Note 284 — LIFE OF SULLA.

A Proscriptio was a notice set up in some public place. This Proscription of Sulla was the first instance of the kind, but it was repeated at a later time. The first list of the proscribed, according to Appian (Civil Wars, i, 55), contained forty senators and about sixteen hundred equites. Sulla prefaced his proscription by an address to the people, in which he promised to mend their condition. Paterculus (ii. 28) states that the proscription was to the following effect:—That the property of the proscribed should be sold, that their children should be deprived of all title to their property, and should be ineligible to public offices; and further, that the sons of Senators should bear the burdens incident to their order and lose all their rights. This will explain the word Infamy, which is used a little below. Infamia among the Romans was not a punishment, but it was a consequence of conviction for certain offences; and this consequence was a civil disability; the person who became Infamis lost his vote, and was ineligible to the great public offices. He also sustained some disabilities in his private rights. Sulla therefore put the children of the proscribed in the same condition as if they had been found guilty of certain offences.

The consequence of these measures of Sulla was a great change of property all through Italy. Cities which had favoured the opposite faction were punished by the loss of their fortifications and heavy requisitions, such as the French army in the Revolutionary wars levied in Italy. Sulla settled the soldiers of twenty-three legions in the Italian towns as so many garrisons, and he gave them lands and houses by taking them from their owners. These were the men who stuck to Sulla while he lived, and attempted to maintain his acts after his death, for their title could only be defended by supporting his measures. These are "the men of Sulla," as Cicero sometimes calls them, whose lands were purchased by murder, and who, as he says (Contra Rullum, ii. 26), were in such odium that their title could not have stood a single attack of a true and courageous tribune.