like Pinna of the Vestini, or a partisan like Minutius Magius of Aeclanum, remained loyal to Rome, all the centre and south of Italy was soon in insurrection.  Perhaps at Pinna the large land-owners or capitalists were supreme, as in Umbria and Etruria, which sided with Rome, as also did most of the Latin towns, the Greek towns Neapolis and Rhegium, and most of Campania, where Capua became an important Roman post during the war. [Sidenote:  The rebels demand the franchise.] The insurgents, emboldened by the swift spread of the rebellion, sent to demand the franchise as the price of submission.  But the old dogged spirit which extremity of danger had ever aroused at Rome was not dead. [Sidenote:  Rage of the equites.  The law of Varius.] The offer was sternly rejected, and the equites turned furiously on the optimates, or the Italianising section of the optimates, to whose folly they felt that the war was due.  With war the hope of their gains was gone; and, enraged at this, they took advantage of the outbreak to repay the Senate for its complicity in the attempt of Drusus to deprive them of the judicia.  Under a law of Varius, who is said by Cicero to have been the assassin of Drusus and Metellus, Italian sympathisers were brought to trial, and either convicted and banished, or overawed into silence.  Among the accused was Scaurus.  But now, as ever, that shifty man emerged triumphant from his intrigues.  He aped the defence of Scipio, and retired not only safe, but with a dignity so well studied that but for his antecedents it might have seemed sincere.  A Spaniard accused him, he said, and Scaurus, chief of the Senate, denied the accusation.  Whether of the twain should the Romans believe?

[Sidenote:  Perils of the crisis.] For such prosecutions there was indeed some excuse, for the prospect was threatening.  Mithridates might at any moment stop the supplies from Asia.  The soldiers of the enemy were men who had fought in Roman armies and been trained to Roman discipline; they were led by able captains, and were more numerous than the forces opposed to them.  And yet the war must be a war of detachments, where numbers were all-important.  It was no time for hesitation about purging out all traitors or waverers.  But the courts that tried other cases were closed for the time.  The distributions of grain were curtailed.  The walls were put in order.  Arms were prepared as fast as possible.  A fleet was collected from the free cities of Greece and Asia Minor.  Levies were raised from the citizens, from Africa, and from Gaul.  Lastly, in view of the inevitably scattered form which the fighting would take, each consul was to have five lieutenants. [Sidenote:  Generals of Rome.] Lupus was to command in the northern district, from Picenum to Campania.  Among the generals who acted under him were the father of Pompeius Magnus, and Marius.  Samnium, Campania, and the southern district fell to Lucius Julius Caesar, and among the five officers who went with him were also two men of mark, Publius Licinius Crassus and Sulla.  We shall see how by an exhaustive process the Romans, after a series of defeats, were at last driven to employ as generals-in-chief the two rivals who were now subordinates and were thus carefully kept aloof.