[Sidenote:  Rivalry of Lepidus and Pompeius.] His death, 78 B.C., was the signal for that break-up of his political institutions to which he had wilfully shut his eyes.  The great men at Rome began to wrangle over his very body before it was cold.  Lepidus, whom Pompeius, against Sulla’s wishes, had helped to the consulship, opposed a public funeral.  The other consul supported it.  Sulla had with his usual shrewdness divined the character of Lepidus, and told Pompeius that he was only making a rival powerful.  Pompeius opposed Lepidus now, for he knew that the partisans of Sulla would insist on doing honour to his memory. [Sidenote:  Funeral of Sulla.] Appian describes the funeral at length.  ’The body was borne on a litter, adorned with gold and other royal array, amid the flourish of trumpets, and with an escort of cavalry.  After them followed a concourse of armed men, his old soldiers, who had thronged from all parts and fell in with the procession as each came up.  Besides these there was as vast a crowd of other men as was ever seen at any funeral.  In front were carried the axes and the other symbols of office which had belonged to him as dictator.  But it was not till the procession reached Rome that the full splendour of the ceremonial was seen.  More than 2,000 crowns of gold were borne in front, gifts from towns, from his old comrades in arms, and his personal friends.  In every other respect, too, the pomp and circumstance of the funeral was past description.  In awe of the veterans all the priests of all the sacred fraternities were there in full robes, with the Vestal Virgins, and all the senators, and all the magistrates, each in his garb of office.  Next, in array that contrasted with theirs, came the knights of Rome in column; then all the men whom Sulla had commanded in his wars, and who had vied with each other in hastening there, carrying gilded standards and silver-plated shields.  There was also a countless host of flute-players, making now most tender, now most wailing music.  A cry of benediction, raised by the senators, was taken up by the knights and the soldiers, and re-echoed by the people, for some mourned his loss in reality, and others feared the soldiers and dreaded him in death as much as in life, the present scene recalling dreadful memories.  That he had been a friend to his friends they could not but admit; but to the rest, even when dead, he was still terrible.  The body was exhibited before the rostra, and the greatest orator of the time spoke the funeral oration; for Faustus, Sulla’s son, was too young to do so.  Then some strong senators took up the litter on their shoulders and bore it to the Campus Martius, where kings only were wont to be buried.  There it was placed on the funeral pyre; and the knights and all the army circled round it in solemn procession.  And that was Sulla’s ending.’