Sulla was now in a dilemma. His life was in danger unless he made peace with Mithridates. To do so was not magnificent: it was not even highly honourable. But Sulla was not a man to be stayed by such ideas. His own life was at the moment more important than anything else. If he were killed there would not be much left of the honour of Rome. He therefore made a treaty with Mithridates. He made the treaty on his own terms, however. Earlier, at a time when he was in extreme danger, Mithridates had offered him an alliance. This he had utterly rejected. Now he insisted that Mithridates should altogether abandon his plans and claims against Rome. By the treaty of Dardanus (84) the king had to give up all his conquests in Greece and Asia and hand over ships of war and a great sum of money to Sulla. In return the man who had arranged the cold-blooded murder of 80,000 Italians was made ‘friend and ally’ of Rome. Sulla knew that Mithridates would sooner or later give trouble again: but for the time being the danger was over. Rome’s power and name in the East had been saved, at a price. The treaty could not stand, but for the moment it was necessary. Sulla could turn to saving Rome at home. Fimbria’s army began to desert to him. Fimbria in despair killed himself. Sulla spent the next year in preparations for his own return in Rome. Carbo, who had succeeded Cinna, was as bitter against him as Cinna had been.

After a year in Asia collecting the taxes, not paid for the last four years, Sulla landed at Brundisium (83) with a well-filled treasury and a devoted army. On every soldier he imposed an oath: they were to treat the Italians as friends and fellow citizens, not as enemies. But to the Marian party in Rome he determined to show no mercy. The State must be cleared of these people: there must be no more riot and revolution. As Sulla marched north he defeated the forces sent against him: many of the soldiers deserted to him: many cities opened their gates. The Government of Marius, Cinna, and Carbo was thoroughly unpopular: and Sulla kept his word, doing no harm to the country through which he passed. Only the Samnites resisted strongly: them Sulla, who had been joined by young Crassus and by Cnaeus Pompeius, defeated in a great battle lasting from noon to the following mid-day outside the Colline Gate (82).

Rome and all Italy were now in Sulla’s power. He entered the city and assembled the Senate in the Temple of Bellona. As he explained his plans for restoring order—he was to have the powers of a dictator till that was done—a frightful sound was heard. Sulla gave his grim smile. ‘Some criminals being punished’, he said. Six thousand Samnite prisoners were being cut to pieces. In this spirit he proceeded to stamp out what had been the party of Marius. Marius had been mad with rage: Sulla was quite calm, but not a whit more merciful. The tomb of Marius was broken open, his ashes scattered in the road. Samnium, which had resisted the conqueror, was laid desert. The land was broken into allotments for Sulla’s soldiers.

The proscriptions followed. Lists of public enemies were posted and a reward paid to any one who killed the men whose names appeared. Their property was confiscated. Men put the names of private enemies on the list before or sometimes after they had killed them. Catiline, for instance, did this to his own brother. Sulla did not care. The State must be cleared of dangerous men and it must get revenues from somewhere. On the 1st June 81 the lists were closed: the executions and confiscations ended. Nearly five thousand persons had perished. Their property and that of those who had fled or been banished fell to the State, which got four million pounds in this way.

By murder and robbery the State treasury was filled. Sulla’s hard mind did not shrink from these ugly words. He did the things and made no pretences. In the same way he never pretended to believe in the rights of the people. He despised them, thought them stupid, ignorant, and lazy. What they needed was police. The Government he built up was of this kind. He made the Senate much larger and stronger, for men of birth and wealth, though no better than the others, could at least, he thought, be trusted to keep things orderly and as they were. No one was to be consul till he had passed through the lower offices, and then consul only once. As consul he was to stay in Italy without an army; at the end of his year he might be sent abroad, with an army, as a pro-consul. In Italy there were to be no troops: no soldiers were to cross the Rubicon. The law courts were reformed, the juries again drawn from the Senate.

A BOAR HUNT
from a sculpture in the Capitoline Museum

When he had finished his work of reorganization and built up the power of the Senate—i.e. of the older men of birth and property—as strongly as he could, Sulla laid down all his extraordinary powers and retired to private life. He had built himself a lovely villa, full of the art treasures he had brought from Greece and from the East, in the midst of exquisite gardens. There he lived, writing his memoirs, and enjoying the pleasures of hunting and fishing, banqueting and revelling, surrounded by the most amusing people he could find. Many of these were writers, artists, and actors. Actors were looked down upon in Rome, but Roscius the tragedian was a great friend of Sulla’s, for he scorned all such notions as unreal. Always Sulla had provoked the Romans by his power of casting off serious cares when he sat down at table and by what they thought his ill-timed jests. They did not understand his view of life. To him it was all a play, not a very good play: out of which, if one were lucky, one might get some entertainment. He had been lucky: chance was his goddess and he believed in nothing higher. Before he died, at the age of sixty, he wrote his own epitaph, which was inscribed on the great monument set up to him in the Campus Martius: ‘No friend ever did me so much good or enemy so much harm but I repaid him with interest.’