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 even 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