Sulla: Wars, Massacres, Dictatorship, the Precursor of Caesar? | Early European History And Religion

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Sulla

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (138– 78 B.C.), known commonly as Sulla or Sylla, was a Roman general and statesman. He had the distinction of holding the office of consul twice, as well as reviving the dictatorship. Sulla was a skillful general, achieving numerous successes in wars against different opponents, both foreign and Roman. He was awarded a grass crown, the most prestigious Roman military honor, during the Social War. Sulla's dictatorship came during a high point in the struggle between optimates and populares, the former seeking to maintain the Senate's oligarchy, and the latter espousing populism. In a dispute over the eastern army command (initially awarded to Sulla by the Senate but withdrawn as a result of Gaius Marius's intrigues) Sulla marched on Rome in an unprecedented act and defeated Marius in battle. In 81 BC, after his second march on Rome, he revived the office of dictator. [Source: Wikipedia]

David Silverman of Reed College wrote: “At Rome, the question of the day was who would get the command against Mithradates. The Senate chose the consul of 88 B.C., L. Cornelius Sulla. From an obscure branch of one of the finest old Roman families, Sulla had arrived late on the political scene, building his wealth (by fair means or foul, his detractors said) until he qualified for the Senate. In the 100s he had been a protege of Marius, and he had greatly distinguished himself in the Numidian campaigns and in the Social Wars. But now the two old campaigners found themselves on opposite sides. Marius' champion was the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus, a populist whose political platform centered around four measures: (1) The expulsion of debtors from the Senate, (2) The recall of exiles, (3) The even and equitable distribution of the newly enfranchised Italians among the 35 tribes, and (4) the transfer of the command against Mithradates to G. Marius. [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]

“Marius was old and enfeebled, but he was the hero of the Jugurthine War and the man who had saved the state from the Celto-Germanic hordes, the Cimbri and Teutones; Sulpicius had little trouble persuading the popular assembly to vote the desired transfer of the Asian command to Marius. This ominous echo of the Gracchan affairs, with the assembly attempting to muscle in on the traditional senatorial prerogative in the management of foreign affairs, rang all too clearly. Sulla gathered some of his veterans, still under arms (for the Social War could not be ended until the final surrender of the Samnites, inveterate foes of Rome), and descended like lightning upon the city, driving Marius and Sulpicius out into the countryside. ^*^

“Sulla had every intention of taking up his Asian command, but first he took steps (which he must have known, however, would prove inadequate) to ensure domestic tranquility and the coverage of his own ... flanks in his absence. Sulpicius' laws were repealed on the grounds that they had been passed by coercive measures ( per vim; indeed, Sulpicius had been in the habit of going about with a rather large band of armed thugs). Here also Sulla took the first of his steps in the direction of weakening the burgeoning power of the tribunate, which since the Gracchi had periodically threatened the senatorial oligarchy. Henceforth the popular assembly was to vote only on measures which had first received the approval of the Senate. And no longer would the whim of the concilium plebis or the comitia tributa be enacted into law; now the people were to vote in their centuries, arranged by economic strata into the more conservative comitia centuriata (Appian BC 1. 7. 59). That done, Sulla left for the East and its riches. ^*^

Sulla and the Mithridatic War (88-84 B.C.)

Mithridates I on a Parthian coin

While Marius was thus enduring the miseries of exile, Sulla was gathering fresh glories in the East. It was at this time that Sulla showed his greatest ability as a soldier. He drove back the armies of Mithridates, besieged Athens and reduced it. He destroyed an army at Chaeronea (86 B.C.), and another at Orchomenus (85 B.C.). Within four years he reëstablished the Roman power, and compelled Mithridates to sign a treaty of peace. The defeated king agreed to give up all his conquests; to surrender eighty war vessels; and to pay 3000 talents ($3,750,000). After imposing upon the disloyal cities of Asia Minor the immense fine of 20,000 talents ($25,000,000), Sulla returned to Italy to find his own party overthrown, and himself an outlaw. \~\

David Silverman of Reed College wrote: “The primary battleground for Mithradates was to be Greece. Invited by the democrats to "liberate" Greece, Mithradates had installed a puppet named Aristion as tyrant at Athens and set out upon an Achaemenid-style overland march through Thrace and Macedonia. On arriving in Greece, Sulla first took (and sacked) Athens, then fought two pitched battles against Mithradates in Boeotia (at Orchomenos and Chaeronea). At Rome Sulla's departure had led to the return of the Marians to power, though Marius himself had died in 86. Marius' partner in the consulship of 86, L. Cornelius Cinna, sent Marius' replacement G. Valerius Flaccus to Greece to relieve Sulla of his command and carry on the war with Mithradates (following Plut. Sol. 20 which derives from Sulla's own Memoirs against the anti-Sullan tradition, which held that Flaccus was simply supposed to support Sulla against Mithradates). G. Flavius [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]

“Fimbria, a legate in Flaccus' army, persuaded the men to mutiny against Flaccus and to set himself at their head. This then was the peculiar situation in Greece and Asia Minor in 86: two Roman consular armies, hostile to each other but both intent on eradicating Mithradates. Sulla brilliantly moved to conclude a treaty with Mithradates, whom Fimbria had conveniently weakened, then crushed Fimbria without even fighting a battle by inviting his men to defect to Sulla's own army. Under Mithradates the cities of Asia had been heavily taxed and looted, and plagued by pirates. Now they were all too ready to submit to Sulla, who imposed a large indemnity (Plut. Sol. 25) and left the province open to the depradations of the publicani. Sulla spent the next few years in mopping-up operations in Greece; finally, in the spring of 83, he landed at Brundisium on the Adriatic. ^*^

Mithridatic Wars, 118-119

The Roman historian Appian (A.D. 95-165) wrote: “Many times Mithridates had over 400 ships of his own, 50,000 cavalry, and 250,000 infantry, with engines and arms in proportion. For allies he had the king of Armenia and the princes of the Scythian tribes around the Euxine and the Sea of Azov and beyond, as far as the Thracian Bosphorus. He held communication with the leaders of the Roman civil wars, which were then fiercely raging, and with those who were inciting insurrections in Spain. He established friendly relations with the Gauls for the purpose of invading Italy. [Source: William Stearns Davis, ed., “Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources,” 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 118-120, 123-127

“From Cilicia to the Pillars of Hercules he also filled the sea with pirates, who stopped all commerce and navigation between cities, and caused severe famine for a long time. In short, he left nothing within the power of man undone or untried to start the greatest possible movement, extending from the Orient to the Occident, to vex, so to speak, the whole world, which was warred upon, tangled in alliances, harassed by pirates, or vexed by the neighborhood of the warfare. Such and so diversified was this one war against Mithridates, but in the end it brought the greatest gain to the Romans; for it pushed the boundaries of their dominion from the setting of the sun to the river Euphrates.

Lucullus (died about 56 B.C.) Was one of the great heros of the Mithridates Wars. Davis wrote: “Lucullus (died about 56 B.C.) would have conquered Mithridates had not Pompey been sent out (in 66 B.C.) to supersede him. As it was, he brought back from the East enough wealth for a magnificent triumph. [Source: William Stearns Davis, ed., “Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources,” 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 118-120, 123-127

On the Triumph after Lucullus’ success, Plutarch wrote in “Life of Lucullus,” xxxvii: “The pomp [of Lucullus' triumph] proved not so wonderful or so wearisome with the length of the procession and the number of things carried in it, but consisted chiefly in vast quantities of arms and machines of the king's [i.e., Mithridates], with which he adorned the Flaminian circus, a spectacle by no means despicable. In his progress there passed by a few horsemen in heavy armor, ten chariots armed with scythes, sixty friends and officers of the king's, and a hundred and ten brazen-beaked ships of war, which were conveyed along with a golden image of Mithridates six feet high, a shield set with precious stones, twenty loads of silver vessels, and thirty-two of golden cups, armor, and money, all carried by men. Besides which, eight mules were laden with golden couches, fifty-six with bullion, and a hundred and seven with coined silver, little less than two million seven hundred thousand pieces. There were tablets, also, with inscriptions, stating what moneys he gave Pompey for prosecuting the piratic war, what he delivered into the treasury, and what he gave to every soldier, which was nine hundred and fifty drachmas each [Arkenberg: about $715 in 1998 dollars]. After all which he nobly feasted the city and adjoining villages.”

eastern Mediterrean at the time of the Mithritadic War in 89 BC

Cinna and the Marian Massacres

During the absence of Sulla, Rome had passed through a reign of terror. The time had now come when parties sought to support themselves by slaughtering their opponents. The two consuls who were left in power when Sulla left Rome, were Cn. Octavius, a friend of Sulla, and L. Cornelius Cinna, a friend of Marius. Cinna, who was an extreme partisan, proposed to rescind the laws of Sulla and reënact those of Sulpicius. But the senate was vehemently opposed to any such scheme. When the assembly of the tribes met in the Forum to vote upon this proposal of Cinna, Octavius carried the day in an armed conflict in which ten thousand citizens are said to have lost their lives. But the victory of Octavius was short. Cinna was, it is true, deprived of his office; but following the example of his enemy Sulla, he appealed to the army for support. \~\

At the same time Marius returned from his exile to aid the cause of Cinna. Uniting their forces, Marius and Cinna then marched upon Rome. The city was taken. Marius saw that the time had now come to satisfy his vengeance for the wrongs which he thought had been done him. The gates of the city were closed, and the massacres began. The first victim was the consul Octavius, whose head was hung up in the Forum. Then followed the leaders of the senatorial part For five days Marius was furious, and revelled in blood. The friends of Sulla were everywhere cut down. The city was a scene of murder, plunder, and outrage. After this spasm of slaughter a reign of terror continued for several months. No man’s life was safe if he was suspected by Marius. Marius and Cinna then declared themselves to be consuls. But Marius held this, his seventh consulship, but a few days, when he died—a great man who had crumbled into ruins. \~\

After the death of Marius, Cinna, the professed leader of the popular party, ruled with the absolute power of a despot. He declared himself consul each year, and named his own colleague. But he seemed to have no definite purpose, except to wipe out the work of Sulla, and to keep himself supreme. At last, hearing of the approach of Sulla, he led an army to prevent him from landing in Italy; but was killed in a mutiny of his own soldiers. \~\

Sulla’s War with the Marian Party

Sulla landed in Italy (83 B.C.) with a victorious army of forty thousand men. He had restored the power of Rome against her enemies abroad; he now set to work to restore her authority against her enemies at home. He looked upon the popular party as a revolutionary faction, ruling with no sanction of law or justice. Its leaders since the death of Cinna were Cn. Papirius Carbo, the younger Marius, and Q. Sertorius. The landing of Sulla in Italy without disbanding his army was the signal for civil war. Southern Italy declared in his favor, and many prominent men looked to him as the deliverer of Rome. The choicest of his new allies was the son of Pompeius Strabo, then a young man of twenty-three, but whose future fame, as Pompey the Great, was destined to equal that of Sulla himself. Sulla marched to Campania and routed the forces of one consul, while troops of the other consul deserted to him in a body. He then attacked the young Marius in Latium, defeated him, and shut him up in the town of Praeneste. Northern Italy was at the same time held in check by Pompey. A desperate battle was fought at Clusium, in Etruria, in which Sulla and Pompey defeated the army of Carbo. At last an army of Samnites which had joined the Marian cause was cut to pieces at the Colline gate under the very walls of Rome. Sulla showed what might be expected of him when he ordered six thousand Samnite prisoners to be massacred in cold blood. \~\

David Silverman of Reed College wrote: “To understand the situation Sulla found upon his return from the East, we need to trace events at Rome during his absence. Cinna had been a reluctant ally of Sulla, but as consul in 87 he had to deal with the reality that Marius (who had skilfully avoided being captured during his outlawry by trading, according to the tradition, upon his vast reserves of auctoritas and dignitas ) had collected veterans loyal to him personally from the lands where he had settled them in Africa, and was augmenting his army with discontented allies in Etruria. At Rome Cinna's attempt to reintroduce the Sulpician tribal reforms had met with violent opposition, and he wisely chose to raise an army from among the allies and throw in his lot with Marius. Together, Marius and Cinna easily overcame the remnants of the Sullan loyalists and returned to Rome triumphant. Some exercise of imagination is necessary to picture the scene in Rome at the end of 86. Marius instituted a reign of terror against his old colleagues in the Senate; the heads of the victims gaped bloodily on stakes by the Rostra; Rome, the center of civilization, was teetering on the brink of anarchy (Appian 1. 8. 71-72). Cinna gets the credit for checking the bloodletting, and Marius for dying of natural causes early in 86. The only ominous thing about the years 86-83 was that Cinna held successive consulships, something for which there was now precedent. Cinna had irrevocably turned his back on Sulla, first by implementing the Sulpician tribal reforms, and second by trying to supplant Sulla as commander in the East. In the years 86-83 the rule of law prevailed at Rome, with one very important exception in the suppression of the electoral system. The most striking thing about the period is the continued ambiguity about who is legal and who is not, who represents the Senate and the People of Rome and who is an outlaw leading a band of renegades. For the moment Cinna was in the former category, and Sulla in the latter. [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]

“Cinna was smart enough to know that a war with Sulla on Italian soil was coming, and he marshalled his forces, using his consular imperium to levy troops, and relying on his support among the Italians. Cinna then perished in a mutiny caused by some trivial high-handedness; in itself the event was significant only in that the command passed to Cinna's less capable colleague Carbo, but it was emblematic of the extent to which the legions were coming to see themselves as the arbiters of power. ^*^

“On landing at Brundisium, Sulla was joined by those of his allies who had survived the period of turmoil. One who presented himself to Sulla with three legions of hardened veterans at his back was the 24 year old Gn. Pompeius (later Magnus), who had rallied the troops from Picenum and Apulia which his father had commanded with great effectiveness in the Social Wars. Sulla moved north, defeating one consular army in Campania and inducing the troops of a second to defect to him; after three years of fighting, the decisive battle with the Marian forces took place outside of Rome (Battle of the Colline Gate).

“Even an account as favorable to Sulla as Plutarch's Life could not even attempt to hide the fact that Sulla's revenge was even worse than Marius'. His main target was the equites, whom he held responsible for the past successes of the Marians, and whose vast fortunes were ripe for confiscation. Sulla's method was the proscription, or public outlawing of individuals from who all the protection of the state was thereby withdrawn, and who could then be killed with impunity. For all that a hostile tradition ascribes base motives to Sulla for these murders, it is possible that he saw them as a needed purge of those who would undermine the traditional forms of government, of which he now emerged as the champion; in other words, that he believed them to be measures taken in the best interest of the state. First he covered himself by settling his veterans on newly confiscated lands in Spain, Etruria, and Samnium. He increased the number of senators, and attempted to placate the equestrian order by including a number of politically reliable equites among the new senators. Henceforth membership in the Senate was to be consequent upon successful completion of the quaestorship rather than by appointment of the censors; with this measure Sulla tried to head off the potential influx of newly enfranchised Italian aristocrats. He tried to block the rise of future Sullas and Marius's with a law against holding the same office in succession, and by enforcing a strict adherence to the sequence of the cursus honorum (the progression of magistracies). Most importantly, Sulla struck at the office of the tribune of the people, now so many times the catalyst for populist measures which threatened the state or (as Syme puts it) the senatorial oligarchy. The tribunate was to be a political dead end, such that ex-tribunes could not go on to the curule magistracies; the veto power was abolished or severely curtailed; and the tribunes could no longer propose new laws to the people. Sulla also reasserted the principle that juries should consist of senators and senators only. ^*^

“All of these measures were consistent with or extensions of the Sullan programme as it appeared before his departure to settle the hash of Mithradates. They clearly marked Sulla out as the champion of the mos maiorum, and even though Sulla appears neither progressive nor democratic in comparison to his political opponents, we must admit that he knew and understood the nature of the forces which were tearing at the fabric of the Republican system. The question is why he ultimately failed, i.e. whether the momentum of the Republic's rush to ruin was now incapable of being stopped. ^*^

Sulla as the Supreme Leader of Rome

Sulla

With Italy at his feet and a victorious army at his back, Sulla, the champion of the senate, was now the supreme ruler of Rome. Before entering upon the work of reconstructing the government, he determined first of all to complete the work of destroying his enemies. It is sometimes said that Sulla was not a man of vindictive nature. Let us see what he did. He first outlawed all civil and military officers who had taken part in the revolution against him, and offered a reward of two talents (about $2500) to the murderer of any of these men. He then posted a list (proscriptio) containing the names of those citizens whom he wished to have killed. He placed eighty names on the first list, two hundred and twenty more on the second, as many more on the third, and so on until nearly five thousand citizens had been put to death in Rome. \~\

But these despotic acts were not confined to Rome; they extended to every city of Italy. “Neither temple, nor hospitable hearth, nor father’s house,” says Plutarch, “was free from murder.” Sulla went to Praeneste, and having no time to examine each individual, had all the people brought to one spot to the number of twelve thousand, and ordered them to be massacred. His sense of justice was not satisfied by punishing the living. The infamous Catiline had murdered his own brother before the war had closed, and he asked Sulla to proscribe him as though he were alive—which was done. The heads of the slain victims Sulla caused to be piled in the streets of Rome for public execration. The tomb of Marius himself was broken open and his ashes were scattered. Besides taking the lives of his fellow-citizens, Sulla confiscated the lands of Italy, swept away cities, and wasted whole districts. If the proscriptions of Sulla were not inspired by the mad fury of revenge which led to the Marian massacres, they were yet prompted by the merciless policy of a tyrant. \~\

Dictatorship of Sulla (82-79 B.C.)

The Office of Perpetual Dictator: When Sulla had destroyed his enemies he turned to the work of reconstructing the government in the interests of the senate and the aristocracy. The first question with Sulla was, What office should he hold in order to accomplish all he wished to do? The Gracchi had exercised their great influence by being elected tribunes. Marius had risen to power through his successive consulships. But the office neither of tribune nor of consul was suited to the purposes of Sulla. He wished for absolute power—in fact, to hold the royal imperium. But since the fall of the Tarquins no man had ever dared assume the name of “king.” Sulla was shrewd enough to see how he could exercise absolute power under another name than that of king. The dictator was, in fact, a sort of temporary king. To make this office perpetual would be practically to restore the royal power. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Accordingly, Sulla had himself declared dictator to hold the office as long as he pleased. All his previous acts were then confirmed. He was given the full power of life and death, the power to confiscate property, to distribute lands, to create and destroy colonies, and to regulate the provinces. Military Support of Sulla’s Power: Sulla believed that a ruler to be strong must always be ready to draw the sword. He therefore did not mean to lose his hold upon his veteran soldiers. When his twenty-three legions were disbanded, they were not scattered, but were settled in Italy as military colonies. Each legion formed the body of citizens in a certain town, the lands being confiscated and assigned to the soldiers. The legionaries were thus bound in gratitude to Sulla, and formed a devoted body of militia upon which he felt that he could rely. By means of these colonies, Sulla placed his power upon a military basis.\~\

Sulla Reforms

Restoration of the Senate: It was one of Sulla’s chief purposes to restore the senate to its former position as the chief ruling body. In the first place, he filled it up with three hundred new members, elected by the comitia tributa from the equites. The senatorial list was no longer to be made out by the censor, but everyone who had been quaestor was now legally qualified to be a senator. In the next place, the jurors (iudices) in criminal trials were henceforth to be taken from the senate, and not from the equestrian order. But as the new senators were from this order, the two classes became reconciled; and Sulla succeeded in doing what Drusus had failed to accomplish. But more than all, no laws could hereafter be passed by the assembly of the tribes until first approved by the senate. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Weakening of the Assembly: Sulla saw that the revolutionary acts of the last fifty years had been chiefly the work of the comitia tributa under the leadership of the tribunes. The other assembly—that of the centuries—had, it is true, equal power to make laws. But the assembly of the tribes was more democratic, and the making of laws had gradually passed into the hands of that body. Sulla took away from the tribes the legislative power, and gave to the senate the authority to propose all laws to be submitted to the centuries. The tendency of this change was to limit the assemblies to the mere business of electing the officers—the lower officers being elected by the tribes, and the higher officers by the centuries. To keep control of the elections Sulla enfranchised ten thousand slaves, and gave them the right to vote; these creatures of Sulla were known as “Cornelii,” or Sulla’s freedmen. \~\

Changes in the Magistrates: In Sulla’s mind the most revolutionary and dangerous office in the government was that of the tribune. This officer hitherto could practically control the state. He had had the chief control of legislation; and also by his veto he could stop the wheels of government. Sulla changed all this. He limited the power of the tribune to simple “intercession,” that is, the protection of a citizen from an act of official injustice. He also provided that no tribune could be elected to the curule offices. The other officers were also looked after. The consuls and praetors must henceforth devote themselves to their civil duties in the city; and then as proconsuls and propraetors they might afterward be assigned by the senate to the governorship of the provinces. Again, no one could be consul until he had been praetor, nor praetor until he had been quaestor; and the old law was enforced, that no one could hold the same office the second time until after an interval of ten years. \~\

Reform of the Judicial System: The most permanent part of Sulla’s reforms was the creation of a regular system of criminal courts. He organized permanent commissions (quaestiones perpetuae) for the trial of different kinds of crimes. Every criminal case was thus tried before a regular court, composed of a presiding judge, or praetor, and a body of jurymen, called iudices. We must remember that whenever the word iudices is used in the political history of this period it refers to these jurors in criminal cases, who were first chosen from the senate, then from the equites, and now under Sulla from the senate again. The organization of regular criminal courts by Sulla was the wisest and most valuable part of his legislation. \~\

Sulla’s Abdication and Death

After a reign of three years (82-79 B.C.), and after having placed the government securely in the hands of the senate, as he supposed, Sulla resigned the dictatorship. He retired to his country house at Puteoli on the Bay of Naples. He spent the few remaining months of his life in writing his memoirs, which have unfortunately been lost. He hastened his end by dissipation, and died the next year (78 B.C.). The senate decreed him a public funeral, the most splendid that Rome had ever seen. His body was burned in the Campus Martius. Upon the monument which was erected to his memory were inscribed these words: “No friend ever did him a kindness, and no enemy a wrong, without being fully repaid.” [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Sulla was a man of blood and iron. Cool and calculating, definite in his purpose, and unscrupulous in his methods, he was invincible in war and in peace. But the great part of the work which he seemed to accomplish so thoroughly did not long survive him. His great foreign enemy, Mithridates, soon renewed his wars with Rome. His boasted constitution fell in the next political conflict. The career of Sulla, like that of the Gracchi and of Marius, marks a stage in the decline of the republic and the establishment of the empire. \~\

When Sulla resigned his power and placed the government in the hands of his party, he no doubt thought that he had secured the state from any further disturbance. He had destroyed all opposition, he fancied, by wiping out the Marian party. But as soon as he died, the remnants of this party began to reappear on every side. With the restoration of the senate’s power there also returned all the old evils of the senatorial rule. The aristocratic party was still a selfish faction ruling for its own interests, and with little regard for the welfare of the people. The separation between the rich and the poor became more marked than ever. Luxury and dissipation were the passion of one class, and poverty and distress the condition of the other. The feebleness of the new government was evident from the start, and Sulla was scarcely dead when symptoms of reaction began to appear.

Challenges to Sulla’s Legacy

Sulla statue base

Failures of the Sullan Party: When Sulla resigned his power and placed the government in the hands of his party, he no doubt thought that he had secured the state from any further disturbance. He had destroyed all opposition, he fancied, by wiping out the Marian party. But as soon as he died, the remnants of this party began to reappear on every side. With the restoration of the senate’s power there also returned all the old evils of the senatorial rule. The aristocratic party was still a selfish faction ruling for its own interests, and with little regard for the welfare of the people. The separation between the rich and the poor became more marked than ever. Luxury and dissipation were the passion of one class, and poverty and distress the condition of the other. The feebleness of the new government was evident from the start, and Sulla was scarcely dead when symptoms of reaction began to appear. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

David Silverman of Reed College wrote: Although Sulla gets credit from moderns for resigning his dictatorship, the measures he undertook to ensure that the Republican system would continue to work were not adequate. Things had gone too far; all of the ominous trends which we have noticed in the previous two lectures, i.e political violence in the city, armies whose loyalty belonged in the first instance to individual commanders and only secondarily to the state itself, agitation for land distributions, and threats to the traditional prerogatives of the Senate, all these intensify in this period.” [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]

The Revolt of Lepidus (77 B.C.): The first attempt to overthrow the work of Sulla was made by the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus, a vain and petulant man, who aspired to be chief of the popular party. Lepidus proposed to restore to the tribunes the full power which Sulla had diminished, and then to rescind the whole Sullan constitution. But his colleague, Q. Lutatius Catulus,1 had no sympathy with his schemes and opposed him at every step. To prevent a new civil war the senate bound the two consuls by an oath not to take up arms. But Lepidus disregarded this oath, raised an army, and marched on Rome. He was soon defeated by Catulus with the aid of Cn. Pompey. It is well for us to notice that Pompey by this act came into greater prominence in politics as a supporter of the senate and the Sullan party. \~\

Silverman wrote: “Lepidus pressed all of the populist hot buttons, calling for a renewed and strong tribunate and cheap subsidized grain; there were new issues as well resulting from the proscription; Lepidus wanted the former partisans of Marius, now exiles, restored to citizenship and their lands, which were confiscated and distributed to Sulla's veterans, returned. When these ideas met with resistance, Lepidus used his consular army to support the farmers who were trying to eject the Sullan colonists from their lands in Etruria. This made Lepidus an enemy of the state, and responsibility for putting him down fell to the young Pompey, who got a special grant of imperium from the Senate to do the job. And, inevitably, the senatus consultum ultimum was passed against Lepidus. Pompey's success allowed him to persuade the senate to send him next, with proconsular imperium, to Spain to crush the rebellion of Q. Sertorius. One of Marius' old proteges, the wily Sertorius had set up a Roman government in exile in Spain. Like some latter day Scipio Africanus, he had great support both among the locals (who believed that he enjoyed divine favor and that his white fawn foretold the future) and the expatriates in Spain. After a series of setbacks Sertorius was assassinated by one of his own men in 72, and Pompey wiped up the remnants of his army in the next year. ^*^

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024