To terrify the unarmed consul by bludgeon-men or the defenceless capital by the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end: Sulpicius assumed that his opponent, now when he could, would requite violence with violence and return to the capital at the head of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue and his laws along with him. Perhaps he was mistaken. Sulla was just as eager for the war against Mithradates as he was probably averse to the political exhalations of the capital; considering his original spirit of indifference and his unrivalled political nonchalance, there is great probability that he by no means intended the coup d'etat which Sulpicius expected, and that, if he had been let alone, he would have embarked without delay with his troops for Asia so soon as he had captured Nola, with the siege of which he was still occupied.
Marius Nominated Commander-In-Chief In Sulla's Stead
But, be this as it might, Sulpicius, with a view to parry the presumed blow, conceived the scheme of taking the supreme command from Sulla; and for this purpose joined with Marius, whose name was still sufficiently popular to make a proposal to transfer to him the chief command in the Asiatic war appear plausible to the multitude, and whose military position and ability might prove a support in the event of a rupture with Sulla. Sulpicius probably did not overlook the danger involved in placing that old man--not less incapable than vengeful and ambitious--at the head of the Campanian army, and as little the scandalous irregularity of entrusting an extraordinary supreme command by decree of the people to a private man; but the very tried incapacity of Marius as a statesman gave a sort of guarantee that he would not be able seriously to endanger the constitution, and above all the personal position of Sulpicius, if he formed a correct estimate of Sulla's designs, was one of so imminent peril that such considerations could hardly be longer heeded. That the worn-out hero himself readily met the wishes of any one who would employ him as a -condottiere-, was a matter of course; his heart had now for many years longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and not less perhaps for an opportunity of once settling accounts thoroughly with the majority of the senate. Accordingly on the proposal of Sulpicius Gaius Marius was by decree of the people invested with extraordinary supreme, or as it was called proconsular, power, and obtained the command of the Campanian army and the superintendence of the war against Mithradates; and two tribunes of the people were despatched to the camp at Nola, to take over the army from Sulla.
Sulla's Recall
Sulla was not the man to yield to such a summons. If any one had a vocation to the chief command in the Asiatic war, it was Sulla. He had a few years before commanded with the greatest success in the same theatre of war; he had contributed more than any other man to the subjugation of the dangerous Italian insurrection; as consul of the year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with the command in it after the customary way and with the full consent of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to him by marriage. It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circumstances to an old military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings. Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such an order, nor dependent enough to need to do so. His army was-- partly in consequence of the alterations of the military system which originated with Marius, partly from the moral laxity and the military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla--little more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader and indifferent to political affairs. Sulla himself was a hardened, cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler, formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily captured than Nola.
Sulla's March On Rome
On these views he acted. He assembled his soldiers--there were six legions, or about 35,000 men--and explained to them the summons that had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander- in-chief would undoubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood, but another formed of fresh troops. The superior officers, who still had more of the citizen than the soldier, kept aloof, and only one of them followed the general towards the capital; but the soldiers, who in accordance with earlier experiences(23) hoped to find in Asia an easy war and endless booty, were furious; in a moment the two tribunes that had come from Rome were torn in pieces, and from all sides the cry arose that the general should lead them to Rome. Without delay the consul started, and forming a junction with his like-minded colleague by the way, he arrived by quick marches--little troubling himself about the deputies who hastened from Rome to meet and attempted to detain him--beneath the walls of the capital. Suddenly the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; and then two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter. Many a worse quarrel, many an important feud had been brought to a settlement within those walls, without any need for a Roman army breaking the sacred peace of the city; that step was now taken, primarily for thesake of the miserable question whether this or that officer was called to command in the east.
Rome Occupied
The entering legions advanced as far as the height of the Esquiline; when the missiles and stones descending in showers from the roofs made the soldiers waver and they began to give way, Sulla himself brandished a blazing torch, and with firebrands and threats of setting the houses on fire the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market-place (not far from S.