Very interesting points, since I sometimes feel that the battles between Sulla and Marius foreshadow EVERYTHING that would come between Caesar and Pompey years later.

Yes, reading about the butchery Marius helped instigate is truly awful, so much so that some have postulated he was either senile or mad, or both, to have given countenance to them. But it wasn't the first time (there were pretty bloody riots in the '90's too) and Sulla made Marius' murders look like a cakewalk. AND he took people's property and gave it to his minions - over years, which probably made the hatred directed towards him smolder much hotter than Marius.

But in the final analysis, Marius was the general who'd saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones, not to mention his achievements in Africa. It would be like someone taking Eisenhower in the America of the '60's and blackening his name, removing it, in spite of his great military reputation and achievements. People must have seethed that Sulla (who was proving just as bad, if not worse, politically) was using his power to make a 'non-person' of a very great popular general.

I think the common people loved Caesar for bringing back Marius' trophies because they were THEIR trophies - and the Romans would forgive a great warrior many things. What Sulla did in the east, however important, probably resonated less than the fact that Marius saved them in Italy - twice! - from the Gauls.