rbo, who had made himself
a name by his impetuous popular eloquence, and above all Quintus
Sertorius, one of the most talented of Roman officers and a man
in every respect excellent, who since his candidature for the
tribunate of the people had been a personal enemy to Sulla and had
been led by this quarrel into the ranks of the disaffected to which
he did not at all by nature belong. The proconsul Strabo, although
at variance with the government, was yet far from going along
with this faction.

Outbreak of the Cinnan Revolution
Victory of the Government

So long as Sulla was in Italy, the confederates for good reasons
remained quiet. But when the dreaded proconsul, yielding not to
the exhortations of the consul Cinna but to the urgent state of
matters in the east, had embarked, Cinna, supported by the majority
of the college of tribunes, immediately submitted the projects
of law which had been concerted as a partial reaction against
the Sullan restoration of 666. They embraced the political
equalization of the new burgesses and the freedmen, as Sulpicius
had proposed it, and the restitution of those who had been banished
in consequence of the Sulpician revolution to their former status.
The new burgesses flocked en masse to the capital, that along with
the freedmen they might terrify, and in case of need force, their
opponents into compliance. But the government party was determined
not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against
Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in
great part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The
tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords
were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force
against force. His compact bands of armed men not only cleared the
Via Sacra and the Forum, but also, disregarding the commands of
their more gentle-minded leader, exercised horrible atrocities
against the assembled multitude. The Forum swam with blood on this
"Octavius' day," as it never did before or afterwards--the number
of corpses was estimated at ten thousand. Cinna called on the
slaves to purchase freedom for themselves by sharing in the
struggle; but his appeal was as unsuccessful as the like appeal of
Marius in the previous year, and no course was left to the leaders
of the movement but to take flight. The constitution supplied no
means of proceeding farther against the chiefs of the conspiracy,