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Then followed the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of the
cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased with
great bloodshed; but when hostilities were finished, hostility
survived, and the subsequent peace was bloody as the war. To the
former and still recent massacres of the elder Marius, the younger
Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater
atrocities. For when Sylla approached, and they despaired not only
of victory, but of life itself, they made a promiscuous massacre of
friends and foes. And, not satisfied with staining every corner of
Rome with blood, they besieged the senate, and led forth the senators
to death from the curia as from a prison. Mucius Scaevola the pontiff
was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to because no spot
in Rome was more sacred than her temple; and his blood well-nigh
extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the constant care of the
virgins. Then Sylla entered the city victorious, after having
slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat, but by an order,
7000 men who had surrendered, and were therefore unarmed; so
fierce was the rage of peace itself, even after the rage of war was
extinct. Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Sylla
slew whom he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond
computation, till it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some
to survive, that the victors might not be destitute of subjects. Then
this furious and promiscuous licence to murder was checked, and much
relief was expressed at the publication of the proscription list,
containing though it did the death-warrant of two thousand men of the
highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number was
indeed saddening, but it was consolatory that a limit was fixed; nor
was the grief at the numbers slain so great as the joy that the rest
were secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could
not but bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those who had
been doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of
the executioners; men treating a living man more savagely than wild
beasts are used to tear an abandoned corpse. Another had his eyes dug
out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long
while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture. Some
celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one was
collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual criminal
would be condemned to death. These things were done in peace when the
war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but
that, after being obtained, it might not be thought lightly of.
Peace Pied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war
overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless. War gave liberty
to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the
survivors not life, but an unresisting death.
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