The opposing army was absolutely destroyed and Sulla had every thing at
his mercy. He waited for a few days outside the city till the Senate had
passed a decree giving him absolute power to change the laws, to fill
the offices of State, and to deal with the lives and properties of
citizens as it might please him. This done, he entered Rome. Then came
another proscription. The chief of his enemies, Marius. was gone. He had
died, tormented it was said by remorse, seventeen days after he had
reached the crowning glory, promised him in his youth by an oracle, and
had been made consul for the seventh time. The conqueror had to content
himself with the same vengeance that Charles II. in our own country
exacted from the remains of Cromwell. The ashes of Marius were taken out
of his tomb on the Flaminian Way, the great North Road of Rome, and were
thrown into the Anio. But many of his friends and partisans survived,
and these were slaughtered without mercy. Eighty names were put on the
fatal list on the first day, two hundred and twenty on the second, and
as many more on the third. With the deaths of many of these victims
politics had nothing to do. Sulla allowed his friends and favorites to
put into the list the names of men against whom they happened to bear a
grudge, or whose property they coveted. No one knew who might be the
next to fall. Even Sulla's own partisans were alarmed. A young senator,
Caius Metellus, one of a family which was strongly attached to Sulla and
with which he was connected by marriage, had the courage to ask him in
public when there would be an end to this terrible state of things.
"We do not beg you," he said, "to remit the punishment of those whom you
have made up your mind to remove; we do beg you to do away with the
anxiety of those whom you have resolved to spare." "I am not yet
certain," answered Sulla, "whom I shall spare." "Then at least," said
Metellus, "you can tell us whom you mean to punish." "That I will do,"
replied the tyrant. It was indeed a terrible time that followed,
Plutarch thus describes it: "He denounced against any who might shelter