was nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in
slaughtering the Sullan party--during which, however, Sulla escaped
from Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and
proceeded to Athens and the East with the object of conquering
Mithridates; for, during these personal contests, the command of this
expedition had been the chief bone of contention among them. Marius,
who was by age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla
might not have it. In the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then
Consul for the seventh time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not
return till 83 B.C. In the interval was that period of peace, fit for
study, of which Cicero afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine
armis."[54] Cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old,
and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the Marian
massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms. It was not
that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at
the pleasure of the slaughterer. Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when
Cicero was twenty-four; and if Marius had scourged the city with rods,
he scourged it with scorpions. It was the city, in truth, that
was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. Sulla began by
proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list
all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on
another day. The numbers were gradually raised to 4,7OO! Nor did this
merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some
miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was armed against
the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to
death. This, however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to
inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men generally do
not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men.
Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the ordinary
Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake of the