self at the head of the Italian party, and Sylla was driven from Rome. Hastening to the army that was besieging Nola, he easily prevailed upon it to obey his commands, and marched to Rome, of which he took possession, the Marians being unable to resist him. After restoring the former state of things, he led his army to Greece, of which the troops of Mithridates had taken possession. He besieged Athens, which was stormed March 1, 86, and plundered it. Piræus then fell into his hands; and he followed the enemy into Boeotia, inflicting a crushing defeat upon them at Charonea. A new army sent by Mithridates was defeated at Orchomenus. Sylla then crossed the Hellespont, and in 84 he granted peace to the Pontine monarch. He also defeated the Roman general Fimbria, who commanded the army sent by the Marians to the East. Having extorted large sums of money from the Asiatic cities, and leaving two legions in Asia, he led the rest of his army back to Greece to prepare for the war in Italy, where the Marian party had regained ascendency. He landed at Brundusium in the spring of 83. The senate sought to reconcile the chiefs of the two parties, but a treaty was impossible. Marius was dead, and Cinna, the ablest of his lieutenants, was murdered by his own soldiers; so that, though the Marians had an enormous force in the field, and were supported by the Italians, or new citizens, they had no military chief who could act against the conqueror of Mithridates. Sylla conciliated the Italians, making treaties with many of their towns, and promising to maintain them in the possession of their privileges. Partly by victories in the field and partly by intrigues, he dispersed or gained over both the consular armies that were opposed to him. He was now joined by several influential Romans, among whom were Crassus, Metellus Pius, and the youthful Pompey, the latter bringing with him 3 legions. In 82 Sylla defeated the younger Marius, who was one of the consuls for that year, and shut him up in Præneste. He then proceeded to Rome, and came very near meeting with total defeat at its gates; for Pontius Telesinus, the chief man among the Samnites, with whom the Lucanians were united, resolved to march direct upon the city, in order, as he said, to destroy the wolves of Italy in their den. The Samnite hate of the Romans had survived two centuries of subjugation, and Telesinus sought to accomplish that which his ancestors had failed to effect before the Roman arms had achieved any thing out of Italy. The Samnites had not received the new franchise, and they were animated by the most vindictive feeling toward the Romans. Failing to effect the relief of Præneste, which was besieged by Ofella, Telesinus proceeded to Rome, which was defenceless, and reached the city but a short time before Sylla also arrived at its gates. The battle that followed was one of the greatest ever fought. Sylla commanded the left wing of his army, which was routed and driven from the

field; but the right wing, under Crassus, was victorious, and retrieved the battle. The num ber of men who fell on both sides was 100,000. The Samnites and Lucanians who were captured were all put to death, and Præneste surren dered, young Marius having committed suicide on seeing the head of Telesinus. In a short time the greater part of the Roman world submitted to the victor, the only man who continued to resist his rule being Sertorius, who carried on the war in Spain until his own death, and for several years after the death of Sylla. The aristocratical leader took the severest vengeance on his enemies, and Italy was the scene of a reign of terror. He introduced the proscriptions, which were lists of his enemies that were exhibited in the forum, and all persons were authorized to kill any one whose name could there be found. To gratify his adherents, he placed in these lists the names of their enemies, or those of persons whose property they desired to seize. He caused himself to be appointed dictator, thus reviving an office that had been unknown to the Romans for 120 years; but while he was dictator he was elected consul. No one of the Cæsars was ever more powerful than was Sylla during his dictatorship, supported as he was by an enormous army, by a large number of slaves whom he had enfranchised (they had belonged to persons who had figured in the proscriptions), by the military colonies he had established throughout Italy, and by the influence which had been created by his successes, his energy, and his cruelty. During his dictatorship a large number of laws were adopted tending to concentrate the power of the state in the aristocracy. He took from the assemblies of the tribes their legislative and judicial power, and also the right to elect priests. No matter was allowed to be brought before the centuries without the previous sanction of a senatus consultum. Hə filled up the senate, and placed the government of the provinces entirely in its hands; and renewed the old laws with regard to magistrates, requiring a regular gradation from office to office, and that no one should be reëlected to the same office till after the expiration of 10 years. The number of quæstors was increased from 8 to 20; of prætors from 6 to 8. He reduced the power of the plebeian tribunes to a mere shadow of what it had been, and forbade all tribunes from aspiring to the higher curule offices. right of self-election was restored to the ecclesiastical corporations, and the number of pontiffs, augurs, and keepers of the sibylline books was increased to 15 respectively. The aris tocracy regained the privilege of having judges taken exclusively from the senatorian order, of which they had been deprived by Caius Gracchus. He reformed the criminal law, enacted sumptuary laws, and sought to regulate marriages. Few of his measures long survived him. "Sylla's enactments," says Mr. G. Long, "were not, like the imperial constitutions of a later day, the mere act of one who held

The

the sovereign power; they were laws (leges) duly passed by the popular assembly. Yet they were Sylla's work, and the legislative body merely gave them formal sanction. The object of Sylla's constitutional measures was to give an aristocratical character to the Roman constitution, to restore it to something of its pristine state, and to weaken the popular party by curtailing the power of the tribunes." As soon as he had completed his legislation, Sylla resigned his dictatorship (79 B. C.), and gave to the people an account of his conduct as a public officer. He had none of that ambition which afterward led Cæsar to found the imperial power; but it may be doubted if he could have performed the part that Cæsar played, had he been inclined to take it. He valued the pleasures of sense and of letters as much as he did those of power, and, feeling secure in the strength of the system he had set up, he devoted the remainder of his days to personal indulgence, residing at Puteoli. He suffered from the horrible disease known as the morbus pediculosus; but it has been said that this is one of the calumnies of his enemies, that his illness was only a fever, and that his death was immediately occasioned by the bursting of a blood vessel. At the time of his triumph, in 81, he took the surname of Felix, because he attributed his success to the gods; and when he had to do with Greeks, he called himself Epaphroditus. Venus he claimed as his especial patroness, who had given him success both in love and in war. He was 5 times married, and his last wife, Valeria, gave birth to a daughter after his death. He wrote memoirs, in 22 books, the last of which was completed but two days before his death, and with his full knowledge that his end was near. He dictated his own epitaph, which says, in substance, that "none of his friends ever did him a kindness, and none of his enemies ever did him a wrong, without being fully repaid." "Sylla," says Mr. Long," was an educated man; he was not a mere soldier like Marius. He was not only a general; he was a man of letters, a lover of the arts, a keen discriminator of men and times, a legislator, and a statesman. He remodelled and reformed the whole criminal law of the Romans. His constitutional measures were not permanent, but it may truly be said that he prepared the way for the temporary usurpation of Cæsar, and the permanent establishment of the Roman state under Augustus." SYLLOGISM. See LOGIC.

SYLVA, BUENO DA. See BUENO DA SYLVA. SYMBOLS, CHEMICAL, abbreviations for expressing the chemical composition of bodies. The idea of representing the names of chemical substances by conventional signs or abbreviations appears to be a very old one. The alchemists were in possession of a set of hieroglyphics by which the metals, and the four so called elements, fire, air, earth, and water, and indeed many other substances, were designated. At a later period, as chemical knowledge

became more consolidated, various modifications of the alchemistical notation were from time to time proposed, and adopted to a greater or less extent. Among these should be specially mentioned the system of notation offered in 1787 by Hassenfratz and Adet, as an appendix to Guyton de Morveau's revised system of nomenclature, since its failure enables us the better to appreciate the peculiar excellence of the system which now prevails. Here was a system of symbols by no means devoid of ingenuity, and much more complete than any previous method, published in connection with a new system of nomenclature, which was soon universally adopted, and recommended by the committee of the French academy by whom this nomenclature had been prepared; yet it met with little or no favor among chemists, and was soon forgotten. This last remark applies as well to the symbols proposed by Dalton in 1808, in connection with his writings upon the atomic theory. None of these systems ever came into general use, nor does it appear that they were of much value as instruments of study even in the special cases in which they were employed. It is to Berzelius that chemical science is indebted for the simple and rational system of notation now in use, which has done so much, especially of late years, to advance knowledge and to lighten the labors of chemical investigators. This system, in its first outlines at least, appears not to have been the result of any premeditated plan or special study, but to have followed incidentally as a natural result from the investigation of the combining proportions of bodies with which its author was occupied. Thus in 1814 he first mentions his symbols in a foot note to a memoir upon nitrous acid (Gilbert's Annalen der Physik, xlvi. 154), as convenient abbreviations for expressing the composition of bodies, which he has himself frequently employed in his private memoranda. Subsequently a more complete exposition of the plan appeared in his Lehrbuch, and in Poggendorff's Annalen, 1826, viii. 7. As a sign to express the name and combining equivalent of an element, Berzelius chose the initial letter of its Latin name; and in those cases where the names of several elements commence with the same letter, he annexed to the common initial the first of the following letters in the Latin name of the element which is peculiar to it; thus, the symbol C indicates an equivalent of carbon, Cl an equivalent of chlorine, and Cr an equivalent of chromium. (For a complete list of these symbols, see EQUIVALENT, CHEMICAL.) The symbols of binary compounds are formed by placing together the symbols of their components, CoO for example representing an equivalent of oxide of cobalt, from Co (cobalt) and O (oxygen); those of ternaries (salts) by uniting the symbols of their compo nent binaries, a comma being placed between these, as CdO, SO,, sulphate of cadmium; and those of quaternaries (double salts) on the