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Accordingly, after holding out with difficulty for two days, they surrendered on the third, and thus added not so much to the power as to the reputation of Sertorius, who had taken by stratagem a place that was impregnable to arms.
According to Appian's narrative the decisive action between Pompeius and Perperna took place "on the tenth day," probably the tenth from the death of Sertorius. Pompeius would not see Perperna after he was taken, and prudently put him to death.
II. Quintus Sertorius belonged to a family not among the meanest in Nussa, a Sabine city. He was carefully brought up by a widowed mother, for he had lost his father, and he appears to have been exceedingly attached to her. His mother's name, they say, was Rhea.
The military successes of Sertorius became like those of Hannibal, of necessity less and less considerable; people began to call in question his military talent: he was no longer, it was alleged, what he had been; he spent the day in feasting or over his cups, and squandered money as well as time. The number of the deserters, and of communities falling away, increased.
For Perpenna, having in his custody all Sertorius's papers, offered to produce several letters from the greatest men in Rome, who, desirous of a change and subversion of the government, had invited Sertorius into Italy.
Emissaries of Sertorius roamed through the whole territory of Gaul; there, too, the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began to make the Alpine passes insecure. Lastly the sea too belonged quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government, since the allies of the former the pirates were almost as powerful in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war.
It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period, or of the present, can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius.
The suffrages on this occasion were united not in favour of the former consul Carbo or of any of the able officers of the hitherto ruling clique, such as Quintus Sertorius or Gaius Marius the younger, but in favour of Lucius Scipio and Gaius Norbanus, two incapables, neither of whom knew how to fight and Scipio not even how to speak; the former of these recommended himself to the multitude only as the great-grandson of the conqueror of Antiochus, and the latter as a political opponent of the oligarchy.
In the meantime Sertorius died, being treacherously murdered by some of his own party; and Perpenna, the chief among them, took the command, and attempted to carry on the same enterprises with Sertorius, having indeed the same forces and the same means, only wanting the same skill and conduct in the use of them.
Cinna with his corps and that of Carbo took post on the right bank of the Tiber opposite to the Janiculum, Sertorius on the left bank confronting Pompeius over against the Servian wall.
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