Granting even that during the death-struggle of the republic it was easier to offer resistance than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only in the complication of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy that rendered it possible for Mithridates to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it nevertheless remains true that before the Parthian war he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the East, and that he defended himself as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter. But whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The Mithridatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political opposition offered by Hellas to Rome and the beginning of a revolt against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against the Occidentals, a new passage in the huge duel between the West and the East which has been transmitted from the struggle of Marathon to the present generation, and will, perhaps, reckon its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past. LUCIUS SYLLA. BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. [Lucius Cornelius Sulla or Sylla (Felix) dictator of Rome, born 138 B.C., died in 78. Leader of the aristocratic party in the state, he destroyed the party of popular reform, became dictator, and proscribed thousands of the best citizens of the republic, who were hunted down like wild beasts. In the Social and the Samnite war, as in the first war against Mithridates, he displayed the genius of a great soldier, surpassing even that of his able rival Marius. He reorganized the Roman Constitution, concentrated all power in the hands of the senatorial oligarchy, and paved the way for Julius Cæsar to overthrow the liberties of the republic, though the latter belonged to the opposite party. References: Froude’s “Life of Cæsar,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”] Lucius Sylla, a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion.