XVI
The most remarkable leaders of the Italians were Silo Popædius, Herius Asinius, Insteius Cato, Caius Pontidius, Telesinus Pontius, Marius Egnatius, and Papius Mutilus. Nor shall I, through mistaken modesty, withhold any part of the praise due to my own family, while I relate only the truth; for much honour ought to be paid to the memory of Minatius Magius of Æculanum, my ancestor in the fourth degree. He was grandson of Decius Magius, (a man of high distinction and trust among the Campanians,) and displayed in this war such a faithful attachment to the Romans, that, when a legion which he himself had raised among the Hirpinians, he, in conjunction with Titus Didius, took Herculaneum, and with Lucius Sylla besieged Pompeii, and gained possession of Compsa. His virtues have been celebrated by several writers, but by Hortensius, in his Annals, more fully and clearly than by any other. The Roman people amply recompensed his fidelity, by voting him a citizen with peculiar distinction, and electing his two sons prætors, at a time when only six were elected. So variable and alarming was the fortune of the Italian war, that in the course of two successive years two Roman consuls, first Rutilius and afterwards Porcius Cato, were slain by the enemy, and the armies of the Roman people discomfited in several places, so that a general assumption of the military dress18 took place, and was long continued. The enemy chose for their seat of government the city of Corfinium, which they renamed Italicum. The strength of the Romans was afterwards recruited, though slowly, by admitting into citizenship such as either had not taken arms, or had laid them down early, while the exertions of Pompey, Sylla, and Marius, revived the energy of the government when it was debilitated and ready to sink.
XVII
An end being now nearly put, except where the remains of hostility continued at Nola, to the Italian war, (the result of which was that the Romans, themselves exhausted, consented to grant the privilege of citizenship to certain state that were vanquished and reduced, rather than to the whole when flourishing in unimpaired strength,) Quintus Pompeius and Lucius Cornelius Sylla entered upon their consulship. Sylla was a man, who, before he had subdued his competitors, could not be sufficiently commended, nor afterwards too severely censured. He was of a noble family, being the sixth in descent from Cornelius Rufinus, one of the most celebrated leaders in the war with Pyrrhus; but as the lustre of the family had been for some time obscured, he conducted himself, through a great part of his life, in such a manner, that he seemed to have no thought of standing for the consulship. However, after his prætorship, having acquired great reputation in the Italian war, (such as he had before gained when lieutenant-general under Marius in Gaul, where he defeated some of the enemy’s most eminent commanders,) he assumed courage from success, and becoming a candidate for the consulship, was elected by the almost universal suffrage of his countrymen. When he attained this honour, he was in the forty-ninth year of his age.
XVIII
About this time Mithridates king of Pontus, a prince who must neither be passed without notice, nor be slightly mentioned; a man most active in war, pre-eminent in courage, distinguished sometimes by success and always by spirit; in council a general, in action a soldier, and in hatred to the Romans another Hannibal, took forcible possession of Asia, and put to death all the Roman citizens that were in it, whom, by sending letters to the different states, filled with promises of great rewards, he procured to be slain on the same day and hour. At this crisis no people equalled the Rhodians, either in resolute exertions against Mithridates, or in firm attachment to the Romans; and a lustre was thrown on their fidelity by the perfidy of the Mitylenæans, who gave up in chains to Mithridates, Manius Aquillius and several others; and yet to these very Mitylenæans liberty was afterwards granted by Pompey, merely to gratify Theophanes19. Mithridates, now becoming formidable, seemed to threaten even Italy, when the province of Asia fell to the lot of Sylla. After leaving Rome, he stayed some time in the neighbourhood of Nola; (for that city, as if repenting of the fidelity to us, which it had sacredly maintained during the Punic war, continued in arms with persevering obstinacy, and was then besieged by a Roman army;) during which interval, Publius Sulpicius, a tribune of the people, an eloquent and active man, distinguished for wealth, interest, the number of his friends, and the vigour of his understanding and character, (who, though he had formerly, with the best apparent intentions, obtained from the people the highest office in the state, yet afterwards, as if he repented of his virtues, and as if his good resolutions were profitless, grew suddenly vicious and violent, and attached himself to Marius, who, at the end of his seventieth year, was still coveting every command and every province,) this man, I say, now proposed a law to the people, by which Sylla’s commission was annulled, and the conduct of the Mithridatic war decreed to Marius; to which he added other laws of pernicious and fatal tendency, such as could not be endured in a free state. He even, by means of some emissaries of his faction, put to death a son of the consul Quintus Pompeius, who was also son-in-law of Sylla.
XIX
On this, Sylla, having collected a body of troops, and returned to the city, took possession of it by force of arms, and expelled twelve promoters of these new and pernicious measures, among whom were Marius, his son, and Publius Sulpicius; at the same time procuring a law to be passed declaring them exiles. As for Sulpicius, some horsemen overtaking him in the Laurentine marshes, put him to death; and his head, being elevated and displayed on the Rostrum, was an omen, as it were, of the approaching proscription. Marius, after his sixth consulship and his seventieth year, being found naked, and covered with mud, with only his eyes and nose above the surface, among the reeds at the margin of the lake of Marica, where he had concealed himself to escape the pursuit of Sylla’s horsemen, was taken out, and, with a cord about his neck, dragged to the prison of Minturnæ, by order of one of the two colonial magistrates. A public servant, by nation a German, who happened to have been taken prisoner by Marius in the Cimbrian war, was sent with a sword to despatch him; but no sooner did he recognise Marius, than, with a loud outcry, showing how much he was shocked at the fall of so great a man, he threw away the weapon, and hurried out of the prison. His countrymen, thus taught by a barbarian20 to commiserate the man who was recently at their head, supplied him with clothes and provision for a voyage, and put him on board a ship. Having overtaken his son near the island of Ænaria, he steered his course to Africa, where, in a hut among the ruins of Carthage, he lived in a state of indigence. Here, while Marius reviewed Carthage, and Carthage contemplated him, they might afford consolation to each other.
XX
In this year the hands of the soldiers were first stained with the blood of a Roman consul. Quintus Pompeius, Sylla’s colleague, was slain by the troops of Cnæus Pompey the proconsul, in a mutiny which their leader had himself excited. * * * *
Cinna showed no more moderation than Marius and Sulpicius; for although the citizenship of Rome had been granted to Italy, on the understanding that the new members should be included in eight new tribes, (lest otherwise their power and numbers might detract from the dignity of the original citizens, and the receivers of the kindness be more powerful than their benefactors,) he now promised that he would distribute them through all the tribes. With this object in view, he had drawn together into the city a vast multitude from all parts of Italy. But he was driven out of Rome by the power of his colleague and of the nobles; and, while he was on his way to Campania, the consulship was taken from him by a vote of the senate, and Lucius Cornelius Merula, flamen of Jupiter, was appointed in his place; an illegal proceeding, better suited to the demerits of the man, than for a precedent. Cinna, after first bribing the tribunes and centurions, and then gaining over the soldiers by promises of largesses, was received as leader by the army at Nola, and when all the troops had sworn obedience to him, he, retaining the ensigns of consul, turned their arms against his country; depending chiefly, however, on the vast number of the new citizens, of whom he had enlisted above three hundred cohorts, and filled up the complement
of thirty legions. His party stood in need of men of character and influence; and, to add to these, he recalled from exile Caius Marius, his son, and the others who had been banished with them.
XXI
While Cinna was making war on his country, Cnæus Pompeius, father of Pompey the Great, (who had done eminent service to the state in the Marsian war, especially in the Picenian territory, and had taken Asculum, near which city, while the troops were dispersed in various other parts, seventy-five Roman citizens, in one day, maintained a conflict with more than sixty thousand Italians,) had become, from being disappointed of another consulship, so equivocal in his conduct, and so apparently undecided for either party, that he seemed to do nothing but with a view to his own advantage, and to be watching for opportunities of turning himself and his army to one side or the other, wherever the greater prospect of power for himself should appear. But at last he came to a collision with Cinna, in a long and fierce battle, of which, begun and ended as it was under the very walls and view of the city of Rome, it can hardly be expressed how grievous was the result both to the combatants and the spectators21. Soon after, while a pestilence was ravaging both armies, as if they were not sufficiently exhausted by the sword, Cnæus Pompeius died; but the joy felt at his death was in a great measure counterbalanced by sorrow for the loss of so many citizens, cut off by the sword or by sickness. The Roman people vented on his corpse the resentment which they owed to him when alive. Whether there were two or three families of the Pompeii, Quintus Pompeius was the first consul of that name, with Cnæus Servilius, about a hundred and sixty-seven years ago. Cinna and Marius, after several encounters, not without considerable bloodshed on both sides, made themselves masters of the city; but Cinna entered it first, and proposed a law for the recal of Marius.
XXII
Soon after, Caius Marius made his entry into the city, an entry fatal to his countrymen. Nothing could have surpassed his victorious irruption in cruelty, had not that of Sylla speedily followed. Nor was the licentious barbarity of the sword inflicted only on the middling ranks; but men of the highest stations, and most eminent characters, were destroyed under various kinds of sufferings; among these the consul Octavius, a man of the mildest disposition, was slain by order of Cinna. Merula, who, on the approach of Cinna, had resigned the consulship, having opened his veins, and sprinkled his blood on the altars, implored the same gods, whom, as priest of Jupiter, he had often intreated to preserve the Commonwealth, to pour curses on Cinna and his party, and then resigned a life, which had greatly served the state. Marcus Antonius, a man as eminent in civil dignity as in eloquence, was, by order of Marius and Cinna, stabbed by the swords of the soldiers; whom he long caused to hesitate by the power of his eloquence. Quintus Catulus, celebrated for his other merits, as well as for the fame acquired in the Cimbrian war, which was common to him and Marius, when search was made for him by executioners, shut himself up in a place lately plastered with mortar22, had fire brought it to raise a strong smell, and then, by inhaling the noxious vapour, and holding in his breath, he found a death agreeable to his wishes, though not to the intentions of his enemies. Everything was falling headlong into ruin, but no person was yet found who dared to make a donation of the property of a Roman citizen, or to ask for it. Afterwards this additional evil was introduced, that avarice supplied motives for cruelty; magnitude of guilt was estimated by magnitude of wealth; whoever was rich, was criminal, and became a reward, as it were, for his own destruction23; nor was anything considered dishonourable that was gainful.
XXIII
Cinna now entered on his second consulship, and Marius on his seventh, to the utter disgrace of the former six. In the early part of it he fell sick and died, leaving a character for having been implacable in war towards his enemies, and in peace toward his countrymen, and utterly impatient of quiet. In his room was elected Valerius Flaccus, the author of a most dishonourable law, by which he obliged all creditors to accept a fourth part of what was due to them; for which proceeding deserved punishment overtook him within two years after. While Cinna tyrannised in Italy, the greater part of the nobility fled into Achaia to Sylla, and thence afterwards into Asia. Sylla meanwhile engaged the generals of Mithridates, near Athens, in Bœotia, and Macedonia, with such success that he recovered Athens, and, after expending a vast deal of labour in reducing the numerous fortifications of the Piræus, slew above two hundred thousand of the enemy, and took at least as many prisoners. If any person imputes the guilt of rebellion to the Athenians, at the time when their city was besieged by Sylla, he is certainly ignorant both of the truth and of history. For so invariable was the fidelity of the Athenians to the Romans, that at all times, and in every transaction, whatever was performed with perfect good faith, the Romans used to say was done with “Attic faith.” But that people, overpowered by the force of Mithridates, were in a most miserable condition, held in possession by their enemies, besieged by their friends, and, while their inclinations were outside the walls, compelled by necessity to keep their persons within. Sylla, then passing over to Asia, found Mithridates submissive, and ready to agree to any terms whatever. He obliged him, after paying a fine in money, and delivering up half of his ships, to withdraw from Asia and all the other provinces of which he had taken possession by force of arms; he recovered the prisoners, punished the deserters and other traitors, and ordered the king to confine himself within his father’s territory, that is, Pontus.
XXIV
Caius Flavius Fimbria (who, being general of the cavalry before Sylla came into Asia, had put to death Valerius Flaccus, a man that had been consul, and, having assumed the command of the army, and been saluted with the title of Imperator, had got the better of Mithridates in a vigorous engagement) slew himself on Sylla’s arrival. He was a young man, who executed with bravery what he planned with utter disregard of honesty. In the same year Publius Lænas, a tribune of the people, threw from the Tarpeian rock Sextus Lucilius, who had been tribune the year before; and as his colleagues, whom he had fixed a day to bring to trial, fled in alarm to Sylla, he procured a sentence of banishment24 against them.
Sylla, having now arranged affairs beyond sea, and having, as chief of all the Romans, received ambassadors from the Parthians, (some of whom, being magi, foretold from marks on his body that his life and memory would be glorious,) sailed home to Italy, landing at Brundisium not more than thirty thousand men to oppose two hundred thousand of his enemies. I can scarcely consider any part of Sylla’s conduct more honourable than this; that while the party of Marius and Cinna held Italy in subjection, during three years, and while he never dissembled his intention of turning his arms against them, he yet did not relinquish the affairs which he had in hand, judging it right to humble an enemy, before he took vengeance on a countryman; nor was it till fear from abroad was removed, and till he had subdued foreign foes, that he proceeded to suppress opposition at home. Before the arrival of Lucius Sylla, however, Cinna was slain in a mutiny of his troops. Such a man deserved to die rather by the sentence of a conqueror, than by the rage of the soldiery. But he was a character, of whom it may truly be said, that he dared what no good man would dare, and accomplished what could be effected by none but the bravest; that he was precipitate in forming his designs, but executed them like a man. Carbo, electing no colleague in his room, continued sole consul for all the rest of the year.
XXV
It might be supposed that Sylla had come into Italy, not to take vengeance for the war raised against him, but merely to establish peace; so quietly did he lead his army through Calabria and Apulia into Campania, taking the greatest care for the safety of the fruits, lands, inhabitants, and towns; and endeavouring to put an end to the war on just and equitable terms. But peace could never be acceptable to those whose desires were unprincipled and without control. In the mean time Sylla’s army increased daily; for all the best and most judicious flocked to his standard. Then, by a happy concurrence of events, he suppressed the consuls Scipio and Norbanus near
Capua; Norbanus was conquered in battle; Scipio, deserted by his troops and delivered into Sylla’s hands, was dismissed without injury. So different was Sylla as an adversary and a conqueror, that, while he was still gaining a victory, he was merciful to excess25, but after it was secured, more cruel than any on record. Thus he dismissed the disarmed consul, as we have said, and released, in like manner, Quintus Sertorius, (soon to prove the firebrand of so great a war,) and many others whom he had taken; in order, we might suppose, that a proof might be seen of the existence of two distinct and opposite minds in the same person. After his victory, on the spot where, in his descent from Mount Tifata, he had encountered Caius Norbanus, he gave solemn thanks to Diana, the deity to whom that tract is sacred, and dedicated to the goddess the waters so celebrated for their salubrity and for curing diseases, with all the adjacent land. An inscription on a pillar at the door of her temple, and a brazen tablet within it, preserve to the present day the memory of this grateful religious ceremony.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 5