subdued. So soon as he had done with that
foe, he crushed anarchy and saved the capital from the firebrands of
the desperate Samnites and revolutionists. The moment of his return
home was for Sulla an overpowering one in joy and in pain: he himself
relates in his memoirs that during his first night in Rome he had
not been able to close an eye, and we may well believe it.
But still his task was not at an end; his star was destined to
rise still higher. Absolute autocrat as was ever any king, and
yet constantly abiding on the ground of formal right, he bridled
the ultra-reactionary party, annihilated the Gracchan constitution
which had for forty years limited the oligarchy, and compelled first
the powers of the capitalists and of the urban proletariate which
had entered into rivalry with the oligarchy, and ultimately the
arrogance of the sword which had grown up in the bosom of his own
staff, to yield once more to the law which he strengthened afresh.
He established the oligarchy on a more independent footing than ever,
placed the magisterial power as a ministering instrument in its
hands, committed to it the legislation, the courts, the supreme
military and financial power, and furnished it with a sort of
bodyguard in the liberated slaves and with a sort of army in the
settled military colonists. Lastly, when the work was finished,
the creator gave way to his own creation; the absolute autocrat
became of his own accord once more a simple senator. In all this
long military and political career Sulla never lost a battle, was
never compelled to retrace a single step, and, led astray neither
by friends nor by foes, brought his work to the goal which he had
himself proposed. He had reason, indeed, to thank his star.
The capricious goddess of fortune seemed in his case for once to
have exchanged caprice for steadfastness, and to have taken a
pleasure in loading her favourite with successes and honours--
whether he desired them or not. But history must be more just
towards him than he was towards himself, and must place him in a
higher rank than that of the mere favourites of fortune.

Sulla and His Work

We do not mean that the Sullan constitution was a work of political
genius, such as those of Gracchus and Caesar. There does not occur
in it--as is, indeed, implied in its very nature as a restoration--a
single new idea in statesmanship. All its most essential features--
admission to the senate by the holding of th