for this end he reinforced the band which he had brought
with him by levying 4000 infantry and 700 cavalry,
and with this one legion and the swarms of Spanish
volunteers advanced against the Romans. The command
in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius, who
through his absolute devotion to Sulla—well
tried amidst the proscriptions—had risen
from a subaltern to be propraetor; he was totally
defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field
of battle. Messengers in all haste summoned the
governor of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus
Domitius Calvinus, to check the farther advance of
the Sertorians; and there soon appeared (675) also
the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla
to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain.
But they did not succeed in mastering the revolt.
In the Ebro province not only was the army of Calvinus
destroyed and he himself slain by the lieutenant of
Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius, but Lucius
Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had
crossed the Pyrenees with three legions to the help
of his colleague, was totally defeated by the same
brave leader. With difficulty Manlius escaped
with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence to his
province, losing on the march his whole baggage through
a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes. In
Further Spain Metellus penetrated into the Lusitanian
territory; but Sertorius succeeded during the siege
of Longobriga (not far from the mouth of the Tagus)
in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush,
and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the
siege and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory.
Sertorius followed him, defeated on the Anas (Guadiana)
the corps of Thorius, and inflicted vast damage by
guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-chief
himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat
clumsy tactician, was in despair as to this opponent,
who obstinately declined a decisive battle, but cut
off his supplies and communications and constantly
hovered round him on all sides.
Organizations of Sertorius
These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius
in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant,
that they were not achieved merely by arms and were
not of a mere military nature. The emigrants
as such were not formidable; nor were isolated successes
of the Lusitanians under this or that foreign leader
of much moment. But with the most decided political
and patriotic tact Sertorius acted, whenever he could
do so, not as condottiere of the Lusitanians in revolt
against Rome, but as Roman general and governor of
Spain, in which capacity he had in fact been sent
thither by the former rulers. He began(16) to
form the heads of the emigration into a senate, which
was to increase to 300 members and to conduct affairs
and to nominate magistrates in Roman form. He
regarded his army as a Roman one, and filled the officers’
posts, without exception, with Romans. When
facing the Spaniards, he was the governor, who by