Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Sylla slew whom he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond computation, till it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some to survive, that the victors might not be destitute of subjects.
Then this furious and promiscuous licence to murder was checked, and much relief was expressed at the publication of the proscription list, containing though it did the death-warrant of two thousand men of the highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian.The large number was indeed saddening, but it was consolatory that a limit was fixed; nor was the grief at the numbers slain so great as the joy that the rest were secure.But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could not but bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those who had been doomed to die.For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of the executioners; men treating a living man more savagely than wild beasts are used to tear an abandoned corpse.
Another had his eyes dug out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture.Some celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one was collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual criminal would be condemned to death.These things were done in peace when the war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but that, after being obtained, it might not be thought lightly of.Peace Pied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless.War gave liberty to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.
CHAP.29.--A COMPARISON OF THE DISASTERS WHICH ROME EXPERIENCED DURINGTHE GOTHIC
AND GALLIC INVASIONS, WITH THOSE OCCASIONED BY THE AUTHORS OF THE CIVILWARS.
What fury of foreign nations, what barbarian ferocity, can compare with this victory of citizens over citizens? Which was more disastrous, more hideous, more bitter to Rome: the recent Gothic and the old Gallic invasion, or the cruelty displayed by Marius and Sylla and their partisans against men who were members of the same body as themselves? The Gauls, indeed, massacred all the senators they found in any part of the city except the Capitol, which alone was defended; but they at least sold life to those who were in the Capitol, though they might have starved them out if they could not have stormed it.The Goths, again, spared so many senators, that it is the more surprising that they killed any.But Sylla, while Marius was still living, established himself as conqueror in the Capitol, which the Gauls had not violated, and thence issued his death-warrants; and when Marius had escaped by flight, though destined to return more fierce and bloodthirsty than ever, Sylla issued from the Capitol even decrees of the senate for the slaughter and confiscation of the property of many citizens.Then, when Sylla left, what did the Marian faction hold sacred or spare, when they gave no quarter even to Mucius, a citizen, a senator, a pontiff, and though clasping in piteous embrace the very altar in which, they say, reside the destinies of Rome? And that final proscription list of Sylla's, not to mention countless other massacres, despatched more senators than the Goths could even plunder.
CHAP.30.--OF THE CONNECTION OF THE WARS WHICH WITH GREAT SEVERITY ANDFREQUENCY
FOLLOWED ONE ANOTHER BEFORE THE ADVENT OF CHRIST.
With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ! These bloody civil wars, more distressing, by the avowal of their own historians, than any foreign wars, and which were pronounced to be not merely calamitous, but absolutely ruinous to the republic, began long before the coming of Christ, and gave birth to one another; so that a concatenation of unjustifiable causes led from the wars of Marius and Sylla to those of Sertorius and Cataline, of whom the one was proscribed, the other brought up by Sylla; from this to the war of Lepidus and Catulus, of whom the one wished to rescind, the other to defend the acts of Sylla; from this to the war of Pompey and Caesar, of whom Pompey had been a partisan of Sylla, whose power he equalled or even surpassed, while Caesar condemned Pompey's power because it was not his own, and yet exceeded it when Pompey was defeated and slain.From him the chain of civil wars extended to the second Caesar, afterwards called Augustus, and in whose reign Christ was born.