[104] So great was this man's boldness and good fortune. It is said that he made a speech in the forum when he laid down his power in which he offered to give the reasons for what he had done to anybody who should ask them. He dismissed the lictors with their axes and discontinued his body-guard, and for a long time walked to the forum with only a few friends, the multitude looking upon him with awe even then. Once only when he was going home he was reproached by a boy. As nobody restrained this boy he made bold to follow Sulla to his house, railing at him, and Sulla, who had opposed the greatest men and states with towering rage, endured his reproaches with calmness and as he went into the house said, divining the future either by his intelligence or by chance, "This young man will prevent any other holder of such power from laying it down." This saying was shortly confirmed to the Romans, for Gaius Cæsar never laid down his power. Sulla seems to me to have been the same masterful and able man in all respects, whether striving to reach supreme power from private life, or changing back to private life from supreme power, or later when passing his time in rural solitude; for he retired to his own estate at Cumæ in Italy and there occupied his leisure in hunting and fishing. He did this not because he was afraid to live a private life in the city, nor because he had not sufficient bodily strength for whatever he might try to do. He was still of virile age and sound constitution, and there were 120,000 men throughout Italy who had recently served under him in war and had received large gifts of money and land from him, and there were the 10,000 Cornelii ready in the city, besides other people of his party devoted to him and still formidable to his opponents, all of whom rested upon Sulla's safety their hopes of impunity for what they had done in coöperation with him. But I think that he was satiated with war, with power, with city affairs, and that he took to rural life finally because he loved it. 1
Y.R. 676 |
