The position of affairs had undergone a most complete change. Powerful, victorious, aggressive as was the insurrection when it began the campaign of 665, it emerged from it deeply humbled, everywhere beaten, and utterly hopeless. All northern Italy was pacified.

In central Italy both coasts were wholly in the Roman power, and the Abruzzi almost entirely; Apulia as far as Venusia, and Campania as far as Nola, were in the hands of the Romans; and by the occupation of the Hirpinian territory the communication was broken off between the only two regions still persevering in open resistance, the Samnite and the Lucano-Bruttian. The field of the insurrection resembled the scene of an immense conflagration dying out; everywhere the eye fell on ashes and ruins and smouldering brands; here and there the flame still blazed up among the ruins, but the fire was everywhere mastered, and there was no further threatening of danger. It is to be regretted that we no longer sufficiently discern in the superficial accounts handed down to us the causes of this sudden revolution.

While undoubtedly the dexterous leadership of Strabo and still more of Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration of the Roman forces, and their more rapid offensive contributed materially to that result, political causes may have been at work along with the military in producing the singularly rapid fall of the power of the insurgents; the law of Silvanus and Carbo may have fulfilled its design in carrying defection and treason to the common cause into the ranks of the enemy; and misfortune, as has so frequently happened, may have fallen as an apple of discord among the loosely-connected insurgent communities.

We see only - and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia, that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions - that the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their own land, and, after "Italia" was vanquished, undertook to continue the struggle as "Safini" or Samnites[18]. The strong Aesernia was converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to him. With astonishment men saw the Samnite wars beginning anew after a pause of two hundred years, and the resolute nation of farmers making a fresh attempt, just as in the fifth century, after the Italian confederation was shattered, to force Rome with their own hand to recognize their country's independence. But this resolution of the bravest despair made not much change in the main result; although the mountain-war in Samnium and Lucania might still require some time and some sacrifices, the insurrection was nevertheless already substantially at an end.

In the meanwhile, certainly, there had occurred a fresh complication, for the Asiatic difficulties had rendered it imperatively necessary to declare war against Mithradates king of Pontus, and for next year (666) to destine the one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor. Had this war broken out a year earlier, the contemporary revolt of the half of Italy and of the most important of the provinces would have formed an immense peril to the Roman state. Now that the marvellous good fortune of Rome had once more been evinced in the rapid collapse of the Italian insurrection, this Asiatic war just beginning was, notwithstanding its being mixed up with the expiring Italian struggle, not of a really dangerous character; and the less so, because Mithradates in his arrogance refused the invitation of the Italians that he should afford them direct assistance. Still it was in a high degree inconvenient. The times had gone by, when they without hesitation carried on simultaneously an Italian and a transmarine war, the state-chest was already after two years of warfare utterly exhausted, and the formation of a new army in addition to that already in the field seemed scarcely practicable. But they resorted to such expedients as they could. The sale of the sites that had from ancient times[19] remained unoccupied on and near the citadel to persons desirous of building, which yielded 9000 pounds of gold (360,000 pounds), furnished the requisite pecuniary means. No new army was formed, but that which was under Sulla in Campania was destined to embark for Asia, as soon as the state of things in southern Italy should allow its departure; which might be expected, from the progress of the army operating in the north under Strabo, to happen soon.

So the third campaign in 666 began amidst favourable prospects for Rome. Strabo put down the last resistance which was still offered in the Abruzzi. In Apulia the successor of Cosconius, Quintus Metellus Pius, son of the conqueror of Numidia and not unlike his father in his strongly conservative views as well as in military endowments, put an end to the resistance by the capture of Venusia, at which 3000 armed men were taken prisoners. In Samnium Silo no doubt succeeded in retaking Bovianum; but in a battle, in which he engaged the Roman general Mamercus Aemilius, the Romans conquered, and - what was more important than the victory itself - Silo was among the 6000 dead whom the Samnites left on the field. In Campania the smaller townships, which the Samnites still occupied, were wrested from them by Sulla, and Nola was invested. The Roman general Aulus Gabinius penetrated also into Lucania and gained no small advantages; but, after he had fallen in an attack on the enemy's camp, Lamponius the insurgent leader and his followers once more held almost undisturbed command over the wide and desolate Lucano-Bruttian country. He even made an attempt to seize Rhegium, which was frustrated, however, by the Sicilian governor Gaius Norbanus. Notwithstanding isolated mischances the Romans were constantly drawing nearer to the attainment of their end; the fall of Nola, the submission of Samnium, the possibility of rendering considerable forces available for Asia appeared no longer distant, when the turn taken by affairs in the capital unexpectedly gave fresh life to the well-nigh extinguished insurrection.

Rome was in a fearful ferment. The attack of Drusus upon the equestrian courts and his sudden downfall brought about by the equestrian party, followed by the two-edged Varian warfare of prosecutions, had sown the bitterest discord between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie as well as between the moderates and the ultras.

Events had completely justified the party of concession; what it had proposed voluntarily to bestow, men had been more than half compelled to concede; but the mode in which the concession was made bore, just like the earlier refusal, the stamp of obstinate and shortsighted envy. Instead of granting equality of rights to all Italian communities, they had only expressed the inferiority in another form.