s at length grew weary of a
contest which was not to their benefit, but which was carried on in behalf
of rival factions at the capital. Dissensions broke out among the officers
of Sertorius, and he was killed at a banquet by Perpenna, his lieutenant.
On the death of the only man capable of resisting the aristocracy of Rome,
and whose virtues were worthy of the ancient heroes, the progress of
Pompey was easy. Perpenna was taken prisoner and his army was dispersed,
and Spain was reduced to obedience.

(M994) In the mean time, while Pompey was fighting Sertorius in Spain, a
servile war broke out in Italy, produced in part by the immense demand of
slaves for the gladiatorial shows. One of these slaves, Spartacus, once a
Thracian captain of banditti, escaped with seventy comrades to the crater
of Vesuvius, and organized an insurrection, and he was soon at the head of
one hundred thousand of those wretched captives whose condition was
unendurable. Italy was ravaged from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. No
Roman general, then in Italy, was equal to the task of subduing them. But,
in the second year of the war, Crassus, who was a great proprietor of
slaves, and who had ably served under Sulla, undertook the task of
subduing the insurrectionary slaves. With six legions he drove them to the
extremity of the Bruttian peninsula, and shut them up in Rhegium by strong
lines of circumvallation. Spartacus was killed, after having broken
through the lines, and most of his followers were destroyed; but six
thousand escaped into Cisalpine Gaul, as the northern part of Italy was
then called, and met Pompey on his victorious return from Spain, by whom
they were utterly annihilated. Pompey claimed the merit of ending the
servile war, and sought the honor of the consulship, although ineligible.
Crassus, also ineligible, also demanded the consulship, and both these
lieutenants of Sulla obtained their ends. But both, in order to obtain the
consulship, made great promises. Pompey, in particular, promised to
restore the tribunitian power. Pompey now broke with the aristocracy,
whose champion he had been, and even carried another law by which the
judices were taken from the equites as well as the Senate. Thus was the
constitution of Sulla subverted within ten years. In this movement Pompey
was supported by Julius Caesar, who was a young man of thirty years of age.

(M995) On the expiration of his consulship, Pompey remained inactive,
refusing