The History of Rome, vol 5 | Page 3

like those of Pompeii, lived on their
property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall
with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the
Arretines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory,
but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by
the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially, were
reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers in the woods.
Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family connections and
freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost their lives in
consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering along the
Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court and in the army of

Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile; for, according to the
strict family-associations that governed the political feeling of this age,
it was accounted a point of honour(2) that those who were left behind
should endeavour to procure for exiled relatives the privilege of
returning to their native land, and, in the case of the dead, at least a
removal of the stigma attaching to their memory and to their children,
and a restitution to the latter of their paternal estate. More especially the
immediate children of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced in
point of law to political Pariahs,(3) had thereby virtually received from
the law itself a summons to rise in rebellion against the existing order
of things.
Men of Ruined Fortunes Men of Ambition
To all these sections of the opposition there was added the whole body
of men of ruined fortunes. All the rabble high and low, whose means
and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar debauchery; the
aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark of quality than their debts;
the Sullan troopers whom the regent's fiat could transform into
landholders but not into husbandmen, and who, after squandering the
first inheritance of the proscribed, were longing to succeed to a
second--all these waited only the unfolding of the banner which invited
them to fight against the existing order of things, whatever else might
be inscribed on it. From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent,
in search of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only
those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied
admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion, and who
therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx and to break
through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority by means of
popular favour, but also the more dangerous men, whose ambition
aimed at something higher than helping to determine the destinies of
the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues. On the advocates'
platform in particular--the only field of legal opposition left open by
Sulla--even in the regent's lifetime such aspirants waged lively war
against the restoration with the weapons of formal jurisprudence and
combative oratory: for instance, the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius
Cicero (born 3rd January 648), son of a landholder of Arpinum,

speedily made himself a name by the mingled caution and boldness of
his opposition to the dictator. Such efforts were not of much
importance, if the opponent desired nothing farther than by their means
to procure for himself a curule chair, and then to sit in it in contentment
for the rest of his life. No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a
popular man and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for
life or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could
be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself any such
lofty aim.
Power of the Opposition
Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government
instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than Sulla
himself probably expected, been thrown by his death on its own
resources. The task was in itself far from easy, and it was rendered
more difficult by the other social and political evils of this
age--especially by the extraordinary double difficulty of keeping the
military chiefs in the provinces in subjection to the supreme civil
magistracy, and of dealing with the masses of the Italian and
extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital, and of the slaves
living there to a great extent in de facto freedom, without having troops
at disposal. The senate was placed as it were, in a fortress exposed and
threatened on all sides, and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue. But
the means of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and
lasting; and although the majority of the nation was manifestly
disinclined to the government which Sulla had installed, and even
animated by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very
well maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against the
distracted