Sulla

he had made himself a sink for the worst of the diseases and passions of Mithridates; and in these her last days he had fixed himself, like a fatal malady, upon a city which had previously passed safely through countless wars, and many usurpations and seditions. This man, although at the time a bushel of wheat sold in the city for a thousand drachmas, and although men made food for themselves of the fever-few which grew on the acropolis,

and boiled down shoes and leather oil-flasks to eat, was himself continually indulging in drinking-bouts and revels by daylight, was dancing in armour and making jokes to deride the enemy, while he suffered the sacred lamp of the goddess to go out for lack of oil; and when the chief priestess begged him for a twelfth of a bushel of wheat, he sent her so much pepper; and when the senators and priests came to him in suppliant array, and entreated him to take pity on the city and come to terms with Sulla, he scattered them with a volley of arrows.

But after a long time, at last, with much ado, he sent out two or three of his fellow-revellers to treat for peace, to whom Sulla, when they made no demands which could save the city, but talked in lofty strains about Theseus and Eumolpus and the Persian wars, said: Be off, my dear Sirs, and take these speeches with you; for I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to learn its history, but to subdue its rebels.

But at this juncture, as it is said, certain soldiers in the Cerameicus[*](The Outer Cerameicus, i.e. the suburb before the Dipylon, or Sacred Gate, through which one left the city for Eleusis.) overheard some old men talking with one another, and abusing the tyrant because he did not guard the approaches to the wall at the Heptachalcum,[*](An unknown feature of the wall, somewhere between the Piraïc, or western gate, and the Dipylon, or Sacred Gate, opening to the N.W.) at which point alone it was possible and easy for the enemy to get over. When this was reported to Sulla, he did not make light of it, but went thither by night, and after seeing that the place could be taken, set himself to the work.

And Sulla himself says, in his Memoirs, that Marcus Ateius was the first man to mount the wall, and that when an enemy confronted him, he gave him a downward cut on the helmet with his sword, and shattered the weapon; he did not, however, yield ground, but remained and held his own. At any rate, the city was taken at this point, as the oldest Athenians used to testify.[*](In Plutarch’s time.)