The History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen [good english books to read txt] 📗

contemporary and rival Crassus penetrated from Picenum by mountain-paths into Umbria and gained the Flaminian road at Spoletium, where they defeated Carbo's legate Carrinas and shut him up in the town; he succeeded, however, in escaping from it on a rainy night and making his way, though not without loss, to the army of Carbo. Sulla himself marched from Rome into Etruria with his army in two divisions, one of which advancing along the coast defeated the corps opposed to it at Saturnia (between the rivers Ombrone and Albegna); the second led by Sulla in person fell in with the army of Carbo in the valley of the Clanis, and sustained a successful conflict with his Spanish cavalry. But the pitched battle which was fought between Carbo and Sulla in the region of Chiusi, although it ended without being properly decisive, was so far at any rate in favour of Carbo that Sulla's victorious advance was checked.

Conflicts about Praeneste

In the vicinity of Rome also events appeared to assume a more favourable turn for the revolutionary party, and the war seemed as if it would again be drawn chiefly towards this region. For, while the oligarchic party were concentrating all their energies on Etruria, the democracy everywhere put forth the utmost efforts to break the blockade of Praeneste. Even the governor of Sicily Marcus Perpenna set out for that purpose; it does not appear, however, that he reached Praeneste. Nor was the very considerable corps under Marcius, detached by Carbo, more successful in this; assailed and defeated by the troops of the enemy which were at Spoletium, demoralized by disorder, want of supplies, and mutiny, one portion went back to Carbo, another to Ariminum; the rest dispersed. Help in earnest on the other hand came from Southern Italy. There the Samnites under Pontius of Telesia, and the Lucanians under their experienced general Marcus Lamponius, set out without its being possible to prevent their departure, were joined in Campania where Capua still held out by a division of the garrison under Gutta, and thus to the number, it was said, of 70,000 marched upon Praeneste. Thereupon Sulla himself, leaving behind a corps against Carbo, returned to Latium and took up a well-chosen position in the defiles in front of Praeneste, where he barred the route of the relieving army.(15) In vain the garrison attempted to break through the lines of Ofella, in vain the relieving army attempted to dislodge Sulla; both remained immoveable in their strong positions, even after Damasippus, sent by Carbo, had reinforced the relieving army with two legions.

Successes of the Sullans in Upper Italy
Etruria Occupied by the Sullans

But while the war stood still in Etruria and in Latium, matters came to a decision in the valley of the Po. There the general of the democracy, Gaius Norbanus, had hitherto maintained the upper hand, had attacked Marcus Lucullus the legate of Metellus with superior force and compelled him to shut himself up in Placentia, and had at length turned against Metellus in person. He encountered the latter at Faventia, and immediately made his attack late in the afternoon with his troops fatigued by their march; the consequence was a complete defeat and the total breaking up of his corps, of which only about 1000 men returned to Etruria. On the news of this battle Lucullus sallied from Placentia, and defeated the division left behind to oppose him at Fidentia (between Piacenza and Parma). The Lucanian troops of Albinovanus deserted in a body: their leader made up for his hesitation at first by inviting the chief officers of the revolutionary army to banquet with him and causing them to be put to death; in general every one, who at all could, now concluded his peace. Ariminum with all its stores and treasures fell into the power of Metellus; Norbanus embarked for Rhodes; the whole land between the Alps and Apennines acknowledged the government of the Optimates. The troops hitherto employed there were enabled to turn to the attack of Etruria, the last province where their antagonists still kept the field. When Carbo received this news in the camp at Clusium, he lost his self-command; although he had still a considerable body of troops under his orders, he secretly escaped from his headquarters and embarked for Africa. Part of his abandoned troops followed the example which their general had set, and went home; part of them were destroyed by Pompeius: Carrinas gathered together the remainder and led them to Latium to join the army of Praeneste. There no change had in the meanwhile taken place; and the final decision drew nigh. The troops of Carrinas were not numerous enough to shake Sulla's position; the vanguard of the army of the oligarchic party, hitherto employed in Etruria, was approaching under Pompeius; in a few days the net would be drawn tight around the army of the democrats and the Samnites.

The Samnites and Democrats Attack Rome
Battle at the Colline Gate
Slaughter of the Prisoners

Its leaders then determined to desist from the relief of Praeneste and to throw themselves with all their united strength on Rome, which was only a good day's march distant. By so doing they were, in a military point of view, ruined; their line of retreat, the Latin road, would by such a movement fall into Sulla's hands; and even if they got possession of Rome, they would be infallibly crushed there, enclosed within a city by no means fitted for defence, and wedged in between the far superior armies of Metellus and Sulla. Safety, however, was no longer thought of; revenge alone dictated this march to Rome, the last outbreak of fury in the passionate revolutionists and especially in the despairing Sabellian nation. Pontius of Telesia was in earnest, when he called out to his followers that, in order to get rid of the wolves which had robbed Italy of freedom, the forest in which they harboured must be destroyed. Never was Rome in a more fearful peril than on the 1st November 672, when Pontius, Lamponius, Carrinas, Damasippus advanced along the Latin road towards Rome, and encamped about a mile from the Colline gate. It was threatened with a day like the 20th July 365 u. c. or the 15th June 455 a. d.— the days of the Celts and the Vandals. The time was gone by when a coup de main against Rome was a foolish enterprise, and the assailants could have no want of connections in the capital. The band of volunteers which sallied from the city, mostly youths of quality, was scattered like chaff before the immense superiority of force. The only hope of safety rested on Sulla. The latter, on receiving accounts of the departure of the Samnite army in the direction of Rome, had likewise set out in all haste to the assistance of the capital. The appearance of his foremost horsemen under Balbus in the course of the morning revived the sinking courage of the citizens; about midday he appeared in person with his main force, and immediately drew up his ranks for battle at the temple of the Erycine Aphrodite before the Colline gate (not far from Porta Pia). His lieutenants adjured him not to send the troops exhausted by the forced march at once into action; but Sulla took into consideration what the night might bring on Rome, and, late as it was in the afternoon, ordered the attack. The battle was obstinately contested and bloody. The left wing of Sulla, which he led in person, gave way as far as the city wall, so that it became necessary to close the city gates; stragglers even brought accounts to Ofella that the battle was lost. But on the right wing Marcus Crassus overthrew the enemy and pursued him as far as Antemnae; this somewhat relieved the left wing also, and an hour after sunset it in turn began to advance. The fight continued the whole night and even on the following morning; it was only the defection of a division of 3000 men, who immediately turned their arms against their former comrades, that put an end to the struggle. Rome was saved. The army of the insurgents, for which there was no retreat, was completely extirpated. The prisoners taken in the battle—between 3000 and 4000 in number, including the generals Damasippus, Carrinas, and the severely-wounded Pontius— were by Sulla's orders on the third day after the battle brought to the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius and there massacred to the last man, so that the clatter of arms and the groans of the dying were distinctly heard in the neighbouring temple of Bellona, where Sulla was just holding a meeting of the senate. It was a ghastly execution, and it ought not to be excused; but it is not right to forget that those very men who perished there had fallen like a band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and, had they found time, would have destroyed them as far as fire and sword can destroy a city and its citizens.

Sieges
Praeneste
Norba
Nola

With this battle the war was, in the main, at an end. The garrison of Praeneste surrendered, when it learned the issue of the battle of Rome from the heads of Carrinas and other officers thrown over the walls. The leaders, the consul Gaius Marius and the son of Pontius, after having failed in an attempt to escape, fell on each other's swords. The multitude cherished the hope, in which it was confirmed by Cethegus, that the victor would even now have mercy upon them. But the times of mercy were past. The more unconditionally Sulla had up to the last moment granted full pardon to those who came over to him, the more inexorable he showed himself toward the leaders and communities that had held out to the end. Of the Praenestine prisoners, 12,000 in number, most of the Romans and individual Praenestines as well as the women and children were released, but the Roman senators, almost all the Praenestines and the whole of the Samnites, were disarmed and cut to pieces; and the rich city was given up to pillage. It was natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new burgesses which had not yet passed over should continue their resistance with the utmost obstinacy. In the Latin town of Norba for instance, when Aemilius Lepidus got into it by treason, the citizens killed each other and set fire themselves to their town, solely in order to deprive their executioners of vengeance and of booty. In Lower Italy Neapolis had already been taken by assault, and Capua had, as it would seem, been voluntarily surrendered; but Nola was only evacuated by the Samnites in 674. On his flight from Nola the last surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the door of his own house. As to the Samnites, the dictator declared that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed, and that the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated from the earth; and, as he verified these words in terrible fashion on the prisoners taken before Rome and in Praeneste, so he appears to have also undertaken a raid for the purpose of laying waste the country, to have captured Aesernia(16) (674?), and to have converted that hitherto flourishing and populous region into the desert which it has since remained. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed by Marcus Crassus. A longer resistance was offered in Etruria by Populonium and above all by the impregnable Volaterrae, which gathered out of the remains of the beaten party an army of four legions, and stood a two years' siege conducted first by Sulla in person and then by the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother of the democratic consul, till at length in the third year after the battle at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on condition of free departure. But in this terrible time neither military law nor military discipline was regarded; the soldiers raised a cry of treason and stoned their too compliant general; a troop of horse sent by the Roman government cut down the garrison as it withdrew in terms of the capitulation. The victorious army was distributed throughout Italy, and all the insecure townships were furnished with strong garrisons: under the iron hand of the Sullan officers the last palpitations of the revolutionary and national opposition slowly died away.

The Provinces

There was still work to be done in the