[Sidenote: Sulla lands at Brundisium, B.C. 83.] Early in 83 he sailed from Dyrrhachium to Brundisium, and was at once received by the town. He was particularly anxious not to rouse against himself the Italians, with whom his name was anything but popular, and he solemnly swore to respect their lately-acquired rights. Adherents soon flocked to him. [Sidenote: He is joined by Crassus;] Marcus Licinius Crassus came from Africa, and was sent to raise troops among the Marsi. He asked for an escort, for he had to go through territory occupied by the enemy. 'I give thee,' said Sulla hotly, 'thy father, thy brother, thy friends and thy kinsmen, who were cut off by violence and lawlessness, and whose murderers I am now hunting down.' [Sidenote: by Metellus Pius;] Quintus Metellus Pius came from Liguria, whither he had escaped from Africa, after holding out there against the Marians as long as he could. [Sidenote: by Ofella;] Quintus Lucretius Ofella also came, soon to find to his cost that he had chosen a master who could as readily forget as accept timely service. [Sidenote: by Cn. Pompeius;] Most welcome of all was Cneius Pompeius, welcome not only for his talents, energy, and popularity, but because he did not come empty-handed. He had taken service under Cinna, but had been looked on with distrust, and an action had been brought against him to make him surrender plunder which his father, Cneius Pompeius Strabo, was said to have appropriated when he took Auximum. Carbo had pleaded for him, and he had been acquitted. But, as soon as Sulla was gaining ground in Italy, he went to Picenum where he had estates, and expelled from Auximum the adherents of Carbo, and then passing from town to town won them one by one from his late protector's interests, and got together a corps of three legions, with all the proper equipment and munitions of war. Three officers were sent against him at the head of three divisions; but they quarrelled, and Pompeius, who is said to have slain with his own hand the strongest horseman in the enemy's ranks, defeated one of them and effected a junction with Sulla somewhere in Apulia. Sulla's soldierly eye was pleased at the sight of troops thus successful, and in good martial trim; and when Pompeius addressed him as Imperator, he hailed him by the same title in return. Or, perhaps, he was only playing on the youth's vanity, for Pompeius, who was for his courage and good looks the darling of the soldiers and the women, was very vain, and flattery was a potion which it seems to have been one of Sulla's cynical maxims always to administer in strong doses. [Sidenote: by Philippus;] Later on he was joined by Philippus, the foe of Drusus, who for shifty and successful knavery seems to have been another Marcus Scaurus; [Sidenote: by Cethegus;] by Cethegus, who had been one of his bitterest enemies, which to a man of Sulla's business-like disposition would not be an objection, so long as he