eless was the pure aristocratic blood, and how little
doubt Sulla had as to its worthlessness, is shown by the fact that,
with the exception of Quintus Metellus who was related to him by marriage,
he selected all his instruments out of what was previously the middle
party and the deserters from the democratic camp--such as Lucius
Flaccus, Lucius Philippus, Quintus Ofella, Gnaeus Pompeius.
Sulla was as much in earnest about the re-establishment of the old
constitution as the most vehement aristocratic emigrant; he understood
however, not perhaps to the full extent--for how in that case could
he have put hand to the work at all?--but better at any rate than
his party, the enormous difficulties which attended this work of
restoration. Comprehensive concessions so far as concession was
possible without affecting the essence of oligarchy, and the
establishment of an energetic system of repression and prevention,
were regarded by him as unavoidable; and he saw clearly that the senate
as it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and would
parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstruction. If Sulla had
already after the Sulpician revolution carried out what he deemed
necessary in both respects without asking much of their advice, he
was now determined, under circumstances of far more severe and intense
excitement, to restore the oligarchy--not with the aid, but in spite,
of the oligarchs--by his own hand.

Sulla Regent of Rome

Sulla, however, was not now consul as he had been then, but was
furnished merely with proconsular, that is to say, purely military
power: he needed an authority keeping as near as possible to
constitutional forms, but yet extraordinary, in order to impose his
reform on friends and foes. In a letter to the senate he announced
to them that it seemed to him indispensable that they should place
the regulation of the state in the hands of a single man equipped
with unlimited plenitude of power, and that he deemed himself qualified
to fulfil this difficult task. This proposal, disagreeable as it was
to many, was under the existing circumstances a command. By direction
of the senate its chief, the interrex Lucius Valerius Flaccus the
father, as interim holder of the supreme power, submitted to the
burgesses the proposal that the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla
should receive for the past a supplementary approval of all the
official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and should