Sertorius won considerable distinction as a soldier in the campaigns against the Cimbri and Teutones. When the Consul Cæpio was defeated he narrowly escaped with his life, swimming across the Rhone in full armour; he fought at Aquæ Sextiæ, having done good service by entering the camp of the Teutones as a spy. When the Civil War broke out he declared for the democratic party. After various changes of fortune the aristocrats were victorious, and then Sertorius found himself in a most difficult position. The democratic leaders had given him a command in Spain, as much to get rid of him, for he was too honourable to suit them, as for any other reason. By degrees he drifted into the position of an enemy. He opposed the march of a Consular army sent across the Pyrenees by the Roman government, crossed to Africa when he could no longer remain in Spain, and came back again to take command of the Lusitanians when this tribe rebelled against Rome. Here he was joined by other adherents of the democratic party, the most important of whom was a certain Perpenna, who brought with him a considerable force, and became his second-in-command. All this time, though waging war with Roman consuls and proconsuls, he claimed to be the Roman governor of Spain, establishing, for instance, a Senate into which no one but Roman citizens were admitted. In 77 B.C. Pompey, who was already famous as a soldier--he had enjoyed the honour of a triumph at the age of twenty-five--was sent into Spain. But Pompey found his task more than he could perform. He won, it is true, victories over Sertorius' lieutenants, but he could not claim any decided success over the great man himself. In a great battle fought on the banks of the Sucro he was routed with the loss of six thousand men. Nor during the three years that followed did he make much way. What really happened during this time it is not easy to say. By some accounts Sertorius became self-indulgent and arbitrary; according to others, his Roman colleagues in command, many of them of better birth than their superior, were jealous of him. What is certain is that it was by a Roman hand that he fell. In 72 B.C. he was assassinated by the orders of Perpenna. Perpenna was wholly unequal to the position which he hoped to attain by the death of his chief. He was defeated in the first battle which he fought with the Roman armies, and was taken prisoner. To save his life he offered to put into Pompey's hands the private letters of Sertorius. Many of them had been sent from Rome, and would probably have compromised various persons of distinction. Pompey ordered the letters to be burnt and Perpenna to be executed.