Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Civil War Between Marius and Sylla.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 27.—Of the Civil War
Between Marius and Sylla.
But when Marius, stained with the
blood of his fellow-citizens, whom the rage of party had
sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and driven from the city, it
had scarcely time to breathe freely, when, to use the words of
Cicero, “Cinna and Marius together returned and took possession
of it. Then, indeed, the foremost men in the state were put to
death, its lights quenched. Sylla afterwards avenged this cruel
victory; but we need not say with what loss of life, and with what
ruin to the republic.”157
| 157 Cicero, in Catilin, iii.
sub. fin. | For of this vengeance, which was
more destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been
committed with impunity, Lucan says: “The cure was excessive,
and too closely resembled the disease. The guilty perished, but
when none but the guilty survived: and then private hatred and
anger, unbridled by law, were allowed free indulgence.”158
| 158 Lucan, Pharsal.
142–146. | In that
war between Marius and Sylla, besides those who fell in the field
of battle, the city, too, was filled with corpses in its streets,
squares, markets, theatres, and temples; so that it is not easy to
reckon whether the victors slew more before or after victory, that
they might be, or because they were, victors. As soon as Marius
triumphed, and returned from exile, besides the butcheries
everywhere perpetrated, the head of the consul Octavius was exposed
on the rostrum; Cæsar and Fimbria were assassinated in their own
houses; the two Crassi, father and son, were murdered in one
another’s sight; Bebius and Numitorius were disembowelled by
being dragged with hooks; Catulus escaped the hands of his enemies
by drinking poison; Merula, the flamen of Jupiter, cut his veins
and made a libation of his own blood to his god. Moreover, every
one whose salutation Marius did not answer by giving his hand, was
at once cut down before his face.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
