The Historians' History of the World 05

The reign of violence and revolution dated from the victory of the Colline Gate, the first of November, 82. While the young Marius and his colleague still occupied the consular office, the master of Rome, omnipotent as he really was, could not legitimately be invested with any civil authority. The weapon which he wielded with such terrible effect was the unsheathed sword of his proconsular imperium. The tribunal, before which he cited the wretched victims of his policy or vengeance, was the military suggestum of the prætorian tent. The death of Marius a few days later rendered vacant one of the consuls’ chairs. Carbo, who occupied the other, did not long survive, being taken in Sicily and executed by Pompey without respect to his rank or office. Before the close of the year the republic was left without a chief magistrate. The senate appointed L. Flaccus, one of Sulla’s officers, interrex to hold the assembly for the election of consuls for the term which was about to commence. But Flaccus, prompted by his imperator, proceeded to recommend the creation of a dictator.

The senate obeyed, the people acquiesced, and after an interval of 120 years, which had elapsed since Q. Fabius Maximus, the citizens beheld once more the four-and-twenty lictors, who invested with invidious splendour that union of civil and military pre-eminence of which their feelings and institutions were equally jealous. The dictatorship, they might remember, had been the rare resource of the patricians in ancient times, when they roused themselves to defend their hateful privileges against the just claims of the plebeians; but since the rights of either class had been happily blended together, the office itself had ceased to have any significance. To revive it now, when no enemy was at the gates, was only to threaten the commons of Rome with a new aristocratical revolution, to menace rights and liberties acquired in a struggle of two hundred years, and on which the greatness and glory of Rome were confessedly founded. But all these misgivings were hushed in silence.b

In the vivid words of Plutarch in North’s old translation, Sulla in the beginning, was very modest and civil in all his prosperity, and gave great good hope that if he came to the authority of a prince, he would favour nobility well, and yet love, notwithstanding, the benefit of the people. And being moreover a man in his youth given all to pleasure, delighting to laugh, ready to pity, and weep for tender heart; in that he became after so cruel and bloody, the great alteration gave manifest cause to condemn the increase of honour and authority, as the only means whereby men’s manners continue not such as they were at the first, but still do change and vary, making some fools, others vain and fantastical, and others extremely cruel and unnatural. But whether that alteration of nature came by changing his state and condition, or that it was otherwise a violent breaking out of hidden malice, which then came to show itself, when the way of liberty was laid open; this matter is to be decided in some other treatise. So it came to pass, that Sulla fell to shedding of blood and filled all Rome with infinite and unspeakable murders; for divers were killed for private quarrels, that had nothing to do with Sulla at any time, who suffered his friends and those about him to work their wicked wills.

But the most wicked and unjust act of all was that, he deprived the sons, and son’s sons of them whom he had killed, of all credit and good name, and besides that had taken all their goods as confiscate. And this was not only done in Rome, but also in all the cities of Italy throughout; and there was no temple of any god whatsoever, no altar in anybody’s house, no liberty of hospital, nor father’s house, that was not imbrued with blood and horrible murder. For the husbands were slain in their wives’ arms, and the children on their mothers’ laps: and yet they which were slain for private hatred and malice, were nothing in respect of those that were murdered only for their goods. And they that killed them might well say, his goodly great house made that man die, his goodly fair garden the other; and his hot baths another.