hey
dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the
expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order.
Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the
most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great
acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the
oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the
service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and
declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political
selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to
be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are
endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's
character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment,
were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been
Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and
his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous
to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of
order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the
Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the
re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of these
institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel
to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no
judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless
condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan
constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit
that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left
any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian seems
to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians,
that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the
means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his
Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored
everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have believed that
when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and grow in power and
prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he
had initiated. There can be no doubt that many of the best in Rome--the
best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did
think that, with the old forms, the old virtue wo