Sulla's Civil War and Dictatorship
Sulla marched a Roman army on Rome in 88 BC, which no one had done, and it broke the Republic's central assumption. The quarrel was over the command against Mithridates of Pontus, who had overrun the Roman province of Asia and organised the massacre of some 80,000 Italians in one day. The command was worth an enormous fortune in plunder, and the senate gave it to Sulla as consul. A tribune then had it transferred by popular vote to Marius, an old man of seventy who had held six consulships and was Sulla's former commander. Sulla was already with his legions at Nola. He put the case to them that they would lose the campaign and its profits, and six thousand of them followed him to Rome; every one of his senior officers except one refused to go and left. He took the city, had Marius declared an enemy, and departed for the east. Marius came back the moment he was gone, took Rome with his own troops and Cinna's, and killed his opponents in the streets for five days before dying of natural causes in his seventh consulship. Sulla returned in 83 BC after making peace with Mithridates, won a civil war in Italy, and had himself made dictator with no time limit — the first since Hannibal — for the purpose of reconstituting the Republic. He published proscription lists: several thousand names, property confiscated, rewards for killers. He then resigned in 79 BC and retired, having demonstrated to Caesar exactly what was possible.
- Category: Political
