The Historians' History of the World 05

Meanwhile the senate was preparing to encounter this formidable assailant with adequate forces, and had pitched, as we have seen, upon Sulla to take the command. Marius was disgusted at the inactivity to which he found himself condemned amidst the derision of the populace. In his retirement at Misenum he meditated revenge. The new citizens of Latium and Italy were already mortified at finding the inefficiency of their votes, confined to a small minority of the tribes, and the slender importance attached to their favour. Their nobles complained of their want of influence, their proletaries of the paltry price their votes commanded. Marius conceived the idea of turning their discontent to his own advantage. Between him and them there was an ancient sympathy, and this it was easy to improve into strict alliance. He offered to repair the injustice of the senate towards them, and to diffuse them among the old tribes of the city, in which their voices would be more powerful than when cooped within the narrow limits of a few separate divisions. Marius recommenced his old game of popular agitation.

Among the tribunes was Sulpicius Galba, whose eloquence and learning and high aristocratic connections had raised him to eminence in the state, but who under the pressure of debt was ready to sell his services to a patron who could hold out to him at least a distant prospect of sharing the spoils of Mithridates. With this guerdon in view, he paused at no excess. Taking Saturninus as his model, he studied only to surpass him in audacity. He marshalled a body of six hundred knights around his person, and gave them the name of his opposition senate. He attacked the consuls in the public assembly with a band of armed men, and seized and massacred the son of Pompeius Rufus. Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made his escape into the house of Marius, where he was least likely to be sought for, and so baffled the pursuers who ran past him. Marius himself received the credit of concealing and letting him out by another door, but Sulla, we are told, made no acknowledgment of such a service in his memoirs. Marius indeed was for the moment triumphant. Sulpicius, having cleared the Forum of his chief opponents, prevailed on the populace to nominate his patron to the command in Asia; and the new proconsul, while preparing to set out on his mission, despatched two tribunes to receive the army of Sulla. But Sulla, escaping from the Forum, had repaired directly to his camp. He had inflamed the fury of his devoted soldiers by the recital of his double injury. While the officers, men of birth and national feeling, refused to listen to his solicitations, the men responded to them without scruple, and carried his banners towards Rome, killing the emissaries of Marius on the way. Joined by Pompeius Rufus with the ensigns of the consulship, these tumultuous bands resumed the appearance of a regular army; and Sulla could avow himself with some show of legality the defender of the state and avenger of the insults she had sustained in the person of her chief magistrates.

This daring movement was entirely unexpected. Six legions advanced upon the city, and the men who had just seized the government were totally unprovided with arms to resist them. Marius sent two prætors to meet the enemy, and command them to desist; but the soldiers neither listened to them, nor paused in their march. They were stripped of their togas, their fasces were broken, and themselves ordered to return with every mark of indignity. Such violence betokened worse to follow. The citizens were dismayed, and without regard either to Marius or Sulpicius, sent envoys to entreat the advancing generals to halt, while they promised to do full justice to their cause by legal and peaceful measures. Sulla himself, it is said, had faltered in his daring design; but he was reassured by a dream, in which a strange divinity, whom the Romans had learned to worship in the East, placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and directed him to launch it against his enemies. He advanced, and Marius, having vainly attempted to raise troops to oppose him, fled with precipitation. As he entered the city tiles and stones were hurled on his soldiers from the house-tops; but a threat of burning the city soon reduced every opponent to submission. Sulla had conquered Rome.[89]