ven allowing the envoys to enter Rome, and
enjoined him summarily to lay down arms. It was not the coterie of
the Marians which primarily brought about this resolute attitude.
That faction was obliged to abandon its hitherto usurped occupation
of the supreme magistracy at the very time when it was of moment,
and again to institute consular elections for the decisive year
671. The suffrages on this occasion were united not in favour
of the former consul Carbo or of any of the able officers of the
hitherto ruling clique, such as Quintus Sertorius or Gaius Marius
the younger, but in favour of Lucius Scipio and Gaius Norbanus,
two incapables, neither of whom knew how to fight and Scipio not
even how to speak; the former of these recommended himself to the
multitude only as the great-grandson of the conqueror of Antiochus,
and the latter as a political opponent of the oligarchy.(11) The
Marians were not so much abhorred for their misdeeds as despised
for their incapacity; but if the nation would have nothing to do
with these, the great majority of it would have still less to do
with Sulla and an oligarchic restoration. Earnest measures of
self-defence were contemplated. While Sulla crossed to Asia and
induced such defection in the army of Fimbria that its leader
fell by his own hand, the government in Italy employed the further
interval of a year granted to it by these steps of Sulla in
energetic preparations; it is said that at Sulla's landing 100,000
men, and afterwards even double that number of troops, were arrayed
in arms against him.

Difficult Position of Sulla

Against this Italian force Sulla had nothing to place in the scale
except his five legions, which, even including some contingents
levied in Macedonia and the Peloponnesus, probably amounted to
scarce 40,000 men. It is true that this army had been, during
its seven years' conflicts in Italy, Greece, and Asia, weaned from
politics, and adhered to its general--who pardoned everything in
his soldiers, debauchery, brutality, even mutiny against their
officers, required nothing but valour and fidelity towards their
general, and set before them the prospect of the most extravagant
rewards in the event of victory--with all that soldierly
enthusiasm, which is the more powerful that the noblest and the
meanest passions often combine to produce it in the same breast.
The soldiers of Sulla voluntarily according to the Roman custom
swore mutual oaths that they w