Sulla had concluded peace with
Mithradates (669-670). Hitherto Sulla had been silent so far as
the authorities ruling in the capital were concerned. Now a letter
from him reached the senate, in which he reported the termination
of the war and announced his return to Italy; he stated that he
would respect the rights conferred on the new burgesses, and that,
while penal measures were inevitable, they would light not on the
masses, but on the authors of the mischief. This announcement
frightened Cinna out of his inaction: while he had hitherto taken
no step against Sulla except the placing some men under arms and
collecting a number of vessels in the Adriatic, he now resolved to
cross in all haste to Greece.

Attempts at a Compromise
Death of Cinna
Carbo and the New Burgesses Arm against Sulla

On the other hand Sulla's letter, which in the circumstances might
be called extremely moderate, awakened in the middle-party hopes
of a peaceful adjustment. The majority of the senate resolved,
on the proposal of the elder Flaccus, to set on foot an attempt
at reconciliation, and with that view to summon Sulla to come under
the guarantee of a safe-conduct to Italy, and to suggest to the
consuls Cinna and Carbo that they should suspend their preparations
till the arrival of Sulla's answer. Sulla did not absolutely
reject the proposals. Of course he did not come in person, but
he sent a message that he asked nothing but the restoration of
the banished to their former status and the judicial punishment of
the crimes that had been perpetrated, and moreover that he did not
desire security to be provided for himself, but proposed to bring
it to those who were at home. His envoys found the state of things
in Italy essentially altered. Cinna had, without concerning
himself further about that decree of the senate, immediately after
the termination of its sitting proceeded to the army and urged
it embarkation. The summons to trust themselves to the sea at
that unfavourable season of the year provoked among the already
dissatisfied troops in the head-quarters at Ancona a mutiny, to
which Cinna fell a victim (beg. of 670); whereupon his colleague
Carbo found himself compelled to bring back the divisions that had
already crossed and, abandoning the idea of taking up the war in
Greece, to enter into winter-quarters in Ariminum. But Sulla's
offers met no better reception on that account; the senate rejected
his proposals without e