rew
to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army.
When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677),
the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return
without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience,
and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power,
the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected
from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this,
his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words,
the -tyrannis- in legal form.

Outbreak of the War
Lepidus Defeated
Death of Lepidus

Thus war was declared. The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to
the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus,
upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance
with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus,
Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital
and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed
in Etruria. At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another
corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held
by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus. While Pompeius speedily
accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely
in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer
it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm.
The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able
even to cross the river. The decisive battle was fought
on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city.
But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria,
while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself
into the fortress of Alba. Thereupon the rising was substantially
atan end. Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was,
notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently
put to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a long siege,
reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed.
Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another
engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure
the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia
from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital,
and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents.
But the governor of the island opposed