The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

WHILE THESE POLITICAL prosecutions unfolded, the campaign season arrived in the spring of 90, and the Romans were ready to start a counteroffensive in multiple theaters. Consul Lucius Julius Caesar* was assigned to the Samnites in the south, while Publius Rutilius Lupus operated in the north against the Marsi. Meanwhile, proconsul Sextus Caesar was dispatched across the Apennines to Asculum. Spread out beneath the senior magistrates were an array of legates and praetors who operated with an unusual amount of independence. Among them were the men who would define the next violent phase of Roman politics: Metellus Pius, Pompey Strabo, Cinna, Quintus Sertorius, even old Marius came out of retirement. But no one used his service in the Social War to better political advantage than Lucius Cornelius Sulla.42