the immense superiority of force. The only hope of safety rested on Sulla. The latter, on receiving accounts of the departure of the Samnite army in the direction of Rome, had likewise set out in all haste to the assistance of the capital. The appearance of his foremost horsemen under Balbus in the course of the morning revived the sinking courage of the citizens; about midday he appeared in person with his main force, and immediately drew up his ranks for battle at the temple of the Erycine Aphrodite before the Colline gate (not far from Porta Pia). His lieutenants adjured him not to send the troops exhausted by the forced march at once into action; but Sulla took into consideration what the night might bring on Rome, and, late as it was in the afternoon, ordered the attack. The battle was obstinately contested and bloody. The left wing of Sulla, which he led in person, gave way as far as the city wall, so that it became necessary to close the city gates; stragglers even brought accounts to Ofella that the battle was lost. But on the right wing Marcus Crassus overthrew the enemy and pursued him as far as Antemnae; this somewhat relieved the left wing also, and an hour after sunset it in turn began to advance. The fight continued the whole night and even on the following morning; it was only the defection of a division of 3000 men, who immediately turned their arms against their former comrades, that put an end to the struggle. Rome was saved. The army of the insurgents, for which there was no retreat, was completely extirpated. The prisoners taken in the battle - between 3000 and 4000 in number, including the generals Damasippus, Carrinas, and the severely-wounded Pontius - were by Sulla's orders on the third day after the battle brought to the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius and there massacred to the last man, so that the clatter of arms and the groans of the dying were distinctly heard in the neighbouring temple of Bellona, where Sulla was just holding a meeting of the senate. It was a ghastly execution, and it ought not to be excused; but it is not right to forget that those very men who perished there had fallen like a band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and, had they found time, would have destroyed them as far as fire and sword can destroy a city and its citizens.
With this battle the war was, in the main, at an end. The garrison of Praeneste surrendered, when it learned the issue of the battle of Rome from the heads of Carrinas and other officers thrown over the walls. The leaders, the consul Gaius Marius and the son of Pontius, after having failed in an attempt to escape, fell on each other's swords. The multitude cherished the hope, in which it was confirmed by Cethegus, that the victor would even now have mercy upon them. But the times of mercy were past. The more unconditionally Sulla had up to the last moment granted full pardon to those who came over to him, the more inexorable he showed himself toward the leaders and communities that had held out to the end. Of the Praenestine prisoners, 12,000 in number, most of the Romans and individual Praenestines as well as the women and children were released, but the Roman senators, almost all the Praenestines and the whole of the Samnites, were disarmed and cut to pieces; and the rich city was given up to pillage. It was natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new burgesses which had not yet passed over should continue their resistance with the utmost obstinacy. In the Latin town of Norba for instance, when Aemilius Lepidus got into it by treason, the citizens killed each other and set fire themselves to their town, solely in order to deprive their executioners of vengeance and of booty. In Lower Italy Neapolis had already been taken by assault, and Capua had, as it would seem, been voluntarily surrendered; but Nola was only evacuated by the Samnites in 674. On his flight from Nola the last surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the door of his own house. As to the Samnites, the dictator declared that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed, and that the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated from the earth; and, as he verified these words in terrible fashion on the prisoners taken before Rome and in Praeneste, so he appears to have also undertaken a raid for the purpose of laying waste the country, to have captured Aesernia [16] (674?), and to have converted that hitherto flourishing and populous region into the desert which it has since remained. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed by Marcus Crassus. A longer resistance was offered in Etruria by Populonium and above all by the impregnable Volaterrae, which gathered out of the remains of the beaten party an army of four legions, and stood a two years' siege conducted first by Sulla in person and then by the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother of the democratic consul, till at length in the third year after the battle at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on condition of free departure. But in this terrible time neither military law nor military discipline was regarded; the soldiers raised a cry of treason and stoned their too compliant general; a troop of horse sent by the Roman government cut down the garrison as it withdrew in terms of the capitulation. The victorious army was distributed throughout Italy, and all the insecure townships were furnished with strong garrisons: under the iron hand of the Sullan officers the last palpitations of the revolutionary and national opposition slowly died away.
There was still work to be done in the provinces. Sardinia had been speedily wrested by Lucius Philippus from the governor of the revolutionary government Quintus Antonius (672), and Transalpine Gaul offered little or no resistance; but in Sicily, Spain, and Africa the cause of the party defeated in Italy seemed still by no means lost. Sicily was held for them by the trustworthy governor Marcus Perpenna. Quintus Sertorius had the skill to attach to himself the provincials in Hither Spain, and to form from among the Romans settled in that quarter a not inconsiderable army, which in the first instance closed the passes of the Pyrenees: in this he had given fresh proof that, wherever he was stationed, he was in his place, and amidst all the incapables of the revolution was the only man practically useful. In Africa the governor Hadrianus, who followed out the work of revolutionizing too thoroughly and began to give liberty to the slaves, had been, on occasion of a tumult instigated by the Roman merchants of Utica, attacked in his official residence and burnt with his attendants (672); nevertheless the province adhered to the revolutionary government, and Cinna's son-in-law, the young and able Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, was invested with the supreme command there. Propagandism had even been carried from thence into the client-states, Numidia and Mauretania. Their legitimate rulers, Hiempsal II son of Gauda, and Bogud son of Bocchus, adhered doubtless to Sulla; but with the aid of the Cinnans the former had been dethroned by the democratic pretender Hiarbas, and similar feuds agitated the Mauretanian kingdom. The consul Carbo who had fled from Italy tarried on the island Cossyra (Pantellaria) between Africa and Sicily, at a loss, apparently, whether he should flee to Egypt or should attempt to renew the struggle in one of the faithful provinces.
Sulla sent to Spain Gaius Annius and Gaius Valerius Flaccus, the former as governor of Further Spain, the latter as governor of the province of the Ebro. They were spared the difficult task of opening up the passes of the Pyrenees by force, in consequence of the general who was sent thither by Sertorius having been killed by one of his officers and his troops having thereafter melted away. Sertorius, much too weak to maintain an equal struggle, hastily collected the nearest divisions and embarked at New Carthage - for what destination he knew not himself, perhaps for the coast of Africa, or for the Canary Islands - it mattered little whither, provided only Sulla's arm did not reach him. Spain then willingly submitted to the Sullan magistrates (about 673) and Flaccus fought successfully with the Celts, through whose territory he marched, and with the Spanish Celtiberians (674).
Gnaeus Pompeius was sent as propraetor to Sicily, and, when he appeared on the coast with 120 sail and six legions, the island was evacuated by Perpenna without resistance. Pompeius sent a squadron thence to Cossyra, which captured the Marian officers sojourning there. Marcus Brutus and the others were immediately executed; but Pompeius had enjoined that the consul Carbo should be brought before himself at Lilybaeum in order that, unmindful of the protection accorded to him in a season of peril by that very man[17], he might personally hand him over to the executioner (672).
