His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, with the colors so ill-mixed, that his face was compared to a mulberry sprinkled with flour. Ambition, he appeared to have none, and when he exerted himself to be appointed quæstor[11] to Marius on the African expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained and disliked. Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the forum, but he had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendancy to the command of every situation in which he might be placed. The war of factions which exiled Marius, placed Sylla at the head of the expedition against the King of Pontus. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece and pursued him into Asia. He left him still in possession of his hereditary kingdom; but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a spirit, to remain thenceforward on his own frontiers. He recovered Greece, the islands, and the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. He extorted an indemnity of five millions, and executed many of the wretches who had been active in the murders. He raised a fleet in Egypt with which he drove the pirates out of the archipelago back into their own waters. He restored the shattered prestige of Roman authority, and he won for himself a reputation which his later cruelties could stain but not efface. During his Eastern campaign, a period of more than four years, the popular party had recovered ascendancy at Rome. The time was come when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for what had been done in his absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country; his task was finished. He had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him, but he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He intended to re-enter Rome with the glories of his conquests about him, for revenge, and a counter-revolution. Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and manuscripts--the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands--to decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consul’s answer he sailed for Brindisi in the spring of 83 with forty thousand legionaries and a large fleet.