Sylla   

than merit, and, in short, makes himself entirely the creature of
a superior power, accounting even his concord with Metellus, his equal
in office, and his connection by marriage, a piece of preternatural
felicity. For expecting to have met in him a most troublesome, he
found him a most accommodating, colleague. Moreover, in the Memoirs
which he dedicated to Lucullus, he admonished him to esteem nothing
more trustworthy than what the divine powers advise him by night.
And when he was leaving the city with an army, to fight in the Social
War, he relates that the earth near the Laverna opened, and a quantity
of fire came rushing out of it, shooting up with a bright flame into
the heavens. The soothsayers upon this foretold that a person of great
qualities, and of a rare and singular aspect, should take the government
in hand, and quiet the present troubles of the city. Sylla affirms
he was the man, for his golden head of hair made him an extraordinary-looking
man, nor had he any shame, after the great actions he had done, in
testifying to his own great qualities. And thus much of his opinion
as to divine agency.
In general he would seem to have been of a very irregular character,
full of inconsistencies with himself much given to rapine, to prodigality
yet more; in promoting or disgracing whom he pleased, alike unaccountable;
cringing to those he stood in need of, and domineering over others
who stood in need of him, so that it was hard to tell whether his
nature had more in it of pride or of servility. As to his unequal
distribution of punishments, as, for example, that upon slight grounds
he would put to the torture, and again would bear patiently with the
greatest wrongs; would readily forgive and he reconciled after the
most heinous acts of enmity, and yet would visit small and inconsiderable
offences with death and confiscation of goods; one might judge that
in himself he was really of a violent and revengeful nature, which,
however, he could qualify, upon reflection, for his interest. In this
very Social War, when the soldiers with stones and clubs had killed
an officer of praetorian rank, his own lieutenant, Albinus by name,
he passed by this flagrant crime without any inquiry, giving it out
moreover in a boast, that the soldiers would behave all the better
now, to make amends, by some special bravery, for their breach of
discipline. He took no notice of the clamours of those that cried
for justice, but designing already to supplant Marius, now that he
saw the Social War near its end, he made much of his army, in hopes
to get himself declared general of the forces against Mithridates.
At his return to Rome he was chosen consul with Quintus Pompeius,
in the fiftieth year of his age, and made a most distinguished marriage
with Caecilia, daughter of Metellus, the chief priest. The common
people made a variety of verses in ridicule of the marriage, and many
of the nobility also were disgusted at it, esteeming him, as Livy
writes, unworthy of this connection, whom before they thought worthy
of a consulship. This was not his only wife, for first, in his younger
days, he was married to Ilia, by whom he had a daughter; after her
to Aelia; and thirdly to Cloelia, whom he dismissed as barren, but
honourably, and with professions of respect, adding, moreover, presents.
But the match between him and Metella, falling out a few days after,
occasioned suspicions that he had complained of Cloelia without due
cause. To Metella he always showed great deference, so much so that
the people, when anxious for the recall of the exiles of Marius's
party, upon his refusal, entreated the intercession of Metella. And
the Athenians, it is thought, had harder measure, at the capture of
their town, because they used insulting language to Metella in their
jests from the walls during the siege. But of this hereafter.
At present esteeming the consulship but a small matter in comparison
of things to come, he was impatiently carried away in thought to the
Mithridatic War. Here he was withstood by Marius; who out of mad affectation
of glory and thirst for distinction, those never dying passions, though
he were now unwieldy in body, and had given up service, on account
of his age, during the late campaigns, still coveted after command
in a distant war beyond the seas. And whilst Sylla was departed for