For the moment there was not much to fight about. The Italians now had everything they ever wanted. Though there is a great deal of ambiguity in the sources, it is almost certain Cinna fulfilled his promise to disperse the Italians among the thirty-one rural tribes. Though it would not be until after the Civil War that the Italians were
But by the end of 85, the anxious fog that hung over Italy began to clear, as the regime made first contact with the victorious Sulla. Pretending that he had not been outlawed, Sulla sent back to Rome a huge official accounting of his campaign, diplomacy, and ledgers. This put the Senate in an awkward position. They sent an embassy to meet with Sulla and sound out his intentions. While they waited, Cinna and Carbo won another controlled election for the consulship of 84 and mobilized the Italians for war.59
Sulla’s response to the senatorial envoys was furious but exact. Sulla denounced the foul treatment he had received from his enemies. He recounted his victories. Listed his credentials. He had just won back Asia! And his thanks? To be declared an outlawed. To have his property seized and burned. His wife and children forced in exile. But with a magnanimous heart Sulla offered simple terms: the Senate and People of Rome must restore his dignity and his property. That was all. He did also say that when he returned he might not spare his enemies—but if the Senate cared to spare them, he would respect their decree.60
WHILE THESE ENVOYS went to Asia and back, Cinna and Carbo continued to raise forces. The Senate ordered them to cease preparing for war until the envoys to Sulla returned, but the consuls merely nodded and went back to recruiting. It would be folly to sit back in Italy and wait patiently for their blood enemy to return at the head of five veteran legions. In fact, they now hoped to stop him before he reached Italy at all.61
With the peninsula only just putting itself back together after the devastation of the Social War, Cinna’s plan was to ferry an army across the Adriatic and confront Sulla in Greece. He already had two legions in Macedonia under Asiaticus. If all went according to plan, by the time Sulla finally made his way home from Asia, he would find his path blocked in Greece by a huge army of implacably hostile Italians ready to fight to the death to protect civitas and suffragium. But the consuls’ impatience to put men into position had fatal consequences. In what remains something of a historical mystery, Cinna refused to wait until spring to ship his new levies across the Adriatic, instead putting them on boats in the early winter months of 84.62
The first troop transports crossed the water fine, but a second convoy was caught in a terrible storm. The resulting shipwrecks drowned half the men. When the survivors washed up on the beach they promptly mutinied. This incident sent shivers through the rest of Cinna’s army, and a detachment in the city of Ancona refused to make the crossing. Cinna was forced to come in person to confront the men and remind them that the only thing he required of them was obedience. But the new recruits were angry, scared, and hostile.63
When Cinna arrived, he called for a general meeting to address the troops. But when he entered the throng of assembled soldiers, one man refused to give way and was struck by one of Cinna’s guards. The man fought back, so Cinna ordered him arrested. This order only inflamed the rest of the men. They pelted Cinna with furious insults and then pelted him with stones. Dodging this sudden onslaught, Cinna tried to extract himself from the mob, but he was grabbed by an angry centurion. The apprehended consul allegedly offered the man a ring to let him go, but the centurion growled, “I am not come to seal a surety, but to punish a lawless and wicked tyrant.” Without further debate the centurion pulled out his sword and cut Cinna down where he stood. Having only just appeared from historical thin air three years earlier, Cinna vanished as abruptly as he arrived.64
