He had a few years before commanded with the greatest success in the same theatre of war; he had contributed more than any other man to the subjugation of the dangerous Italian insurrection; as consul of the year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with the command in it after the customary way and with the full consent of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to him by marriage.

It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circumstances to an old military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings.
Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such an order, nor dependent enough to need to do so.

His army was-- partly in consequence of the alterations of the military system which originated with Marius, partly from the moral laxity and the military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla--little more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader and indifferent to political affairs.

Sulla himself was a hardened, cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler, formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily captured than Nola.
Sulla's March on Rome On these views he acted.

He assembled his soldiers--there were six legions, or about 35,000 men--and explained to them the summons that had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander- in-chief would undoubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood, but another formed of fresh troops.