A Manual of Ancient History

by M. E. Thalheimer

145. Sulla increased the number of the Senate by 300 new members chosen from the knights, all, of course, adherents of his own. He gained, also, a sort of body-guard, by giving the rights of citizenship to 10,000 slaves of those whom he had proscribed. These freedmen all received his own clan-name, Cornelius, and became his clients. He rewarded his veterans with the confiscated lands of the Marian party, thus replacing honest and industrious farmers with too often lawless and thriftless military communities. When Sulla had held the dictatorship three years, he surprised the world by suddenly resigning it, and retiring to his country-seat at Pute´oli. Here he devoted his days to the amusements of literature, mingled, unhappily, with less ennobling pleasures. He died B. C. 78, the year following his abdication. Two days before his death he completed the history of his own life and times, in twenty-two volumes, in which he recorded the prediction of a Chaldæan soothsayer, that he should die, after a happy life, at the very height of his prosperity.

146. A remnant of the Marian faction still held out in the west of Spain. Sertorius had been sent to command that province, chiefly because, as the most honest and keen-sighted of the Marians, he was troublesome to his brother officers. During the proscription by Sulla, he was joined by many exiles, who aided him in drilling the native troops. Though driven for a time into Africa by the proconsul An´nius, he returned, upon the invitation of the Lusitanians, with a Libyan and Moorish army, which defeated the fleet of Sulla in the Straits of Gibraltar, and his land forces near the Guadalquivir. All Roman Spain became subject to Sertorius. With the aid of Cilician pirates, he captured the islands of Ivi´ca and Formente´ra. He formed a government, in which the senate was composed only of Romans; but he distinguished the native Spaniards by many marks of favor, and won their confidence not only by his brilliant genius, but by his perfect justice in the administration of their affairs.

147. Metellus, Sulla’s colleague in the consulship, who commanded his armies in Spain, was completely baffled by the unwearied activity and superior knowledge of the country displayed by Sertorius. At length Cneius Pompey, who had already, in his thirtieth year, gained the title of Great, and the honor of a triumph for his victories over the allies of the Marians in Africa, was sent into Spain with the title of proconsul, to share the command with Metellus. His military skill far surpassed that of his predecessors, but for five years the war was still dragged out with more loss and vexation than success.

At last, Sertorius was murdered by one of his own officers, a man of high birth, who envied the ascendency of genius and integrity, and hoped by removing his general to open the way to his own advancement. He was totally defeated and captured by Pompey in the first battle which he fought as commander-in-chief; and though he tried to save his life by giving up the papers of Sertorius, and thus betraying the secrets of his party in Rome, he was ordered to instant execution, B. C. 72.

148. The Spanish war was now ended, but a nearer and greater danger threatened Rome. The pride and luxury fed by foreign conquest had brought no increase of refinement to the common people; and their favorite amusement for festal days was to see the bravest captives, taken in war and trained for the purpose, slaughter each other in the amphitheater. The ædiles, who provided the public shows, vied with each other in the numbers and training of the gladiators, whom they either bought or hired from their owners for exhibition. Among the unhappy men who were under training in the school at Capua, was a Thracian peasant named Spar´tacus. His soul revolted against the beastly fate to which he was doomed, and he communicated his spirit to seventy of his comrades. Forcibly breaking bounds, they passed out at the gates of Capua, seized upon the road some wagon-loads of gladiators’ weapons, and took refuge in an extinct crater of Vesuvius. They defeated 3,000 soldiers who besieged them, and armed themselves more effectively with the spoils of the slain.

Spartacus proclaimed freedom to all slaves who would join him. The half-savage herdsmen of the Bruttian and Lucanian mountains sprang to arms at his call, and the number of insurgents quickly rose to 40,000. They defeated two legions under the prætor Varinius, stormed and plundered Thurii and Metapon´tum, Nola and Nuce´ria, and many other towns of southern Italy. In the second year their forces were increased to 100,000 men, and they defeated successively two consuls, two prætors, and the governor of Cisalpine Gaul. All Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Messana, quaked at the name of Spartacus, as it had done, more than a hundred years before, at that of Hannibal; but it only proved the decay of Roman character, that a mere bandit chief could accomplish what had once taxed the genius of the greatest general whom the world had yet produced.

149. Spartacus, however, saw clearly that in the end the organized power and resources of Rome must be superior to his own, and he only proposed to his followers to fight their way to and beyond the Alps, and then disperse to their homes; but the insurgents, spoiled with success, refused to leave Italy, and turned again to the south. Their winter-quarters, near Thurii, were like an immense fair crowded with the plunder of the whole peninsula, which merchants from far and near assembled to buy. Spartacus refused gold or silver, and took in exchange only iron or brass, which he converted into weapons of war by means of foundries established in his camp. In the panic which pervaded Rome, no one was willing to offer himself for the office of prætor. At length, Licinius Crassus accepted the appointment, and led eight legions into the field.

150. Spartacus was twice defeated, and driven to the southern point of Bruttium. Thence he tried to escape into Sicily, where the servile war was still smoldering and ready to be rekindled, and where, by holding the grain fields, he could soon have raised a bread-riot among the hungry mob of Rome. But the Cilician pirates, who had engaged to transport him, proved treacherous; and his attempt to convey his army across the straits on rafts and wicker boats was ineffectual. He then, in despair, broke the lines of Crassus, and once more threw Rome into great consternation.

But the same jealousies which had scattered the forces of Greeks and Romans, doomed the barbarians, also, to destruction. Thirty thousand Gauls separated themselves from Spartacus and his Thracians, and were totally destroyed near Crotona. The final encounter took place on the head-waters of the Silarus. Spartacus fell desperately fighting, and his army was destroyed. Only 5,000 of his men made their way to the north of Italy, where they were met by Pompey on his return from Spain, and all put to the sword. The 6,000 prisoners taken by Crassus were crucified along the Appian Way.