[Sidenote: Foreign events after the second slave war.] After the defeat of the northern hordes and the suppression of the second slave revolt, there was a war with the Celtiberi in Spain, in 97, in which Sertorius showed himself already an adroit and bold officer. [Sidenote: Sertorius in command against the Celtiberi.] He was in winter quarters at Castulo (Cazlona), and his men were so disorderly that the Spaniards were emboldened to attack them in the town; Sertorius escaped, rallied those soldiers who had also escaped, marched back, and after putting those in the town to the sword, dressed his troops in the dead men's clothes, and so obtained admission to another town which had helped the enemy. But the hero of the campaign was Titus Didius, afterwards Caesar's lieutenant in the Social War. He had some hard fighting and captured Termesus, the chief town of the Arevaci, and Colenda.—He earned his triumph by other means also. There was a town near Colenda, the inhabitants of which the Romans wished to destroy. Didius told them that he would give them the lands of Colenda, and they came to receive their allotments. As soon as they were within his lines, his soldiers set on them and slew them all.

[Sidenote: Africa.] In 96 B.C. Ptolemaus Apion bequeathed Cyrene—a narrow strip of terraced land on the north coast of Africa, situated between the Libyan deserts and the Mediterranean—to Rome. The Romans did not refuse the legacy; but they took no trouble to govern the country. The cities of Cyrene were declared to be free. In other words, while nominally subject to Rome, so that she might interfere when she pleased, they were left to govern themselves. Such government was no government; but it was in accordance with the deliberate policy of the senatorial party.

[Sidenote: Crimes and intrigues of Mithridates.] It was in the same year that Mithridates committed the first of the series of crimes which eventually brought him into collision with Rome. His sister had married the King of Cappadocia. Mithridates assassinated him. Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, seized Cappadocia and married the widowed sister of Mithridates. Having slain one brother-in-law, Mithridates expelled the other, and set on the throne his sister's son. But when his nephew refused to welcome home Gordius, the man who had murdered his father, Mithridates marched against and assassinated him. Then he set on the throne his own son, to whom he gave his nephew's name, and made Gordius his guardian. Him the Cappadocians expelled, and raised to the throne another nephew of Mithridates; but Mithridates instantly drove him from power. Nicomedes now appealed to the Senate, and produced, as he asserted, a third nephew of Mithridates as a claimant for the crown. To support his assertion he sent his wife to Rome to swear she had had three sons. Mithridates, as if in burlesque of the imposture, sent Gordius to swear that the youth on the throne was son of a Cappadocian king who had died more than thirty years before. The Senate decided as a lion might between two jackals quarrelling over a carcase. It took Cappadocia from Mithridates and Paphlagonia from Nicomedes, and declared both countries free. But the Cappadocians clamoured for a king, and so, in 93, the Senate appointed Ariobarzanes I. Mithridates then stirred up Tigranes, King of Armenia, to expel Ariobarzanes, who fled to Rome. Sulla was sent to restore him, and did so in 92, after defeating the Cappadocians under Gordius and the Armenians. [Sidenote: The Romans come in contact with the Parthians.] It was when he was on this mission that the Romans and Parthians confronted each other for the first time. The Parthians sent an embassy to ask for the alliance of Rome. Three chairs were set for Ariobarzanes, Sulla, and Orobazus; and Sulla, who was only propraetor, took the central seat. This incensed the Parthian king; and he revenged himself not on Sulla, but on the unfortunate Orobazus, whom he put to death. A Chaldean in the Parthian's suite, after studying Sulla's face, predicted great things for him; which pleased Sulla as much as it would have done Marius, for he believed in his luck just as his rival did in his seventh consulship. But when he came home he was impeached for taking bribes from Ariobarzanes, and no doubt he had made his trip which was so gratifying to his pride not less profitable also, and had had his appetite whetted for a second taste of eastern treasures. Mithridates, meanwhile, was brooding over his humiliation and meditating revenge. He went on a journey incognito through the Roman province of Asia and Bithynia, intending to attack both if he found himself strong enough. When he came back he found that his wife, who was also his sister, had been unfaithful to him, and he put her to death. He had now murdered a wife, a sister, a brother, and a nephew. He had also imprisoned his mother, and was equally merciless to his sons, his daughters, and his concubines. At his death, it is said, a paper was found in which he had foredoomed his most trusted servants, and he slew all the inmates of his harem in order to hinder them from falling into his enemies' hands.

[Sidenote: Early years of Mithridates.] His whole history is in fact one long record of sensuality, treachery, and murder. From his earliest years he had breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of assassination. His father had been assassinated when he was eleven years old. His guardians and even his own mother had then plotted to assassinate him. They placed him on a wild horse, and made him perform exercises with the javelin on it. When his precocious vigour defeated their hopes, they tried to poison him. But by studying antidotes he made his body poison-proof, or at least was reputed to have done so, and, flying from his enemies, lived for seven years through all the hardships of a wild and wandering life, in which he never slept under a roof, and hunted and fought with wild beasts, to emerge in manhood a very tiger himself for strength, and beauty of body, and ferocity of disposition, a tyrant who spared neither man in his ambition nor woman in his lust. [Sidenote: His physical vigour.] His stature was gigantic, his strength and activity such as took captive the imagination of the East. He could, it was believed, outrun the deer; out-eat and out-drink everyone at the banquet; strike down flying game unerringly; tame the wildest steed, and ride 120 miles in a day. Twenty-two nations obeyed him, and he could speak the dialect of each. A veneer of Greek refinement was spread thinly over the savage animalism of the man. [Sidenote: Pseudo-civilisation of his court.] He was a virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep him from being grossly superstitious.

[Sidenote: His kingdom and how it was acquired.] For twenty years (110-90 B.C.) he had been with never-resting activity extending his empire, before the Romans assailed him. He had inherited from his ancestors the kingdom of Pontus, or Cappadocia on the Pontus, which had been one of the two satrapies into which Cappadocia was divided at the time of the Macedonian conquest. Mithridates IV. had married a princess of the Greek race, the sister of Seleucus, King of Syria. His grandfather had conquered Sinope and Paphlagonia, as far as the Bithynian frontier. His father had helped the Romans in the third Punic War, had been styled the friend of Rome, and had been rewarded with the province of Phrygia nominally for his services against Aristonicus, the pretender to the kingdom of Attalus, but had been deprived of it afterwards when it was found out that really it had been put up for auction by Manius Aquillius, who was completing the subjugation of the adherents of the pretender. The boundaries of Pontus at his accession cannot be strictly defined. On the east it stretched towards the Caucasus and the sources of the Euphrates, Lesser Armenia being dependent on it. On the south and south-west its frontiers were Cappadocia and Galatia. On the west nominally Paphlagonia was the frontier, for the grandfather of Mithridates had been induced by the Romans to promise to evacuate his conquests. But Sinope was then, and continued to be, the capital of the Pontic kingdom, and both Paphlagonia and Galatia were virtually dependent. This was the territory to which Mithridates was heir, and which, true to the policy of his father and grandfather, he constantly strove by force or fraud to extend. [Sidenote: Mithridates extends his kingdom.] To the east of the Black Sea he conquered Colchis on the Phasis, and converted it into a satrapy. To the north he was hailed as the deliverer of the Greek towns on that coast and in the region now known as the Crimea, which from the constant exaction of tribute by barbarous tribes were, in the absence of any protectorate like that of Athens, falling into decay. By sea, and perhaps across the Caucasus by land, Mithridates sent his troops under the Greek generals Neoptolemus and Diophantus. Neoptolemus won a victory over the Tauric Scythians at Panticapaeum (Kertch), and the kingdom of Bosporus in the Crimea was ceded to his master by its grateful king. Diophantus marched westwards as far as the Tyras (Dneister), and in a great battle almost annihilated an army of the Roxolani, a nomadic people who roamed between the Borysthenes (Dneiper) and the Tanais (Don). By these conquests Mithridates acquired a tribute of 200 talents (48,000l.), and 270,000 bushels of grain, and a rich recruiting ground for his armies. [Sidenote: His alliance with Tigranes.] On the east he annexed Lesser Armenia, and entered into the closest alliance with Tigranes, King of Greater Armenia, which had lately become a powerful kingdom, giving him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. If the allies had any defined scheme of conquest, it was that Mithridates should occupy Asia Minor and the coast of the Black Sea, and Tigranes the interior and Syria. How the King intrigued and meddled in Cappadocia and Bithynia has been previously related; and when he had marched into Cappadocia it was at the head of 80,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 600 scythed chariots.

Such was the history, the power, and the character of the great potentate who had yielded to the demands of Sulla, the propraetor, but who now awaited the attack of Sulla, the proconsul, with proud disdain. Much, indeed, had happened since the year 92 to justify such feelings. Hardly had Sulla reinstated Ariobarzanes when Tigranes drove him out again, and restored the son of Mithridates; while in Bithynia the younger son of Nicomedes, Socrates, appeared in arms against his elder brother, Nicomedes II., who on his father's death had been acknowledged as king by Rome. Socrates had soldiers from Pontus with him; but Mithridates, though his hand was plain in these disturbances, outwardly stood aloof; and the Senate, sending Manius Aquillius to restore the two kings, ordered Mithridates to aid him with troops if they were wanted. [Sidenote: Mithridates submits to Aquillius.] The king submitted as before, not, indeed, sending troops, but without resisting, and as a proof of his complacency put Socrates to death. This happened in the year 90, when Rome was pressed hardest by the Italians, and at first sight it seems astonishing that he should not have seized on so favourable a moment. But in those days news would travel from the west of Italy to Sinope but slowly and uncertainly, and Mithridates would have the fate of Antiochus in mind to warn him how the foes of the great republic fared, and the history of Pergamus to testify to the prosperity of those who remained its friends. Sulla's proud tone in 92 would not have lessened this impression; and, before he appealed to force, the crafty king hoped to make his position securer by fraud. Partly, therefore, from real awe, partly because he was not yet ready, he obeyed Aquillius as he had obeyed Sulla. But Aquillius, who had once put up Phrygia to auction, knew what pickings there were for a senator when war was afoot in Asia, and perhaps may have had the honester notion that, as Mithridates was sure to go to war soon, it was for the public as well as for his private interest to act boldly and strike the first blow. So he forced the reluctant Bithynian king to declare war, and to ravage with an army the country round Amastris while his fleet shut up the Bosporus. Still Mithridates did not stir; all that he did was to lodge a complaint with the Romans, and solicit their mediation or their permission to defend himself. [Sidenote: Aquillius forces on a war.] Aquillius replied that he must in no case make war on Nicomedes. It is easy to conceive how such an answer affected a man of the king's temper. He instantly sent his son with an army into Cappadocia. But once more he tried diplomacy. [Sidenote: Ultimatum of Mithridates.] Pelopidas, his envoy, came to Aquillius, and said that his master was willing to aid the Romans against the Italians if the Romans would forbid Nicomedes to attack him, their ally. If not, he wished the alliance to be formally dissolved. Or there was yet another alternative. Let the commissioners and himself appeal to the Senate to decide between them. The commissioners treated the message as an insult. Mithridates, they said, must not attack Nicomedes, and they intended to restore Ariobarzanes. Possibly the conduct of Aquillius was due to his having been heavily bribed by Nicomedes, who must have felt that when the Romans were gone he would be like a mouse awaiting the cat's spring; for it is difficult to imagine the foolhardiness which without some such tangible stimulus would at that moment have plunged him into war.

[Sidenote: War begun. Energy of Mithridates.] But when once the die was cast, Mithridates threw himself into the war with the energy of long-suppressed rage. He sent to court the alliance of Egypt and the Cretan league, to whom he represented himself as the champion of Greece against her tyrant. He tried to stir up revolts in Thrace and Macedonia. He arranged with Tigranes that an Armenian army should co-operate with him, leaving him the land it occupied, but carrying off the plunder. He gave the word, and a swarm of pirate ships swept the Mediterranean under his colours. He summoned an army of 250,000 foot, 40,000 horse, and 130 scythed chariots, a fleet of 300 decked vessels, and 100 other ships called 'Dicrota' with a double bank of oars. He formed and armed in Roman fashion a foreign contingent, in which many Romans and Italians enlisted; and he placed able Greek generals, Archelaus and Neoptolemus, over his troops. [Sidenote: Forces of Rome.] To meet this formidable array the Romans had a fleet off Byzantium, the army of Nicomedes, which was still between Sinope and Amastris, and three corps, each of 40,000 men, but composed for the most part of hastily organized Asiatics; one under Cassius between Bithynia and Galatia, another under Aquillius between Bithynia and Pontus, and a third under Oppius in Cappadocia. The war was decided almost in a single battle. [Sidenote: Victory of Mithridates over Nicomedes.] Neoptolemus and Archelaus routed the Bithynian army on the river Amnias, and captured the camp and military chest. It was a fierce and for some time a doubtful fight, and seems to have been decided by the scythed chariots, which spread terror in the Bithynian ranks. [Sidenote: Victory over Aquillius.] Nicomedes fled to Aquillius, who was defeated by Archelaus near Mount Scorobas, and fled with the king across the Sangarius to Pergamus, whence he attempted to reach Rhodes. Cassius retreated to Phrygia, and tried to discipline his raw levies. But, finding this impossible; he broke up the army and led the Roman troops with him to Apameia. The fleet in the Black Sea was surrendered by its commander.

[Sidenote: Mithridates' progress through Phrygia, Mysia and Asia.] Thus, triumphant by sea and land, Mithridates, after settling Bithynia, marched through Phrygia and Mysia into the Roman province Asia, and was hailed everywhere as a deliverer, for after his victories he had sent home all his Asiatic prisoners with presents. Then he sent messengers into Lycia and Pamphylia to seek the alliance of those countries. Oppius was in Laodicea, on the Lycus. The king offered the townsmen immunity if they surrendered him, and, when they did so, carried him about as a show. [Sidenote: Fate of Aquillius.] Aquillius was also given up by the Mytileneans and made to ride in chains on an ass, calling out who he was wherever he went. At Pergamus Mithridates slew him by pouring molten gold down his throat—a savage punishment, which, however, confirms the impression that it was Roman avarice which forced on the war. Magnesia on the Maeander, Ephesus, and Mitylene welcomed the king joyfully, and Stratoniceia, in Caria, was captured. He then attacked Magnesia near Mount Sipylus, prepared to invade Rhodes, and issued a hideous order for an exterminating massacre of every Roman and Italian in Asia on an appointed day. Punishments were proclaimed for anyone who should hide one of the proscribed or bury his body; rewards were promised for all who killed or denounced them. Slaves who slew their masters were to be freed. The murder of a creditor was to be taken as payment by a debtor of half his debt. [Massacre of Romans and Italians.] There were dreadful scenes on the fatal day—the thirtieth after the order was issued—in the Asiatic cities. In Pergamus the victims fled to the temple of Aesculapius, and were shot down as they clung to the statues. At Ephesus they were dragged out from the temple of Artemis and slain. At Adramyttium they swam out to sea, but were brought back and killed, and their children were drowned. At Cos alone was any mercy shown. There those who had taken refuge in the temple of Aesculapius were spared. The number of the slain was said to be 80,000 or even 120,000, which must have been, however, an incredible exaggeration. [Sidenote: Objects of the massacre.] By this fiendish crime Mithridates must, though he was mistaken, have felt that he cut himself off for ever from all reconciliation with Rome. But no doubt he acted on calculation. For not only did he get rid of men who might have recruited the Roman armies; not only did he gratify the long-hoarded hatred of the farmers and peasants of whom Roman publicans and Roman slave-masters had so long made a prey; not only did he oblige the debtors by wiping out their debts and even the very memory of them in their creditors' blood, but he might well count on putting his accomplices also beyond the pale of Roman mercy, and so linking them to his own fortunes. Moreover, vengeance seemed remote. For Sulla had just marched on Rome instead of to the east, and a civil war in Italy might make Mithridates permanently supreme in Asia. [Sidenote: Mithridates' settlement of his new acquisitions.] So he made Pergamus his capital, leaving Sinope to his son as vice-regent, while Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Bithynia were turned into satrapies. All arrears of taxes were remitted; and so wealthy had his spoils made him that exemption for five years to come was promised to the towns that had obeyed his orders.

[Sidenote: Reverses of Mithridates. He retires to Pergamus.] But the tide was already on the turn. In Paphlagonia there was still resistance. Archelaus was repulsed and wounded at Magnesia. Mithridates in person was forced to abandon the siege of Rhodes. His revenge was sated; he was tired of the hardships of a war which he meant his generals to conduct in future; and with a new wife he went back to Pergamus, to his rings, and his music, and debaucheries, at the very time that a shudder had gone through Italy at the tidings of the massacre, and when Sulla was on his way to avenge it.

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CHAPTER XII.

SULLA IN GREECE AND ASIA.

[Sidenote: Aristion at Athens.] A citizen of Athens, named Aristion, whose mother was an Egyptian slave, and who was the son or adopted son of one Athenion, had been sent by the Athenians as ambassador to Mithridates. He had been a schoolmaster and teacher of rhetoric, and professed the philosophy of Epicurus. He gained the ear of Mithridates, and sent home flaming accounts of the king's power, and of his intention of restoring the democracy at Athens. The Athenians sent some ships of war to bring him home from Euboea, with a present of a silver-footed litter; and in this, clothed in purple, and with a fine ring on his finger, which he had got probably from his friend Mithridates, he came back to Athens with much parade. [Sidenote: Revolt of Athens from Rome.] In a set speech he dilated on the king's splendid successes, and advised the people to declare themselves independent and elect him their general. They did so, and he very soon massacred his opponents and made himself despot. Thus Athens and the Piraeus passed into the hands of Mithridates. The spirit of disaffection to Rome spread rapidly. [Sidenote: Revolt of the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians.] When Archelaus appeared in Greece, the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians, with the exception of Thespiae, joined him, while the Pontic fleet seized Euboea and Demetrias, a town at the head of the gulf of Pagasae.

Sura was sent by the Roman governor of Macedonia to make head against the invaders. He won a naval battle and captured Sciathus, where all the spoils of the enemy were stored. [Sidenote: Conflicts between the Romans and the forces of Mithridates in Boeotia.] Then he marched into Boeotia, and, after a three days' engagement with the combined forces of Archelaus and Aristion, pushed Archelaus back to the coast. The war, perhaps, might have been ended here; but at this moment Lucullus came to announce the approach of Sulla, and to warn Sura that the war had been entrusted to him. So Sura retired to Macedonia. [Sidenote: Sulla lands in Epirus, 87 B.C., and marches on Athens.] Sulla had left Brundusium in 87, and, landing on the coast of Epirus, gathered what supplies he could from Aetolia and Thessaly, and marched straight for Athens. It was soon seen that the foundations of the empire of Mithridates were based on sand. The Boeotians at once submitted, including Thebes, which had joined the king. [Sidenote: Siege of the Piraeus and Athens.] Sulla then began two sieges, that of the Piraeus where Archelaus was, and that of Athens defended by Aristion. Archelaus had before shown himself an intrepid soldier, and he baffled all Sulla's efforts with equal ingenuity and courage. After an unsuccessful attempt to storm the walls, Sulla retired to Eleusis and Megara, thus keeping up his communications with Thebes and the Peloponnese, and set to work constructing catapults and other engines, and preparing an earthwork from which he meant to attack the wall with them. For these purposes he cut down the trees of the Academia and the Lyceum. He was kept informed of intended sallies by two slaves inside the town, who threw out leaden balls with words cut on them. But as fast as the earthwork rose Archelaus built towers on the walls opposite to it, and thence harassed the besiegers. [Sidenote: Battle at the Piraeus. Archelaus nearly taken.] He was also reinforced by Mithridates, and then came out and fought a battle which was for some time doubtful; but he was forced to retire at length with the loss of 2,000 men. He himself remained till the last. The gates were shut and he had to be drawn up by a rope over the wall.

[Sidenote: Sulla's difficulties.] The affairs of Sulla, however, were in no flourishing condition. He had come to Greece with only 30,000 men, with no fleet, and little money. He was forced to plunder the shrines of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. His messenger to Delphi came back saying that he had heard the sound of a lute in the temple, and dared not commit the sacrilege. But Sulla sent him back, saying that he was sure the sound was a note of welcome, and that the god meant him to have the treasure. He promised to pay it back some day, and he kept his word, for he confiscated half the land of Thebes and applied the proceeds to reimbursing the sacred funds. In his worst straits he was always ready with some such mockery. [Sidenote: Sulla sends Lucullus to Egypt.] Winter was now at hand, and Sulla despatched Lucullus to Egypt to get ships. The refusal of the King of Egypt shows what was now thought of the Roman power. Sulla then formed a camp at Eleusis and continued the siege, and so shook the great tower of Archelaus by a simultaneous discharge of twelve leaden balls from his catapults that it had to be drawn back. [Sidenote: Blockade of Athens.] By means of the two slaves he was also able to frustrate the attempts of Archelaus to throw supplies into Athens, which was now suffering from hunger, for Sulla had surrounded it with forts and turned the siege into a blockade. Mithridates now sent his son into Macedonia with an army, before which the small Roman force there had to retire. After this success the prince marched towards Athens, but died on the way. [Sidenote: Desperate defence of the Piraeus.] At the Piraeus scenes occurred which were afterwards repeated at the siege of Jerusalem. Archelaus undermined the earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the assailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to advance. [Sidenote: Sulla turns the siege into a blockade.] At last, wearied by this dogged resistance, Sulla turned the siege of the Piraeus also into a blockade, which meant simply that he hindered Archelaus from helping Athens, for he could not prevent the influx of supplies from the sea.

[Sidenote: Athens taken March 1, B.C. 86.] Athens meanwhile was in dreadful straits. Wheat was selling at nearly 3l. 10s. a gallon, and the inhabitants were feeding on old leather bottles, shoes, and the bodies of the dead. A deputation came out, but Sulla sent them back because they began an harangue on the deeds of their ancestors, put into their mouths, no doubt, by the rhetorician Aristion. Sulla told them they were the scum of nations, not descended from the old Athenians at all, and that instead of listening to their rhetoric he meant to punish their rebellion. On the night of March 1, 86 B.C., he broke into the town amid the blare of trumpets and the shouts of his troops. He told his men to give no quarter, and the blood, it was said, ran down through the gates into the suburbs. [Sidenote: Aristion slain.] Aristion fled to the Acropolis. Hunger forced him in the end to capitulate, and he was killed. Sulla meanwhile had forced on the siege of Piraeus still more vigorously. He got past the crescent wall, only to find other walls similarly constructed behind it; but he gradually drove Archelaus into Munychia, or the peninsular part of Piraeus, and as he had no ships he could do nothing more. [Sidenote: Archelaus sails from Piraeus, and joins Taxiles, sent by Mithridates with reinforcements.] Either before or after the capture of the Acropolis Archelaus sailed away, in obedience to a summons from Taxiles, a new general whom Mithridates had sent with an army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and ninety scythed chariots into Greece. With these forces and the troops previously sent with his master's son he formed a junction at Thermopylae, marched into Phocis down the valley of the Cephissus, attempted but failed to take Elateia, and came up with Sulla near Chaeroneia. [Sidenote: Sulla forms a junction with Hortensius.] Sulla had marched into Boeotia and joined Hortensius, who had a brought some troops from Thessaly. But he is said by Appian to have had not a third of the enemy's numbers, while Plutarch affirms that he had only 15,000 foot and 1,500 horse.



[Sidenote: Position of the two armies.] Sulla was on the west bank of the Cephissus, on an eminence named Philoboeotus, and Archelaus on the other side of the river not far off. Sulla's soldiers were alarmed by the numbers and splendour of the enemy, for the brass and steel of their armour 'kindled the air with an awful flame like that of lightning.' [Sidenote: Manoeuvres of Sulla and Archelaus.] Archelaus, marching down the valley of the Cephissus, tried to seize a strong position called the Acropolis of the Parapotamii, situated on the Assus, which joined the Cephissus to the south of both armies. But Sulla, who had wearied out his men by drudgery in dyke-making, and made them eager for a fight, crossed the Cephissus, seized the position first, and then, crossing the Assus, took up his position under Mount Edylium. Here he encamped opposite Archelaus, who, having also crossed the Assus, was now at a place called Assia, which was nearer Lake Copais. Thence Archelaus made an attempt on Chaeroneia; but Sulla was again beforehand with him, and garrisoned the place with one legion. South of Chaeroneia was a hill called Thurium. This Archelaus seized. Sulla then brought the rest of his troops across the Cephissus, to form a junction with the legion in Chaeroneia and dislodge the enemy from Thurium. He left Murena on the north of the Cephissus to keep the enemy in check at Assia. Archelaus, however, also brought his main army across the Cephissus after Sulla. Murena followed him, and Sulla drew up his army with his cavalry on each wing, himself commanding the right and Murena the left. The armies were now opposite each other, Sulla to the south, then Archelaus, then the Cephissus.

[Sidenote: Battle of Chaeroneia.] Sulla sent some troops round Thurium to the hills behind Chaeroneia, and in the enemy's rear. The enemy ran down in confusion from Thurium, where they were met by Murena with Sulla's left wing, and were either destroyed or driven back upon the centre of the line of Archelaus, which they threw into disorder. Sulla on the right advanced so quickly as to prevent the scythed chariots from getting any impetus, by which they were rendered useless, for the soldiers easily eluded them when driven at a slow pace, and as soon as they had passed killed the horses and drivers. Archelaus now extended his right wing in order to surround Murena. Hortensius, whom Sulla had posted on some hills to the left of his left wing on purpose to defeat this manoeuvre, immediately pressed forward to attack this body on its left flank. But Archelaus drove him back with some cavalry, and nearly surrounded Hortensius.



Sulla hastened to his aid, and Archelaus, seeing him coming, instantly counter-marched and attacked Sulla's right in his absence, while Taxiles assailed Murena on the left. But Sulla hastened back, too, after leaving Hortensius to support Murena, and, when he appeared, the right wing drove back Archelaus to the Cephissus. Murena was equally triumphant on the left wing, and the barbarians fled pell-mell to the Cephissus, only 10,000 of them reaching Chalcis in Euboea. [Sidenote: Sulla's falsehood about the battle.] Appian says the Romans lost only thirteen men, while Plutarch, on the authority of Sulla's Memoirs, says that they lost four. This is absurd. Sulla seems to have told some startling lies in his Memoirs, perhaps to prove that he had been the favourite of fortune, which was a mania of his.

[Sidenote: Dorylaus reinforces Archelaus.] Mithridates, when he heard of the defeat of Archelaus, sent Dorylaus with 8,000 men to Euboea, where he joined the remnant of the army of Archelaus, and crossing to the mainland met Sulla at Orchomenus. Sulla was in Phthiotis, to confront L. Valerius Flaccus who had come to supersede him, but he returned as soon as he heard that Dorylaus had landed. Orchomenus is just north of the Cephissus where it runs into Lake Copais, and a stream called Melas, rising on the east of Orchomenus, joined the Cephissus near its mouth, the neighbouring ground being a marsh. [Sidenote: Battle of Orchomenus. Disposition of Archelaus' army.] Archelaus did not want to fight, but Dorylaus hinted at treachery and had, no doubt, been ordered by Mithridates to avenge Chaeroneia. Near Mount Tilphossium, however, to the south of Lake Copais, he was worsted by Sulla in a skirmish, and thinking better of the advice of Archelaus tried to prolong the war. Archelaus, indeed, seems to have commanded in the battle, for Mithridates was shrewd enough to know when he had a good general. He drew up his army in four lines, the scythed chariots in front, behind them the Macedonian phalanx, then his auxiliaries, including Italian deserters, and, lastly, his light-armed troops. On each flank he posted his cavalry. [Sidenote: Sulla's arrangements.] Sulla, who was weak in cavalry, dug two ditches guarded by forts, one on each flank, so as to keep off the enemy's horse. Then he drew up his infantry in three lines, leaving gaps in them for the light troops and cavalry to come through from the rear when needed. To the second line stakes were given, with orders to plant them so as to form a palisade; and the first line, when the chariots charged, retired behind the palisade, while the light troops advanced through the gaps and hurled missiles at the horses and drivers. The chariots turned and threw the phalanx into confusion, and when Archelaus ordered up his cavalry, Sulla sent round his to take them in the rear. At one time, however, the contest was doubtful, and the Romans wavered, till they were put to shame by their general, who, seizing a standard and advancing towards the foe, cried out, 'When those at home ask where it was you abandoned your leader, say, it was at Orchomenus.' This great victory, in which Sulla showed generalship of a high order, ended the first Mithridatic war. The date is not quite certain. Probably it happened in 86.

[Sidenote: Sulla winters in Thessaly.] After the battle Sulla wintered in Thessaly, where he built a fleet, being tired of waiting for Lucullus. [Sidenote: He confers with Archelaus at Delium.] At Delium he met Archelaus and each urged the other to turn traitor, Archelaus promising that Mithridates would aid Sulla against Cinna; Sulla advising Archelaus to dethrone Mithridates. It was a curious way of showing the respect which they entertained for each other's ability; but Sulla was too scornful of Asiatic aid, and Archelaus too loyal to listen to such suggestions. However, when Archelaus fell ill afterwards, Sulla was so attentive to him, besides giving him land in Euboea and styling him friend of the Roman people, that it was suspected that Archelaus had been playing into his hands all along. It was a most unlikely suspicion; for nothing was more natural than that now, when Sulla was making terms with Mithridates and going to meet Fimbria, he should wish to make Archelaus his friend. For after all he had resolved to forget the Asiatic massacre and not push Mithridates to desperation. [Sidenote: Terms offered by Sulla to Mithridates.] The terms agreed upon were these: Mithridates was to surrender Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Asia, and the islands, eighty ships of war, all prisoners and deserters; he was to give pay and provisions to Sulla's men, and provide a war indemnity of 3,000 talents (732,000l.); to restore to their homes the refugees from Macedonia, and those whom, as will be related hereafter, he had carried off from Chios; and to hand over more of his ships of war to such states as Rhodes in alliance with Rome. Mithridates was then to be recognised as the ally of Rome. He chafed at the terms, the proposal of which indeed brought out the long-headed intrepidity of Sulla's character in the strongest light. Walking, as it were, on the razor-edge of two precipices, he never faltered once. The Romans could not charge him with not having carried into effect the original purpose of the war—the restoration of Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes—nor could Mithridates fail in the end to listen to the voice of Archelaus. When he at first rejected the terms, Sulla advanced towards Asia, plundering some of the barbarous tribes on the frontiers of Macedonia, and reducing that province to order. But Mithridates did not hesitate long. [Sidenote: Tyranny and difficulties of Mithridates.] He, too, was in a difficult position. The inhabitants of Asia Minor soon found that in yielding to him they had exchanged whips for scorpions. He suspected that the defeat of Archelaus at Chaeroneia would excite rebellion, and he seized as many of the Galatian chiefs as he could, and slew them with their wives and children. The consequence was that the surviving chiefs expelled the man whom he had sent as satrap. He suspected the Chians also, and made them give up their arms and the children of their chief men as hostages. Then he made a requisition on them for 2,000 talents (488,000l.), and because they could not raise the money, or because the tyrant pretended that there was a deficiency, the citizens were shipped off to the east of the Black Sea, and the island was occupied by colonists. The man who had managed the affair of Chios was sent to play the same game at Ephesus. But the people were on their guard, slew him, and raised the standard of rebellion. Tralles, Hypaepa, Metropolis, Sardis, Smyrna, and other towns followed their example. Mithridates tried to buoy up his sinking cause, attracting debtors by the remission of debts, resident aliens by the gift of the citizenship of the towns which they inhabited, and slaves by the promise of freedom—devices of a desperate man. A plot was laid against his life which was betrayed, and in his fury he launched out into yet more savage excesses. He sent a set of men to collect depositions, and they slew indiscriminately those who were denounced, 1600, it is said, in all.

[Sidenote: Fimbria mutinies against and murders Flaccus.] These events must have occurred in the winter of 86-85 B.C., when Flaccus was on his march from the Adriatic coast through Macedonia and Thrace for Asia. Flaccus had quarrelled with his lieutenant Fimbria, and superseded him. The latter, when Flaccus had crossed from Byzantium to Chalcedon, induced the troops, who hated their general, to mutiny. Flaccus returned in haste; but, learning what had happened, fled back to Chalcedon and thence to Nicomedia. Here Fimbria, finding him hidden in a well, murdered him, and threw his head into the sea. [Sidenote: He defeats the son of Mithridates and pursues the king.] Then, attacking the king's son, he defeated him at the river Rhyndacus, and pursued the king himself to Pergamus and Pitane, where he would have taken him but that he crossed over to Mitylene, while Fimbria had no ships and was thus baulked of his prey. Another event had happened to aggravate his irritation. [Sidenote: Lucullus off the coast of Asia Minor. Overtures of Fimbria to him.] Lucullus, sent by Sulla to collect a fleet, had, as has been related (p. 153), failed in Egypt. But he had procured ships from Syria and Rhodes, induced Cos and Cnidus to revolt, and driven out the Pontic partisans from Chios and Colophon. He was now in the neighbourhood, when Mithridates was at Pitane. [Sidenote: Mithridates meets Sulla and thy come to terms.] But, he turned a deaf ear to Fimbria's request for aid, and after defeating Neoptolemus, the king's admiral, met Sulla in the Thracian Chersonese, and conveyed him across to Dardanus, in the Troad, where Mithridates came to meet him. Each had one feeling in common—dread lest the other should make terms with Fimbria; and the bargain was soon struck in spite of Sulla's soldiers, who were thus after all baulked of the long-looked-for Asiatic campaign and their desire to take revenge for the great massacre. But Sulla, as we have seen (p. 153), got some money to quiet them; and they were in his power in Asia almost as much as he had been in theirs at Rome. He at once led them against Fimbria, who was near Thyatira, in Lydia. [Sidenote: Fimbria's men desert to Sulla. Fimbria commits suicide.] He summoned that leader to hand over his army, and the soldiers began to desert to him. Fimbria tried to force them to swear obedience to him, and slew the first who refused. Then he sent a slave to assassinate Sulla; and the discovery of this attempt so maddened Sulla's soldiers that Fimbria dared not trust even Sulla's promised safe-conduct and slew himself. [Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] Sulla incorporated his troops with his own army, and proceeded to regulate the affairs of Asia. Those towns which had remained faithful to Rome or had sided with him were liberally rewarded. All slaves who refused to return to their masters were slain. The towns that resisted were punished and their walls destroyed. The ringleaders in the massacre were put to death. The taxpayers were forced to pay at once the previous five years' arrears and a fine of 20,000 talents (4,880,000l.), and Lucullus was left to collect it. In order to raise this sum the unhappy Asiatics were obliged to mortgage their public buildings to the Italian money-lenders; but Sulla got the whole of it, and scarcely was he gone when pirates, hounded on by Mithridates, came, like flocks of vultures, to devour what the eagles had left.

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CHAPTER XIII.

SULLA IN ITALY.

[Sidenote: Sulla sets out homewards.] Leaving Murena in Asia with Fimbria's legions, Sulla, in 84 B.C., with his soldiers in good humour, and with full coffers, at last set out homewards. Three days after sailing from Ephesus he reached the Piraeus. Thence he wrote to the Senate in a different style from that in which he had communicated his victory over Fimbria, when he had not mentioned his own outlawry. He now recounted the Senate all that he had done, and contrasted it with what had been done to him at Rome, how his house had been destroyed, his friends murdered, and his wife and children forced to fly for their lives. He was on his way, he said, to punish his enemies and those who had wronged him. Other men, including the newly-enfranchised Italians, need be under no apprehension. We do not know much of what had been going on at Rome beyond what has been related in a previous chapter. Cinna and Carbo, the consuls, were making what preparations they could when the letter arrived. But it struck a cold chill of dread into many of the Senate, and Cinna and Carbo were told to desist for a time, while an embassy was sent to Sulla to try and arrange terms, and to ask, if he wished to be assured of his own safety, what were his demands. But when the ambassadors were gone, Cinna and Carbo proclaimed themselves consuls for 83, so that they might not have to come back to Rome to hold the elections; and Cinna was soon afterwards murdered at Ancona. The tribunes then compelled Carbo to come back and hold the elections in the regular manner; and Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and Caius Norbanus were elected.

Meanwhile the ambassadors had found Sulla in Greece, and had received his answer. [Sidenote: Sulla's response to an embassy from Rome.] He said that he would never be reconciled to such criminals as his enemies, though the Romans might, if they chose; and that, as for his own safety, he had an army devoted to him, and should prefer to secure the safety of the Senate and his own adherents. He sent back with the ambassadors some friends to represent him before the Senate, and, embarking his army at the Piraeus, ordered it to go round the coast to Patrae in Achaia, and thence to the shores opposite Brundisium. He, himself, having a fit of gout, went to Euboea, to try the springs of Aedepsus. [Sidenote: Story of Sulla and some fishermen.] One day, says Plutarch, while he was walking on the shore there some fishermen brought him some fine fish. He was much pleased, but when they told him that they were citizens of Halae, a town which he had destroyed after the battle of Orchomenos, he said in his grim way, 'What! is there a man of Halae still alive?' But then he told the men to take heart, for the fish had pleaded eloquently for them. From Euboea he crossed to the mainland to rejoin his troops. They were about 40,000 in number, and more than 200,000 men were, he said, in arms against him in Italy. [Sidenote: Devotion of Sulla's troops to him.] But Sulla, who had connived at their mutinies, their vices, and their breaches of discipline, who had always led them to victory, and had never yet thrown aside that mask of moderation which veiled an inflexible determination to be revenged—Sulla who had been so long the sole representative of authority, and to whom they had learned to look for their ultimate reward, was their hero and hope. They offered him their money, and of their own accord swore not to disperse or to ravage the country. Sulla refused their money. Indeed he must have had plenty of his own. But now, when slowly and still very cautiously he was unfolding his designs, such devotion must have been very welcome.

[Sidenote: Sulla lands at Brundisium, B.C. 83.] Early in 83 he sailed from Dyrrhachium to Brundisium, and was at once received by the town. He was particularly anxious not to rouse against himself the Italians, with whom his name was anything but popular, and he solemnly swore to respect their lately-acquired rights. Adherents soon flocked to him. [Sidenote: He is joined by Crassus;] Marcus Licinius Crassus came from Africa, and was sent to raise troops among the Marsi. He asked for an escort, for he had to go through territory occupied by the enemy. 'I give thee,' said Sulla hotly, 'thy father, thy brother, thy friends and thy kinsmen, who were cut off by violence and lawlessness, and whose murderers I am now hunting down.' [Sidenote: by Metellus Pius;] Quintus Metellus Pius came from Liguria, whither he had escaped from Africa, after holding out there against the Marians as long as he could. [Sidenote: by Ofella;] Quintus Lucretius Ofella also came, soon to find to his cost that he had chosen a master who could as readily forget as accept timely service. [Sidenote: by Cn. Pompeius;] Most welcome of all was Cneius Pompeius, welcome not only for his talents, energy, and popularity, but because he did not come empty-handed. He had taken service under Cinna, but had been looked on with distrust, and an action had been brought against him to make him surrender plunder which his father, Cneius Pompeius Strabo, was said to have appropriated when he took Auximum. Carbo had pleaded for him, and he had been acquitted. But, as soon as Sulla was gaining ground in Italy, he went to Picenum where he had estates, and expelled from Auximum the adherents of Carbo, and then passing from town to town won them one by one from his late protector's interests, and got together a corps of three legions, with all the proper equipment and munitions of war. Three officers were sent against him at the head of three divisions; but they quarrelled, and Pompeius, who is said to have slain with his own hand the strongest horseman in the enemy's ranks, defeated one of them and effected a junction with Sulla somewhere in Apulia. Sulla's soldierly eye was pleased at the sight of troops thus successful, and in good martial trim; and when Pompeius addressed him as Imperator, he hailed him by the same title in return. Or, perhaps, he was only playing on the youth's vanity, for Pompeius, who was for his courage and good looks the darling of the soldiers and the women, was very vain, and flattery was a potion which it seems to have been one of Sulla's cynical maxims always to administer in strong doses. [Sidenote: by Philippus;] Later on he was joined by Philippus, the foe of Drusus, who for shifty and successful knavery seems to have been another Marcus Scaurus; [Sidenote: by Cethegus;] by Cethegus, who had been one of his bitterest enemies, which to a man of Sulla's business-like disposition would not be an objection, so long as he could make himself useful at the time; [Sidenote: by Verres.] and by Caius Verres, a late quaestor of Carbo, who had embezzled the public money in that capacity, and thus began by tergiversation and theft a notorious career.

Sulla marched northwards through Apulia, gaining friends by committing no devastation, and sending proposals of peace to the consul Norbanus, which were as hypocritical as was his abstinence from ravaging the country. He meant to deal with these Samnites through whose country he was marching at some other time. At present it was most politic not to provoke them. According to Appian, he met the consul at Canusium, on the Aufidus. [Sidenote: Battle of Mount Tifata. Defeat of Norbanus.] But it is probable that this is a mistake, and that the first battle was fought at Mount Tifata, a spur of the Apennines, near Capua. Norbanus had seized Sulla's envoys, and this so enraged the soldiers of the latter that they charged down the hill with irresistible impetuosity, and killed 6000 of the foe. Norbanus fled to Capua. Only seventy of the Sullans were killed. Sulla now crossed the Volturnus, and marching along the Appian Road met the other consul, Scipio, at Teanum, with whom he opened negotiations. Scipio sent Sertorius to Norbanus, who was blockaded in Capua, to consult him on the terms proposed. Sertorius, who had guessed what was coming and hoped to prevent it by something more efficacious than the advice of Norbanus, went out of his way and seized Suessa. This would interrupt Sulla's immediate communications with the sea, of which he was master. Sulla complained; but all the while he was, as Sertorius had warned Scipio, corrupting the Consul's troops. [Sidenote: Scipio's troops desert to Sulla.] They murmured when Scipio returned the hostages which Sulla had given; and, when the latter on their invitation approached their lines they went over to him in a body. On hearing of this Carbo said, that in contending with Sulla he had to contend with a lion and a fox, and that the fox gave him most trouble.

It may be noted here that Sulla, whose calculated moderation was paying him well—the more pleasantly because he knew that he could wreak his revenge afterwards at his leisure—never scrupled to employ every kind of subterfuge and lie. [Sidenote: Sulla's mendacity.] He tricked and lied on his march to Rome in 88. He lied foully to the Samnites after the battle of the Colline Gate. And he lied in his Memoirs, when he said that he only lost four at Chaeroneia, and twenty-three at Sacriportus, where he also said that he killed 20,000 of the foe. Absurd assertions like these may have been dictated as a sort of lavish acknowledgment paid to fortune, of whom he liked to be thought the favourite—lies that no one believed or was expected to believe, but keeping up a fiction of which it was his foible to be proud. [Sidenote: His success due greatly to desertions.] Another thing we may note is, that this was only the first of a long series of treasons to which, as much almost as to his own generalship, Sulla owed his final success. Five cohorts deserted at Sacriportus. Five more went over from Carbo to Metellus. Two hundred and seventy cavalry went over from Carbo to Sulla in Etruria. A whole legion, despatched by Carbo to relieve Praeneste, joined Pompeius. At the battle of Faventia 6000 deserted, and a Lucanian legion did the same directly afterwards. Naples and Narbo were both banded over by treachery. We hear also of commanders deserting. On the other hand, nothing is said of anyone deserting from Sulla, so that from the very beginning the contest could never have been really considered doubtful.

[Sidenote: Sertorius sent to Spain. No capable man left to oppose Sulla.] After this signal success at Teanum Sertorius was sent to Spain, either because, as is likely, he made bitter comments on the consul's incompetence, or because it was important to hold Spain as a place for retreat. Carbo hastened to Rome to and at his instigation the Senate outlawed all the senators who had joined Sulla—a suicidal step, which would contrast fatally with Sulla's crafty moderation. [Sidenote: Burning of the Capitol.] It was about this time that the Capitol, and in it the Sibylline books, were burnt. Some people said that Carbo burnt it, though what his motive could be is difficult to conjecture. Sulla very likely regretted the loss of the Sibylline books as much as any man. [Sidenote: Sulla's situation at the close of 83 B.C.] With this the first year of the civil war ended. Sulla was master of Picenum, Apulia, and Campania; had disposed of two consuls and their armies; and had, by conciliation and swearing to respect their rights, made friends of some of the newly-enfranchised Italian towns.

The consuls for the next year (82) were Carbo and young Marius. The Marian governor in Africa was suspected of wishing to raise the slaves and to make himself absolute in the province. Consequently the Roman merchants stirred up a tumult, in which he was burnt alive in his house. In Sardinia the renegade Philippus did some service by defeating the Marian praetor, and so securing for Sulla the corn supply of the islands. In the spring Sulla seized Setia, a strong position on the west of the Volscian Mountains. Marius was in the same neighbourhood, and he retreated to Sacriportus on the east of the same range. [Sidenote: Battle of Sacriportus.] Sulla followed him, his aim being to get to Rome. A battle took place at Sacriportus. Marius was getting the worst of it on the left wing, when five cohorts and two companies of cavalry deserted him. The rest fled with great slaughter, and Sulla pressed so hard on them that the gates of Praeneste were shut, to hinder him getting in with the fugitives. Marius was thus left outside, and, like Archelaus at Piraeus, had to be hoisted over the walls by ropes. [Sidenote: Sulla wins the battle and besieges Praeneste.] Sulla captured 8000 Samnites in the battle, and now, for the first time, when the road to Rome was opened and victory seemed secure, showed himself in his true colours, and slew all of them to a man. [Sidenote: Massacre at Rome by order of young Marius.] An equally savage butchery had been going on in Rome, where Marius, before he was blockaded in Praeneste, had given orders to massacre the leaders of the opposite faction. The Senate was assembled as if to despatch business in the Curia Hostilia, and there Carbo's cousin and the father-in-law of Pompeius were assassinated. The wife of the latter killed herself on hearing the news. Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the chief pontiff, and the first jurist who attempted to systematise Roman law, fled to the temple of Vesta, and was there slain. The corpses of those who had been killed were thrown into the Tiber, and Marius had the ferocious satisfaction of feeling that his enemies would not be able to exult over his own imminent ruin. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to Rome.] Sulla, leaving Ofella to blockade Praeneste, hastened to Rome, but there was no one on whom to take vengeance, for his foes had fled. He confiscated their property, and tried to quiet apprehensions by telling the people that he would soon re-establish the State. But he could not stay long in the city, for matters looked threatening in the north.

[Sidenote: Metellus and Carbo in the north.] In this quarter the contest was more stubborn, because the newly enfranchised towns were stronger partisans of Marius. Metellus had fought a battle on the Aesis, the frontier river of Picenum, against Carrinas, one of Carbo's lieutenants, and after a hard fight had beaten him and occupied the adjacent country. This brought Carbo against him with a superior army, and Metellus could do nothing till the news of Sacriportus frightened Carbo into retreating to Ariminum, that he might secure his communications and get supplies from the rich valley of the Po. Metellus immediately resumed the offensive. He defeated in person one division of Carbo, five of whose cohorts deserted in the battle. His lieutenant, Pompeius, defeated Censorinus at Sena and sacked the town. Pompeius is also said to have crossed the Po and taken Mediolanum (Milan), where his soldiers massacred the senate. Metellus, meanwhile, had gone by sea along the east coast north of Ariminum, and had thus cut off Carbo's communications with the valley of the Po. This drove Carbo from his position, and he marched into Etruria, where he fought a battle near Clusium with Sulla, who had just arrived from Rome. In a cavalry fight near the Clanis, 270 of Carbo's Spanish horse went over to Sulla, and Carbo killed the rest. There was another fight at Saturnia, on the Albegna, and there, too, Sulla was victorious. [Sidenote: Indecisive combats.] He was less fortunate in a general engagement near Clusium, which after a whole day's fighting ended indecisively. Carbo was, however, now reduced to great straits. Carrinas was defeated by Pompeius and Crassus near Spoletum, and retired into the town. Carbo sent a detachment to his aid; but it was cut to pieces by an ambuscade laid by Sulla. Bad news, too, reached him from the south, where Marius was beginning to starve in Praeneste. [Sidenote: Carbo attempts to relieve Praeneste.] He sent a strong force of eight legions to raise the siege; but Pompeius waylaid and routed them, and surrounded their officer who had retreated to a hill. But the latter, leaving his fires alight, marched off by night, and returned to Carbo with only seven cohorts; for his troops had mutinied, one legion going off to Ariminum and many men dispersing to their homes. [Sidenote: A second attempt also fails.] A second attempt to relieve Praeneste was now made from the south. Lamponius from Lucania, whom we last heard of in the Social War (p. 120), and Pontius Telesinus from Samnium, marched at the head of 70,000 men into Latium. This movement drew Sulla from Etruria. He threw himself between Rome and the enemy, and occupied a gorge through which they had to pass before they could get to Praeneste. The Latin Road branches off near Anagnia, one route leading straight to Rome, the other making a detour through Praeneste. [Sidenote: The dead lock at Praeneste.] It was somewhere here that Sulla took his stand; and neither could the southern army break through his lines, nor Marius break through those of Ofella, though he made determined attempts to do so.

Meanwhile Carbo and Norbanus, released from the pressure of Sulla's army, struck across the Apennines to overwhelm Metellus; but their imprudence ruined them. [Sidenote: Overthrow of Carbo by Metellus.] Coming on Metellus at Faventia (Faenza) when their troops were weary after a day's march, they attacked him in the evening, hoping to surprise him. But the tired men were defeated. Ten thousand were killed; 6000 surrendered or deserted. The rest fled, and only 1000 effected an orderly retreat to Arretium. Nor did the disaster end here. A Lucanian legion, coming to join Carbo, deserted to Metellus on hearing the result of the battle, and the commander sent to offer his submission to Sulla. Sulla characteristically replied that he must earn his pardon, and the other, nothing loth, asked Norbanus and his officers to a banquet and murdered all who came. Norbanus refused the invitation and escaped to Rhodes; but when Sulla sent to demand that he should be given up he committed suicide. [Sidenote: Third attempt to relive Praeneste.] Carbo had still more than 30,000 men at Clusium, and he made a third attempt to relieve Praeneste by sending Damasippus with two legions to co-operate from the north with the Samnites on the south. [Sidenote: Carbo flies to Africa.] But Sulla found means to hold them in check, and Carbo, on the news of other disasters—at Fidentia, where Marcus Lucullus defeated one of his lieutenants, and at Tuder, which Marcus Crassus took and pillaged—lost heart and fled to Africa. Plutarch says that Lucullus, having less than a third of the numbers of the enemy, was in doubt whether to fight. But just then a gentle breeze blew the flowers from a neighbouring field, which fell on the shields and helmets of the soldiers in such a manner that they seemed to be crowned with garlands, and this so cheered them that they won an easy victory. After Carbo's flight his army was defeated by Pompeius near Clusium. [Sidenote: Carbo's lieutenants threaten Rome.] The rest of it, under Carrinas and Censorinus, joined Damasippus, and, taking up a position twelve miles from Rome in the Alban territory, threatened the capital and forced Sulla to break up his quarters, where he had been barring the roads to Praeneste and Rome. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to the rescue.] The sequel is uncertain; but it is probable that when the three commanders marched into Latium, Sulla was obliged to detach cavalry to harass them, and soon afterwards to march with all his forces to prevent Rome being taken. Why Carrinas did not assault Rome at once as he came south, we cannot say. Probably the relief of Praeneste was the most urgent necessity, and he hoped, after setting Marius free, to overwhelm Sulla first, then Pompeius, and then to take Rome. But, if these were his plans, the furious impetuosity of the Samnites disarranged them. [Sidenote: Desperate attempt of Pontius Telesinus.] Pontius, as soon as he saw Sulla's troops weakened, in order to oppose Carrinas, forced his way by night along the Latin Road, gathered up the troops of Carrinas on the march, and at daybreak was within a few miles of Rome. Sulla instantly followed, but by the Praenestine Road, which was somewhat longer; and when he got to Rome about midday, fighting had already taken place, and the Roman cavalry had been beaten under the walls of the city.

[Sidenote: Battle of the Colline Gate.] It was November, B.C. 82. Sunset was near and Sulla's men were weary, but he was determined or was compelled to fight. Giving his men some hasty refreshment, he at once formed the line of battle before the Colline Gate, and the last and most desperate conflict of the civil war began. Sulla's left wing was driven back to the city walls, and fugitives brought word to Ofella at Praeneste that the battle was lost. [Sidenote: Danger of Sulla.] Sulla himself was nearly slain. He was on a spirited white horse, cheering on his men. Two javelins were hurled at him at once. He did not see them, but his groom did, and he lashed Sulla's horse so as to make it leap forward, and the javelins grazed its tail. Sulla wore in his bosom a small golden image of Apollo, which he brought from Delphi. He now kissed it with devotion, and prayed aloud to the god not to allow him to fall ingloriously by the hands of his fellow-citizens, after leading him safe through so many perils to the threshold of the city. But neither courage nor superstition availed him against the fury of the Samnite onset. For the first time in his life Sulla was beaten, and either retreated into Rome or maintained a desperate struggle close to the walls during the night. On the right wing, however, Crassus had gained the day, had chased the foe to Antemnae, and halting there sent to Sulla for a supply of food. Thus apprised of his good fortune, he hastened to join Crassus. That division of the enemy which had beaten him had doubtless heard the same news, and must have dispersed or joined the rest of their forces at Antemnae. But in any case they were full of despair. Three thousand offered to surrender. But Sulla never gave mercy, though he often sold it for an explicit or tacit consideration. He swore to spare them if they turned on their own comrades. They did so, and Sulla, taking them to Rome with four or five thousand other prisoners, placed them in the Circus Flaminius and had them all slain. [Sidenote: Sulla's cold-blooded ferocity.] He was haranguing the Senate in the temple of Bellona, and the cries of the poor wretches alarmed his audience; but he told them to attend to what he was saying, for the noise they heard was only made by some malefactors, whom he had ordered to be chastised. This last blind rush of the Sabellian bull on the lair of the wolves, which Pontius had told his followers they must destroy, had failed only by a hair's breadth, and since the days of the Gauls Rome had never been in such peril. But now at last Sulla had triumphed, and could afford to gratify his pent-up passion for vengeance. This butchery in the Circus was but the beginning of what he meant to do. [Sidenote: Executions.] The four leaders, Pontius, Carrinas, Damasippus, and Censorinus, were all beheaded; and, in the same ghastly fashion in which, it was said, Hannibal had learnt the death of Hasdrubal, so those blockaded in Praeneste learnt the fate of the relieving army and their own fate also by seeing four heads stuck on poles outside the town walls. They were half starving and could resist no longer. Marius and a younger brother of Pontius killed each other before the surrender. Ofella sent the head of Marius to Sulla, who had it fixed up before the Rostra, and jeered at it in his pitiless fashion, quoting from Aristophanes the line,

You should have worked at the oar before trying to handle the helm.

[Sidenote: Massacre at Praeneste.] Then he went to Praeneste, and made all the inhabitants come outside and lay down their arms. The Roman senators who had been in the place had been already slain by Ofella. Three groups were made of the rest, consisting of Samnites, Romans, and Praenestines. The Romans, the women, and the children were spared. All the others, 12,000 in number, were massacred, and Praeneste was given over to pillage.

[Sidenote: Fate of Norba.] So ruthless an example provoked a desperate resistance at Norba. It was betrayed to Lepidus by night; but the citizens stabbed and hung themselves or each other, and some locking themselves inside their houses, set them in flames. A wind was blowing and the town was consumed. So at Norba there was neither pillage nor execution. Nola was not taken till two years afterwards, and we have seen (p. 121) what became of Mutilus on its surrender. [Sidenote: Sulla's vengeance in Samnium.] Aesernia, the last Samnite capital in the Social War, was captured in the same year (80), and Sulla did his best to fulfil his threat of extirpating the Samnite name. In Etruria Populonium held out longer, and in Strabo's time was still deserted—a proof of the punishment which it received. Volaterrae was the last town to submit. In 79 its garrison surrendered, on condition of their lives being spared. But the soldiers of the besieging force raised a cry of treason and stoned their general, and a troop of cavalry sent from Rome cut the garrison to pieces.

[Sidenote: Fate of Carbo. Pompeius in Sicily.] In the provinces there was still much to be done. Pompeius was sent to Sicily, and on his arrival Perperna, the Marian governor, left the island. Carbo had come over from Africa to Cossura, and was taken and brought before Pompeius. Pompeius condemned the man who had once been his advocate, and sent his head to Sulla. It is said that Carbo met his death in a craven way, begging for a respite. Whether this is true or not, he seems to have been a selfish and incapable man. But if it be true that Pompeius, while he had Carbo's companions instantly slain, purposely spared Carbo himself in order to have the satisfaction of trying him, he was less to be envied than the man he tried. He divorced his wife at this time in order to marry Sulla's step-daughter, who was also divorced from her husband for the purpose. From Sicily Pompeius was sent to Africa, where Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was in arms. Crossing offer with 120 ships and 800 transports he landed some of his troops at Utica and some at Carthage.

[Sidenote: Decay of discipline in Roman armies.] The decay of discipline in the Roman armies is illustrated by an incident which occurred at Carthage. One soldier found some treasure, and the rest would not stir for several days till they were convinced that there was nothing more to be found. Pompeius looked on and laughed at them. Sulla's way of treating his soldiers was already bearing fruit, and was one of the worst of the evils which he brought on Italy; for he who goes about scattering smiles and smooth words in order to win a name, for good-nature will always find others to run him a race in such meanness, and so discipline becomes subverted and states are ruined.

[Sidenote: Domitius Ahenobarbus conquered and slain by Pompeius in Africa.] Pompeius found Domitius strongly posted behind a ravine. Taking advantage of a tempest, he crossed it and routed the enemy. His men hailed him Imperator: but he said he would not take the title till they had taken the camp. The camp was then stormed and Domitius slain. Pompeius also captured the towns held by the partisans of Domitius, and defeated and took prisoner the Marian usurper who had expelled Hiempsal, King of Numidia. Hiempsal was restored and his rival put to death. On returning to Utica Pompeius found a message from Sulla, telling him to disband his troops except one legion and wait till his successor came. [Sidenote: Vanity of Pompeius.] The men mutinied, for they liked Pompeius, and Sulla was told that Pompeius was in rebellion. He remarked that 'in his old age it was his fate to fight with boys'—a saying to which Pompeius's speech, 'that more men worshipped the rising than the setting sun,' may have been intended as a rejoinder. But soon he was relieved by hearing that the politic Pompeius had appeased the mutiny. Sulla had the art of yielding with a good grace when it was necessary, and, seeing how popular Pompeius was, he went out to meet him on his return and greeted him by the name 'Magnus.' The vain young man asked for a triumph. His forty days' campaign had indeed been brilliant; but he was not even a praetor, the lowest official to whom a triumph was granted, nor a senator, but only an eques. Sulla at first was astonished at the request, but contemptuously replied, 'Let him triumph; let him have his triumph.'

[Sidenote: Sulla has Ofella slain.] Two other officials of Sulla gave him trouble. One, Ofella, stood for the consulship against his wishes, and went about with a crowd of friends in the Forum. But with a man like Sulla it was foolish to presume on past services. He had no notion of allowing street-riots again, and sent a centurion who cut Ofella down. The people brought the centurion to him, demanding justice. [Sidenote: Sulla's parables.] Sulla told them the man had done what he ordered, and then spoke a grim parable to them. A rustic, he said, was so bitten by lice that twice he took off his coat and shook it. But as they went on biting him he burnt it. And so those who had twice been humbled had better not provoke him to use fire the third time. [Sidenote: Murena provokes the second Mithridatic war.] The other officer was Murena, who had been left in Asia. He raised troops besides the legions left with him, forced Miletus and other Asiatic towns to supply a fleet, and then stirred up the second Mithridatic war. The Colchians had revolted, and Mithridates suspected his son of fostering the revolt in order to be set over them. So he invited him to come to his court, put him there in chains of gold, and soon killed him. He had also, it seems, threatened Archelaus, who fled from him and represented to the ready ears of Murena, that Mithridates still held part of Cappadocia, and was collecting a powerful army. Murena advanced into Cappadocia, took Comana, and pillaged its temple. Mithridates appealed to the treaty; but Murena asked where it was, for the terms had never been reduced to a written form. [Sidenote: Mithridates appeals to the Senate.] The king then sent to the Senate. Murena crossed the Halys, and retired into Phrygia and Galatia with rich spoil. [Sidenote: Murena defeated.] Disregarding a prohibition of the Senate, he again attacked the king, who at last sent Gordius against him, and soon after, coming up in person, defeated Murena twice and drove him into Phrygia. For this success Mithridates lit on a high mountain a bonfire, which, it is said, was seen more than a hundred miles away by sailors in the Black Sea. [Sidenote: Sulla puts a stop to the war.] Sulla sent orders to Murena to fight nor more; and Mithridates, on condition of being reconciled to Ariobarzanes, was allowed to keep as much of Cappadocia as was in his possession. He gave a great banquet in honour of the occasion; and Murena went home, where he had a triumph. Sulla probably granted it to him after his defeats with more pleasure than he granted it to Pompeius for his victories.

[Sidenote: Sertorius in Spain.] The ablest of the Marian generals was, it has been seen, virtually unemployed in the Civil War. Sertorius, when sent to Spain, seized the passes of the Pyrenees. Sulla, in 81, sent against him, Q. Annius Luscus, who found one of the lieutenants of Sertorius so strongly posted that he could not get past him. However this lieutenant was assassinated by one of his own men, and his troops abandoned their position. [Sidenote: He flies to Mauretania. At Pityussa.] Sertorius had few men, and fled to New Carthage, and thence to Mauretania. Here he was attacked by the barbarians, and re-embarking, was on his way back to Spain, when he fell in with some Cilician pirates with whom he attacked Pityussa (Iviza) and expelled the Roman garrison. [Sidenote: At Gades.] Annius hastened to the rescue and worsted him in a fight, after which Sertorius sailed away through the Straits of Gibraltar to Gades (Cadiz). Here some sailors told him of two islands which the Spaniards believed to be the Islands of the Blest, with a pleasant climate and a fruitful soil. In these islands—probably Madeira—Sertorius wished to settle. [Sidenote: In Mauretania.] But, when his Cilician allies sailed to Mauretania to restore some prince to his throne, he went there too and fought on the other side. Sulla sent help to the prince, but Sertorius defeated the commander and was joined by the troops. [Sidenote: Invited to Spain.] Now, when once more at the head of a Roman army, he was invited to Spain by the Lusitani, who were preparing to revolt against Rome. With 2,600 Romans and 700 Africans he crossed the sea, gaining a victory over the Roman cruisers on his way, and set to work organizing and drilling the Lusitani in Roman fashion. [Sidenote: His white fawn.] One of them gave him a white fawn, and Sertorius declared that it had been given him by Diana. After this, when he obtained any secret intelligence he said that the fawn had told him, and brought it out crowned with flowers, if it was some officer's success of which he had heard. By such means, and by introducing a gay and martial uniform among his troops, he made his army both well-disciplined and devoted to him personally, and defeated one governor of Further Spain on the Baetis (Guadalquiver). [Sidenote: Defeats Metellus Pius.] Gaining afterwards a series of successes over Q. Metellus Pius, who had been sent against him, he was still in arms and master of a considerable part of Spain when Sulla died.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE PERSONAL RULE AND DEATH OF SULLA.

Sulla was to all intents and purposes a king in Rome. He harangued the people on what he had achieved, and told them that if they were obedient he would make things better for them, but that he would not spare his enemies, and would punish everyone who had sided with them since Scipio violated his covenant. [Sidenote: Reign of terror in Rome.] Then began a reign of terror. Not only did he kill his enemies, but gave over to his creatures men against whom he had no complaint to make. At last a young noble, Caius Metellus, asked him in the Senate, 'Tell us, Sulla, when there is to be an end of our calamities. We do not ask thee to spare those whom those hast marked out for punishment, but to relieve the suspense of those whom thou hast determined to save.' Sulla replied that he did not yet know. 'Then,' said Metellus, 'let us know whom thou intendest to destroy.' [Sidenote: Sulla's proscriptions.] Sulla answered by issuing a first proscription list, including eighty names. People murmured at the illegality of this, and in two days, as if to rebuke their presumption, he issued a second of 220, and as many more the next day. Then he told the people from the rostrum that he had now proscribed all that he remembered, and those whom he had forgotten must come into some future proscription. Such a speech would seem incredible if put into the mouth of any other character it history; but it is in keeping with Sulla's passionless and nonchalant brutality. The ashes of Marius he ordered to be dug up and scattered in the Anio, the only unpractical act we ever read of him committing. Death was ordained for every one who should harbour or save a proscribed person, even his own brother, son, or parent. But he who killed a proscribed man, even if it was a slave who slew his master or a son his father, was to receive two talents. Even the son and grandson of those proscribed were deprived of the privileges of citizenship, and their property was confiscated. Not only in Rome but in all the cities of Italy this went on. Lists were posted everywhere, and it was a common saying among the ruffianly executioners, 'His fine home was the death of such an one, his gardens of another, his hot baths of a third,' for they hunted down men for their wealth more than from revenge. [Sidenote: Story illustrative of the time.] One day a quiet citizen came into the Forum, and out of mere curiosity read the proscription list. To his horror he saw his own name. 'Wretch,' he cried, 'that I am, my Alban villa pursues me!' and he had not gone far when a ruffian came up and killed him. [Sidenote: Sulla and Julius Caesar.] The famous Julius Caesar was one of those in danger. He would not divorce his wife at the bidding of Sulla, who confiscated her property if not his as well, being so far merciful for some reason which we do not know. [Sidenote: Story of Roscius.] One case has been made memorable by the fact that Cicero was the counsel for one of the sufferers. Two men named Roscius procured the assassination of a third of the same name by Sulla's favourite freedman, Chrysogonus, who then got the name of Roscius put on the proscription list, and, seizing on his property, expelled the man's son from it. He having friends at Rome fled to them, and made the assassins fear that they might be compelled to disgorge. So they suddenly charged the son with having killed his father. The most frightful circumstance about the case is not the piteous injustice suffered by the son, but the abject way in which Cicero speaks of Sulla, comparing him to Jupiter who, despite his universal beneficence, sometimes permits destruction, not on purpose but because his sway is so world-wide, and scouting the idea of its being possible for him to share personally in such wrongs. It has been well said, 'We almost touch the tyrant with our finger.' Cicero soon afterwards left Rome, probably from fear of Sulla.

[Sidenote: Wholesale punishment of towns.] It is said that the names of 4,700 persons were entered on the public records as having fallen in the proscriptions, besides many more who were assassinated for private reasons. Whole towns were put up for auction, says one writer, such as Spoletum, Praeneste, Interamna, and Florentia. By this we may understand that they lost all their land, their privileges, and public buildings, perhaps even the houses themselves. Others, such as Volaterrae and Arretium, were deprived of all privileges except that of Commercium or the right of trade.

[Sidenote: Sulla rewards his soldiers and establishes a permanent party.] Sulla's friends attended such auctions and made large fortunes. One of his centurions, named Luscius, bought an estate for 10,000,000 sesterces, or 88,540l. of our money. One of his freedmen bought for 20l. 12s. an estate worth 61,000l. Crassus, Verres, and Sulla's wife, Metella, became in this way infamously rich. In spite of such nominal prices, the sale of confiscated estates produced 350,000,000 sesterces, or nearly 3,000,000l. of our money. Sulla approved of such purchases, for they bound the buyers to his interests, and ensured their wishing to uphold his acts after his death. With the same view of creating a permanent Sullan party in Italy, and at the same time to fulfil his pledges to the soldiers, he allotted to them all public lands in Italy hitherto undistributed, and all confiscated land not otherwise disposed of. In this way he punished and rewarded at a stroke. No fewer than 120,000 allotments were made and twenty-three legions provided for. There was in it a plausible mimicry of the democratic scheme of colonies which Sulla must have thoroughly enjoyed. Thus in Italy he provided a standing army to support his new constitution. [Sidenote: The Cornelii.] In Rome itself, by enfranchising 10,000 slaves whose owners had been slain, he formed a strong body of partisans ever ready to do his bidding; these were all named Cornelii. A man is known by his adherents, and the worst men were Sulla's proteges.

[Sidenote: Catiline.] Catiline's name rose into notoriety amid these horrors. He was said not only to have murdered his own brother, but, to requite Sulla for legalising the murder by including this brother's name in the list of the proscribed, to have committed the most horrible act of the Civil War—the torture of Marcus Marius Gratidianus. This man, because he was cousin of Marius, was offered up as a victim to the manes of Catulus, of whom the elder Marius had said, 'He must die.' This poor wretch was scourged, had his limbs broken, his nose and hands cut off, and his eyes gouged out of their sockets. Finally his head was cut off, and Cicero's brother writes that Catiline carried it in his hands streaming with blood. But no one would attach much importance to what the Ciceros said of Catiline, and two circumstances combine to point to his innocence of such extreme enormities. One is that it was the son of Catulus who begged as a boon from Sulla the death of this Marius, and his name was very likely confused with Catiline's in the street rumours of the time; and the other and more direct piece of evidence is, that Catiline was tried in the year 64 for murders committed at this time, and was acquitted. It is a curious thing that the obloquy which has clung to Catiline's name on such dubious reports has never attached in the same measure to the undoubted horrors and abominations of Sulla's career.

Sulla, though he meant above all to have his own way, had no objection to use constitutional forms where they could be conveniently employed. He made the Senate pass a resolution approving his acts, and, as there were no consuls in 82, after the death of Marius and Carbo, he retired from Rome for a while and told the Senate to elect an Interrex, in conformity with the prescribed usage under such circumstances. Then he wrote to the Interrex and recommended that a Dictator should be appointed, not for a limited time, but till he had restored quiet in the Roman world, and, with a touch of that irony which he could not resist displaying in and out of season, went on to say that he thought himself the best man for the post. [Sidenote: Sulla's power.] Thus, in November 82, he was formally invested with despotic power over the lives and property of his fellow-citizens, could contract or extend the frontiers of the State, could change as he pleased the constitution of the Italian towns and the provinces, could legislate for the future, could nominate proconsuls and propraetors, and could retain his absolute power as long as he liked. He might have dispensed with consuls altogether. But he did not care to do this. The consuls whom he allowed to be elected for 81 were of course possessed of merely nominal power. Twenty-four lictors preceded him in the streets. He told the people to hail him as 'Felix,' declared that his least deliberate were his most successful actions, signed himself 'Epaphroditus' when he wrote to Greeks, named his son and daughter Faustus and Fausta, boasted that the gods held converse with him in dreams, and sent a golden crown and axe to the goddess whom he believed to be his patroness. Like Wallenstein, he mingled indifference to bloodshed with extreme superstition and boundless self-confidence. But, as the historian remarks, 'a man who is superstitious is capable of any crime, for he believes that his gods can be conciliated by prayers and presents. The greatest crimes have not been committed by men who have no religious belief.' No doubt to his mind there was a sort of judicial retribution in all this bloodshed; and, as he tried to make himself out the favourite of the gods, so by formally announcing the close of the proscription lists for June 1, 81 B.C., he spread some veil of legality over his shameless violence. [Sidenote: Peculiarly horrible nature of Sulla's acts.] There is something particularly revolting in the business-like and systematic way in which he went about his murderous work, appointing a fixed time for it to end, a fixed list of the victims; a fixed price to be paid per head, a fixed exemption for the murderers from his own law 'De Sicariis.' Modern idolaters of a policy of blood and iron may profane history by their glorification of human monsters; but no sophistry can blind an independent reader to the real nature of Sulla's character and acts. He organized murder, and filled Italy with idle soldiers instead of honest husbandmen. He did so in the interests of a class—a class whose incapacity for government he had discovered; and yet, knowing that his re-establishment of this class could only be temporary, he fortified it by every means in his power, and then, after a theatrical finale, returned to the gross debaucheries in which he revelled. Anything more selfish or cynical cannot be conceived, and those who call vile acts by their plain names will not feel inclined to become Sulla's apologists.

When he died he left behind him, it is said, what he may have meant as his epitaph, an inscription containing the purport of three lines in the 'Medea'—

Let no man deem me weak or womanly, Or nerveless, but of quite another mood, A scourge to foes, beneficent to friends.

Pompeius, the only man who had successfully bearded him, was the only friend not mentioned in his will. If anything could palliate his remorseless selfishness it is the candour with which he confessed it. He had made a vast private fortune out of his countrymen's misery. When he surrendered his dictatorship he offered a tenth of his property to Hercules, and gave a banquet to the people on so profuse a scale that great quantities of food were daily thrown into the Tiber. Some of the wine was forty years old, perhaps wine of that vintage which was gathered in when Caius Gracchus died. [Sidenote: He divorces Metella and marries again.] In the middle of the banquet his wife Metella sickened, and in order that, as Pontifex, he might prevent his home being polluted by death he divorced her, and removed her to another house while still alive. Soon afterwards he married another wife, who at a gladiatorial show came and plucked his sleeve, in order, as she said, to obtain some of his good fortune. [Sidenote: His abdication.] The rest of his life was spent, near Cumae, in hunting, writing his memoirs, amusing himself with actors, and practising all sorts of debauchery. Ten days before he died he settled the affairs of the people of Puteoli at their request, and was busy in collecting funds to restore the Capitol up to the last. [Sidenote: His death.] Some say he died of the disease which destroyed Herod. Some say that there is no such disease. Others say that he broke a blood-vessel when in a rage. He is described as having blue eyes, and a pale face so blotched over that it was likened to a mulberry sprinkled with meal.