es 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 L470) 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