Sulla maintained that it
was too late and that the agreement had been already concluded;
whereupon Scipio's soldiers, under the pretext that their general
had wrongfully denounced the armistice, passed over en masse to the
ranks of the enemy. The scene closed with an universal embracing,
at which the commanding officers of the revolutionary army had to
look on. Sulla gave orders that the consul should be summoned to
resign his office--which he did--and should along with his staff be
escorted by his cavalry to whatever point they desired; but Scipio
was hardly set at liberty when he resumed the insignia of his
dignity and began afresh to collect troops, without however
executing anything further of moment. Sulla and Metellus took
up winter-quarters in Campania and, after the failure of a second
attempt to come to terms with Norbanus, maintained the blockade
of Capua during the winter.

Preparations on Either Side

The results of the first campaign in favour of Sulla were the
submission of Apulia, Picenum, and Campania, the dissolution of
the one, and the vanquishing and blockading of the other, consular
army. The Italian communities, compelled severally to choose
between their twofold oppressors, already in numerous instances
entered into negotiations with him, and caused the political
rights, which had been won from the opposition party, to be
guaranteed to them by formal separate treaties on the part
of the general of the oligarchy. Sulla cherished the distinct
expectation, and intentionally made boast of it, that he would
overthrow the revolutionary government in the next campaign and
again march into Rome.

But despair seemed to furnish the revolution with fresh energies.
The consulship was committed to two of its most decided leaders,
to Carbo for the third time and to Gaius Marius the younger; the
circumstance that the latter, who was just twenty years of age,
could not legally be invested with the consulship, was as little
heeded as any other point of the constitution. Quintus Sertorius,
who in this and other matters proved an inconvenient critic, was
ordered to proceed to Etruria with a view to procure new levies,
and thence to his province Hither Spain. To replenish the
treasury, the senate was obliged to decree the melting down of
the gold and silver vessels of the temples in the capital; how
considerable the produce was, is clear from the fact that after
several months' warfare there was still on