Spartacus, after having broken out, escaped with his followers to mount Vesuvius: he must have been a very great man, and would undoubtedly have proved himself to be one in any other position. The volcano had at that time quite burnt out: there was on it an old tumbled-down crater very difficult of access, in which they hid themselves, and whither immense crowds of slaves, of which there were then great numbers in Italy, ran to join them. Spartacus at first formed a band of robbers; and when troops were sent to surround and take him, he gave them the slip, and defeated the Romans with much loss on their side. By this means, the slaves began to be provided with good arms; hitherto they had made their own weapons themselves, as well as they could. Spartacus now proclaimed the freedom of the slaves. Lower Italy was in those days either altogether lying waste, or it was overrun by slaves, all of whom forthwith hastened to him: the freemen had so much dwindled since the devastations of Sylla, that there was no one at hand to check the insurrection. It is strange that among the slaves Germans also are positively mentioned: of these there cannot now have been many from the Teutones; they must have come thither from the Gauls by commercium. The leaders ruled with dictatorial power; Spartacus was a Thracian, Crixus and Oenomaus were Gauls. The war lasted until the third year. Two consular, and three prætorian armies were utterly routed; a great number of towns like Nola, Grumentum, Thurii, very likely also Compsa in the country of the Hirpinians, were taken and sacked with the atrocious cruelty which might have been looked for in a horde of bandits; we know but the smallest part of these horrors. Crassus defeated them in the third year. They had large forges for making arms, and did not shrink from the mighty thought of conquering the greater part of Italy, not to speak of destroying Rome itself. Rome would have been obliged to concentrate her power from all quarters, had not quarrels arisen among the rebels themselves, owing to which they split into three different bodies, each of which was hostile to the others; thus Crassus was enabled to defeat them one by one. Near Petilia in Lucania, he gained the last decisive victory; and he followed it up with the same cruelty which the German princes displayed after the Peasants’ War in the sixteenth century. Every where prisoners were seen speared, hung up mangled on the highways, and tortured to death. The devastations of southern Italy have indeed never been so completely repaired, as to restore it to the same condition as that to which it had reached before the Marsian war; yet I fully believe, that even its present wretched state is better, and that its inhabitants are more numerous, than in the most prosperous times under the emperors. The free population was quite rooted out, the towns were laid waste, and the few places which are mentioned of Lucania in the itineraries, were hardly anything else but posting stages; the whole country moreover was turned into large estates which were used for the breeding of cattle, especially of horses. The number of monuments which one finds of the towns of that period, is incredibly small.

SECOND AND THIRD WAR AGAINST MITHRIDATES.

At the same time, Rome was carrying on a war in Asia, against Mithridates. It was also in fact the third against him, and it had sprung out of the one with Sertorius: others, however, call it the second.

After Sylla had left Asia, Mithridates fulfilled most of the conditions of the peace; he gave Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Paphlagonia to the prince set up by the Romans; he also had delivered up ships, money and prisoners; in Cappadocia alone, the surrender had not been complete. Yet he had likewise yielded up the greater part of that country to Ariobarzanes, the prince protected by Romans, and he had kept but a small part of it; nor can we blame his motives for doing so. Having faithfully performed every stipulation with the exception of this single point, he now demanded that the Romans should exchange the treaty in form, and that the peace should be ratified in a regular written document by the senate and people, as Sylla had promised him; for as yet he had but Sylla’s word. That he had not put forth these claims at once, was very naturally owing to Sylla’s wishing first to regain Italy himself. Afterwards, the blame lay not so much with Sylla, who was not false in such matters, as with the senate, which flatly refused to grant such a document.

L. Murena now proceeded to Cappadocia, and thence he made an inroad into Mithridates’ territory, and plundered the rich temple of Anaitis in Comana. Although Mithridates did everything in his power to avoid a collision, Murena carried things so far that a war broke out, in which he was worsted. After this, Mithridates still continued to declare with perfect truth, that he was only acting in self-defence; and he begged the Romans to ratify the treaty. Sertorius being still in arms, the Romans held their peace and took his excuses; but the treaties seem never to have been exchanged.

They left him in possession of that part of Cappadocia, and he affianced to Ariobarzanes one of his daughters who at that time was still a child. This is to be considered as the second Mithridatic War.

The last great war against Mithridates, a war which lasted even to the twelfth year, was brought about by Sertorius, who sent two proscribed persons (L. Marius, probably a Campanian new-citizen, and L. Fannius) to Mithridates, and made an alliance with him. It was stipulated that the latter should aid Sertorius with his naval forces, and place at his disposition the Cilician pirates, who were under his influence; Sertorius, on the other hand, was in the event of success to give up the whole of Asia to Mithridates.

END OF VOL. II.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Monte Pellegrino.—Germ. Edit.