A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Dictatorship of Sulla 431
avoid being taken. Sulla then went to Praeneste (which Sulla at
Prflsnc st6
Marius had held) and there began to examine the case of
each individual before punishing him; but lacking time Suiu, ^2.
for this inquiry, he had all the people brought to one spot
to the number of twelve thousand, and ordered them to be
massacred, with the exception of one man, an old friend
of his, whom he offered to pardon. But the man nobly
declared he would never owe his
safety to the destroyer
of his country; and mingling with the rest of the citizens,
he was cut down together with them.
Besides the massacres, other things caused dissatisfac-
His dictatortion.
Sulla had himself proclaimed dictator, and 'thus B.C.'
revived this office after an interval of a hundred and piutarch,
twenty years.
His legisla-
Twenty-four axes were carried in front of him, as was
customary with dictators—the same number which was
borne before the ancient kings; and he had besides a large
body-guard. He repealed laws and enacted others. He
'• ^°°forbade
any one to hold the office of praetor till after he
had held that of quaestor, or to be consul before he had been
praetor, and he prohibited any man from holding the same
office a second time till after the lapse of ten years. He
reduced the tribunician power to such an extent that it
seemed to be destroyed. He curtailed it by a law which
provided that one holding the office of tribune should never
afterward hold any other office.
Sulla, 3,^.
cWtwars,
STUDIES
I. How did the Romans dispose of acquired land? What resulted
from these arrangements? What were the provisions of the agrarian
law of Tiberius? What was his aim? Who opposed and who supported
him, and why? Discuss the legahty of the deposition of
Octavius.