The Historians' History of the World 05

But besides so many murders committed, yet were there other things also that grieved the people marvellously. For he proclaimed himself dictator, which office had not been of six score years before in use, and made the senate discharge him of all that was past, giving him free liberty afterwards to kill whom he would, and to confiscate their goods; to destroy cities, and to build up new as he listed; to take away kingdoms, and to give them where he thought good. And furthermore, he openly sold the goods confiscate, by the crier, sitting so proudly and stately in his chair of state, that it grieved the people more to see those goods packed up by them, to whom he gave and disposed them, than to see them taken from those that had forfeited them. For sometimes he would give a whole country, or the whole revenues of certain cities, unto women for their beauty, or unto pleasant jesters, minstrels, or wicked slaves made free; and unto some, he would give other men’s wives by force, and make them to be married against their wills.c

The people crouched beneath the brandished sword of the conqueror, and the acclamations of the nobles, who relied upon his stern resolution to crush the insolence of the tribunes and repel the advance of democracy. Even the narrow limit of six months which the law had been wont to assign to the duration of this extraordinary despotism was now disregarded. Sulla was required to reform and reconstitute the commonwealth; he was allowed to determine for himself the period so arduous an enterprise would demand, nor less the principles and the means he should think fit to adopt. The Romans solemnly divested themselves of all their political rights, so long as the great reformer should deem it expedient to exercise autocratic control over them. To Sulla they committed without limit or question the power of life and death over citizens and subjects, of amercing his enemies and rewarding his friends, of building cities or destroying them, of giving away kingdoms or incorporating them in the empire. In order perhaps to mark more conspicuously the pre-eminence of this sovereign power above the legitimate dictatorship of ancient times, Sulla required that the consulship should coexist with it in a state of degrading subordination. He allowed the centuriate assembly to elect M. Tullius Decula and Cneius Dolabella for the year 81. In the following year he assumed the consular fasces himself in conjunction with Metellus Pius, while still retaining the ensigns of the dictatorship. He was elected a second time for the year 79; but his ambition was by this time satisfied and he declined the proffered title.

Proscription and massacre had cleared the ground for the social edifice which Sulla proposed to construct. With a blind and arrogant predilection for the traditionary forms of the ancient Roman municipality, he resolved to restore, as far as circumstances could be moulded thereto, by the harshest exercise of his prerogative, the civil ascendency of the old Roman families. To re-enact indeed the letter of the old oligarchical constitution, as it had existed before the days of plebeian encroachment, was impossible; but he hoped at least to reanimate its spirit. The temper however of the dictator was too impetuous and vehement for an undertaking requiring the most delicate management. His reforms were bold and decisive, they were conceived on a single great idea, and executed with consistency and vigour; but they were not adopted with any consideration for the genuine tendencies of society, and accordingly they struck no root in the mind of the people. Sulla, we have seen, had cut off two hundred senators with the sword of the proscriptions; Marius had probably slaughtered an equal number. The remnant had been decimated on the field of battle. To replenish this frightful void the dictator selected three hundred from the equestrian order; but however respectable in birth and rank these new senators may have been, they could hardly restore the lustre of the great council of the state, which had formerly owed its chief authority to the personal distinction of its members. We may conjecture that the numbers of the body thus reconstructed amounted to about six hundred. The vacancies which thenceforth occurred were probably more than supplied by the regular succession to the benches of the senate of the men who had filled certain high offices. Twenty quæstors were elected annually, and passed into it in due rotation.