ght thousand men, who had escaped the general carnage,
surrendered themselves to the conqueror; he ordered them to be put
into the Villa Pub'lica, a large house in the Campus Mar'tius; and, at
the same time, convoked the senate: there, without discovering the
least emotion, he spoke with great fluency of his own exploits, and,
in the mean time, gave private directions that all those wretches whom
he had confined, should be slain. 26. The senate, amazed at the horrid
outcries of the sufferers, at first thought that the city was given up
to plunder; but Sylla, with an unembarrassed air, informed them, that
it was only some criminals who were punished by his order, and that
the senate ought not to make themselves uneasy at their fate. 27. The
day after he proscribed forty senators, and sixteen hundred knights;
and after an intermission of two days, forty senators more, with an
infinite number of the richest citizens. 28. He next resolved to
invest himself with the dictatorship, and that for a perpetuity; and
thus uniting all civil as well as military power in his own person, he
thought he might thence give an air of justice to every oppression.
29. Thus he continued to govern with capricious tyranny, none daring
to resist his power, until, contrary to the expectation of all
mankind, he laid down the dictatorship, after having held it not quite
three years.

[Illustration: Sylla reproaching the little image of Apollo with his
defeat.]

30 After this, he retired into the country, and abandoned himself to
debauchery; but he did not long survive his abdication; he was seized
with a horrible distemper, and died a loathsome and mortifying object,
and a melancholy proof of the futility of human ambition.[5]

The character of Sylla exhibits a singular compound of great and mean
qualities. Superstition was one of its features. It is said that
having suffered a defeat in the course of the Social War, in Italy, he
drew from his bosom a little image of Apollo, which he had stolen from
the temple of Delphi, and had ever since carried about him when
engaged in war. Kissing it with great devotion, he expostulated with
the god, for having brought him to perish dishonourably, with his
countrymen, at the gates of his native city, after having raised him
by many victories to such a height of glory and greatness.

_Questions for Examination_.

1. What were the first acts of Sylla?

2. What became of Marius?

3. To what dangers was