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 hand nearly 600,000 pounds (14,000 pounds of gold and 6000 pounds of silver).  In the considerable portion of Italy, which still voluntarily or under compulsion adhered to the revolution, warlike preparations were prosecuted with vigour.  Newly-formed divisions of some strength came from Etruria, where the communities of new burgesses were very numerous, and from the region of the Po.  The veterans of Marius in great numbers ranged themselves under the standards at the call of his son.  But nowhere were preparations made for the struggle against Sulla with such eagerness as in the insurgent Samnium and some districts of Lucania.  It was owing to anything but devotion towards the revolutionary Roman government, that numerous contingents from the Oscan districts reinforced their armies; but it was well understood there that an oligarchy restored by Sulla would not acquiesce, like the lax Cinnan government, in the independence of these lands as now de facto subsisting; and therefore the primitive rivalry between the Sabellians and the Latins was roused afresh in the struggle against Sulla.  For Samnium and Latium this war was as much a national struggle as the wars of the fifth century; they strove not for a greater or less amount of political rights, but for the purpose of appeasing long-suppressed hate by the annihilation of their antagonist.  It was no wonder, therefore, that the war in this region bore a character altogether different from the conflicts elsewhere, that no compromise was attempted there, that no quarter was given or taken, and that the pursuit was continued to the very uttermost.

Thus the campaign of 672 was begun on both sides with augmented military resources and increased animosity.  The revolution in particular threw away the scabbard:  at the suggestion of Carbo the Roman comitia outlawed all the senators that should be found in Sulla’s camp.  Sulla was silent; he probably thought that they were pronouncing sentence beforehand on themselves.

Sulla Proceeds to Latium to Oppose the Younger Marius
His Victory at Sacriportus
Democratic Massacres in Rome