Hello and welcome to this episode of Epoch where I shall be continuing my narrative all about

the decline of fall of the Roman Republic.

Last time I left off with Sulla besieging the town of Nola right at the very very end of the social wars.

Well the social wars had more or less come to an end.

There were now to be consular elections and a grand priors to be fought over, i.e. who would get to command the armies to be led against

mythradites in the east, last time I set up mythradites and his rebellion in the east.

Now all the senior people in Rome that could have been picked

would love to have been selected to lead that army against Mithradatesis because it promised a

fantastic amount of wealth. The Eastern Roman world was always

considered or was much much richer than the West. It's funny nowadays Western

Europe is richer than Eastern Europe or the Mediterranean or the near

East. Back then the East was richer. So if you got to lead an army back through the East

to reconquer the East, you were sure to collect lots and lots of money

and if you got all the way to Pontus which itself was very very rich

with the Redatus's home turf then whoever got the command was sure to become an extremely rich man.

And Sulla himself had returned to Rome from besieging Nola to run as consul and he'd won, and whereas he was the most preeminent general

with perhaps the exception of Marius himself was getting old a bit now bit

past his prime and if you remember had been disgraced politically a good 10 years ago.

So Sula was the obvious choice and once he'd won the console ship he got the command

to go and fight Mithrad 80s, which was the greatest prize at that point

you would become assuming you won,

would become the most triumphant commander in all of Rome

...