Sertorius had risen by his valour alone. In the times of Cinna, he had delivered Rome from the freedmen of Marius; when Sylla came to Italy, he was a legatus of the consuls. And now, when in the following year Carbo had managed affairs in Etruria in a hopelessly wretched way, he succeeded in getting a commission out in Spain to maintain that province for his party. Had he chanced to be at the head of Marius’ faction, (which was not the case, as he was above all intrigues,) he would have baffled the plans of Sylla. In Spain, not merely from policy, but because he was a man of noble mind, it was his aim to win over the Spaniards; wherever he could remedy their grievances, he did it, not treating them as despised provincials, but trying as much as possible to amalgamate them with the Romans: he thought of holding out in Spain, even when Italy was entirely lost. He had an army in the eastern Pyrenees, on the road which leads from the country between Perpignan and Collioure, with which he made head against the enemy under Livius[113] Salinator: but his men, after having already beaten off Annius whom Sylla had sent against them, were seduced to go over to the other side; on which he was forced to flee with a few followers who were true to him. This piece of treachery was part of Sylla’s astonishing luck. Sertorius at first roved over the sea, where the Romans had little power, and the pirates had greatly spread; then he tried for some time to maintain himself in Ivica. From thence he fled to the Lusitanians, who were the sworn foes of the Romans, and who trusted in his honour and uprightness; but as he could not stand his ground against overwhelming numbers, he embarked for Mauritania: there he declared for one of the two pretenders to the crown, and took Tangier, and got a great deal of booty. He was even thinking of withdrawing from public life altogether, and going to the Canary islands, so as to be out of the reach of Roman rule, and to live there in freedom; when there now came again to him an invitation from the Lusitanians, and with it the hope of being able to achieve something. The Roman commanders had, as usual, given vent to their rage in Spain, and had made the pursuit of Sertorius a pretext for plundering; Sylla moreover was dead, and in so distant a province, the belief that the fabric which he had built would fall to pieces, was quite natural. Romans and Spaniards declared for Sertorius; particularly the half-citizens (hybridæ), who, being the children of Roman soldiers by Spanish women, had no franchise, but yet considered themselves as Roman citizens, and had Roman names, and also spake both Roman and Spanish: they were the corner-stone of his power, the link which connected him with the Spaniards. Proscribed Romans who had hidden themselves hitherto, now came forward to join him; the Spaniards likewise, especially the Celtiberians, were filled with enthusiasm for him and took up arms.
As soon as he could look upon himself as having the chief command in Spain, he proceeded, according to a well-arranged plan, to change the Spaniards into Romans, so that they were to take their tone from Roman civilisation and Roman life; but he did not wish to sacrifice any of that loftiness which the Spanish character had of its own. He gathered from among the proscribed, and the other Romans who were scattered in the provinces, from among the hybridæ, and partly also, no doubt, from among the noble Spaniards, a senate of three hundred members, which is spoken of in history (Sall. Fragm.)[114] as Senatus Hispanicus; thus making a Rome out of Rome. Then he established at Osca, a town in the north of Spain (the Huesca of the present day), an academy, into which he got together the sons of the most distinguished men, and had them instructed in the Roman language and grammar, according to the ancient meaning of that word. They were also, like the young Romans of rank, adorned with the bulla and dressed in the prætexta; it is evident that he secured to them the Roman franchise. These boys were at the same time to be to him the hostages for the fidelity of the parents, a thing which was very necessary, owing to the capricious disposition of the Spaniards. There was moreover formed around him a body-guard of men who, according to a custom which was peculiar to the Spaniards, took a vow not to survive him, and therefore in fighting for him, fought also for their own lives: this he readily agreed to, and it was a very numerous band. He also worked on their imagination, addressing himself to their own fancies. We need not assume with Plutarch, that it was trickery and cunning: it is very possible that, living among them, he shared their prejudices, when he treated a white hind as a fairy who disclosed to him the future. I believe that he was open to such impressions, like his master and instructor Marius.
The war lasted eight years from his first appearance in Spain to his death; but in fact there were not more than six years from the time when, after the downfall of his party, he placed himself at the head of the Spaniards. The Romans sent Q. Metellus—called Pius on account of his filial love to his father Q. Metellus Numidicus—against him into Bætica. Metellus was at first successful; but Sertorius soon gained more and more the advantage over him, so that the Romans gave the command to Cn. Pompey.
Cn. Pompey, at that time, was still of the equestrian order, that is to say, he had not yet held any office which entitled him to be chosen into the senate; he was about thirty years old. It is very difficult to speak at all decidedly of Pompey, as he is not one of those characters, like Marius, Sylla, Sertorius, or Cæsar, the outlines of which are distinct and marked; it is even hard to say whether he was a great general or not. He was one of those whose high position depends on their having been, if not altogether, at least to a certain degree favoured by fortune; he had not sufficient strength and greatness of soul to display the same bearing throughout a whole life, even in misfortune itself. There can be no mistake as to his having greatly distinguished himself under Sylla in the Social War, as the latter, who certainly was a competent judge on this point, particularly esteemed him. In the war of Sertorius, Pompey undoubtedly showed himself very different from Metellus, although Sertorius was superior to him in generalship; the war against the pirates was uncommonly well planned and speedily executed; the war with Mithridates was not a difficult one to carry on, still he was quick and resolute, and turned every circumstance to good account. Yet from the time of his triumph over Mithridates to the civil war against Cæsar, he appears to have been any thing but great, either as a citizen or a statesman. In the madness of his folly he wants to crush Cæsar, yet he is intimidated by the factions; just in the same way, he quailed before the faction of Clodius, and he was mean towards Cæsar, to whose superiority he was wilfully blind: he behaved like a trimmer and a thorough coward in the affair of Cicero’s impeachment, and he never could be trusted as a friend. In his youth, during the war of Sylla, he showed himself cruel; and Cicero entertains no doubt but that in his old age, he would, if victorious, have renewed the proscriptions of Sylla. Nor is he much to be praised for any other great qualities: in eloquence and education he was nothing remarkable, he was even below mediocrity.
His head on his statues and busts, which we have no reason not to believe true likenesses, has something vulgar and coarse about it; in that of Cæsar’s, we see the full expression of his vast and quick intellect. Pompey from weakness was at different times a different man, and had very much fallen off in his later years, though he was not more than fifty-six when he died: in his youth he was a much abler man.
In several campaigns, (in two of them especially,) Sertorius succeeded so well, that Metellus had to retreat to Andalusia, and Pompey across the Pyrenees, whilst he himself was able to return quietly into winter-quarters. Had the Spaniards only stood by each other, he would certainly have beaten both of these enemies; but he had just as much to struggle against the traitors among the Spaniards as against the Romans themselves. In two battles, on the Guadalquivir and on the Sucro, he withstood the united forces of the two Roman generals, and in both, one wing of each army was victorious; but as the Spaniards did not remain true to him, he got at last into very serious difficulties, notwithstanding all the readiness of his inventive mind. Many towns fell away from him; but in other quarters he met with all that faithful attachment is able to do: when Calagurris held out against a very sharp siege, he did his utmost to relieve it, in which he was also at length successful. Yet the cowardice and faithlessness of several towns goaded him into an action which is a stain upon his life: he even sold their hostages for slaves. It is true that other generals have often behaved in the same way; but yet he ought not to have done it, as it was at variance with his noble-heartedness, and his power was altogether a moral one: the consequence of it was, that the attachment of the other towns began likewise to waver.
With Sertorius was M. Perperna, a Roman of very high rank, probably a son of the consular M. Peperna: to judge from his name, he was most likely of Etruscan extraction, -na being an Etruscan termination which corresponds to the Roman -ius.[115] He had gathered together the remnants of the soldiers of Lepidus, and had wished at first to carry on the war by himself; but he was forced by his own troops to lead them over from Sardinia into Spain, and to acknowledge Sertorius as commander-in-chief. This man conspired with some other Romans against Sertorius, who before that had already had several persons executed for plots of this kind; owing to this circumstance, Perperna found many who were ready to join him. Sertorius was murdered at a feast. At his funeral, an incredible number of Spaniards, faithful to their vow, fell by each other’s hands. Perperna was from necessity acknowledged as general; but in the first engagement with Pompey, he was utterly routed, taken prisoner, and put to death.[116]
SERVILE WAR. SPARTACUS. M. LICINIUS CRASSUS.
Pompey was now made consul: he was the favourite of the people, as it was expected that he would restore the tribuneship. In no other way can I account for this enthusiasm. It might indeed much rather have been felt for Cæsar, whose nature was such that no worthy hearted man could come near him without loving him, even as Cicero in truth was always fond of him: it is a very noble want of the people, that it longs so often to find an object for its enthusiasm. Pompey had not yet been invested with any curule dignity; notwithstanding which, he was consul with Crassus, a man with whom he was at that time on such ill terms, that the Romans trembled lest the two foes should take up arms against each other. But at the urgent entreaties of the senate they made up their quarrel, and both of them behaved like honourable men; for during nineteen years afterwards they never were really enemies again, and they sometimes even appeared to be very good friends.
Crassus had gained his importance as the conqueror of Spartacus. About three[117] years after Sylla’s death, Spartacus, a Thracian, had with forty, others say with seventy-four gladiators, broken out of a barrack of gladiators at Capua. There is a house at Pompeii which is very like a barrack, with rooms in which arms were found, and which has therefore been called the soldiers’ quarters. The very fact that there should have been a garrison at Pompeii, seemed to me quite incredible; but on closer examination, I recognised the arms as being of the same description as those described by Livy as having been in use among the Samnites, which were afterwards adopted by the Campanians, and then by the gladiators; there is therefore no doubt but that it was a ludus gladiatorius, which we must thus suppose to have been a building of this kind, in which the gladiators were shut up at night. The number of the gladiators had gone on increasing; as the rage for them among the Romans had daily become greater, and such games were the surest means by which the men of rank could make themselves popular.