LOL - Demetrios, your posts always get me thinking. It had never occurred to me that the Social War could have impacted Sulla's treatment once he came to unchallenged power, but how could it NOT? Here we've just had a major civil war (which, if we weren't looking at so many other factors, would have to be as traumatic as all civil wars). It was, I believe, far more bloody and divisive than the civil war Caesar fought against Pompey, because it involved far more devestation against Italian cities and lands (there was no one like Caesar yelling "clemency!") It always seems to me that, in cases of civil war, there are severe social dislocations that seem to attend, whoever wins.

So . . . don't know if we can prove it, but perhaps your point about Sulla's violence does make sense - although, in other ways, I think he was a truly nasty, ruthless, violent piece of work and was simply looking for loot to give to his supporters.