[Sidenote:  Sertorius sent to Spain.  No capable man left to oppose Sulla.] After this signal success at Teanum Sertorius was sent to Spain, either because, as is likely, he made bitter comments on the consul’s incompetence, or because it was important to hold Spain as a place for retreat.  Carbo hastened to Rome to and at his instigation the Senate outlawed all the senators who had joined Sulla—­a suicidal step, which would contrast fatally with Sulla’s crafty moderation. [Sidenote:  Burning of the Capitol.] It was about this time that the Capitol, and in it the Sibylline books, were burnt.  Some people said that Carbo burnt it, though what his motive could be is difficult to conjecture.  Sulla very likely regretted the loss of the Sibylline books as much as any man. [Sidenote:  Sulla’s situation at the close of 83 B.C.] With this the first year of the civil war ended.  Sulla was master of Picenum, Apulia, and Campania; had disposed of two consuls and their armies; and had, by conciliation and swearing to respect their rights, made friends of some of the newly-enfranchised Italian towns.

The consuls for the next year (82) were Carbo and young Marius.  The Marian governor in Africa was suspected of wishing to raise the slaves and to make himself absolute in the province.  Consequently the Roman merchants stirred up a tumult, in which he was burnt alive in his house.  In Sardinia the renegade Philippus did some service by defeating the Marian praetor, and so securing for Sulla the corn supply of the islands.  In the spring Sulla seized Setia, a strong position on the west of the Volscian Mountains.  Marius was in the same neighbourhood, and he retreated to Sacriportus on the east of the same range. [Sidenote:  Battle of Sacriportus.] Sulla followed him, his aim being to get to Rome.  A battle took place at Sacriportus.  Marius was getting the worst of it on the left wing, when five cohorts and two companies of cavalry deserted him.  The rest fled with great slaughter, and Sulla pressed so hard on them that the gates of Praeneste were shut, to hinder him getting in with the fugitives.  Marius was thus left outside, and, like Archelaus at Piraeus, had to be hoisted over the walls by ropes. [Sidenote:  Sulla wins the battle and besieges Praeneste.] Sulla captured 8000 Samnites in the battle, and now, for the first time, when the road to Rome was opened and victory seemed secure, showed himself in his true colours, and slew all of them to a man. [Sidenote:  Massacre at Rome by order of young Marius.] An equally savage butchery had been going on in Rome, where Marius, before he was blockaded in Praeneste, had given orders to massacre the leaders of the opposite faction.  The Senate was assembled as if to despatch business in the Curia Hostilia, and there Carbo’s cousin and the father-in-law of Pompeius were assassinated.  The wife of the latter killed herself on hearing the news.  Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the chief pontiff, and the first jurist who attempted to systematise Roman