The tribuneship he brought back to its original state, as it was before the Publilian law of the year 283; which was as much as going back four hundred years. For he took away from the tribunes the right of bringing bills into the assembly of the people, and revived the old way of making laws: these were now proposed by the consuls, and passed by the senate and the centuries. One might wonder at his not having restored the curies; yet he could not do this, as they were so changed that he would have had in them a democratical assembly. As he neglected every means which ought to have been tried for raising the state again to a healthy condition, he despaired of all gradual improvement, and therefore he rushed headlong into violent measures and all kinds of makeshifts. Much might be said for his changes in the tribuneship, as at that time the office could no longer be made available for good: it had become a nuisance, every one cried out against it; and so the tribunes were henceforth to be only ad auxilium ferendum. No tribune of old could have been allowed to have a curule office, as he was a plebeian; and therefore Sylla, wishing in this respect also to retrograde, lessened the influence of the tribunes by enacting that no tribune, after having laid down his magistracy, should fill any office which was a stepping-stone to the senate.
To secure himself still further, he deprived the children of those who had been proscribed, of part of their rights as citizens, that is to say, of eligibility to hold office. This unjust law remained many years in force until Cæsar repealed it.
The administration of justice he gave back to the senators. The knights had employed the power which they had acquired by the exercise of such jurisdiction, entirely against the nobility. The senators should now have taken some care to do away with the old reproaches made against them, by judging righteously; but the courts were never as venal as they were then. Sylla’s faction so basely and infamously abused the advantages which they had gained, that they cut their own throats; and had it not been for the military colonies, a heavy vengeance would soon have been wreaked upon them.
Sylla was a very active legislator, nor are every one of his enactments to be found fault with. For though he showed great want of sense in his constitutional measures, in those which were administrative, as in criminal legislation, he did things which prove that he had excellent advisers; in fact, he was the first who placed these matters on even a tolerable footing. And for the management also of criminal trials, his regulations were real improvements. He likewise made a lex annalis to settle the order in which the different offices were to be held.
Moreover, it is one of Sylla’s changes that there was a considerable increase in the number of the magistracies and priesthoods. In the earliest times, the pontificate consisted of four members, two from each of the oldest tribes, besides the pontifex maximus: so it was with the augurs. Afterwards, the number of the pontiffs was, by the addition of four plebeian ones,[105] raised to nine, in which the Pontifex Maximus was included, his office being common to both orders; the augurs were also increased, as it was still intended in those days that the two orders should share the priestly dignities alike. It cannot be stated with certainty, when this was no longer done; yet it must have been before the Lex Domitia. Sylla himself thought no more of dividing these between the patricians and plebeians; so much did the power of circumstances prevail over the crotchets which he otherwise used to form! He suspended the lex Domitia; restored to the priestly colleges the right of co-optation; and raised the number of the pontiffs[106] and augurs to fifteen.
This had no material influence on the state; but certainly the great increase of the prætors and quæstors had. By his reforms of the criminal law, he assigned to the prætors the quæstiones perpetuæ; and because the vast extent of the commonwealth had now made many more accountants necessary, he raised the establishment of quæstors to twenty. Thus there was a considerable multiplication of curule and other dignities. The senate he enlarged to six hundred;[107] and now every year, more as a matter of course than by any wish of his, the twenty quæstors came into it, forming the thirtieth part of the whole body. As no one was quæstor more than once, its numbers were almost always full, and thus the censors all but lost their power of choosing the members. Thus the question whether the senate was elective, is placed in quite a different light. The senate is never to be looked upon as a representative body, unless it were in the very earliest times, when it was elected directly by the curies; its being filled up by the quæstors, makes it indeed an elective assembly.
Sylla had a body-guard of freedmen whom he called Cornelians, and these soon became most powerful people. That at that time, anybody in the country towns who had either interest or connexions with these Cornelians, especially with Chrysogonus, Sylla’s favourite, might do whatever he listed, and even commit murder; is borne out by the evidence of Cicero’s orations pro Sexto Roscio Amerino and pro Cluentio. The state of things in those days, was horrible and shocking beyond description.
Sylla gave all these laws as dictator, which, after the deaths of Marius and Carbo, he had caused himself to be made for an indefinite period by the interrex L. Valerius Flaccus. It was thought that he would never again lay down the dictatorship; but he held it only two years. He was tired of every thing around him: he would either have had to wage wars abroad, for which perhaps he felt that he was too old, and for which he had no longer any taste; or he must have gone on with reforms at home, though he thought that this had been done already as far as it was practicable.[108] For this reason he resigned the dictatorship, a step which was not by any means so very bold as it would seem; for the condition of the republic, the utter prostration of the enemy, and his military colonies insured his safety. He went to Puteoli, where he was attacked by that most dreadful of all diseases, the phthiriasis: his whole body became full of boils which bred vermin. This in all likelihood is no romance: the chief cases of this disorder are those of tyrants, like Philip II., Herod the king of the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes, and of land-owners who have ground down their peasants; but the philosopher Pherecydes likewise had it. Though Sylla’s strength was wasted away by this sickness, his death was brought on by an accident, and it was most lucky for him that he died before the whole of the machinery which he had created fell to pieces. He thought, that in Puteoli he might even lead history astray, and make posterity believe that all his measures had only been overthrown by the bad management of those who came after him; yet he still ruled the state, even from thence, by means of his trembling creatures who could not do without him. He amused himself at Puteoli with the legislation of the place, wishing to seem as if he were nothing more than a plain citizen, yet for all that his will was to be law: being contradicted one day, he got into such a rage that he broke a blood vessel and died, at the age of sixty. Even if his death had happened ten years later, his last days would have been peaceful: the party against him was crushed, the tribunes were paralysed, and the whole of Italy was occupied by military colonies on whose devotion he could rely. His body was brought to Rome; and the pomp of his burial, which was not inferior to that of Augustus, shows that his rule was not dependent on his person, nor on the circumstances of the moment.
LITERATURE. MANNERS AND MODE OF LIVING.
With the consulship of Lepidus and Catulus began the History of Sallust, the loss of which, to judge from the fragments, is one of the most painful of all those which we have to mourn over in Roman literature, not only on account of the matter in it, but above all, because of its value as a work of art. The history of the Social War was written by Sisenna, who was in some measure a forerunner of Sallust: he was also an earlier acquaintance of Cicero’s, who does not speak over favourably of the literary merits of his writings. Yet I am inclined to think that here we should not blindly follow the opinion of Cicero: for Sisenna’s manner was one which he did not like; it was the horridum of the ancients, an imitation of Clitarchus.[109] He wrote quite differently from his predecessors, in reading whose fragments we can hardly believe that any one could ever have written in such a way. At that time, the whole style of literature was changed. It was as in Germany about the period of the Seven Years’ War; and just as there were then some stragglers in our republic of letters, thus was it also in Rome. Among these I class Claudius Quadrigrarius, who has still the stiff, uncouth, quaint manner: the want of refinement in the whole of his performances is quite astonishing.