*Sulla’s retirement and death, 78 B. C.* Sulla did not seek political power for its own sake, and, after carrying his reforms into effect, he resigned his dictatorship in 79 B. C. He retired to enjoy a life of ease and pleasure on his Campanian estate, relying for his personal security and that of his measures upon his veterans and the Cornelian freedmen. In the following year he died at the age of sixty. Sulla’s genius was rather military than political. Fond though he was of sensual pleasures, he was possessed of great ambition which led him to such a position of prominence that he was forced to adopt the cause of one of the two political factions in the state. From that point he must crush his enemies or be crushed by them; and in this lies the explanation of his attempt to extirpate the Marian party. As a statesman he displayed little imagination or constructive ability. He could think of nothing better than to restore the Senate to a position which it had shown itself unable to maintain; and his persecutions of his political opponents had not crushed out opposition to the Senate, but left a legacy of hatred endangering the permanence of his reforms. The epoch between the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and the death of Sulla revealed the incapacity of either the Senate or the tribunes and the Assembly to give a peaceful and stable government to the Roman state. Sulla’s career, anticipating those of Caesar and Augustus, pointed the way to the ultimate solution. CHAPTER XIII THE RISE OF POMPEY THE GREAT: 78–60 B. C.