LUCIUS SYLLA. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla or Sylla (Felix) dictator of Rome, born 138 B.C., died in 78. Leader of the aristocratic party in the state, he destroyed the party of popular reform, became dictator, and proscribed thousands of the best citizens of the republic, who were hunted down like wild beasts. In the Social and the Samnite war, as in the first war against Mithridates, he displayed the genius of a great soldier, surpassing even that of his able rival Marius. He reorganized the Roman Constitution, concentrated all power in the hands of the senatorial oligarchy, and paved the way for Julius Cæsar to overthrow the liberties of the republic, though the latter belonged to the opposite party. References: Froude’s “Life of Cæsar,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”]

Lucius Sylla, a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion.

His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, with the colors so ill-mixed, that his face was compared to a mulberry sprinkled with flour. Ambition, he appeared to have none, and when he exerted himself to be appointed quæstor[11] to Marius on the African expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained and disliked. Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the forum, but he had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendancy to the command of every situation in which he might be placed.

The war of factions which exiled Marius, placed Sylla at the head of the expedition against the King of Pontus. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece and pursued him into Asia. He left him still in possession of his hereditary kingdom; but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a spirit, to remain thenceforward on his own frontiers. He recovered Greece, the islands, and the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. He extorted an indemnity of five millions, and executed many of the wretches who had been active in the murders. He raised a fleet in Egypt with which he drove the pirates out of the archipelago back into their own waters. He restored the shattered prestige of Roman authority, and he won for himself a reputation which his later cruelties could stain but not efface. During his Eastern campaign, a period of more than four years, the popular party had recovered ascendancy at Rome.

The time was come when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for what had been done in his absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country; his task was finished. He had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him, but he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He intended to re-enter Rome with the glories of his conquests about him, for revenge, and a counter-revolution. Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and manuscripts—the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands—to decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consul’s answer he sailed for Brindisi in the spring of 83 with forty thousand legionaries and a large fleet.

The war lasted for more than a year. At length the contest ended in a desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the first of November, B.C., 82. The popular army was at last cut to pieces, a few thousand prisoners taken, but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young Marius killed himself. Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the aristocracy were masters of Rome and Italy. Sylla was under no illusions. He understood the problem which he had in hand. He knew that the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the people; he knew that they deserved to be detested, but they were at least gentlemen by birth and breeding.

The democrats, on the other hand, were insolent upstarts who, instead of being grateful for being allowed to live and work and pay taxes and serve in the army, had dared to claim a share in the government, had turned against their masters, and had set their feet upon their necks. They were ignorant, and without leaders could be controlled easily. The guilt and danger lay with the men of wealth and intellect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights and patricians like Cinna,[12] who had taken the popular side and deserted their own order. There was no hope for an end of agitation till every one of these men had been rooted out.

Appointed dictator, at his own direction, by the senate, he at once outlawed every magistrate, every public servant, civil or municipal, who had held office under the rule of Cinna. It mattered little to Sylla who were included if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an order was issued for a slaughter of the entire number, the confiscation of their property, and the division of it between the informers and Sylla’s friends and soldiers. It was one of those deliberate acts, carried out with method and order, which are possible only in countries in an advanced stage of civilization, and which show how thin is the film spread over human ferocity by what is called progress and culture. Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla, all men of education and fortune. Common report or private information was at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself condemnation.

The political reform enforced by the dictator gave the senate complete restrictive control over legislation and administration. All constitutional progress which had been made in the interests of the people was utterly swept away. The senate was made omnipotent and irresponsible. Sylla’s career was drawing to its close, and the end was not the least remarkable feature of it. He resigned the dictatorship and became a private citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he had abused the leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and dinner-parties.

He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable. He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense. His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular liberty.

The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in laying down his authority has often been commented on, but the risk which he incurred was insignificant. Of assassination he was in no greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to assassinate him was less. His influence was practically undiminished, and as long as he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the first person in the republic. He lived a year after his retirement and died 78 B.C., being occupied at the time in writing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. He was buried gorgeously in the Campus Martius, among the old kings of Rome.