ing ever her honor and service to our own
fathers and children."

And, in fact, it is told that the great-grandfather of Fabius, who was
undoubtedly the greatest man of Rome in his time, both in reputation
and authority, who had been five times consul, and had been honored with
several triumphs for victories obtained by him, took pleasure in serving
as lieutenant under his own son, when he went as consul to his command.
And when afterwards his son had a triumph bestowed upon him for his good
service, the old man followed his triumphant chariot, on horseback, as
one of his attendants; and made it his glory, that while he really
was, and was acknowledged to be, the greatest man in Rome, and held a
father's full power over his son, he yet submitted himself to the law
and the magistrate.

THE CRUELTY OF LUCIUS CORNELIUS SYLLA

Sylla's general personal appearance may be known by his statues; only
his blue eyes, of themselves extremely keen and glaring, were rendered
all the more forbidding and terrible by the complexion of his face, in
which white was mixed with rough blotches of fiery red. Hence, it is
said, he was surnamed Sylla, and in allusion to it one of the scurrilous
jesters at Athens made the verse upon him,

Sylla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal.

Sylla being wholly bent upon slaughter, filled the city with executions
without number or limit, many wholly uninterested persons falling a
sacrifice to private enmity, through his permission and indulgence to
his friends. At last Caius Metellus, one of the younger men, made bold
in the senate to ask him what end there was of these evils, and at what
point he might be expected to stop? "We do ask you," said he, "to pardon
any whom you have resolved to destroy, but to free from doubt those whom
you are pleased to save." Sylla answering, that he knew not as yet whom
to spare, he asked: "Will you then tell us whom you will punish?" This
Sylla said he would do. These last words, some authors say, were spoken
not by Metellus, but by Afidius, one of Sylla's fawning companions.
Immediately upon this, without communicating with any magistrates, Sylla
proscribed eighty persons, and notwithstanding the general indignation,
after one day's respite, he posted two hundred and twenty more, and on
the third again, as many. In an address to the people on this occasion,
he told them he had put up as many names as he could think of; those
which had escaped his memory