The Gracchi Marius and Sulla Part 6

CHAPTER XII.

SULLA IN GREECE AND ASIA.

[Sidenote: Aristion at Athens.] A citizen of Athens, named Aristion, whose mother was an Egyptian slave, and who was the son or adopted son of one Athenion, had been sent by the Athenians as amba.s.sador to Mithridates. He had been a schoolmaster and teacher of rhetoric, and professed the philosophy of Epicurus. He gained the ear of Mithridates, and sent home flaming accounts of the king's power, and of his intention of restoring the democracy at Athens. The Athenians sent some s.h.i.+ps of war to bring him home from Euboea, with a present of a silver-footed litter; and in this, clothed in purple, and with a fine ring on his finger, which he had got probably from his friend Mithridates, he came back to Athens with much parade. [Sidenote: Revolt of Athens from Rome.] In a set speech he dilated on the king's splendid successes, and advised the people to declare themselves independent and elect him their general. They did so, and he very soon ma.s.sacred his opponents and made himself despot. Thus Athens and the Piraeus pa.s.sed into the hands of Mithridates. The spirit of disaffection to Rome spread rapidly. [Sidenote: Revolt of the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians.] When Archelaus appeared in Greece, the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians, with the exception of Thespiae, joined him, while the Pontic fleet seized Euboea and Demetrias, a town at the head of the gulf of Pagasae.

Sura was sent by the Roman governor of Macedonia to make head against the invaders. He won a naval battle and captured Sciathus, where all the spoils of the enemy were stored. [Sidenote: Conflicts between the Romans and the forces of Mithridates in Boeotia.] Then he marched into Boeotia, and, after a three days' engagement with the combined forces of Archelaus and Aristion, pushed Archelaus back to the coast. The war, perhaps, might have been ended here; but at this moment Lucullus came to announce the approach of Sulla, and to warn Sura that the war had been entrusted to him. So Sura retired to Macedonia. [Sidenote: Sulla lands in Epirus, 87 B.C., and marches on Athens.] Sulla had left Brundusium in 87, and, landing on the coast of Epirus, gathered what supplies he could from Aetolia and Thessaly, and marched straight for Athens. It was soon seen that the foundations of the empire of Mithridates were based on sand. The Boeotians at once submitted, including Thebes, which had joined the king. [Sidenote: Siege of the Piraeus and Athens.] Sulla then began two sieges, that of the Piraeus where Archelaus was, and that of Athens defended by Aristion.

Archelaus had before shown himself an intrepid soldier, and he baffled all Sulla's efforts with equal ingenuity and courage. After an unsuccessful attempt to storm the walls, Sulla retired to Eleusis and Megara, thus keeping up his communications with Thebes and the Peloponnese, and set to work constructing catapults and other engines, and preparing an earthwork from which he meant to attack the wall with them. For these purposes he cut down the trees of the Academia and the Lyceum. He was kept informed of intended sallies by two slaves inside the town, who threw out leaden b.a.l.l.s with words cut on them. But as fast as the earthwork rose Archelaus built towers on the walls opposite to it, and thence hara.s.sed the besiegers. [Sidenote: Battle at the Piraeus. Archelaus nearly taken.] He was also reinforced by Mithridates, and then came out and fought a battle which was for some time doubtful; but he was forced to retire at length with the loss of 2,000 men. He himself remained till the last. The gates were shut and he had to be drawn up by a rope over the wall.

[Sidenote: Sulla's difficulties.] The affairs of Sulla, however, were in no flouris.h.i.+ng condition. He had come to Greece with only 30,000 men, with no fleet, and little money. He was forced to plunder the shrines of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. His messenger to Delphi came back saying that he had heard the sound of a lute in the temple, and dared not commit the sacrilege. But Sulla sent him back, saying that he was sure the sound was a note of welcome, and that the G.o.d meant him to have the treasure. He promised to pay it back some day, and he kept his word, for he confiscated half the land of Thebes and applied the proceeds to reimbursing the sacred funds. In his worst straits he was always ready with some such mockery. [Sidenote: Sulla sends Lucullus to Egypt.] Winter was now at hand, and Sulla despatched Lucullus to Egypt to get s.h.i.+ps. The refusal of the King of Egypt shows what was now thought of the Roman power. Sulla then formed a camp at Eleusis and continued the siege, and so shook the great tower of Archelaus by a simultaneous discharge of twelve leaden b.a.l.l.s from his catapults that it had to be drawn back. [Sidenote: Blockade of Athens.] By means of the two slaves he was also able to frustrate the attempts of Archelaus to throw supplies into Athens, which was now suffering from hunger, for Sulla had surrounded it with forts and turned the siege into a blockade. Mithridates now sent his son into Macedonia with an army, before which the small Roman force there had to retire. After this success the prince marched towards Athens, but died on the way. [Sidenote: Desperate defence of the Piraeus.] At the Piraeus scenes occurred which were afterwards repeated at the siege of Jerusalem. Archelaus undermined the earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the a.s.sailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to advance. [Sidenote: Sulla turns the siege into a blockade.] At last, wearied by this dogged resistance, Sulla turned the siege of the Piraeus also into a blockade, which meant simply that he hindered Archelaus from helping Athens, for he could not prevent the influx of supplies from the sea.

[Sidenote: Athens taken March 1, B.C. 86.] Athens meanwhile was in dreadful straits. Wheat was selling at nearly 3_l_. 10_s_. a gallon, and the inhabitants were feeding on old leather bottles, shoes, and the bodies of the dead. A deputation came out, but Sulla sent them back because they began an harangue on the deeds of their ancestors, put into their mouths, no doubt, by the rhetorician Aristion. Sulla told them they were the sc.u.m of nations, not descended from the old Athenians at all, and that instead of listening to their rhetoric he meant to punish their rebellion. On the night of March 1, 86 B.C., he broke into the town amid the blare of trumpets and the shouts of his troops. He told his men to give no quarter, and the blood, it was said, ran down through the gates into the suburbs. [Sidenote: Aristion slain.] Aristion fled to the Acropolis. Hunger forced him in the end to capitulate, and he was killed. Sulla meanwhile had forced on the siege of Piraeus still more vigorously. He got past the crescent wall, only to find other walls similarly constructed behind it; but he gradually drove Archelaus into Munychia, or the peninsular part of Piraeus, and as he had no s.h.i.+ps he could do nothing more. [Sidenote: Archelaus sails from Piraeus, and joins Taxiles, sent by Mithridates with reinforcements.] Either before or after the capture of the Acropolis Archelaus sailed away, in obedience to a summons from Taxiles, a new general whom Mithridates had sent with an army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and ninety scythed chariots into Greece.

With these forces and the troops previously sent with his master's son he formed a junction at Thermopylae, marched into Phocis down the valley of the Cephissus, attempted but failed to take Elateia, and came up with Sulla near Chaeroneia. [Sidenote: Sulla forms a junction with Hortensius.] Sulla had marched into Boeotia and joined Hortensius, who had a brought some troops from Thessaly. But he is said by Appian to have had not a third of the enemy's numbers, while Plutarch affirms that he had only 15,000 foot and 1,500 horse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map to ill.u.s.trate the March of SULLA and ARCHELAUS before Chaeroneia.]

[Sidenote: Position of the two armies.] Sulla was on the west bank of the Cephissus, on an eminence named Philoboeotus, and Archelaus on the other side of the river not far off. Sulla's soldiers were alarmed by the numbers and splendour of the enemy, for the bra.s.s and steel of their armour 'kindled the air with an awful flame like that of lightning.' [Sidenote: Manoeuvres of Sulla and Archelaus.] Archelaus, marching down the valley of the Cephissus, tried to seize a strong position called the Acropolis of the Parapotamii, situated on the a.s.sus, which joined the Cephissus to the south of both armies. But Sulla, who had wearied out his men by drudgery in d.y.k.e-making, and made them eager for a fight, crossed the Cephissus, seized the position first, and then, crossing the a.s.sus, took up his position under Mount Edylium. Here he encamped opposite Archelaus, who, having also crossed the a.s.sus, was now at a place called a.s.sia, which was nearer Lake Copais. Thence Archelaus made an attempt on Chaeroneia; but Sulla was again beforehand with him, and garrisoned the place with one legion. South of Chaeroneia was a hill called Thurium. This Archelaus seized. Sulla then brought the rest of his troops across the Cephissus, to form a junction with the legion in Chaeroneia and dislodge the enemy from Thurium. He left Murena on the north of the Cephissus to keep the enemy in check at a.s.sia. Archelaus, however, also brought his main army across the Cephissus after Sulla. Murena followed him, and Sulla drew up his army with his cavalry on each wing, himself commanding the right and Murena the left. The armies were now opposite each other, Sulla to the south, then Archelaus, then the Cephissus.

[Sidenote: Battle of Chaeroneia.] Sulla sent some troops round Thurium to the hills behind Chaeroneia, and in the enemy's rear. The enemy ran down in confusion from Thurium, where they were met by Murena with Sulla's left wing, and were either destroyed or driven back upon the centre of the line of Archelaus, which they threw into disorder. Sulla on the right advanced so quickly as to prevent the scythed chariots from getting any impetus, by which they were rendered useless, for the soldiers easily eluded them when driven at a slow pace, and as soon as they had pa.s.sed killed the horses and drivers. Archelaus now extended his right wing in order to surround Murena. Hortensius, whom Sulla had posted on some hills to the left of his left wing on purpose to defeat this manoeuvre, immediately pressed forward to attack this body on its left flank. But Archelaus drove him back with some cavalry, and nearly surrounded Hortensius.

[Ill.u.s.tration: First position of the two armies at CHAERONEIA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Second position of the two armies at CHAERONEIA.]

Sulla hastened to his aid, and Archelaus, seeing him coming, instantly counter-marched and attacked Sulla's right in his absence, while Taxiles a.s.sailed Murena on the left. But Sulla hastened back, too, after leaving Hortensius to support Murena, and, when he appeared, the right wing drove back Archelaus to the Cephissus. Murena was equally triumphant on the left wing, and the barbarians fled pell-mell to the Cephissus, only 10,000 of them reaching Chalcis in Euboea. [Sidenote: Sulla's falsehood about the battle.] Appian says the Romans lost only thirteen men, while Plutarch, on the authority of Sulla's Memoirs, says that they lost four. This is absurd. Sulla seems to have told some startling lies in his Memoirs, perhaps to prove that he had been the favourite of fortune, which was a mania of his.

[Sidenote: Dorylaus reinforces Archelaus.] Mithridates, when he heard of the defeat of Archelaus, sent Dorylaus with 8,000 men to Euboea, where he joined the remnant of the army of Archelaus, and crossing to the mainland met Sulla at Orchomenus. Sulla was in Phthiotis, to confront L. Valerius Flaccus who had come to supersede him, but he returned as soon as he heard that Dorylaus had landed. Orchomenus is just north of the Cephissus where it runs into Lake Copais, and a stream called Melas, rising on the east of Orchomenus, joined the Cephissus near its mouth, the neighbouring ground being a marsh.

[Sidenote: Battle of Orchomenus. Disposition of Archelaus' army.]

Archelaus did not want to fight, but Dorylaus hinted at treachery and had, no doubt, been ordered by Mithridates to avenge Chaeroneia.

Near Mount Tilphossium, however, to the south of Lake Copais, he was worsted by Sulla in a skirmish, and thinking better of the advice of Archelaus tried to prolong the war. Archelaus, indeed, seems to have commanded in the battle, for Mithridates was shrewd enough to know when he had a good general. He drew up his army in four lines, the scythed chariots in front, behind them the Macedonian phalanx, then his auxiliaries, including Italian deserters, and, lastly, his light-armed troops. On each flank he posted his cavalry. [Sidenote: Sulla's arrangements.] Sulla, who was weak in cavalry, dug two ditches guarded by forts, one on each flank, so as to keep off the enemy's horse. Then he drew up his infantry in three lines, leaving gaps in them for the light troops and cavalry to come through from the rear when needed. To the second line stakes were given, with orders to plant them so as to form a palisade; and the first line, when the chariots charged, retired behind the palisade, while the light troops advanced through the gaps and hurled missiles at the horses and drivers. The chariots turned and threw the phalanx into confusion, and when Archelaus ordered up his cavalry, Sulla sent round his to take them in the rear. At one time, however, the contest was doubtful, and the Romans wavered, till they were put to shame by their general, who, seizing a standard and advancing towards the foe, cried out, 'When those at home ask where it was you abandoned your leader, say, it was at Orchomenus.' This great victory, in which Sulla showed generals.h.i.+p of a high order, ended the first Mithridatic war. The date is not quite certain. Probably it happened in 86.

[Sidenote: Sulla winters in Thessaly.] After the battle Sulla wintered in Thessaly, where he built a fleet, being tired of waiting for Lucullus. [Sidenote: He confers with Archelaus at Delium.] At Delium he met Archelaus and each urged the other to turn traitor, Archelaus promising that Mithridates would aid Sulla against Cinna; Sulla advising Archelaus to dethrone Mithridates. It was a curious way of showing the respect which they entertained for each other's ability; but Sulla was too scornful of Asiatic aid, and Archelaus too loyal to listen to such suggestions. However, when Archelaus fell ill afterwards, Sulla was so attentive to him, besides giving him land in Euboea and styling him friend of the Roman people, that it was suspected that Archelaus had been playing into his hands all along. It was a most unlikely suspicion; for nothing was more natural than that now, when Sulla was making terms with Mithridates and going to meet Fimbria, he should wish to make Archelaus his friend. For after all he had resolved to forget the Asiatic ma.s.sacre and not push Mithridates to desperation. [Sidenote: Terms offered by Sulla to Mithridates.] The terms agreed upon were these: Mithridates was to surrender Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Asia, and the islands, eighty s.h.i.+ps of war, all prisoners and deserters; he was to give pay and provisions to Sulla's men, and provide a war indemnity of 3,000 talents (732,000_l_.); to restore to their homes the refugees from Macedonia, and those whom, as will be related hereafter, he had carried off from Chios; and to hand over more of his s.h.i.+ps of war to such states as Rhodes in alliance with Rome. Mithridates was then to be recognised as the ally of Rome.

He chafed at the terms, the proposal of which indeed brought out the long-headed intrepidity of Sulla's character in the strongest light.

Walking, as it were, on the razor-edge of two precipices, he never faltered once. The Romans could not charge him with not having carried into effect the original purpose of the war--the restoration of Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes--nor could Mithridates fail in the end to listen to the voice of Archelaus. When he at first rejected the terms, Sulla advanced towards Asia, plundering some of the barbarous tribes on the frontiers of Macedonia, and reducing that province to order.

But Mithridates did not hesitate long. [Sidenote: Tyranny and difficulties of Mithridates.] He, too, was in a difficult position.

The inhabitants of Asia Minor soon found that in yielding to him they had exchanged whips for scorpions. He suspected that the defeat of Archelaus at Chaeroneia would excite rebellion, and he seized as many of the Galatian chiefs as he could, and slew them with their wives and children. The consequence was that the surviving chiefs expelled the man whom he had sent as satrap. He suspected the Chians also, and made them give up their arms and the children of their chief men as hostages. Then he made a requisition on them for 2,000 talents (488,000_l_.), and because they could not raise the money, or because the tyrant pretended that there was a deficiency, the citizens were s.h.i.+pped off to the east of the Black Sea, and the island was occupied by colonists. The man who had managed the affair of Chios was sent to play the same game at Ephesus. But the people were on their guard, slew him, and raised the standard of rebellion. Tralles, Hypaepa, Metropolis, Sardis, Smyrna, and other towns followed their example.

Mithridates tried to buoy up his sinking cause, attracting debtors by the remission of debts, resident aliens by the gift of the citizens.h.i.+p of the towns which they inhabited, and slaves by the promise of freedom--devices of a desperate man. A plot was laid against his life which was betrayed, and in his fury he launched out into yet more savage excesses. He sent a set of men to collect depositions, and they slew indiscriminately those who were denounced, 1600, it is said, in all.

[Sidenote: Fimbria mutinies against and murders Flaccus.] These events must have occurred in the winter of 86-85 B.C., when Flaccus was on his march from the Adriatic coast through Macedonia and Thrace for Asia. Flaccus had quarrelled with his lieutenant Fimbria, and superseded him. The latter, when Flaccus had crossed from Byzantium to Chalcedon, induced the troops, who hated their general, to mutiny.

Flaccus returned in haste; but, learning what had happened, fled back to Chalcedon and thence to Nicomedia. Here Fimbria, finding him hidden in a well, murdered him, and threw his head into the sea. [Sidenote: He defeats the son of Mithridates and pursues the king.] Then, attacking the king's son, he defeated him at the river Rhyndacus, and pursued the king himself to Pergamus and Pitane, where he would have taken him but that he crossed over to Mitylene, while Fimbria had no s.h.i.+ps and was thus baulked of his prey. Another event had happened to aggravate his irritation. [Sidenote: Lucullus off the coast of Asia Minor. Overtures of Fimbria to him.] Lucullus, sent by Sulla to collect a fleet, had, as has been related (p. 153), failed in Egypt.

But he had procured s.h.i.+ps from Syria and Rhodes, induced Cos and Cnidus to revolt, and driven out the Pontic partisans from Chios and Colophon. He was now in the neighbourhood, when Mithridates was at Pitane. [Sidenote: Mithridates meets Sulla and thy come to terms.]

But, he turned a deaf ear to Fimbria's request for aid, and after defeating Neoptolemus, the king's admiral, met Sulla in the Thracian Chersonese, and conveyed him across to Darda.n.u.s, in the Troad, where Mithridates came to meet him. Each had one feeling in common--dread lest the other should make terms with Fimbria; and the bargain was soon struck in spite of Sulla's soldiers, who were thus after all baulked of the long-looked-for Asiatic campaign and their desire to take revenge for the great ma.s.sacre. But Sulla, as we have seen (p.

153), got some money to quiet them; and they were in his power in Asia almost as much as he had been in theirs at Rome. He at once led them against Fimbria, who was near Thyatira, in Lydia. [Sidenote: Fimbria's men desert to Sulla. Fimbria commits suicide.] He summoned that leader to hand over his army, and the soldiers began to desert to him.

Fimbria tried to force them to swear obedience to him, and slew the first who refused. Then he sent a slave to a.s.sa.s.sinate Sulla; and the discovery of this attempt so maddened Sulla's soldiers that Fimbria dared not trust even Sulla's promised safe-conduct and slew himself.

[Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] Sulla incorporated his troops with his own army, and proceeded to regulate the affairs of Asia. Those towns which had remained faithful to Rome or had sided with him were liberally rewarded. All slaves who refused to return to their masters were slain. The towns that resisted were punished and their walls destroyed. The ringleaders in the ma.s.sacre were put to death. The taxpayers were forced to pay at once the previous five years' arrears and a fine of 20,000 talents (4,880,000_l_.), and Lucullus was left to collect it. In order to raise this sum the unhappy Asiatics were obliged to mortgage their public buildings to the Italian money-lenders; but Sulla got the whole of it, and scarcely was he gone when pirates, hounded on by Mithridates, came, like flocks of vultures, to devour what the eagles had left.

CHAPTER XIII.

SULLA IN ITALY.

[Sidenote: Sulla sets out homewards.] Leaving Murena in Asia with Fimbria's legions, Sulla, in 84 B.C., with his soldiers in good humour, and with full coffers, at last set out homewards. Three days after sailing from Ephesus he reached the Piraeus. Thence he wrote to the Senate in a different style from that in which he had communicated his victory over Fimbria, when he had not mentioned his own outlawry.

He now recounted the Senate all that he had done, and contrasted it with what had been done to him at Rome, how his house had been destroyed, his friends murdered, and his wife and children forced to fly for their lives. He was on his way, he said, to punish his enemies and those who had wronged him. Other men, including the newly-enfranchised Italians, need be under no apprehension. We do not know much of what had been going on at Rome beyond what has been related in a previous chapter. Cinna and Carbo, the consuls, were making what preparations they could when the letter arrived. But it struck a cold chill of dread into many of the Senate, and Cinna and Carbo were told to desist for a time, while an emba.s.sy was sent to Sulla to try and arrange terms, and to ask, if he wished to be a.s.sured of his own safety, what were his demands. But when the amba.s.sadors were gone, Cinna and Carbo proclaimed themselves consuls for 83, so that they might not have to come back to Rome to hold the elections; and Cinna was soon afterwards murdered at Ancona. The tribunes then compelled Carbo to come back and hold the elections in the regular manner; and Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and Caius Norba.n.u.s were elected.

Meanwhile the amba.s.sadors had found Sulla in Greece, and had received his answer. [Sidenote: Sulla's response to an emba.s.sy from Rome.]

He said that he would never be reconciled to such criminals as his enemies, though the Romans might, if they chose; and that, as for his own safety, he had an army devoted to him, and should prefer to secure the safety of the Senate and his own adherents. He sent back with the amba.s.sadors some friends to represent him before the Senate, and, embarking his army at the Piraeus, ordered it to go round the coast to Patrae in Achaia, and thence to the sh.o.r.es opposite Brundisium. He, himself, having a fit of gout, went to Euboea, to try the springs of Aedepsus. [Sidenote: Story of Sulla and some fishermen.] One day, says Plutarch, while he was walking on the sh.o.r.e there some fishermen brought him some fine fish. He was much pleased, but when they told him that they were citizens of Halae, a town which he had destroyed after the battle of Orchomenos, he said in his grim way, 'What! is there a man of Halae still alive?' But then he told the men to take heart, for the fish had pleaded eloquently for them. From Euboea he crossed to the mainland to rejoin his troops. They were about 40,000 in number, and more than 200,000 men were, he said, in arms against him in Italy. [Sidenote: Devotion of Sulla's troops to him.] But Sulla, who had connived at their mutinies, their vices, and their breaches of discipline, who had always led them to victory, and had never yet thrown aside that mask of moderation which veiled an inflexible determination to be revenged--Sulla who had been so long the sole representative of authority, and to whom they had learned to look for their ultimate reward, was their hero and hope. They offered him their money, and of their own accord swore not to disperse or to ravage the country. Sulla refused their money. Indeed he must have had plenty of his own. But now, when slowly and still very cautiously he was unfolding his designs, such devotion must have been very welcome.

[Sidenote: Sulla lands at Brundisium, B.C. 83.] Early in 83 he sailed from Dyrrhachium to Brundisium, and was at once received by the town.

He was particularly anxious not to rouse against himself the Italians, with whom his name was anything but popular, and he solemnly swore to respect their lately-acquired rights. Adherents soon flocked to him.

[Sidenote: He is joined by Cra.s.sus;] Marcus Licinius Cra.s.sus came from Africa, and was sent to raise troops among the Marsi. He asked for an escort, for he had to go through territory occupied by the enemy. 'I give thee,' said Sulla hotly, 'thy father, thy brother, thy friends and thy kinsmen, who were cut off by violence and lawlessness, and whose murderers I am now hunting down.' [Sidenote: by Metellus Pius;]

Quintus Metellus Pius came from Liguria, whither he had escaped from Africa, after holding out there against the Marians as long as he could. [Sidenote: by Ofella;] Quintus Lucretius Ofella also came, soon to find to his cost that he had chosen a master who could as readily forget as accept timely service. [Sidenote: by Cn. Pompeius;] Most welcome of all was Cneius Pompeius, welcome not only for his talents, energy, and popularity, but because he did not come empty-handed. He had taken service under Cinna, but had been looked on with distrust, and an action had been brought against him to make him surrender plunder which his father, Cneius Pompeius Strabo, was said to have appropriated when he took Auximum. Carbo had pleaded for him, and he had been acquitted. But, as soon as Sulla was gaining ground in Italy, he went to Picenum where he had estates, and expelled from Auximum the adherents of Carbo, and then pa.s.sing from town to town won them one by one from his late protector's interests, and got together a corps of three legions, with all the proper equipment and munitions of war.

Three officers were sent against him at the head of three divisions; but they quarrelled, and Pompeius, who is said to have slain with his own hand the strongest horseman in the enemy's ranks, defeated one of them and effected a junction with Sulla somewhere in Apulia. Sulla's soldierly eye was pleased at the sight of troops thus successful, and in good martial trim; and when Pompeius addressed him as Imperator, he hailed him by the same t.i.tle in return. Or, perhaps, he was only playing on the youth's vanity, for Pompeius, who was for his courage and good looks the darling of the soldiers and the women, was very vain, and flattery was a potion which it seems to have been one of Sulla's cynical maxims always to administer in strong doses.

[Sidenote: by Philippus;] Later on he was joined by Philippus, the foe of Drusus, who for s.h.i.+fty and successful knavery seems to have been another Marcus Scaurus; [Sidenote: by Cethegus;] by Cethegus, who had been one of his bitterest enemies, which to a man of Sulla's business-like disposition would not be an objection, so long as he could make himself useful at the time; [Sidenote: by Verres.] and by Caius Verres, a late quaestor of Carbo, who had embezzled the public money in that capacity, and thus began by tergiversation and theft a notorious career.

Sulla marched northwards through Apulia, gaining friends by committing no devastation, and sending proposals of peace to the consul Norba.n.u.s, which were as hypocritical as was his abstinence from ravaging the country. He meant to deal with these Samnites through whose country he was marching at some other time. At present it was most politic not to provoke them. According to Appian, he met the consul at Ca.n.u.sium, on the Aufidus. [Sidenote: Battle of Mount Tifata. Defeat of Norba.n.u.s.]

But it is probable that this is a mistake, and that the first battle was fought at Mount Tifata, a spur of the Apennines, near Capua.

Norba.n.u.s had seized Sulla's envoys, and this so enraged the soldiers of the latter that they charged down the hill with irresistible impetuosity, and killed 6000 of the foe. Norba.n.u.s fled to Capua. Only seventy of the Sullans were killed. Sulla now crossed the Volturnus, and marching along the Appian Road met the other consul, Scipio, at Teanum, with whom he opened negotiations. Scipio sent Sertorius to Norba.n.u.s, who was blockaded in Capua, to consult him on the terms proposed. Sertorius, who had guessed what was coming and hoped to prevent it by something more efficacious than the advice of Norba.n.u.s, went out of his way and seized Suessa. This would interrupt Sulla's immediate communications with the sea, of which he was master. Sulla complained; but all the while he was, as Sertorius had warned Scipio, corrupting the Consul's troops. [Sidenote: Scipio's troops desert to Sulla.] They murmured when Scipio returned the hostages which Sulla had given; and, when the latter on their invitation approached their lines they went over to him in a body. On hearing of this Carbo said, that in contending with Sulla he had to contend with a lion and a fox, and that the fox gave him most trouble.

It may be noted here that Sulla, whose calculated moderation was paying him well--the more pleasantly because he knew that he could wreak his revenge afterwards at his leisure--never scrupled to employ every kind of subterfuge and lie. [Sidenote: Sulla's mendacity.] He tricked and lied on his march to Rome in 88. He lied foully to the Samnites after the battle of the Colline Gate. And he lied in his Memoirs, when he said that he only lost four at Chaeroneia, and twenty-three at Sacriportus, where he also said that he killed 20,000 of the foe. Absurd a.s.sertions like these may have been dictated as a sort of lavish acknowledgment paid to fortune, of whom he liked to be thought the favourite--lies that no one believed or was expected to believe, but keeping up a fiction of which it was his foible to be proud. [Sidenote: His success due greatly to desertions.] Another thing we may note is, that this was only the first of a long series of treasons to which, as much almost as to his own generals.h.i.+p, Sulla owed his final success. Five cohorts deserted at Sacriportus. Five more went over from Carbo to Metellus. Two hundred and seventy cavalry went over from Carbo to Sulla in Etruria. A whole legion, despatched by Carbo to relieve Praeneste, joined Pompeius. At the battle of Faventia 6000 deserted, and a Lucanian legion did the same directly afterwards. Naples and Narbo were both banded over by treachery. We hear also of commanders deserting. On the other hand, nothing is said of anyone deserting from Sulla, so that from the very beginning the contest could never have been really considered doubtful.

[Sidenote: Sertorius sent to Spain. No capable man left to oppose Sulla.] After this signal success at Teanum Sertorius was sent to Spain, either because, as is likely, he made bitter comments on the consul's incompetence, or because it was important to hold Spain as a place for retreat. Carbo hastened to Rome to and at his instigation the Senate outlawed all the senators who had joined Sulla--a suicidal step, which would contrast fatally with Sulla's crafty moderation.

[Sidenote: Burning of the Capitol.] It was about this time that the Capitol, and in it the Sibylline books, were burnt. Some people said that Carbo burnt it, though what his motive could be is difficult to conjecture. Sulla very likely regretted the loss of the Sibylline books as much as any man. [Sidenote: Sulla's situation at the close of 83 B.C.] With this the first year of the civil war ended. Sulla was master of Picenum, Apulia, and Campania; had disposed of two consuls and their armies; and had, by conciliation and swearing to respect their rights, made friends of some of the newly-enfranchised Italian towns.

The consuls for the next year (82) were Carbo and young Marius. The Marian governor in Africa was suspected of wis.h.i.+ng to raise the slaves and to make himself absolute in the province. Consequently the Roman merchants stirred up a tumult, in which he was burnt alive in his house. In Sardinia the renegade Philippus did some service by defeating the Marian praetor, and so securing for Sulla the corn supply of the islands. In the spring Sulla seized Setia, a strong position on the west of the Volscian Mountains. Marius was in the same neighbourhood, and he retreated to Sacriportus on the east of the same range. [Sidenote: Battle of Sacriportus.] Sulla followed him, his aim being to get to Rome. A battle took place at Sacriportus. Marius was getting the worst of it on the left wing, when five cohorts and two companies of cavalry deserted him. The rest fled with great slaughter, and Sulla pressed so hard on them that the gates of Praeneste were shut, to hinder him getting in with the fugitives. Marius was thus left outside, and, like Archelaus at Piraeus, had to be hoisted over the walls by ropes. [Sidenote: Sulla wins the battle and besieges Praeneste.] Sulla captured 8000 Samnites in the battle, and now, for the first time, when the road to Rome was opened and victory seemed secure, showed himself in his true colours, and slew all of them to a man. [Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre at Rome by order of young Marius.] An equally savage butchery had been going on in Rome, where Marius, before he was blockaded in Praeneste, had given orders to ma.s.sacre the leaders of the opposite faction. The Senate was a.s.sembled as if to despatch business in the Curia Hostilia, and there Carbo's cousin and the father-in-law of Pompeius were a.s.sa.s.sinated. The wife of the latter killed herself on hearing the news. Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the chief pontiff, and the first jurist who attempted to systematise Roman law, fled to the temple of Vesta, and was there slain. The corpses of those who had been killed were thrown into the Tiber, and Marius had the ferocious satisfaction of feeling that his enemies would not be able to exult over his own imminent ruin. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to Rome.]

Sulla, leaving Ofella to blockade Praeneste, hastened to Rome, but there was no one on whom to take vengeance, for his foes had fled.

He confiscated their property, and tried to quiet apprehensions by telling the people that he would soon re-establish the State. But he could not stay long in the city, for matters looked threatening in the north.

[Sidenote: Metellus and Carbo in the north.] In this quarter the contest was more stubborn, because the newly enfranchised towns were stronger partisans of Marius. Metellus had fought a battle on the Aesis, the frontier river of Picenum, against Carrinas, one of Carbo's lieutenants, and after a hard fight had beaten him and occupied the adjacent country. This brought Carbo against him with a superior army, and Metellus could do nothing till the news of Sacriportus frightened Carbo into retreating to Ariminum, that he might secure his communications and get supplies from the rich valley of the Po.

Metellus immediately resumed the offensive. He defeated in person one division of Carbo, five of whose cohorts deserted in the battle. His lieutenant, Pompeius, defeated Censorinus at Sena and sacked the town.

Pompeius is also said to have crossed the Po and taken Mediolanum (Milan), where his soldiers ma.s.sacred the senate. Metellus, meanwhile, had gone by sea along the east coast north of Ariminum, and had thus cut off Carbo's communications with the valley of the Po. This drove Carbo from his position, and he marched into Etruria, where he fought a battle near Clusium with Sulla, who had just arrived from Rome. In a cavalry fight near the Clanis, 270 of Carbo's Spanish horse went over to Sulla, and Carbo killed the rest. There was another fight at Saturnia, on the Albegna, and there, too, Sulla was victorious.

[Sidenote: Indecisive combats.] He was less fortunate in a general engagement near Clusium, which after a whole day's fighting ended indecisively. Carbo was, however, now reduced to great straits.

Carrinas was defeated by Pompeius and Cra.s.sus near Spoletum, and retired into the town. Carbo sent a detachment to his aid; but it was cut to pieces by an ambuscade laid by Sulla. Bad news, too, reached him from the south, where Marius was beginning to starve in Praeneste.

[Sidenote: Carbo attempts to relieve Praeneste.] He sent a strong force of eight legions to raise the siege; but Pompeius waylaid and routed them, and surrounded their officer who had retreated to a hill.

But the latter, leaving his fires alight, marched off by night, and returned to Carbo with only seven cohorts; for his troops had mutinied, one legion going off to Ariminum and many men dispersing to their homes. [Sidenote: A second attempt also fails.] A second attempt to relieve Praeneste was now made from the south. Lamponius from Lucania, whom we last heard of in the Social War (p. 120), and Pontius Telesinus from Samnium, marched at the head of 70,000 men into Latium.

This movement drew Sulla from Etruria. He threw himself between Rome and the enemy, and occupied a gorge through which they had to pa.s.s before they could get to Praeneste. The Latin Road branches off near Anagnia, one route leading straight to Rome, the other making a detour through Praeneste. [Sidenote: The dead lock at Praeneste.] It was somewhere here that Sulla took his stand; and neither could the southern army break through his lines, nor Marius break through those of Ofella, though he made determined attempts to do so.

Meanwhile Carbo and Norba.n.u.s, released from the pressure of Sulla's army, struck across the Apennines to overwhelm Metellus; but their imprudence ruined them. [Sidenote: Overthrow of Carbo by Metellus.]

Coming on Metellus at Faventia (Faenza) when their troops were weary after a day's march, they attacked him in the evening, hoping to surprise him. But the tired men were defeated. Ten thousand were killed; 6000 surrendered or deserted. The rest fled, and only 1000 effected an orderly retreat to Arretium. Nor did the disaster end here. A Lucanian legion, coming to join Carbo, deserted to Metellus on hearing the result of the battle, and the commander sent to offer his submission to Sulla. Sulla characteristically replied that he must earn his pardon, and the other, nothing loth, asked Norba.n.u.s and his officers to a banquet and murdered all who came. Norba.n.u.s refused the invitation and escaped to Rhodes; but when Sulla sent to demand that he should be given up he committed suicide. [Sidenote: Third attempt to relive Praeneste.] Carbo had still more than 30,000 men at Clusium, and he made a third attempt to relieve Praeneste by sending Damasippus with two legions to co-operate from the north with the Samnites on the south. [Sidenote: Carbo flies to Africa.] But Sulla found means to hold them in check, and Carbo, on the news of other disasters--at Fidentia, where Marcus Lucullus defeated one of his lieutenants, and at Tuder, which Marcus Cra.s.sus took and pillaged--lost heart and fled to Africa. Plutarch says that Lucullus, having less than a third of the numbers of the enemy, was in doubt whether to fight. But just then a gentle breeze blew the flowers from a neighbouring field, which fell on the s.h.i.+elds and helmets of the soldiers in such a manner that they seemed to be crowned with garlands, and this so cheered them that they won an easy victory. After Carbo's flight his army was defeated by Pompeius near Clusium. [Sidenote: Carbo's lieutenants threaten Rome.]

The rest of it, under Carrinas and Censorinus, joined Damasippus, and, taking up a position twelve miles from Rome in the Alban territory, threatened the capital and forced Sulla to break up his quarters, where he had been barring the roads to Praeneste and Rome. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to the rescue.] The sequel is uncertain; but it is probable that when the three commanders marched into Latium, Sulla was obliged to detach cavalry to hara.s.s them, and soon afterwards to march with all his forces to prevent Rome being taken. Why Carrinas did not a.s.sault Rome at once as he came south, we cannot say. Probably the relief of Praeneste was the most urgent necessity, and he hoped, after setting Marius free, to overwhelm Sulla first, then Pompeius, and then to take Rome. But, if these were his plans, the furious impetuosity of the Samnites disarranged them. [Sidenote: Desperate attempt of Pontius Telesinus.] Pontius, as soon as he saw Sulla's troops weakened, in order to oppose Carrinas, forced his way by night along the Latin Road, gathered up the troops of Carrinas on the march, and at daybreak was within a few miles of Rome. Sulla instantly followed, but by the Praenestine Road, which was somewhat longer; and when he got to Rome about midday, fighting had already taken place, and the Roman cavalry had been beaten under the walls of the city.