The Historians' History of the World 05

Events and circumstances had now fulfilled their part in developing Sulla’s policy, and moulding his character. Fond of literature, vain of his accomplishments, attached to frivolous pleasures and frivolous people, a man, it is said, of soft and even tender feelings, and easily moved to tears by a tale of sorrow, Sulla in his early years had surprised his countrymen, rather than alarmed them, by the success of his military career and his influence with the soldiers. The haughty jealousy of Marius had disposed him to take an opposite part in public life. The rivalry of the two great captains had been enhanced by the contrast of their manners, origin, and connections. In brooding over his personal resentments Sulla had insensibly come to identify himself with the cause of the oligarchy. The sanguinary violence of Cinna and Marius had irritated the champion of the persecuted faction, and he had vowed a bloody vengeance against the authors of the proscriptions. But the opposition he experienced in Italy expanded his views beyond the limits of party warfare. The Etrurians and the Samnites transformed him from the chief of a Roman faction into the head of the Roman nation. The vows of extermination they breathed against the sacred city of Quirinus sank deeply into his mind. He had displayed in the East his contempt for the just claims of the provincials. The cries of the miserable Greeks and Asiatics he had mocked with pitiless scorn, and had reimposed upon their necks, in its full weight and irksomeness, the yoke from which they had in vain invoked Mithridates to relieve them. The man who had reconquered the East had now reconquered Italy, and he determined to restore the supremacy of his countrymen at their own gates, which he had vindicated with triumphant success at the farthest limits of their empire.

The morning after the battle of the Colline Gate, Sulla was haranguing the senate in the temple of Bellona. As an imperator commanding a military force, the law forbade him to enter the city, and the senators attended his summons beyond the walls. Cries of horror and despair were suddenly heard outside the place of assembly. “Be not alarmed,” he calmly remarked to the affrighted senators, “it is only some rascals whom I have ordered to be chastised.” They were the death cries of the eight thousand Samnite prisoners, whom he had delivered to be cut to pieces by his legions in the Field of Mars. The first of his blows fell upon the Italian confederates; but he speedily launched his vengeance upon the Romans themselves. On his return from Præneste he mounted the rostra, and addressed the people. He vaunted his own greatness and irresistible power, and graciously assured them that he would do them good if they obeyed him well; but to his foes he would give no quarter, but prosecute them to the death, high as well as low, prætors, quæstors, tribunes, and whosoever had provoked his just indignation.

THE PROSCRIPTIONS

These words were a signal to his adherents, and before the names of the destined citizens were publicly announced many a private vengeance was wreaked, and many a claim advanced upon the conqueror’s gratitude. The family of Marius were among the first attacked. One of his relatives named Marius Gratidianus, who had signalised his prætorship by checking the debasement of the coinage, was pursued by Catiline, a brutal young officer, and murdered with the most horrible tortures. The assassin placed the bloody head upon Sulla’s banquet-table, and coolly washed his hands in the lustral waters of a neighbouring temple. The corpse of the great Marius himself, which had been buried and not burned, was torn from its sepulchre on the banks of the Anio, and cast into the stream. This desecration of the funeral rites was an impiety of which the contests of the Romans had hitherto furnished no example. It was never forgotten by a shocked and offended people. The troubled ghost, says the poet of the civil wars, continued to haunt the spot, and scared the husbandmen from their labours on the eve of impending calamity.