Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/785

SULLA.] K O M E 761 ally suspended. For 85 and 84 Cinna nominated himself and a trusted colleague as consuls. 1 The state was, as Cicero 2 says, without lawful authority. 3 One important matter was carried through the registration in all the tribes of the newly enfranchised Italians, 4 but beyond this little was done. The attention of Cinna and his friends was in truth engrossed by the ever-present dread of Sulla's return from Asia. The consul of 86, Valerius Flaccus, sent out to supersede him, was murdered by his own soldiers at Nicomedia. 5 In 85 Sulla, though disowned by his government, concluded a peace with Mithradates. 6 In 84, after settling affairs in Asia and crushing Flaccus's suc- cessor Fimbria, he crossed into Greece, and in the spring of 83 landed at Brundusium with 40,000 soldiers and a large following of emigre' nobles. Cinna was dead, 7 murdered like Flaccus by his mutinous soldiers ; his most trusted colleague Carbo was commanding as proconsul in Cisalpine Caul ; and the resistance offered to Sulla's advance was slight. At Capua Sulla routed the forces of one consul, Norbanus ; at Teanum the troops of the other went over in a body to the side of the outlawed proconsul. After a winter spent in Campania he pressed forward to Rome, defeated the younger Marius (consul 82) near Praeneste, and entered the city without further opposition. In North Italy the success of his lieutenants Metellus, C. Pompeius, and Marcus Crassus had been fully as decisive. Cisalpine Gaul, Umbria, and Etruria had all been won for Sulla, and the two principal leaders on the other side, Carbo and Norbanus, had each fled, one to Rhodes, the other to Africa. Only one foe remained to be conquered. The Samnites and Lucanians whom Cinna had conciliated, and who saw in Sulla their bitterest foe, were for the last time in arms, and had already joined forces with the remains of the Marian army close to Rome. The decisive battle was fought under the walls of the city, and ended in the com- plete defeat of the Marians and Italians. 8 For a period of nearly ten years Rome and Italy had been distracted by civil war. Constitutional government, whether by senate or assembly, had been in abeyance, while the opposing parties fought out their quarrels with the sword, under the leadership of generals at the head of legions ready and willing to follow them against their fellow citizens and against the established authorities of the state. The strife had spread from the Roman forum to Italy, and from Italy to the provinces ; and for the first time the integrity of the empire was threatened by the conflicts of rival governors. 9 The tottering fabric of Italian prosperity had been rudely shaken by the ravages of war. Class hatreds and personal feuds distracted the community, while the enfranchisement of the Italians was in itself a revolution which affected the very foundations of the republic. Such was the situation with which Sulla was now called upon to deal. It was for him to heal the divisions which rent the state asunder, to set in working again the machinery of civil government, and above all so to modify it as to meet the altered conditions, 1 The consuls of 86, 85, 84 were all nominated without election. Livy, Epit., Ixxx., Ixxxiii. ; App., i. 75. 2 Brut., 227. 3 The nobles had fled to Sulla in large numbers; Velleius, ii. 23. 4 This work was accomplished apparently by the censors of 86 ; but cf. Lange, iii. 133 ; Mommsen, ii. 315 ; Livy, Epil., Ixxxiv. 8 Livy, Epit., Ixxxii. Appian, Mithr., 52; Plut., Sulla, 23. 6 Livy, Epit., Ixxxiii.; Veil., ii. 23 ; Plut., Suit., 22. 7 In 84 ; App., B. C., i. 78 ; Livy, Epit., Ixxxiii. 8 Livy, Epit., Ixxxviii., "cum Sammtibus ante portam Collinam debellavit ; " Plut., Sulla, 29, and Crassus, 6. According to App., i. 93, and Livy, loc. cit., 8000 captives were massacred. Florus, iii. 21, gives 4000. Praeneste surrendered, was razed to the ground, and its population put to the sword. 9 In Asia between Sulla and Fimbria. In 82 Pompey crushed the Marian leader Carbo in Africa. In Spain Q. Sertorius maintained himself for ten years (82-72). and to fortify it against the dangers which visibly threatened it in the future. The real charge against Sulla 10 is not that he failed to accomplish all this, for to do so was beyond the powers even of a man so able, resolute, and self-confident as Sulla, armed though he was with absolute authority and backed by overwhelming military strength and the prestige of unbroken success. He stands convicted rather of deliberately aggravating some and culpably ignoring others of the evils he should have tried to cure, and of contenting himself with a party triumph when he should have aimed at the regeneration and con- firmation of the whole state. His victory was instantly followed, not by any measures of conciliation, but by a series of massacres, proscriptions, and confiscations, of which almost the least serious consequence was the immediate loss of life which they entailed. 11 From this time forward Effects the fear of proscription and confiscation recurred as a of the ii .. !, i i .. Sullan possible consequence of every political crisis, and it was pj.^^ with difficulty that Caesar himself dissipated the belief tions. that his victory would be followed by a Sullan reign of terror. The legacy of hatred and discontent which Sulla left behind him was a constant source of disquiet and danger. In the children of the proscribed, whom he excluded from holding office, and the dispossessed owners of the confiscated lands, every agitator found ready and willing allies. 1 - The moneyed men of the equestrian order were more than ever hostile to the senatorial government, which they now identified with the man who cherished towards them a peculiar hatred, 13 and whose creatures had hunted them down like dogs. The attachment which the new Italian citizens might in time have learnt to feel for the old republican constitution was nipped in the bud by the massacres at Prasneste and Norba, by the harsh treat- ment of the ancient towns of Etruria, and by the ruthless desolation of Samnium and Lucania. 14 Quite as fatal were the results to the economic prosperity of the peninsula. Sulla's confiscations, following on the civil and social wars, opened the doors wide for a long train of evils. The veterans whom he planted on the lands he had seized 15 did nothing for agriculture, and swelled the growing numbers of the turbulent and discontented. 16 The "Sullan men" became as great an object of fear and dislike as the "Sullan reign." 17 The "latifundia" increased with start- ling rapidity whole territories passing into the hands of greedy partisans. 18 Wide tracts of land, confiscated but never allotted, ran to waste. 19 In all but a few districts of Italy the free population finally and completely dis- appeared from the open country ; and life and property were rendered insecure by the brigandage which now developed unchecked, and in which the herdsmen slaves played a prominent part. The outbreaks of Spartacus in 73, and of Catiline ten years later, were significant com- 681. mentaries on this part of Sulla's work. 20 His constitutional Consti- legislation, while it included many useful administrative tit'onal reforms, is marked by as violent a spirit of partisanship, t j^ S Qf and as apparently wilful a blindness to the future. The gulla. 10 Compare especially Mommsen's brilliant chapter, which is, how- ever, too favourable (ii. 335*-377), and also Lange (iii. 144 sq.), where most of the special literature on the Sullan legislation is given. 11 App., i. 95 sq.; Dio Cassius, fr. 109; Plut., Sulla, 31. The number of the proscribed is given as 4700 (Valer. Max.), including, according to Appian, 2600 members of the equestrian order. 12 E.g., Catiline, in 63. Sail., Cat., 21, 37. For the "liberipro- scriptorum," see Velleius, ii. 28. 13 Cic. Pro Clumt., 151. 11 Cic., Phil., v. 43, "tot municipiorum maximae calamitates. " Cic. Pro Doino, 30 ; Cic. Ad Alt., i. 19 ; Florus, iii. 21 ; Strabo, p. 223, 254. 15 Livy, Epit., Ixxxix.; App., B. C., i. 100 ; Cicero, Catil., ii. 20. 16 Sail., Cat., 28. 17 Cic., Lex Agr., ii. 26. 18 Cic., Lex Agr., ii. 26, 28, iii. 2, the territories of Prceneste and of the Hirpini. u Cic., Lex Agr., ii. 27, iii. 3. 20 See especially Cicero's oration Pro Tullio. For the " pastores " of Apulia, Sail., Cat., 28. XX. 96