Sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the occasion, whereas Marius, who had become the great soldier of the Republic, and had been six times Consul, failed to gather fresh laurels.
Rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all the glory and all the disgrace of Cicero's life, and was open to the dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and the strongest.

Marius, after a series of romantic adventures with which we must not connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his death, while Sulla went off with his army, pillaged Athens, plundered Asia Minor generally, and made terms with Mithridates, though he did not conquer him.

With the purport, no doubt, of conquering Mithridates, but perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of Rome, the army had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the Marian faction.
Then came those three years, when Sulla was in the East and Marius dead, of which Cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which a student was able to study in Rome.

"Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[41] These must have been the years 86, 85, and 84 before Christ, when Cicero was twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this period, in truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he tells us of his studies with Philo, and Molo, and Diodatus.

Precocious as he was in literature, writing one poem--or translating it--when he was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he was by no means in a hurry to commence the work of his life.