in-chief? "Sulla," said the Senate, "because he is Consul."
"Marius," said the mob, "because he has been Consul five times and
because he is the champion of our rights."

Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be in actual
command of the army. He went west to defeat Mithridates and Marius fled
to Africa. There he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into
Asia. He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents,
marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional highwaymen,
spent five days and five nights, slaughtering the enemies of the
Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and promptly died from the
excitement of the last fortnight.

There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated
Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle
a few old scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his
soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were
suspected of democratic sympathies. One day they got hold of a young
fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were going
to hang him when some one interfered. "The boy is too young," he said,
and they let him go. His name was Julius Caesar. You shall meet him
again on the next page.

As for Sulla, he became "Dictator," which meant sole and supreme ruler
of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died
quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly
raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent
a lifetime killing their fellow-men.

But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse.
Another general, Gnaeus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla,
went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates. He
drove that energetic potentate into the mountains where Mithridates took
poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a
Roman captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over Syria,
destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia, trying to revive the
myth of Alexander the Great, and at last (in the year 62) returned to
Rome with a dozen ship-loads of defeated Kings and Princes and Generals,
all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession of this
enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty
million dollars in plunder.

It was necessary that the government of Rome be pla