comrades.  They did so, and Sulla, taking them to Rome with four or five thousand other prisoners, placed them in the Circus Flaminius and had them all slain. [Sidenote:  Sulla’s cold-blooded ferocity.] He was haranguing the Senate in the temple of Bellona, and the cries of the poor wretches alarmed his audience; but he told them to attend to what he was saying, for the noise they heard was only made by some malefactors, whom he had ordered to be chastised.  This last blind rush of the Sabellian bull on the lair of the wolves, which Pontius had told his followers they must destroy, had failed only by a hair’s breadth, and since the days of the Gauls Rome had never been in such peril.  But now at last Sulla had triumphed, and could afford to gratify his pent-up passion for vengeance.  This butchery in the Circus was but the beginning of what he meant to do. [Sidenote:  Executions.] The four leaders, Pontius, Carrinas, Damasippus, and Censorinus, were all beheaded; and, in the same ghastly fashion in which, it was said, Hannibal had learnt the death of Hasdrubal, so those blockaded in Praeneste learnt the fate of the relieving army and their own fate also by seeing four heads stuck on poles outside the town walls.  They were half starving and could resist no longer.  Marius and a younger brother of Pontius killed each other before the surrender.  Ofella sent the head of Marius to Sulla, who had it fixed up before the Rostra, and jeered at it in his pitiless fashion, quoting from Aristophanes the line,

  You should have worked at the oar before trying to handle the helm.

[Sidenote:  Massacre at Praeneste.] Then he went to Praeneste, and made all the inhabitants come outside and lay down their arms.  The Roman senators who had been in the place had been already slain by Ofella.  Three groups were made of the rest, consisting of Samnites, Romans, and Praenestines.  The Romans, the women, and the children were spared.  All the others, 12,000 in number, were massacred, and Praeneste was given over to pillage.

[Sidenote:  Fate of Norba.] So ruthless an example provoked a desperate resistance at Norba.  It was betrayed to Lepidus by night; but the citizens stabbed and hung themselves or each other, and some locking themselves inside their houses, set them in flames.  A wind was blowing and the town was consumed.  So at Norba there was neither pillage nor execution.  Nola was not taken till two years afterwards, and we have seen (p. 121) what became of Mutilus on its surrender. [Sidenote:  Sulla’s vengeance in Samnium.] Aesernia, the last Samnite capital in the Social War, was captured in the same year (80), and Sulla did his best to fulfil his threat of extirpating the Samnite name.  In Etruria Populonium held out longer, and in Strabo’s time was still deserted—­a proof of the punishment which it received.  Volaterrae was the last town to submit.  In 79 its garrison surrendered, on condition of their lives being spared.  But the soldiers of the besieging force raised a cry of treason and stoned their general, and a troop of cavalry sent from Rome cut the garrison to pieces.