The bone of contention snapped when a statue arrived from the friendly King of Numidia, commemorating the end of the African war and Jugurtha's downfall. Beneath the outstretched wings of Victory the gilded figures depicted the King handing over the chained Jugurtha to the King's great friend, Sulla. Marius was nowhere depicted. Marius nearly went out of his mind in a jealous rage at the idea of Sulla stealing his glory, and threatened to destroy the statue with his own hands unless the Senate passed legislation to remove it from the Capitol. The rhetoric on either side escalated until the breach between the two men was irreparable. Violence would surely have followed, but at that moment all private feuds were abruptly postponed by the eruption of the Social War between Rome and her Italian allies.
The scale of the Social War was unprecedented on Italian soil, as was the suffering and disruption it caused. But finally compromises were reached, intransigent rebels were mercilessly punished, and Rome endured, but not all Roman politicians fared equally well. Marius, well over sixty, his military powers faded and his health erratic, accomplished practically nothing in the war. Sulla, in the prime of his manhood and riding the crest of good fortune, was everywhere at once, making his reputation as hero, saviour, destroyer, currying the favour of the legions and amassing political prestige.
When it was over, Sulla had his first consulship at the respectable age of fifty. Rome, like a patient in violent throes, having just survived one great spasm, was about to undergo another.
Marius's populist movement reached its peak. His right-hand man was the radical tribune and demagogue Sulpicius, the elected representative of the masses, whose every move mocked the power and prestige of the noble establishment. Under Sulpicius, Roman citizenships were sold at auction to ex-slaves and aliens in the Forum, an act of impiety that drove the old nobility to apoplexy. More insidiously, Sulpicius gathered a private army of three thousand swordsmen from the equestrian class, ambitious and ruthless young men ready for anything. From these he culled an elite bodyguard of six hundred who milled constantly about the Forum. Sulpicius called them his Anti-Senate.
Abroad, Mithridates was ravaging Rome's eastern possessions, including Greece. The Senate voted to send Sulla to reclaim them, a duty which his previous service had earned and which should have fallen to him by right as consul. The command would be extraordinarily lucrative; there is nothing like a successful Eastern campaign to raise immense revenues through tributes, taxes, and outright looting. It would also give its commanding general immense power; in the old days Roman armies were loyal to the Senate, but now they follow the man who leads them. Sulpicius's Anti-Senate decided that the command should go to Marius. Chaos erupted in the Forum. The Senate was pressured into transferring the command from Sulla to Marius, and Sulla barely escaped being murdered in the streets.
Sulla fled Rome to take his appeal directly to the army. When the common soldiers heard what had happened, they pledged themselves to Sulla and stoned their staff officers (appointed by
Marius) to death. Marius's followers reacted in Rome by attacking members of the Sullan party and looting their property. In a panic, people changed from one side to the other, fleeing from Rome to Sulla's camp or from the camp to Rome. The Senate capitulated to whatever Marius and Sulpicius demanded. Sulla marched on the capital.
The unthinkable came to pass. Rome was invaded by Romans.
On the night before, Sulla dreamed. Behind him stood Bellona, whose cult had been brought to Rome from the East, whose ancient temples Sulla himself had visited in Cappadocia. She placed thunderbolts in his hands. She named his enemies one by one, and as she named them they appeared through a mist like tiny figures seen from a hilltop. The goddess told Sulla to strike them He cast the thunderbolts. His enemies were blasted asunder. He awoke, his Memoirs tell us, feeling invigorated and supremely confident.
"What kind of man has such a dream? Is he mad? Or a genius? Or simply a child of Rome blessed by Fortune, sent a reassuring message of success by the power that guides his destiny?
Before dawn, as the army assembled, a lamb was sacrificed. By the smoky torchlight the soothsayer Postumius read the entrails. He rushed to Sulla and knelt, offering up his hands as if for shackles. He begged Sulla to keep him bound as a prisoner so that he might be summarily executed if his visions were false, so certain was he of Sulla's triumph. So the legend tells us. There is something about a man like Sulla that makes savants and soothsayers clamour to grovel at his feet.
Sulla attacked from the east with a force of 35,000. There are sections of the Esquiline Hill that still bear the blackened scars of his advance. The walls were breached. The unarmed populace resisted with a bombardment of tiles and rubble cast from rooftops. Sulla himself was the first to take a torch in hand and set fire to a building where the people had gathered to resist. Archers shot fire-arrows onto rooftops. Whole families were burned alive; others were left homeless and ruined. The flames made no distinction between the guilty and the innocent, friend and foe. All were consumed.
Marius was driven back to the Temple of Tellus. Here his radical populism reached its apex: in return for their support, he offered freedom to the slaves of Rome. It says something for the prescience of the slaves or for the decline of Marius's reputation that only three slaves came forward. Marius and his supporters fled the city and scattered. The tribune Sulpicius, master of the Anti-Senate, was betrayed by one of his own slaves and put to death. Sulla first rewarded the treacherous slave by granting him freedom, then punished him as a free man by having him huried to his death from the Tarpeian Rock.
My thoughts, having wandered their own way on the wings of Metrobius's song, returned abruptly to the present. Echoing up from below us, Metrobius's voice affected a childish singsong with an atrociously crude Greek accent:
The crowd gasped. A few in the room tittered nervously. Chrysogonus suppressed his golden smile. Sulla's face was a blank. Rufus looked disgusted. Hortensius had just put something into his mouth and was looking about the room, uncertain whether he should swallow. The ruined young poet looked nauseated — literally nauseated, pale and sweaty, as if something on the table had disagreed with him and he might vomit at any moment.
The lyre fell silent and Metrobius froze for a long moment. The lyre struck a twanging note. Metrobius cocked his head. 'Well,' he said archly, 'it may not be Sophocles, or even Aristophanes — but I like it'
The tension broke. The room erupted in laughter; even Rufus smiled. Hortensius finally swallowed and reached for his goblet The young poet staggered up from his couch and rushed from the room, clutching his belly.
The lyre player strummed and Metrobius took a deep breath. The song recommenced.
Sulla resumed his term as consul. Marius was outlawed. His enemies exiled, the Senate pacified, and the populace dazed, Sulla set out for Greece to win glory and drive back Mithridates.
Afterwards, critics complained that his sweeping eastern campaign was the most expensive military expedition in the history of Rome.
For the Greeks the price was devastating. Always in the past the great Roman conquerors of Greece and Macedonia had paid homage to the local shrines and temples, endowing them with offerings of gold and silver — respecting, if not the present inhabitants, then at least the memories of Alexander and Pericles. Sulla treated the temples differently. He looted them. The statues at Epidaurus were stripped of their gilding. The sacred offerings at Olympia were melted for coin. Sulla wrote to the keepers of the Oracle at Delphi and requested their treasure, saying that in his hands it would be safer from the vagaries of war, and that if he did have occasion to spend it he would certainly replace it. Sulla's envoy, Caphis, arrived at Delphi, entered the inner shrine, heard the music of an invisible lyre, and burst into tears. Caphis sent word to Sulla, begging him to reconsider. Sulla wrOte back, telling him that the sound of the lyre was surely a sign, not of Apollo's anger, but of approval. The portable treasures were carried away in sacks. The great silver urn was cut into pieces and carted off on a wagon. The Oracle fell silent. In a hundred generations the Greeks will not forget.