CHAP. XXXII.

DEATH OF MARIUS.

255

swelled by slaves and Italians, who sacrificed men of every party to indiscriminate fury and cruelty.

force.

When at last Marius and Cinna thought fit to arrest the carnage and pillage, Sertorius was charged to restore order with military But many victims were still offered up under forms of judicial process. Cinna could not pardon the illustrious Merula the crime of intrusion into his office. Catulus, the noble colleague of Marius in his last battle against the Cimbri, threw himself on his knees and vainly begged for his life. "You must die," was the only answer vouchsafed him, and he was compelled to suffocate himself with charcoal. When sated with vengeance the chiefs of the revolution began to reorganize the government. Not deigning even to convene the assembly of the tribes, they nominated themselves to the highest magistracy. Marius be- .o. 668. came consul for the seventh time. At the age of sev- B.C. SC. enty, his health broken and his strength failing, he reached the summit of his aspirations, and fulfilled the prophecy on which he had relied in his darkest moments. He was even desirous of leaving his colleague to preside in the city, and assuming himself the command of the legions and wresting from Sulla the conduct of affairs in the East. But the effort was beyond his strength. His mood was now as desponding and gloomy as it had once been sanguine. Wearied with a life in which he had enjoyed all the favors of fortune and suffered her worst buffets, he could hardly wish to protract existence and multiply its experiences. One evening, while walking with some friends after supper, he fell to talking of the incidents of his career from boyhood; and after enumerating his triumphs and his perils, no man of sense, he said, ought to trust again to so balanced a fortune. He took leave of his companions, and, keeping his bed for seven days successively, was found dead with no known or suspected illness. Such is the account we have received, and we may readily imagine that he actually put an end to his career by suicide. His obsequies were celebrated with a public ceremonial. It was related that the tribune Fimbria sacrificed a noble victim to the manes of the dead, after the fashion of the heroic age. He caused the venerable Mucius Scævola, the chief of the Roman jurists, to be led before the pyre, and bade the sacrificer plunge a sword into his bosom. The wounded man was allowed, however, to be carried off by his friends, and under their care he recovered. It seems, however, most probable that this pretended sacrifice was no more than the drawing of a drop of blood to satisfy an ancient superstition. It is not likely that Fimbria would have suffered an act of real vengeance to remain incomplete.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Cinna effaces the last distinction between the Romans and the Italians.Adjustment of debts.-Sulla conducts the war against Mithridates. -Sack of Athens.-Sulla overthrows Fimbria and Cinna, and returns to Italy.Burning of the Capitol.-The younger Marius blockaded in Præneste.Carbo and Sertorius driven out of Italy.-Overthrow of the Samnites.Fall of Præneste.-Battle of the Colline Gate.-Sulla enters Rome.-His proscription of the Marian faction.-Massacres and confiscations.-Settlement of Sulla's veterans on Italian lands.—Ruin of Etruria by Sulla.Employs Cn. Pompeius and spares C. Julius Cæsar. (B.c. 86-82.)

MARIUS had died in January, almost at the commencement of his year of office. Cinna chose for his colleague Valerius Flaccus, the same who as consul fourteen years before had aided Marius to crush the revolt of Saturninus. He set himself at once to fulfil his pledges to the allies. Censors were appointed to effect the complete emancipation of Italy, by suppressing the ten Italian tribes, and enrolling the new citizens of the Plautian law among the thirty-five tribes of the city. Thus the last remaining distinction between the Romans and the Italians was effaced for all who chose to accept the proffered privilege. The Samnites, the Lucanians, and others still scorned to adopt it. The consul proceeded to undertake another and more critical measure. He proclaimed an adjustment of debts, or the payment of one fourth only. He exchanged, as the Romans phrased it, silver for copper; for the copper coin (the as) was made equivalent for the purpose to the silver sesterce, which then stood at four times its intrinsic value. After so long a series of wars and revolutions the measure may have been one of necessity. But the stroke was ominous; it did not fail to kindle criminal hopes among the dissolute and discontented for more than one generation. This done, Flaccus placed himself at the head of the legions destined for the Pontic War, and proceeded to the East, to watch or anticipate the movements of Sulla.

While Rome was completing her preparations Mithridates had been gaining enormous successes. Bithynia and Cappadocia had fallen into his hands. The Roman province of Asia, with the wealthy Ephesus for its capital, had succumbed, and in the prospect of relief from its Roman tax-gatherers had even received its

CHAP. XXXIII.

SACK OF ATHENS.

257

new master with acclamations. From thence Mithridates had crossed the Ægean Sea and accepted the submission of its flourishing islands, while his admiral, Archelaus, had captured Athens itself, with its harbor in the Piræus, and all its naval equipments. The Greek cities for the most part regarded him as a deliverer. It was impossible to foresee how far the general disaffection might spread, and when Sulla landed on the eastern shore of the Adriatic his task had swelled to the reconquest of one hemisphere of the empire.

Sulla had only quitted Italy in 87, while Marius was still a proscribed fugitive. Whether he thought the government he had set up in Rome sufficiently secure or not, he considered his own fortunes to depend more on the devotion of the legions he attached to his person than upon any civil institutions, and felt that for his private interests his place should be at the head of an army which he could gorge with plunder. With this view before him he could leave Rome to take care of itself. He reached Greece with a force of five legions, and he might expect at the end of the year to be superseded by another commander, the nomince, perhaps, of his enemies. There was no time to be lost. Instead of checking the license of his soldiers, he stimulated and secured them by more indulgence than ever. The course of his march he allowed to be marked by devastation and sacrilege. The sacred treasures of Epidaurus and Olympia fell into his hands. When the spirits of his troops were elated to the utmost he led them to the siege of Athens, broke through the long walls of Themistocles, and successively reduced the city and its port. The storm and sack of Athens were marked with more than the usual Roman barbarity. In Boeotia he encountered a vast army of Orientals in the open field, and totally routed them at the great battle of Chæronea. Flaccus was now advancing upon his steps, and summoning him to surrender his command. He was about to turn boldly against the intruder, when Mithridates threw a second armament within his reach. A second victory at Orchomenus broke the power of the king of Pontus, and compelled him to withdraw beyond the Ægean and leave Greece a clear stage for the mutual conflict of the two Roman armies. Meanwhile a mutiny broke out in the camp of the consul. Flaccus was assassinated. The soldiers placed Fimbria at their head, but, instead of measuring themselves with Sulla, required to be led into Asia, and allowed to ransack the provinces. They encountered and dispersed some of the king's detachments, and Mithridates himself would have U.O. 669.

U.C. 669.
B.C. 85.

fallen into their hands also at Pitane but for the inter- 1.0.85. vention of Sulla's lieutenant, Lucullus, who afforded him means of escape by sea. By this manœuv Sulla secured the advantage

of imposing his own terms upon him. On surrendering Bithynia and Cappadocia and the Roman province of Asia, with a large part of his fleets and treasures, he was admitted into amity and alliance with the republic. As soon as these matters were settled Sulla U.o. 670. turned suddenly on Fimbria. Two Roman armies met B.O. 84. in the field at Thyatira; but Fimbria's soldiers were open to bribery: they deserted their standards and reduced their leader to extremity. He refused, however, the safe-conduct which was held out to him, and fell upon his own sword.

At Rome the news of the death of Fimbria was accompanied by the announcement of Sulla's speedy return. Of the surrender of Mithridates little heed was taken. Sulla declared that on his arrival with thirty thousand veterans his foes and the foes of the republic, whom he classed together, should suffer condign chastisement. The Senate, no less than the populace, were terrified by this manifesto; the vicissitudes of political conflict had filled half their benches with Marians, and the earlier party distinctions had become greatly obliterated. In Rome and throughout Italy both Cinna and Sulla relied rather upon personal than political connections. The Senate, as an order in the state, could only pretend to mediate between rival chieftains. They sent a deputation to mollify the anger of the conqueror, while they forbade the consuls to arm for their own defence. Cinna and Carbo, the successors of Flaccus, disregarded their feeble interference, made new levies for themselves throughout Italy, and solicited the Samnites and Lucanians to join them. The Italians promised succor, but their levies refused to embark. Cinna led some troops across the Adriatic, but he was soon afterwards slain in his camp by his own mutinous soldiers. Carbo withheld the election of another colleague, and remained through the rest of the year sole consul. He sought to strengthen himself by enrolling large numbers of emancipated slaves in the tribes of the city. His brief usurpation was a career of violence. He hurled his enemies from the Tarpeian Rock, and expelled the tribunes from the city. Sulla had by this time assembled his troops at Dyrrachium, and immediately transported five legions into Italy. With this force of devoted veterans he despised any number of fresh levies which could be brought against him by such chiefs as Carbo and the son of Marius, by Carrinas, Cælius, and Sertorius, distracted as he knew them to be by mutual jealousies. If the Italians for the most part sided with the Marians, there was no concert among them. Sulla was enabled to detach their states one by one from the common cause. Meanwhile Metellus Pius raised his own standard in Liguria, and the young Pompeius in Picenum. The families of the victims of the recent proscription arrayed themselves in all quarters against the successor of Marius.

CHAP. XXXIII.

BURNING OF THE CAPITOL.

259

U.O. 671.

B.C. 83.

At this crisis an event, the origin of which was never discovered, threw the city into consternation. On the sixth of July (B.C. 83) the Capitol was consumed by fire; even the volumes of the Sibylline oracles, stored in its most secret recesses, were devoured by the flames. This destruction of the sanctuary of the nation, and of the documents which directed its solemn counsels, seemed to announce an epoch in the destinies of Rome. "Great was the era that was closing, and great was that which was commencing."

Sulla marched triumphantly through Apulia and Campania, defeating one army and subverting the fidelity of another. At the commencement of 82, Carbo and the young Marius took possession of the consulship; the one undertook to close the passes of the Apennines, and check Metellus and Pompeius in the north; the other to cover the approach to Latium against Sulla. V.C. 672. Carbo gained some partial successes, but Marius, after B.C.82. collecting a mass of plunder at Præneste, met his assailant at no further distance than Sacriportus, where he suffered a defeat, retired within his strong position, and left the road to Rome open to a daring enemy. Sulla was content to watch Præneste, while he hastened in person to attack Carbo in Etruria, who was now enclosed between three opponents. Carbo had posted himself at Clusium, on the Clanis, and with the help of Etruscan and other allies maintained his position with intrepidity. He fought more than one battle and gained some partial successes, while he strove to effect a junction with the Samnites who advanced to his relief. He was at last defeated with great loss at Faventia, near Ravenna, where he had flung himself desperately upon Metellus. His cause was from this time hopeless, but he still carried on an irregular warfare in the Apennines till he found an opportunity of escaping into Africa. Sertorius had already withdrawn into Spain. The Marian chieftains surrendered Italy to Sulla, and sought to raise the provinces against him.

Præneste, indeed, with the young Marius, still held out, but under blockade or close observation. The Samnites, with the indomitable Pontius at their head, had not yet abandoned their arms. But there was little sympathy and still less concert between these powers. Pontius found means of passing the flank of the Sullan armies before Præneste, and made a rush on Rome. The city was never in such imminent peril since the days of Brennus, though any permanent occupation was not to be feared. But Sulla was equal to the crisis.

On the first of November the Samnites advanced, but he was already at their back. At the Colline Gate he came up with them, and engaged them in a desperate encounter. The left wing, commanded by Sulla himself, was put to