CHAPTER XXXII.

CN. POMPEIUS IN SPAIN.

B.C. 76-75.

IN forty days Pompeius was ready to march to Spain. It is uncertain whether he set out at the close of B.C. 77 or in the beginning of B.C. 76. He crossed the Alps, not indeed with so much difficulty as Hannibal, but he cut a new road at a part which Appian describes as situated about the sources of the Rhone and the Po, which rivers, he adds with his usual ignorance of geography, rise in the Alps not far from one another. Pompeius probably made his road by the pass of Mont Genèvre, which seems to be the route that Caesar took in the first year of his Gallic campaigns. In his letter to the Senate Pompeius says that the enemy was threatening Italy by the Alpine passes, and he drove them back to Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees and received the submission of the Laletani and the Indigetes, two nations on the coast between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. Meeting with no enemy here Pompeius advanced southwards through the plain of Valencia to relieve the town Lauron which Sertorius was besieging. Lauron was probably situated near the mouth of the Sucro (Xucar). Orosius reports on the authority of a writer named Galba (Sueton. Galba, c. 3) that Pompeius had thirty thousand infantry, and a thousand horsemen; and Sertorius double the number of infantry and eight thousand horsemen. The hostile camps about Lauron were near to one another, and both Sertorius and Pompeius were compelled to forage

for supplies.

There were only two places which could furnish the armies, one near the camps, and the other at a distance. Sertorius ordered his light troops to scour the part that was near, but he would not allow them to visit the remoter spot, his design being to make the enemy believe that they might safely forage there. The men of Pompeius having been thus led to seek supplies in the more distant place, Sertorius sent forward Octavius Graecinus with ten cohorts armed in Roman fashion, ten cohorts of light armed Spaniards, and Tarquitius Priscus, with two thousand horsemen, to lay an ambuscade for the enemy. This man seems to be the Q. Tarquitius who accompanied C. Annius into Spain (p. 450), and if so, he must have changed sides. After carefully examining the ground the officers of Sertorius by night placed their troops in a wood near the foraging ground of the enemy. In the front they put the Spaniards, who were well fitted for operations which required speed and stealth; a little distance behind them were posted the heavy armed troops, and furthest in the rear the cavalry, in order that the ambuscade might not be betrayed by the neighing of the horses. All were ordered to keep quiet till the third hour after sunrise, for the foragers would of course come in the early morning. The men of Pompeius after well loading themselves were making ready to return, with no apprehensions about their safety, and even the picquets, seeing that all was quiet, were dispersed to look after supplies, when on a sudden the nimble Spaniards fell on the enemy who being scattered in all directions were surprised by this unexpected attack. Before they could make any resistance, the heavy armed troops rushed out of the wood and put to flight the foragers while they were attempting to form their ranks. The cavalry then coming up pursued and cut down the fugitives all along the road by which they were making their escape to the camp of Pompeius, who seeing the confusion sent a legion under D. Laelius to protect the foragers. Upon this the enemy's cavalry turned off to the right as if they were taking to flight, but as the soldiers of Pompeius advanced, the cavalry fell on their rear,

and at the same time those who were pursuing the fugitives attacked them in front. The legion thus placed between two bodies of the enemy was destroyed together with the commander. Pompeius indeed began to put his whole army in motion to save the legion, but Sertorius had placed his men on the hills ready for action, and thus he deterred Pompeius from leaving his position. Sertorius thus inflicted a double loss on the Roman general, and compelled him to be a passive spectator of the destruction of his own men. This was the first contest between Sertorius and Pompeius. Livy wrote that Pompeius lost ten thousand men and all his baggage, but this statement has been disputed, because according to the narrative there was no general battle and it is not said that Pompeius was compelled to leave his camp. But if a whole legion perished, and also all the men who were sent out to forage, and the beasts with them, the loss would correspond pretty exactly to Livy's statement and to the narrative of Appian.

There was a height near the city well situated for enabling an enemy to attack Lauron, and both Pompeius and Sertorius had attempted to secure this valuable position. Sertorius succeeded in getting it; and Pompeius was well pleased with the result, or affected to be, thinking that Sertorius would be hemmed in between the town and his own army. He encouraged the townsmen to hold out, and to look on while Sertorius was blockaded. But Sertorius smiled when he heard of this, or more probably he would see without being told what the design of his adversary was. He encouraged his men by reminding them that he had still six thousand regular soldiers on the ground which he held before he seized the hill, and that if Pompeius should attack them, he would be himself attacked in the rear. Thus Sertorius made good his words when he said that he would teach Sulla's pupil, for so he contemptuously named Pompeius, that a general should look behind him rather than before. We cannot tell at what time of the siege of Lauron the affair of the foragers happened, but we learn from Frontinus' narrative of the successful stratagem of Sertorius that

he was then in the possession of the heights. Pompeius saw
when it was too late that the enemy, whom he was expecting
to blockade, had so disposed his force that it was not safe to
attack him. Want of supplies and the heavy loss that he
had sustained may have led Pompeius to retire before Lauron
surrendered, for as Sertorius was superior in numbers, he
could not have stayed safely. Lauron was burnt, and the
inhabitants who survived the slaughter were sent as slaves to
Lusitania. Plutarch says that Sertorius spared the people
and let them all go; but after he had burnt their houses and
taken all their property, there would be less mercy in turning
them loose to starve than in selling them for slaves. Ser-
torius boasted that Pompeius saw the city perish and was
near enough to warm himself by the flames. Pompeius in
his letter to the Senate simply says that he sustained the
attack of Sertorius though his forces were very inferior in
numbers; but he indirectly admits that he was forced to
retire. The young general made his hasty retreat north-
ward from a burning town which he had come to save, and
from a wasted country, where he had left thousands of his
men to rot.
rot. He had learned something of the art of war by
sad experience, and he had at least the merit of escaping
from his terrible enemy.

An event happened at the capture of Lauron which gives us some notion of the difficulty that Sertorius had in keeping his men under discipline and of his prompt punishment. When Lauron was surrendered or taken, for the fact is doubtful, a soldier attempted unnatural violence upon a Spanish woman, who tore out the villain's eyes. Sertorius heard of what happened, and as the whole cohort had a bad name for such vices, he destroyed every man, though they were all Roman soldiers.

The winter was coming on, but Sertorius did not rest. He began the siege of Contrebia, a town which has been mentioned already in the history of the Spanish wars (Vol. i. p. 65). The site of this place is unknown, but it must have been somewhere near the Ebro. As Contrebia held out against Sertorius, we must assume that it was in the Roman

interest; and it is said that it was defended by deserters from
Sertorius and by runaway slaves. After a siege of four-and-
forty days and great loss to Sertorius the town surrendered.
He took hostages from the people, demanded a small sum of
money, and deprived them of all their arms. The freemen,
who had deserted were given up; the runaway slaves, who were
much more numerous, were massacred by the townsmen at
the command of Sertorius, and their carcases were thrown
over the walls. Sertorius left in the town an officer named
L. Insteius with some men, and led his forces to the Ebro to
the neighbourhood of a place named Aelia Castra, where he
built huts and put his army in winter quarters.

Here he held a meeting of the Spanish states, which were
on his side. He had given orders all through the Nearer
province, in which he now was, that the several peoples
should furnish arms according to their ability. When the
arms thus furnished were approved, the soldiers were ordered
to bring in their old arms, and they received a new supply.
The cavalry received fresh equipment, and pay. Arti-
zans were collected and employed in a public workshop. A
calculation also was made of the amount of work that could
be turned out every day. Thus all kinds of weapons and
military material were prepared, for the states in alliance
with Sertorius eagerly seconded his designs. The general
thanked the deputies of the several states and towns for what
they had done, laid before them an account of his own opera-
tions, and exhorted them to prosecute the war.

In the spring of B.C. 75 Sertorius sent Perperna with twenty
thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse to the territory of the
Ilercaones, who were on the coast near the mouth of the
Ebro, to protect the maritime parts of that country and to
watch Pompeius. At the same time he wrote to Herennius
or Herennuleius, as he is named in Livy, who was in the
same parts to which Perperna was sent. We know nothing
of the operations of Metellus in the preceding year (B.c. 76).
One of Sertorius' commanders, named L. Hirtuleius, was now
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Metellus, and Sertorius
sent him instructions for the conduct of the war he was