The Comic History of Rome

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

Sulla's success seemed only to have effected a change of tyrants; and his conduct proved that the monster grievance of Rome was the series of inhuman monsters who had got hold of the government. The atrocities attributed to Sulla are, however, so enormous, as almost to border on the burlesque; and it is comfortable to feel in the exaggeration a ground for hope that in the account furnished by the historians, much may fall under the head of "Errors excepted."

It is said that 3000 of the enemy at Antennæ implored his mercy, which he granted, on the understanding that they were to assassinate their associates—a service that was performed with brutal eagerness. When the 3000 claimed their own pardon as a reward, they were, according to Plutarch, conveyed to Rome, and butchered with a few thousand others, who had the misfortune to differ in opinion with the chief of a republican government.

It was found so extremely embarrassing to heads of families and others who were liable every day or hour to be cut off, that it was at length proposed, as a matter of convenience, that Sulla should save time by publishing a short list, containing the few names of those whom he did not intend to sacrifice. He replied, by bringing out a very long list of those he did, which he stated to be merely the first number of a serial work, which he did not pledge himself to complete within any particular period. As every copyright is liable to be infringed, the work of Sulla was the subject of numerous imitations; and there were many who made lists of their own, containing names disagreeable to themselves; so that no man could walk the streets without the chance of reading his own death-warrant on the walls of the capital. Sulla, in many instances, offered rewards for the heads of his victims, and his doors were beset from morning till night with the cry of, "Butcher!" by those who called for the sums they had earned as slaughtermen. Assassinations proceeded to such a fearful degree, that Q. Catulus asked Sulla, in confidence, whether it was the intention of the latter to spare any human being at all? for there seemed a chance of his having no one left to rule over but himself; and such a man was likely to find self-government exceedingly difficult.

While these things were going on at Rome, Marius was besieged in Præneste, from which he tried to make his escape through the common sewer; a mode of insuring his life that was far from dignified. He, however, was espied through an iron aperture, which was so grating to his feelings, that he called upon his slave to run him through; when the faithful fellow immediately bored him to death with a trusty and rusty weapon.

Sulla, the perpetrator of all the acts of despotism and cruelty which are above described, was without any legal authority, and had no more right than the meanest subject of the republic to the power which he exercised. His reign was a reign of terror, supported by the swords of a sordid soldiery. Of the two Consuls, Marius was already dead; and Carbo, being taken prisoner, was condemned to death; so that Carbo—the blackness of whose conduct justified his title of the coal—was soon reduced to ashes.

The senate, which had been cut down by assassination to suit the views of Sulla, elected L. Valerius Flaccus as interrex, who immediately caused Sulla to be invested with the power of doing whatever he liked, as long as he liked; or, to use the official phraseology, made him dictator for an unlimited period.

On receiving his appointment, the first measure of Sulla was to reward the tools who had assisted him, and L. Valerius Flaccus was immediately made master of the horse, while the military murderers, who had acted as executioners in the execution of his plans, received grants of land in the places which had been unfavourable to the tyrant. He courted a certain sort of popularity by extending the suffrage to some 10,000 emancipated slaves, who retained enough of their slavishness to cause them to vote as their master desired. He affected to reconstitute the legislative body which he had illegally destroyed, and he sent into it a quantity of that noxious scum which, in the troubled waters of revolution, is frequently cast up to the surface of society.

Having established his position through the brutality of one part of the people, and the cowardice of the other, he set about the business of a reformer; and, though he did much harm, the little good that he accomplished must not be denied to him. Being a despot by nature, he limited, as far as he could, the popular element in the constitution, by curtailing the power of the tribunes; and he increased the government patronage by adding to the number of pontiffs and augurs, so that he might have the privilege of appointment to lucrative, but useless, offices. His changes in the criminal code were, however, really beneficial, for he made murder, whether committed by poison or violence, a crime by law; and, indeed, it was necessary that the point should be clearly defined, for military murders at the hands of the executive had been so numerous that it was reasonably doubted whether human life was henceforth to be protected at all by the government. Many old laws were re-enacted, though they had never been repealed; but the usurpers of power had so thoroughly trampled on every legal form, that it was impossible to know which of the laws were to be regarded as imperative on the people.

Sulla, and his friends, boasted that his firmness had given tranquillity to Rome; but tranquillity can scarcely be a desirable condition to one whose quietude is the result of a gag in the mouth, a sword suspended over the head, and chains on every part of the body. The repose, or rather, the stillness thus obtained, was no less costly than inconvenient, for there was a wholesale confiscation of the property of all who were supposed to entertain views different from those of the government. The iniquities of the master will often be followed by the man, and, in conformity with this rule, a fellow, named Chrysogonus, one of Sulla's creatures, caused the murder of Roscius of Armenia, in order to get the opportunity of robbing him. The property of Roscius was knocked down at a mock auction to a bad lot of ruffians, who were there to intimidate the auctioneer into doing their smallest bidding. Everything went for positively nothing, and Chrysogonus was understood to have got nearly the whole of it at a ludicrously low figure.

The laws made by Sulla, though perhaps plain enough in their purport, had an ambiguity in their application which was extremely inconvenient. Though binding at some times, in some places, upon some persons, they were not so at other times, in other places, upon others. He had laid it down as a rule that no one could be elected consul until he had been prætor; though, in the case of his own adherents, Sulla was not at all particular. When, however, L. Ofella, the commander at Præneste, who had never been prætor, put up for the consulship, Sulla declared such conduct was not to be put up with at all, and had him killed in the middle of a morning's canvass. The people were rather angry at the outrage, when Sulla, walking among a group with a sword in his hand, "demanded silence for an anecdote."[72] A circle drew round him, tremblingly alive to what he was about to say, when the despot proceeded as follows: "A labourer," said he, "was at work at the plough, when he was annoyed by insects, which caused him to stop and beat them off by dusting his own jacket. Finding himself annoyed a second time he took off his jacket and threw it into the fire. Now, I advise those whom I have twice conquered not to oblige me to try the fire," The people, who knew something of Sulla's threatened fire, dreaded it with all the horror of a burned child, and he was left to pursue his career of unchecked atrocity.