The army of the Optimates was divided.  The proconsul Metellus undertook, resting on the support of the Picenian insurrection, to advance to Upper Italy, while Sulla marched from Campania straight against the capital.  Carbo threw himself in the way of the former; Marius would encounter the main army of the enemy in Latium.  Advancing along the Via Latina, Sulla fell in with the enemy not far from Signia; they retired before him as far as the so-called “Port of Sacer,” between Signia and the chief stronghold of the Marians, the strong Praeneste.  There Marius drew up his force for battle.  His army was about 40,000 strong, and he was in savage fury and personal bravery the true son of his father; but his troops were not the well trained bands with which the latter had fought his battles, and still less might this inexperienced young man bear comparison with the old master of war.  His troops soon gave way; the defection of a division even during the battle accelerated the defeat.  More than the half of the Marians were dead or prisoners; the remnant, unable either to keep the field or to gain the other bank of the Tiber, was compelled to seek protection in the neighbouring fortresses; the capital, which they had neglected to provision, was irrecoverably lost.  In consequence of this Marius gave orders to Lucius Brutus Damasippus, the praetor commanding there, to evacuate it, but before doing so to put to death all the esteemed men, hitherto spared, of the opposite party.  This injunction, by which the son even outdid the proscriptions of his father, was carried into effect; Damasippus made a pretext for convoking the senate, and the marked men were struck down partly in the sitting itself, partly on their flight from the senate-house.  Notwithstanding the thorough clearance previously effected, there were still found several victims of note.  Such were the former aedile Publius Antistius, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius, and the former praetor Gaius Carbo, son of the well-known friend and subsequent opponent of the Gracchi,(14) since the death of so many men of more distinguished talent the two best orators in the judicial courts of the desolated Forum; the consular Lucius Domitius, and above all the venerable -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola, who had escaped the dagger of Fimbria only to bleed to death during these last throes of the revolution in the vestibule of the temple of Vesta entrusted to his guardianship.  With speechlesshorror the multitude saw the corpses of these last victims of the reign of terror dragged through the streets, and thrown into the river.

Siege of Praeneste
Occupation of Rome