With Norbanus and Asiaticus having proven themselves unequal to the task of defeating Sulla, Carbo returned to Rome for the consular elections for 82. The Assembly returned Carbo to his third consulship and for a colleague elected Marius’s son, Gaius Marius the Younger. Still in his late twenties, Marius the Younger had never served a magistracy and was not eligible to stand for the consulship. But Carbo engineered the young man’s election because, as a matter of family honor and personal predilection, Marius the Younger was a relentless—even cruel—enemy of Sulla. Besides, he was not being
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