Sulla

• 1. Introduction

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  Sulla composed his own epitaph. Carved into his tomb on the Campus Martius, it read: "No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full." That a man would write these words about himself tells you almost everything about Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix. He was a Roman general and statesman who died in 78 BC, leaving behind a city he had twice conquered by force, a constitution he had rewritten from scratch, and a precedent that would eventually help pull the Roman Republic apart. But his story begins not in a general's tent or a marble hall. It begins in poverty, on the streets of Rome, among comedians and dancers and lute players. How does a penniless patrician become the most powerful man in the ancient world? And what happens to a republic when one man decides that winning a war matters more than obeying its laws?

• 2. A Poor Man Among Patricians

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  Publius Cornelius Rufinus, one of Sulla's ancestors, was expelled from the Senate after being caught owning more than ten pounds of silver plate. That single scandal shadowed the family for generations. By the time Sulla was born around 138 BC, his branch of the patrician gens Cornelia had fallen into genuine poverty. His father died while Sulla was still young, leaving the family with little or nothing to inherit.

  Without money, Sulla spent his formative years in circles that no aspiring Roman politician would normally frequent. He lived among Rome's actors, comedians, and dancers. He wrote Atellan farces, a Roman genre of comedic street plays. Plutarch, who is the main source for this period of his life, notes that even much later, during his final marriage to Valeria, Sulla still kept company with "actresses, musicians, and dancers, drinking with them on couches night and day."

  His education was not neglected. The historian Sallust singles him out as well read, intelligent, and fluent in Greek. But being educated and being wealthy were two different things in Roman politics. The ladder of office required money, connections, and military service. Sulla's path to that ladder came through two inheritances: one from his stepmother, who loved him, and one from his mistress, an older woman named Nicopolis. The classicist Arthur Keaveney, author of the biography Sulla: The Last Republican, places both windfalls around the time Sulla turned thirty. Whatever their exact source, they gave him just enough to enter the race.

• 3. Soldier and Diplomat

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  Sulla stood for the quaestorship in 108 BC, the first rung on Rome's ladder of office, and was assigned by lot to serve under the consul Gaius Marius. The Jugurthine War in North Africa was already several years old, a grinding conflict against the Numidian king Jugurtha that had embarrassed Rome and exposed its commanders to accusations of bribery.

  Marius gave the young Sulla, who had no military experience, the task of organising cavalry units to chase the fast-moving Numidians through the desert. Sulla proved charming and effective with the men. The war ended in 106 BC largely through Sulla's initiative. Jugurtha had fled to his father-in-law, King Bocchus I of Mauretania. After a pitched battle, the Senate delegated negotiations to Marius, who appointed Sulla as envoy with full authority to deal. Sulla persuaded Bocchus to hand Jugurtha over to Roman custody. It was a diplomatic and personal triumph. In 91 BC, Bocchus paid to erect a gilded equestrian statue in Rome depicting the moment of capture.

  But Marius took credit for ending the war. This was the seed of a rivalry that would eventually crack Rome open. Sulla served Marius again during the Cimbrian War against Germanic invaders, fighting under him and later under the consul Catulus when Sulla's advancement under Marius stalled. He proved himself capable at provisioning armies, subduing restive allied tribes, and negotiating defections. He was elected praetor for 97 BC after initially losing the race because, he claimed, the people wanted him to spend money on games first. During a proconsular command in Cilicia in 96 BC, he became the first Roman magistrate ever to meet a Parthian ambassador. At that meeting, a Chaldean seer told him he would die at the height of his fame and fortune. Plutarch says the prophecy never left him.

• 4. The Grass Crown and the Social War

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  The Grass Crown was the highest military honour Rome could give. Made from grasses, flowers, and grain pulled from the battlefield itself, it was awarded by the soldiers to the commander who had saved an encircled army. Sulla received it during the Social War.

  The Social War broke out in 91 BC when Rome's Italian allies revolted after decades of being denied Roman citizenship. A plebeian tribune named Marcus Livius Drusus had tried to pass a bill extending citizenship and was assassinated for it. The Italians rose up. Sulla served as a senior legate in the southern theatre, initially operating defensively. His opportunity came when he was placed in supreme command of the south after the consul above him died in battle. He besieged Pompeii. He defeated an Italian relief force under a commander named Lucius Cluentius, killing Cluentius before the walls of Nola. He then besieged Nola itself, where his troops awarded him the Grass Crown for his bravery. Pompeii, Stabiae, and Aeclanum all fell. He forced the Hirpini to surrender, routed a Samnite army near Aesernia, and captured the new Italian capital at Bovianum Undecimanorum.

  These victories made him the most celebrated Roman commander of the moment. He was elected easily to the consulship of 88 BC. But Rome's political climate was already fracturing. Legislation to grant the Italian allies full citizenship was dividing the city. And waiting in the wings was a tribune named Publius Sulpicius Rufus, who had struck a deal with Sulla's old rival Gaius Marius.

• 5. The March on Rome

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  Sulla had been awarded command of the war against Mithridates VI of Pontus by the Senate. Mithridates was already a serious threat: he had invaded Roman Asia and arranged the massacre of roughly eighty thousand Roman and Italian residents living in the province, an atrocity known as the Asiatic Vespers. Command of this war meant enormous glory and plunder. Marius wanted it.

  The tribune Sulpicius brought legislation to transfer the command to Marius. He had an armed mob at his back. During the street violence that followed, Sulla was forced to take shelter in Marius's own house. He later denied this in his memoirs. Once safe, he lifted the suspension of public business that he and his colleague had declared, which allowed Sulpicius to push the transfer through. Sulla then left the city for his army near Nola.

  His officers understood what he was contemplating. All of them deserted except his quaestor and kinsman, almost certainly Lucius Licinius Lucullus. The troops, however, followed. He told them Marius would bring new men to fight Mithridates, robbing them of eastern plunder. When Sulla marched on Rome, the Senate sent an embassy demanding an explanation. He told them he was freeing the city from tyrants. His men were pelted with tiles from rooftops by Roman citizens as they entered the streets.

  Sulla outlawed Marius, Marius's son, Sulpicius, and nine others. Of the twelve, only Sulpicius was killed, betrayed by a slave. Marius escaped to Africa. Sulpicius's legislation was annulled on the grounds it had been passed by force. Then, with the consulship at its end, Sulla marched east to fight Mithridates, leaving behind a city that already hated him. His enemy Lucius Cornelius Cinna was elected consul for 87 BC and, before taking office, announced he would prosecute Sulla as soon as the latter's consular term ended.

• 6. War in the East

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  Early in 87 BC, Sulla crossed the Adriatic with five legions into Thessaly. His first act upon arriving was to order the officer who had been delaying Mithridates's advance into Greece to pull back into Macedonia. Then he split his effort: besieging Athens and its port at Piraeus while fending off Pontic reinforcements moving through northern Greece.

  Athens fell on the 1st of March 86 BC. Sulla's men found a weak point in the city walls. Athens was spared total destruction because of its cultural standing, but it was sacked regardless. The Acropolis held out longer and was then besieged. Desperate for metal and money, Sulla also looted the temples at Epidaurus, Delphi, and Olympia.

  Two major battles followed in Boeotia during the summer of 86 BC. At Chaeronea, the Romans neutralised a Pontic charge of scythed chariots before pushing the Pontic phalanx back across the plain. The Pontic general Archelaus reportedly commanded between 60,000 and 120,000 men; he allegedly escaped the field with only 10,000. At Orchomenus, Sulla's troops dug three trenches to contain the Pontic cavalry. When his men nearly broke under a cavalry attack, Sulla dismounted and personally steadied the line on foot. Archelaus was eventually surrounded, broke out unsuccessfully, and hid in nearby marshes before escaping to Chalcis.

  Back in Rome, Sulla had been declared an outlaw by the Cinnan regime, which sent its own general, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, to replace him. Flaccus was later murdered by his own legate, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who then pursued Mithridates on his own. Mithridates, caught between Fimbria's army, Sulla's general Lucullus's fleet, and internal revolts in Asia, eventually met Sulla at Dardanus in autumn of 85 BC and accepted peace terms. Mithridates returned his conquests, paid a war indemnity of two or three thousand talents, and equipped Sulla with seventy or eighty ships. Even in antiquity, the peace was condemned as too generous. Sulla then advanced on Fimbria's forces, which deserted their commander. Fimbria committed suicide.

• 7. Proscription and Dictatorship

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  Sulla crossed back into Italy in the spring of 83 BC. He landed at Brundisium with five legions of hardened veterans. Within days, senators were defecting to him. Pompey raised a private army from his family's clients in Picenum and joined the cause. Crassus raised forces in Spain. Even men Sulla had previously outlawed came over to his side.

  The decisive battle came on the 1st of November 82 BC outside Rome at the Colline Gate. Sulla's own wing was pushed back and he himself took refuge in his camp. His lieutenant Crassus, on the right, was victorious. Sulla's retreating men reached Rome only to find the gates shut against them, forcing them to turn and fight. By morning, Crassus had driven the enemy far into the countryside and the civil war in Italy was over.

  The day after the battle, Sulla summoned the Senate to the temple of Bellona on the Campus Martius. While he was speaking, three or four thousand Samnite prisoners were butchered outside, within earshot of the senators. On the 3rd of November, he published his first proscription list as a proconsular edict. It initially carried roughly 80 names and condemned to death, without trial, every living magistrate elected under the Cinnan regime who had not defected to Sulla. More lists followed over the coming days, eventually naming hundreds more. Property was forfeit to the state, descendants were barred from civil office for two generations, and rewards were given to anyone who killed or informed on the proscribed. Sulla's allies used the process to settle personal scores and acquire choice properties at far below market prices.

  To restructure the state, Sulla revived the dictatorship, a magistracy dormant since the Second Punic War more than a century earlier. Because both consuls were dead, he had the Senate elect an interrex, the aged princeps senatus Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who then brought legislation to appoint Sulla dictator for an unlimited term. Sulla set about reforming criminal law, weakening the tribunate, restructuring the courts, and expanding the Senate's authority over provincial governors. The number of quaestors was raised to twenty; ex-quaestors automatically entered the Senate. Tribunes were banned from introducing legislation and barred from seeking further office. Sulla freed roughly ten thousand slaves belonging to proscribed men, adding a mass of freedmen clients loyal to his memory.

  He resigned the dictatorship at the start of 80 BC, served an ordinary consulship alongside Metellus Pius, disbanded his legions, and walked unguarded through the Forum, offering to account for his actions to any citizen who asked.

• 8. Legacy and Death

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  Sulla retired to a villa near Puteoli at the end of his second consulship. He declined the provincial command he was offered and went back to actors, musicians, and his memoirs. Plutarch says he continued his relationship with the actor Metrobius to the end of his life.

  He died in 78 BC. According to ancient sources, he learnt that a local magistrate in Puteoli was embezzling from the town treasury, had the man brought before him, and shouted orders to have him strangled. The exertion caused an oral haemorrhage consistent with acute liver failure. He died the following day.

  The question of whether he would receive a public funeral divided the consuls. Catulus, with Pompey's support, carried the issue against the opposition of Lepidus. The funeral was on a scale not matched again until that of Augustus in AD 14. His body was brought into Rome on a golden bier, escorted by his veteran soldiers. Several eminent senators delivered orations. His remains were cremated and his ashes placed in his tomb on the Campus Martius.

  The epitaph he composed himself said everything: "No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full." Plutarch adds a second motto, carved separately: "no better friend, no worse enemy."

  Cicero records that Pompey once said, surveying Sulla's example: "If Sulla could, why can't I?" Julius Caesar too would follow the path Sulla opened. Sulla had tried to close that path by law, stripping provincial governors of initiative and binding them to senatorial orders. Those laws outlasted him into the imperial period. But they did not stop Pompey or Caesar from acting on the precedent he had set. His son Faustus Cornelius Sulla and a grandson Quintus Pompeius Rufus issued coins bearing the dictator's name. His family held four consulships during the imperial period, the last of the Cornelii Sullae being executed on the orders of the emperor Nero in AD 62.