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 under the new name of Italica, was to be the capital, and which was to embrace the whole peninsula. Fortunately for Rome, the Latins (including the various colonies of the Latin name throughout Italy), the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and the Campanians, did not join the confederacy. The Latins were instantly rewarded with the Roman franchise, and the field was taken against the confederacy. During two years, the war was carried on vigorously on both sides, the most distinguished of the Roman generals being Marius, Sulla, and Cneius Pompeius Strabo. At length ( 89), the Italians having been greatly reduced, and the whole peninsula having suffered much, the Romans saw fit to yield to demands which many even of those whose patriotism led them to fight against the allies believed to be just. The Roman citizenship was extending to all the nations of the peninsula south of the Po, the new citizens being either distributed, according to one account, among eight of the old tribes, or arranged, according to another, in fifteen new ones. At the same time the Latin franchise was conferred on the Gauls between the Po and the Alps.

Sulla had gained greater distinction in the Marsic War than Marius, who was now verging on old age. The public eye was consequently turned to Sulla; and as, on the appearance of the Cimbric hosts twenty years before, the Romans had placed their dependence on Marius, so now, on the breaking out of war in the East, they placed their dependence on his younger rival. Mithridates VI, the young king of Pontus, an Oriental by birth, but of Greek education, and a man of splendid abilities, had been for some years silently extending his dominions in western Asia; and the Romans, long jealous of his movements, had at length openly warned him to desist. Mithridates scouted the warning; marched through Asia Minor, putting the Romans to the sword; and was welcomed everywhere by the Asiatic Greeks as a deliverer from the Roman yoke: ultimately ( 88), crossing over into Greece, he menaced the Empire near its centre.

Sulla, then engaged with the Samnites, the last dregs of the Social War, was chosen consul, and invested with the command against the Eastern monarch. He was then in the forty-ninth year of his age. Vexed at the preference of his rival, the grim old Marius used all his efforts to have the appointment canceled, and himself nominated to the Mithridatic command. His political opinions recommending him to many, and a tribune named Sulpicius having procured the passing of a preliminary measure distributing the new Italian citizens among all the old tribes, which had now attained the number of thirty-five, he at length carried his point, and Sulla was superseded. But the aristocratic general was not a man to be trifled with. Marching from the south of Italy, where he was when he heard the news, he appeared with his army before the city, forced his entrance through the rotten walls, dislodged his antagonists from the houses from which they were throwing stones and missiles at his men, and compelled Marius and his adherents to save their lives by a precipitate flight. Marius escaped to Africa; Sulla, after settling affairs at Rome, set out for Greece. Here he speedily retrieved the Roman losses; sacked Athens, which had provoked him by its opposition; and reduced Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, to such extremities, that having crossed into Asia, Mithridates was glad to conclude a peace with him ( 84), by which he renounced all he had gained, and agreed to pay the expenses of the