om Rome for a while and told the Senate to elect an Interrex, in
conformity with the prescribed usage under such circumstances. Then
he wrote to the Interrex and recommended that a Dictator should be
appointed, not for a limited time, but till he had restored quiet in
the Roman world, and, with a touch of that irony which he could not
resist displaying in and out of season, went on to say that he thought
himself the best man for the post. [Sidenote: Sulla's power.] Thus,
in November 82, he was formally invested with despotic power over
the lives and property of his fellow-citizens, could contract or
extend the frontiers of the State, could change as he pleased the
constitution of the Italian towns and the provinces, could legislate
for the future, could nominate proconsuls and propraetors, and could
retain his absolute power as long as he liked. He might have dispensed
with consuls altogether. But he did not care to do this. The consuls
whom he allowed to be elected for 81 were of course possessed of
merely nominal power. Twenty-four lictors preceded him in the streets.
He told the people to hail him as 'Felix,' declared that his
least deliberate were his most successful actions, signed himself
'Epaphroditus' when he wrote to Greeks, named his son and daughter
Faustus and Fausta, boasted that the gods held converse with him
in dreams, and sent a golden crown and axe to the goddess whom
he believed to be his patroness. Like Wallenstein, he mingled
indifference to bloodshed with extreme superstition and boundless
self-confidence. But, as the historian remarks, 'a man who is
superstitious is capable of any crime, for he believes that his gods
can be conciliated by prayers and presents. The greatest crimes have
not been committed by men who have no religious belief.' No doubt
to his mind there was a sort of judicial retribution in all this
bloodshed; and, as he tried to make himself out the favourite of the
gods, so by formally announcing the close of the proscription lists
for June 1, 81 B.C., he spread some veil of legality over his
shameless violence. [Sidenote: Peculiarly horrible nature of Sulla's
acts.] There is something particularly revolting in the business-like
and systematic way in which he went about his murderous work,
appointing a fixed time for it to end, a fixed list of the victims; a
fixed price to be paid per head, a fixed exemption for the murderers
from his own law 'De Sicariis.' Modern idolaters of a pol