For Sulla, then, as for Marius, the stakes had grown perilously high – except that Sulla, unlike Marius, was yet to realise just how high they still had to go. Then, with the dust of Rome upon him, another messenger came galloping down the road that led to Nola. Arriving among the siege works, he was brought before the consul. The messenger proved to be one of Marius’ staff officers, and Sulla had only to see him to know that the news was likely to be bad. Even so, just how bad still came as a shock. There had been a plebiscite, Sulla was informed. Proposed by Sulpicius, it had been ratified by the Roman people and passed into law. By its terms, Sulla was demoted from the command against Mithridates. His replacement – inevitably – was Marius. The staff officer had come to take command of the army. Sulpicius had paid off his debt.
Sulla, first in consternation and then in mounting fury, retired to his tent. There he did some quick calculations. With him at Nola he had six legions. Five of these had been assigned to the war against Mithridates and one to the continued prosecution of the siege – in all, around thirty thousand men. Although much reduced from the numbers Sulla had commanded the previous summer, they nevertheless represented a menacing concentration of fighting power. Only the legions of Pompeius Strabo, busy mopping up rebels on the other side of Italy, could hope to rival them. Marius, back in Rome, had no legions whatsoever.
The maths was simple. Why, then, had Marius failed to work it out, and how could so hardened an operator have chosen to drive his great rival into a corner where there were six battle-hardened legions ready to hand? Clearly, the prospect that Sulla might come out of it fighting had never even crossed Marius’ mind. It was impossible, unthinkable. After all, a Roman army was not the private militia of the general who commanded it, but the embodiment of the Republic at war. Its loyalty was owed to whomever was appointed to its command by the due processes of the constitution. This was how it had always been, for as long as the Republic’s citizens had been going to war – and Marius had no reason to imagine that things might possibly have changed.
But Sulla did have reason: his hatred of his rival, his fury at the frustration of his ambitions and his utter belief in the justice of his case all helped him to contemplate a uniquely audacious and dreadful possibility. No citizen had ever led legions against their own city. To be the first to take such a step, and to outrage such a tradition, should have been a responsibility almost beyond a Roman’s enduring. Yet it seems that Sulla, far from havering, betrayed not the slightest hesitation. All his most successful operations, he would later claim, had been the result not of a measured weighing of the odds but of a sudden flash of inspiration. Such flashes, it appeared to Sulla, were divinely sent. Baleful cynic though he was, he was also an unusually religious man. He believed with perfect certainty that a goddess was prompting him; a great goddess, more powerful than any of the gods who might be affronted by his actions. Whatever he did, however high he reached, Sulla could be confident of the protection of Venus, who granted to her favourites both sex appeal and fortune.
How else, after all, to explain his extraordinary rise? As a man who set great store by loyalty, he had never forgotten that he owed everything to the two women who had left him their fortunes. Did this influence how he saw his relationship with Venus herself ? Did he see the goddess as another woman to be seduced and worshipped, in return for all she could provide? Certainly, throughout his life, Sulla deployed his charm as a weapon, on politicians and soldiers as much as on whores. In particular, he was adept at winning the rank-and-file legionaries to his side. He could speak their language and enjoy their jokes, and he soon developed a reputation as an officer prepared to do his men a favour. When combined with his parallel reputation for extraordinary good luck, fostered over the years by a succession of military victories and daring personal escapades, Sulla’s popularity with his troops was hardly a surprise.
Yet, to many, there remained something sinister about his charm. It could be read in his physiognomy. For, handsome as Sulla was, he had a violent, purple complexion, and all over his face, whenever he grew angry, mysterious white spots would appear. Medical opinion explained this disfigurement as the consequence of sexual perversion, a diagnosis that was also reckoned to confirm the persistent story that Sulla lacked a testicle. The seamy nature of such rumours had always dogged him. When Sulla had been appointed to his first campaign, Marius, as his commander, had expressed disgust at his new officer’s frivolous reputation. Much later, when Sulla had more than proved his military worth, and was boasting to a nobleman of lesser achievement but greater pedigree, the nobleman would only comment that there was something not quite right about a man who had come into such wealth after being left nothing by his father. Such disquiet about Sulla’s triumphs was expressed too consistently for it to be dismissed as snobbery and jealousy alone. His great victories against the Samnites, for instance, had required him to appropriate legions from their legitimate commanders, and even, on one notorious occasion, to wink at murder. In the early months of 89 BC, during the siege of Pompeii, a particularly obdurate defence had led the Roman troops to suspect their commander of treachery and lynch him. When Sulla arrived to take control of the siege from the murdered officer, he conspicuously failed to punish the mutineers, and was even rumoured to have instigated the crime himself. It says much about the ambiguous character of his reputation that such a story could not only be believed, but apparently boost his popularity with his men.
Certainly, having clubbed one officer to death, it appears that Sulla’s troops had developed a taste for dispatching uppity legates. When Sulla summoned them to a meeting on the parade ground and broke the news that he had received from Rome, they immediately turned on Marius’ envoy and stoned him to death. Unprompted, they then clamoured for Sulla to lead them on the capital, a demand to which Sulla delightedly acceded. His officers were so appalled by this plan that all except one resigned, but Sulla, knowing that he had already set himself beyond the pale, could no longer turn back. Leaving behind a single legion to continue the siege of Nola, he marched northwards. The news of his approach was greeted in Rome with disbelief. Some, such as Pompeius Rufus, the deposed consul, welcomed the news and hurried off to join him, but most felt only consternation and despair. Frantic embassies were sent in an attempt to shame Sulla into turning back, but to every appeal he would only answer blithely that he was marching on Rome ‘to free her from her tyrants’.3 Marius and Sulpicius, all too aware who were the objects of this menacing aim, desperately sought to buy time. As Sulla approached the outskirts of Rome they sent one final deputation, promising that the Senate would be assembled to discuss his grievances, and that they too would attend its meeting and be bound by its decisions. All they asked in return was that Sulla stay camped five miles from the sacred boundary of Rome herself.