under of Sicily. The fortune he acquired in
his government of that province enabled Lepidus to secure his election as
consul, B.C. 78, and he even attempted to deprive Sulla of his funeral
honors. A conspiracy was organized in Etruria, where the Sullan
confiscation had been most severe. Lepidus came forward as an avenger of
the old Romans whose fortunes had been ruined. The Senate, fearing
convulsions, made Lepidus and Catulus, the consuls, swear not to take up
arms against each other; but at the expiration of the consulship of
Lepidus, went, as was usual, to the province assigned to him. This was
Gaul, and here the war first broke out. An attempt on Rome was frustrated
by Catulus, who defeated Lepidus, and the latter soon died in Sardinia,
whither he had retired.

(M991) Sertorius was then in command of the army in Spain,--a man who had
risen from an obscure position, but who possessed the hardy virtues of the
old Sabine farmers. He served under Marius in Gaul, and was praetor when
Sulla returned to Italy. When the cause of Marius was lost in Africa, he
organized a resistance to Sulla in Spain. His army was re-enforced by
Marian refugees, and he was aided by the Iberian tribes, among whom he was
a favorite. For eight years this celebrated hero baffled the armies which
Rome, under the lead of the aristocracy, sent against him, for he
undertook to restore the cause of the democracy.

(M992) Against Sertorius was sent the man who, next to Caesar, was destined
to play the most important part in the history of those times--Cn.
Pompeius, born the same year as Cicero, B.C. 106, who had enlisted in the
cause of Sulla, and early distinguished himself against the generals of
Marius. He gained great successes in Sicily and Africa, and was, on his
return to Rome, saluted by the dictator Sulla himself with the name of
_Magnus_, which title he ever afterward bore. He was then a simple
equestrian, and had not risen to the rank of quaestor, or praetor, or
consul. Yet he had, at the early age of twenty-four, without enjoying any
curule office, the honor of a triumph, even against the opposition of
Sulla.

(M993) Pompey was sent to Spain with the title of proconsul, and with an
army of thirty thousand men. He crossed the Alps between the sources of
the Rhone and Po, and advanced to the southern coast of Spain. Here he was
met by Sertorius, and at first was worsted. I need not detail the varied
events of this war in Spain. The Spaniard