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Optimates, who belonged to the best families in Rome, at once left the city and fled to Greece to the camp of Sulla. So many senators also joined the general, that Sulla could act in the name of the Senate more truly than could his rival in Rome herself. He therefore proclaimed that when the war was over he would come back to Rome with his army and overthrow Cinna and his government.
The Consuls, when they heard this, at once began to enrol troops, that they might be prepared to hold the city against Sulla when he came.
But Cinna, after all, was not alive to meet his dreaded enemy. For in 84 B.C. the soldiers of the Consul mutinied and murdered him. Sulla did not return to Italy until the spring of 83 B.C.
