Lion At The Gate

Historical Note

From 91 to 87 B.C., Rome fought a war against its Italian allies known as the "Social War". The Italian states fought for equal rights with Roman citizens (which the Romans did not want). Two of Rome's most famous generals who took part in the Social War were Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius. Sulla, in his political life, tended to align himself with the wealthy and uphold patrician (noble) values, while Marius, by then nearly seventy and long past his prime, generally aligned himself with the Roman public. Following the war, Sulla, who had recently been elected consul (Rome's highest military/political rank) returned to Rome and prepared to wage war on King Mithridates VI of Pontus, which Marius desired as well. Marius (with help from other politicians) managed to convince the senate to take this command away from Sulla, who was stripped of his title as consul and forced to flee the city. Sulla, highly charismatic and, since Marius was by this point an old man, the greatest general in the Roman Republic, travelled to the camps of the legions he had commanded in the Social War and convinced them to betray their new commanders and return to his service. Roman legionaries were generally paid by their commanders, rather than the state, and were often much more loyal to their commanders than Rome. In this case, they stood to gain much more by following Sulla, who led them to march on Rome. In an unprecedented event in the history of the Roman Republic, Sulla captured the city of Rome with a Roman army. The ancient Romans were very "by the books", and to do this was unthinkable to them. Nothing like this had ever happened before, but after this event it happened quite frequently. Upon taking the city, Sulla eventually stopped his legions from looting, insisting that he was not taking the city but liberating it. He began executing those who had previously opposed him (although Marius escaped), and after "order" was restored, took his legions east to fight Mithridates. This story occurs in 87 B.C., on the eve of Sulla's invasion of Rome. The characters (other than Sulla and Marius) are entirely fictional.