FIERTO'RIUS, Q., one of the ablest Roman commanders in the later ages of the repub lic, was a native of Nursia, in the country of the Sabines, and began his military career in Gaul. He fought, 105 n.c., in the disastrous battle on the Rhone in which the Roman proconsul, Q. Servilius Cfepio, was defeated by the Cimbri and and took part In the splendid victory at Aqua; Sexthe (mod. Aix), 102 B.C. „where Marius annihilated the same barbarians. On the breaking out of the sanguinary struggle between the party of the nobles under Sulla (q.v.), and the popular party headed by (q.v.) (88 n.c.), he espoused the cause of the latter. Morally, he was much superior to the military adventurers of his time; and the impression we have of him from Plutarch's picturesque biography is that of a valiant, resolute, honest, and stubborn Roman, such as was com moner iu the 3d than in the 5th c. of the republic. None of the Marian generals held out so long or so successfully as he against the victorious oligarchy. He fought in con junction with Cinna the battle at the Colline gate, which placed Rome at the mercy of the Marians, but he had no hand in the bloody massacres that followed. What we do hear of him is to his credit. He got his own troops together, and slew 4,000 of the mit t:lay slaves whom Marius was permitting to plunder and ravish at will through the city. On the return of Sulla from the east (83 n.c.), Sertorius withdrew into Eutruria, but finding it impossible to act in concert with the other military leaders of his party, he went to Spain, where he continued the struggle in an independent fashion. At first he was not very successful, and found it advisable to embark for Mauritania. After several adventures, in the course of which lie once passed through the strait of Gibral tar, and fell in with some sailors who had visited the Atlantic islands, and whose descrip tions so wrought upon his imagination, that he " was seized with a strong desire to dwell in the islands, and to live in quiet, free from tyranny and never-ending wars"—(PItt tarch)—he returned to the peninsula, at the invitation of the Lusitanians, got together an army composed of natives, Libyans, and Romans, and after a time became the virtual monarch of the whole country. During 80-76 B.C., he was victorious over all his oppon
ents, nor was it until the arrival (76 is.c.), of young Pompey (" Pompey the great"), that he found an opponent worthy to cope with him; and even Pompey was scarcely yet his equal in military skill. Sertorius drove Pompey over the Ibcrus (Ebro) with heavy loss; nor was the campaign of the following year (75 B.C.), more favorable, for though Sertorius's subordinates were twice beaten, Pompey himself had no success, and was forced to write urgent letters to the senate for,re-enforcements. The campaigns of the next two years were unimportant, except in so far as they show us the gradual opera tion of that miserable jealousy and envy of Sertorius that brought about his ruin. Per perna, and other Roman officers of the Marian party, who bad fled to him in 77 B.C., when Sulla became triumphant at home, and who seem to have been a set of base adventurers, secretly stirred up the Spaniards against him, and when that artifica-did not prove so successful as was hoped, they conspired against his life, and assassinated him in his own tent, 72 B.C., under circumstances of shameful perfidy. With Sertorius the Marian or popular cause sunk, until it was revived and attained final success in the person of Julius Caesar (q.v.). Plutarch has written Sertorius's life, and Corneille has made it the subject of a tragedy.