in the
field; he understood, better than any one else, the supreme danger in
which Rome stood. It was this, and not personal ambition in the ordinary
sense, that made him take the command against Mithridates, and march on
Rome when the Marius faction showed that they were incapable of keeping
order there.

Sulla could spend no time in Rome. The danger in the East was too
pressing. He sailed for Greece. Marius might return: if he did Sulla
knew that his own life might be in danger, but he could not trouble
about that. Roman rule in the East was threatened: it was his business
to save it. He saw, as Marius did not or could not see, that at this
terrible moment the fate of Rome trembled in the balance. Italy lay torn
and exhausted by civil war. Agriculture had been ruined, thousands
slain, and business of all kinds was at a standstill. The war in the
East shook the very life of the Republic to its foundations. Rome lived,
as London lives, on trade and supplies from overseas. They were stopped.
There was a money panic. The danger was the greater that the revolt
against Rome, both in Italy and in Asia, Greece, and elsewhere, had
right on its side. The Roman Government, in the years that had passed
since the defeat of Hannibal, had been bad: cruel, extortionate, and
unjust. In Rome itself there was bitter disunion.

When Sulla set sail he knew all this, knew how tremendous a task was
before him, and, believing as he did in his star, knew that he would
accomplish it. But only he of Romans then living could have done it.
Marius, hot-headed always and now old and weakened in will and mind by
drink, could not have succeeded. It needed all Sulla's extraordinary
coolness, all his iron will.

Though he saw that trouble would break out again in Rome as soon as his
back was turned, he also saw that the danger from the revolt of Greece
and from Mithridates was even more immediate and pressing. The whole
basis on which the Roman world rested would drop from under it if
Mithridates succeeded. The danger was, in its way, as great as that
which had threatened Rome when Hannibal crossed the Alps.

[Illustration: MITHRIDATES from a coin]

For Mithridates was an exceedingly able prince. His strength did not lie
in the huge hordes of soldiers he had behind him. Eastern soldiers were
a poor match for Roman legionaries, even when they far outnumbered them.
Nor did it lie in the vast wealth of the kingdoms over which he ruled:
though in