Italy. The restoration of the Capitoline temple, burnt during
the civil war, was begun. The new law-courts started work with
the new juries, and the first case in the murder-court was a
charge of parricide, connected with events arising from the pro-
scriptions. In this trial a young man from Arpinum, M. Tullius
Cicero, made a successful defence against the leader of the
Roman bar, Q. Hortensius, and the secret influence of Sulla's
great freedman Chrysogonus. Henceforth Cicero stood in the
front rank of forensic orators.

448. Sulla was weary, and longing to retire and enjoy low
company in private life. His public policy had been such as to
make retirement (the great difficulty of tyrants) reasonably safe.
He refused to be elected consul for 79, and laid down the
dictatorship early in that year. At his Campanian villa near
Puteoli he gathered round him a congenial crew of parasites.
He went on writing his memoirs. Though one of the consuls ¹
selected for 78 was coming forward as leader of a counter-revolu-
tion, and Rome was disturbed, Sulla did not hesitate to interfere
despotically in the affairs of the Puteolan municipality. In a fit
of rage he broke a blood-vessel and died. His adherents insisted
on giving him a splendid funeral, at which his body was burned,
contrary to the custom of the Cornelian clan. By his will he
made Lucullus (not Pompey) the guardian of his young son.
Lucullus was his literary executor also. His death left others to
compete for the first place. He had for the moment restored
the senatorial nobility to power, but he could not remove their
selfishness and jealousies, and restore them to harmony and
vigour. Nothing could prevent the rise of individuals, so an
autocrat would surely come. But this great change was not to
come at once, or in any other way than as the result of sheer
exhaustion. With all the tendencies of the age working against
them, the Roman aristocrats made a stubborn fight in defence of
their Republic. It was their form of patriotism, and many of
them were wholly or partly influenced by high motives. In the
next period we must bear in mind that Aristocrat and Republican
are two names for the same thing.

-347-