Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/140

116 would be slow to move, and that they would have time to strike the great blow before a sufficient force could be raised against them. On the other hand Sulla had stored up for them an ample supply of revolutionaries in the very men whom he had intended to be the guardians of his government. The veterans of his Asiatic army were richly rewarded from the spoils of the conquered party, and were planted out as colonists over Italy: it was supposed that their interests had been effectually bound up with the maintenance of Sulla's ordinances. But these professional soldiers seem not to have made good farmers. Some of them had sold their holdings and gone to swell the pauper population of Rome, others remained, having squandered their donatives and involved themselves in debt, and these naturally looked for a fresh call to civil war as the best means of restoring their fortunes.

While these resources lay ready to the hand of the conspirators, the forces at the disposal of the government were invitingly weak. There was no garrison and no tolerable police force in the city of Rome; the officers and public slaves who attended the magistrates might be overpowered by a resolute gang of assassins, especially if their attention could be distracted by the alarm of fire in various parts of the city. The only efficient army of the State was far away with Pompey in Asia, and all the troops available were a few cohorts in Cisalpine Gaul and the scanty retinue of two commanders, Lucius Lucullus