Measures of the confederates.] They called their capital
Italica. In it they built a forum, and fortified its walls. They
issued a new coinage. They chose two consuls, twelve praetors, and a
senate of five hundred, and gave the franchise to every community
in arms on their side. They mustered an army of 100,000 men, and
entrusted the command against Lupus in the north and west to
Pompaedius Silo, with six lieutenants under him; the command against
Caesar in the south and east was given to a noted Samnite, named Caius
Papius Mutilus.

It is easier to get a general idea of the war than of its details,
though the latter are not without interest. The results of the first
year were, in spite of some victories, most unfavourable to Rome. The
insurgents were encouraged. The insurrection had spread to Umbria and
Etruria, and the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote:
General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they
had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise
checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt
in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the
second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually
at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its
absolute extinction, and some embers of it still lingered for five
years more, and though Roman forces were still required after 89 B.C.
among the Sabines in Samnium, in Lucania, and at Nola, the war as
a war ended in that year. [Sidenote: Twofold division of the war.]
Consequently we may divide it into two periods, each well defined and
each consisting of a year, the first in which the confederate cause
triumphed and Marius lost credit; the second in which the cause of
Rome triumphed, and Sulla enhanced his reputation and became the
foremost man at Rome.

[Sidenote: B.C. 90. First year of the war. Attempt on Asculum by
Pompeius.] The war began, as was natural, with an attempt to take
Asculum. But the townsmen, manning the walls with the old men past
service, surprised Cnaeus Pompeius by a sally, and defeated him.
[Sidenote: Pompeius defeated and driven into Firmum.] Subsequently he
was again defeated at Faleria and driven into Firmum, a Latin colony
which held out for Rome. There he stayed till Servius Sulpicius came
to his help. [Sidenote: Pompeius, relieved by Sulpicius, besieges
Asculum.] On the approach of Sulpicius he sallied out. The e