M.E.T.H.O.D.

What are your opinions about this rather overlooked figure in Roman History?

I consider Sertorius a very talented,enterprising and smart general(aside from being one of my favourite), able to succesfully switch between pitched battles and guerrilla warfare.I really like his image of an "outlaw general".
On the political side his ability created a cohesive alliance formed by Marians and Celtiberians, who he treated as equals.

His defeat in Spain was not due to pure military factors: the Senate prevailed only because of the overwhelming resources and the treachery of Peperna, while Sertorius repeatedly smashed Pompeus, who when first arrived in Spain was already thinking about his triumph after the campaing and taught him and hard lesson.
What do you think would have happened to Sertorius and Pompeus without Peperna's treachery?
I think that on the long run, the Senate would have obtained the victory but at the cost of Pompeus' reputation(bye bye dreams of glory) and his subsequent fall from the scene.

Thank you in advance for you considerations.

okamido

One of my favorites, and far superior to, 'Magnus'.

Cornelia

I like him. Though he has made some troubles to one of my favorites - Pius.

sylla1

And presumably even to CJ Caesar too.

(BTW, if you are talking about good ol' Cn. Pompeius, why the "quotation marks"; such was his official cognomen granted by the senate & people of Rome earnestly won in the battlefield and eventually transmitted to his family)

Just remember that contrary to the other Roman commanders of the republican civil wars, Q. Sertorious almost always defeated the porweful legions of his enemies (by far the best military unit of the era) almost exclusively with local Spanish recruits...

clement

Sertorius was a remarkable general, but even before his death he was losing according to Appian : Pompey used another strategy that was working better : rather than fighting one decisive battle, he launched offensives to besiege enemy cities and they fell one after another. On several occasions, Sertorius managed to check Pompey's advance, however, the Senatorial forces had already gain the upper hand.

Sertorius proved superior to Pompey on the battlefield, but stategically speaking, he was losing because his enemy knew how to weaken him : constant pressure and a strategy of attrition and slow progress. In this sense, I think that people often underestimate the feats of Pompey (and Metellus) during this war.

sylla1

Or maybe, just maybe, he was slowly but inevitably losing simply because he was facing overhwelmingly superior forces under able commanders...

Does the Waterloo Campaign 1815 ring any bell?

M.E.T.H.O.D.

From what i read Sertotius lost because during the last years the Celtiberian tribes lost the will to fight and abandoned him, while the roman army was reinforcing every day(the senate granted 2 legions to Pompey)
the temporizing tactic of Metellus proved to be more effective than the one of Pompey, that wasted many resources in every engagement with very poor results

sylla1

That is mostly explained by the evident strong bias against Cn. Pompeius Magnus of most of the relevant available sources; on a purely factuall account it's clear that the latter commander was more efficient than Metellus.

clement

Metellus seems to have been quite uneffective, since Pompey was sent to Spain to relieve him after several failures. Pompey did not waste ressources in many engagements. He tried to engage in a major battle against Sertorius three times (Lauro, Sucro and near Saguntum i think) and in every cases, the two sides lost a huge number of men. Seeing that he could not win this way, Pompey asked the senate for two more legions and started a different sort of war which proved effective. It is clear that in this second phase of the war, he was no longer an ambitious junior officier under the orders of Metellus (as he had been in Italy) but in fact the main senatorial commander.

As for Sertorius, I think that we must not forget that he also had a big army, and he could also be reinforced since one of his great successes was the organization and mobilization of the iberian provinces to support his war effort. Hence, it is normal that Pompey had to ask for reinforcements (just as Caesar did in Gaul), since he operated in a hostile environnement. On the other hand, Sertorius could raise armies in Hispania proper so he had an advantage here. And if the celtiberians started to desert, it was also because the war was in fact no going well for them. If Sertorius was decisevely winning, why would they have deserted ?

M.E.T.H.O.D.

I read an interesting thing about Sertorius: during the Cimbrian war he disguised himself as a barbarian(he learnt their language too) to provide intelligence to Gaius Marius

Did he really send ambassadors to Mithridates in order to obtain his support or this story was written by the Optimates to ruin his reputation and strenghten the idea of "Roman traitor"?
I know he had the assistance of the Cilician pirates for a while....