While on the public stage, Cinna was the dominant leader of a tense coalition that ruled Rome for three years. And while Cinna obviously had a dismissive attitude toward republican norms, so did everyone else. Despite repeated attacks from men like Cicero who called him a “monster of cruelty,” Cinna was no more a lawless and wicked tyrant than any of the other men who played the deadly new game of violent politics. Cinna was certainly not an unimaginative dictator who used brutality only to secure petty whims and pleasures. The regime Cinna led tried to address the economic devastation of Italy, begin the process of fully integrating the Italians, and lay the groundwork for a return to peace. It was not inevitable that Sulla would win the looming confrontation, and there was a real possibility that it would be the Cinnans, not the Sullans, who would define the future of the Republic. But Cinna would not be there to lead the defense of his regime. Instead, he was murdered by a random soldier in the heat of an argument. The historian Velleius Paterculus concluded, “He was a man who deserved to die by the sentence of his victorious enemies rather than at the hands of his angry soldiers. Of him one can truly say that he formed daring plans, such as no good citizen would have conceived, and that he accomplished what none but a most resolute man could have accomplished, and that he was foolhardy enough in the formulation of his plans, but in their execution, a man.”65
* They were also pretty mad Sulla had left them behind.
* Son of the Lucullus who behaved so disgracefully during the Second Servile War. Also probably the unnamed quaestor who remained with Sulla for the march on Rome.
* The father of THE Marcus Crassus.
Thus the seditions proceeded from strife and contention to murder, and from murder to open war… Henceforth there was no restraint upon violence either from the sense of shame, or regard for law, institutions, or country.
APPIAN1
IN THE WAKE OF CINNA’S SUDDEN DEATH, CARBO CANCELED THE plan to fight in Greece. If war came, it would be fought in Italy. Returning to Rome, Carbo faced pressure from the Senate to ensure that it did not come to that. Though he never stopped mobilizing, Carbo did try to outflank his enemies by proposing that
Now sole consul, Carbo spent all of 84 BC raising an army. Despite the mutiny in Ancona, it was not hard to raise soldiers. Under Cinna’s guidance the Senate already passed a decree recognizing both citizenship and voting equality for the Italians. Recruiters made the obvious case that when Sulla came back all these advances would be canceled. Even if they cared little for the dynamics of high Roman politics, every Italian could agree that civitas and suffragium were worth fighting for. As long as Sulla remained hostile to the idea of Italian equality, he could expect endless waves of resistance upon his return to the peninsula.3
Waves of Italians weren’t the only thing Sulla would face upon his return—also on board with the growing anti-Sullan coalition were the plebs urbana of Rome. The plebs urbana had been staunchly opposed to Italian citizenship and were thus unhappy additions to the Cinnan fold. But they did not have much of a choice. If Sulla returned to Rome, he was not likely to be as benevolent as he was after the first march. The murder of his friends and destruction of his property guaranteed that there would be a vicious punitive response. Tales of the sack of Athens had already filtered back to Italy. Fearing the same treatment, the plebs urbana lined up behind Carbo as he orchestrated a pan-Italian defense. By the time Sulla sailed for Italy, Carbo could call on as many as 150,000 men and the wealth and resources of the entire western empire.4
