of some that bad luck has not a little to do with creating a reputation for virtue.[69] As soon as Sulla had vanquished the Samnites and thought he had put an end to the war (the rest of it he held of no account) he changed his tactics and, as it were, left his former personality behind outside the wall and in the battle, and proceeded to surpass Cinna and Marius and all their associates combined.  Treatment that he had given to no one of the foreign peoples that had opposed him he bestowed upon his native land, as if he had subdued that as well.  In the first place he sent forthwith the heads of Damasippus and the members of his party stuck on poles to Praeneste, and many of those who voluntarily surrendered he killed as if he had caught them without their consent.  The next day he ordered the senators to assemble at the temple of Bellona, giving them the idea that he would make some defence of his conduct, and ordered those captured alive to meet at the so-called “public” field,[70] pretending that he would enroll them in the lists.  This last class he had other men slay, and many persons from the city, mixed in among them, likewise perished:  to the senators he himself at the same time addressed a most bitter speech. (Valesius, p. 654.)

[Footnote 69:  Adopting Reiske’s suggestion for filling out a lacuna in the sense.]

[Footnote 70:  The villa publica.]

2. (Par.) The massacre of the captured persons was going on even under Sulla’s direction with unabated fury, and as they were being killed near the temple the great uproar and lamentation that they made, their shrieks and wails, invaded the senate-house, so that the senate was terrified for two reasons.  The second of the two was that they were not far from expecting that they themselves, also, might yet suffer some terrible injury, so unholy were both his words and his actions:  therefore many, cut to the heart with grief at the thought of reality and possibility, wished that they themselves belonged to the number of men already dead outside, and so might secure a respite at last from fear.  Their cases, however, were postponed, while the rest were slaughtered and thrown into the river, so that the savagery of Mithridates, deemed so terrible, in slaughtering all the Romans in Asia in one day, was now held to be of slight importance in comparison with the number massacred and their manner of death.  Nor did the terror stop here, but the slaughters which began at this point as if by a kind of signal occurred in the country district and all the cities of Italy.  Toward many Sulla himself showed hatred and toward many others his companions did the same, some truthfully and some in pretence, in order that displaying by the similarity of their deeds a character similar to his and establishing him as their friend they might not, by any dissimilarity, incur suspicion, seem to be reproving him at all, and so endanger themselves.  They murdered all whom they saw to surpass them either in wealth or in any other respect, some through envy and others on account of their possessions.  For under such conditions many neutral persons even, though they might have taken neither side, became subject to some private complaint, as surpassing some one in excellence or wealth and family.  No safety was visible for any one against those in power who wished to commit an injustice in any case. (Valesius, p. 657.)