reasure and the greater part of the fugitives
entered the latter. Sulla left an able officer, Quintus Ofella,
before Praeneste just as he had done in the previous year before
Capua, with instructions not to expend his strength in the siege
of the strong town, but to enclose it with an extended line of
blockade and starve it into surrender. He himself advanced from
different sides upon the capital, which as well as the whole
surrounding district he found abandoned by the enemy, and occupied
without resistance. He barely took time to compose the minds of
the people by an address and to make the most necessary arrangements,
and immediately passed on to Etruria, that in concert with Metellus
he might dislodge his antagonists from Northern Italy.

Metellus against Carbo in Northern Italy
Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

Metellus had meanwhile encountered and defeated Carbo's lieutenant
Carrinas at the river Aesis (Esino between Ancona and Sinigaglia),
which separated the district of Picenum from the Gallic province;
when Carbo in person came up with his superior army, Metellus had
been obliged to abstain from any farther advance. But on the news
of the battle at Sacriportus, Carbo, anxious about his communications,
had retreated to the Flaminian road, with a view to take up his
headquarters at the meeting-point of Ariminum, and from that point
to hold the passes of the Apennines on the one hand and the valley
of the Po on the other. In this retrograde movement different
divisions fell into the hands of the enemy, and not only so,
but Sena Gallica was stormed and Carbo's rearguard was broken
in a brilliant cavalry engagement by Pompeius; nevertheless Carbo
attained on the whole his object. The consular Norbanus took
the command in the valley of the Po; Carbo himself proceeded to
Etruria. But the march of Sulla with his victorious legions to
Etruria altered the position of affairs; soon three Sullan armies
from Gaul, Umbria, and Rome established communications with each
other. Metellus with the fleet went past Ariminum to Ravenna, and
at Faventia cut off the communication between Ariminum and the
valley of the Po, into which he sent forward a division along the
great road to Placentia under Marcus Lucullus, the quaestor of
Sulla and brother of his admiral in the Mithradatic war. The young
Pompeius and his contemporary and rival Crassus penetrated from
Picenum by mountain-paths into Umbria and gained the Fl