it have been permanent without reform. Still, we must credit Sulla with having made the best, on his own principles, of an almost desperate situation. On the assumption that an oligarchy must bear rule by the strong hand, the first duty of legislative prudence was to construct an impregnable citadel. A less prejudiced observer might probably have seen then, as it is more easy for us moderns, wise after the event, to see now, that this assumption was fatal to the oligarchy itself, and disastrous to the commonwealth. At the moment when Sulla interposed, two courses were possible, though not equally easy. One course, that which Sulla took, was to reconstitute the oligarchy in the oligarchic sense, by a more intense concentration of powers. The other course, more difficult, but perfectly feasible for an able and resolute dictator, was to reform the oligarchy in the direction of true aristocracy, by bringing the Senate back as much as possible to the type of that Senate which had ruled Rome from the overthrow of the Samnites to the overthrow of Carthage. A man who had attempted this would have offended the ultra-oligarchs and failed to satisfy the ultra-democrats; but the Right Centre and the Left Centre would have been with him; and, with the peculiar powers of a Roman dictator, he might have left the irreconcilables to be converted by the soothing counsels of time or the sharper admonitions of self-interest. The first step towards the successful attainment of this object would have been to recruit the Senate, not, as Sulla did, exclusively from that
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