The spirits of the victors of so many encounters were elated to the highest pitch. The Etruscans and Umbrians began to falter in their allegiance to Rome, while the envoys of the Italians were seeking a more distant and still more formidable alliance at the court of Mithridates, king of Pontus, a chieftain whose power and resources the republic had not yet learned to measure. The Romans on their part, though neither dismayed nor disconcerted, began to feel the imminence of their danger. The sense of peril restored, perhaps, their national feelings of pride and mutual confidence. The bodies of the consul and the brave officers who had fallen had been carried into the city, and had excited the deepest sensations of distress. The senate was compelled to decree that henceforth the dead should be buried on the spot where they fell. As in the days of the Gallic tumults, all the citizens arrayed themselves in arms, and swords were placed in the hands of the freedmen, of whom several corps were formed for the defence of the city and its environs. In this attitude of grave resolution they awaited the arrival of succours from the provinces. Sicily signalised its fidelity by the zeal with which it furnished the necessaries of war. The Cisalpine Gaul sent ten thousand soldiers to the army of Cæsar at Teanum; and he was further reinforced by numerous bodies of Moors and Numidians. Enabled now to reassume the offensive he advanced once more to the relief of Acerræ, defeated Mutilus with great slaughter, and threw succours into the place. The citizens were reassured by this gleam of victory, and resumed within their walls the garb and occupations of peace.
MARIUS ASSUMES THE COMMAND
With this victory of Cæsar fortune began to turn to the side of the Romans, but still with faltering and uncertain steps. After the defeat of Rutilius the senate had united his shattered forces with the divisions of Marius and Cæpio, but so deep was its jealousy of its veteran general that it combined his inexperienced colleague in the command with him with equal authority. Cæpio, dazzled by a trifling success, allowed himself to fall into the snares of Pompædius. The Marsian, pretending to deliver himself up to the republic, came with two young slaves, to personate his own sons, as hostages, with ingots of gilt lead to represent gold, and offered to surrender to the Roman the army confided to him. Cæpio put himself under his guidance, and was led into an ambuscade. Pompædius galloped to an eminence under pretence of reconnoitring, and gave the signal to his troops. The Romans were surrounded, attacked, and cut to pieces, and Cæpio the proconsul with them. This disaster, followed by the surrender of Æsernia, which had suffered the extremity of famine, compelled the senate to transfer to Marius the undivided command of all its forces in that quarter. He commenced his operations with the same circumspection which he had manifested in his campaign against the Teutones. By the able choice of his positions he secured the frontier against the inroads of the victorious Marsians, whom he refused to encounter in the open field with his own beaten and dispirited soldiers. “If you are so great a general,” exclaimed his opponent, “why come you not to the combat?” “So powerful and so victorious, why do you not compel me?” replied Marius.
But when the proper moment arrived, the conqueror of the Cimbri knew how to profit by it. He engaged the enemy and defeated them with great slaughter, including the loss of Herius Asinius, chief of the Marrucinians. But the peasant of Arpinum, the accomplice of Saturninus, the man who had defied the nobles of Rome, who had armed the proletaries, and enfranchised the Italian veterans, could not fail to cherish sympathy with the nations now opposed to him. To Marius at least the war was a civil war, and many of his legionaries appear to have entertained a similar feeling. When his troops found themselves arranged in front of the forces of Pompædius, they recognised in the opposite ranks many of their own guests and kinsmen. They called one another by their names, and made kindly gestures with their hands. The two chiefs came forth from the ranks and entered into conversation together, deploring the unnatural contest which had so long divided them. Encouraged by the familiarity of their leaders the soldiers themselves broke from their lines, and mingled with one another in the plain, like citizens in their common forum. We may believe that Marius would have been well pleased to put an end to the war by the concession upon the spot of demands to which he at least was indifferent or favourable. But he commanded a portion only of the forces of the republic, and besides the army of Cæsar in the south, he was checked by the jealous observation of his own lieutenant Sulla, who had already more than once snatched the laurels from his hand. He was forced to engage the enemy once more; but he fought without spirit, and refused to complete his victory. The honour of the day fell again to his youthful rival, who attacked the Italians in their retreat, and thoroughly routed them. It was the first time, according to the boast of the vanquished Marsians, that the Romans had ever won a battle either against them, or without them.
Marius might plead the languor and ill-training of his raw soldiers for the want of spirit he had himself manifested; but the easy success which followed upon the more decisive blows of his subordinate were sufficient to refute him. The same vacillating and inconsistent politician, who as tribune had repudiated a popular measure, who as consul had launched himself against the senate, who had seconded Saturninus and presently reduced him to submission, who had favoured the Italians and finally had led the legions against them, had now once more abandoned his post, and grounded his arms in the moment of victory. After the affair of Saturninus, suspicious and suspected on all sides, he had retired moodily into voluntary exile. He now renounced the command by which he had made the Italians his enemies without securing the gratitude of the Romans, and pretended that age and infirmities unfitted him for the duties of the camp. He retired to his villa at Misenum, formerly the residence of the mother of the Gracchi, while Sulla sprang into his place at the head of the legions and at the summit of popular favour.
Meanwhile the Roman arms had been crowned with success in other partial encounters. The Umbrians and Etruscans, who had threatened for a moment to join the general defection, were chastised and checked. But fresh dangers were accumulating in the remoter distance. The trans-Alpine province was harassed by an insurrection of the Salyes, which required to be promptly repressed, and the king of Pontus was preparing to take up arms and wrest from the republic her possessions in the East. At such a conjuncture policy might dictate the concessions which pride had so resolutely refused, and in the moment of victory they could be accorded with a better grace. The consul Cæsar was empowered to carry a law for imparting the franchise to all the Italian states which had held aloof from the general insurrection, together with those already in the enjoyment of Latin rights. The lex Julia, both in its principle and its immediate effects one of the most important enactments of the republic, required the citizens of such states, including Umbria, Etruria, and the southern extremities of the peninsula, to come in person to Rome, and demand the freedom of the city within sixty days. The time allowed for deliberation was not long, and the hardships and dangers of the journey might deter many even of those who could resolve at once to renounce their own laws and institutions for the charges and immunities of the metropolis. It is probable therefore that the concession was after all more specious than real; and that the numbers who actually availed themselves of it were but limited. Nevertheless, it served to impart new hopes to the Italians, to distract their councils, and to relax the sinews of resistance.
[90-88 B.C.]
With the commencement of the second year of war (89), the Romans were enabled to assume the offensive in every quarter. Cn. Pompeius and Porcius Cato, the consuls of the year, assailed the confederates in the north; the one in Picenum, the other on the banks of the lake Fucinus. Sulla and Cæsar turned their legions against Mutilus in Campania, while the cities of Apulia and Lucania were attacked and recovered by officers of inferior note. Porcius himself was slain in battle with the Marsians, but his death was speedily avenged by his colleague. Judacilius, who commanded in Asculum, unable to repel his besiegers, constructed a pyre in the principal temple of the place, and laid his couch on the summit. He then caused a repast to be served, took poison, and applied the torch. The Romans entered the undefended walls, massacred the inhabitants, and reduced the city to ashes.
Asculum was the bulwark of the Italian confederacy in the north, and its fall opened the heart of their territories to the Romans. Another great defeat, with the loss of Vettius Scato, crushed the spirit of the Marsians, the Pelignians, and the Marrucinians, who hastened to lay down their arms. Pompeius, the victorious general, obtained a triumph, and among the captives who were led in chains before his chariot was a child, carried at his mother’s breast, who lived to become a consul at Rome and to gain the honour of a triumph himself. This was a native of Asculum, by name Ventidius, whose strange reverse of fortune deserved to become the theme of public admiration. The laurelled car was followed by the Roman legionaries, and among them we may suppose was a youth, who gained in after times a far nobler reputation, Cicero, the chief of Roman orators, who earned under the auspices of Pompeius his first and only stipend.
In the south, the death of the late consul Cæsar had thrown upon Sulla the conduct of the war. The cities of Campania fell successively before his prowess and good fortune. Stabiæ was overthrown, Herculaneum and Pompeii capitulated. His progress was checked for a moment by a mutiny in a division of his forces, in which his lieutenant, Postumius, lost his life. Sulla recalled the men to obedience, and required them to expiate the slaughter of a citizen by torrents of hostile blood. Assured of their ardour and devotion to his ascendant genius, he led them against the Samnite general, Cluentius, and gained a sanguinary victory under the walls of Nola. Leaving this impregnable fortress behind him, he next entered the territory of the Hirpinians, and sacked their capital, Æculanum. Meanwhile a Roman officer, named Cosconius, penetrated into Lucania, and defeated Egnatius by treachery. The shattered remnant of the confederate armies, reduced to thirty thousand men, were enclosed in the defiles of the Apennines. Pompædius, the last survivor of the gallant band of Italian generals, sought to envelop the Romans, as his last resource, in the flames of a servile insurrection. He summoned the slaves to rise throughout Italy, and put arms into their hands; at the same time he continued to press Mithridates for succours, and his emissaries solicited the subjects of the republics in Greece, Asia, and Africa. The final struggle of the expiring confederacy was not uncheered by a gleam of sunshine. Pompædius gained a victory, and entered Bovianum with the imitation of a Roman triumph. But his success was transient, and his laurels quickly faded. He was slain in the third year of the war in an encounter with the prætor Metellus, near Teanum in Apulia (88).