A famous Roman general stood poised to take the unprecedented step of marching on Rome with his legions, to purge the Senate of his political enemies and to ensure the downfall of a rival general, once more famous, now vying for command of the Roman armies. Of an old but decayed patrician family, he was famous for his conquest of foreign kings and his unrivaled luck in battle. He was ruthless, brilliant, alternately merciful and pitiless to his enemies. The younger general's actions sent shock-waves to the very foundations of the enfeebled Republic and led to his seizing the dictatorship of Rome; however, he would not step aside from the office in the traditional six months, but proceeded to force through legislation to recreate Rome in his own image. His name would become a byword for those who helped destroy the Roman Republic in its final years.

His name was Lucius Cornelius Sulla "Felix" - the fortunate.

The parallels between Sulla's notorious career and that of Julius Caesar (who was not even born when Sulla first rose to prominence, but who lived his youth under his shadow) are uncanny. As Caesar had his Pompey, Sulla had his Gaius Marius. The increasing struggles between the two warlords resulted in civil war and a seesaw of alternating political regimes that immersed Rome in blood. Caesar grew up in this political chaos. Sulla's ruthless actions must have profoundly influenced the mind of the young Julian.

We know more about Sulla than of many Romans of the period; Sulla wrote extensive memoirs and, although they are lost to history, other writers like Plutarch and Appian could rely on Sulla's own words to justify his actions. Plutarch often follows Sulla's lead about his motivations and ignores the more controversial of his actions; the disastrous consequences of Sulla's march on Rome (model for so many later would-be conquerors) are hardly commented on. Little mention is made of Sulla's remaking of the legislature to reflect his own reactionary aims. Plutarch does not dwell on the bloodbath of Marius' supporters in the proscriptions following Sulla's takeover, or the unprecedented corruption which followed. The truth about Sulla must be inferred from all the sources, not from his own vision of his importance to history.

Sulla was born into an impoverished branch of the Cornelii, of impeccable patrician background but no longer contenders in Rome's power structure. Sulla appears to have lived a poor and dissolute existence until he received two family inheritances that finally gave him the financial stature to run for office. His first major break into the Roman political ladder was to serve as quaestor for the famous general, Gaius Marius, who was leading Rome's armies against King Jugurtha of Numidia. Sulla, the impoverished patrician, served with Marius, the ambitious up-and-comer, and rose to be his ranking lieutenant. After several years of inconclusive battles, the ambitious Sulla was able to negotiate Jugurtha's surrender personally: typically, he persuaded one of Jugurtha's relations to betray him. This glorious conclusion to the campaign was an achievement the jealous Marius never forgave. Relations between the two men soured to the point that, when Marius fought his memorable campaign against the Germanic Teutones and Cimbri tribes in further Gaul (104-103 BC), Sulla had transferred to the staff of his rival, Catulus, and fought elsewhere. By all accounts, Sulla was invaluable to Catulus and their armies secured a great victory against the invading Germans.

Upon his return to Rome, Sulla served as praetor urbanus, after having lost the year before in his first attempt at the office. The young Caesar would later comment on the common rumors that Sulla had bought his election; when Sulla threatened to use his personal power and authority against Caesar, Caesar replied "Considering that you bought it, you are absolutely right to call it your own." (Plutarch, 5).

Sulla was assigned the province of Cilicia pro consule and was instrumental in displaying Rome's power to the eastern provinces, including Parthia; the ambassadors of the distant kingdom, hitherto largely unknown to Rome, sent their ambassadors to meet the tough young politician. It was while in the East that Sulla allegedly was told by a mystic that he would achieve greatness and die at the very height of his good fortune, a prophecy Sulla apparently took seriously and recounted in his memoirs. Sulla remained in the east for several years, returning to Rome in either 92 or 91 BC. He immediately joined the political faction opposed to Gaius Marius, who had served in five successive consulships but was still hungry for power. The two factions were on the verge of open riot when the "Social War" intervened in 89.

THE SOCIAL WAR AND THE MARCH ON ROME, 89-87 BC

After decades in which various city-states on the Italian peninsula sought, and were denied, full political power in Rome, a series of revolts against Roman hegemony drew all her generals into the field. Sulla rose to increased prominence as one of the three generals who were successful in the bitter years of the Social War; he outshone Marius (who was now in his late 60's) as well as his only other rival, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (father of Pompey the Great). Due to his successes, he was elected Consul (88 BC). Velleius comments, "Sulla was a man to whom, up to the conclusion of his career of victory, sufficient praise can hardly be given, and for whom, after his victory, no condemnation can be adequate." (II, XVII).

At the summit of his career, Plutarch notes that Sulla had a very irregular and inconsistent character. He was deeply greedy and deeply generous; he was completely unpredictable; he would have a man beaten to death for no good reason and yet pardon an inveterate political enemy. Sulla lived rough with his troops, sharing their lives. He could be a brutal disciplinarian yet also was notorious for pampering his soldiers (recognizing, probably, that they were his guarantee of influence and power). Physically, Sulla is described as looking "much like his statues," with cold blue eyes and a peculiar blotched complexion of red and white, looking like "mulberries lying atop oatmeal." As Consul, Sulla prepared to take an army to the east, where Mithridates, King of Pontus, had invaded Bithynia and Phrygia. However, the aging Marius, who had become almost unbalanced in his jealousy of Sulla, encouraged the tribune Sulpicius Rufus to force a vote in the assembly to award command of the army to Marius, instead of Sulla. After Sulla and the army left Rome, Sulpicius managed through violent means to reverse the command.

When Sulla learned of this, camped in Italy prior to leaving for the East with his army, he called his commanders together and portrayed himself as the victim of Marius' intrigues, manipulating them into suggesting that he march on Rome to secure his rights. Taking six legions, Sulla took the fateful step. Most of his officers resigned rather than being part of what looked like the first act in civil war. As Sulla's armies took Rome, Marius fled and Sulla harangued the Senate.

Sulla, with an army behind him, easily persuaded the Senate and the Comitia (the people's Assembly) to pass laws implementing his wishes. Marius and his followers were declared outlaws and efforts made to hunt them down and kill them. Sulpicius' measures were all declared invalid and the Senate was strengthened. New consuls were elected, including L. Cornelius Cinna, soon to be Caesar's father-in-law. Sulla then took his army and left to fight Mithridates.

Scarcely had Sulla's army left Rome when Cinna, now allied with the fugitive Marius, switched sides. Before the end of 87, Rome had fallen to the forces of Marius; together, he and Cinna instituted a bloodbath of political opponents exceeding anything ever seen in the city. Marius and Cinna were elected consuls for 86; Sulla was formerly exiled and his laws repealed. Marius died only days into the new consulship and, for the next three years, Cinna controlled Rome, securing reelection to the consulship each year. As Sulla's armies found increasing success in the campaign against Mithridates, his vengeful shadow loomed over the forces of Cinna. Upon Cinna's death in 84, his co-consul, Carbo, became the target. Sulla pillaged the treasures of Asia for the inevitable conflict with his enemies in Rome.

Once Sulla heard of Cinna's death, he abandoned his Asian maneuvers and returned to Italy. En route to Rome (his second effort with an army behind him), Sulla was met by the ambitious young Gnaeus Pompeius, who brought him a small army of his own clients and his father's veterans; hereinafter, Pompey would firmly attach himself to Sulla's star. Sulla won battles and negotiated to bring armies over to his side before finally approaching the gates of Rome. The final battle against the consular forces was in Rome's very outskirts, in the battle of the Colline Gate in November, 82, in which Marcus Crassus helped turned the tide for Sulla. It had taken less than a year to defeat the armies of Carbo and the young Marius, who were now hunted down without mercy and destroyed. Pompey completed the mopping-up operations, earning the possibly ironic title from Sulla of "Magnus," the great.

SULLA'S TERROR

Now completely in charge of Rome, Sulla proceeded to butcher all political opponents on a scale unmatched even by the outrages of Marius and Cinna. Plutarch describes the terror and awe in which Sulla was held. The city was filled with murder; " ...a young senator at one point asked Sulla when they could expect a cessation of the murder and plundering.

Sulla obligingly began posting lists of the condemned in the Roman Forum, of those to be killed and/or those who property would revert to the state, in this case comprised of Sulla, his creatures, and his cronies. The young Caesar, nominated as Flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter) by his father-in-law, Cinna, was also proscribed. Married to Cinna's daughter, he tactfully left Rome, only barely escaping Sulla's enforcers. Thousands were not so lucky. Eventually, Sulla was persuaded by a consortium of Caesar's supporters to pardon him, but only after grimly noting that he should not be permitted to survive as he had "many Mariuses" in his nature. He also ordered the young Julian to divorce Cinna's daughter. When Caesar refused, Sulla simply impounded her dowry.

Sulla was apparently indifferent to the unprecedented corruption which his prescriptions had spawned. Informers were paid bounties for turning in the "disloyal"; instantly, untold numbers of innocent Romans were denounced and their property confiscated to the state and sold for a song to supporters of the current regime. The looting reached through Sulla's personal circle and down the food chain. Marcus Crassus allegedly built his vast fortune through the confiscation and murders of Sulla's time. An ambitious young lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, made a name for himself in a murder case in which one of Sulla's chief assistants featured in an attempted property grab. Informers were everywhere. Thousands perished.

A complaisant and severely diminished Senate, flooded with Sullan supporters and under a tame interrex (temporary ruler), voted Sulla the long-neglected position of Dictator. In the early years of the Republic, a dictator could be appointed to sole power when the state was in imminent danger, but for no longer than a six-months' period. However, no dictator had ruled Rome in centuries. And no dictator had refused to step down after the expiration of his six-months' term. Sulla did.

In 81, Sulla began enactment of a legislative program designed to curb the power of the tribunes of the people by requiring that the Senate approve all tribunician bills, which made it impossible to get the Assembly to pass laws without Senatorial approval. Limits were placed on tribunes' vetoes; no tribune could later hold a higher office (thus making the position a dead end in political careers). Sulla reworked the political ladder, making the quaestorship as well as the praetorship compulsory for anyone seeking the consulate, and establishing minimum age requirements. He settled his veterans on confiscated lands where, as his clients, they were to support the new status quo throughout Italy.

Sulla's aim was simple; he believed he knew how to prevent the kind of political infighting, which included demagogue Tribunes playing on the unemployed mob, that had so marred the last fifty years of Rome's political history, dating back to the turbulence of the Gracchi. He was determined to check the political power of the tribunes, Comitia, Equites (knights) and people in favor of the traditional and much more powerful Senate. He thus restored the courts to senatorial control, diminished the political power of the Equites class, and revived the lex annalis to prevent the repeated consulships of popular leaders like Marius and Cinna. However, he totally ignored the dangers to the state of his own actions and made no effort to ensure that his precedent of marching on Rome with loyal legions could not be followed by those generals coming after him to intimidate and control the state.

The rest of Sulla's reactionary legislation would be dismantled within a few years of his death, ironically by his lieutenants Pompey and Crassus in 70 BC. Yet one overlooked precedent from Sulla's maverick career would end the Republic when Caesar, who learned much from Sulla's mistakes, marched on Rome against his political enemies - but (unlike Sulla) sweetened his actions with a politic policy of mercy. Sulla did succeed, ironically, in giving Rome a horror of civil war that echoes in Cicero's denunciations of Cataline a generation later, although that horror would be repeated within a generation of Sulla's death.

Coin bearing Sulla's profile [issued posthumously]

Apparently, Sulla believed a prediction made in the East that he would die soon after attaining his unmatched power as dictator. He agreed to stand as Consul in 80 but withdrew in 79 from all political activity, essentially retiring from politics. Living quietly in the country, and purportedly writing his memoirs, Sulla was surrounded by a riffraff of actors, prostitutes and thugs, some of whom had remained his friends since his youth. He died the next year. Pompey helped force through a magnificent state funeral, to the delight of Sulla's veterans, although many wished to give him no honors from a Republic they thought he had polluted. Sulla's legislative program was soon under attack and was largely dismantled during the Consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70 BC.

In the next and succeeding generations, this inscrutable, remarkable, bloody man became the model of a Roman tyrant. When Caesar and Pompey were commencing their own struggle for absolute power in 49, Caesar quite specifically stated that he did not propose to emulate the notorious Sulla, settling instead on a policy of mercy and reconciliation. As for Sulla, Plutarch concludes,

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