49d Sulla had captured most of Greece.

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/caesarjulius.htm

n Rome Sulla's old commanding officer, Marius, the one who had become jealous of Sulla solution to the Jugurtha problem, used his influence in the Senate to have himself named commander of the expeditionary force to punish Mithradates instead of Sulla. Sulla with an army already at his command marched on Rome and the decision concerning naming Marius commander was reversed. Marius fled Rome into exile and died about a year later. Marius had been a revolutionary seeking to take power away from the oligarchy represented by the Senate. Sulla was the counter-revolutionary.

Sulla took his force to Greece where he proceded to defeat each general of Mithradates. By the spring of 87 BCE the troops of Sulla had captured most of Greece. Athens resisted but fell in 86 BCE after a long siege.

n 85 BCE Mithradates met with Sulla and accepted a treaty that made him a vassal of Rome. Sulla stayed in Athens until the summer of 83 BCE when he led his forty thousand troops into southern Italy.

In Rome during Sulla's absence the popular party had gained control of the Senate. This group declared Sulla to be a public enemy. The house belonging to Sulla was destroyed and his family had to flee for their lives. The Senate even sent someone to take command of the army which Sulla had been commanding. That replacement happened to have been killed before he could reach Sulla. Sulla then marched to Rome and took control of the city by the end of the year 82. Rome had been militarily occupied before but always by alien invaders rather than a Roman army. Sulla's troops took vengance upon the popular party.

The victorius Sulla was given the office of dictator. For the Romans dictator was a temporary position given to someone to run the government until an election could be held and the subsequently elected official could take office. However prior to Sulla the office of dictator was for a specified period of time. In the case of Sulla his term as dictator did not have a time limit. Sulla promised to relinquish the office as soon as possible.

In power as the dictator of Rome, Sulla carried out an extensive program of governmental reform. For example, he increased the number of courts to try criminal cases. One of the concerns at the time was that popular assemblies with legislative power would wrest effective control of Roman government away from the Senate. Sulla sought to prevent this by enacting legislation that required laws which were to be considered by popular assemblies be first submitted to the Senate for debate. The Senate could thus deny a popular assembly the opportunity to even consider a proposed law. This reform enabled the Senate to reign in any usurpation of power by the popular assemblies.

After carrying out his reform measures Sulla then indulged himself with a celebration of his triumph over Mithradates. Such celebrations were an important element of Roman life and politics. After the celebration, in 79 BCE Sulla then, to almost everone's surprise, resigned his dictatorship and retired to private life. He wrote his memoirs and continued to be active, but a fever killed him in the year 78 BCE when he was about sixty years of age.