95 So perished the stout-hearted men of Norba; and now, after thus crushing Italy by war, fire, and murder, Sulla's generals visited the several cities and established garrisons at the suspected places. Pompey was despatched to Africa against Carbo and to Sicily against Carbo's friends who had taken refuge there. Sulla himself called the Roman people together in an assembly and made them a speech, vaunting his own exploits and making other menacing statements in order to inspire terror. He finished by saying that he would bring about a change which would be beneficial to the people if they would obey him, but of his enemies he would spare none, but would visit them with the utmost severity. He would take vengeance by strong measures on the praetors, quaestors, military tribunes, and everybody else who had committed any hostile act after the day when the consul Scipio violated the agreement made with him. After saying this he forthwith proscribed about forty senators and 1600 knights. He seems to have been the first to make a formal list​ of those whom he punished, to offer prizes to assassins and rewards to informers, and to threaten with punishment those who should conceal the proscribed. Shortly afterward he added the names other senators to the proscription. Some of these, taken unawares, were killed wherever they were caught, in their houses, in the streets, or in the temples. Others were hurled through mid-air​ and thrown at Sulla's feet. Others were dragged through the city and trampled on, none of the spectators daring to utter a word of remonstrance against these horrors. Banishment was inflicted upon some and confiscation upon others. Spies were searching everywhere for those who had fled from the city, and those whom they caught they killed.

96 There was much massacre, banishment, and confiscation also among those Italians who had obeyed Carbo, or Marius, or Norbanus, or their lieutenants. Severe judgments of the courts were rendered against them throughout all Italy on various charges — for exercising military command, for serving in the army, for contributing money, for rendering other service, or even giving counsel against Sulla. Hospitality, private friendship, the borrowing or lending of money, were alike accounted crimes. Now and then one would be arrested for doing a kindness to a suspect, or merely for being his companion on a journey. These accusations abounded mostly against the rich. When charges against individuals failed Sulla took vengeance on whole communities. He punished some of them by demolishing their citadels, or destroying their walls, or by imposing fines and crushing them by heavy contributions. Among most of them he placed colonies of his troops in order to hold Italy under garrisons, sequestrating their lands and houses and dividing them among his soldiers, whom he thus made true to him even after his death. As they could not be secure in their own holdings unless all Sulla's system were on a firm foundation, they were his stoutest champions even after he died.

While the affairs of Italy were in this state, Pompey sent a force and captured Carbo, who had fled with many persons of distinction from Africa to Sicily and thence to the island of Cossyra. He ordered his officers to kill anyone of the others without bringing them into his presence; but Carbo, "the three times consul," he caused to be brought before his feet in chains, and after making a public harangue at him, murdered him and sent his head to Sulla.

97 When everything had been accomplished against his enemies as he desired, and there was no longer any hostile force except that of Sertorius, who was far distant, Sulla sent Metellus into Spain against him and seized upon everything in the city to suit himself. There was no longer any occasion for laws, or elections, or for casting lots, because everybody was shivering with fear and in hiding, or dumb. Everything that Sulla had done as consul, or as proconsul, was confirmed and ratified, and his gilded equestrian statue was erected in front of the rostra with the inscription, "Cornelius Sulla, the ever Fortunate," for so his flatterers called him on account of his unbroken success against his enemies. And this flattering title still attaches to him. I have come across a document which relates that Sulla was styled Epaphroditus​ by a decree of the Senate itself. This does not seem to me to be inappropriate for one of his names was Faustus (lucky), which name seems to have very nearly the same signification as Epaphroditus. There was also an oracle given to him somewhere which, in response to his question concerning the future, assured his prosperous career as follows:—

"Roman, believe me! On Aeneas' line Cypris, its patron, sheddeth power divine; To all the Immortals bring thy yearly gifts; And chief to Delphi. But where Taurus lifts His snowy side, and Carian men have walled A far-spread town, from Aphrodite called,​ There bring an Axe, and power supreme is thine!

Whichever inscription the Romans voted when they erected the statue, they seem to me to have inscribed it either by way of jest or cajolery. However, Sulla did actually send a golden crown and axe to Venus with this inscription:—

This Axe to Aphrodite Sulla brought, For in a dream he saw her as she fought Queen of his host, full armed, and deeds of knighthood wrought.

98 Thus Sulla became king, or tyrant, de facto, not elected, but holding power by force and violence. As, however, he needed the pretence of being elected this too was managed in this way. The kings of the Romans in the olden time were chosen for their bravery, and whenever one of them died the senators held the royal power in succession for five days each, until the people should decide who should be the new king. This five-day ruler was called the Interrex, which means king for the time being. The retiring consuls always presided over the election of their successors in office, and if there chanced to be no consul at such a time an Interrex was appointed for the purpose of holding the consular comitia. Sulla took advantage of this custom. There were no consuls at this time, Carbo having lost his life in Sicily and Marius in Praeneste. So Sulla went out of the city for a time and ordered the Senate to choose an Interrex.

They chose Valerius Flaccus, expecting that he would soon hold the consular comitia. But Sulla wrote ordering Flaccus to represent to the people his own strong opinion that it was to the immediate interest of the city to revive the dictatorship, an office which had now been in abeyance 400 years.​ He told them not to appoint the dictator for a fixed period, but until such time as he should firmly re-establish the city and Italy and the government generally, shattered as it was by factions and wars. That this proposal referred to himself was not at all doubtful, and Sulla made no concealment of it, declaring openly at the conclusion of the letter that, in his judgment, he could be most serviceable to the city in that capacity.

99 Such was Sulla's message. The Romans did not like it, but they had no more opportunities for elections according to law, and they considered that this matter was not altogether in their own power. So, in the general deadlock, they welcomed this pretence of an election as an image and semblance of freedom, and chose Sulla as their absolute master for as long a time as he pleased. There had been autocratic rule of the dictators before, but it was limited to short periods. But under Sulla it first became unlimited and so an absolute tyranny. All the same they added, for propriety's sake, that they chose him dictator for the enactment of such laws as he himself might deem best and for the regulation of the commonwealth. Thus the Romans, after having government by kings for above sixty Olympiads, and a democracy, under consuls chosen yearly, for 100 Olympiads, resorted to kingly government again. This was in the 175th Olympiad, according to the Greek calendar, but there were no Olympic games then except races in the stadium, since Sulla had carried away the athletes and all the sights and shows to Rome to celebrate his victories in the Mithridatic and Italian wars, under the pretext that the masses needed a breathing-spell and recreation after their toils.

100 Nevertheless, by way of keeping up the form of the republic he allowed them to appoint consuls. Marcus Tullius and Cornelius Dolabella were chosen. But Sulla, like a reigning sovereign, was dictator over the consuls. Twenty-four axes were borne in front of him as dictator, the same number that were borne before the ancient kings, and he had a large body-guard also. He repealed laws and enacted others. He forbade anybody to hold the office of praetor until after he had held that of quaestor, or to be consul before he had been praetor, and he prohibited any man from holding the same office a second time till after the lapse of ten years. He reduced the tribunician power to such an extent that it seemed to be destroyed. He curtailed it by a law which provided that one holding the office of tribune should never afterward hold any other office; for which reason all men of reputation or family, who formerly contended for this office, shunned it thereafter. I am not able to say positively whether Sulla transferred this office from the people to the Senate, where it is now lodged, or not. To the Senate itself, which had been much thinned by the seditions and wars, he added about 300 members from the best of the knights, taking the vote of the tribes on each one. To the plebeians he added more than 10,000 slaves of proscribed persons, choosing the youngest and strongest, to whom he gave freedom and Roman citizenship, and he called them Cornelii after himself. In this way he made sure of having 10,000 men among the plebeians always ready to obey his commands. In order to provide the same kind of safeguard throughout Italy he distributed to the twenty-three legions that had served under him a great deal of land in the various communities, as I have already related, some of which was public property and some taken from the communities by way of fine.

101 So terrible in all ways was he and so uncontrollable in anger that finding it vain to check and hinder by persuasive means Q. Lucretius Ofella, who had besieged and captured Praeneste together with the consul Marius, and had won the final victory for him, and who was now, despite the new law, presumed to be a candidate for the consulship while still in the equestrian order and before he had been quaestor and praetor, counting on the greatness of his services, according to the traditional custom, and appealing to the populace, he slew him in the middle of the forum. Then Sulla assembled the people and said to them​ "Know, citizens, and learn from me, that I put to death Lucretius because he disobeyed me." And then he told a parable: "A husbandman was bitten by fleas while ploughing. He stopped his ploughing twice in order to shake them out of his shirt. When they bit him again he burned his shirt, to avoid interruption in his work. And I tell you, who have felt my hand twice, to take warning lest the third time you need fire." With these words he terrified them and thereafter ruled as he pleased. He had a triumph on account of the Mithridatic war, during which some of the scoffers called his government "the official denial of royalty" because he kept back only the name of king. Others took the contrary view, judging from his acts, and called it "the official avowal of tyranny."

102 Into such evils were the Romans and all the Italians plunged by this war; and so likewise were all the countries beyond Italy by the recent piracies, or by the Mithridatic war, or by the many exhausting taxes levied to meet the deficit in the public treasury due to the seditions. All the allied nations and kings, and not only the tributary cities, but those which had delivered themselves to the Romans voluntarily under sworn agreements, and those which by virtue of their furnishing aid in war or for some other merit were autonomous and not subject to tribute, all were now required to pay and to obey, while some were deprived of the territory and harbours that had been conceded to them under treaties.

Sulla declared that Alexander (the son of Alexander the former sovereign of Egypt), who had been reared in Cos and given up to Mithridates by the inhabitants of that island, and had fled to Sulla and become intimate with him, should be king of Alexandria. He did this because the governor of Alexandria was destitute of a sovereign in the male line, and the women of the royal house wanted a man of the same lineage, and because he expected to reap a large reward from a rich kingdom. As, however, Alexander relying upon Sulla behaved himself in a very offensive manner toward them, the Alexandrians, on the nineteenth day of his reign, dragged him from the palace to the gymnasium and put him to death; for they too were still without fear of foreigners, either by reason of the magnitude of their own government or their inexperience as yet of external dangers.