ould stand firmly by each other, and
each voluntarily brought to the general his savings as a contribution
to the costs of the war. But considerable as was the weight
of this solid and select body of troops in comparison with the
masses of the enemy, Sulla saw very well that Italy could not
be subdued with five legions if it remained united in resolute
resistance. To settle accounts with the popular party and their
incapable autocrats would not have been difficult; but he saw
opposed to him and united with that party the whole mass of those
who desired no oligarchic restoration with its terrors, and above
all the whole body of new burgesses--both those who had been
withheld by the Julian law from taking part in the insurrection,
and those whose revolt a few years before had brought Rome to
the brink of ruin.

His Moderation

Sulla fully surveyed the situation of affairs, and was far
removed from the blind exasperation and the obstinate rigour which
characterized the majority of his party. While the edifice of the
state was in flames, while his friends were being murdered, his
houses destroyed, his family driven into exile, he had remained
undisturbed at his post till the public foe was conquered and the
Roman frontier was secured. He now treated Italian affairs in the
same spirit of patriotic and judicious moderation, and did whatever
he could to pacify the moderate party and the new burgesses, and
to prevent the civil war from assuming the far more dangerous form
of a fresh war between the Old Romans and the Italian allies.
The first letter which Sulla addressed to the senate had asked
nothing but what was right and just, and had expressly disclaimed
a reign of terror. In harmony with its terms, he now presented
the prospect of unconditional pardon to all those who should even
now break off from the revolutionary government, and caused his
soldiers man by man to swear that they would meet the Italians
thoroughly as friends and fellow-citizens. The most binding
declarations secured to the new burgesses the political rights
which they had acquired; so that Carbo, for that reason, wished
hostages to be furnished to him by every civic community in Italy,
but the proposal broke down under general indignation and under the
opposition of the senate. The chief difficulty in the position of
Sulla really consisted in the fact, that in consequence of the
faithlessness and perfidy which prevailed the new burgesses had