XXVII.[169] Now most of the Iberians immediately sent ambassadors to Pompeius and Metellus, to make their submission; those who remained Perpenna took under his command, and attempted to do something.  After employing the means that Sertorius had got together, just so far as to disgrace himself, and show that he was not suited either to command or to obey, he engaged with Pompeius.  Being quickly crushed by him and taken prisoner, he did not behave himself even in this extremity as a commander should do; but having got possession of the papers of Sertorius, he offered to Pompeius to show him autograph letters from consular men and persons of the highest influence at Rome, in which Sertorius was invited to Italy, and was assured that there were many who were desirous to change the present settlement of affairs, and to alter the constitution.  Now Pompeius, by behaving on this occasion, not like a young man, but one whose understanding was well formed and disciplined, relieved Rome from great dangers and revolutions.  He got together all those letters, and all the papers of Sertorius, and burnt them, without either reading them himself or letting any one else read them; and he immediately put Perpenna to death, through fear that there might be defection and disturbance if the names were communicated to others.  Of the fellow-conspirators of Perpenna, some were brought to Pompeius, and put to death; and others, who fled to Libya, were pierced by the Moorish spears.  Not one escaped, except Aufidius, the rival of Manlius, and this happened, either because he escaped notice, or nobody took any trouble about him, and he lived to old age, in some barbarian village, in poverty and contempt.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 101:  If this is obscure, the fault is Plutarch’s.  His word for Fortune is [Greek:  tuche] which he has often used in the Life of Sulla.  The word for Spontaneity is [Greek:  to automaton], the Self-moved.  The word for Elemental things is [Greek:  ta hupokeimena] .  The word [Greek:  hupokeimenon] is used by Aristotle to signify both the thing of which something is predicated, the Subject of grammarians, and for the Substance, which is as it were the substratum on which actions operate.  Aristotle (Metaphys. vi. vii. 3) says “Essence ([Greek:  ousia]) or Being is predicated, if not in many ways, in four at least; for the formal cause ([Greek:  to ti en einai]), and the universal, and genus appear to be the essence of everything; and the fourth of these is the Substance ([Greek:  to hupokeimenon]).  And the Substance is that of which the rest are predicated, but it is not predicated of any other thing.  And Essence seems to be especially the first Substance; and such, in a manner, matter ([Greek:  hule]) is said to be; and in another manner, form; and in a third, that which is from these.  And I mean by matter ([Greek:  hule]), copper, for instance; and by form, the figure of the idea; and by that which is from them, the statue in the whole,” &c.  I have translated [Greek:  to ti en einai] by “formal cause,” as Thomas Taylor has done, and according to the explanation of Trendelenburg, in his edition of Aristotle On the Soul, i. 1, Sec. 2.  It is not my business to explain Aristotle, but to give some clue to the meaning of Plutarch.