Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/70

Rh Takht-i-Suliman or Solomon’s throne. It may be seen on the western horizon from Dera Ismail Khan, a grey, flat-looking rampart rising from the lower line of mountains north and south of it, slightly saddle-backed in the middle, but culminating in a very well-defined peak at its northern extremity. The legend of the mountain is that Solomon visited Hindostan to marry Balkis, and that as they were returning through the air, on a throne supported by genii, the bride implored the bridegroom to let her look back for a few moments on her beloved land. Solomon directed the genii to scoop out a hollow for the throne on the summit of the mountain. The hollow is a cavity some 30 ft. square cut out of the solid rock, at the southern extremity of the mountain and is a place of pilgrimage for both Hindus and Mahommedans. The actual shrine is about two m. south of the highest peak. The whole mountain was traversed and surveyed by the Takht-i-Suliman Survey Expedition of 1883 (see ) and was found to consist of two parallel ridges running roughly north and south, the southern end of the eastern ridge culminating in a point 11,070 ft. high, which is the Takht proper on which the shrine is situated, and the western ridge culminating at its northern nd in a point 11,300 ft. high known as Kaisargarh. Between these two ridges is a connecting tableland about 9000 ft. high. This plateau and the interior slopes of the ridges are covered with chilghosa (edible pine) forests. The mass of the mountain is composed of nummulitic limestone. No water is to be found on the summit.

SULINA, a town in Rumania, at the mouth of the Sulina branch of the Danube. Pop. (1900), 5611. Sulina is the only free port on the Danube, and is much used for the transhipment into seagoing vessels of grain which is brought down the river in large lighters from Rumania, Russia, Bulgaria, Servia and Austria-Hungary. No agricultural produce is grown in its neighbourhood, owing to the reed-covered swamps with which it is surrounded. Sulina is the headquarters of the technical department of the European Commission of the Danube (q.v.). Large steamers navigate up to Galatz and Braila. In roof, 1411 steamers and sailing craft aggregating 1,830,000 tons register cleared from Sulina for European ports carrying, besides other merchandise, nearly 13,000,000 quarters of grain. Owing to the improvements effected by the European Commission, there is a depth of 24 ft. of water on the bar, and of 18 to 22 ft. in the fairway. A lighthouse overlooks the estuary. The town contains the only English church in Rumania.

 SULITELMA, a mountain on the frontier between Norway and Sweden, forming a salient (6158 ft.) of the Kjöl or “keel” of the Scandinavian peninsula. The mass, composed of three peaks, is situated in 67° 10′ N., and covered with a snow-field from which many glaciers descend. In these rise feeders of the Swedish rivers Lilla Lule and Pite, flowing south-east. Westward, the foothills descend upon the Skjerstad Fjord, above which are two lakes, Nedre and Ovre Vand. From Sjönstaa steamers on the Langvand and a light railway give communication between the sea and Furulund, the headquarters of the Swedish Sulitelma Mining Company. A mountain track descends from Sulitelma to Kvickjock (or Kvikkjokk), a considerable village magnificently situated on the Tarrajock, a head-stream of the Lilla Lule. This is distant three days’ journey on foot from Furulund.

 SULLA, LUCIUS CORNELIUS (138–78 ), surnamed Felix, Roman general, politician and dictator, belonged to a minor and impoverished branch of the famous patrician Cornelian gens. He received a careful education, and was a devoted student of literature and art. His political advancement was slow, and he did not obtain the quaestorship until 107, when he served in the Jugurthine war under Marius in Africa. In this he greatly distinguished himself, and claimed the credit of having terminated the war by capturing Jugurtha himself. In these African campaigns Sulla showed that he knew how to win the confidence of his soldiers, and throughout his career the secret of his success seems to have been the enthusiastic devotion of his troops, whom he continued to hold well in hand, while allowing them to indulge in plundering and all kinds of excess. From 104 to 101 he served again under Marius in the war with the Cimbri and Teutones and fought in the last great battle in the Raudian plains near Verona. It was at this time that Marius’s jealousy of his legate laid the foundations of their future rivalry and mutual hatred. When the war was over, Sulla, on his return to Rome, lived quietly for some years and took no part in politics. In 93 he was elected praetor after a lavish squandering of money, and he delighted the populace with an exhibition of a hundred lions from Africa. Next year (92) he went as propraetor of Cilicia with special authority from the senate to make Mithradates VI. of Pontus restore Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, one of Rome’s dependants in Asia. Sulla with a small army soon won a victory over the general of Mithradates, and Rome’s client-king was restored. An embassy from the Parthians now came to solicit alliance with Rome, and Sulla was the first Roman who held diplomatic intercourse with that remote people. In the year 91, which brought with it the imminent prospect of sweeping political change, with the enfranchisement of the Italian peoples, Sulla returned to Rome, and it was generally felt that he was the man to lead the conservative and aristocratic party.

Meanwhile Mithradates and the East were forgotten in the crisis of the Social or Italic War, which broke out in 91 and threatened Rome’s very existence. The services of both Marius and Sulla were given; but Sulla was the more successful, or, at any rate, the more fortunate. Of the Italian peoples Rome’s old foes the Samnites were the most formidable; these Sulla vanquished, and took their chief town, Bovianum. In recognition of this and other brilliant services, he was elected consul in 88, and brought the revolt to an end by the capture of Nola in Campania. The question of the command of the army against Mithradates again came to the front. The senate had already chosen Sulla; but the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus moved that Marius should have the command. Rioting took place at Rome at the prompting of the popular leaders, Sulla narrowly escaping to his legions in Campania, whence he marched on Rome, being the first Roman who entered the city at the head of a Roman army. Sulpicius was put to death, and Marius fled; and he and his party were crushed for the time.

Sulla, leaving things quiet at Rome, quitted Italy in 87, and for the next four years he was winning victory after victory against the armies of Mithradates and accumulating boundless plunder. Athens, the headquarters of the Mithradatic cause, was taken and sacked in 86; and in the same year, at Chaeroneia, the scene of Philip II. of Macedon’s victory more than two and a half centuries before, and in the year following, at the neighbouring Orchomenus, he scattered immense hosts of the enemy with trifling loss to himself. Crossing the Hellespont in 84 into Asia, he was joined by the troops of C. Flavius Fimbria, who soon deserted their general, a man sent out by the Marian party, now again in the ascendant at Rome. The same year peace was concluded with Mithradates on condition that he should be put back to the position he held before the war; but, as he raised objections, he had in the end to content himself with being simply a vassal of Rome.

Sulla returned to Italy in 83, landing at Brundisium, having previously informed the senate of the result of his campaigns in Greece and Asia, and announced his presence on Italian ground. He further complained of the ill-treatment to which his friends and partisans had been subjected during his absence. Marius had died in 86, and the revolutionary party, specially represented by L. Cornelius Cinna, Cn. Papirius Carbo and the younger Marius, had massacred Sulla’s supporters wholesale, confiscated his property, and declared him a public enemy. They felt they must resist him to the death, and with the troops scattered throughout Italy, and the newly enfranchised Italians, to whom it was understood that Sulla was bitterly hostile, they counted confidently on success. But on Sulla’s advance at the head of his 40,000 veterans many of them lost heart and deserted their leaders, while the Italians themselves, whom he confirmed in their new privileges, were won over to his side. Only the Samnites, who were as yet without the Roman franchise, remained his enemies, and it seemed as if the old war between Rome and Samnium had to be fought once again. Several Roman nobles,