tribune, a command answering more or less nearly to that of colonel in our own army. It was, however, mainly an ornamental rank, being bestowed sometimes by favor of the general in command, sometimes by a popular vote. The young Cicero indeed had already served, and he now distinguished himself greatly, winning some considerable successes in the command of the cavalry which Brutus afterwards gave him. When the hopes of the party were crushed at Phillippi, he joined the younger Pompey in Sicily; but took an opportunity of an amnesty which was offered four years afterwards to return to Rome. Here he must have found his old fellow-student, who had also reconciled himself to the victorious party. He was made one of the college of augurs, and also a commissioner of the mint, and in B.C. 30 he had the honour of sharing the consulship with Augustus himself. It was to him that the dispatch announcing the final defeat and death of Antony was delivered; and it fell to him to execute the decree which ordered the destruction of all the statues of the fallen chief. "Then," says Plutarch, "by the ordering of heaven the punishment of Antony was inflicted at last by the house of Cicero." His time of office ended, he went as Governor to Asia, or, according to some accounts, to Syria; and thus disappears from our view.

Pliny the Elder tells us that he was a drunkard, sarcastically observing that he sought to avenge himself on Antony by robbing him of the reputation which he had before enjoyed of being the hardest drinker of the time. As the story which he tells of the younger Cicero being able to swallow twelve pints of wine at a draught is clearly incredible, perhaps we may disbelieve the whole, and with it the other anecdote, that he threw a cup at the head of Marcus Agrippa, son-in-law to the Emperor, and after him the greatest man in Rome.

CHAPTER III.

IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR.

In November 82 B.C., Cornelius Sulla became absolute master of Rome. It is not part of my purpose to give a history of this man. He was a great soldier who had won victories in Africa and Asia over the enemies of Rome, and in Italy itself over the "allies," as they were called, that is the Italian nations, who at various times had made treaties with Rome, and who in the early part of the first century B.C. rebelled against her, thinking that they were robbed of the rights and privileges which belonged to them. And he was the leader of the party of the nobles, just as Marius was the leader of the party of the people. Once before he had made himself supreme in the capital; and then he had used his power with moderation. But he was called away to carry on the war in Asia against Mithridates, the great King of Pontus; and his enemies had got the upper hand, and had used the opportunity most cruelly. A terrible list of victims, called the "proscription," because it was posted up in the forum, was prepared. Fifty senators and a thousand knights (peers and gentlemen we should call them) were put to death, almost all of them without any kind of trial. Sulla himself was outlawed. But he had an army which he had led to victory and had enriched with prize-money, and which was entirely devoted to him; and he was not inclined to let his enemies triumph. He hastened back to Italy, and landed in the spring of 83. In the November of the following year, just outside the walls of Rome, was fought the final battle of the war.

The opposing army was absolutely destroyed and Sulla had every thing at his mercy. He waited for a few days outside the city till the Senate had passed a decree giving him absolute power to change the laws, to fill the offices of State, and to deal with the lives and properties of citizens as it might please him. This done, he entered Rome. Then came another proscription. The chief of his enemies, Marius. was gone. He had died, tormented it was said by remorse, seventeen days after he had reached the crowning glory, promised him in his youth by an oracle, and had been made consul for the seventh time. The conqueror had to content himself with the same vengeance that Charles II. in our own country exacted from the remains of Cromwell. The ashes of Marius were taken out of his tomb on the Flaminian Way, the great North Road of Rome, and were thrown into the Anio. But many of his friends and partisans survived, and these were slaughtered without mercy. Eighty names were put on the fatal list on the first day, two hundred and twenty on the second, and as many more on the third. With the deaths of many of these victims politics had nothing to do. Sulla allowed his friends and favorites to put into the list the names of men against whom they happened to bear a grudge, or whose property they coveted. No one knew who might be the next to fall. Even Sulla's own partisans were alarmed. A young senator, Caius Metellus, one of a family which was strongly attached to Sulla and with which he was connected by marriage, had the courage to ask him in public when there would be an end to this terrible state of things. "We do not beg you," he said, "to remit the punishment of those whom you have made up your mind to remove; we do beg you to do away with the anxiety of those whom you have resolved to spare." "I am not yet certain," answered Sulla, "whom I shall spare." "Then at least," said Metellus, "you can tell us whom you mean to punish." "That I will do," replied the tyrant. It was indeed a terrible time that followed, Plutarch thus describes it: "He denounced against any who might shelter or save the life of a proscribed person the punishment of death for his humanity. He made no exemption for mother, or son, or parent. The murderers received a payment of two talents (about £470) for each victim; it was paid to a slave who killed his master, to a son who killed his father. The most monstrous thing of all, it was thought, was that the sons and grandsons of the proscribed were declared to be legally infamous and that their property was confiscated. Nor was it only in Rome but in all the cities of Italy that the proscription was carried out. There was not a single temple, not a house but was polluted with blood. Husbands were slaughtered in the arms of their wives, and sons in the arms of their mothers. And the number of those who fell victims to anger and hatred was but small in comparison with the number who were put out of the way for the sake of their property. The murderers might well have said: 'His fine mansion has been the death of this man; or his gardens, or his baths.' Quintus Aurelius, a peaceable citizen, who had had only this share in the late civil troubles, that he had felt for the misfortunes of others, coming into the forum, read the list of the proscribed and found in it his own name. 'Unfortunate that I am,' he said, 'it is my farm at Alba that has been my ruin;' and he had not gone many steps before he was cut down by a man that was following him. Lucius Catiline's conduct was especially wicked. He had murdered his own brother. This was before the proscription began. He went to Sulla and begged that the name might be put in the list as if the man were still alive; and it was so put. His gratitude to Sulla was shown by his killing one Marius, who belonged to the opposite faction, and bringing his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum. (This Marius was a kinsman of the great democratic leader, and was one of the most popular men in Rome.) This done, he washed his hands in the holy water-basin of the temple of Apollo."

Forty senators and sixteen hundred knights, and more than as many men of obscure station, are said to have perished. At last, on the first of June, 81, the list was closed. Still the reign of terror was not yet at an end, as the strange story which I shall now relate will amply prove. To look into the details of a particular case makes us better able to imagine what it really was to live at Rome in the days of the Dictator than to read many pages of general description. The story