When the State was fighting for its existence it was found necessary to place supreme power in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman dictator authority which was much greater than the authority belonging to preventive arrest and martial law.

My friends, these scorns of yours perhaps may move The next dictator shun to yield his state, For fear he find as much as Sylla doth.

I was soon after sent to school at a village hard by, of which my grandfather had been dictator time out of mind; but as he neither paid for my board, nor supplied me with clothes, books, or other necessaries, my condition was very ragged and contemptible; and the schoolmaster gave himself no concern about the progress I made.