Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands
of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess. Throughout he exercised
a just and gentle rule. His troops, at least so far as his eye
and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline.
Gentle as he generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable
when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil.
Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of the condition
of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers
to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive
burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source
of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped. For the children
of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca),
in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome,
learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga--a remarkable
measure, which was by no means designed merely to take from the allies
in as gentle a form as possible the hostages that in Spain
were inevitable, but was above all an emanation from, and an advance
onthe great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic
party for gradually Romanizing the provinces. It was the first
attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by extirpating
the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants,
but by Romanizing the provincials themselves. The Optimates
in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian
army, the last of the robber-band of Carbo; the sorry taunt
recoiled upon its authors. The masses that had been brought into
the field against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish
general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers,
and 6000 cavalry. Against this enormous superiority of force Sertorius
had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts
and victories, but had also reduced the greater part of Spain