The same year that Cinna died, Sulla landed at Brundisium, with 40,000
troops and a large following of nobles who had fled from Rome. Every
preparation was made by the Marian party for his reception; but no
sooner did he land in Italy than the soldiers were induced to desert
to him in immense numbers, and he soon found himself in possession of
all Lower Italy. Among those who hastened to his standard was young
POMPEY, then but twenty-three years old, and it was to his efforts
that Sulla's success was largely due. The next year, 83, the Marian
party was joined by the Samnites, and the war raged more fiercely than
ever. At length, however, Sulla was victorious under the walls of
Rome. The city lay at his mercy. His first act, an order for the
slaughter of 6,000 Samnite prisoners, was a fit prelude to his conduct
in the city. Every effort was made to eradicate the last trace of
Marian blood and sympathy from the city. A list of men, declared to be
outlaws and public enemies, was exhibited in the Forum, and a
succession of wholesale murders and confiscations throughout Rome and
Italy, made the name of Sulla forever infamous.

Having received the title of Dictator, and celebrated a splendid
triumph for the Mithradátic war, he carried (80-79) his political
measures. The main object of these was to invest the Senate, the
thinned ranks of which he filled with his own creatures, with full
control over the state, over every magistrate and every province.

In 79 he resigned his dictatorship and went to Puteoli, where he died
the next year, from a loathsome disease brought on by his excesses.


THE REFORMS OF SULLA.