The most striking example is the
enfranchisement of 10,000 by Sulla, who according to custom took
his name Cornelius, and, though destined to be a kind of military
guarantee for the permanence of the Sullan institutions, only became
a source of serious peril to the State at the time of Catiline's
conspiracy. Caesar, who was probably more alive to this kind of
social danger than his contemporaries, sent out a great number of
libertini,--the majority, says Strabo, of his colonists,--to his new
foundation at Corinth[362]. But Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing
in the time of Augustus, when he stayed some time in Rome, draws a
terrible picture of the evil effects of indiscriminate manumission,
unchecked by the law[363].
"Many," he says, "are indignant when they see unworthy men manumitted,
and condemn a usage which gives such men the citizenship of a
sovereign state whose destiny is to govern the world. As for me, I
doubt if the practice should be stopped altogether, lest greater evil
should be the result; I would rather that it should be checked as far
as possible, so that the state may no longer be invaded by men of such
villainous character.
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