Porta Collina (Hill Gate) was one of the entrances to Ancient Rome, opened, according to tradition, by King Servius Tullius in the wall he had ordered built and which bore his name. In its surroundings were located the temples of Fortuna and Venus—later also the Gardens of Sallust and the Baths of Diocletian—and Plutarch recounts that the Vestal Virgins who broke their vow of chastity were buried alive in a chamber nearby. But Porta Collina is best known for the night battle fought before it in the 1st century BC between Sulla and Crassus’ optimates and the popular legions and Italic militias led by the Samnite general Pontius Telesinus.

The name Pontius will sound familiar to readers. We dedicated an article here to Gaius Pontius, the Samnite leader who defeated the Romans at the Battle of the Caudine Forks and was an ancestor of Pontius Pilate. Telesinus, who also descended from him—thus, he too would be an ancestor of the famous prefect of Judea—was in command of the forces of Samnium, that region which in past centuries had fiercely resisted Roman expansionism and which now rose once more in arms, taking advantage of the outbreak of the First Civil War between the aforementioned optimates and populares.

The conflict began in 88 BC, sparked by the clash between representatives of both factions, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius respectively, over who would lead the campaign against Mithridates VI, responsible for a genocide of Romans in Pontus. The Senate supported Sulla’s appointment, but the assemblies opposed it because they preferred Marius, and Sulla resolved the issue by marching on Rome with his legions and handing all power to the Senate. Marius had to flee, and his rival departed for Greece, although the consular elections were won by the popular Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius, a conservative but opposed to Sulla.

Sulla battle Collina
Bust of Sulla. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

As might be expected, the former broke his oath of loyalty and took advantage of Sulla’s absence to restore power to the Assembly of the Plebs, as well as the suffragium proposal for the new Italic citizens resulting from the Social War. Those defeated in that war helped him when Gnaeus Octavius removed and expelled him from Rome; allied with Marius, he returned, took the city, unleashed brutal repression, and together they had themselves named consuls. Unfortunately for Cinna, his colleague died two weeks later and he found himself alone against Sulla who, warned of the situation—was declared a hostis publicus (public enemy) and had his property confiscated—signed peace with the Pontic king and began his return.

Two of the most conspicuous victims of Marius’ reprisals, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius and Marcus Licinius Crassus, sided with him, and in 83 BC, as soon as Sulla landed in Brundisium (Brindisi), the fighting began. Cinna had been assassinated the previous year during a mutiny, so now the leaders of the populares were Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, of plebeian origin, and the son of Gaius Marius, who bore the same name and is distinguished with the agnomen the Younger. Sulla’s five veteran legions prevailed in the battles of Mount Tifata and Sacriportus, leaving the Italic militias allied with the populares severely weakened.

It was then that the Lucanians and Samnites joined the coalition. They feared a repeat of the ruthless devastation they had suffered in the Social War at the hands of Sulla and feared he would revoke the autonomy and freedoms they enjoyed. Therefore, they assembled an army of seventy thousand men and marched toward Praeneste (Palestrina), where Gaius Marius the Younger was under siege. They could not break the siege because Sulla had constructed strong earthen fortifications around the entire perimeter, so Pontius Telesinus, who was leading that force, changed his objective and set his sights on Rome.

Sulla battle Collina
Sulla’s campaign: his route from Brundisium (blue line), important battles (red dots) and dates (green). Credit: Homoatrox / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

As his name suggests, Pontius Telesinus was born in the Campanian city of Telesia—his birth date is unknown—and sources usually assign him a prominent role in the Social War, though without specifying more than his leadership of the last resistance groups in Lucania (modern-day southern Basilicata) and Bruttium (Calabria) with the rank of praetor. It was in that conflict that he developed a deep-seated hatred “for the very name of Rome itself”, in the words of Velleius Paterculus, who adds that he was “brave in spirit and in action.” He had a chance to make peace with the Romans thanks to Cinna but, as we’ve seen, the Civil War and the aforementioned defeat at Sacriportus—where his brother fought—ruined that opportunity.

According to Lucius Annaeus Florus in his Epitome of Livy, Telesinus and his Lucanian co-commander Marcus Lamponius—joined by a contingent from Capua under the command of Tiberius Gutta—ravaged Campania on their way to Rome while other armies were defeated in various places: Gaius Norbanus had to flee to Rhodes after falling at Faenza before Metellus Pius, and Papirius Carbo, informed of the disaster and routed by Gnaeus Pompey, took refuge in Africa. Only Gaius Albinus Carrinas decided to press on, gathering all the survivors to reinforce Telesinus.

Thanks to their use of secondary roads, the Samnites encountered no resistance and reached Rome at dawn on November 1st, 82 BC, just a day after leaving Praeneste. They camped ten stadia away from the Collina Gate, to the dismay of the nearly defenseless population, who saw in Telesinus a new Hannibal, especially after a makeshift troop hastily raised by Appius Claudius went out to try to stop him and was easily annihilated. Only the arrival of seven hundred cavalrymen under Octavius Balbus, sent by Sulla in forced marches, prevented morale from collapsing entirely.

That cavalry force informed Telesinus that his enemy was on the way and decided to wait for him. Indeed, Sulla arrived at midday with the bulk of his army and deployed it near the Porta Pia, not far from the temple of Venus Erycina. Even though the soldiers were tired, they had just enough time to recover some strength and have a light meal before being sent into battle, against the advice of his aides, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella and Lucius Manlius Torquatus, who preferred to allow the troops to rest and present a full battle the next day, fully recovered, since they were no longer facing the diminished forces of Marius but a powerful and fresh enemy.

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Statue of a Samnite warrior in the Italian town of Pietrabbondante. Credit: Torquatus / Wikimedia Commons

But Sulla insisted, aware of the need to lift the citizens’ spirits, and gave the order at the tenth hour (between three and four in the afternoon). Telesinus accepted the challenge and delivered a stirring speech to his men, recorded by Velleius Paterculus: “Now the Romans face their last day. These are the wolves that have been tearing apart Italy’s freedom. They will not leave until we have felled the forest that shelters them.” And thus began the Battle of the Porta Collina. The Samnites focused their efforts on the enemy’s left wing, where Sulla had to go in person to prevent a collapse, ignoring the spears flying around him because, religious as he was, he had entrusted himself to Apollo.

However, the ranks began to give ground until they were cornered against Rome’s perimeter wall, whose gates remained shut by Sulla’s order so the legionaries would have no choice but to keep resisting. The situation became critical, with countless casualties and the (false) rumor that their general had died, when a messenger arrived from Crassus, reporting that he had achieved a total victory on the left wing, routing Marius’s forces and pursuing them until nightfall advised him to stop. Sulla seized on this boost to morale, and his men rallied enough to keep fighting through the night.

By dawn, the tide had turned, and it was the Samnites who lost heart upon hearing of their allies’ defeat; in fact, three thousand Italics switched sides, triggering the final collapse of Telesinus’s army, whose body was found dead on the battlefield. Marcus Lamponius managed to flee, but the other leaders—Carrinas, Damasippus, and Censorinus—were captured and beheaded on the spot. Some estimates claim there were fifty thousand deaths, to which were added between five and eight thousand prisoners, mercilessly executed over the next three days, perhaps to intimidate unaligned senators.

The bodies of the fallen were thrown into the Tiber, but the heads of their leaders were sent impaled on spears to Quintus Ofella, the officer besieging Praeneste, so he could display them to the defenders. Gaius Marius the Younger realized it was over and, after a brief and failed escape attempt, surrendered the city before taking his own life alongside Telesinus’s brother; his severed head made the reverse journey and was displayed in Rome. Sulla took revenge by looting and burning Praeneste, killing all the Samnites—whom he did not consider citizens—and launching a harsh crackdown on their senators, some imprisoned and others condemned to death; only people of Roman origin were spared. In Rome, he targeted forty senators and sixteen hundred equites.

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The Porta Collina in an 1820 engraving. Credit: The British Library / Wikimedia Commons

Soon after, another enemy city fell, Norba, taken by treachery; its defenders committed mass suicide, either by falling on their swords or hanging themselves. Domitius Ahenobarbus was finally located in his African hideout and executed by Pompey, who returned surrounded by an aura of glory, though at the cost of earning the nickname adulescentulus carnifex (young butcher). A nickname that could also apply to Sulla—perhaps that’s why he called himself Felix (the Fortunate)—for in Rome he arrested twelve thousand populares, killing three thousand of them in the Campus Martius; their screams shocked the Senate, which was meeting in the temple of Bellona, but not him: “There’s nothing to worry about, they are merely following my orders.”

The surviving Marian leaders tried to regroup outside Italy without success; only Quintus Sertorius managed to return to Hispania and raise it in rebellion, resisting alone until 72 B.C. Sulla, enjoying full powers after being appointed dictator, began dismantling all the Marian reforms to strengthen senatorial power while continuing to crush the enemy’s last embers. They were not extinguished until the surrender of Volterra in 79 B.C., whose defenders naively trusted in a promise of clemency that was not kept. In this way, the Etruscans and Samnites were absorbed and disappeared as distinct peoples, their lands distributed among veteran legionaries.

A symbol of the excesses committed during that period was the increase in Crassus’s fortune at the expense of confiscated property from political enemies, his greed reaching such heights that he even expropriated a wealthy loyal citizen—an act that scandalized even Sulla, who withdrew his favor. In 79 B.C., with that stage completed, Sulla resigned the dictatorship and died the following year. His reforms only partially survived him, as a new generation of young politicians emerged to seize power and pass into posterity: the aforementioned Crassus and Pompey, along with Julius Caesar, who would form the First Triumvirate.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on May 12, 2025: Porta Collina, la victoria nocturna de Sila que provocó que etruscos y samnitas dejaran de existir como pueblos independientes

SOURCES

Veleyo Patérculo, Historia romana

Floro, Epítome de la Historia de Tito Livio

Theodor Mommsen, Historia de Roma

Pierre Grimal, El mundo mediterráneo en la Edad Antigua: La formación del Imperio Romano

Francisco Javier Lomas Salmonte, Pedro López Barja de Quiroga, Historia de Roma

Wikipedia, Batalla de la Puerta Collina

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