after Sulla's death. It seems to have been accepted as being in no
especial way remarkable.[57] At his own demand, the plenary power of
Dictator had been given to him--power to do all as he liked, without
reference either to the Senate or to the people, and with an added
proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it
down when it pleased him. He did lay it down, flattering himself,
probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his
dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There had been no Dictator in
Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of
Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a
few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having accomplished the
special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected to do the same;
and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation
in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only by tradition,
that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special
wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the remembrance
of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the Romans.

It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he
ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable
that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without
protection. In the year after his abdication he died, at the age
of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if
Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease.
Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have
praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty,
he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic
again into order. Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom
the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by
the glory of his great acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the