[Sidenote:  Successes of Sulla in the south-west.] While the Roman supremacy was thus re-established all along the east coast, Sulla, in Campania, was equally triumphant.  He recovered Stabiae in April, and his lieutenant, T. Didius, took Herculaneum in June.  Didius, however, lost his life in the assault.  Sulla next besieged Pompeii, defeated Cluentius who came to its aid, again defeated him between Pompeii and Nola, and a third time at the gates of Nola, where Cluentius was slain.  About this time Aulus Postumius Albinus, while in charge of the fleet, was murdered by his own men, recruits probably whom he was bringing from Rome to Sulla’s army.  Sulla pardoned the mutineers, saying that he knew they would wipe out their crime by their bravery, and they did so in the fights with Cluentius.  By such politic clemency and never-varying good fortune Sulla bound the army to his own interests.

Leaving Nola behind him, he crossed the Hirpinian frontier and marched on Aeclanum.  The townsmen, who were expecting a Lucanian reinforcement that day, asked for time to deliberate.  Sulla gave them an hour, and occupied the hour in heaping vine osiers round the wooden walls.  Not choosing to be burnt the townsmen surrendered, and Sulla sacked the place.  He then marched northwards into Samnium.  The mountain-passes were held by Mutilus, who hemmed in Sulla near Aesernia.  Sulla pretended to treat for peace, and, when the enemy were off their guard, marched away in the night, leaving a trumpeter to sound all the watches as if the army was still in position.  He seems to have defeated Mutilus after this, and, leaving Aesernia behind as he had left Nola, finally, before going home to sue for the consulship of 88 B.C., stormed Bovianum.  He had managed the campaign in a bold and able way, where less daring generalship might have failed.

[Sidenote:  First Bovianum, and then Aesernia, becomes the confederate capital.] As the insurrection was thus being stamped out on either coast, Bovianum had become the capital of the insurgents instead of Corfinium.  Now Bovianum was taken, and Aesernia became its centre.  The occupation of the Hirpinian territory cut off the Samnites from the South of Italy, where the Lucanians and Bruttians remained in arms.  Except for some trifling operations, which Pompeius had to carry out in order to complete the pacification of his district, all that was now left for the commanders of 88 was to crush the rebels in these two isolated divisions, and the war would be at an end. [Sidenote:  B.C. 88.  Desperation of the confederates.] The rebels indeed prepared for a desperate resistance.  Five generals were appointed, Pompaedius Silo, the Marsian, at their head; and, by enrolling slaves and calling out fresh levies, the Samnites mustered an army of 50,000 men.  Once more, almost single-handed, they prepared to strive with their old enemy for the sovereignty of Italy.  The gallant Silo signalised his appointment by recovering Bovianum, but he was