Sulla could see something of future events.

He could understand that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors.

He might thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others.

Some glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty.

It seems to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the Empire by adherence to these forms.