ABSTRACT
Immediately upon hearing the good news from Crassus, Sulla hurried off to Antemnae. There he found the rebel remnant holed up in the town. Three thousand of the enemy sent him a deputation to ask for terms. Sulla promised them safety if they would do a mischief to the rest of the garrison. They fell in with his wishes and a great slaughter followed within the town. The traitors were soon to learn, however, that their efforts had been in vain and that the time for showing mercy to repentant foes had ended with the battle of the Colline Gate. All of the survivors were marched back to Rome and, together with those others remaining after the battle before Rome, were herded into the Villa Publica, where the Senate normally received foreign ambassadors, on the pretence that they were there to be numbered. Sulla’s soldiers then set about massacring the lot. While the butchery was in progress Sulla himself addressed the Senate which had assembled in the nearby temple of Bellona to hear his report on the Mithridatic War. The shrieks and groans of so many men being murdered in so small a space carried clearly and the senators started in dumbfounded horror. Sulla, however, betrayed no signs of emotion and, without altering his tone in any way, told his listeners to calm themselves. Some criminals were receiving correction at his orders. When he had done with the Senate, he went on to report on his exploits to the people. After extolling his own exploits he issued a grim warning: anybody who had been in arms against him from the time the truce with Scipio was broken could expect to pay for it.1
