The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius,
who through his absolute devotion to Sulla--well tried amidst
the proscriptions--had risen from a subaltern to be propraetor;
he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field
of battle. Messengers in all haste summoned the governor
of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus,
to check the farther advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared
(675) also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla
to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain. But they did
not succeed in mastering the revolt. In the Ebro province
not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain
by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius,
but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed
the Pyrenees with three legions to the help of his colleague,
was totally defeated by the same brave leader. With difficulty
Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence
to his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through
a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes. In Further Spain Metellus
penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded
during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth
of the Tagus) in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush,
and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege
and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory. Sertorius followed him,
defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted
vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-
chief himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy
tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately
declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies
and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.