soon afterwards slain.  He is said to have been defeated in a great battle by Mamercus Aemilius, and to have fallen in it.  Appian says that Metellus defeated him in Iapygia; Orosius, that Sulpicius defeated him in Apulia.  However that may be, with him the last gleam of hope for the Samnite cause faded away.  They made, it is said, a treaty with Mithridates; but long before that king could have reached Italy, if he had been able to make the attempt, there would have been no allies to support him.  In Lucania Aulus Gabinius, made rash by some successes, assaulted the confederate camp, but was repulsed and slain.  Lamponius, the Lucanian general, remained master of the country, and attempted to take Rhegium, with the view of crossing over to Sicily and renewing the rebellion there.  But the attempt failed. [Sidenote:  Revolution at Rome, and the part taken by the insurgents in it.] Nola, however, still held out in Campania; and now there occurred a revolution at Rome which postponed the final subjugation of the insurgents till after the battle of the Colline Gate.  For convenience and clearness the part taken by them in this revolution may be here summarised.  Sulla, as consul, was besieging Nola when he was recalled to Rome by the Sulpician revolution and his election to the command against Mithridates.  A Samnite army had come to relieve it, but had been defeated by Sulla.  Three Roman corps still remained to keep the Samnites in check and besiege Nola, under Claudius, Metellus, and Plotius.  It was to Nola that Cinna came, and seduced a large portion of the besiegers to follow him to Rome.  Upon this the insurgents suddenly found themselves, instead of hunted desperadoes, courted as allies by two parties.  The Senate again offered the terms of the Lex Plautia Papiria to all in arms, and some accepted them.  But the Nolans, when Metellus was recalled and the long siege was then raised in 87 B.C., marched out and burnt Abella.  The Samnites demanded, as the price of their assistance, that the prisoners, spoils, and deserters should be restored, and that they and the Romans who had joined them should receive the franchise.  The Senate refused, and the Samnites at once joined Cinna and Marius, who were pledged not only to give the franchise, but also to enrol all the new voters in the old tribes; a measure which was ratified by the Senate in the year of Cinna’s last consulship, 84 B.C.  On Sulla’s return to Italy they with the Lucanians, who had meanwhile been practically independent, were the most eager supporters of Marius’s son. [Sidenote:  Pontius of Telesia.] In 82 Pontius of Telesia, at the head of a Samnite force, with the desperate hardihood inspired by centuries of hatred, marched straight on Rome, and the city was saved only by Sulla’s victory at the Colline Gate.  Three days after the battle Sulla massacred all his prisoners.  He knew that death alone could disarm such implacable foes.  The Samnite name, he said, with his cold ferocity, must be erased from the earth,