without trial, and in hot haste swift decisive measures were taken which
permanently, as Sylla hoped, or if not permanently at least for the
moment, would lame the limbs of the democracy. The Senate, being below its
numbers, was hastily filled up from the patrician families. The
arrangements of the Comitia were readjusted to restore to wealth a
decisive preponderance in the election of the magistrates. The tribunes of
the people were stripped of half their power. Their veto was left to them,
but the right of initiation was taken away, and no law or measure of any
kind was thenceforth to be submitted to the popular assembly till it had
been considered in the Curia and had received the Senate's sanction.

Thus the snake was scotched, and it might be hoped would die of its
wounds. Sulpicius and his brother demagogues were dead. Marius was exiled.
Time pressed, and Sylla could not wait to see his reforms in operation.
Signs became visible before he went that the crisis would not pass off so
easily. Fresh consuls had to be elected. The changes in the method of
voting were intended to secure the return of the Senate's candidates, and
one of the consuls chosen, Cnaeus Octavius, was a man on whom Sylla could
rely. His colleague, Lucius Cinna, though elected under the pressure of
the legions, was of more doubtful temper. But Cinna was a patrician,
though given to popular sentiments. Sylla was impatient to be gone; more
important work was waiting for him than composing factions in Rome. He
contented himself with obliging the new consuls to take an oath to
maintain the constitution in the shape in which he left it, and he sailed
from Brindisi in the winter of B.C. 88.

The campaign of Sylla in the East does not fall to be described in this
place. He was a second Coriolanus, a proud, imperious aristocrat,
contemptuous, above all men living, of popular rights; but he was the
first soldier of his age; he was himself, though he did not know it, an