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He was guilty of the same extravagance in the language he publicly used, as Titus Ampius informs us; according to whom he said, The republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality. Sylla was an ignorant fellow to abdicate the dictatorship. Men ought to consider what is becoming when they talk with me, and look upon what I say as a law. To such a pitch of arrogance did he proceed, that when a soothsayer announced to him the unfavourable omen, that the entrails of a victim offered for sacrifice were without a heart, he said, The entrails will be more favourable when I please; and it ought not to be regarded as a prodigy that a beast should be found wanting a heart.