The Italian peoples, according to Appian,[95] who alone has recorded this fact, had established a senate of five hundred persons, and chosen two consuls and twelve prætors, thus altogether adopting the forms of the Roman republic. One consul was Pompædius Silo, the soul of the undertaking, who was a Marsian and the guest-friend of Drusus, with whom he had formerly negotiated; the second was C. Papius Mutilus, a Sabine. And not to speak of this constitution, the nations were very widely distinct from each other: they had been parted for centuries, each standing by itself; so that when they now made themselves independent of Rome, there could not but have been a great temptation to be independent of each other, their principles and pursuits being different. The Samnites, whom afterwards C. Pontius Telesinus led against Rome, that he might, as he said, destroy the den of the wolf, had from of old entertained an implacable hatred against Rome; and indeed Pontius Telesinus himself, who in this war with Sylla showed such undaunted resolution, and whose thoughts were ever bent on Rome’s annihilation, may have sprung from the Gens Pontia of that C. Pontius who had so terribly humbled the Romans at Caudium. The Marsians, on the other hand, had never had a fierce and protracted war with the Romans, as the latter had always faithfully fulfilled their honourable conditions with them. These therefore were quite a heterogeneous element of the league. The seat of the government was Corfinium, in the country of the Pelignians, a small but valiant people, and the town now assumed the name of Italica: denarii are not unseldom found, which have the inscription Italia and Viteliu. The latter, which is the Oscan way of writing, belongs to the Samnites; the former, the Latin one, to the Marsians, who had a language of their own, but Latin letters: from this we see that those nations differed also in their languages. Among the Samnites, the Oscan was indeed the prevailing language; the Marsians and their allies were of far purer race than the Sabines, although in a wider sense of the word they were all of them Sabines. There are also coins still existing with the likeness of C. Papius Mutilus.
At the outbreak of the war, the allies had decidedly the advantage. The only thing which saved the Romans, was that the Latin colonies remained true to them; as there is no doubt but that as soon as ever the struggle began, the Romans granted the full franchise to the Latins by the lex Julia, which was so called from the consul L. Julius Cæsar. It is a common, but yet an incorrect way of speaking, to say that the Italians had got the rights of citizenship through the lex Julia; for they did not get these all at once by one law, but by several distinct enactments which were successively enlarged. Unhappily we know of none of their details. The lex Julia applied to the forty or fifty Latin colonies; and not only to those in Italy, but also to Narbo and Aquæ Sextiæ (the former is mentioned at a later period as colonia civium Romanorum), and without doubt to Tibur and Præneste as well, besides those other old Latin towns which had not received all the rights of citizenship in the year 417.[96] To this last class the Hernican towns especially belonged; and perhaps also Venafrum, Atina, and some others, in which at that time there was a præfectura. This gave a great increase to the strength of the Romans, who even in the war with Hannibal had thus brought into the field eighty thousand men able to bear arms, all of whom spoke Latin, Roman citizens likewise being mingled with them. It was now seen how foolish it was in the Romans to have let things go so far; for had they turned a deaf ear to the Latins also, Rome would have been lost. This grant of the franchise dates from the beginning of the year.
Although Hiero in his day had still said that the Romans employed none but Italian troops, yet they now carried on the war with soldiers raised from whatever country they could get them, with Gauls, Mauritanians, Numidians, Asiatics: not a place was spared in the levy. Thus by degrees the preponderance of the Italians was balanced by the Latins, and outweighed at last by the foreigners. Moreover, Rome had an immense advantage from her central position, and her colonies which were scattered all over Italy. By her position, she cut off the North from the South; by her colonies, which it was everywhere necessary to beset with troops, the resources of the allies were frittered away.
The history of the war is chiefly to be found in Diodorus and Appian. I have been at much pains about it, and have tried to put the materials in order; yet I have only just barely succeeded in getting anything like a clear notion of it. The scene of the war was in three different districts: there was an army of the south, a central, and a northern army. The southern army of the allies was in Campania as far as the Liris; that of the centre, was from the Liris, all through the country of the Sabines, to the neighbourhood of Picenum; that of the north, in Picenum: here was the utmost boundary of the operations, whilst the Greek towns in the rear of the Italians kept neutral. Nothing whatever is now said of the Bruttians; so much had that unfortunate nation suffered in the war of Hannibal: nor is there any mention of the Messapians, who may already have been entirely hellenized. The Roman colony of Venusia, as we remarked above, took the side of the allies, its population having at length almost become Apulian and Lucanian, so that indeed the Latin language was scarcely any longer the one most in use. In the army of the South, C. Papius Mutilus held the command against the Roman consul L. Julius Cæsar. Mutilus conquered Nola, Muceria, Pompeii, and Stabiæ, and carried the war into Campania. Capua was kept by the Romans; Naples and the Greek cities remained faithful, acting as if the war was no concern of theirs. The struggle was very sharp around Acerræ: at the end of the year, the allies had the best of it.
With the army of the centre, Pompædius, or Poppædius, Silo opposed P. Rutilius Lupus: the former showed himself to have been a great general, and the Roman commander, who was no match for him, lost his life in the battle. But Sylla and Marius were with the army there, which was the main one, as lieutenant-generals; and Rome owed it to these, that limits were put to the success of the enemy. The Latin colony of Æsernia in the midst of Samnium, was conquered by the Samnites. Here was seen the hatred of the colonies against the Italians; for the people of Æsernia, who seem to have had faith in the lucky star of Rome, held out until they were reduced by hunger: the Samnites in the beginning of the siege had certainly offered them a free retreat. The first who had any brilliant success, was Cn. Pompeius Strabo, the father of him who afterwards was called Magnus, a prætor proconsulari potestate: he had all the profligacy of his age, notwithstanding which he was a distinguished man. He defeated the Picentines in a battle near Asculum, where there were 75,000 Italians against 65,000 Romans: the Romans gained a decisive victory, and a terrible chastisement was inflicted upon Asculum. The Picentines, on the whole, had to suffer most grievously for their conduct. Cn. Pompeius now advanced from the north: the Italian peoples lost their feeling of confidence in victory, and owing to the want of hearty union among themselves, were no longer able to stand their ground. First of all, the Vestinians separated from the rest; and now the Romans held out allurements to the nations singly, granting them peace and the franchise. What the conditions were we know not, though there must have been more than the civitas sine suffragio: the Romans, however, must have taken care not to lay down a distinct rule; for afterwards there is a dispute about the meaning of the grant. Velleius Paterculus, a very ingenious writer who was perfectly master of his subject, whatever objections one may have to the man himself, tells us that nearly three hundred thousand Italians who were able to bear arms, perished in this war; and that the Romans had not yielded the citizenship to the Italians, until they had spent the last drop of blood which they had to shed. We may, therefore, take it for granted, that half of the whole number of men engaged on both sides were killed, and that therefore the struggle was carried on with the greatest fury, as in a civil war: hence Appian also places it in his work as such.
In the second year, the war is still less to be made out than in the first: thus much only is certain, that the northern Sabellian peoples also, the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians, had now a separate peace, even as early perhaps as the end of the first year. These new citizens were not distributed among the old tribes, but others were formed out of them: this was quite in keeping with the system of the ancients, as otherwise the old citizens would have been outnumbered in the assemblies of the people, and in the elections, by the new ones. It is not known for certain how many fresh tribes were created: according to a passage in Velleius, there were eight of them. Another statement in Appian[97] is evidently written wrong: there we find δεκατεύοντες ὰπέφηναν ἑτέρας (viz. φυλάς), from which δέκα φυλάς, has been gathered, though perhaps it would then have been better to read δέκα ἐξ αὐτῶν. Yet, from Appian’s usual way of speaking, it seems to have been δεκαπέντε. My reasons for this, are from a feeling of symmetry: if we add 15 to 35, we have 50; 35 is quite an awkward number, which had grown up by degrees, and at which one would not wish to stop; 15 is to 35 as 3 to 7, and is therefore somewhat less than half of the original number, which was now of necessity to be changed. That Velleius has eight, I account for by the circumstance that the Latins had eight tribes given them, and afterwards the Etruscans and Umbrians got seven.
The number of battles fought in this war, is even beyond belief. Corfinium took again its old name, and the seat of government was transferred to Æsernia; the Samnites now formed the real centre of the war, and they carried it on with the same perseverance as they had done in former times: this was at least the case with the three cantons of the Hirpinians, the Caudines, and the Pentrians. The Romans marched into Apulia, and entirely surrounded the Samnites; so that already by the end of the year 663, the war was well nigh decided. The Samnites indeed still held out; yet there were none in arms besides them, but a part of the Apulians and Lucanians. These peoples went on with the war from despair alone: they either reckoned on the movement in Asia caused by the war of Mithridates, or they had made up their minds to perish.
In this second year of the war, there was also a rising of the Etruscans and the Umbrians: but they soon made their peace with the Romans. Their rebellion took quite a different character from that of the Italians:—a prætor conquers the Etruscans, and they get the franchise at once. The Etruscans had formerly furnished no troops for the Roman army: yet now they were ready to take up arms for an honour to which they had not hitherto attached any value. The Roman of rank had in the Marsian a very dangerous rival for all the offices; whereas, on the other hand, the Etruscan, being as a foreigner quite distinct from the Roman, had far less chance of getting these places. The Marsians were to the Romans very much like what the Germans of the North are to those of the South; and therefore they readily blended with the Romans, whilst the Etruscans were to these, as the French, or the Slavonians are to the Germans. The Samnites, as in olden times, wished for the destruction of Rome.
The Italian war had raised the glory of Sylla to its highest point, and now his aversion and enmity against Marius showed itself conspicuously. In the year 664, Sylla had been elected consul at the age of forty-nine, while Marius was already past seventy: Sylla therefore decidedly belonged to a later generation. This utterly widened the breach which in everything had existed between them. Sylla (Sulla) is a most original character, and it is difficult to give a cut and dry opinion about him. He was a great general, and also a favourite of fortune, a circumstance on which he himself laid great stress, and which also drew the attention of the crowd upon him; nor is it a delusion, that some men are favoured by luck, either always, or for a long run. When still a very young man, being much under forty, he had distinguished himself in the war of Jugurtha, serving as quæstor under Marius; and he had had the good fortune to carry on the negotiations with Bocchus, so that he looked upon the ending of it as his own work. He had likewise won renown in the Cimbric, and still more so in the Italian war, in the which he far outshone Marius, as he was the only Roman who played a brilliant part in it. He was of the illustrious gens of the Cornelii, and was descended in the sixth generation from that P. Cornelius Rufinus who is honourably mentioned in the war with Pyrrhus; yet the family to which he belonged was undistinguished. The name of Sulla has been rightly derived by Gronovius from Sura (Surula, by contraction Sulla); consequently it is an apparent diminutive which has the same meaning as the root itself. Sura was a surname of the Lentuli and others. He was in every respect the opposite of Marius. The latter had risen from the ranks, and was a soldier of fortune; Sylla, on the contrary, was a refined man of the world: for his chief delight was in Greek literature; he was quite a master of the Greek language, and a writer of elegant taste. His family being poor, he rose from under as great difficulties as if he had been of humble parentage: the patrician ties were broken, and the Scipios and Lentuli were of no help to him. Marius had all the unhappy feelings of an old man against a younger one who is making his way: this rising sun troubled him, and made him ill at ease; and by treating that extraordinary man with envy and jealousy, he provoked him to an opposition, which—certainly from Marius’ own fault at first—gave birth to their mutual dislike. Ever since the time of the war with Jugurtha, Marius had done his best to keep his rival down; and Sylla must also have said to himself, “had I been in Marius’ place, I should have done just as he did.” Notwithstanding his old age, Marius was insatiable of ruling and commanding, and demanded for himself the conduct of the war against Mithridates, which had been given to Sylla as the consul of that year.
The motive for this war was the very justest on the side of Mithridates, the wrong done by the Romans being too glaring. Mithridates had sprung from a Persian family, which even as early as under the Persian kings had its satrapy in Pontus: the first whom we know of it, in all likelihood was Ariobarzanes, governor of those countries under Ochus. Perhaps it was one of the seven noble families which alone had freedom, being in some sort sacrosancti, and invested with the hereditary dignity of governors of those parts. The nation consisted of Syrians and Assyrians; that is to say, the great mass may originally have been Armenian, but as early as in the times of the Assyrian rule over Asia, a colony of Assyrians may have settled here, who called themselves Leuco-Syrians. It was their good fortune, that Alexander did not devastate their country; it was only under his successors, that they got involved in the Macedonian wars: Mithridates the son of the then governor, who arrogated to himself the dignity of a tributary prince, escaped by the friendship of Demetrius Poliorcetes from the jealousy of Antiochus the One-eyed, the father of Demetrius. These countries afterwards established their power on so firm a footing, that even in the fifth century of Rome, their governors already took the title of kings. During the long wars of the successors of Alexander, particularly those of the Syrian kings with Egypt, their strength was completely consolidated; but they were divided by inheritance into two kingdoms, Cappadocia and Pontus proper: they were either under the same dynasty, or at least both of them subject to Persian families. This separation still continued in the beginning of the seventh century (about the year 620), when a Mithridates ruled over Pontus proper and part of Paphlagonia: he gave help to the Romans against Aristonicus, and had before that sent galleys against Carthage; and as a reward they yielded up to him Great Phrygia, which until then had belonged to the kingdom of Pergamus. From a fragment of a speech of C. Gracchus, we find, however, that he had bought this grant from those, who were in power at Rome. Thus then his kingdom was of great extent, and its strength and its revenues were considerable, on quite a different scale from that of our poor Europe. At that time, Lesser Asia was divided into the kingdoms of Pontus and Bithynia, of which the former was the largest; into the Roman province; and into Cappadocia and the southern coast, where Cilicia, Caria, Pamphylia, and a number of small independent states, were then in a chaotic confusion.