slew them
and that it should be duly entered in the public account-books, that
the confiscated property should be brought to the hammer like the spoil
of an enemy in the public market, that the general should order a
refractory officer to be at once cut down and acknowledge the deed
before all the people. This public mockery of humanity was also
a political error; it contributed not a little to envenom later
revolutionary crises beforehand, and on that account even now
a dark shadow deservedly rests on the memory of the author
of the proscriptions.

Sulla may moreover be justly blamed that, while in all important
matters he acted with remorseless vigour, in subordinate and more
especially in personal questions he very frequently yielded to
his sanguine temperament and dealt according to his likings or
dislikings. Wherever he really felt hatred, as for instance against
the Marians, he allowed it to take its course without restraint even
against the innocent, and boasted of himself that no one had better
requited friends and foes.(52) He did not disdain on occasion of
his plenitude of power to accumulate a colossal fortune. The first
absolute monarch of the Roman state, he verified the maxim of
absolutism--that the laws do not bind the prince--forthwith in
the case of those laws which he himself issued as to adultery and
extravagance. But his lenity towards his own party and his own
circle was more pernicious for the state than his indulgence towards
himself. The laxity of his military discipline, although it was
partly enjoined by his political exigencies, may be reckoned as
coming under this category; but far more pernicious was his indulgence
towards his political adherents. The extent of his occasional
forbearance is hardly credible: for instance Lacius Murena was not only
released from punishment for defeats which he sustained through arrant
perversity and insubordination,(53) but was even allowed a triumph;
Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still more
extravagantly honoured by Sulla.(54) The extensive range and
the worst enormities of the proscriptions and confiscations probably
arose not so much from Sulla's own wish as from this spirit of
indifference, which in his position indeed was hardly more pardonable.
That Sulla with his intrinsically energetic and yet withal indifferent
temperament should conduct himself very variously, sometimes with
incredible indulgence, sometimes with inexorab