fault nor the fault of their generals that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable to insurrectionary and piratical warfare.  So little could its end be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts and thereby add to its dangerous character.  Just at that time the Romans were contending on every sea with piratical fleets, in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes on the lower Danube; and in the east Mithradates, partly induced by the successes of the Spanish insurrection, resolved once more to try the fortune of arms.  That Sertorius had formed connections with the Italian and Macedonian enemies of Rome, cannot be distinctly affirmed, although he certainly was in constant intercourse with the Marians in Italy.  With the pirates, on the other hand, he had previously formed an avowed league, and with the Pontic king—­ with whom he had long maintained relations through the medium of the Roman emigrants staying at his court—­he now concluded a formal treaty of alliance, in which Sertorius ceded to the king the client-states of Asia Minor, but not the Roman province of Asia, and promised, moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead his troops, and a number of soldiers, while the king, in turn, bound himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3000 talents (720,000 pounds).  The wise politicians in the capital were already recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip from the east and by Hannibal from the west; they conceived that the new Hannibal, just like his predecessor, after having by himself subdued Spain, could easily arrive with the forces of Spain in Italy sooner than Pompeius, in order that, like the Phoenician formerly, he might summon the Etruscans and Samnites to arms against Rome.

Collapse of the Power of Sertorius

But this comparison was more ingenious than accurate.  Sertorius was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise of Hannibal.  He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people; and even there he was more and more compelled to renounce the offensive.  His admirable skill as a leader could not change the nature of his troops.  The Spanish militia retained its character, untrustworthy as the wave or the wind; now collected in masses to the number of 150,000, now melting away again to a mere handful.  The Roman emigrants, likewise, continued insubordinate, arrogant, and stubborn.  Those kinds of armed force which require that a corps should keep together for a considerable time, such as cavalry especially, were of course very inadequately represented in his army.  The war gradually swept off his ablest officers and the flower of his veterans;