Part 26

But during the night Sulla received favorable news. Crassus, who commanded his right wing, had completely defeated a detachment of the Marian army. With quick decision, Sulla marched during the night round the enemy's camp, joined Crassus, and at day-break attacked the foe.

The battle that ensued was a terrible one. Fifty thousand men fell on each side. Pontius and other Marian leaders were slain. In the end Sulla triumphed, taking eight thousand prisoners, of whom six thousand were Samnites. The latter were, by order of the victor, ruthlessly butchered in cold blood.

This was but the prelude to an equally ruthless but more protracted butchery. Sulla was at last lord of Rome, as absolute in power as any emperor of later days. In fact, he had himself appointed dictator, an office which had vanished more than a century before, and which raised him above the law. He announced that he would give a better government to Rome, but to do so he must first rid that city of its enemies.

Marius, whom Sulla hated with intense bitterness, had escaped him by death. By his orders the bones of the old general were torn from their tomb near the Anio and flung into that stream. The son of Marius had slain himself to prevent being taken. His head was brought to Sulla at Rome, who gazed on the youthful face with grim satisfaction, saying, "Those who take the helm must first serve at the oar." As for himself, his fortune was now accomplished, he said, and henceforth he should be known as Felix.

The cruel work which Sulla had promised immediately began. Adherents of the popular party were slaughtered daily and hourly at Rome. Some who had taken no part in the late war were slain. No man knew if he was safe. Some of the senators asked that the names of the guilty should be made known, that the innocent might be relieved from uncertainty. The proposition hit with Sulla's humor. He ordered that a list of those doomed to death should be made out and published. This was called a Proscription.

But the uncertainty continued as great as ever. The list contained but eighty names. It was quickly followed by another containing one hundred and twenty. Day after day new lists of the doomed were issued. To make death sure, a reward of two talents was promised any one who should kill a proscribed man,--even if the killer were his son or his slave. Those who in any way aided the proscribed became themselves doomed to death.

Men who envied others their property managed to have their names put on the list. A partisan of Sulla was exulting over the doomed, when his eye fell on his own name in the list. He hastily fled, and the bystanders, judging the cause, followed and cut him down. Catiline, who afterwards became notorious in Roman history, murdered his own brother, and to legalize the murder had the name of his victim placed on the list.

How many were murdered we do not know. Probably little less than three thousand in Rome. The stream of murder flowed to other cities. Several of these defied the conqueror, but were taken one by one and their defenders slain. To all cities which had taken part with the Marians the proscription made its way. Of the total number slain during this reign of terror no record exists, but the deliberate butchery of Sulla went far beyond the ferocious but temporary slaughter of Marius.

Murder was followed by confiscation. Sulla ordered that the property of the slain should be sold at auction and the proceeds put in the treasury. But the favorites of the dictator were the chief bidders, the property was sold at a tithe of its value, and the unworthy and dissolute obtained the lion's share of the spoil.

During this period of murder and confiscation we first hear the names of a number of afterwards famous Romans. Catiline we have named. Pompey took part in the war on Sulla's side, was victorious in Sicily and Africa, and on his return was hailed by his chief with the title of Pompey the Great. Another still more famous personage was Julius Cæsar. Sulla had ordered that all persons connected by marriage with the Marian party should divorce their wives. Pompey obeyed. Cæsar, who was a nephew of Marius and had married the daughter of Cinna, boldly refused. He was then a youth of nineteen. His boldness would have brought him death had not powerful friends asked for his life.

"You know not what you ask," said Sulla; "that profligate boy will be more dangerous than many Mariuses."

Cæsar, not trusting Sulla's doubtful humor, escaped from Rome, and hid in the depths of the Sabine mountains, awaiting a time when the streets of the capital city would be safer for those who dared speak their minds.

Another young man of rising fame showed little less boldness. This was Cicero, who had just returned to Rome from his studies in Greece. He ventured to defend Roscius of Ameria against an accusation of murder made by Chrysogonus, a prime favorite of Sulla. Cicero lashed the favorite vigorously, and won a verdict for his client. But he found it advisable to leave Rome immediately and resume his studies at Rhodes.

Sulla ended his work by organizing a new senate and making a new code of laws. Three hundred new members were added to the senate, and the laws of Rome were brought largely back to the state in which they had been before the Gracchi.

This done, to the utter surprise of the people he laid down his power and retired from Rome, within whose streets he never again set foot. He had no occasion for fear. He had scattered his veterans throughout Italy on confiscated estates, and knew that he could trust to their support. Before his departure he gave a feast of costly meats and rich wines to the Roman commons, in such profusion that vast quantities that could not be eaten were cast into the Tiber. Then he dismissed his armed attendants, and walked on foot to his house, through a multitude of whom many had ample reason to strike him down.

He now retired to his villa near Puteoli, on the Bay of Naples, with the purpose of enjoying that life of voluptuous ease which he craved more than power and distinction. Here he spent the brief remainder of his life in nocturnal orgies and literary converse, completing his "Memoirs," in which he told, in exaggerated phrase, the story of his life and exploits.

He lived but about a year. His excesses brought on a complication of disorders, which ended, we are told, in a loathsome disease. The senate voted him a gorgeous funeral, after which his body was burned on the Campus Martius, that no future tyrant could treat his remains as he had done those of his great rival Marius.

THE REVOLT OF THE GLADIATORS.

At the beginning of the first Punic War, or war with Carthage, a new form of entertainment was introduced into Rome. This was the gladiatorial show, the fights of armed men in the arena, the first of which was given in the year 264 B.C., at the funeral of D. Junius Brutus. These exhibitions were long confined to funeral occasions, money being frequently left for this purpose in wills, but they gradually extended to other occasions, and finally became the choice amusement of the brutal Roman mob. The gladiators were divided into several classes, in accordance with their particular weapons and modes of fighting, and great pains were taken to instruct them in the use of their special arms. But in the period that followed the death of Sulla Rome was to have a gladiatorial exhibition of a different sort.

In the city of Capua was a school of gladiators, kept by a man named Lentulus. It was his practice to hire out his trained pupils to nobles for battles in the arena during public festivals. His school was a large one, and included in its numbers a Thracian named Spartacus, who had been taken prisoner while leading his countrymen against the Romans, and was to be punished for his presumption by making sport for his conquerors.

But Spartacus had other and nobler aims. He formed a plot of flight to freedom in which two hundred of his fellows joined, though only seventy-eight succeeded in making their escape. These men, armed merely with the knives and spits which they had seized as they fled, made their way to the neighboring mountains, and sought a refuge in the crater of Mount Vesuvius. It must be borne in mind that this mountain, in that year of 73 B.C., was silent and seemingly extinct, though before another century passed it was to awake to vital activity. It was only biding its time in slumber.

It was better to die on the open field than in the amphitheatre, argued Spartacus, and his followers agreed with him. Their position in the crater was a strong one, and the news of their revolt soon brought them a multitude of allies,--slaves and outlaws of every kind. These Spartacus organized and drilled, supplying them with officers from the gladiators, mostly old soldiers, and placing them under rigid discipline. It was liberty he wanted, not rapine, and he did his utmost to restrain his lawless followers from acts of violence.

Pompey, the chief Roman general of that day, was then absent in Spain, fighting with a remnant of the Marian forces. Two Roman prætors led their forces against the gladiators, but were driven back with loss, and the army of Spartacus swelled day by day. The wild herdsmen of Apulia joined him in large numbers. They were slaves to their lords, whom they hated bitterly, and here was an opening for freedom and revenge.

It was soon evident that Rome had on its hands the greatest and most dangerous of its servile wars. Spartacus was brave and prudent, and possessed the qualities of an able leader. Unfortunately for him, he led an unmanageable host. In the next year both the consuls took the field against him. By this time his army had swelled to more than one hundred thousand men, and with these he pushed his way northward through the passes of the Apennines. But now insubordination appeared. Crixus, one of his lieutenants, ambitious of independent command, led off a large division of the army, chiefly Germans. He was quickly punished for his temerity, being surprised and slain with the whole of his force.

Spartacus, wise enough to know that he could not long hold out against the whole power of Rome, kept on northward, hoping to pass the Alps and find a place of refuge remote from the stronghold of his foes. Both the consuls attacked him in his march, and both were defeated, while he retaliated on Rome by forcing his prisoners to fight as gladiators in memory of the slain Crixus.

Reaching the provinces of the north, his diminished force was repulsed by Crassus, one of the richest men of Rome, who had taken the field as prætor. Spartacus would still have fought his way towards the Alps but for his followers, whose impatient thirst for rapine forced him to march southward again.

Every Roman force that assailed him on this march was hurled back in defeat. He even meditated an attack on Rome itself, but relinquished this plan as too desperate, and instead employed his men in collecting arms and treasure from the cities of central and southern Italy. Discipline was almost at an end. The wild horde of slaves and outlaws were beyond any strict military control. So great and general were their ravages that in a later day the poet Horace promised his friend a jar of wine made in the Social War, "if he could find one that had escaped the ravages of roaming Spartacus."

In the year 71 B.C. the most vigorous efforts were made to put down this dangerous revolt. Pompey was still in Spain. The only man at home of any military reputation was the prætor Crassus, who had amassed an enormous fortune by buying up property at famine prices during the Proscription of Sulla, and in speculative measures since.