Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C.In the interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero afterward spoke.

"Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms.

It was not that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer.
Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions.
It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction.

Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on another day.

The numbers were gradually raised to 4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to death.