"saving society;" that is to say, in saving their own privileges, their
opportunities for plunder, their palaces, their estates, and their
game-preserves. They had treated the people as if they were so many cattle
grown troublesome to their masters, and the cattle were human beings with
rights as real as their own.

The democratic party were now masters of the situation, and so continued
for almost four years. Cinna succeeded to the consulship term after term,
nominating himself and his colleagues. The franchise was given to the
Italians without reserve or qualification. Northern Italy was still
excluded, being not called Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul. South of the Po
distinctions of citizenship ceased to exist. The constitution became a
rehearsal of the Empire, a democracy controlled and guided by a popular
dictator. The aristocrats who had escaped massacre fled to Sylla in Asia,
and for a brief interval Rome drew its breath in peace.




CHAPTER VIII.


Revolutionary periods are painted in history in colors so dark that the
reader wonders how, amidst such scenes, peaceful human beings could
continue to exist. He forgets that the historian describes only the
abnormal incidents which broke the current of ordinary life, and that
between the spasms of violence there were long quiet intervals when the
ordinary occupations of men went on as usual. Cinna's continuous
consulship was uncomfortable to the upper classes, but the daily business
of a great city pursued its beaten way. Tradesmen and merchants made