expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He had probably left Rome before it occurred, and did not return till after Sulla's death. It seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57] At his own demand, the plenary power of Dictator had been given to him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the Senate or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the Romans. It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection. In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order. Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment, were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous