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Updated: June 2, 2025
When, after the victory over the allied Samnites and others, at the Colline gate of Rome, Sylla ordered the massacre of more than four thousand prisoners who laid down their arms; when his lists of proscription filled with blood Rome and other cities of Italy, Sylla so firmly consolidated the supremacy of the Urbs over Italy and over the world, that after twenty centuries of the most manifold vicissitudes, transformations and tempests, this supremacy cannot yet be upturned.
Lartius, with a party of light-armed troops, to post himself at the Colline gate till the enemy should pass by, and then to throw himself in their way so that there may be no return to the river.
In ancient Rome, in the month of April, "when the fertilising powers of nature begin to operate, and its powers to be visibly developed, a festival in honour of Venus took place; in it the phallus was carried in a cart, and led in procession by the Roman ladies to the temple of Venus outside the Colline gate, and then presented by them to the sexual part of the goddess."
The troops of Carrinas were not numerous enough to shake Sulla's position; the vanguard of the army of the oligarchic party, hitherto employed in Etruria, was approaching under Pompeius; in a few days the net would be drawn tight around the army of the democrats and the Samnites. The Samnites and Democrats Attack Rome Battle at the Colline Gate Slaughter of the Prisoners
They consisted partly of a strengthening of the hill-slopes by facing them with lining-walls as much as 4 metres thick, partly in the intervals, above all on the Viminal and Quirinal, where from the Esquiline to the Colline gate there was an absence of natural defence of an earthen mound, which was finished off on the outside by a similar lining-wall. On these lining-walls rested the breastwork.
Sulla followed them, and a bloody battle was fought at the Colline gate, on the northern side of the city. It was a fight for the very existence of Rome, for Pontius Telesinus, commander of the Samnites, declared that he intended to raze the city to the ground.
They were terrified also, in addition to these disasters, both with other prodigies, and also because two vestal virgins, Opimia and Floronia, were that year convicted of incontinence; one of whom was, according to custom, buried alive at the Colline gate; the other destroyed herself.
At Sacriportus Sulla defeated Marius, and entered Rome. But the insurgent Italians united with the revolutionary forces of Rome, and seventy thousand Samnites and Lucanians approached the capital. At the Colline gate a battle was fought, in which Sulla was victorious. This ended the Social war, and the subjugation of the revolutionists soon followed.
Rome was in despair, for all seemed at an end. The Samnites had not forgotten a former Pontius, who had sent a Roman army under the Caudine Forks, and had been cruelly murdered in the Capitol They thundered on the Colline Gate. But at that critical moment a large body of cavalry appeared and charged the foe. It was the vanguard of Sulla's army, marching in haste to the relief of Rome.
Amid these events an unusually great rising of the waters was converted into a prodigy; for the Tiber overflowed its banks to such a degree, that as the circus was under water, the Apollinarian games were got up near the temple of Venus Erycina, without the Colline gate.
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