Sertorius

But in Spain, as soon as the senators and men of equal rank about Sertorius felt confident that they were a match for their enemies and dismissed their fears, they were seized with envy and foolish jealousy of their leader. They were encouraged in these feelings by Perpenna, whose high birth filled him with vain aspirations for the chief command, and he would hold malevolent discourses in secret among his associates:

What evil genius, pray, has seized us and is hurrying us from bad to worse? We would not consent to remain at home and do the bidding of Sulla when he was lord of all the earth and sea together, but we came to this land of destruction with the idea of living like freemen, and are now voluntarily slaves in the body-guard or Sertorius the exile, being a senate, a name jeered at by all who hear it, and submitting to no lesser insults, injunctions, and toils than Iberians and Lusitanians.

Most of his hearers, their minds infected with such sentiments as these, did not, indeed, openly desert Sertorius, because they were in fear of his power; but they secretly tried to vitiate his enterprises, and abused the Barbarians with severe punishments and exactions, on the plea that Sertorius thus ordered. Consequently there were revolts and disturbances among the cities.

And those who were sent to assuage and cure these disorders brought more wars to pass before they returned, and increased the existing insubordination, so that Sertorius laid aside his former clemency and mildness and wrought injustice upon the sons of the Iberians who were being educated at Osca,[*](Cf. chapter xiv. 2 f.) killing some, and selling others into slavery.