Sulla, and his friends, boasted that his firmness had given tranquillity to Rome; but tranquillity can scarcely be a desirable condition to one whose quietude is the result of a gag in the mouth, a sword suspended over the head, and chains on every part of the body. The repose, or rather, the stillness thus obtained, was no less costly than inconvenient, for there was a wholesale confiscation of the property of all who were supposed to entertain views different from those of the government. The iniquities of the master will often be followed by the man, and, in conformity with this rule, a fellow, named Chrysogonus, one of Sulla's creatures, caused the murder of Roscius of Armenia, in order to get the opportunity of robbing him. The property of Roscius was knocked down at a mock auction to a bad lot of ruffians, who were there to intimidate the auctioneer into doing their smallest bidding. Everything went for positively nothing, and Chrysogonus was understood to have got nearly the whole of it at a ludicrously low figure. The laws made by Sulla, though perhaps plain enough in their purport, had an ambiguity in their application which was extremely inconvenient. Though binding at some times, in some places, upon some persons, they were not so at other times, in other places, upon others. He had laid it down as a rule that no one could be elected consul until he had been prætor; though, in the case of his own adherents, Sulla was not at all particular. When, however, L. Ofella, the commander at Præneste, who had never been prætor, put up for the consulship, Sulla declared such conduct was not to be put up with at all, and had him killed in the middle of a morning's canvass. The people were rather angry at the outrage, when Sulla, walking among a group with a sword in his hand, "demanded silence for an anecdote."[72] A circle drew round him, tremblingly alive to what he was about to say, when the despot proceeded as follows: "A labourer," said he, "was at work at the plough, when he was annoyed by insects, which caused him to stop and beat them off by dusting his own jacket. Finding himself annoyed a second time he took off his jacket and threw it into the fire. Now, I advise those whom I have twice conquered not to oblige me to try the fire," The people, who knew something of Sulla's threatened fire, dreaded it with all the horror of a burned child, and he was left to pursue his career of unchecked atrocity.