Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the armies,[716] the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites who had surrendered prisoners.[717] A considerable number of the inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been granted them after the war of the allies;[718] he invented a new punishment, that of proscription,[719] and, in Rome alone, he banished four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators, fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights.[720] His fury fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared, and he almost entirely annihilated that nation.[721] Although his triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the same lot.[722] Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or cry on looking at these was a crime.[723] M. Pletorius was slaughtered for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the prætor, M. Marius;[724] to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts, or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about 11,640 francs [£460]) a head;[725] to assist them, to have had friendly or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other, all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus, were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being candidates for public offices.[726] All these acts of pitiless vengeance had been authorised by a law called _Valeria_, promulgated in 672, and which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently followed by the emperors. Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest the course of ideas.