For the second time in two years, Rome had fallen to a Roman army. Yet the two conquests were not the same. Sulla maintained to the end that he was a consul restoring order in the city after an outbreak of mob rule. Whatever his inclinations, apart from punishing those he considered guilty of inciting that mob rule, he had refrained from vengeance. Vengeance, on the other hand was what Marius was all about. Guilt or innocence had little to do with it. His intention was not to restore order, but to make sure that those whom he considered as having betrayed him now paid for it with their lives.
