Sulla's Revolution

A History of Mankind (206)

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Away in the East, Sulla was stripped of his proconsulate. For the first time, a general was declared an enemy of the state while still in command of his troops and the middle of a large-scale war spanning continents against a supposedly formidable enemy.

Marius and Cinna most certainly were unfazed by their having set this curious precedent and had themselves elected as consuls for 86 BC; however, days after Marius assumed the consulship for a seventh time, he died, probably of mere old age.

Informed of all this, Sulla continued his campaign in Greece. At Chaeronea, where Alexander and Demosthenes had fought some 250 years earlier, his army met a Pontic-led Greek force three times its size, under the command of general Taxiles.

There, Roman military superiority was plain for all to see: the legions dug themselves up and then feigned a retreat towards another fortified position, so Taxiles unleashed his antiquated force, including chariots, against an enemy that was ready for just that eventuality. With help from siege artillery firing from the Roman positions, the Romans first shattered the Greeks’ resolve and then killed perhaps as many as 100,000 enemies in a terrible slaughter.