Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself.

Of these institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel to be justified.

"On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left any savor by which it could be preserved.

But the German historian seems to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians, that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the means of knowing all that they, the historians, know.

Sulla and his Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored everything to an equilibrium.