The consuls for the next year (82) were Carbo and young Marius. The Marian governor in Africa was suspected of wishing to raise the slaves and to make himself absolute in the province. Consequently the Roman merchants stirred up a tumult, in which he was burnt alive in his house. In Sardinia the renegade Philippus did some service by defeating the Marian praetor, and so securing for Sulla the corn supply of the islands. In the spring Sulla seized Setia, a strong position on the west of the Volscian Mountains. Marius was in the same neighbourhood, and he retreated to Sacriportus on the east of the same range. [Sidenote: Battle of Sacriportus.] Sulla followed him, his aim being to get to Rome. A battle took place at Sacriportus. Marius was getting the worst of it on the left wing, when five cohorts and two companies of cavalry deserted him. The rest fled with great slaughter, and Sulla pressed so hard on them that the gates of Praeneste were shut, to hinder him getting in with the fugitives. Marius was thus left outside, and, like Archelaus at Piraeus, had to be hoisted over the walls by ropes. [Sidenote: Sulla wins the battle and besieges Praeneste.] Sulla captured 8000 Samnites in the battle, and now, for the first time, when the road to Rome was opened and victory seemed secure, showed himself in his true colours, and slew all of them to a man. [Sidenote: Massacre at Rome by order of young Marius.] An equally savage butchery had been going on in Rome, where Marius, before he was blockaded in Praeneste, had given orders to massacre the leaders of the opposite faction. The Senate was assembled as if to despatch business in the Curia Hostilia, and there Carbo's cousin and the father-in-law of Pompeius were assassinated. The wife of the latter killed herself on hearing the news. Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the chief pontiff, and the first jurist who attempted to systematise Roman law, fled to the temple of Vesta, and was there slain. The corpses of those who had been killed were thrown into the Tiber, and Marius had the ferocious satisfaction of feeling that his enemies would not be able to exult over his own imminent ruin. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to Rome.] Sulla, leaving Ofella to blockade Praeneste, hastened to Rome, but there was no one on whom to take vengeance, for his foes had fled. He confiscated their property, and tried to quiet apprehensions by telling the people that he would soon re-establish the State. But he could not stay long in the city, for matters looked threatening in the north.