who were with him in exile must be recalled and reinstated in their possessions, but that even then he could never be on any terms with the perpetrators of the enormities by which he and his adherents had been outraged.43 Such replies were like the frosty gusts of winter to those to whom they were borne; and though the remaining adherents of their fast approaching foe were massacred at Rome,44 and the very temples of the gods were plundered to pay the troops who should stand in the way of Sulla's soldiers, the year during which resistance was protracted soon closed in submission. The conqueror, who had played the fox and the lion with equal effect, and by whose side were gathered many of the most illustrious and the most promising of his countrymen, Metellus Pius, Crassus Dives, and the youthful Cneius Pompeius Strabo, took possession of Rome; and the agony of doubt, at least, was ended.

46

The final battle at the gates was fought with the Samnites, who had vainly hoped to find some room for victory where their foes stood sundered amongst themselves. Within the walls, and at the summit, so to speak, of the whole city, the Capitol, some time

43 Liv., Epit. LXXXIV. App., Bell. Civ., I. 79.

44 App., Bell. Civ., I. 88. Cf. 56; Liv., Epit. LXXXVI.

45 Val. Max., VII. 6. 4. 200,000 men were at one time in arms. Vell. Pat., II. 24. Sulla had 30,000 or 40,000. Ibid., and App., Bell. Civ., I. 79.

46 Metellus was the son of Marius's opponent, Metellus Numidicus; Pompeius, or, as we call him, Pompey, of Pompeius Strabo, the Consul in the Social War. It was Carbo who said that he had to fight both a fox and a lion in Sulla. Plut., Sull., 28.

47 Vell. Pat., II. 27.

48

before destroyed by fire, now lay in ruins. It was through this butchery of the last Italians in arms and to the blackened temple of his own Rome, that Sulla wended his way, begirt by bloody men and inspired by horrible resolves. His victory, for which he soon afterwards called himself the Fortunate,49 was the sign how far mercy, peace, and liberty were extinct amongst his race and through the heathen world.

That night, according to his own confession,50 he could not sleep; and the visions of his darkened chamber were soon the realities of the overshadowed city. Calling the people, shuddering every one of them, except his followers, for their own fate, into the Forum, he declared that he would be good to them, if they obeyed him, but that not one of his enemies would be spared. The threat was thoroughly fulfilled, and not in Rome alone, but over Italy, wherever an estate could be found for confisca tion, or a life be marked for assassination. If we turned away from the fury of Marius, we ought scarcely to hint the atrocity of Sulla; and nearly all that need be told is, that every vice the latter had, whether of luxury or avarice or cruelty,52 was satisfied. Ninety Senators, fifteen of consular rank, and twenty-six hundred Knights were slain or exiled, be

48 App., Bell. Civ., I. 83.

52

"Trium pestiferorum vitio49" Felix." Vell. Pat., II. 27. rum," says Cicero, who, though Now A. C. 82. young, knew Sulla well, "luxuriæ,

50 Ap. Plut., An Sen., etc., Tom. avaritiæ, crudelitatis magister fuit."

IX. p. 143, ed. Reiske.

De Fin. Bon. et Mal., III. 22.

51 App., Bell. Civ., I. 95.

sides those that had fallen in actual war, the more than one hundred thousand Roman and Italian youth whom the historian numbers.53 Eight thousand prisoners fell in a single massacre; 54 whole towns were fined, dismantled, or sold; 55 into every sheepfold 56 there was an irruption, and in every den of the fiercer amongst the vanquished there was a deadly conflict. The sole bounds upon the bloodthirstiness of the victor were set by his own pleasure, that some should live to see his greatness and to obey him.5

57

These outrages, and others worse than these, upon humanity and liberty would seem less fatal, had they been Sulla's work alone, or even had they been applauded merely by the soldiery or the populace. But the higher classes, or that portion of them which survived his butcheries, were united with him, not so much in fear for their safety, as in satisfaction of old enmities and in hope of new honors; many, even, for the sake of a neighbour's land, or for the palace of a rich man, sometimes on their own side.58 The Senate, so called, after losing its ninety members, was emphatically devoted to Sulla; and many

53 App., Bell. Civ., I. 103. Eutropius (V. 9) says more. "Ne dici quidem opus est," says Cicero (In Cat., III. 10), " quanta diminutione civium et quanta calamitate reipublicæ."

54 Liv., Epit. LXXXVIII. Cf. Plut., Sull., 30.

who would sup full of horrors may turn to Liv., Epit. LXXXVIII. – LXXXIX; Plut., Sull., 30-33; App., Bell. Civ., I. 94-96, 100, 101; Vell. Pat., II. 28; Val. Max., IX. 2. 1.

57 Vivere aliquos debere ut essent quibus imperarent." Flor.,

55 Flor., III. 21. App., Bell. III. 21. Civ., I. 96.

56 Et miseræ maculavit ovilia Romæ." Lucan., II. 197. Any one

58" Neque prius finis jugulandi fuit quam Sulla omnes suos divitiis explevit." Sall., Cat., 51.

of the younger men, like Pompey, were as ready to join the throng, from motives a little higher than those enumerated, perhaps believing him to be the champion of their principles in contradiction to those of Marius and Cinna, or convinced, without this faith, that there was no other man to take the lead amongst their long-distracted fellow-citizens.59 these things as they may, there is little doubt about the position which Sulla himself intended to occupy, not as the leader of any party or of any parties, but as the sovereign of the entire Commonwealth.

Be

The leaders of the faction he had crushed were fled or slain, unlamented even by their own adherents. Only Quintus Sertorius, the single capable and upright one of all, had been able, with some followers, before Sulla's victory, to seek refuge in Spain, where he will shortly be found. The few men or the few families in Rome, of whom no account is preserved, who must have lived in comparative indignation at the deeds they every day beheld, were too anxious for their own safety 60 to plead for the safety of their countrymen, or for respect to their country. Porcius Cato, now nine years older than when he slighted the menaces of Pompædius Silo, asked, on beholding the monstrous cruelties of which Sulla's house or its neighbourhood was the hourly scene, why, if others feared, he was not himself armed to kill the tyrant and deliver Rome. A young

59"Egregie auctoritate nobilitatis defensus." Val. Max., IX. 2.1.

60 See App., Bell. Civ., I. 97 ; Dion Cass., Fragm. CXXXVII. 61 Plut., Cat. Min., 3.

man, some years older than Cato, already one of the priesthood, and married to a daughter of Cornelius Cinna, was ordered to put away his wife as of a blood displeasing to the conqueror. But the youthful husband refused; and though deprived of fortune and office, as well as obliged to hide himself from assassination, he neither yielded nor sought for pardon. His kindred, however, all of the highest rank, entreated Sulla in his behalf, and the Vestal virgins, whose privilege it was to intercede for the condemned, besought that he might be forgiven. Sulla finally gave way, declaring, as he did so, that there were many Mariuses in the Julius Cæsar whom he spared.62 It was more than the resolution of boys or youths could achieve to right the shattered Commonwealth; yet while such as Cæsar and Cato remained, some hope, apparently, survived of calmer seas and more trusty helmsmen.

Before these things, and others like them, had all taken place, the absolute authority of life and death had been formally conferred by the Senate upon the man whom their fathers would have speedily chastised for his presumption, even if they had been insensible to his barbarity. A decree put forth to ratify and renew the acts of his consulship and proconsulship was soon followed by the erection, before the rostra, of an equestrian statue of himself, blazing with gold and inscribed to Sulla the Fortunate Victor.63 The show of statues, and the revival of laws

62 Suet., C. J. Cæs., 1.
63 App., Bell. Civ., I. 97.

cerning the act of ratification, see Con- Cic., De Leg. Agr., III. 2.