Lupus, and of Sulla, who was the legate of the other consul, Lucius Julius Cæsar.

While the Roman government were gathering their forces, and meanwhile directing the severest prosecutions against the friends of Drusus and all who were supposed to favour the Italian cause, the first brunt of war fell upon the fortresses and faithful cities in the revolted territory. The Romans met with their accustomed bal luck at the opening of the war. In Campania, Lucius Cæsar reinforced Capua and other chief cities, but his further efforts against the insurgents were unsuccessful: his legate Crassus was cut off in Venafrum; Æsernia, Nola, Venusia, and other cities were lost; the Greek towns on the bays of Naples and Pæstum generally declared for the insurgents; and they were masters of all Apulia and nearly all Campania. When Oxyntas, the son of Jugurtha, whom they had taken prisoner at Venusia, appeared in their ranks in regal purple, the Numidians deserted so rapidly, that Cæsar was obliged to send the whole contingent home. Mutilus now ventured to attack the Roman camp; but he was repulsed with the loss of 6000 men, and in the joy of this first success, the soldiers saluted Cæsar as Imperator on the field of battle. The victory was soon tarnished by a severe defeat; but the consul was able to keep the field till winter, without suffering any overwhelming disaster.

His colleague was less fortunate in the Marsian territory. Rejecting the advice of Marius to train his troops by skirmishing, Lupus first suffered the defeat of a division of 10,000 under C. Perperna, and was himself cut off and slain, with 8000 men, by an ambuscade planned by Publius Scato. Then Q. Cæpio, whom the Senate associated with Marius in the command, incurred the like disaster at the hands of Silo. But these heavy losses left Marius in sole command; and, pressing on with his usual caution, he gained two successive victories over the enemy. Once more,

however, it was his fate to see his laurels reaped by Sulla, who, co-operating in the second battle with a contingent from the southern army, gained the chief share of honour by cutting off the enemy's retreat. In Picenum, Cneius Pompeius Strabo, the father of the celebrated Pompey, had been defeated and shut up in Firmum; but the advance of Servius Sulpicius, who had gained a victory over the Pelignians, enabled him to defeat the hostile general, and to shut up his broken army in Asculum.

The general result of the campaign had been so discouraging, that the Romans felt the necessity of concession, to secure the

well-affected and, if possible, reclaim the revolted. A decisive proof of reaction was given, when one of the new tribunes, M. Plautius Silvanus, carried a law for depriving the Equites of their judicial power in the trials for treason under the commission of Varius, and entrusting it to Judices chosen by the tribes; a change, of which the result was seen in the condemnation of Varius himself. The consul L. Julius Cæsar had already carried a law for conferring the Roman franchise on the citizens of all Italian states which had not openly revolted; and now the tribune Silvanus, with his colleague C. Papirius Carbo, passed a measure allowing every domiciled citizen of an Italian state to become a citizen of Rome, by presenting himself before the prætor within sixty days -that is, before the opening of the next campaign.* By the LEX JULIA and the Lex Plautia Papiria the states of Italy Proper won their equal union with Rome, after a struggle of three centuries. The case of Cisalpine Gaul was provided for by a separate enactment, carried by the new consul Pompeius Strabo. A distinction was made between the states on the two sides of the Po, tantamount to fixing the northern boundary of Italy, in its new political unity, at that river. All the cities within that limit, whether Latin or Celtic, received the Roman franchise, which was also bestowed on the Latin colonies of the Transpadane region. But, perhaps from a reluctance to introduce so large a foreign element to a share in the government, the great and numerous Celtic communities between the Po and the Alps were admitted only to that modified citizenship called the "Jus Latii.”

These concessions had the immediate effect of stopping the spread of the insurrection which had already broken out in Umbria and Etruria, and giving new life to the aid rendered by the Gauls, while they raised misgivings and divisions among the insurgents. The Romans put forth new efforts to finish the war under the new consuls. Cn. Pompeius Strabo remained in Picenum. L. Porcius Cato succeeded Marius, who was thought to have become sluggish with age; while Sulla, with the rank of proprætor, took the place of Cæsar, who was recalled to fill the censorship. Among the youths who, in their first campaign, enjoyed the favour of living in the tent of the consul Pompeius, was M. Tullius Cicero. Before the winter ended, Strabo won the first honours of the war by the total defeat of 15,000 Marsians who were on their way to aid the insurrection in Etruria. After the death of Cato, in a battle near the Fucine lake, Strabo pressed

This plebiscitum seems to have been passed about January, B.C. 89.

the siege of Asculum, and defeated an army which marched to its relief under Judacilius. On that day 75,000 Romans are said to have fought with 60,000 Italians. The place, where the outrage that began the war had been committed, resisted with the energy of despair for several months. When surrender became inevitable, Judacilius tortured to death the chiefs of the Roman party-for there was one even in Asculum—and then put an end to his own life. The victorious Romans retaliated upon the citizens; and all who escaped the executioner were driven forth as destitute wanderers. In this and the following campaign, moveable columns reduced the Sabellians in succession: a Samnite army which came to their help under Marius Egnatius was defeated by Strabo at the passage of the Aufidus: Corfinium surrendered; and the remnant of the Italian Senate fled to the Samnites, who now alone prolonged the war. Meanwhile, Sulla drove out the enemy from southern Campania, and won by his defeat of the Samnite general Cluentius the gift of the "corona obsidionalis" by the acclamations of his army. Then, pressing forward into Samnium, and making a fearful example of the town of Æclanum, he turned the position of the Italian consul Mutilus, and followed up the total defeat of his army by the capture of Bovianum, the Samnite capital. At the beginning of the third campaign, the insurrection was everywhere suppressed, except in Samnium and the south of Lucania, and these districts were severed by the Roman occupation of Apulia. But, with a spirit worthy of the times of their dictator Caius Pontius, the Samnites gathered at the fortress of Æsernia for a desperate resistance. Their army of 300,000 foot and 1000 horse, besides 20,000 manumitted slaves, was commanded by the Marsian Quintus Silo, with Mutilus and three other generals. But the success of Silo in retaking Bovianum was soon eclipsed by his fall in a battle won by the Roman general Mamercus Æmilius. Venusia had already yielded to Q. Metellus Pius, the son of Metellus Numidicus; Sulla, who was now consul, had captured nearly all the lesser Campanian towns and had invested Nola; and he seemed within reach of that end of the war, for which he only waited in order to lead his victorious army against Mithridates, when the extraordinary events occurring in the capital itself caused him to march at the head of that army against Rome, and to commence the Civil War, of which the conflicts attending the deaths of the Gracchi and Saturninus had been the prelude.

Not to interrupt the narrative of these strange events, we postpone for awhile to trace the career of that wonderful man who

revived the question that seemed to have been settled by the fall of Antiochus the Great,-whether the empire of the world should be the prize of an Asiatic monarch or of a European republic. For many years the conflict had been threatening; and it is one more instance of Rome's strange exemption from overwhelming combinations of her enemies, that neither the solicitations of refugees nor the direct appeals of the Italians had induced Mithridates to take a decisive part till the crisis of the Social War was past. Like Antiochus in the Hannibalic War, he was just too late to throw a fatal make-weight into the trembling balance of Rome's existence. Meanwhile both Marius and Sulla had kept their eyes upon the future theatre of the war. We have had occasion to notice the suspicious journey of Marius to the East in B.C. 99, seven years after which, Sulla, as proprætor in Cilicia, had come into successful conflict with Gordius, the general of Mithridates (B.C. 92). This success designated him in the eyes of his party for the command in the East; and he gained his new distinctions in the Social War at the very time when the contest with Mithridates became inevitable, and when the recent services of Marius had only brought him into disrepute (B.c. 89). The old man had retired to his splendid villa at Misenum, to brood with redoubled bitterness over the revenge which he still trusted to accomplish in his seventh consulate, when he was roused to action by the election of Sulla to the consulship and to the command in the Mithridatic War. Hastening to Rome, he began to show that age had not impaired his bodily powers, by repairing daily to the Campus Martius and sharing the exercises of the young recruits. His designs were favoured by a new political convulsion. The laws which granted the citizenship to the Italians had branded these new citizens with certain marks of inferiority. Instead of being distributed among all the thirty-five tribes, they were confined to twelve, and thus assimilated with the freedmen, who were enrolled only in the four city tribes. These and other grievances, together with new difficulties between the capitalists and their debtors, excited the reforming zeal of P. Sulpicius Rufus, an adherent of the aristocratic party, who had renounced his nobility in order to qualify for the tribunate. Entering upon that office in the spirit of Drusus, who had been his most intimate friend, Sulpicius proposed to distribute the new citizens among all the tribes, and to extend the same privilege to the freedmen. The latter proposal gained him the favour of the city mob, and he went about, like former agitators, with an escort of 3000 men, besides 600 young

nobles and knights who shared his opinions, and were derisively called his Senate. Sulla, who had come to Rome to assume the consulship, with his colleague Q. Pompeius Rufus, tried to check the progress of the Sulpician Rogations by ordering special religious solemnities, during which all public business was suspended. A fearful tumult ensued, costing the life of young Q. Pompeius, son of the consul Rufus and son-in-law of Sulla, who is said himself to have escaped only by taking refuge in the house of Marius. The laws were now passed, and Sulla, having countermanded the religious fêtes, returned to his army in Campania. His departure was followed by a decree of the people, passed on the motion of Sulpicius, transferring the command of that army and of the Mithridatic war to Marius, with the title of proconsul, and two tribunes proceeded to the camp before Nola, to require the consul to hand over his army.

This step, which Sulpicius seems to have taken through fear that Sulla might throw his army into the scale of parties at Rome, ensured the very evil that he dreaded. Calling together his six legions, amounting to 35,000 men, Sulla told them of the order he had received, and warned them that Marius would lead not them, but a new army, to reap the spoil of Asia. This appeal to the cupidity of the common soldiers was irresistible; but of the superior officers only one quæstor adhered to Sulla. The two tribunes were torn to pieces: the legions marched on Rome: the feeble resistance of Marius and Sulpicius, with the civic force and armed slaves, was overpowered in a combat on the Esquiline; and for the first time in the annals of Rome, a Roman army lighted its watchfires in the Forum of the captured city. The victory was used with moderation; only Sulpicius and Marius, with twelve of their principal adherents, being doomed to death as public enemies. Sulpicius was overtaken at Laurentum ; and his head, brought to Sulla, was exposed on the Rostra, where he had been often applauded as the greatest orator of the age. Marius fled, with his son, hotly pursued by the assassins, and succeeded in embarking at Ostia on a ship bound for Africa. But the wind was adverse, and want of provisions compelled him, with his few attendants, to disembark at the Circeian promontory. The hungry party had wandered on foot through the woods to the mouth of the Liris, when the pursuing Roman cavalry were seen in the distance, and they barely escaped by swimming off to two coasting vessels. The horsemen galloped down to the shore, and demanded with loud threats that Marius should be surrendered or thrown overboard.