Pompey got his money; the senators understood an ultimatum when it was put to them in such downright, forthright language. The whole country groaned, but was in no condition to deal with an invasion by Quintus Sertorius, especially reinforced by four legions of Pompeian troops. So salutary was the shock of Pompey's letter that Metellus Pius also received money. It only remained for the two Roman generals to find food. Back came Pompey's two legions from Further Spain, bringing a huge column of supplies with them, and back to his war of attrition went Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. He took Pallantia at last, then moved on to Cauca, where he begged the townspeople to take in his sick and wounded and succor them. The townspeople agreed; but Pompey disguised his best soldiers as sick and wounded, and took Cauca from within. One after the other Sertorius's strongholds fell, yielding their stores of grain to Pompey. When winter came, only Calagurris and Osca still held out. Pompey received a letter from Metellus Pius.
I am delighted, Pompeius. This year's campaigning by you and you alone has broken Sertorius's back. Perhaps the victories in the field were mine, but the determination has been all yours. At no time did you give up, at no time did you allow Sertorius the room to breathe. And always it was you Sertorius himself attacked, whereas I had the luck to face first Hirtuleius a good man, but not in Sertorius's class and then Perperna a pure mediocrity. However, I would like to commend the soldiers of our legions. This has been the most thankless and bitter of all Rome's wars, and our men have had to endure hideous hardships. Yet neither of us has experienced discontent or mutiny, though the pay has been years late and the booty nonexistent. We have sacked cities to scrabble like rats for the last grain of wheat. Yes, two wonderful armies, Gnaeus Pompeius, and I wish I was confident that Rome will reward them as they ought to be rewarded. But I am not. Rome cannot be defeated. Battles she may lose, wars she does not. Perhaps our gallant troops are the reason for that, if one takes their loyalty, their good behavior and their absolute determination to grind on into account. We generals and governors can only do so much; in the end, I believe the credit must go to Rome's soldiers. I do not know when you plan to go home. It may be, I suppose, that as the Senate gave you your special command, the Senate will take it away. For myself, I am the Senate's governor in the Further province, and in no hurry to return home. It is easier for the Senate at the moment to prorogue me if I request it than to find Further Spain a new governor. So I will request that I be prorogued for at least two more years. Before I leave I would like to set my province on its feet properly, and make it safe from the Lusitani. I do not look forward upon my eventual return to Rome to engaging in a fresh conflict a clash with the Senate to procure lands on which to settle my veterans. Yet I refuse to see my men go unrewarded. Therefore what I plan to do is to settle my men in Italian Gaul, but on the far side of the Padus, where there are tremendous expanses of good tilling soil and rich pastures at present in the hands of Gauls. It is not Roman land per se so the Senate will not be interested, and I will back my veterans against a pack of Insubres any day. I have already discussed this with my centurions, who profess themselves well pleased. My soldiers will not have to mill about aimlessly for up to several years waiting for a committee of land commissioners and bureaucrats to survey and chat and cull lists and chat and apportion and chat, and end in accomplishing nothing. The more I see of committees, the more convinced I am that the only thing a committee can organize is a catastrophe. I wish you well, dear Magnus.
Pompey wintered that year among the Vascones, a powerful tribe which occupied the western end of the Pyrenees, and whose men were now thoroughly disenchanted with Sertorius. Because they were good to his soldiers, Pompey kept his army busy in building a stronghold for them, having elicited an oath from them to the effect that Pompaelo (as he called this new focus for a town) would always remain loyal to the Senate and People of Rome.
That winter was a bitter one for Quintus Sertorius. Perhaps he had always known that his was a lost cause; certainly he knew he had never been one of Fortune's favorites. But he could not consciously admit these facts to himself in so many words. Instead he told himself that things had gone all his way as long as he had managed to delude his Roman adversaries that they could win against him in the field. His downfall had arrived when the old woman and the kid saw through the ploy and adopted a policy of trying to avoid battle. Fabian strategy. The offer of a reward for betrayal had cut him to the heart, for Quintus Sertorius was a Roman, and understood the cupidity which lived somewhere inside the most reasonable and decent of men. He could no longer trust any of his Roman or Italian confederates, brought up in the same traditions as he, whereas his Spanish people were as yet innocent of that particular fault civilization brought along with it. Always alert now for a hand stealing toward a knife or a certain look on a face, his temper began to shred under the strain. Aware that this new behavior must seem peculiar and atypical to his Spaniards, he strove mightily to control his moods; and in order to control them, he began to use wine as a pacifier. Then cruelest blow of his life word came from Nersae that his mother was dead. The ultimate betrayal. Not if the bloodied bodies of his German wife and the son he had deliberately excluded from a Roman education had been laid at his feet would he have mourned as he mourned for his mother, Maria. For days he shut himself in his darkened room, only Diana the white fawn and an endless number of wine flagons for company. The years of absence, the loss! The loss! The guilt. When he finally emerged a strange iron had entered into him. Hitherto the epitome of courtesy and kindness, he now revealed a Sertorius who was surly and suspicious even of his Spaniards, and quick to insult even his closest friends. Physically could he seem to feel Pompey prising apart the hold he had kept on Spain as Pompey pursued his policy of attrition with smooth efficiency, physically could he seem to feel his world disintegrating. And then, fed by the insidious phantoms in his wine, the paranoia in him erupted. When he heard that some of his Spanish chieftains were surreptitiously removing their sons from his famous school in Osca, he descended with his bodyguards upon its light filled and peaceful colonnades and killed many of the children who remained. It was the beginning of his end. Marcus Perperna Veiento had never forgotten or forgiven the way Sertorius had wrested control of his army from him, nor could he cope with the natural superiority in this Marian renegade from the Sabine mountains. Every time they fought a battle it was brought home to Perperna anew that he had neither the talent nor the devotion of his soldiers that Sertorius possessed in such abundance. Oh, but it came hard to admit that he could not surpass Sertorius in anything! Except, as it turned out, in treachery. From the moment he learned of the reward being offered by Metellus Pius, his course was set. That Sertorius would make it so easy for him by lashing out in all directions was a piece of luck he hadn't counted on, but seized nonetheless. Perperna threw a feast to relieve the monotony of life in wintry Osca, he explained lightly, inviting his Roman and Italian cronies. And inviting Sertorius, of course. He wasn't sure Sertorius would come until he actually saw that familiar bulk and divided face come through his door, but then he rushed forward and eagerly ushered his principal guest to the locus consularis upon his own couch, and made sure his slaves plied the man with undiluted fortified wine. Everyone present was a party to the plot; the atmosphere crackled with emotions. Chiefly fear, apprehension. So the wine flowed unwatered down every throat until Perperna began to think that no one would remain sober enough to do the deed. The little white fawn had come with its master, of course he never stirred without it these days and settled itself on the couch between him and Perperna, an affront which angered Perperna with a peculiar intensity considering the real purpose of the gathering. So as soon as he could he removed himself from the lectus medius, thrust the part Roman, part Spanish Marcus Antonius down in his place. A low fellow got on some peasant by one of the great Antonii, he had never been acknowledged by his father, let alone been showered with the usual openhanded Antonian generosity. The conversation grew coarser, the roistering more vulgar
, with Antonius at its forefront. Sertorius, who detested obscene language and jokes, took no part in the banter. He cuddled Diana and drank, the readable side of his face aloof, withdrawn. Then one of the others made a particularly crude remark which appealed to everybody except Sertorius, who threw himself backward on the couch with a grimace of disgust. Fearing that he would get up and leave, Perperna in a panic gave the signal, though the noise was so uproarious he didn't know whether it would be heard. Down onto the floor he threw his silver goblet, so hard that it gave forth a ringing clatter and bounced high into the air. Absolute silence fell immediately. But Antonius was quicker by far than the unsuspecting, wine soaked Sertorius; he drew a Roman legionary's big dagger from under his tunic, hurled himself upon Sertorius and stabbed him in the chest. Diana squealed and scrabbled away, Sertorius began to struggle upright. All the company surged forward to pin the stricken man down by arms and legs, while Antonius plied his dagger up and down, up and down. Sertorius had made no outcry, but had he cried out no one would have come to help him; his Spanish bodyguards waiting outside Perperna's door had been murdered earlier in the night. Still squealing, the white fawn jumped up on the couch as the assassins drew back, satisfied; it began to nose frantically at its master, covered in blood, perfectly still. Now this was a task Perperna felt himself qualified to do! Seizing the knife Marcus Antonius had dropped, he plunged it into Diana's left side just behind the foreleg. The white fawn collapsed in a tangle athwart the dead Sertorius, and when the jubilant party picked him up to throw him out the door of Perperna's house like a piece of unwanted furniture, they pitched Diana after him.
Pompey heard the news in what, he decided afterward, was actually a predictable way, though at the time it struck him as noisome, disgusting. For Marcus Perperna Veiento sent him Sertorius's head as fast as a horse and rider could gallop from Osca to Pompaelo. With the gruesome trophy came a note which informed Pompey that he and Metellus Pius owed Perperna one hundred talents of gold and twenty thousand iugera of land. A second letter to the same effect had been dispatched to Metellus Pius, Perperna said. Pompey replied on his own behalf, and sent a courier in a hurry to Metellus Pius bearing a copy:
It brings me no joy to learn that Quintus Sertorius died at the hands of a worm like you, Perperna. He was sacer, but he deserved a better fate at nobler hands. I take great pleasure in denying you the reward, which was not offered for a head. It was offered to anyone willing to lay information leading to our apprehending or killing Quintus Sertorius. If the copy of our reward poster you happened to see did not specify the laying of information, then blame the scribe. But I certainly did not see any poster neglecting to say the laying of information. You, Perperna, come from a consular family, belonged to the Senate of Rome and were a praetor. You ought to have known better. As I presume you will succeed Quintus Sertorius in the command, it gives me great pleasure to lay information with you that the war will go on until the last traitor is dead and the last insurgent has been sold into slavery.
When Spain learned of the death of Quintus Sertorius, his Spanish adherents vanished into Lusitania and Aquitania; even some of his Roman and Italian soldiers deserted Perperna's cause. Undeterred, Perperna marshaled all those who had elected to remain and in May ventured out of Osca to give battle to Pompey, whose curt reply to his petition for the reward had angered him greatly. Who did the Picentine upstart think he was, to answer on behalf of a Caecilius Metellus? Though the Caecilius Metellus had not answered at all. The battle was no contest. Perperna stumbled upon one of Pompey's legions foraging in the country south of Pompaelo; its men were scattered, and hampered too by several dozen oxcarts. Seeing the last army of Sertorius bearing down on them, Pompey's men fled into the confines of a steep gulch. Perperna, elated, followed them. Only when every last man was inside the gulch did Pompey spring his trap; down from its sides thousands of his soldiers leaped out of concealment, and massacred the last army of Quintus Sertorius. Some soldiers found Perperna hiding in a thicket and brought him to Aulus Gabinius, who at once brought him to Pompey. Grey with terror, Perperna tried to bargain for his life by offering Pompey all of Quintus Sertorius's private papers which, he whimpered, would confirm the fact that there were many important men in Rome who were anxious to see Sertorius win, reconstruct Rome on Marian principles. "Whatever they might be," said Pompey, face wooden, blue eyes expressionless. What might be?'' asked Perperna, shivering. "Marian principles." "Please, Gnaeus Pompeius, I beg of you! Only let me give you these papers, and you'll see for yourself how right I am!" "Very well, give them to me," said Pompey laconically. Looking immensely relieved, Perperna told Aulus Gabinius whereabouts to look for the papers (he had carried them along with him, fearing to leave them in Osca), and waited with scarcely concealed impatience until the detail came back again. Two of the men bore a large chest between them, and put it on the ground at Pompey's feet. "Open it," said Pompey. He squatted down and rustled through the packed scrolls and papers inside for a very long time, occasionally spreading a sheet out to read it, nodding to himself as he muttered. The vaster bulk of what the chest contained he merely glanced at, but some of the shorter papers he also merely glanced at caused him to raise his brows. He stood up when the chest was empty and a huge pile of documents lay higgledy piggledy on the trampled grass. Push all that rubbish together and burn it here and now in front of me," said Pompey to Aulus Gabinius. Perperna gasped, but said nothing. When the contents of the chest were blazing fiercely, Pompey thrust his chin toward Gabinius, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. "Kill this worm," he said. Perperna died under a Roman legionary's sword, and the war in Spain was over in the moment his head rolled and jumped across the blood soaked ground. "So that's that," said Aulus Gabinius. Pompey shrugged. "Good riddance," he said. Both of them had been standing looking down at Perperna's disembodied face, its eyes goggling in horrified surprise; now Pompey turned away and began to walk back to the rest of his legates, who had known better than to intrude themselves when they had not been summoned. "Did you have to burn the papers?" asked Gabinius. "Oh, yes." "Wouldn't it have been better to have brought them back to Rome? Then all the traitors would have been flushed out." Pompey shook his head, laughed. What, keep the Treason Court busy for the next hundred years?" he asked. "Sometimes it is wiser to keep one's own counsel. A traitor does not cease to be a traitor because the papers which would have indicted him have gone up in smoke." "I don't quite understand." "I mean they'll keep, Aulus Gabinius. They'll keep."
Though the war was over, Pompey was too meticulous a man to pack up and march home bearing Perperna's head on a spear. He liked to clean up his messes, which principally meant killing anyone he thought might prove a threat or a danger in the future. Among those who perished were Sertorius's German wife and son, whom Pompey found in Osca when he accepted the capitulation of that frowning fortress in June. The thirty year old man who was pointed out to him as Sertorius's son looked enough like him to make the tale credible, though he spoke no Latin and conducted himself like a Spaniard of the Illergetes. On hearing of Sertorius's death, Clunia and Uxama repented of their submissions to Pompey, shut their gates and prepared to withstand siege. Pompey was happy to oblige them. Clunia fell. Uxama fell. So eventually did Calagurris, where the appalled Romans discovered that the men of the town had eaten their own women and children rather than surrender; Pompey had every living Calagurrian executed, then put not only the town but the entire district to the torch. Of course all through this, communications had flown back and forth between the victorious general and Rome. Not all the letters were official ones, nor all the documents for public dissemination; chief among Pompey's correspondents was Philippus, who was crowing mightily in the Senate. The consuls of the year were two of Pompey's secret clients, Lucius Gellius Poplicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, which meant that Pompey was able to petition them to secure the Roman citizenship for those Spaniards who had assisted him significantly. At the top of Pompey's list was the same outlandi
sh name, twice written; Kinahu Hadasht Byblos, uncle and nephew, aged thirty three and twenty eight respectively, citizens in good standing of Gades, Punic merchant princes. But they did not assume Pompey's name, for it was no part of Pompey's plan to let loose a flood of Spanish Gnaeus Pompeius This and That upon Rome. The Gadetanian uncle and nephew were put in the clientship of one of Pompey's more recent legates, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, a cousin of the consul. So they entered into Roman life and annals as Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor. Still Pompey refused to hurry. The mines around New Carthage were reopened, the Contestani punished for attacking dear, dead Gaius Memmius: his sister was now a widow. He would have to do something about that when he returned to Rome! Slowly the province of Nearer Spain was carefully pieced together, given a properly organized bureaucracy, a tax structure, succinct rules and laws, and all the other adjuncts necessary to pronounce a place Roman. Then in the autumn Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus bade farewell to Spain, devoutly hoping he would never need to return. He had quite recovered his self confidence and his good opinion of himself, though never again would he face any military adversary without a premonitory shudder, never again would he enter into any war unless he knew he outnumbered the enemy by several legions at least. And never again would he fight another Roman! At the crest of the pass through the Pyrenees the victorious general set up trophies, including armor which had belonged to Quintus Sertorius and the armor in which Perperna had lost his head. They hung sturdily stapled to tall poles with crossarms, pteryges flapping in the mournful mountain wind, a mute reminder to all who crossed from Gaul into Spain that it did not pay to go to war with Rome. Alongside the various trophies Pompey erected a cairn which bore a tablet on which he set forth his name, his title, his commission, the number of towns he had taken and the names of the men who had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship. After which he descended into Narbonese Gaul and spent the winter there feasting on shrimps and dug mullets. Like his war, that year had seen a turn for the better; the harvests were good in both the Spains but bountiful in Narbonese Gaul. He did not plan to reach Rome until the middle of the year at the earliest, though not because he came home feeling any sense of failure. Simply, he didn't know what to do next, where to go next, what pillar of Roman tradition and veneration to tumble. On the twenty eighth day of September he would turn thirty five years old, no longer the fresh faced darling of the legions. Thus it behooved him to find a goal suitable for a man, not a boy. But what goal? Something the Senate would hate to give him, of that there could be no doubt. He could feel the answer lurking in the mazes of that part of his mind he shrank from exploring, but still it eluded him. Then he shrugged, cast all those thoughts away. There were more immediate things to do, such as opening up the new road he had pioneered across the Alps survey it, pave it, make it what? The Via Pompeia? That sounded good! But who wanted to die leaving the name of a road as his monument to glory? No, better to die leaving just the name itself. Pompey the Great. Yes, that said it all.
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