The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (highly recommended books TXT) 📖

a third time. Now the state of things was changed. The democratic Hotspurs in the capital, long impatient of the endless delay and inflamed by the brilliant news from Spain, urged that a blow should be struck; and Lepidus, with whom the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own characteristic frivolity. For a moment it seemed as if the torch which kindled the funeral pile of the regent would also kindle civil war; but the influence of Pompeius and the temper of the Sullan veterans induced the opposition to let the obsequies of the regent pass over in peace.

Insurrection of Lepidus

Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth made to introduce a fresh revolution. Daily the Forum resounded with accusations against the "mock Romulus" and his executioners. Even before the great potentate had closed his eyes, the overthrow of the Sullan constitution, the re-establishment of the distributions of grain, the reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their former position, the recall of those who were banished contrary to law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly indicated by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at which they aimed. Now communications were entered into with the proscribed; Marcus Perpenna, governor of Sicily in the days of Cinna,(17) arrived in the capital. The sons of those whom Sulla had declared guilty of treason—on whom the laws of the restoration bore with intolerable severity—and generally the more noted men of Marian views were invited to give their accession. Not a few, such as the young Lucius Cinna, joined the movement; others, however, followed the example of Gaius Caesar, who had returned home from Asia on receiving the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans of Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted with the character of the leader and of the movement prudently withdrew. Carousing and recruiting went on in behalf of Lepidus in the taverns and brothels of the capital. At length a conspiracy against the new order of things was concocted among the Etruscan malcontents.(18)

All this took place under the eyes of the government The consul Catulus as well as the more judicious Optimates urged an immediate decisive interference and suppression of the revolt in the bud; the indolent majority, however, could not make up their minds to begin the struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible by a system of compromises and concessions. Lepidus also on his part at first entered into it. The suggestion, which proposed a restoration of the prerogatives taken away from the tribunes of the people, he as well as his colleague Catulus repelled. On the other hand, the Gracchan distribution of grain was to a limited extent re-established. According to it not all (as according to the Sempronian law) but only a definite number— presumably 40,000—of the poorer burgesses appear to have received the earlier largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five -modii- monthly at the price of 6 1/3 -asses- (3 pence)—a regulation which occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least 40,000 pounds.(19) The opposition, naturally as little satisfied as it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession, displayed all the more rudeness and violence in the capital; and in Etruria, the true centre of all insurrections of the Italian proletariate, civil war already broke out, the dispossessed Faesulans resumed possession of their lost estates by force of arms, and several of the veterans settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult. The senate on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two consuls thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the insurrection.(20) It was impossible to adopt a more irrational course. The senate, in presence of the insurrection, evinced its pusillanimity and its fears by the re-establishment of the corn-law; in order to be relieved from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious head of the insurrection with an army; and, when the two consuls were bound by the most solemn oath which could be contrived not to turn the arms entrusted to them against each other, it must have required the superhuman obduracy of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting such a bulwark against the impending insurrection. Of course Lepidus armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrection— sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had taken bound him only for the current year. The senate put the oracular machinery in motion to induce him to return, and committed to him the conduct of the impending consular elections; but Lepidus evaded compliance, and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official year drew to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army. When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677), the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience, and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power, the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this, his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words, the -tyrannis- in legal form.

Outbreak of the War
Lepidus Defeated
Death of Lepidus

Thus war was declared. The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus, upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus, Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed in Etruria. At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus. While Pompeius speedily accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm. The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able even to cross the river. The decisive battle was fought on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city. But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria, while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself into the fortress of Alba. Thereupon the rising was substantially atan end. Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was, notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently put to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a long siege, reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed. Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital, and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents. But the governor of the island opposed to him a vigorous resistance; and he himself died, not long after his landing, of consumption (677), whereupon the war in Sardinia came to an end. A part of his soldiers dispersed; with the flower of the insurrectionary army and with a well-filled chest the late praetor, Marcus Perpenna, proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to join the Sertorians.

Pompeius Extorts the Command in Spain

The oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus; but it found itself compelled by the dangerous turn of the Sertorian war to concessions, which violated the letter as well as the spirit of the Sullan constitution. It was absolutely necessary to send a strong army and an able general to Spain; and Pompeius indicated, very plainly, that he desired, or rather demanded, this commission. The pretension was bold. It was already bad enough that they had allowed this secret opponent again to attain an extraordinary command in the pressure of the Lepidian revolution; but it was far more hazardous, in disregard of all the rules instituted by Sulla for the magisterial hierarchy, to invest a man who had hitherto filled no civil office with one of the most important ordinary provincial governorships, under circumstances in which the observance of the legal term of a year was not to be thought of. The oligarchy had thus, even apart from the respect due to their general Metellus, good reason to oppose with all earnestness this new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his exceptional position. But this was not easy. In the first place, they had not a single man fitted for the difficult post of general in Spain. Neither of the consuls of the year showed any desire to measure himself against Sertorius; and what Lucius Philippus said in a full meeting of the senate had to be admitted as too true—that, among all the senators of note, not one was able and willing to command in a serious war. Yet they might, perhaps, have got over this, and after the manner of oligarchs, when they had no capable candidate, have filled the place with some sort of makeshift, if Pompeius had merely desired the command and had not demanded it at the head of an army. He had already lent a deaf ear to the injunctions of Catulus that he should dismiss the army; it was at least doubtful whether those of the senate would find a better reception, and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate— the scale of aristocracy might very easily mount up, if the sword of a well-known general were thrown into the opposite scale. So the majority resolved on concession. Not from the people, which constitutionally ought to have been consulted in a case where a private man was to be invested with the supreme magisterial power, but from the senate, Pompeius received proconsular authority and the chief command in Hither Spain; and, forty days after he had received it, crossed the Alps in the summer of 677.

Pompeius in Gaul

First of all the new general found employment in Gaul, where no formal insurrection had broken out, but serious disturbances of the peace had occurred at several places; in consequence of which Pompeius deprived the cantons of the Volcae-Arecomici and the Helvii of their independence, and placed them under Massilia. He also laid out a new road over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre,(21)), and so established a shorter communication between the valley of the Po and Gaul. Amidst this work the best season of the year passed away; it was not till late in autumn that Pompeius crossed the Pyrenees.

Appearance of Pompeius in Spain

Sertorius had meanwhile not been idle. He had despatched Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep Metellus in check, and had himself endeavoured to follow up his complete victory in the Hither province, and to prepare for the reception of Pompeius. The isolated Celtiberian towns there, which still adhered to Rome, were attacked and reduced one after another; at last, in the very middle of winter, the strong Contrebia (south-east of Saragossa) had fallen. In vain the hard-pressed towns had sent message after message to Pompeius; he would not be induced by any entreaties to depart from his wonted rut of slowly advancing. With the exception of the maritime towns, which were defended by the Roman fleet, and the districts of the Indigetes and Laletani in the north-east corner of Spain, where Pompeius established himself after he had at length crossed the Pyrenees, and made his raw troops bivouac throughout the winter to inure them to hardships, the whole of Hither Spain had at the end of 677 become by treaty or force dependent on Sertorius, and the district on the upper and middle Ebro thenceforth continued the main stay of his power. Even the apprehension, which the fresh Roman force and the celebrated name of the general excited in the army of the insurgents, had a salutary effect on it. Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto as the equal of Sertorius in rank had claimed an independent command over the force which he had brought with him from Liguria, was, on the news of the arrival of Pompeius in Spain, compelled by his soldiers to place himself under the orders of his abler colleague.

For the campaign of 678 Sertorius again employed the corps of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with a strong army took up his position along the lower course of the Ebro to prevent Pompeius from crossing the river, if he should march, as was to be expected, in a southerly direction with the view of effecting a junction with Metellus, and along the coast for the sake of procuring supplies for his troops. The corps of Gaius Herennius was destined