March on Rome (88 BC)

In 88 BC, Sulla was elected consul and given the command of the war against the king of Pontus Mithridates, who had recently invaded the Roman province of Asia.

The same year, Sulla and his colleague Quintus Pompeius Rufus opposed the attempt of the tribune of the plebs Publius Sulpicius to enrol the Italians who received the Roman citizenship at the end of the Social War (91–87 BC).

Using armed gangs to intimidate the tribal assembly, Sulpicius removed Pompeius' consulship and forced Sulla to flee from Rome, after which he enrolled the Italians and gave the Mithridatic command to Marius.

Sulla immediately passed a law declaring Sulpicius, Marius, and ten other leaders, as public enemies, therefore encouraging their murder.

He passed several laws that weakened the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, while enhancing those of the curule magistrates and the senate, whose membership was also doubled.

Sulpicius wanted to pass a law in favour of the Italians who had received the citizenship in 90 thanks to the lex Julia, but had not yet been registered in the Roman tribes.

[23] A powerful orator and ambitious politician, Sulpicius was initially a friend of the consul Pompeius Rufus and had decisively prevented Caesar Strabo from running against Sulla, maybe to attract the latter's goodwill so he would not challenge his Italian bill.

[27] Like the other main politicians of the period, the old general, six times consul and very influential among the equites and Italian gentry, wanted the command against Mithridates, and also to settle some old grudges against Sulla.

[28] In exchange for supporting the Italian bill, Marius requested Sulpicius to pass a law transferring the Eastern command from Sulla to him.

[31] Sulpicius assembled a large bodyguard of 600 equites and a private army of 3,000 men, probably to avoid the same fate as previous revolutionary tribunes—such as the Gracchi and Saturninus—and to intimidate voters.

In return, Sulpicius provoked a riot with his gangs that killed Pompeius' son and forced Sulla to seek shelter into the house of Marius, who apparently negotiated his survival on the condition that he cancelled the justitium, which would let the Italian bill pass.

Marius also allowed Sulla to leave Rome in order to finish the siege of Nola in Campania, one of the last pockets of resistance of the Social War.

[37][38] These bills broke many constitutional practices; the most outstanding one was the transfer of the eastern command from a consul to a privatus (Marius), a citizen that did not hold any magistracy—an unprecedented occurrence.

While he was pretending to build a camp, he had dispatched two of his military tribunes, Lucius Minucius Basilus and Gaius Mummius, with the cavalry and some light troops to seize the Esquiline Gate, on the eastern wall of Rome.

Seeing that Sulla's legions were moving behind their back, Marius and Sulpicius retreated to the Oppian Hill and the Temple of Tellus, where they promised the local slaves freedom if they fought for them.

[83][84][85][86] Sulla ensured that his legions remained under control by executing a few soldiers who had looted some houses, then spread his troops over the city for the night to maintain order.

[94][95] As nobody else dared to oppose Sulla, the senate approved a list of twelve people who were declared hostes, "foreign enemies", another constitutional precedent.

[162][163] The swiftness with which Sulla passed several complex laws in quick succession just after having taking Rome shows that there was no improvisation; he had devised his political program for a while and took advantage of his control of the institutions to enforce it.

However, without his army to scare his opponents, several candidates could speak freely against him, and even support an amnesty of the hostes still alive; the results were thus not in his favour.

[171] Voters in the tribes were perhaps shocked by Sulla's coup, the murder of Sulpicius—who was still a sacrosanct tribune of the plebs—and the action against Marius, a popular hero since the Cimbrian War.

Sulla's favourite candidate for the consulship, Publius Servilius Vatia, also lost, even though he had arranged a triumph for him on 21 October 88 in order to boost his popularity.

The wealthy voters who dominated the centuriate assembly were against both Sulpicius' mass enrolment of new Italian citizens and Sulla's coup, even though his reforms benefited them.

However, he was a harsh conservative from a family with distinguished records of resisting popular agitation—he personally fought Saturninus in his youth—which made his election possible in the political context of 88.

Keaveney says he possibly made a campaign against Sulla,[188] while Barry Katz tells that Cinna was at the time from a more conservative background, with ancestors and relatives hostile to the Gracchi.

[190][191][192] This oath had perhaps been required by a law of Sulla, approved by the senate and voted by the centuriate assembly because it enshrined the political and social status quo.

Cinna then followed Sulla's example; he gathered troops still present in Italy and, appealing to the men to vindicate his consular status, marched on Rome with the help of Marius, who had returned from Africa.

[206][207] In the subsequent confrontation, known as the Bellum Octavianum, the other consul Octavius could only rely on the troops of Pompeius Strabo, but the latter died in a plague, which enabled Cinna and Marius to capture the city.

They insist on the novelty of Sulla's march, which destroyed the previous aristocratic system of governance, and the dangerous precedent he set for strong and unscrupulous generals.

Christopher Mackay writes that "at this point, Sulla took a step that would seal the fate of the Republic, even though it would continue to function (more or less) for another four decades".

[216] C. F. Konrad says that "For the res publica of the nobles, it signaled the beginning of the end",[217] a view followed by Harriet Flower, "Sulla's decision to march on Rome with the army... was a devastating choice that led to the complete collapse of the traditional republican culture of the nobiles".