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.
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