When, after a brutal civil war, the dictator Sulla took power in Rome (82 BC), among the many who refused to accept his rule was a young army officer called Quintus Sertorius. Sertorius fled, first to Africa and then to Spain, where he made common cause with the native people who had been savagely oppressed by a succession of corrupt Roman governors. Discovering a genius for guerilla warfare (he claimed he received divine guidance from Artemis via a white fawn he kept), Sertorius came close to driving the Romans out of Spain altogether.