Nevertheless, the government was at odds with itself; there was unrest in the provinces, private armies springing up and a consul had been murdered by his own men. No matter that the root cause of most of this disruption was Sulla himself. That Rome was in a parlous state was all the justification that Sulla needed to take matters into his own hands. As he had done in 88 BC in his earlier march on Rome, now in the spring of 83 BC Sulla set out for Italy publicly announcing his intention of ‘restoring order’.
