Reaction in favor of the aristocracy.
Sulla was alive when M. Lepidus came forward as the leader of the democratic party against C. Lutatius Catulus—a man without character or ability, who had deserted from the optimates to the popular party, to escape prosecution for the plunder of Sicily. The fortune he acquired in his government of that province enabled Lepidus to secure his election as consul, B.C. 78, and he even attempted to deprive Sulla of his funeral honors. A conspiracy was organized in Etruria, where the Sullan confiscation had been most severe. Lepidus came forward as an avenger of the old Romans whose fortunes had been ruined. The Senate, fearing convulsions, made Lepidus and Catulus, the consuls, swear not to take up arms against each other; but at the expiration of the consulship of Lepidus, went, as was usual, to the province assigned to him. This was Gaul, and here the war first broke out. An attempt on Rome was frustrated by Catulus, who defeated Lepidus, and the latter soon died in Sardinia, whither he had retired.
Sertorius.
Sertorius was then in command of the army in Spain,—a [pg 521] man who had risen from an obscure position, but who possessed the hardy virtues of the old Sabine farmers. He served under Marius in Gaul, and was prætor when Sulla returned to Italy. When the cause of Marius was lost in Africa, he organized a resistance to Sulla in Spain. His army was re-enforced by Marian refugees, and he was aided by the Iberian tribes, among whom he was a favorite. For eight years this celebrated hero baffled the armies which Rome, under the lead of the aristocracy, sent against him, for he undertook to restore the cause of the democracy.
Pompey.
Against Sertorius was sent the man who, next to Cæsar, was destined to play the most important part in the history of those times—Cn. Pompeius, born the same year as Cicero, B.C. 106, who had enlisted in the cause of Sulla, and early distinguished himself against the generals of Marius. He gained great successes in Sicily and Africa, and was, on his return to Rome, saluted by the dictator Sulla himself with the name of Magnus, which title he ever afterward bore. He was then a simple equestrian, and had not risen to the rank of quæstor, or prætor, or consul. Yet he had, at the early age of twenty-four, without enjoying any curule office, the honor of a triumph, even against the opposition of Sulla.
Death of Sertorius.
Pompey was sent to Spain with the title of proconsul, and with an army of thirty thousand men. He crossed the Alps between the sources of the Rhone and Po, and advanced to the southern coast of Spain. Here he was met by Sertorius, and at first was worsted. I need not detail the varied events of this war in Spain. The Spaniards at length grew weary of a contest which was not to their benefit, but which was carried on in behalf of rival factions at the capital. Dissensions broke out among the officers of Sertorius, and he was killed at a banquet by Perpenna, his lieutenant. On the death of the only man capable of resisting the aristocracy of Rome, and whose virtues were worthy of the ancient heroes, the progress of Pompey was easy. Perpenna [pg 522] was taken prisoner and his army was dispersed, and Spain was reduced to obedience.
Servile war. Pompey.
In the mean time, while Pompey was fighting Sertorius in Spain, a servile war broke out in Italy, produced in part by the immense demand of slaves for the gladiatorial shows. One of these slaves, Spartacus, once a Thracian captain of banditti, escaped with seventy comrades to the crater of Vesuvius, and organized an insurrection, and he was soon at the head of one hundred thousand of those wretched captives whose condition was unendurable. Italy was ravaged from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. No Roman general, then in Italy, was equal to the task of subduing them. But, in the second year of the war, Crassus, who was a great proprietor of slaves, and who had ably served under Sulla, undertook the task of subduing the insurrectionary slaves. With six legions he drove them to the extremity of the Bruttian peninsula, and shut them up in Rhegium by strong lines of circumvallation. Spartacus was killed, after having broken through the lines, and most of his followers were destroyed; but six thousand escaped into Cisalpine Gaul, as the northern part of Italy was then called, and met Pompey on his victorious return from Spain, by whom they were utterly annihilated. Pompey claimed the merit of ending the servile war, and sought the honor of the consulship, although ineligible. Crassus, also ineligible, also demanded the consulship, and both these lieutenants of Sulla obtained their ends. But both, in order to obtain the consulship, made great promises. Pompey, in particular, promised to restore the tribunitian power. Pompey now broke with the aristocracy, whose champion he had been, and even carried another law by which the judices were taken from the equites as well as the Senate. Thus was the constitution of Sulla subverted within ten years. In this movement Pompey was supported by Julius Cæsar, who was a young man of thirty years of age.