L. Quintus Sertorius

I'm not sure about that one, but I remember a Polybios quote that reads something like this: "The welfare of the Roman state is based on ancient traditions, and the men who uphold them."

His inattention to the skill of his subordinates. He spent little, if any, time educating his Iberian and Roman officers about the conduction of military matters - and as a result was forced to be in command at all important conflicts. His campaign would have been much more successful had he been in command of a skillful officer corps, as his style of guerilla warfare would have been less haphazard and more in tune with the actual goals of his campaign.

It is a true pity that a man of such valor and skill as Lucius Quintus Sertorius goes unknown by all but classical historians and those who chance to stumble upon his biography in Plutarch. So for the hopeful benefit of the community, I present an annotated version of Plutarch's Life of Sertorius. Lucius Quintus Sertorius was born the scion of a noble Sabine family in the city of Nursia. His father died when he was quite young, and the young Sertorius was raised and educated by his mother Rhea. He was a keen student of oratory and managed to acquire some small fortune and influence in Rome by the means of his pleading in the courts (the custom being that a successful prosecutor was paid by the fines exacted from his plaintiff, and also acquired his rank.). However, upon the second invasion of Gallia Narbonensis by the Cimbri and Teutones (105 B.C.E.), Sertorius joined the consular army of Quintus Servilius Caepio and followed him north to confront the Cimbri on the plains of Arausio. The two consuls for 105, Q. Servilius Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, were bitter political opponents. Gnaeus Maximus, a homo novus (that is, a politician with no senatorial forebears), was the senior consul and thus held jurisdiction in command over Caepio. However, Caepio, due to his prejudice against Mallius, refused to cooperate with him or even to let their armies camp together. This refusal weakened the Roman forces' morale and strategic position (they were outnumbered by a large number, and the separation of their forces left them open to attack). The Cimbri, discerning the infighting between the consuls during diplomatic negotiations, and prompted by an attack upon their camp by Caepio, utterly annihilated his legion. They then proceeded to sweep down towards the camp of Mallius Maximus, whose legionaries attempted to fight but were forced into rout and cut down. Sertorius, though wounded in many places, swam the Rhone River in full armor and managed to escape. The second invasion of Italy by the Cimbri and Teutones prompted Sertorius to join with the army of Gaius Marius, and follow him north to Aquae Sextiae. In the weeks preceding the battle, Sertorius acquired a Gallic disguise, taught himself basic Gaelic, and managed to spy out the enemy camp undetected. He returned to Marius with valuable information about the leadership and situation of the enemy troops; and when battle was finally joined in 102 B.C.E., Marius utterly crushed the forces of the Cimbri and Teutones, to the extent even of capturing their king, Teutobod. For his conspicuous bravery, Sertorius received military decorations from the hands of Gaius Marius himself, and was awarded a military tribunate in Spain with command of a thousand men (approximately three legions), under the Roman proconsul, Didius. Sertorius wintered his troops in the country of the Celtiberians, occupying the city of Castulo. The soldiers, being accustomed to treat the Iberians as inferiors, came to be despised by the Castulones so much that they sent to their near neighbors, the Grysoenians, and attacked the Romans in their barracks. Sertorius, taken by surprise, rallied those of his troops who escaped the city and by circling the walls, discovered the gate by which the Grysoenians had entered the city. Posting a guard, he ambushed the Gysoenians as they left Castulo, and slew every man who was of an age to bear arms among them. After securing Castulo, he then ordered his men to put aside their Roman arms and accoutrements, and to take up those of the fallen Grysoenians. He managed to capture Grysoenia by leading the citizens to believe that his men were their returning warriors, and slew all of an age to bear arms at the city gates where they had gathered to welcome their warriors home. He then sacked Grysoenia and enslaved a great many people in retribution for his fallen soldiers. He gained great fame and renown in Iberia for this act, and as a result was appointed quaestor of Cisalpine Gaul on his return to Italy. When Sertorius took up his quaestorship in 91 B.C.E., the Italian peninsula was about to enter into the throes of the Marsian War, also called the War of the Italian Allies (Socii). Sertorius was called upon to muster and train troops for Rome, which he accomplished with exceptional alacrity and efficiency. Leading from the front against the Italian forces, he lost an eye in close combat. Stories of his heroism reached Rome, and upon his return to Rome, he was so famous that he was applauded every time he entered a theatre. This popularity was not, however, enough to secure him a tribunate; mainly because he was a declared opponent of L. Cornelius Sulla, and all the formidable resources of this favorite of Venus were arrayed against him. Defeated in the election, Sertorius was greatly embittered and withdrew from politics until Sulla marched on Rome in 87 B.C.E. After Marius and his partisans fled Rome for Africa, Sulla withdrew his forces from Rome and embarked for Pontus and the Mithridatic War. By the end of 87, Marius had returned to Rome and set up a pseudo-dictatorship with L. Cornelius Cinna. Sertorius had attempted to dissuade Cinna from summoning Marius back to Rome, as Plutarch relates: However, Cinna was not swayed, and Marius became, in effect, the ruler of Rome. Cinna and Sertorius insisted that Marius divide his forces between the three of them, so that no one man should have supreme power. Marius assented to this, but raised in replacement an army of freed slaves, which committed such atrocities upon the Romans that they looked upon the evils of wartime as a golden age in comparison. Sertorius, despairing of Marius

It's mainly Plutarch, but I added some bits to his account of Arausio and several other battles that I have from my books. If I can find the time today, I'll cite them in the thread.

Sertorius had a good chance of defeating Pompey and Metellus militarily, had he survived. The more important question is whether or not the Iberians would have continued his reforms and continued to singly resist Roman aggression. The answer to this, sadly, is probably not. Also, I'm working on an annotation of Plutarch's Sertorius that I hope to post on here within the next week or so.

You're quite correct. Pompey's command was given to him by an extraordinary law that specifically extended his proconsular imperium to include, as I recall, unlimited authority over all of the Mediterranean Sea, and also over all land within fifty miles of the shoreline. Caesar's command was, ostensibly, a standard proconsular commission. However, the strength of his block of supporters in Rome enabled him to breach the legal standards restricting the abuse of proconsular power without facing any substantial opposition from anyone - save Cato, that is. Pompey's breach of the restrictions on his imperium were slight and, in any case, there were few restrictions to begin with. Caesar's were much more perfidious for knowingly breaking the laws governing his power, and counting on the docility of his enemies to allow him to get away with it. It is obvious that Caesar was counting on his enemies to let him get away with what he had perpetrated during his consulate of 60 B.C.E., and subsequently in his ten years in Gaul. It was their determination to uphold the rule of law that caused Caesar to launch the Bellum Civilis. Even if comparisons to the current straits of American politics are for the most part baseless, I still dislike the idea of such a precedent. EDIT - I think that when the article refers to a "special extended command" of Caesar's, he refers to the fact that no man would normally be alotted two successive proconsulates, except perhaps in times of dire need (Scipio in Spain and successively, Africa.).

The study of Roman law and writings never really halted in Lombardia. In Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1000-1350, J.K. Hyde devotes the better part of a chapter to an analysis of the status of Italian cities under the Lombardic and Frankish kingdoms (the latter being better known as the Holy Roman Empire, though there was not technically such a body at the time of the Frankish conquest). Under the Gothic kings, Italian cities were encouraged to continue the bureacratic traditions of the Romans. Civic legal codes became slightly differentiated, mainly because of the lack of a codified, readily available source of written law. The introduction of Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis led to a new interest in the study of Roman law. Indeed, by the time of the Lombard conquests in the late 6th century, Italian lawyers and bureacrats were operating under much the same conditions and with similar procedures as their counterparts of 100 or even 200 years before. After the Lombards conquered Northern Italy, they made few attempts to learn the art of government needed to organize such a large kingdom as the one they now controlled. As such, they turned to the native Italians for legal and bureacratic advice. However, Lombard laws were slowly forced upon the cities, and the study of Justinian's Code became the enclave of specially designated advocates, or giudices. The Lombard system was even then sophisticated enough to stun the invading Franks, to whom the Lombards had been described as godless, uncultured barbarians. Roman culture survived the fall of Rome, for the most part intact, in Italy. Indeed, the great Lombard League that threw down Barbarossa swore common ground with the Pope and the S.P.Q.R. (though really now only composed of aristocratic Roman families). Even classical allusions were quite commonplace, as Hyde referenced:

I don't live in Pennsylvania - Louisiana pride! But I also have school next year, so it will have to be sometime in the summer. Preferably not too far west, I don't want to go bankrupt for two or three days in Vegas.

And so you postulate that, even if Sulla and Pompey had met no resistance in Italy, they still would have proscripted so many? I doubt that highly, and you're applying a varnish to Caesar's political tool of clemency that was not there at all times. Caesar's hard-won war in Spain led him to execute 5,000 captured Roman soldiers after the battle of Munda, and kill Gnaeus Pompey and Labienus. Would Caesar have been so forgiving after a long, slogging campaign down the Italian peninsula, as surely would have occurred had Pompey mustered the forces he intended to in time? Again, highly doubtful. It's also probable that, given such a firm resistance in Italy proper, Caesar would have dropped all pretenses and lashed out against his political opponents - just as Sulla did. The extent of those who stayed behind is greatly exaggerated. Almost all of the Senate and the Ordo Equester left with Pompey - there were so few Senators left that Caesar could barely muster a rump to hear his justifications when he reached Rome. And Pompey's nickname during the 1st Civil War was adulescens carnifex - teenage butcher. A nickname earned for stupendously outrageous acts during Sulla's reign. So, we have a "teenage butcher" with the backing of the legitimate government of the People of the Imperium Romanorum, and a middle-aged butcher who, having drenched his sword with blood in Gaul, decided that he'd rather drench it in Italian blood than lay it down. Of course they didn't want a civil war - but when it came down to it, they had no choice. Caesar alone had the power to disband his legions, lay down his imperium, and answer for his crimes. It was his refusal to do so that prompted the Civil War, not any speech of Cato or Cicero's. If by "poor and stubborn politicians", you mean "the legitimate and near entire governing body of the Roman Republic", then you might be somewhere near correct. And if there was a greater general among the Senate to defend the legitimate cause of the Republic than Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, feel free to point him out. I'm having trouble seeing anyone else who had the slightest chance of victory. Whose fault the whole mess was in the first place.

I wasn't familiar with that use (mainly because I plucked mine out of my New College Latin and English Dictionary), but yours is certainly easier to pronounce.

The verb is percutio, percutere, percutissi, percutissus The noun for smiter would be percutissor.

If you refer to the fight against Sullan dictatorship by Sertorius as a mere revolt, then I fear you have gravely misunderstood the motivations and reasons behind his actions.

I'm not sure exactly what source details Bibulus baring his neck to Caesar, but I've read it in several works on the period (Meier and Holland among them), and so will continue to search for it.

I pulled 5 million off the top of my head, should have verified it before posting. My apologies, I'll amend it.

An old favorite: "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away." - Shelley. And also: "The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning, His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air; And him that stands will die for naught, and home there's no returning. The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair." - A.E. Housman And for a funny one, the last words of Vespasian - "Dear me! I think I'm becoming a god!"

This looks like fun! I am compelled to indulge. Apologies for the long scrambles, my family is Irish-Catholic. danenrb apktrci ealrclr

Though the defense may rest, the prosecution sees no reason to halt its presentation of the case. Trying to end Caesar's career by prosecuting him for the breach of a negligible law is like trying to kill an elephant with a pellet gun. Besides, Caesar had many, more devastating charges to answer for - the breach of proconsular imperium, the wanton murder of approximately 5 million innocent Gauls [edit - a more accurate number would be 1 million], the unlawful imprisonment of diplomatic envoys, the destruction of a Roman ally, and threatening the life of a consular colleague. Trying to support the position that the Late Republic was more corrupt than that of earlier generations is an impossible proposition. These breaches of electoral law had gone on since the days of Gaius Gracchus, Marius and M. Aemilius Scaurus, Cinna and Sulla; and it went on now in the days of Caesar, Cato, Cicero, and Pompey. Their violence was escalating, true, but the death of Clodius and the exile of Milo did much to calm the city in the years preceding Caesar's coup. In any case, the violence of the period is much exaggerated, mainly because the only primary source we have are Cicero's hyperbolic letters to Atticus - whereas we have little if any records from the participants in politics of earlier periods. I have no doubt that the letters of M. Aemilius Scaurus or M. Porcius Cato Maior would read much the same, save perhaps the difference in the purity of their Latin prose. I can think of a superb solution - Caesar comes back to Rome without a sword in his hand and answers for his crimes. That would have suited Rome perfectly. My comment was in answer to your supposition that any small fry could bring down Caesar in the courts, as referenced here: Too bad you failed to mention that Sallust was a staunch Caesarian, and actually accompanied Caesar in his African campaign to fight against fellow Romans. In fact, Sallust was guilty of such gross oppression and extortion as governor of Africa that only Caesar's influence saved him from prosecution and exile. He may have been there to see it all, but he certainly didn't see it clearly.

And I'm also quite certain that you realize that the penalties for such crimes were negligible, if they were even implemented at all. Usually, such prosecutions followed closely on the heels of various sumptuary laws (e.g., those of Cato the Elder), and were in no way, shape, or form career-ruining convictions.

What are forums for if not discussion of differing opinions? One more lap around the cursus, good sir.

Then refute it with your own argument.

Brutus followed Pompey because the Senate and the cause of legitimate Roman government chose Pompey as their champion. A M. Junius Brutus, descendant of the man who slew his own sons for conspiring against the consuls, could never take the standard of an outlaw opposed to the Roman state - even if that outlaw had the best chance of revenging one's own personal grievances. The Republic came before vendetta in any case. For Brutus, much as for Cicero, "Caesar's cause lacked nothing but a cause.". And it was that lack that determined Brutus' position.

I was actually searching the house for my copy of Tom Holland's Rubicon, as he quotes Antony and provides a footnote and reference. But alas, I found it not.

I searched in vain for the source of that quote, so that I could have the joy of posting it - "Who cares if I'm screwing the Queen? What does it matter where you shove your erection?". But you beat me to it. I think that's one that really shows the character of Antony the man.

You did ask a question, and I simply asked you to prune down your inquiry that I might better address it. Do you have a measurement for this statement, or is it, as I suspect - naught but subjective opinion? The Roman aristocrats of the Late Republic did what the Roman aristocrats of the time of Marius and Sulla, Scipio and Cato had done before them. They squabbled and bickered and fought for offices like children over toys. I assume by "contemptuous", you refer to an attitude toward the Ordo Equester? Or perhaps the Capite Censi? The Senate was by no means one united front - the Boni were but a loose faction among loose factions, albeit an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful one. Individual members had individual positions on individual issues - your greatest ally might have a different stance on the rights of Gallic nobility to attain the Roman citizenship, and would thusly vote and argue for a different position than yours. Roman politics were never an exclusively party affair - individuals won offices, not parties. Individual ambitions, admittedly influenced by the politics of their allies, were indulged in. The Boni had no set stance - theirs was a policy colored by tradition moreso than law. And even then, what were the Boni? Those opposed to the populares? There were many who opposed the popularis tradition, especially after Sulla; but those who did so and worked as a group to suppress it did so on individual motives, not out of any sense of duty to a higher party. The Senate stuck to politics as it had for centuries. If certain politicians closely aligned themselves with your interests, you scratched their backs in return for yours being scratched. You married their daughters, and their sons married your sisters. Politics did not change in the Late Republic, barring the tenuous argument that Clodius' agitation totally revamped the political scene. Marius had handed out largesse to the populace long before Caesar and Pompey were born - and other generals had done the same long before Marius. The distribution of largesse from a victorious war was a traditional feature of Roman warfare - why bother to expand at all if all you plan to gain is the cost of administrating just one more city? What you see as placating two opposing parties fomenting civil war was, to the Romans, nothing more than catalyzing the continual hunt for offices and influence. No one except Caesar knew that there would be civil war as a result of their political games, at least until it was too late for anything to really be done. How many legions did Strength and Righteousness command that might have aided the Republic in throwing down Caesar? The Republic had not changed - it had not decayed or rotted. What had changed was how far one man was willing to go to preserve his own personal political authority and reputation. Caesar was the change.