively, while harassing the Romans with a huge and active cavalry.

Deep in hostile country, Lucullus could only seek to force a military decision by striking deeper still. In midsummer of 68 B.C. he set out for the last great Armenian city, Artaxata. But when the long-suffering Roman soldiers (many had seen eighteen years’ service) found themselves amid snow and ice while still far from their goal, they mutinied and forced a retreat. Lucullus managed it with his usual skill, and on the way back captured the stronghold of Nisibis as a safe winter haven. But his absence threw the whole weight of the Asiatic offensive on the Roman occupation troops left behind, and the Roman corps in Pontus was surrounded and totally destroyed.

With this defeat came word from Rome that release of the Roman veterans in the East had been decreed, and that the consul Manius Glabrio had been given Lucullus’ command. Though Glabrio showed no desire to take charge at this difficult juncture, in the ensuing confusion over who was to command and what troops were willing to fight, Mithradates reoccupied his whole kingdom; and by the spring of 66 B.C. the Romans, despite Lucullus’ brilliant achievements, were exactly where they had been eight years before.

Let us review the events of the decade of the Sullan restoration. None of the external or internal developments during that period—neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and the slaves—necessarily constituted of itself a grave danger to the state; yet in all these struggles the nation had well-nigh fought for its very existence.

The reason was that every task was left undone so long as it might still be done with ease. Neglect of the simplest precautions produced the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. To be sure, the insurrections of the popular opposition and of the slaves were subdued. But such victories neither solidified the government at home nor strengthened it abroad. It was no credit to Rome that in an eight-year struggle, marked by more defeats than victories, the government’s two most celebrated generals had failed to master the insurgent chief Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that only the dagger of his friends decided the Sertorian war in favor of the legitimate government. As for the slaves, it was far less an honor to have conquered them than a disgrace to have fought them on equal terms for years.

Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war, and it must have brought a blush to the cheek of every honorable Roman when he reflected on the nation’s fearfully rapid decline since that great age. Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted if need be like a general, and fought often unsuccessfully, but always honorably; now it was difficult to find even a tolerably efficient leader among all the officers of rank. Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plow rather than forego the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now it was on the verge of abandoning both these long-since-conquered regions merely to defend itself against runaway slaves at home. Spartacus as well as Hannibal had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits, beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade. The enterprise which took the greatest general of antiquity to conduct it, against the Rome of former days, could now be undertaken by a daring bandit captain. Was there any wonder that such victories over rebels and robber chiefs produced no national upsurge?

The foreign wars had produced still less satisfactory results. It is true that the outcome of the Thraco-Macedonian war was not unfavorable, although far from corresponding to the cost. On the other hand, in the wars in Asia Minor and with the pirates the government had exhibited utter failure. The former ended with the loss of all conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter with the total driving of the Romans from “their own sea.” Once Rome, fully conscious of her irresistible power by land, had transferred her superiority also to the other element; now the mighty state was powerless at sea and apparently on the point of also losing its hegemony in Asia.

All the material benefits which a state exists to confer—security of frontiers, undisturbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection, and regulated administration—began to vanish for all the nations united in the Roman state. The gods of blessing seemed all to have mounted to Olympus, leaving the miserable earth at the mercy of official or volunteer plunderers and tormentors. Nor was this decay felt merely by those possessing political rights and public spirit. The slave revolts and the brigandage and piracy brought the sense of it home to the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and constituted a personal calamity for every one who pursued trade and commerce or bought a bushel of wheat.

If the authors of this dreadful and unparalleled misery are sought, it is not difficult to share the blame among many. The slaveowners whose hearts were in their moneybags, the insubordinate soldiers, the cowardly, incapable, or foolhardy generals, the demagogues running after shadows, all bore their share of the blame. Or, to speak more accurately, who did not share it? It was instinctively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder were too colossal to be the work of any one man. As the greatness of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals, but rather of a soundly organized body of citizens, so the decay of this mighty structure was not the work of some destructive genius but rather the result of a general disorganization. The great majority of the citizens were good for nothing, and every rotten stone helped to bring about the ruin of the whole structure. The whole nation suffered for what was the whole nation’s fault.

It was unfair to hold the government, as the ultimate organ of the state, responsible for all the state’s curable and incurable diseases; but it was certainly true that the government deserved a liberal share of the general culpability. In the Asiatic war, for example, where no individual of the ruling group conspicuously failed, and where Lucullus, from a military viewpoint, acted with ability and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame for the failure lay in the system and in the government as such—primarily, in that particular war, in the initial abandonment of Cappadocia and Syria, and in the awkward relations of an able general with a governing group incapable of energetic decision.

Likewise in combating piracy the Senate’s sound idea of a general clean-up was first spoiled in the execution and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system of sending legions against the coursers of the sea. The expeditions of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete, were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against the pirates. Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind us of that Persian great-king who ordered the sea to be scourged with rods to make it obey him.

Doubtless, therefore, the nation had good reason for blaming its failure primarily on the restoration government. A similar misrule had always accompanied the re-establishment of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that of Marius and Saturninus. Yet never before had it shown at the same time such violence and such laxity, never before had it been so corrupt and so pernicious. When a government cannot govern it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also the right to overthrow it.

It is no doubt unhappily true that an incapable government may long trample underfoot a nation’s welfare and honor, before men are found who are able and willing to wield against that government its own formidable weapons, and to forge the justifiable revolution out of the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many. But a game played with the fortunes of nations, however long and merry and undisturbed it may be, is ever a treacherous game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one blames the axe when it is laid to the root of the tree that bears such fruit. For the Roman oligarchy that hour had now come. The Asiatic war and the pirate campaigns provided the immediate cause of the overthrow of the Sullan restoration and the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.

1. The original continues by listing several such communities.

2. Mommsen continues here in the original to describe the domination of political life by the political clubs.

3. It was the gradual decline of moral standards—Mommsen continues in the original—that led such men to waste “the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious idleness.”

4. Mommsen’s personal contempt for Pompey is amplified in a further passage of the original, which charges Pompey with being a frightened man whose “deeply agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inner contradiction.”

5. Several such towns are listed in the original.

6. The original continues here by describing the clean-up in Spain after the Roman victory.