nce to the
collection of a contribution for the rebuilding of the Capitoline
temple, of which he was not allowed to witness the completion.

Death of Sulla

Little more than a year after his retirement, in the sixtieth year
of his life, while yet vigorous in body and mind, he was overtaken by
death; after a brief confinement to a sick-bed--he was writing at his
autobiography two days even before his death--the rupture of a blood-
vessel(55) carried him off (676). His faithful fortune did not
desert him even in death. He could have no wish to be drawn once
more into the disagreeable vortex of party struggles, and to be
obliged to lead his old warriors once more against a new revolution;
yet such was the state of matters at his death in Spain and in
Italy, that he could hardly have been spared this task had his life
been prolonged. Even now when it was suggested that he should have a
public funeral in the capital, numerous voices there, which had been
silent in his lifetime, were raised against the last honour which it
was proposed to show to the tyrant. But his memory was still too
fresh and the dread of his old soldiers too vivid: it was resolved
that the body should be conveyed to the capital and that the obsequies
should be celebrated there.

His Funeral

Italy never witnessed a grander funeral solemnity. In every place
through which the deceased was borne in regal attire, with his well-
known standards and fasces before him, the inhabitants and above all
his old soldiers joined the mourning train: it seemed as if the whole
army would once more meet round the hero in death, who had in life
led it so often and never except to victory. So the endless
funeral procession reached the capital, where the courts kept
holiday and all business was suspended, and two thousand golden
chaplets awaited the dead--the last honorary gifts of the faithful
legions, of the cities, and of his more intimate friends. Sulla,
faithful to the usage of the Cornelian house, had ordered that his
body should be buried without being burnt; but others were more
mindful than he was of what past days had done and future days
might do: by command of the senate the corpse of the man who had
disturbed the bones of Marius from their rest in the grave was
committed to the flames. Headed by all the magistrates and the
whole senate, by the priests and priestesses in their official robes
and the band of noble youths in equestrian armour, the pro