Lucius Cornelius Sulla came from a patrician branch whose ancestor had been expelled from the Senate for illegally hoarding silver plate, so he grew up poor and spent his youth among actors, musicians and comedians, writing farces himself. Inheritances from a devoted stepmother and a wealthy courtesan named Nicopolis let him enter politics in his late twenties. At 30 he served as quaestor under Gaius Marius in the war against Jugurtha and persuaded King Bocchus of Mauretania to hand over his son-in-law. Marius took the triumph, but Sulla sealed his letters with a signet ring showing the surrender. In the Social War his rally at Nola won him the grass crown, and he was consul in 88 BC.
When the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus passed a law moving Sulla’s command against Mithridates to Marius, Sulla told his troops they would lose the eastern plunder and marched on Rome, crossing the pomerium. After he left for Greece, Marius retook the city and had Sulla declared a public enemy. Sulla looted Athens, Olympia and Delphi, won at Chaeronea and Orchomenus, and accepted the lenient Treaty of Dardanus despite the Asiatic Vespers. Returning, he won at the Colline Gate and posted proscription lists. As dictator with no time limit he gutted the tribunes and fixed political career rules, then resigned, served as consul once more and retired to a coastal villa.
- Anyone who killed a proscribed man and brought his head received a state bounty, and his property was auctioned cheaply to Sulla’s allies.
- Descendants of the proscribed were barred from public office.
- At Chaeronea his men dug trenches that trapped the enemy’s scythed chariots.
- He walked Rome as a private citizen without bodyguards, and no one challenged him.
- He died of an internal hemorrhage after screaming at a corrupt local official, and wrote an epitaph about repaying friends and enemies in full.
Leave a Reply