ated with Gnaeus Octavius, a man
certainly of strictly Optimate views. It may be presumed that it
was chiefly the capitalist party, which by this choice retaliated
on the author of the law as to interest. Sulla accepted the
unpleasant election with the declaration that he was glad to see
the burgesses making use of their constitutional liberty of choice,
and contented himself with exacting from both consuls an oath that they
would faithfully observe the existing constitution. Of the armies,
the one on which the matter chiefly depended was that of the north,
as the greater part of the Campanian army was destined to depart for
Asia. Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the
people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and procured the recall
of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a manner as to spare as far
as possible his feelings--the more so, because the latter belonged to
the equestrian party and his passive attitude during the Sulpician
troubles had occasioned no small anxiety to the aristocracy. Rufus
arrived at the army and took the chief command in Strabo's stead;
but a few days afterwards he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo
returned to the command which he had hardly abdicated. He was
regarded as the instigator of the murder; it is certain that he
was a man from whom such a deed might be expected, that he reaped the
fruits of the crime, and that he punished the well-known originators
of it only with words. The removal of Rufus and the commandership of
Strabo formed a new and serious danger for Sulla; yet he did nothing
to deprive the latter of his command. Soon afterwards, when his
consulship expired, he found himself on the one hand urged by his
successor Cinna to depart at length for Asia where his presence was
certainly urgently needed, and on the other hand cited by one of
the new tribunes before the bar of the people; it was clear to
the dullest eye, that a new attack on him and his party was in
preparation, and that his opponents wished his removal. Sulla had
no alternative save either to push the matter to a breach with Cinna
and perhaps with Strabo and once more to march on Rome, or to leave
Italian affairs to take their course and to remove to another
continent. Sulla decided--whether more from patriotism or more from
indifference, will never be ascertained--for the latter alternative;
handed over the corps left behind in Samnium to the trustworthy and
experien