The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

SULLA IN GREECE

Nor had he now, like his predecessors in the career of eastern conquest, the undivided resources of the commonwealth to sustain him. Sulla was conscious that he was only the general of a party which, though for the moment triumphant, was, he well knew, insecure, and every express that arrived to him from Rome brought him alarming accounts of the fears and perils of the friends he had left behind him. He reached Greece at the commencement of the year 87 with a force of five legions, which he had no means of recruiting, and he might apprehend that in the course of another year he would be superseded by another commander, the nominee, perhaps, of his enemies. He had not a moment to lose. Instead of checking the licentiousness of his soldiers, and drawing tighter the long relaxed bands of discipline, which must have been a work of time and leisure, he was compelled to stimulate their ardour and secure their obedience by additional indulgence and license more complete. The course of his march he allowed to be marked by plunder, devastation, and sacrilege. He traversed Greece and Asia to gorge his men with booty before he turned their arms against the invader from the East. The sacred treasures of the temples at Epidaurus, Ephesus, and Olympia fell successively into his hands. When the spirits of his soldiers were elated to the utmost, he led them under the walls of Athens, which he speedily reduced, and devoted to pillage. In Bœotia he encountered the enemy in the open field, and routed them in the great battle of Chæronea (86). Flaccus was now advancing upon his steps, and summoning him to surrender his command to his legitimate successor.

[86-84 B.C.]

He was about to turn boldly upon the intruders, confident of his soldiers’ devotion, when Mithridates placed a second army within his reach. A second great battle at Orchomenos broke the power of the king of Pontus, reducing him to act on the defensive beyond the waters of the Ægean. Greece remained as a clear stage for the Roman armies to contend upon. At the close of the year 86 Sulla had taken up his quarters in Thessaly, while Flaccus, not venturing to engage him, had moved in a lateral direction, and watched him from the neighbourhood of Byzantium. Among the new consul’s officers was Flavius Fimbria, the tribune whose ferocity has already been signalised. Beloved by the soldiers whose licentiousness he encouraged, while his general strove fruitlessly to repress it, Fimbria conceived the idea of making himself independent of the government at home, and acting the part of a Strabo or a Sulla himself. Flaccus was assassinated in his camp, and Fimbria, who may be supposed to have instigated the deed, was proclaimed general in his room by the soldiers themselves. But neither they nor their new leader chose to measure themselves with the rival imperator in Thessaly. Passing over into Asia (85) they ravaged every fertile plain and wealthy city, attacked the forces of Mithridates wherever they could reach them, and defeated a son of the great king himself. Mithridates was driven out of Pergamus, and reduced to shelter himself in Pitane, where he must have been captured, had not Lucullus, a lieutenant of Sulla, removed the fleet with which he co-operated to a distance, in order to prevent the upstart Fimbria from snatching the honour of such a triumph from his own superior. Mithridates escaped by sea, and Sulla opened negotiations with him. Upon his surrendering Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, renouncing his pretensions to the province of Asia, and delivering up a large portion of his fleets and treasures, he was solemnly admitted to the alliance and amity of Rome. Sulla thus confined the enemy of the republic to the limits of his dominions, such as they existed before the war; but, doubtless, had his own resources been more abundant and his position more secure, he would not have been content with a barren victory, nor have returned from the frontiers of the empire without an effort to advance them.

Sulla had entered Asia to conduct his negotiations at the sword’s point. As soon as they were concluded he turned abruptly upon Fimbria. The two Roman armies met near Thyatira; but Fimbria’s soldiers, plied with gold, rapidly deserted, and even those who still kept to their standards, refused to engage their brethren in the field. Having failed in an attempt to procure his rival’s assassination, Fimbria found himself deprived of his last resource. In this extremity Sulla promised him his life, on condition that he should resign his command, and withdraw from Asia. When Rutilius, on the part of his general, offered him a safe conduct to retire by sea, he replied proudly that he knew a shorter and a better way, and pierced himself with his sword.

Fimbria might well despair when he saw the forces with which his own victory over Mithridates had armed the champion of the party he had outraged. Sulla could leave in the East the legions which his rivals had brought to share or contest his laurels, while he took himself the route of Italy with a force of thirty thousand veterans, who had served three years under his standard, and had learned in a rapid career of glory and plunder to regard him as the founder and the pledge of their fortunes. The treasures of Mithridates, swelled by the ransom of an hundred Greek and Asiatic cities, furnished him with ample means for securing their fidelity. The vast fleets of Asia, delivered into his hands, might be used to abridge the long march through Thrace and Macedonia. The news of the surrender and death of Fimbria was accompanied by the announcement of Sulla’s speedy return; and the moderation he had professed while his successes were still incomplete was already exchanged for bitter complaints of the injuries he had received, the confiscation of his estates, the banishment of his family, the proscription of his own person, and persecution of his party. But his foes and those of the republic, whom he classed together, were now, he declared, about to suffer due chastisement; in proclaiming an amnesty for honest men of all parties, he announced that he would respect the privileges of the Italians, and leave them no excuse for devoting themselves to his adversaries.

THE RETURN OF SULLA; AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

[84-83 B.C.]

The senate, no less than the populace, was terrified by this manifesto. So many of the Marian party had become incorporated among the thinned ranks of the ancient aristocracy, that the counter-revolution now impending seemed not only to menace the safety of the particular faction which had aspired to rule the state, but to threaten the great mass of the nobility with indiscriminate massacre. Both in Rome and throughout the states of the peninsula, the vicissitudes of war and conflicts of special interests had gone far to efface the old distinctions of parties, and both Cinna and Sulla relied rather upon personal than political attachments. The senate, as an order in the state, could only pretend to mediate between rival chieftains.

It now ventured to send a deputation to mollify the ferocity of the conqueror; on the other hand, it forbade the consuls to make preparations for their own defence. Cinna and Carbo, who had now succeeded to Flaccus, disregarded this feeble interference. They made new levies throughout Italy, and solicited the Samnites and Lucanians to wreak their vengeance upon Rome by arming once more against her victorious champion. The Italians promised their succours; but the troops they levied for the purpose could not be induced to embark, and the expedition which Cinna rashly undertook to lead against Sulla in the East was reluctantly abandoned. Cinna himself was soon afterwards massacred in his camp by his own mutinous soldiers. Carbo took advantage of the disturbed state of affairs to withhold the election of another colleague, and remained through the rest of the year 84 in sole occupation of the consulship. He strengthened himself by a further extension of the franchise, and enrolled large numbers of emancipated slaves in the thirty-five tribes of the city. His brief usurpation was a career of unbridled violence. He hurled his enemies from the Tarpeian Rock and expelled the tribunes from the city. He caused the terrified senate to decree that all the legions then in arms should be disbanded, hoping to fix upon Sulla a charge of disloyalty in refusing, as he of course expected, obedience to the command. Sulla had, by this time, assembled his troops at Dyrrhachium, and this decree was the signal for his crossing the sea with five legions of veterans. The invader was aware that he should have armies far more numerous than his own to encounter, but these he knew were for the most part new levies; while the old soldiers they had among them were dispersed in petty detachments and under unknown leaders: nor did he apprehend that any confidence or concert would exist among the host of generals, Carbo himself, the young Marius, Cælius, Carrinas, Brutus, Sertorius, and others, under whom they were arrayed. The Italians ranged themselves on the side of Carbo and Marius, but many tribes were at least lukewarm in the cause, the promises and bribes which Sulla could administer might be expected to find their way into the camp of the enemy. The north of Italy, the Cisalpines, the Picentines, and the Marsians were jealous of the Samnite confederacy in the south; and even the Samnites, in their implacable hostility to the Roman power, seem to have negotiated secretly with the assailant, in whom they, for their part, recognised only the enemy of the republic. Sulla’s address was equal to his valour. He was enabled to penetrate into the heart of Italy without striking a blow. One by one the most illustrious officers of the government brought over their troops to him. Metellus Pius raised his standard in Liguria; the young Pompey, already the idol of his own soldiery, levied three legions for him in Picenum, and defeated the Marians in various encounters. Crassus, the son of a victim of the late proscriptions, who had been compelled to conceal himself for the last eight months in a cave, Cethegus, Dolabella, and M. Lucullus, brother to Sulla’s lieutenant in Asia, gave to his cause the lustre of their noble names. The persecution which the young Marius presently renewed against the most distinguished senators, effected the complete identification of the interests of Sulla with those of the highest aristocracy of the city.