Cicero's Civil War

At 16 he witnessed and participated in the social war between Rome and its Italian satellites. At 18 he heard of a colossal Eastern army bearing down on Roman territories in Greece and Asia Minor, and at 19 he saw Sola's first march on Rome. In between the ages of 23 and 25 Cicero watched two factions of Rome slaughter one another in Rome's first full-scale civil war. The purges of Sola and his cronies ravaged those who had survived the recent violence and hope for something better. As Cicero celebrated his 26th birthday, Plutarch writes, "Sola now devoted himself entirely to the work of Butchery"