138-78 B.C. page 16
Sylla, having marched through Thessaly and Macedon to the sea coast,
prepared, with twelve hundred vessels, to cross over from
Dyrrhachium to Brundisium. Not far from hence is Apollonia, and near
it the Nymphaeum, a spot of ground where, from among green trees and
meadows, there are found at various points springs of fire continually
streaming out. Here, they say, a satyr, such as statuaries and
painters represent, was caught asleep, and brought before Sylla, where
he was asked by several interpreters who he was, and, after much
trouble, at last uttered nothing intelligible, but a harsh noise,
something between the neighing of a horse and crying of a goat. Sylla,
in dismay, and deprecating such an omen, bade it be removed.
At the point of transportation, Sylla being in alarm, lest at
their first setting foot upon Italy the soldiers should disband and
disperse one by one among the cities, they of their own accord first
took an oath to stand firm by him, and not of their good-will to
injure Italy; then seeing him in distress for money, they made, so
they say, a free-will offering, and contributed each man according
to his ability.
However, Sylla would not accept of their offering, but
praising their good-will, and arousing up their courage, went over (as
he himself writes) against fifteen hostile generals in command of four
hundred and fifty cohorts; but not without the most unmistakable
divine intimations of his approaching happy successes.
For when he was
sacrificing at his first landing near Tarentum, the victim's liver
showed the figure of a crown of laurel with two fillets hanging from
it. And a little while before his arrival in Campania, near the
mountain Hephaeus, two stately goats were seen in the daytime,
fighting together, and performing all the motions of men in battle. It
proved to be an apparition, and rising up gradually from the ground,
dispersed in the air, like fancied representations in the clouds,
and so vanished out of sight.
Not long after, in the self-same
place, when Marius the younger and Norbanus the consul attacked him
with two great armies, without prescribing the order of battle, or
arranging his men according to their divisions, by the sway only of
one common alacrity and transport of courage, he overthrew the
enemy, and shut up Norbanus into the city of Capua, with the loss of
seven thousand of his men. And this was the reason, he says, that
the soldiers did not leave him and disperse into the different
towns, but held fast to him, and despised the enemy, though infinitely
more in number.
At Silvium (as he himself relates it), there met him a servant of
Pontius, in a state of divine possession, saying that he brought him
the power of the sword and victory from Bellona, the goddess of war,
and if he did not make haste, that the capitol would be burnt, which
fell out on the same day the man foretold it, namely, on the sixth day
of the month Quintilis, which we now call July.
At Fidentia, also, Marcus Lucullus, one of Sylla's commanders,
reposed such confidence in the forwardness of the soldiers, as to dare
to face fifty cohorts of the enemy with only sixteen of his own: but
because many of them were unarmed delayed the onset. As he stood
thus waiting, and considering with himself, a gentle gale of wind,
bearing along with it from the neighbouring meadows a quantity of
flowers, scattered them down upon the army, on whose shields and
helmets they settled, and arranged themselves spontaneously so as to
give the soldiers, in the eyes of the enemy, the appearance of being
crowned with chaplets. Upon this, being yet further animated, they
joined battle, and victoriously slaying eight thousand men, took the
camp. This Lucullus was brother to that Lucullus who in aftertimes
conquered Mithridates and Tigranes.
Sylla, seeing himself still surrounded by so many armies, and such
mighty hostile powers, had recourse to art, inviting Scipio, the other
consul, to a treaty of peace. The motion was willingly embraced, and
several meetings and consultations ensued, in all which Sylla, still
interposing matter of delay and new pretences, in the meanwhile,
debauched Scipio's men by means of his own, who were as well practised
as the general himself in all the artifices of inveigling.
For
entering into the enemy's quarters and joining in conversation, they
gained some by present money, some by promises, others by fair words
and persuasions; so that in the end, when Sylla with twenty cohorts
drew near, on his men saluting Scipio's soldiers, they returned the
greeting and came over, leaving Scipio behind them in his tent,
where he was found all alone and dismissed. And having used his twenty
cohorts as decoys to ensnare the forty of the enemy, he led them all
back into the camp. On this occasion, Carbo was heard to say that he
had both a fox and a lion in the breast of Sylla to deal with, and was
most troubled with the fox.
Some time after, at Signia, Marius the younger, with eighty-five
cohorts, offered battle to Sylla, who was extremely desirous to have
it decided on that very day; for the night before he had seen a vision
in his sleep, of Marius the elder, who had been some time dead,
advising his son to beware of the following day, as of fatal
consequence to him.
For this reason, Sylla, longing to come to a
battle, sent off for Dolabella, who lay encamped at some distance. But
because the enemy had beset and blocked up the passes, his soldiers
got tired with skirmishing and marching at once.
To these difficulties
was added, moreover, tempestuous rainy weather, which distressed
them most of all. The principal officers therefore came to Sylla,
and besought him to defer the battle that day, showing him how the
soldiers lay stretched on the ground, where they had thrown themselves
down in their weariness, resting their heads upon their shields to
gain some repose. When, with much reluctance, he had yielded, and
given orders for pitching the camp, they had no sooner begun to cast
up the rampart and draw the ditch, but Marius came riding up furiously
at the head of his troops, in hopes to scatter them in that disorder
and confusion.