But when Sulla found that they had started in the direction of the capital, he understood their purpose, and followed in all haste. The Samnites had already commenced to assault the gates before Sulla arrived. He ordered an immediate attack on both detachments of the Marian army, one on each side of the city. Sulla himself was opposed to the Samnites, and when darkness came, he was defeated. He had prepared to sell his life the next morning as dearly as possible, when he received news at night from his colleague, Crassus, that the Marian army on the other side of the city was routed. He then managed to escape from his uncomfortable position before dawn, and join Crassus; and when daylight arrived, the united forces attacked the Samnites and overwhelmed them. The dead of the two days numbered 50,000, exclusive of six thousand Samnites, whom Sulla captured, and massacred the same day in the Flaminian circus, soon after he entered the city.

SEC. 463. Sulla's Laws.—Sulla undertook to reform the government. Having the power, he used it energetically. His soldiers were ready to sustain him, and with their aid he was irresistible. They were not attached to the patrician party by their political opinions; their feelings and their family relationships drew them towards the plebeian party; but the time had passed when the Roman soldiers generally cared for any allegiance save that of the leader who gave them victory and booty. Sulla was the invincible general, and him his troops would obey in all things.

His remedy for the political evils of Rome had two parts; first, was a comprehensive reform of the constitution, and, second, was the slaughter of those men who would do their utmost to defeat the reform. He began

with the second part of his programme. He made out and published lists of all those persons whom he considered dangerous enemies of himself or of the senatorial party. He condemned them to death, and for the murder of each, he offered a reward of two thousand dollars, in addition to a share of the victim's property. The reward was to be paid to any murderer, even if slave, brother, son, or parent of the proscribed person. Everyone who sheltered a proscribed person was proscribed. List succeeded list. Those who wished to gain favor with Sulla called his attention to enemies whom he had overlooked, or of whose hostility he had not been informed. False charges were made so that the accusers could murder the accused, either to gratify hatred or to obtain the reward.

Having dispatched the dangerous class, he turned his attention to constitutional reform. He ordered the centuriate assembly to elect him dictator for life, and it obeyed. Having been thus clothed with absolute power, he issued a series of decrees. He confirmed his proscription list and his confiscation act. He excluded the descendants of the proscribed from citizenship, and confiscated their property. He distributed the land of numerous disaffected towns among 150,000 soldiers who had served under him.

Sulla was master of the city after it had been under the control of his personal enemies for four years, and after a period of fifty years, in which it had frequently allowed its brutal rabble to dictate the conduct of public affairs-fifty years of impotent law and intermittent civil war. This rabble, established in their dominant power by time and custom, could not be dethroned without radical changes in the constitution; and it was for the

purpose of securing the permanence of his projected reforms, that he had exterminated all those who had been active and influential leaders of the anarchical party.

He reorganized the legislative department of the government by abolishing the tribal assembly and giving to the senate the exclusive authority to originate bills to be submitted to the centuriate assembly for final enactment. The majority of the Roman freemen were a mob so base that they were unfit to have any share in the law-making power; but perhaps the time had not yet come when they could be excluded from it. As Sulla was a man of high political as well as military capacity, we may assume that his course was the best possible under the circumstances. Incomplete as his reform was, it was a great improvement on the previous condition. Under his system, no Gracchus, or Cinna, would again get control of the government.

He increased the number of senators to four hundred and fifty, and filled all the vacancies, taking most of his appointees from the old patrician families, but many also from the rich plebeians. His selections were so judicious that they added greatly to the strength of his reform as well as to his own popularity. He provided that no one should be consul until he had been prætor, nor should anyone be prætor until he had served a term as curule ædile or as quæstor; but this provision was a command addressed to the people, and was not accompanied by any adequate guaranty for its enforcement. There was no provision that the officer who counted the votes for an ineligible candidate, or that the person who, while ineligible, presented himself as a candidate, should be punished for crime. Sulla decreed that between any two terms of elective office, there must be an interval of one

year; and that between two terms of the same office there must be an interval of ten years. Nobody was to be elected consul for two years in succession. He abolished the office of censor, and provided that a person once appointed to the senate should not be deprived of his senatorial dignity.

The authority of interfering in elections, in legislation, and in affairs of the public treasury, was taken from the tribunitian office, the acceptance of which was made a disqualification for the positions of quæstor, curule ædile, prætor, and consul. Senatorial rank was indispensable in the candidate for the tribunitian office, which was thus placed beyond the reach of demagogues who might hope to use it as a stepping-stone to the highest positions in the state.

Finally Sulla restored to the senators the privilege of sitting on juries in important state trials. This was not a reform, but a restoration of a great abuse. The senate distributed the provinces among its members, with the expectation that each would accumulate a large fortune within a year by extortion. The law forbade but custom permitted the most outrageous cruelty in the exaction of money from provincial subjects; and custom established the rule that the senators should protect one another in their extortion. The average senator was dependent on his colleagues for the fortune not only of himself but of his relatives and friends. All looked with indulgence upon the violation of the law for the protection of one of their own number; and the majority felt great resentment against a just sentence in a case of senatorial extortion. The number of senators was so small, the influence of a vote so great, the class feeling so strong, the fighting propensity so highly developed, the resent

ment against any personal enemy so bitter, and the opportunities for assassination so frequent in their wars and riots, that it was highly dangerous for a senator, unless supported by a number of others, to vote for the conviction of an associate on a charge of extortion. When the jurymen were selected among the knights, there was more probability of an honest verdict, because there was not the same community of interest between the jurymen and the accused, and also because the class from which the jury were selected was much larger. The equestrian juries sometimes, and the senatorial rarely, rendered honest verdicts in cases of extortion.

Sulla retained the dictatorial office and despotic power for three years; and in 79 B. C. resigned and retired to private life, living without guards and without further participation in official business. He made his home on a magnificent estate at Puteoli, now Pozzuoli, near Naples, where he lived in a most luxurious style, devoting his leisure to the composition of his memoirs, which, unfortunately, have not come down to us. died suddenly in 78 B. C., a year after his retirement; and his corpse was taken to Rome, where it had a more magnificent funeral than any ever before seen in the Eternal City. His companions in arms came from remote parts of the peninsula to attend his obsequies. Nobody dared to abuse the memory of Sulla.

He

SEC. 464. Pompey.—After the death of Sulla, the most influential man in Rome was Cnæus Pompeius, or, as his name has usually been written in English, Pompey; and he held this position for about twenty-five years. He was a great general and a weak statesman. At seventeen he began his service in the army, and at twenty-three he had become the second general of the republic in credit,