they had been conquered, before the expansion of their Commonwealth from a city to a nation. The cost must be reckoned before glorying in the prize. All the institutions by which the Italians had been separated were now blended in their common liberties; and the lines of division formerly run between allied or municipal or any other subordinate estates were broken down, so that the whole people stood, nominally at least, united amongst themselves and to Rome. But in the operation, more wonderful, had it succeeded, than any similar achievement in ancient history, three hundred thousand of Italian," without counting those of Roman, blood had perished; and though the camps were deserted, and the weapons that had rung and glittered in men's hands were laid aside, the pangs of such a conflict could not at once be soothed. The Romans remembered how their Senate had ordered the dead to be buried on the fields of battle, lest the lamentations of kindred or friends at home should overcome the resolution of the survivors.79 And the Italians bewailed the vacant places around their hearthstones, and thought with fury, intermitted, perhaps, but not appeased, of the injustice to which their fathers or their sons, their brothers, lovers, or husbands, had fallen victims. Nor did the reward of citizenship prove so fair as to console them; for they had been put within new Tribes,80 to which inferior places were 78 Vell. Pat., II. 15. "Nec Annibalis,' exclaims Florus (III. 18), "nec Pyrrhi tanta vastatio!" 79 App., Bell. Civ., I. 43. 80 Of which the number varies from eight to fifteen. Appian (Bell. Civ., 1. 49) says ten. Velleius Paterculus (II. 20) says eight. assigned; and again the old complaints of arrogance and wrong were heard upon many tongues and felt within some hearts. It appears as if the judgment of Heaven upon the Romans for the abuses of their freedom was its incapacity of finding the air or the life it required, and would have obtained in being generously given to the Italians. CHAPTER IV. SULLA : CIVIL WAR AND DESPOTISM. "Civilis vulnera dextræ."— LUCAN, I. 32. "A tyrant is one whose list is his law."- FULLER, Profane State, XVII. THE introduction of the Italians was as vain as the seditions and the reforms of preceding years to save the Commonwealth from the wreck to which it was hurrying with all its liberties. Of still less avail to its protection were the efforts of one or two amongst its citizens, whose voices were loud and whose figures were prominent in the midst of these conflicting perils. A few years before the Social War, for instance, the Censors Domitius Ahenobarbus and Licinius Crassus expelled some Latin rhetoricians, on account of the corruption they were supposed to inculcate upon their disciples; but there was no better instruction to take the place of that thus formally forbidden; and if the rhetoricians themselves did not actually return, their schools must soon have been reopened by others like them, and thronged, as theirs 1 A. C. 93. See the singular edict of the Censors in Aul. Gell., XV. 11, and the explanation which Cicero has preserved, as if made by had been, by young and old. In the second year of the war, another essay towards regeneration was made by the Prætor Sempronius Asellio, who endeavoured to subdue the tumults, excited afresh between creditors and debtors, by reviving the impossible law against interest; but it was far too late to wear about upon the courses of an earlier period, and Asellio, attacked by an armed band while sacrificing before a temple in the Forum, was slain as though he had been the victim whom his gods required.2 Plautius Silvanus, a Tribune of the same year, and one of the two whose law gave welcome to the allies, was more successful in the wiser designs he had conceived. The first law, apparently, that bears his name, committed the choice of a certain number of judges to each of the Tribes, in order, as it seems, to unite the Senators, the Knights, and even the lower classes of citizens, then largely increased, as must be remembered, in the management, or at least the superintendence, of the public tribunals. A second law, a yet nobler memorial of the Tribune's wisdom, determined the punishment of riot or violence, at the very moment, perhaps, of the Prætor Asellio's murder, as a capital offence; and could any 3 2 A. C. 89. The Senate offered But Asconius says in his commena reward for the apprehension of his tary, "Et quidam etiam ex ipsa murderers, but the affair was hushed plebe." up and nothing more was heard of them. App., Bell. Civ., I. 54. Liv., Epit. LXXIV. 3"Quum primum Senatores cum Equitibus Romanis lege Plotia judicarent." Cic., Pro C. Corn., I. 4"Ad salutem omnium pertinet," etc. Cic., Pro Cæl., 29. The Lex Lutatia was perhaps identical with or else a confirmation of this law of Plautius. mere enactment have held fast, this one of Plautius would, perhaps, a little longer have preserved the liberty of Rome. But the waves rose higher; laws parted; peace and freedom sank together; and wild was the triumph of the fathomless sea. At the close of the same year in which these things were done and feared, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, then in his fiftieth year, was elected Consul,5 in defiance of opposition as bitter as if he had been recognized for what he was or was to be amongst his countrymen. A youth of the deepest debauchery had been succeeded by a manhood of the highest ambition; and the quæstorship of Sulla in Africa, his lieutenancy under Marius and Lutatius Catulus, followed by a prætorship in Rome, a mission to the East, and latterly by brilliant services against the Italians, were all inadequate to cover the stories of his profligacy, or to counteract the evil look he wore, as of one who fed his soul upon depravity, after the same system that gave his body up to licentiousness. At the same time, he was full of that imposing condescension which makes the timid confident and the worthless active in behalf of its possessor; and although the factions of Rome were anxious, and the prospects out of Rome were fearful, there was a sufficiently numerous party to make Sulla Consul, 5 For A. C. 88. 6 A. C. 93. "The Prætor was right," said one of Sulla's opponents, "to call the office his, for he had bought it dear." Plut., Sull., 5. Set this anecdote by the side of his earlier debaucheries and his intervening military services, when, as Drumann says, "Raffte er sich von den Trinkgelagen auf," and we have the manhood of Cornelius Sulla. |