1.57 to 1.61

Rivalry between Marius and Sulla, an adherent of the senatorial party, for command in a war against Mithradates in Asia Minor led Sulla to march with his troops on Rome. For the first time Rome was invaded by a Roman army. As soon as Sulla and his legions were safely out of the way in Asia, Marius in turn seized Rome with his army and massacred many of the senatorial leaders. On his victorious return in 82 BC, Sulla took a fearful revenge, slaughtering more than 5,000 of the people's leaders and confiscating their goods. As "perpetual dictator" (81-79 BC) he passed laws transferring supreme power from the people to the Senate. The aristocrats, however, were too corrupt and feeble to hold power. The history of the remaining years of the republic is told in biographies of the great adventurers who now made themselves masters of the torn and disrupted state. They sometimes united to make their positions secure and sometimes waged savage civil warfare. The only thing that saved the vast edifice of Roman power from crashing to final destruction was the emergence of two brilliant statesmen, Gaius Julius Caesar and his great-nephew Augustus (Octavian). Scrapping the old republican framework, except in outward form, they remolded the tottering structure into an empire. All power was gradually concentrated in the hands of a single ruler, who was backed by the might of the Roman legions. How this change was brought about is told in the articles on Julius Caesar and Augustus. Two Centuries of Peace and Prosperity With the establishment of the Empire, the century of civil strife, which had also seen almost constant warfare abroad, was followed by two centuries of profound peace broken only by frontier warfare. At home literature and civilization flourished, and in the provinces responsible men held power. More and more the Mediterranean world came to resemble one great nation. Paved roads led from one end of Italy to the other and into what are now France and Germany. Fragments of Roman roads still exist even in faraway Britain, aqueducts and bridges in France, and Roman wells in the Egyptian oases of the Sahara Desert.