hem. Marius, who was by age
unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not have it. In
the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh
time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C. In the
interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero
afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was
then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have
understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to
have the city embroiled by arms. It was not that men were fighting, but
that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer.
Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if
Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions.
It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile
faction. Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had
included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten
should be added on another day. The numbers were gradually raised to
4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and
killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was
armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also
doomed to death. This, however, might have been comparatively
inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men
generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of
other men. Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the
ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake
of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be
made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the
victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the
man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an
informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in
the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for
killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims
selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade
proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us how a
quie