This Social War, as it was called, was waged with dreadful bitterness on
both sides, and the misery and ruin it brought on the country was
terrible. In the first year (90) things went against Rome, though all
their best generals, including Marius and his hated rival Sulla, took
the field. In the second year (89) Marius did little or nothing, but in
the south Sulla carried everything before him. But while the Romans were
winning they were also beginning to see that the war need never have
taken place: it was time to let the Italians take their share and make
them Romans. A Bill giving them voting rights was drafted and passed
into law. This did more than anything in the actual campaign to bring
the fighting to an end.

The war was still raging when news came that the East was ablaze.
Mithridates, King of Pontus, the richest king in Asia Minor, and far the
ablest, had taken the field and was preparing to overrun the Roman
provinces. Hard on the heels of this came worse. Mithridates had
defeated a Roman general, destroyed his army, captured his fleet and was
invading Asia. He came, he said, to free the people from the Roman
tax-collectors who sucked their blood away. Slaves and prisoners were
set free, those who killed Italians pardoned. On a certain day of the
year 88 there was a massacre of no less than 80,000 Italians in Asia.
The rebellion against Rome, thus begun, spread to Greece. Athens threw
off the Roman yoke; Mithridates, who dreamed of ruling over the whole
East, sent his general to help overthrow the Roman garrisons in Greece.

Thus while Romans were fighting one another the lands beyond the seas of
which they were so proud, and which were the source of most of their
wealth, were in rebellion. Men of their own race had been massacred by
Asiatics. Each day the news grew worse. In Rome there were riots in the
streets. Sulla had been named commander against Mithridates. Marius
could not bear this. He got his friends to bring in a Bill transferring
the command to him. It was carried, but amid such disorder that senators
and consuls fled from the city. Sulla had left the riots and disorders
of Rome to go to his army at Nola. There he received the order to hand
over the command to Marius. If Marius expected him to obey he had
misread the character of the man he hated. Sulla's answer was to march
upon Rome at the head of his legions. There he was welcomed by the
remnant of the Senate as the restorer of law and orde