oops. 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. Maria Maggiore). There the force hastily collected
by Marius and Sulpicius awaited them, and by its superior numbers
repelled the first invading columns. But reinforcements came up from
the gates; another division of the Sullans made preparations for
turning the defenders by the street of the Subura; the latter were
obliged to retire. At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline
begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more
to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens
to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself
had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned
against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general. Even
when the slaves were summoned to arm