In the first century BC, Rome was conquered from within by a general named Marius and a rogue consul named Cinna. The Roman general Sulla returned from Asia Minor, accompanied by two of his best officers, Pompey and Crassus (who would become two-thirds of the ruling “triumvirate” at the end of the Roman Republic).

Once Sulla had taken over Rome (”The only men ruthless enough to fight against tyranny,” writes Susan Wise Bauer, “were themselves inclined to it”) he began a purge of those prominent Romans who had supported the previous round of thugs.

“Friends and relatives of Marius and Cinna died, or fled; Cinna’s son-in-law, a young man named Julius Caesar, was one of the lucky escapees.”

Bauer continues:

The official murders progressed beyond the political and encompassed the personal as well: “More were killed for their property,” Plutarch writes, “and even the executioners tended to say that this man was killed by his large house, this one by his garden, that one by his warm springs.”[24] […] Meanwhile, Crassus was helping out by setting fires to houses in Rome which he and Sulla wanted to claim. He also had a band of firemen and a real-estate agent on his payroll. As soon as the house began to burn, the agent would appear and offer to buy the property for a bargain price; the homeowner would agree, so that the house wouldn’t be a dead loss; and then the firemen would appear from out of sight and douse the fire.[26]

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[24] Sulla 31, in Plutarch, Greek Lives, p. 210.

[26] Hooper, Finley. Roman Realities, p. 223.

(The History of the Ancient World, p. 678.)

From Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World, p. 673f:

By 101 BC, the Han general Li Kuang had been put in charge of the most expensive campaign in Chinese history: the conquest of the northwestern land of Ferghana, or T’ai-yuan. Li Kuang had been fighting for the Han emperors for over thirty years; his first military expedition had been against invading Xiongnu, back in the days of the Emperor Wendi. Sima Qian writes that, on a later campaign, he demonstrated his intelligence by escaping from several thousand Xiongnu horsemen who had cut him off with only a hundred of his own men around him. He told his riders to get down from their horses and undo the saddles: “They expect us to run away,” he said, “and if we show that we are not ready to flee, they’ll suspect that something is up.” His men obeyed him, and the Xiongnu, suspecting a trap, kept their distance. Dark was now creeping up on the trapped band, and Li Kuang told them to roll up in their blankets and lie down under their horses. The Xiongnu, seeing this, “concluded that the Han leaders must have concealed soldiers in the area and be planning to fall upon them in the dark.” They all retreated, upon which Li Kuang and his men sprang up and rode back to the main body of the army.