Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/44

28 But the revolutionists proved themselves unworthy to rule; they resorted to bloodshed and plunder; they governed yet more despotically than their rivals had done, and without the softening effect of ancestral custom and historic dignity to relieve the naked harshness of their domination. This party fell ingloriously and without regret before the swords of Sulla's veterans when he returned from the East in 83 B.C.

An unlimited power for the reconstruction of the State was lodged in the hands of Sulla. Avowedly the partisan of a Restoration, he attempted little that was original in substance, though many of his regulations were new in form. He desired to revive, so far as possible, the Rome which had been before the Gracchi with such variations in detail and such safeguards against revolution as seemed to be suggested by the experience of the last half-century. The senators were henceforth to have exclusive possession of the jury-courts, the corn-distributions instituted by Gracchus were abolished, and the tribunate which had been used as an instrument of revolution was strictly curbed. The constitutional obligation which lay on the tribune to use his initiative power only with the approval of the Senate, was no longer left to be enforced by the uncertain and, as it had proved, insufficient sanction of the veto, but was raised to the level of positive law; the proposal of a bill to the Plebs was now null and void, unless it had received the previous assent of the Senate. Within the Senate itself precautions were taken to prevent any one man from aspiring to rise