wholesale slaying, in another reign of
terror, and Marius is despot of the city for a while, as Sylla had been
before, till spent with age, his life goes out amid drunkenness and
blood. The people tear down Sylla's house, burn his villa and drive out
his wife and his children. Back he comes after four years, victorious,
fighting his way right and left, against Lucanians and Samnites, back to
Rome still fighting them, almost loses the battle, is saved by Crassus
to take vengeance again, and again the long lists of the proscribed are
written out and hung up in the Forum, and the city runs blood in a third
Terror. Amid heaps of severed heads, Sylla sits before the temple of
Castor and sells the lands of his dead enemies; and Catiline is first
known to history as the executioner of Caius Gratidianus, whom he slices
to death, piecemeal, beyond the Tiber.

[Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK]

Sylla, cold, aristocratic, sublimely ironical monster, was Rome's first
absolute and undisputed military lord. Tired of blood, he tried reform,
invented an aristocratic constitution, saw that it must fail, and then,
to the amazement of his friends and enemies, abdicated and withdrew to
private life, protected by a hundred thousand veterans of his army, and
many thousands of freedmen, to die at the last without violence.

Of the chaos he left behind him, Caesar made the Roman Empire.

The Gracchi, champions of the people, were foully done to death. Marius
and Sylla, tearing the proud Republic to pieces for their own greatness,
both died in their beds, the one of old age, the other of disease. There
is no irony like that which often ended the lives of great Romans.
Marcus Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls, was hurled to his
death from the same rock, by the tribunes of the people, and Rome's
citadel and sanctuary was desecrated by the blood of its preserver.
Scipio of Africa breathed his last in exile, but Appius Claudius, the
Decemvir, died rich and honoured.

One asks, naturally enough, how Rome could hold the civilized nations in
subjection while she was fighting out a civil war that lasted fifty
years. We have but little idea of her great military organization, after
arms became a profession and a career. We can but call up scattered
pictures to show us rags and fragments of the immense host that
patrolled the world with measured tread and matchless precision of
serried rank, in tens and scores and hundreds of thousands,