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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 ; 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.

Where a band gathers, leaders are not wanting; and in this case the men were soon found who were fitted to be captains of banditti. Catalina The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Gnaeus Piso, were distinguished among their fellows not merely by their genteel birth and their superior rank.

In Syria Demetrius, who had the better title, was set aside, and Antiochus Eupator was recognized as king; while the guardianship of the royal boy was entrusted by the senate to the Roman senator Gnaeus Octavius, who, as was to be expected, governed thoroughly in the interest of Rome, reduced the war-marine and the army of elephants agreeably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of completing the military ruin of the country.

He did not march on Rome; nor even against Gnaeus Servilius, an able general, who had with the help of the fortresses on the northern road preserved his army hitherto uninjured, and would perhaps have kept his antagonist at bay. Once more a movement occurred which was quite unexpected.

Accordingly the Roman armies before Carthage or Numantia already remind one of those Syrian armies, in which the number of bakers, cooks, actors, and other non-combatants exceeded fourfold that of the so-called soldiers; already the Roman generals are little behind their Carthaginian colleagues in the art of ruining armies, and the wars in Africa as in Spain, in Macedonia as in Asia, are regularly opened with defeats; the murder of Gnaeus Octavius is now passed over in silence; the assassination of Viriathus is now a masterpiece of Roman diplomacy; the conquest of Numantia is now a great achievement.

Not only did he himself discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular: it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it. Pompeius Pompeius also had no desire for peace.

On the other hand, of the 76,000 Romans who had taken their places in the line of battle 70,000 covered the field, amongst whom were the consul Lucius Paullus, the proconsul Gnaeus Servilius, two-thirds of the staff- officers, and eighty men of senatorial rank. The consul Gaius Varro was saved solely by his quick resolution and his good steed, reached Venusia, and was not ashamed to survive.

The extent of his occasional forbearance is hardly credible: for instance Lacius Murena was not only released from punishment for defeats which he sustained through arrant perversity and insubordination, but was even allowed a triumph; Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still more extravagantly honoured by Sulla.

Transpadanes Freedmen But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period in a form suitable to the times. The election of the priests by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced and Sulla had again done away, was established by a law of the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691.

The government would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla; for the northern army was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional embarrassment.