BELIEVING TIME WAS on his side, Sulla was in no hurry to force a climactic battle. Instead he recruited and politicked his way through communities throughout southern Italy to bring everyone over to his side. To combat these efforts, Carbo returned to Rome in July 83 and had the Senate declare everyone who joined Sulla an enemy of the state. Over the summer both sides fanned out to towns and cities across Italy to make their pitches. Sulla’s agents were able to point to their recent victories, defections of troops, and the allegiance of eminent statesmen. But most importantly they made the devastating promise that citizenship for the Italians would be respected. Carbo’s agents said that Sulla was known for his cruelty and duplicity. His brutal campaigns against the Hirpini and Samnites during the Social War were well known. Plus the sequence of events that had led to Sulla’s first illegal march on Rome had been kicked off by Sulla’s opposition to Italian citizenship. Most of Italy did not know whom to believe: “They were therefore obliged to shift their pretended allegiance from one side to the other, and to appease whoever was present.”25
The battle for control of Picenum was particularly fierce as Carbo’s agents tried to blunt the damage of Pompey’s defection. But with most of the leading men in the region already siding with the young general, Pompey was able to raise two more legions on Sulla’s behalf. Carbo sent in a detachment of legates to disrupt Pompey’s efforts, but instead they were driven out of the region, which now fell decisively into Pompey’s hands. Sertorius had better luck recruiting in the old Marian stronghold of Etruria, and when Asiaticus arrived after being released by Sulla, Sertorius was able to present the consul with four fresh legions.26
Asiaticus led these four legions into Picenum to confront Pompey directly, but was forced to endure the same shame he had endured at Sulla’s hands. After planting his legions near Pompey’s army, the soldiers began mingling, and Asiaticus’s men were again amenable to the promises made by the other side. When Asiaticus woke up in the morning, he once again found his men had all deserted to the other side to the enemy. In an age where conflicts were led by men who commanded unprecedented personal loyalty—Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Pius, Sertorius—Scipio Asiaticus was a singularly uninspiring leader who watched two full armies abandon him on the eve of battle. He fled into Gaul, never to return. Sulla, meanwhile, was now even more impressed that Pompey, “who was still extremely young, had snatched such a large army away from the enemy, but those who were far superior to him in age and reputation could hardly keep even their own servants in a dependable alliance.”27
Asiaticus’s loss of the legions he had just raised also convinced Sertorius that the time had come to move along. Disillusioned with the leadership of the anti-Sullan forces, Sertorius decided that Italy was likely lost—and if the cause was to survive, a prudent withdrawal was in order. Having been elected praetor for the year and given Spain as his province, Sertorius abandoned Italy and made his way overland toward Spain to raise new armies. After Sulla won the Civil War and liquidated all his enemies in Italy, Sertorius’s Spanish legions would be the only force left in the world opposing him. Sertorius would emerge as principal leader of the opposition to the coming Sullan regime. Many refugees fled Rome for the safety of Sertorius’s army and he managed to avoid defeat for nearly a decade, embarrassing the authorities in Rome who were trying to pretend like everything was settled and life had returned to normal.28
DESPITE SULLA’S MOMENTUM, however, the war was far from over. Most of north and central Italy remained in opposition and skeptical of his ultimate intentions. It is telling that Sulla was still not willing to risk all in battle, because it was a battle he might lose. In the fall of 83, Rome still remained in the hands of his enemies.
With Norbanus and Asiaticus having proven themselves unequal to the task of defeating Sulla, Carbo returned to Rome for the consular elections for 82. The Assembly returned Carbo to his third consulship and for a colleague elected Marius’s son, Gaius Marius the Younger. Still in his late twenties, Marius the Younger had never served a magistracy and was not eligible to stand for the consulship. But Carbo engineered the young man’s election because, as a matter of family honor and personal predilection, Marius the Younger was a relentless—even cruel—enemy of Sulla. Besides, he was not being elected for any special military leadership or political skill. Even by Carbo’s own admission, Marius was elected because the name Marius still meant something.29
