be more just
towards him than he was towards himself, and must place him in a
higher rank than that of the mere favourites of fortune.

Sulla and His Work

We do not mean that the Sullan constitution was a work of political
genius, such as those of Gracchus and Caesar. There does not occur
in it--as is, indeed, implied in its very nature as a restoration--a
single new idea in statesmanship. All its most essential features--
admission to the senate by the holding of the quaestorship, the
abolition of the censorial right to eject a senator from the senate,
the initiative of the senate in legislation, the conversion of the
tribunician office into an instrument of the senate for fettering
the -imperium-, the prolonging of the duration of the supreme
office to two years, the transference of the command from the
popularly-elected magistrate to the senatorial proconsul or
propraetor, and even the new criminal and municipal arrangements--
were not created by Sulla, but were institutions which had
previously grown out of the oligarchic government, and which he
merely regulated and fixed. And even as to the horrors attaching
to his restoration, the proscriptions and confiscations--are they,
compared with the doings of Nasica, Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and
so on, anything else than the legal embodiment of the customary
oligarchic mode of getting rid of opponents? On the Roman
oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed save one of
inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything, else
connected with it, the Sullan constitution is completely involved in
that condemnation. To accord praise which the genius of a bad man
bribes us into bestowing is to sin against the sacred character of
history; but we may be allowed to bear in mind that Sulla was far
less answerable for the Sullan restoration than the body of the
Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as a clique for centuries and had
every year become more enervated and embittered by age, and that all
that was hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately
traceable to that aristocracy. Sulla reorganized the state--not,
however, as the master of the house who puts his shattered estate
and household in order according to his own discretion, but as
the temporary business-manager who faithfully complies with his
instructions; it is superficial and false in such a case to devolve
the final and essential responsibility from the master upon the
manager.