where the -Vicus
Jugarius- opened into the Forum, where the dictator had ordered them
to be publicly exposed; and among men of the second and third rank in
particular death reaped a fearful harvest. In addition to those who
were placed on the list for their services in or on behalf of the
revolutionary army with little discrimination, sometimes on account of
money advanced to one of its officers or on account of relations of
hospitality formed with such an one, the retaliation fell specially on
those capitalists who had sat in judgment on the senators and had
speculated in Marian confiscations--the "hoarders"; about 1600 of
the equites, as they were called,(6) were inscribed on the proscription-
list. In like manner the professional accusers, the worst scourge of
the nobility, who made it their trade to bring men of the senatorial
order before the equestrian courts, had now to suffer for it--"how
comes it to pass," an advocate soon after asked, "that they have left
to us the courts, when they were putting to death the accusers and
judges?" The most savage and disgraceful passions raged without
restraint for many months throughout Italy. In the capital a Celtic
band was primarily charged with the executions, and Sullan soldiers
and subaltern officers traversed for the same purpose the different
districts of Italy; but every volunteer was also welcome, and the
rabble high and low pressed forward not only to earn the rewards
of murder, but also to gratify their own vindictive or covetous
dispositions under the mantle of political prosecution. It sometimes
happened that the assassination did not follow, but preceded, the
placing of the name on the list of the proscribed. One example shows
the way in which these executions took place. At Larinum, a town of
new burgesses and favourable to Marian views, one Statius Albius
Oppianicus, who had fled to Sulla's headquarters to avoid a charge
of murder, made his appearance after the victory as commissioner of
the regent, deposed the magistrates of the town, installed himself
and his friends in their room, and caused the person who had
threatened to accuse him, along with his nearest relatives and
friends, to be outlawed and killed. Countless persons--including
not a few decided adherents of the oligarchy--thus fell as the victims
of private hostility or of their own riches: the fearful confusion,
and the culpable indulgence which Sulla displayed in this as in every
instance