23.
In consequence, Urba'nus, one of the consuls, killed himself, and Carbo fled to Africa, where, after wandering a long time, he was at last delivered up to Pompey, who, to please Sylla, ordered him to be beheaded.24.Sylla, now become undisputed master of his country, entered Rome at the head of his army.

Happy, had he supported in peace the glory which he had acquired in war; or, had he ceased to live when he ceased to conquer! 25.

Eight thousand men, who had escaped the general carnage, surrendered themselves to the conqueror; he ordered them to be put into the Villa Pub'lica, a large house in the Campus Mar'tius; and, at the same time, convoked the senate: there, without discovering the least emotion, he spoke with great fluency of his own exploits, and, in the mean time, gave private directions that all those wretches whom he had confined, should be slain.26.The senate, amazed at the horrid outcries of the sufferers, at first thought that the city was given up to plunder; but Sylla, with an unembarrassed air, informed them, that it was only some criminals who were punished by his order, and that the senate ought not to make themselves uneasy at their fate.27.

The day after he proscribed forty senators, and sixteen hundred knights; and after an intermission of two days, forty senators more, with an infinite number of the richest citizens.28.He next resolved to invest himself with the dictatorship, and that for a perpetuity; and thus uniting all civil as well as military power in his own person, he thought he might thence give an air of justice to every oppression.
29.

Thus he continued to govern with capricious tyranny, none daring to resist his power, until, contrary to the expectation of all mankind, he laid down the dictatorship, after having held it not quite three years.
[Illustration: Sylla reproaching the little image of Apollo with his defeat.] 30 After this, he retired into the country, and abandoned himself to debauchery; but he did not long survive his abdication; he was seized with a horrible distemper, and died a loathsome and mortifying object, and a melancholy proof of the futility of human ambition.[5] The character of Sylla exhibits a singular compound of great and mean qualities.