LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA.• Hotnvar's edition of Plutarch's Life of Salle
is worthy of Mr. Holden, and no farther praise of this interesting and valuable book is necessary. It is thoroughly adapted for the use of schoolboys, and is, at the same time, a mine of information for the ripest of scholars to work in with profit as well as pleasure. We find no fault to mark in it but one ; and we recommend it most emphatically to every schoolmaster in the Kingdom who has to teach a form that is at all advanced in Greek. The single fault that we complain of is glaring, indeed, and vexatious, but is also comparatively innoxions. Mr. Holden writes " Dionysios of nalicarnassos," and ignores the fact that " Dionysins " and " Halicarnassus" are English as well as Latin words. We will, however, most cheerfully concede that they are not, and we will swallow our objections to Mr. Holden's spelling with humility and bona fides, if he will condescend to explain logically why he substitutes omicron for "n" in the final syllables of these proper names, while retaining the Latin, and, as we contend, the English, "y" and "o" in their third syllables. But, condescension here or condescension there, this is what Mr. Holden cannot do, any more than he can logically explain why he mixes aliens like his " Chaironeia" and " Kallisthenes " with natives like his " Boeotia " and " Thncydides." We have often implicitly challenged, in these columns, the inconsistent votaries of the silly "fad" that we are again condemning, to say a word in defence of their inconsistencies ; but they are silent, and their silence is significant enough. It is a pity that a scholar so sound and sensible as Mr. Holden, should deface good work by capricious and demonstrably incorrect spelling ? Will he, too, make no sign, and let judgment go against himself by default P He errs, no doubt, in company with learned scholars like Mayor and Sayce, who ought to know better, and with unlearned pedagogues whose knowledge does not aggravate their offence. But he will probably smile tacitly at these remarks, if they meet his eye, or murmur, peradventure,— " Defendit numeros junctreque nmbone phalanges." And his error, we admit, is a venial one, for there is no more harm, after all, in spelling Halicarnassus with an "o," than in pronouncing it without the aspirate.
To pass, however, from Mr. Holden's admirable edition of this biography, to the biographer himself hand to Sulk. Plutarch, as becomes a Greek who, in Mom msen's phrase, knew about as much Latin as Diderot knew of
' Plutarch's Life of Lucius Cornelius Cons. With Introduction, Notes, and Leadoon. By the Rev. Hobert A. Holden, M.A. Cambridge University Prem. 1888.
Russian, omits all notice of Sulla's reactionary reforms and alterations in the Constitution of Rome. We can spare them well. It is idle to waste time over the transitory changes which were made with kaleidoscopic celerity in that Constitu- tion daring the troubled century which preceded Julius COMMA seizing the helm. The time had come, as Tacitns puts it, when it was all men's interest for one man to rule. The fates gave to the human race the one best man that the world has Been for such a consummation. But they did but show him, for human folly prevented him from building on the foundation which his daring and creative genius surely laid. What rose from that founda- tion is well worth long and attentive study ; but the legislative alterations and revolutions which preceded the laying of it may be safely left to specialists. A Mommsen, lege operis, must record the details of such matters ; a Plutarch may be for- given for disregarding them. Yet they bring out the char- acter of Sulla in no small degree, and as doing so, must not be dismissed too cavalierly. For Sulla was, indeed, a man whose character, long obscured by the cruelty of his acts. has within the last thirty years been wonderfully handled, if not rehabilitated, by the pen of Germany's greatest historian. And although his view of Rome's Alcibiades may be taxed as paradoxical, Mommeen's paradoxes, when Cicero is not their theme, are paradoxes that, in homely phrase, will " wash ;" and if he misrepresents the abilities and acquirements of the prince of Latin literature, he does so with his eyes open, for that he understands them is beyond all cavil. His portrait of Bella cannot be judged so compendiously. The more we read it, the more we feel in sympathy with it ; but the conclusion to which reflection brings us at last is that its colours want toning down. When Atticus, in Cicero's Brutus, blames the orator for overpraising the eloquence of old Cato, he admits that Cato was a great man, and a very great and peculiar personage,— "Magnum, mehercule, hominem vel potius summurn et singn- larem virum,"—and these expressions describe Salla with felicity and force. Yet he was hardly that unique phenomenon in the history of the world which Mommsen deems him to be. A capable soldier beyond all cau- tion, as brave and as skilful as Alexander the Great, he was still far from being " dressed in the abilities " which the son of Philip displayed in the field of practical statesmanship. He had, indeed, as a politician not one spark of that creative genius and true insight which stamped his great successor as the "foremost man of all this world." A party leader, in the strictest meaning of the word, he used his victory for party purposes in a spirit that was parochial rather than imperial. And as the party which be reinstated in power were to the full as contemptible in every respect as their defeated opponents, the position of a really able man like Sella at their head soon became a weariness to him and vexation of spirit. He had, if we may use such a metaphor, repaired and repainted, in the eftest way, their cranky coach ; but he lacked all wish to drive it. So, calmly resigning the reins to any driver that cared to handle them, and with the full confidence that the machine would run for his lifetime, he retired to enjoy those pleasures of the table, the chase, and the study, which he tasted with a gdsto that would have puzzled Lord Chesterfield as much as it would have pleased Sir Walter Scott. His dissipation, as men call it, was clearly other than that of a sot or a gastrolater ; and if he hunted and wrote with satisfaction to himself, after a career so tempestuous, it must be reckoned to him, in a very modified sense of the word, of course, for righteousness. If his voluminous Memoirs had not perished so utterly that it is- possible, in spite of Dr. Holden's cogent quotations from Aulus Gelling, to doubt, with Heeren, in what language they were written, Sulla's character would puzzle no one. "No man," Bentley said—and he was right so far as the sort of men he meant are concerned—" no man was ever written down except by himself." And no man was ever quite successfully written up by himself. Whether Sulla's Memoirs would have proved the grave or the monument of his reputation is more than we can guess. It is curious that the style in which they were written is not so dark to us. The Roman Plutarch, Suetonius, quotes Caesar's opinion of Sulla's literary incapacity, and warmly reprobates it as a sign of that great man's bound- less arrogance. Sulla was an unlettered fellow, said the dictator,—"Nescivit literati ut qui dietaturam deposuerit." Now, modern scholars are pretty well agreed in treating this sally as a playful pun, and their view, of course, is one that must
have occurred to Suetonius. We should guess, therefore, that opinions differed in literary circles at Rome about Sulla's style, and that Caesar gave it no quarter, and its admirers much offence. Be this as it may, the destruction of his Memoirs has left Sulbee character an enigma that defies exact solution. Had he that unwavering faith in his good fortune and unshaken trust in dreams and presentiments with which he is generally credited P Napoleon was more favoured by what men call luck than Sulla was, and he believed unquestionably in presenti- ments, and perhaps in his star. But the Roman's beliefs are less patent to us than the Corsican's; and Plutarch, who was not such an old woman as he is sometimes thought to be by those who have never read him, hits the nail on the head when he says, with terse common-sense, that it is impossible to say whether Sulla's superstitious confidence was really felt by him, or merely feigned to rivet the attention of his fellow-men. The question is curious, rather than important ; but Mommsen's opinion that Salle was fells opportunitate mortis, is open to doubt. The ex- dictator was, as Madame Roland called Mirabeau, so imman- guablement maitre in the face of all possible antagonists, that victory would have been his had he ever been forced again to take an active part in politics.
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