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Cornelius Sulla, one of the men of highest family in Rome. He had all
the high culture and elegant learning that the rough soldier Marius
despised, spoke and wrote Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well read
in Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian could be; but he was
given up to all the excesses of luxury in which the wealthy Romans
indulged, and his way of life had made him frightful to look at. His
face was said to be like a mulberry sprinkled with salt, with a terrible
pair of blue eyes glaring out of it.

In 93 he was sent to command against Mithridates, king of Pontus, one
of the little kingdoms in Asia Minor that had sprung up out of the
break-up of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithridates, it had
grown very powerful. He was of Persian birth, had all the learning and
science both of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial to be
wonderfully learned in all plants and their virtues, so as to have made
himself proof against all kinds of poison, and he could speak
twenty-five languages.

He had great power in Asia Minor, and took upon himself to appoint a
king of Cappadocia, thus leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In the
midst of the Social War, when he thought they had their hands full in
Italy, Mithridates caused all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor to
rise upon the Romans among them in one night and murder them all, so
that 80,000 are said to have perished. Sulla was ordered to take the
command of the army which was to avenge their death; but, while he was
raising his forces, Marius, angry that the patricians had hindered the
plebeians and Italians from gaining more by the Social War, raised up a
great tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' resistance. He would
have done more wisely had he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for that
general came back to the rescue of his friends with six newly-raised
legions, and Marius could only just contrive to escape from Rome, where
he was proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. He was now
seventy years old, but full of spirit. First he escaped to his own farm,
whence he hoped to reach Ostia, where a ship was waiting for him; but a
party of horsemen were seen coming, and he was hidden in a cart full of
beans and driven down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go to
Africa; but adverse winds and want of food forced him to land at
Circaeum, whence, with a few friends, he made his way along the coast,
through woods and r