Again the Roman generals had to take up their winter quarters with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal of their Sisyphean war-toils.  It was not even possible to choose quarters in the region of Valentia, so important on account of the communication with Italy and the east, but fearfully devastated by friend and foe; Pompeius led his troops first into the territory of the Vascones(22) (Biscay) and then spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei (about Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.

Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

For five years the Sertorian war thus continued, and still there seemed no prospect of its termination.  The state suffered from it beyond description.  The flower of the Italian youth perished amid the exhausting fatigues of these campaigns.  The public treasury was not only deprived of the Spanish revenues, but had annually to send to Spain for the pay and maintenance of the Spanish armies very considerable sums, which the government hardly knew how to raise.  Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the Roman civilization, which unfolded so fair a promise there, received a severe shock; as was naturally to be expected in the case ofan insurrectionary war waged with so much bitterness, and but too often occasioning the destruction of whole communities.  Even the towns which adhered to the dominant party in Rome had countless hardships to endure; those situated on the coast had to be provided with necessaries by the Roman fleet, and the situation of the faithful communities in the interior was almost desperate.  Gaul suffered hardly less, partly from the requisitions for contingents of infantry and cavalry, for grain and money, partly from the oppressive burden of the winter-quarters, which rose to an intolerable degree in consequence of the bad harvest of 680; almost all the local treasuries were compelled to betake themselves to the Roman bankers, and to burden themselves with a crushing load of debt.  Generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance.  The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in talent, a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very serious perils and of successes difficult to be attained and far from brilliant; it was asserted that Pompeius was scheming to get himself recalled from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command somewhere else.  The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign in which not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows and worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them with extreme irregularity.  Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army was threatening to break up.  The Roman government might certainly have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less remissness, to say nothing of better will.  In the main, however, it was neither their