About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the kings, dedicated by the youthful republic, and spared by the storms of five hundred years—­ the temple of the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol—­perished in the flames.  It was no augury, but it was an image of the state of the Roman constitution.  This, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruction.  The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the victory was far from implying as a matter of course the restoration of the old government.  The mass of the aristocracy certainly was of opinion that now, after the death of the two revolutionary consuls, it would be sufficient to make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental election and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should seem farther requisite for the rewarding of the victorious army, for the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists, and possibly also for the prevention of similar outbreaks.  But Sulla, in whose hands the victory had concentrated for the moment all power, formed a more correct judgment of affairs and of men.  The aristocracy of Rome in its best epoch had not risen above an adherence—­partly noble and partly narrow—­to traditional forms; how should the clumsy collegiate government of this period be in a position to carry out with energy and thoroughness a comprehensive reform of the state?  And at the present moment, when the last crisis had swept away almost all the leading men of the senate, the vigour and intelligence requisite for such an enterprise were less than ever to be found there.  How thoroughly useless was the pure aristocratic blood, and how little doubt Sulla had as to its worthlessness, is shown by the fact that, with the exception of Quintus Metellus who was related to him by marriage, he selected all his instruments out of what was previously the middle party and the deserters from the democratic camp—­such as Lucius Flaccus, Lucius Philippus, Quintus Ofella, Gnaeus Pompeius.  Sulla was as much in earnest about the re-establishment of the old constitution as the most vehement aristocratic emigrant; he understood however, not perhaps to the full extent—­for how in that case could he have put hand to the work at all?—­but better at any rate than his party, the enormous difficulties which attended this work of restoration.  Comprehensive concessions so far as concession was possible without affecting the essence of oligarchy, and the establishment of an energetic system of repression and prevention, were regarded by him as unavoidable; and he saw clearly that the senate as it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and would parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstruction.  If Sulla had already after the Sulpician revolution carried out what he deemed necessary in both respects without asking much of their advice, he was now determined, under circumstances of far more severe and intense excitement, to restore the oligarchy—­not with the aid, but in spite, of the oligarchs—­by his own hand.