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100]
Nevertheless, as the form of the republic remained
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 was customary with
dictators, the same number that were borne before the ancient kings, and he
had a large body-guard also. He repealed laws and he enacted others. He
forbade anybody to hold the office of prætor until after he had
held that of quæstor, or to be consul before he had been
prætor, 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 for 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 among the communities, as I have already related, some of which
was public property and some taken from the communities by way of fine.
