The Marian party, fearing that the successes of Sulla might encourage resistance to the despotism still prevailing at Rome, determined on getting rid of the principal politicians of the day, the heads of the National Assembly of the period. The modern practice might have been to have shut up the place of meeting, and prevent the members, by armed force, from going in--slaughtering them, of course, in case of their perseverance; but the Marian policy was to summon them to the Curia Hostilia, and having got them in, to butcher those who attempted to go out again. The prætor, L. Damasippus, was entrusted with this sanguinary business; and every eminent politician, who was suspected of having an independent opinion of his own, was at once massacred. This step was declared to be necessary to give strength to the Government, and to insure the unanimity of the nation, by cutting the throats of all who ventured to be of a way of thinking contrary to that of the ruling power. Unfortunately, some of the best and wisest men of the day were blind to the virtues of the chief of the republic; and the whole of these, including Q. Mucius Scævola, the eminent jurist, were unceremoniously sacrificed. The news of the success of Sulla at Sacriportus, caused a panic among those who had been combining the butcher's business with that of government at Rome, and the perpetrators tried to fly when they heard the enemy was approaching the city. Sulla, leaving Lucretius Ofella to keep watch at the gates of Præneste, lest Marius should attempt to creep out, marched in person on the capital. Directing his steps towards the Colline gate, he found there an army of those same Samnites, who had been previously cut into so many pieces, and who were ready to be cut into so many more, should occasion require the alarming sacrifice. Their general, Pontius Telesinus, rode in front of them, entreating them to come and be killed for positively the last time; and the dux had sufficient influence to induce them to rush like a flock of geese on their own destruction. The victory of Sulla was complete; and Pontius Telesinus having been overlooked by the foe in the heat of battle, supplied the omission in the business of the day by making away with himself--after the usual cowardly fashion of the heroes of antiquity. Sulla's success seemed only to have effected a change of tyrants; and his conduct proved that the monster grievance of Rome was the series of inhuman monsters who had got hold of the government. The atrocities attributed to Sulla are, however, so enormous, as almost to border on the burlesque; and it is comfortable to feel in the exaggeration a ground for hope that in the account furnished by the historians, much may fall under the head of "Errors excepted."