or Rome could never rest.  The Samnites evacuated Nola in the year 80 B.C., and then their last great leader, C. Papius Mutilus, having fled in disguise to his wife at Teanum, was disowned by her and slew himself. [Sidenote:  Fate of Samnium.] Sulla carried his threats into effect.  He captured Aesernia, and spread a desolation all around, from which the country has never recovered to this day.  Then, and not till then, the stubborn resistance of the most relentless foes of Rome was finally suppressed.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX.

SULPICIUS.

The terrible disintegration which the Social War had brought on Italy was faithfully reproduced in Rome.  There, too, every man’s hand was against his neighbour.  Creditor and debtor, tribune and consul, Senate and anti-Senate, fiercely confronted each other.  Personal interests had become so much more prominent, and old party-divisions were so confused by the schemes of Italianising politicians, aristocratic in their connexions, but cleaving to part at least of the traditional democratic programme, that it is very hard to see where the views of one faction blended with those of another and where they clashed. [Sidenote:  The Sulpician revolution difficult to understand.] Still harder is it to dissect the character of individuals; to decide, for instance, how far a man like Sulpicius was swayed by disinterested principles, and how far he fought for his own hand.  We need not make too much of the fact that he appealed to force, because violence was the order of the day, and submission to the law simply meant submission to the law of force.  But there are some parts of his career apparently so inconsistent as almost to defy explanation which in any case can be little more than guesswork.

[Sidenote:  Sulpicius.] Publius Sulpicius Rufus was now in the prime of life, having been born in 124 B.C.  He was an aristocrat, an orator of great force and fire, and a friend of Drusus, whose views he shared and inherited.  Cicero speaks of him in no grudging terms.  ’Of all the speakers I have heard Sulpicius was the grandest, and, so to speak, most tragic.  Besides being powerful, his voice was sweet and resonant.  His gestures and movements, elegant though they were, had nothing theatrical about them, and his oratory, though quick and fluent, was neither redundant nor verbose.’ [Sidenote:  Financial crisis at Rome.] The year before his tribunate had been a turbulent one at Rome.  The Social War and Asiatic disturbances had brought about a financial crisis.  Debtors, hard pressed by their creditors, invoked obsolete penalties against usury in their defence, and the creditors, because the praetor Asellio attempted to submit the question to trial, murdered him in the open Forum.  The debtors responded by a cry for tabulae novae, or a sweeping remission of all debts.  Of these debtors many doubtless would belong to the lower orders; but, from a proposal of Sulpicius made the next year, it appears probable that some were found in the ranks of the Senate.  War had made money ‘tight,’ to use the phraseology of our modern Stock Exchange, and reckless extravagance could no longer be supported by borrowing.