for revenge and a counter-revolution. The consuls replied with refusing to
treat with a rebel in arms, and with a command to disband his troops.

Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and
manuscripts, the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands, to
decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consuls' answer, he sailed for
Brindisi in the spring of 83, with forty thousand legionaries and a large
fleet. The south of Italy made no resistance, and he secured a standing-
ground where his friends could rally to him. They came in rapidly, some
for the cause which he represented, some for private hopes or animosities,
some as aspiring military adventurers, seeking the patronage of the
greatest soldier of the age. Among these last came Cnaeus Pompey,
afterward Pompey the Great, son of Pompey, surnamed Strabo, or the squint-
eyed, either from some personal deformity or because he had trimmed
between the two factions and was distrusted and hated by them both.

Cnaeus Pompey had been born in the same year with Cicero, and was now
twenty-three. He was a high--spirited ornamental youth, with soft melting
eyes, as good as he was beautiful, and so delightful to women that it was
said they all longed to bite him. The Pompeys had been hardly treated by
Cinna. The father had been charged with embezzlement. The family house in
Rome had been confiscated; the old Strabo had been killed; the son had
retired to his family estate in Picenum,[3] where he was living when Sylla
landed. To the young Roman chivalry Sylla was a hero of romance. Pompey
raised a legion out of his friends and tenants, scattered the few
companies that tried to stop him, and rushed to the side of the deliverer.
Others came, like Sergius Catiline or Oppianicus of Larino,[4] men steeped
in crime, stained with murder, incest, adultery, forgery, and meaning to
secure the fruits of their villanies by well-timed service. They were all
welcome, and Sylla was not particular. His progress was less rapid than it