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The insurrection spread; when Mutilus advanced into Campania at the head of the Samnite army, the citizens of Nola surrendered to him their city and delivered up the Roman garrison, whose commander was executed by the orders of Mutilus, while the men were distributed through the victorious army.
When the Romans got in they took fearful vengeance, slaying all the officers and men of position, expelling the rest of the inhabitants, and confiscating their property. Such was the fate of the ringleaders of the rebellion. Silo assailed Alba and Mutilus Aesernia. The consul Caesar, sending ahead Marcellus and Crassus into Samnium and Lucania, followed in person as soon as he could.
The Numidians, who were in great numbers in Caesar's army, began to pass over in troops to Mutilus or rather to Oxyntas, the son of Jugurtha, who on the surrender of Venusia had fallen into the hands of the Samnites and now appeared among their ranks in regal purple; so that Caesar found himself compelled to send home the whole African corps.
Mutilus ventured even to attack the Roman camp; but he was repulsed, and the Samnites, who while retreating were assailed in the rear by the Roman cavalry, left nearly 6000 dead on the field of battle. It was the first notable success which the Romans gained in this war; the army proclaimed the general -imperator-, and the sunken courage of the capital began to revive.
They chose two consuls, twelve praetors, and a senate of five hundred, and gave the franchise to every community in arms on their side. They mustered an army of 100,000 men, and entrusted the command against Lupus in the north and west to Pompaedius Silo, with six lieutenants under him; the command against Caesar in the south and east was given to a noted Samnite, named Caius Papius Mutilus.
In a military point of view the insurgent country fell into two divisions; in the northern, which reached from Picenum and the Abruzzi to the northern border of Campania and embraced the districts speaking Latin, the chief command was held on the Italian side by the Marsian Quintus Silo, on the Roman side by Publius Rutilius Lupus, both as consuls; in the southern, which included Campania, Samnium, and generally the regions speaking Sabellian, the Samnite Gaius Papius Mutilus commanded as consul of the insurgents, and Lucius Julius Caesar as the Roman consul.
On his flight from Nola the last surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the door of his own house. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed by Marcus Crassus.
Both sides now made extensive preparations, and the forces were nearly balanced. One hundred thousand men were in arms, in two divisions, on either side, the Romans commanded by the consul, Publius Rutilius Lupus, and the Italians by Quintus Silo and Gaius Papius Mutilus. Gaius Marius served as a lieutenant-commander.
The strong Aesernia was converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to him.
The pass, where the Samnite militia under Mutilus awaited him, was turned, the Samnite army was attacked in rear, and defeated; the camp was lost, the general escaped wounded to Aesernia. Sulla advanced to Bovianum, the capital of the Samnite country, and compelled it to surrender by a second victory achieved beneath its walls. The advanced season alone put an end to the campaign there.
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