proposals of Sulpicius, was yet, like Sulpicius and Drusus and all the
more far-seeing aristocrats in general, favourable to material reforms
in themselves; as to which we may not overlook the circumstance, that
he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own
free will. If we combine with such considerations the fact, that Sulla
allowed the principal foundations of the Gracchan constitution to
stand and disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the largesses
of grain, we shall find warrant for the opinion that the Sullan
arrangement of 666 substantially adhered to the status quo subsisting
since the fall of Gaius Gracchus; he merely, on the one hand, altered
as the times required the traditional rules that primarily threatened
danger to the existing government, and, on the other hand, sought to
remedy according to his power the existing social evils, so far as
either could be done without touching ills that lay deeper. Emphatic
contempt for constitutional formalism in connection with a vivid
appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrangements, clear
perceptions, and praiseworthy intentions mark this legislation
throughout. But it bears also a certain frivolous and superficial
character; it needed in particular a great amount of good nature
to believe that the fixing a maximum of interest would remedy the
confused relations of credit, and that the right of previous
deliberation on the part of the senate would prove more capable
of resisting future demagogism than the right of veto and religion
had previously been.

New Complications
Cinna
Strabo
Sulla Embarks for Asia

In reality new clouds very soon began to overcast the clear sky
of the conservatives. The relations of Asia assumed daily a more
threatening character. The state had already suffered the utmost
injury through the delay which the Sulpician revolution had
occasioned in the departure of the army for Asia; the embarkation
could on no account be longer postponed. Meanwhile Sulla hoped to
leave behind him guarantees against a new assault on the oligarchy
in Italy, partly in the consuls who would be elected under the new
electoral arrangement, partly and especially in the armies employed
in suppressing the remains of the Italian insurrection. In the
consular comitia, however, the choice did not fall on the candidates
set up by Sulla, but Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who belonged to the most
determined opposition, was associ