unconstitutional deposition of the popular consul and the interference of the senate with the rights of the sovereign people told on the common soldier, and the gold of the consul or rather of the new burgesses made the breach of the constitution clear to the officers.  The Campanian army recognized Cinna as consul and swore the oath of fidelity to him man by man; it became a nucleus for the bands that flocked in from the new burgesses and even from the allied communities; a considerable army, though consisting mostly of recruits, soon moved from Campania towards the capital.  Other bands approached it from the north.  On the invitation of Cinna those who had been banished in the previous year had landed at Telamon on the Etruscan coast.  There were not more than some 500 armed men, for the most part slaves of the refugees and enlisted Numidian horsemen; but, as Gaius Marius had in the previous year been willing to fraternize with the rabble of the capital, so he now ordered the -ergastula-in which the landholders of this region shut up their field-labourers during the night to be broken open, and the arms which he offered to these for the purpose of achieving their freedom were not despised.  Reinforced by these men and the contingents of the new burgesses, as well as by the exiles who flocked to him with their partisans from all sides, he soon numbered 6000 men under his eagles and was able to man forty ships, which took their station before the mouth of the Tiber and gave chase to the corn-ships sailing towards Rome.  With these he placed himself at the disposal of the “consul” Cinna.  The leaders of the Campanian army hesitated; the more sagacious, Sertorius in particular, seriously pointed out the danger of too closely connecting themselves with a man whose name would necessarily place him at the head of the movement, and who yet was notoriously incapable of any statesmanlike action and haunted by an insane thirst for revenge; but Cinna disregarded these scruples, and confirmed Marius in the supreme command in Etruria and at sea with proconsular powers.

Dubious Attitude of Strabo
The Cinnans around Rome

Thus the storm gathered around the capital, and the government could no longer delay bringing forward their troops to protect it.(1) But the forces of Metellus were detained by the Italians in Samnium and before Nola; Strabo alone was in a position to hasten to the help of the capital.  He appeared and pitched his camp at the Colline gate:  with his numerous and experienced army he might doubtless have rapidly and totally annihilated the still weak bands of insurgents; but this seemed to be no part of his design.  On the contrary he allowed Rome to be actually invested by the insurgents.  Cinna with his corps and that of Carbo took post on the right bank of the Tiber opposite to the Janiculum, Sertorius on the left bank confronting Pompeius over against the Servian wall.  Marius with his band which had gradually increased to three legions, and in possession