Their years of power in Rome had allowed the Cinnan regime to place loyal men in key positions across the empire. Scipio Asiaticus was still out on the Macedonian frontier with two legions. A loyal Cinnan partisan named Hadrianus had secured control of Africa and was raising men and supplies. Sertorius had strong connections in Cisalpine Gaul that could be turned to the cause. The island of Sicily, meanwhile, had long ago fallen into the hands of longtime populare stalwart Gaius Norbanus. As a tribune in 103, Norbanus had worked with Saturninus to stir up the riots that exiled Caepio and Mallius. He had survived the bloody purge of 100 and resumed a regular career, eventually being elected praetor and assigned to Sicily. But shortly after he arrived on the island the Social War broke out and the Senate extended all provincial commands. Norbanus remained in place through the Social War, and when the Cinnan regime captured Rome, Norbanus gladly pledged his loyalty. By the spring of 84, Norbanus had been governing Sicily for at least seven years; its all-important grain and manpower were in his safe hands.5
A wild card in all of this was Gnaeus Pompeius, the twenty-one-year-old son of the late Pompey Strabo. The man known to history as Pompey the Great was still too young to hold a magistracy, but had become the head of the Pompeius household when his father died over the winter of 87–86. This assumption of authority gave Pompey control over the impressive client network his father had built up in northern Italy. Far more popular than his father, Pompey consolidated personal control over the family network thanks to his ambitious charisma. Cicero says Pompey was “a man who was born to excel in every thing, would have acquired a more distinguished reputation for his eloquence, if he had not been diverted from the pursuit of it by the more dazzling charms of military fame.” Though he had barely emerged into adulthood, Pompey already commanded attention—and securing his loyalty would be a key objective of both sides in the coming civil war.6
After a year of careful preparation made possible by Sulla’s lingering in Asia, Carbo finally presided over new consular elections. Rather than stay in office himself, Carbo orchestrated the election of two close allies of the regime for the consulship of 83: Scipio Asiaticus and Gaius Norbanus. Though sometimes portrayed as moderate members of the Cinnan party, Asiaticus and Norbanus were amongst Sulla’s most implacable opponents and were elevated specifically because they were men capable of prosecuting a civil war without craving reconciliation like the tired old men in the Senate. Carbo himself meanwhile set down the consulship to become proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul, a country full of resources and men that sat poised atop the peninsula. Carbo’s path from consul of Rome to proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul blazed a trail that would be followed by both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.7
The elections complete, Carbo settled a matter of pro forma business: he induced the Senate to decree the senatus consultum ultimum. This gave the new consuls the absolute power to do what was necessary to protect the state, which the Cinnans had just as much claim to as Sulla did: “For the sympathies of the people were much in favor of the consuls, because the action of Sulla, who was marching against his country, seemed to be that of an enemy, while that of the consuls, even if they were working for themselves, was ostensibly the cause of the republic.” The decree in hand, Asiaticus and Norbanus received Italy as their consular province. With the entire western empire at their backs, they entered 83 feeling good about their odds of burying Sulla and his vaunted legions.8
ON THE OTHER side of the Adriatic, Sulla was also preparing. The settlement of Asia was not just about restoring Roman domination: it was about putting the wealth of the province at his disposal. With his coffers stocked from a winter of tax collection, Sulla could afford whatever came next. He also built a fleet of over a thousand ships to ferry his men to Italy and keep them supplied indefinitely from Greece and Asia. As the Cinnans claimed the resources of the west, Sulla claimed the east.
