Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army was threatening to break up.

The Roman government might certainly have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less remissness, to say nothing of better will.

In the main, however, it was neither their fault nor the fault of their generals that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable to insurrectionary and piratical warfare.

So little could its end be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts and thereby add to its dangerous character.

Just at that time the Romans were contending on every sea with piratical fleets, in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes on the lower Danube; and in the east Mithradates, partly induced by the successes of the Spanish insurrection, resolved once more to try the fortune of arms.