employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be made to
flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the victim's
life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the man
who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of
an informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were
made in the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were
named for killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few
victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a
trade proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us
how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one
who took no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He
had an Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin.
He had hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before
he was slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an
interval of two or three years after those of Marius, between which
was the blessed time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of
Marius, Cicero was too young, and of no sufficient importance, on
account of his birth or parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it
probable that Marius would have turned against his townsmen. When
Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not absolutely connected with the
Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in politics. In going back even
to this period we may use the terms Liberals and Conservatives for
describing the two parties. Marius was for the people; that is to say,
he was opposed to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and
loved to feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. Of
liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but not
the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. Sulla, on the