There had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his office.

Sulla now affected to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old spirit.

It was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special wonder.

The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the Romans.
It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection.
In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease.

Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order.
Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment, were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been Sulla.