The same exterminating policy extended also to the provinces, wherever the temper of the native races seemed to resent the uncontrolled domination of the Roman conquerors. Sulla had chastised Greece and Asia with a rod of iron. He now commissioned his lieutenants to chase his enemies from the retreats to which they had been invited in Sicily, Africa, Gaul, and Spain. Metellus fell upon the Cisalpine province, Valerius Flaccus devastated the Narbonensis, Pompey was despatched to punish the provinces of the south, and Annius was deputed to follow Sertorius into Spain and recover the vast regions which he had armed against the new government of Rome, and even against Rome herself. At the same time the republic was threatened with a renewal of her foreign warfare. The Thracians, never yet subdued, troubled the frontiers of Macedonia; Mithridates was commencing a new movement in Asia; the distressed and indignant population of the eastern coasts had betaken themselves in vast numbers to the sea, and infested the waters of Greece and even Italy itself with fleets of pirate vessels. The mountains of Etruria and Sabellia, of Samnium and Lucania, swarmed with the miserable fugitives from spoliation and massacre, and armed bands roamed beneath the walls of populous cities ready to carry off any booty that fell in their way, and rendering both life and property everywhere insecure. Even the proprietors of estates leagued themselves with these wretched outcasts, and employed them to kidnap free citizens of the republic, to be buried as slaves in their forests, or chained in their factories.
Sulla had returned to Rome laden with the spoils of war; his troops had been gorged with plunder, and he could not plead for his proscriptions the demands of an insatiate soldiery. But the accumulating troubles of the empire, and the increasing armaments required in every quarter, demanded the opening of new sources of revenue. The provinces, harassed by war, were now crushed by imposts. Treaties and promises were alike disregarded. All were forced to contribute—not only the tributary states, but even those which had acquired by their services immunity and independence. To satisfy the requisitions made upon them, many cities were forced to pledge their public lands, their temples, their ports, and even the stones of their walls. Sulla took upon himself to sell the sovereignty of the independent kingdom of Egypt to Alexander II. Donatives were demanded of foreign kings and potentates.[b]
“Zachariæ,[k]” says Ihne,[e] “in his book on L. Cornelius Sulla (i. 145), has hit the truth in saying: ‘We must not imagine that these horrors and cruelties were caused by the passions so powerfully excited by the civil war, nor that they are to be attributed to Sulla’s implacability and vindictiveness, nor that Sulla simply connived at them, or ordered deeds which he could not prevent, surrounded as he was by an army drunk with victory and greedy for plunder. It is true some dark passions were at work, and in several instances Sulla acted from momentary whims or was influenced by angry passions. It is true that Sulla was obliged to be indulgent and forgiving to his soldiers because he was himself in want of indulgence and forgiveness. Nevertheless we have good reason to believe that on the whole Sulla acted on a deep and coolly meditated plan.… He intended that out of the work of destruction a new and vigorous Italy was to come forth with a population from whose gratitude or satisfaction he could confidently expect security for peace, and for that constitution of the republic which he was about to establish.’” With this Freeman[l] agrees, when he says that Sulla “was not cruel in the sense of delighting in human suffering. Through the whole of Sulla’s tyranny there is nothing passionate; it is not so much cruelty as recklessness of human life; it is the cold, deliberating, exterminating policy of a man who has an object to fulfill, and who will let nothing stand in the way of that object.”[a]
FOOTNOTES
[89] [The Roman historian Florus[d] comments on and classifies the wars thus: “This only was wanting to complete the misfortunes of the Romans that they should raise up an unnatural war among themselves and that in the midst of the city and Forum, citizens should fight with citizens, like gladiators in an amphitheatre. I should bear the calamity, however, with greater patience if plebeian leaders or contemptible nobles had been at the head of such atrocity; but even Marius and Sulla (O indignity! such men, such generals!), the grace and glory of their age, lent their eminent characters to this worst of evils. It was carried on, if I may use the expression, under three constellations, the first movement being light and moderate, an affray rather than a war, for the violence prevailed only between the leaders themselves; in the next rising, the victory spread with greater cruelty and bloodshed, through the very bowels of the whole senate; the third conflict exceeded not merely animosity between citizens, but that between enemies, the fury of the war being supported by the strength of all Italy, and rancour raging till none remained to be killed.”
[90] [On this act of Octavius, Beesly[c] cynically comments: “He was an obstinate, dull man; and if the burlesque of the conduct of the senators when the Gauls took Rome was really enacted, theatrical display must have been cold comfort for those of his party on whom his incapacity brought ruin.”]
[91] [Ihne[e] says “the story is absurd,” and credits it to a calumny of his enemies. Long, however, accepts it as possible.]
[92] [See Valerius Maximus[f] and Cicero.[g] Mommsen[h] credits the story, and Dyer[i] calls it “one of those ferocious jokes which find their parallel only amidst the butcheries of the French Revolution.”]
[93] [“The battle of the Colline Gate was one of the few great and decisive battles which are recorded in the history of Rome,” says Ihne.[e] In spite of all this, he says, we know almost absolutely nothing of the position of the armies and the progress of the fight, “and this cannot be vouched for with any degree of confidence, as the two principal authorities cannot be satisfactorily made to harmonise.” Appian[m] says that each side lost 50,000; Orosius[n] sets the number at only 11,000.]
[94] [Mommsen[h] quotes the sale of an estate valued at £61,000 or $305,000 for about £20 or $100; and rates the total proceeds of confiscation at £3,050,000 or $15,250,000.]