ridates, came, like flocks of
vultures, to devour what the eagles had left.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII.

SULLA IN ITALY.

[Sidenote: Sulla sets out homewards.] Leaving Murena in Asia with
Fimbria's legions, Sulla, in 84 B.C., with his soldiers in good
humour, and with full coffers, at last set out homewards. Three days
after sailing from Ephesus he reached the Piraeus. Thence he wrote to
the Senate in a different style from that in which he had communicated
his victory over Fimbria, when he had not mentioned his own outlawry.
He now recounted the Senate all that he had done, and contrasted it
with what had been done to him at Rome, how his house had been
destroyed, his friends murdered, and his wife and children forced to
fly for their lives. He was on his way, he said, to punish his enemies
and those who had wronged him. Other men, including the
newly-enfranchised Italians, need be under no apprehension. We do not
know much of what had been going on at Rome beyond what has been
related in a previous chapter. Cinna and Carbo, the consuls, were
making what preparations they could when the letter arrived. But it
struck a cold chill of dread into many of the Senate, and Cinna and
Carbo were told to desist for a time, while an embassy was sent to
Sulla to try and arrange terms, and to ask, if he wished to be assured
of his own safety, what were his demands. But when the ambassadors
were gone, Cinna and Carbo proclaimed themselves consuls for 83, so
that they might not have to come back to Rome to hold the elections;
and Cinna was soon afterwards murdered at Ancona. The tribunes then
compelled Carbo to come back and hold the elections in the regular
manner; and Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and Caius Norbanus were
elected.

Meanwhile the ambassadors had found Sulla in Greece, and had received
his answer. [Sidenote: Sulla's response to an embassy from Rome.]
He said that he would never be reconciled to such criminals as his
enemies, though the Romans might, if they chose; and that, as for his
own safety, he had an army devoted to him, and should prefer to secure
the safety of the Senate and his own adherents. He sent back with the
ambassadors some friends to represent him before the Senate, and,
embarking his army at the Piraeus, ordered it to go round the coast to
Patrae in Achaia, and thence to the shores opposite Brundisium. He,
himself, having a fit of gout, went to Euboea,