Sertorius

So, reflecting on these things and getting information about them from the natives of the country, Sertorius ordered his soldiers to take some of the loose and ashy soil that I have described, carry it directly opposite the hill, and make a heap of it there. This the Barbarians conjectured to be a mound raised for assaulting them, and jeered at their enemy.

On that day, then, the soldiers of Sertorius worked until night, and were then led back to camp. But when the next day came, at first a gentle breeze arose, stirring up the lightest portions of the gathered soil and scattering them like chaff; then, when Caecias was blowing strong with the mounting of the sun and covering the hills with dust, the soldiers came and stirred up the mound of earth to the bottom and broke up the lumps, while some actually drove their horses back and forth through it, throwing up the loosened earth and giving it to the wind to carry.

Then the wind caught up all the earth thus broken and stirred and threw it up against the dwellings of the Barbarians, which opened so as to admit Caecias. And the Barbarians, since their caves had no other inlet for air than that against which the wind was dashing, were quickly blinded, and quickly choked, too, as they tried to inhale an air that was harsh and mingled with great quantities of dust.

Therefore, after holding out with difficulty for two days, on the third day they surrendered, thereby adding not so much to the power as to the fame of Sertorius, since by his skill he had subdued what could not be taken by arms.

Well, then, as long as he carried on the war with Metellus as his antagonist, he was thought to be successful for the most part because, owing to great age and natural slowness, Metellus could not cope with a man who was bold and headed a force composed of robbers rather than soldiers; but when Pompey also crossed the Pyrenees and became his antagonist,[*](In 76 B.C.) and each of them had offered and accepted every test of a general’s powers, and Sertorius had the advantage in counter-planning and watchfulness, then indeed it was noised abroad as far as Rome that he was the ablest general of his time in the conduct of a war.