THE PROSCRIPTIONS OF SULLA.--The returning army from the East landed in Italy. With his veteran legions at his back, Sulla marched into Rome with all the powers of a dictator. The leaders of the Marian party were proscribed, rewards were offered for their heads, and their property was confiscated. Sulla was implored to make out a list of those he designed to put to death, that those he intended to spare might be relieved of the terrible suspense in which all were now held. He made out a list of eighty, which was attached to the Rostrum. The people murmured at the length of the roll. In a few days it was extended to over three hundred, and grew rapidly, until it included the names of thousands of the best citizens of Italy. Hundreds were murdered, not for any offence, but because some favorites of Sulla coveted their estates. A wealthy noble coming into the Forum, and reading his own name in the list of the proscribed, exclaimed, "Alas! my villa has proved my ruin." The infamous Catiline, by having the name of a brother placed upon the fatal roll, secured his property. Julius Cæsar, at this time a mere boy of eighteen, was proscribed on account of his relationship to Marius; but, upon the intercession of friends, Sulla spared him: as he did so, however, he said warningly, and, as the event proved, prophetically, "There is in that boy many a Marius." Senators, knights, and wealthy land-owners fell by hundreds and by thousands; but the poor Italians who had sided with the Marian party were simply slaughtered by tens of thousands. Nor did the provinces escape. In Sicily, Spain, and Africa the enemies of the dictator were hunted and exterminated like noxious animals. It is estimated that the civil war of Marius and Sulla cost the republic over one hundred and fifty thousand lives. When Sulla had sated his revenge, he celebrated a splendid triumph at Rome, and the Senate enacted a law declaring all that he had done legal and right, caused to be erected in the Forum a gilded equestrian statue of the dictator, which bore the legend, "To Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Commander Beloved by Fortune," and made him dictator for life. Sulla used his position and influence in recasting the constitution in the interest of the aristocratic party. After enjoying the unlimited power of an Asiatic despot for three years, he suddenly resigned the dictatorship, and retired to his villa at Puteoli, where he gave himself up to the grossest dissipations. He died the year following his abdication (78 B.C.). CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST CENTURY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (_concluded_). (133-31 B.C.)