secured prosperity, although they were considerably terrified by the
transactions and still more by omens. For the standards of the army
guarding the city were covered with spiders, and weapons were seen
reaching up from earth to heaven while a great din resounded from them,
and in the shrines of Aesculapius bees gathered in numbers on the roof and
crowds of vultures settled on the temple of the Genius Populi and on that
of Concord. [-3-] And while these conditions still remained practically
unchanged, those murders by proscription which Sulla had once caused were
put into effect and the whole city was filled with corpses. Many were
killed in their houses, many in the streets, and scattered about in the
fora and near the temples: the heads of such were once more attached to
the rostra and their trunks flung out to be devoured by the dogs and
birds or cast into the river. Everything that had been done before in
the days of Sulla found a counterpart at this time, except that only two
white tablets were posted, one for the senators and one for the rest. The
reason for this I have not been able to learn from any one else nor to
find out myself. The cause which one might have imagined, that fewer were
put to death, is least of all true: for many more names were listed,
because there were more leaders concerned. In this respect, then, the
case differed from the murders that had earlier taken place: but that the
names of those prominent were not posted with the rabble, but separately,
appeared very nonsensical to the men who were to be murdered in the same
way. Besides this no few other very unpleasant conditions fell to their
lot, although the former régime, one would have said, had left nothing to
be surpassed. [-4-] But in Sulla's time those guilty of such murderous
measures had some excuse in their very hardihood: they were trying the
method for the first time, and not with set intentions; hence in most
cases they behaved less maliciously, since they were acting not according
to definite plans but as chance dictated. And the victims, succumbing
to sudden and unheard of catastrophes, found some alleviation in the