, he would publish at a future time. He
issued an edict likewise, making death the punishment of humanity,
proscribing any who should dare to receive and cherish a proscribed
person, without exception to brother, son, or parents. And to him who
should slay any one proscribed person, he ordained two talents' reward,
even were it a slave who had killed his master, or a son his father.
And what was thought most unjust of all, he caused the attainder to
pass upon their sons, and sons' sons, and made open sale of all their
property. Nor did the proscription prevail only at Rome, but throughout
all the cities of Italy the effusion of blood was such that neither
sanctuary of the gods nor hearth of hospitality nor ancestral home
escaped. Men were butchered in the embraces of their wives, children in
the arms of their mothers. Those who perished through public animosity,
or private enmity, were nothing in comparison to the numbers of those
who suffered for their riches. Even the murderers began to say, that
"his fine house killed this man, a garden that, a third, his hot baths."
Quintus Aurelius, a quiet, peaceable man, and one who thought all his
part in the common calamity consisted in condoling with the misfortunes
of others, coming into the forum to read the list, and finding himself
among the proscribed, cried out, "Woe is me, my Alban farm has informed
against me." He had not gone far, before he was despatched by a ruffian,
sent on that errand.

In the meantime, Marius, on the point of being taken, killed himself;
and Sylla, coming to Praeneste, at first proceeded judicially against
each particular person, till at last, finding it a work of too much
time, he cooped them up together in one place, to the number of twelve
thousand men, and gave order for the execution of them all, save his own
host (The friend, that is, with whom he always stayed when he happened
to be at Praeneste, his 'xenos;' a relationship much regarded to the
Greek and Roman world) alone excepted. But he, brave man, telling him
he could not accept the obligation of life from the hands of one who
had been the ruin of his country, went in among the rest, and submitted
willingly to the stroke.

THE LUXURY OF LUCULLUS

Lucullus' life, like the Old comedy, presents us at the commencement
with acts of policy and of war, and at the end offers nothing but good
eating and drinking, feastings, and revelings, and mere play. For I give
no higher name to his