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foreign wars, yet Rome had ceased to reward the Italian Allies with gifts of the Roman citizenship, and denied Italians parity in trade, commerce, and all the other benefits accruing to full Roman citizens. The leaders of the various Italian peoples were now clamoring with increasing vigor and resolution for equal status with Rome.
    Marcus Livius Drusus had a friend, Quintus Poppaedius Silo, who was an Italian of high estate; the leader of his people, the Marsi, Silo was determined to see all the Marsi become full Roman citizens. And Drusus sympathized with him. A great Roman aristocrat of enormous wealth and political clout, Drusus was sure that with his assistance the Italians would gain the longed-for franchise and equality.
    But matters within Drusus's own family were to undermine Drusus's resolve. His sister, Livia Drusa, was unhappily married to Drusus's best friend, Quintus Servilius Caepio (Caepio had taken to physically abusing her); then she met Marcus Porcius Cato, fell in love with him, and began an affair. Already the mother of two girls, Livia Drusa became pregnant by Cato and bore a son who she managed to convince Caepio was his child. Then her eldest girl, Servilia, accused Livia Drusa of infidelity with Cato, and precipitated a family crisis. Caepio divorced Livia Drusa and disowned all three children; Drusus and his wife stood by her. Livia Drusa then married Cato and gave him two more children, Porcia and Young Cato (the future Cato Uticensis). While all this was going on, Drusus had struggled to convince the Senate of the justice of Italian claims to the citizenship, but after Livia Drusa's scandal he found his task far more difficult, thanks to Caepio's sudden and bitter enmity.
    In 96 B.C. Drusus's wife died. In 93 B.C. Livia Drusa died. Her five children passed fully into Drusus's care. In 92 B.C. Cato died. Only the estranged Caepio and Drusus were left.
    Though considered too old for the office, Drusus decided the only way to obtain equality for the Italians was to become a tribune of the plebs and coax the Plebeian Assembly into granting the franchise against obdurate opposition from the Senate. An impressively patient and intelligent man, he did very well. But some of the senatorial diehards (including Scaurus, Catulus Caesar and Caepio) were absolutely determined he would not succeed. On the very eve of victory, Drusus was assassinated in the atrium of his own house. The time was late in 91 B.C.
    The five children of Livia Drusa plus his own adopted son, Drusus Nero, witnessed the horror of his lingering death. Only Caepio was left to those young people, but Caepio refused to have anything to do with them. So they passed into the care of Drusus's mother and his younger brother, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. In 90 B.C. Caepio died, and in 89 B.C. Drusus's mother died. Now only Mamercus remained. When his wife refused to shelter the children Mamercus was forced to leave them to grow up in Drusus's house. He put them in the charge of a spinster relative and her formidable mother.
    Sulla had returned from Nearer Spain in time to be elected urban praetor for 93 B.C. In 92 B.C. (while Drusus struggled to bring about the franchise for all of Italy) Sulla was sent to the east to govern Cilicia. There he discovered that Mithridates, emboldened by five years of Roman inertia, had once again invaded Cappadocia. Sulla led his two legions of Cilician troops into Cappadocia, ensconced them inside a superbly fortified camp, and proceeded to run military rings around Mithridates, despite the King's overwhelming superiority in numbers. For the second time Mithridates was forced to look a solitary Roman in the eye and hear himself curtly ordered to go home. For the second time Mithridates clipped his tail between his legs and took his army back to Pontus.
    But the son-in-law of Mithridates, King Tigranes of Armenia, was still at large and intent upon war. Sulla led his two legions to Armenia, becoming the first