The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

An Incense Burner

He contented himself with detaching a division of his army to effect a junction with the Samnites, now advancing, and thus create a diversion on the right of Sulla’s position. Sulla took measures to guard the defiles which lead towards Præneste, while Pompey, by a lateral movement, surprised and routed the detached division. The ground, however, was cleared around Carbo’s entrenchments. He had only a single enemy, Metellus, before him, and upon him he threw himself with desperate resolution. But a great battle fought at Faventia near Ravenna resulted in his total defeat, with the loss of ten thousand slain, and several thousands of deserters. His officers hastened to pillage and betray him. His quæstor Verres plundered his military chest, while Albinovanus massacred several chiefs of the army, whom he had invited to a banquet. Norbanus took ship and fled to Rhodes. Carbo, after raising another army in Etruria, and conducting for some time a war of guerillas in the mountains, abandoned his colleague to the fate which awaited him, and made the best of his way into Africa. Sertorius had already withdrawn from a contest which he judged to be hopeless, and was engaged in forming a new confederation in Spain. The Marian chieftains surrendered Italy to the senate, and sought to raise the provinces against it (82).

Sulla and his colleagues now directed their victorious legions upon the last of the Marian armies in their last stronghold, Præneste. But Pontius Telesinus, at the head of a combined force of Samnites, Lucanians, and Campanians, to whom the destruction or humiliation of Rome was a dearer object than the success of either party among the Romans, seized the opportunity to wreak the vengeance of their countrymen upon the capital of their common enemies. Adroitly evading the lines of the numerous legions which were now concentrating upon Præneste, they penetrated by night within ten or twelve miles of the city, which they hoped to surprise, and give to the flames. But they spent one day in the preparations for the assault, and in the interval the slender garrison within the city was enabled to communicate with Sulla. On the first of November the Samnites advanced, but Sulla was already at their back. At the Colline Gate he came up with them, and engaged them in a long and desperate encounter. Since the invasion of the Gauls Rome had never struggled against an enemy so near to her own walls, nor been brought so nigh to destruction.

The combat lasted a day and a night. The left wing commanded by Sulla himself was put to rout, and the fugitives running to the lines before Præneste, exclaimed that the battle was lost and their imperator himself slain. But Crassus meanwhile, with the right wing, had broken the enemy’s ranks, and pursued them as far as Antemnæ. Eight thousand of the Italians were made prisoners, and the Roman officers captured in their ranks were devoted to the sword. Pontius Telesinus, grievously wounded in the fight, was despatched by the conqueror on the field of battle. His whole life had been devoted to the hatred of Rome, and at the moment when she finally escaped from his murderous grasp he could no longer wish to live. He was the last Italian enemy of Rome. As the adversary of the Decii and Fabii he might have been the destroyer of the Roman name, and have changed the face of history. But in the age of Marius and Sulla he could only hope for one day of plunder and conflagration, and when this momentary triumph was snatched from him, what sweeter satisfaction could he covet than to fall among fifty thousand corpses, one-half of which were Roman?[93]

As soon as the Prænestines learned the result of this bloody day, and saw the heads of the Italians and Marians borne in triumph beneath their walls, they opened their gates to the victors. The young Marius had retired into a subterraneous apartment with the brother of Pontius Telesinus. Determined not to fall into the enemy’s hands, they challenged each other to the combat, and Marius, having slain his friend and confederate, caused himself to be despatched by the hands of a slave. A few cities still held out. At Norba in Latium, the inhabitants chose to consume themselves together with their city, rather than submit to the conqueror. Nola opened its gates after a long defence; Volaterræ resisted for two years. But the struggle in Italy was hopeless. Spain and Africa rose indeed against the Roman government; but the gates of the peninsula were securely closed against these foreign auxiliaries.