very well how to satisfy ironically the demands of
religion. When he emptied the treasuries of the Greek temples, he
declared that the man could never fail whose chest was replenished
by the gods themselves. When the Delphic priests reported to him
that they were afraid to send the treasures which he asked, because
the harp of the god emitted a clear sound when they touched it,
he returned the reply that they might now send them all the more
readily, as the god evidently approved his design. Nevertheless
he fondly flattered himself with the idea that he was the chosen
favourite of the gods, and in an altogether special manner of that
goddess, to whom down to his latest years he assigned the pre-
eminence, Aphrodite. In his conversations as well as in his
autobiography he often plumed himself on the intercourse which
the immortals held with him in dreams and omens. He had more right
than most men to be proud of his achievements he was not so, but he
was proud of his uniquely faithful fortune. He was wont to say that
every improvised enterprise turned out better with him than those
which were systematically planned; and one of his strangest whims--
that of regularly stating the number of those who had fallen on his
side in battle as nil--was nothing but the childishness of a child of
fortune. It was but the utterance of his natural disposition, when,
having reached the culminating point of his career and seeing all
his contemporaries at a dizzy depth beneath him, he assumed the
designation of the Fortunate--Sulla Felix--as a formal surname,
and bestowed corresponding appellations on his children,

Sulla's Political Career

Nothing lay farther from Sulla than systematic ambition. He had too
much sense to regard, like the average aristocrats of his time, the
inscription of his name in the roll of the consuls as the aim of his
life; he was too indifferent and too little of an ideologue to be
disposed voluntarily to engage in the reform of the rotten structure
of the state. He remained--where birth and culture placed him--in the
circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual routine of
offices; he had no occasion to exert himself, and left such exertion
to the political working bees, of whom there was in truth no lack.
Thus in 647, on the allotment of the quaestorial places, accident
brought him to Africa to the headquarters of Gaius Marius.
The untried man-of-fashion from the capital was not very well rec