and in the east; the state had once more unity of government and peace without and within. After the terrible convulsions of the last years even this rest was a relief. Whether it was to furnish more than a mere relief; whether the remarkable man, who had succeeded in the difficult task of vanquishing the public foe and in the more difficult work of subduing the revolution, would be able to meet satisfactorily the most difficult task of all-- the re-establishing of social and political order shaken to its very foundations--could not but be speedily decided
CHAPTER X The Sullan Constitution
The Restoration
About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the kings, dedicated by the youthful republic, and spared by the storms of five hundred years-- the temple of the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol--perished in the flames. It was no augury, but it was an image of the state of the Roman constitution. This, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruction. The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the victory was far from implying as a matter of course the restoration of the old government. The mass of the aristocracy certainly was of opinion that now, after the death of the two revolutionary consuls, it would be sufficient to make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental election and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should seem farther requisite for the rewarding of the victorious army, for the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists, and possibly also for the prevention of similar outbreaks. But Sulla, in whose hands the victory had concentrated for the moment all power, formed a more correct judgment of affairs and of men. The aristocracy of Rome in its best epoch had not risen above an adherence--partly noble and partly narrow--to traditional