was
restored to its ancient dignity and power, and three hundred new members
appointed. The number of praetors was increased to eight. The government
still rested on the basis of popular election, but was made more
aristocratic than before. The Comitia Centuriata was left in possession of
the nominal power of legislation, but it could only be exercised upon the
initiation of a decree of the Senate. The Comitia Tributa was stripped of
the powers by which it had so long controlled the Senate and the State.
Tribunes of the people were selected from the Senate. The College of
Pontiffs was no longer filled by popular election, but by the choice of
their own members. A new criminal code was made, and the several courts
were presided over by the praetors. Such, in substance, were the Cornelian
laws to restore the old powers of the aristocracy.

(M989) Having effected this labor, Sulla, in the plenitude of power,
retired into private life. He retired, not like Charles V., wearied of the
toils of war, and disgusted with the vanity of glory and fame, nor like
Washington, from lofty patriotic motives, but to bury himself in epicurean
pleasures. In the luxury of his Cumaenon villa he divided his time between
hunting and fishing, and the enjoyments of literature, until, worn out
with sensuality, he died in his sixtieth year, B.C. 78. A grand procession
of the Senate he had saved, the equites, the magistrates, the vestal
virgins, and his disbanded soldiers, bore his body to the funeral pyre,
and his ashes were deposited beside the tombs of the kings. A splendid
monument was raised to his memory, on which was inscribed his own epitaph,
that no friend ever did him a kindness, and no enemy a wrong, without
receiving a full requital.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

ROME FROM THE DEATH OF SULLA TO THE GREAT CIVIL WARS OF CAESAR AND
POMPEY.--CICERO, POMPEY, AND CAESAR.

On the death of Sulla, the Roman government was once more in the hands of
the aristocracy, and for several years the consuls were elected from the
great ruling families. But, in spite of all the conquests of Sulla and all
his laws, the State was tumbling into anarchy, and was convulsed with
fresh wars.

(M990) Sulla was alive when M. Lepidus came forward as the leader of the
democratic party against C. Lutatius Catulus--a man without character or
ability, who had deserted from the optimates to the popular party, to
escape prosecution for the pl