some measure
devoid of passion; the commonwealth seemed all the more irretrievably
lost, when the frenzy and the crime on both sides were equally balanced.

Maintenance of the Burgess-Rights Previously Conferred

In regulating the relations of Italy and of the capital, Sulla--
although he otherwise in general treated as null all state-acts done
during the revolution except in the transaction of current business--
firmly adhered to the principle, which it had laid down, that every
burgess of an Italian community was by that very fact a burgess also
of Rome; the distinctions between burgesses and Italian allies,
between old burgesses with better, and new burgesses with more
restricted, rights, were abolished, and remained so. In the case
of the freedmen alone the unrestricted right of suffrage was again
withdrawn, and for them the old state of matters was restored.
To the aristocratic ultras this might seem a great concession;
Sulla perceived that it was necessary to wrest these mighty levers
out of the hands of the revolutionary chiefs, and that the rule
of the oligarchy was not materially endangered by increasing
the number of the burgesses.

Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

But with this concession in principle was combined a most rigid
inquisition, conducted by special commissioners with the co-operation
of the garrisons distributed throughout Italy, in respect to
particular communities in all districts of the land. Several towns
were rewarded; for instance Brundisium, the first community which
had joined Sulla, now obtained the exemption from customs so
important for such a seaport; more were punished. The less guilty
were required to pay fines, to pull down their walls, to raze their
citadels; in the case of those whose opposition had been most
obstinate the regent confiscated a part of their territory, in some
cases even the whole of it--as it certainly might be regarded in law as
forfeited, whether they were to be treated as burgess-communities which
had borne arms against their fatherland, or as allied states which had
waged war with Rome contrary to their treaties of perpetual peace.
In this case all the dispossessed burgesses--but these only--were
deprived of their municipal, and at the same time of the Roman,
franchise, receiving in return the lowest Latin rights.(7) Sulla
thus avoided furnishing the opposition with a nucleus in Italian
subject-communities of inferior rights; the home