allies organized an alliance. The Samnites, Marsians, Apulians, Lucanians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians sent deputies to a convention, which submitted a statement of their claims to the senate. They said they had furnished two-thirds of the soldiers in the armies of Rome and had conquered the world for her, and they had a right to full citizenship. The senate refused to make any promise to them. The allies saw that they could get nothing by peaceful means, so they resorted to arms. They were known as the allies, (soci) of Rome, and their war is sometimes called the Social war.

They established a federated government with their capital in Corfinum, a town about eighty miles east of Rome, and called it Italica. To their federated state they gave the name of Italia; they organized a senate of three hundred members; and they appointed consuls and prætors. Their government seems to have been a close imitation of that of Rome. They organized large bodies of troops, and acted with the energy of experienced soldiers. They defeated several Roman armies, and frightened the senate, which passed a bill to grant full citizenship to those allies who had remained faithful or had returned to their allegiance. This measure, having been adopted, was received with much favor in those towns which had not declared themselves; and after a few months it was followed by another, granting citizenship to allies, whether of Italian or other blood, residing in Italy, who, within sixty days, should register oaths of fidelity in the office of a Roman prætor. In 89 B. C. the generals of Rome were victorious in nearly all their battles, and before the end of the year the rebellion had collapsed. In the two campaigns 300,000 men, including those who fell on both sides, were slain,

SEC. 462. Sulla.-In 88 B. C. Cornelius Sulla, who had been the chief lieutenant of Marius in the Numidian war, and had gained much reputation in the campaigns against the Teutons, Cimbrians, and rebel allies, was elected consul. By the senate he was assigned to the command of the army of Mithradates, who had declared war against Rome, slaughtered all the Romans in Asia Minor, taken a large number of Greek mercenaries into his pay, and occupied much of Greece.

This assignment offended Marius, who, after commanding successfully in the war against the rebellious allies, had returned to Rome and regained much of his popularity. He thought that he was entitled to the command in Asia, and to the profits and honors that would easily be reaped there. He appealed to the tribal assembly, which adopted a resolution that he should command in Asia. The base trick by which the patricians attempted to deprive consul Marius of his command in Numidia was now repeated by the plebeians to deprive consul Sulla of his command in Asia. In both cases it failed. Sulla, in Rome at the time, made all haste to southern Italy, where his army was stationed. He explained to them what had been done; how he, after being chosen consul, was to be deprived of the province assigned to him by the senate; and how, if he did not go to Asia, they would get no share in the spoils of Mithradates. They understood the last point. Marius would not select the legions which had served under Sulla. They had great faith in Sulla; they had looked forward with confidence and pleasure to the Asiatic expedition, and its booty; and they replied that they were willing to stand by him, even if he wished to return to Rome. That was exactly what he wished. He started immediately with

35,000 men, and he was joined by his consular colleague, Q. Pompeius Rufus. Marius made a little resistance at the city gates, but, having no considerable military force, was easily defeated. He then fled, and Sulla took possession of the city. Under his dictation the senate declared Marius and eleven of his friends outlaws.

Sulla then went with his army to Greece, where he began to fight the armies of Mithradates. He found the task much more difficult than he expected. Mithradates had an abundance of money, of war ships, of fortifications, and of good soldiers; and the Greeks of Asia Minor, as well as the other residents of that region, preferred his rule to that of the Romans. In three years, however, Sulla succeeded in his task, at least so far that he compelled Mithradates to surrender all claim to those portions of Greece and Asia Minor which he had taken from Rome; to deliver seventy ships of war and pay an indemnity of $2,000,000 in coin to Sulla. These terms were probably much more indulgent to the vanquished monarch than they would have been if Sulla had not been extremely anxious to return to Rome.

Before he left Italy to make war on Mithradates, in 87 B. C., Cornelius Cinna and an insignificant colleague had been elected consuls. Cinna, whose political opinions had not been clearly understood, gave notice of a bill to distribute the new citizens through all the tribes, instead of restricting them as before to a few tribes, in which they could exert little influence in the government.

When the bill was to be submitted to vote, several tribunes announced that they would interpose their veto. Cinna and his adherents threatened death to anyone who should undertake to defeat their measure in that way. Both parties were ready for violence, and a fearful rioț

was the result. The dead numbered 10,000, and the senatorial party were victorious. Cinna escaped, and the senate, after declaring his office vacant, appointed an aristocrat to serve as consul in his place.

The senatorial party were hated by the multitude throughout Italy. They had tyrannized over the allied cities and over the provinces. They had treated the majority of the soldiers in the armies of the republic as if they were little better than slaves. They had excluded the Samnites, Marsians, Pelignians, and Marrucinians from citizenship. They had been responsible for the fearful slaughter and devastation of the Social war. And now they insisted upon depriving the new citizens of political influence proportioned to the number of votes.

Cinna fled to southern Italy, where the new citizens were most numerous. He was received with great demonstrations of popular favor. He asked for soldiers, and a multitude were ready to follow him. At the head of an army he returned to the capital. The senators and their dependents were a ferocious mob, but they were not anxious to meet disciplined troops. The gates were opened to Cinna, who was accompained by Marius, furious against the senators who had declared him an outlaw. He had a band of ruffians, who murdered every man pointed out to them as an enemy of Marius. The man to whom their hero refused to speak in the street was slain at once. The slaughter and other violations of public order were frightful for day after day. For a time Cinna did not interfere; but after the disappearance of all the enemies whom Marius had denounced, Sertorius, with the approval of the consul, started out with his troops, and cut down all the marauders, several thousand in number. Then a semblance of order was restored. In January

86 B. C. the time came round for a consular election, but none was held. Cinna and Marius simply usurped the office, the latter now holding it for the seventh time. He had held it only two weeks when a natural death overtook him in his bed.

Without any known protest by the senate or popular assembly, Cinna, and his colleague, Carbo, declared themselves consuls in 85 and again in 84 B. C. In the latter year, after having been despot of Rome for three consular terms, Cinna was slain by some mutinous soldiers. In 83 B. C., when it was known that the conqueror of Mithradates was about to return with his army, determined, as he publicly declared, to take vengeance on his enemies, the leaders of the Marian party considered it advisable to hold an election for consuls. They chose two men of little note.

In the summer of that year Sulla arrived in Italy. Although he had announced that he would not interfere with "the rights of citizens new or old," he was regarded as the enemy of the newly enfranchised citizens, who looked upon the Marian party as their benefactors and friends. The consuls therefore obtained numerous recruits from Samnium, Apulia, Campania, Lucania, and other Italian districts recently admitted to Roman citizenship, and Sulla had a difficult task before him. The war resembled that against the rebellious allies six years previously. The Samnites did not lose their hereditary feelings. Though Roman citizens, they still hated Rome. An army of them, while opposing Sulla, attempted to seize the city, and their avowed purpose was to "destroy the lair of the wolves." If they had succeeded in getting possession, they might have taken vengeance for the ruthlessness with which their country had been treated.