absolute power based on a decree of the people and restrained by no set term or colleague, was no other than the old monarchy, which in fact just rested on the free engagement of the burgesses to obey one of their number as absolute lord.  It was urged even by contemporaries in vindication of Sulla that a king is better than a bad constitution,(2) and presumably the title of dictator was only chosen to indicate that, as the former dictatorship implied a reassumptionwith various limitations,(3) so this new dictatorship involved a complete reassumption, of the regal power.  Thus, singularly enough, the course of Sulla here also coincided with that on which Gaius Gracchus had entered with so wholly different a design.  In this respect too the conservative party had to borrow from its opponents; the protector of the oligarchic constitution had himself to come forward as a tyrant, in order to avert the ever-impending -tyrannis-.  There was not a little of defeat in this last victory of the oligarchy.

Executions

Sulla had not sought and had not desired the difficult and dreadful labour of the work of restoration; out, as no other choice was left to him but either to leave it to utterly incapable hands or to undertake it in person, he set himself to it with remorseless energy.  First of all a settlement had to be effected in respect to the guilty.  Sulla was personally inclined to pardon.  Sanguine as he was in temperament, he could doubtless break forth into violent rage, and well might those beware who saw his eye gleam and his cheeks colour; but the chronic vindictiveness, which characterized Marius in the embitterment of his old age, was altogether foreign to Sulla’s easy disposition.  Not only had he borne himself with comparatively great moderation after the revolution of 666;(4) even the second revolution, which had perpetrated so fearful outrages and had affected him in person so severely, had not disturbed his equilibrium.  At the same time that the executioner was dragging the bodies of his friends through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand, had given orders for his decent burial.  On landing in Italy he had earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to make his peace had been rejected.  Even after the first successes he had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio; it was the revolutionary party, which had not only broken off these negotiations, but had subsequently, at the last moment before their downfall, resumed the massacres afresh and more fearfully than ever, and had in fact conspired with the inveterate foes of their country for the destruction of the city of Rome.  The cup was now full.  By virtue of his new official authority Sulla, immediately after assuming the regency, outlawed as enemies of their country all the civil and military officials who had taken an active part in favour of the revolution after