The most remarkable of the native insurrections was that organised in Lusitania by Viriathus. This extraordinary man was bred a shepherd; he turned robber, became the captain of a band of outlaws, and raising a standard to which all the disaffected flocked, he defeated several Roman armies. He was vanquished by treachery, the consul Servilius having bribed three of his followers to assassinate him in his sleep. After his murder, the rebellion, as the haughty conquerors termed every insurrection for self-defence, was speedily quelled. Spain was soon afterwards the theatre of the last struggle of the horrible civil wars with which Marius and Sulla desolated the Roman world. When Sulla had finally triumphed at Rome, Sertorius, a leader of the defeated party, fled to Spain, and there long bade defiance to the dictator’s power. He was at length vanquished by Cneius Pompeius Magnus, familiarly called Pompey the Great, and, like Viriathus, was murdered by his own treacherous partisans. Pompey, during his command in Spain, merited the good-will of the nation, which subsequently espoused his cause in his contest with Julius Cæsar. After Pompey’s death his party still held out in Spain. But Cæsar repaired thither in person; his military skill prevailed, and the province was shortly pacified.[b] As long as Rome treated the provincials merely as a conquered people the provincials remained unsubdued; but as soon as wiser and more friendly counsels generally prevailed, the Roman Spaniard grasped the hand that was extended to him, and became one of the proudest and most loyal citizens of the empire. Left to themselves, the tribes were ever divided, factious, disturbed. United under Lusitanian Viriathus or even under Roman Sertorius, they long successfully withstood the power of the republic. United under Julius and Augustus Cæsar, they became the most Roman of the provincials of Rome. [Sidenote: [229 B.C.-138 A.D.]] [Illustration: A GALLO-ROMAN]