Book 1
13.108
There remained of the Sullan troubles the war with Sertorius, which had been going on for eight years, More probably ten years, Mendelssohn thinks. and was not an easy war to the Romans since it was waged not merely against Spaniards, but against other Romans and Sertorius. He had been chosen governor of Spain while he was coöperating with Carbo against Sulla; and after taking the city of Suessa during the armistice he fled and assumed his praetorship. He had an army from Italy itself and he raised another from the Celtiberians, and drove out of Spain the former praetors, who, in order to favor Sulla, refused to surrender the government to him. He had also fought nobly against Metellus, who had been sent against him by Sulla. Having acquired a reputation for bravery he enrolled a council of 300 members from the friends who were with him, and called it the Roman Senate in derision Y.R. 677 of the real one. After Sulla died, and Lepidus later, he B.C. 77 obtained another army of Italians which Perpenna, the lieutenant of Lepidus, brought to him and it was supposed that he intended to march against Italy itself, and would have done so had not the Senate become alarmed and sent another army and general into Spain in addition to the former ones. This general was Pompey, who was still a young man, but renowned for his exploits in the time of Sulla, in Africa and in Italy itself.
