in the superficial accounts handed down to us the causes of this sudden revolution.  While undoubtedly the dexterous leadership of Strabo and still more of Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration of the Roman forces, and their more rapid offensive contributed materially to that result, political causes may have been at work along with the military in producing the singularly rapid fall of the power of the insurgents; the law of Silvanus and Carbo may have fulfilled its design in carrying defection and treason to the common cause into the ranks of the enemy; and misfortune, as has so frequently happened, may have fallen as an apple of discord among the loosely-connected insurgent communities.

Perseverance of the Samnites

We see only—­and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia, that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions—­that the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their own land, and, after “Italia” was vanquished, undertook to continue the struggle as “Safini” or Samnites.(18) The strong Aesernia was converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to him.  With astonishment men saw the Samnite wars beginning anew after a pause of two hundred years, and the resolute nation of farmers making a fresh attempt, just as in the fifth century, after the Italian confederation was shattered, to force Rome with their own hand to recognize their country’s independence.  But this resolution of the bravest despair made not much change in the main result; although the mountain-war in Samnium and Lucania might still require some time and some sacrifices, the insurrection was nevertheless already substantially at an end.

Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

In the meanwhile, certainly, there had occurred a fresh complication, for the Asiatic difficulties had rendered it imperatively necessary to declare war against Mithradates king of Pontus, and for next year (666) to destine the one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor.  Had this war broken out a year earlier, the contemporary revolt of the half of Italy and of the most important of the provinces would have formed an immense peril to the Roman state.  Now that the marvellous good fortune of Rome had once more been evinced in the rapid collapse of the Italian insurrection, this Asiatic war just beginning was, notwithstanding its being mixed up with the expiring Italian struggle, not of a really dangerous character;