fairs. Paterculus (ii. 28)
mentions the 120 years as having elapsed since the time of a previous
dictatorship, which was the year after Hannibal left Italy B.C. 202.
As Sulla was elected Dictator in B.C. 81, Plutarch's statement is
correct. (On the functions of the Dictator see Life of Caesar, c. 37.)]

[Footnote 290: Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was praetor B.C. 70 during
the proceedings against Verres. He was the son of the M. Acilius
Glabrio who got a law passed on mal-administration in offices
(repetundae), and the grandson of the Glabrio who defeated King
Antiochus near Thermopylae. (See c. 12.)]

[Footnote 291: This murder is told more circumstantially by Appian
(_Civil Wars_, i. 101), who has added something that Plutarch should
not have omitted. After saying to the people that Lucretius had been
put to death by his order, Sulla told them a tale: "The lice were very
troublesome to a clown, as he was ploughing. Twice he stopped his
ploughing and purged his jacket. But he was still bitten, and in order
that he might not be hindered in his work, he burnt the jacket; and I
advise those who have been twice humbled not to make fire necessary
the third time."]

[Footnote 292: Plinius (_H.N._ 33, c. 5) speaks of this triumph: it
lasted two days. In the first day Sulla exhibited in the procession
15,000 pounds weight of gold and 115,000 pounds of silver, the produce
of his foreign victories: on the second, 13,000 pounds weight of gold
and 6000 pounds of silver which the younger Marius had carried off to
Praeneste after the conflagration of the Capitol and from the robbery
of the other Roman temples.]

[Footnote 293: The term Felix appears on the coins of Sulla.
Epaphroditus signifies a favourite of Aphrodite or Venus. (Eckhel,
_Doctrina Num. Vet._ v. 190.) Eckhel infers from the guttus and lituus
on one of Sulla's coins that he was an Augur.]

[Footnote 294: Sulla abdicated the dictatorship B.C. 79 in the
consulship of P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus and Appius Claudius
Pulcher. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 103, &c.) speaks of the abdication.
He made no attempt to secure to his family the power that he had
acquired. It may be that he had no desire to perpetuate the power in
his family; and it is certain that this could not have been
accomplished. Sulla had only one son, and he was now a child. But it
is certainly a striking trait in this man's character that he
descended to a private station from the possession of unlimited