But the immediate outcome was the revolt of the Italians, the socii (whence the name social war).  They were not citizens, not on an equal footing with the citizens before the law.  The revolt was suppressed, but the legions were completely out of hand.  The attempt of Sulpicius to head the reform movement was answered by Sulla, who for the first time led a Roman army against Rome, crushed Sulpicius, prescribed some of his adherents, and placed the power of the senate on a stronger footing by legal enactment.  Then he went to the East, to conduct the war against Mithridates.

While Sulla was conducting his operations, military and diplomatic, with skill and success in the East, his arrangements at Rome had left discontent and disappointment seething.  There was another revolution, led by Cinna, Marius and Sertorius; it mastered Rome.  Marius spilt seas of blood, but soon died.  For three years Cinna was supreme, but he had no constructive policy.

But now Sulla had finished his work in the East.  He was returning at the head of a body of veterans devoted to him; and his diplomacy won over half Italy to his side.  The struggle with the revolutionary government was not greatly prolonged, and it was decisive.

In plain terms, the Roman constitution had gone utterly to wreck; Sulla was in something of the same position as Oliver Cromwell.  He had to reconstruct under conditions which made a constitutional restoration impracticable; but his control of the efficient military force gave him the necessary power.  That any system introduced must be arbitrary and find its main sanction in physical force—­that it should partake of terrorism—­was inevitable.

Sulla obtained the formal conferment on himself of absolute power.  He began by applying this rule of terror not vindictively, but with impersonal mercilessness, against the lives and property of the opposition.  In the constitution which he promulgated the senatorial body was alone recognised as a privileged class; the senate itself was increased, it recovered full control of the judiciary and of legislation; no power was left of cancelling membership.  The tribunician power was curtailed.

The civil and military functions of consuls and praetors were separated.  They were to hold civil power in Italy proper during their year of office; they were then to have a second year in military control of a province.  The planting of military colonies provided numerous garrisons whose interests were associated with the new constitution.  When Sulla had done his work, he resigned his extraordinary powers with entire indifference.  In a little more than a year he died.

The Sullan constitution saved the Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like Cromwell’s protectorate.  There were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves.  And there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on work demanding a master.