232 sic maesta senectus. An old man, who had lived through the Marian and Sullan times, predicts similar horrors of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey.
The Proscriptions. ‘They were the product not of passion or thirst of blood, but of a cool political calculation, and the conviction of its inevitable necessity.’—Ihne.
[A.] Sulla appointed Dictator, 81 B.C.
Dictator creatus (cuius honoris usurpatio per annos centum et viginti intermissa; nam proximus post annum quam Hannibal Italia excesserat, uti appareat populum Romanum usum dictatoris haud metu desiderasse tali quo timuisset potestatem) imperio, 5 quo priores ad vindicandum maximis periculis patriam usi erant, eo in immodicae crudelitatis licentiam usus est.
Velleius Paterculus, ii. 28.
1-2 cuius honoris . . . intermissa. The last real Dictator (M. Junius Pera) was appointed after Cannae 216 B.C.
5-8 imperio quo . . . usus est. ‘The Dictator of the first age of the Republic down to the Punic Wars had always a well-defined special duty to discharge in a given time. Sulla’s task was of a general nature and all-comprehensive range, and he had the most essential of all monarchical attributes, which is the unlimited duration of office.’—Ihne.
[B.] Sulla lays down his Dictatorship, 79 B.C.
Nec minoris impotentiae voces propalam edebat, ut Titus Ampius scribit, ‘Nihil esse rempublicam, 10 appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie. Sullam nescisse litteras, qui dictaturam deposuerit.’