Sulla

The Last Republican

Arthur Keaveney

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134305865
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Historical Biographies

In this second edition of Arthur Keaveney's classic biography, a fresh generation of students, scholars and readers are introduced to one of the most pivotal figures in the outgoing Roman Empire.

A definitive book in its field, this second edition is a must read. Completely rewritten and updated to include the further discoveries of the last two decades, it challenges traditional views of Sulla as a tyrant and harsh military dictator and instead delivers a compellingly complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was blessed with divine favour.
Written by a leading authority on the classical world, this lively and entertaining book transports us through Sulla's rise from poverty and obscurity to his dictatorship of Rome, highlighting his dedication and achievements in better ordering the Republic before his decline a generation later.

1

The World of Sulla

On a day in 88,¹ a Roman consul, for the first time in history, put himself at the head of his army in order to lead it against Rome. That consul was Lucius Cornelius Sulla. His action, as might be expected, has made him from that day to this a figure of debate and controversy and has provoked a thousand questions. What kind of man was he? Why did he do this? What became of him after? What were the consequences for Rome? These, and other questions, we will attempt to answer in this work. But before we do, it will not, perhaps, be out of place for us to present a brief and, given the nature of our narrative, necessarily somewhat simplified sketch of the world into which Sulla was born.²

After several centuries of steady advance and conquest culminating in the destruction of her greatest rival, Carthage, in 146, Rome, by the time of Sulla’s birth, had achieved total mastery of the Mediterranean basin, since such few states in the area as retained their independence did so by her leave. This vast empire was ruled from Rome itself, whence the officials who governed the provinces in her name issued at regular intervals. The complicated constitution of the governing city itself won the praise of the Greek historian Polybius who discerned in it elements of the democracy, the oligarchy and the kingship. Power, in theory, rested with the democratic element, the people. It was they who, in their assemblies, passed all laws and elected the state officials or magistrates. The chief of these magistrates, the two consuls, represented a kind of kingship for Polybius since, although elected for only a year, they possessed, during that period, the very widest powers. The Senate could be seen as the oligarchical component. This body was composed of ex-magistrates and was, in origin, a purely consultative assembly to be summoned by certain of the magistrates when they needed to seek its advice.

In practice, by the time Sulla had come on the scene, the Senate was the dominant organ of government although no ordinance actually sanctioned this state of affairs. Rather, it had come about largely because the experience which these former magistrates had acquired lent a great deal of weight to their opinion, so that in time it came to have the binding force of a law. This mature counsel was particularly valued in the field of foreign affairs. These had gradually grown in complexity with the development of the empire, so that finally the people were content to delegate their authority over the provinces and their right to deal with foreign powers to the senators. The means by which the Senate maintained its usurped supremacy over the other elements were somewhat as follows. First, no consul would alone defy it, since it had the power to assign him his province and, if he acted contrary to its wishes, then it could ensure he received a profitless assignment. In addition, as magistrates were, in most cases, already members of the Senate they would not want to risk antagonising their peers by untimely displays of independence. Such displays might very easily result in obstacles appearing in the way of their further advancement. So far as the assemblies were concerned scholars have drawn attention to various devices available to the aristocracy which enabled them to keep control. Many of the people had economic and social ties with the aristocracy and the latter also controlled the state religion which might be deployed to their advantage. Above all, however, the people, most of the time did not deviate from a kind of ingrained deference to those whom they looked upon as their betters.³

We must not, however, think of the Senate as a solid monolithic block. Within it there was a group which could clearly be distinguished from the rest of the members. These were the men who were able to boast of numbering a consul among their ancestors and they were, in consequence, styled nobiles. With their vast landed estates and their large following of clients, a handful of these noble families, by their power and prestige, controlled the state. But while these families were of one mind about the necessity of maintaining the position of their class as a whole, they agreed on little else. Amongst themselves they engaged in a continuous, and often bitter, competition for the offices and dignities which government could offer. To promote their own interests in these struggles both individuals and families forged, among themselves, political alliances of greater or lesser duration; a man who today invoked an ally’s aid and influences would tomorrow be called upon to repay the help thus offered by using his own power to enhance the ally’s position.⁴

Such, then, was the state of affairs at the time of Sulla’s birth. But even at that stage there had already been set in motion developments which were to threaten the Senate’s control of affairs and were to give its leading members something else to think about besides their squabbles with their fellow senators.

Foremost among these developments was what is called the struggle between the Optimates and the Populares. A Popularis was usually an aristocrat who, proving untrue to his own background, attempted to invoke the people’s sovereign power to pass measures unpalatable to the senatorial majority. With becoming modesty that majority, closing ranks before the threat, styled itself the Optimates (best men). For most Populares the tribunate was the favourite weapon to use in their struggle with their opponents. It had first been so used by the Gracchi, undoubtedly the most famous Populares of all, to attempt unacceptable land reform. And, like the Gracchi, many of these popular politicians met a violent end in that intermittent civic violence which, as a result of these struggles, was to plague the republic from now until its end. Often, the Populares threw down a challenge to the Senate’s control of provincial and foreign policy by galvanising the people into exercising their power in these areas once more. Now, at the behest of a popular tribune, the people were ready to overturn a senatorial decision concerning the allocation of provinces and men like Saturninus did not hesitate to intervene in negotiations with kings such as Mithridates.⁵

If these attacks on the Senate’s positions were often severe, they were, at least, intermittent and tended to burn themselves out after a time. A more persistent challenge to senatorial control came from a legacy of C. Gracchus – the politicisation of the equites (knights). This class ranked next to the Senate in dignity, and many of its members were involved in banking, money-lending, tax collection and the execution of public contracts. About this time Rome slowly began to develop a system of permanent criminal courts and Gracchus put these courts into the hands of the equites. This meant that any senator who offended their interests was liable to be condemned by such a court. Of particular importance was the court which heard cases of res repetundae (extortion). Given the type of business the equites engaged in, they naturally had a strong interest in exploiting the provinces. Their control of this tribunal meant they could go their way with impunity for it would be a very brave governor indeed who would interfere, knowing that back at Rome he would face a trumped up charge of robbing those he governed, which could send him into exile. So, in this way, too, senatorial control over the provinces was weakened and a characteristic of the period is the sporadic attempts by the Senate to regain control of the courts.⁶

In these ways was the authority of the Senate challenged and its prestige, in the process, dimmed. There was, however, another force at work which did not merely threaten senatorial authority but set fair to destroy Rome itself. This was the so-called ‘Italian problem’. Technically Rome stood at the head of an Italian confederacy. This confederacy consisted of a large number of Italian nations who were her allies but in an inferior position to her. About this time these allies began to agitate for equality of status and demanded to be admitted to full Roman citizenship. Their motives for making such a request were various. In the first place, as they supplied a large part of Rome’s armies they could see no reason why, after bearing the burdens, they should not share fully in the fruits of conquest. Further, these very wars had heightened their consciousness of their own worth. Abroad the provincials acknowledged them as lords and masters; it was all the more galling, therefore, to return home to become inferiors once more. And this heightened consciousness could ill brook the increasing high-handedness, and often downright brutality of the Roman magistrates with whom they came in contact. It was the Romans’ consistent and stupid refusal (and here Sulla was as guilty as any of his fellow countrymen) to make any concession whatsoever to these allies which led, in the end, to the Social War, when the exasperated Italians finally rebelled and fought, not for citizenship, but for total independence from Rome.⁷

Changes in the army at this time are often assumed as having sinister implications. Marius in 107 had admitted men without property qualifications to the ranks. This, in effect, meant a loosening of loyalty to the state and a greater devotion to the commander. Sulla, it is claimed, exploited Marius’ new arrangements to further his own political ends by force of arms. We shall see however that this is false. What Sulla did was not to exploit men’s economic standing but to politicise his soldiers.⁸

2

The Early Years: 138–105BC

Of the seven patrician families who belonged to the Cornelian gens, that to which Sulla belonged, although it could boast of one colourful character, was the least distinguished. The earliest member of the family of whom we have a record is P. Cornelius Rufinus, who was dictator in 334, but he is a rather shadowy figure and is for us really little more than a name.¹ The same cannot be said of his son, also called P. Cornelius Rufinus, who was undoubtedly the most celebrated – some would say, rather, notorious – member of the family before Sulla himself. As consul in 290 he played a prominent part in the war against the Samnites. At some time around 285, he, like his father, became dictator and in 277 was consul once more. Here again he gave a good account of himself by waging war against the allies of Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who had invaded southern Italy.² In the next year, however, his career came to an abrupt and ignominious end. Such a character could not fail to make enemies among his jealous fellow nobles, who viewed any man’s excessive prominence with suspicion, and when Rufinus was found to possess more than 10 librae of plate, the maximum allowed by law at the time, they saw to it that he was expelled from the Senate. Ironically, this incident gained for him something he would probably not have won by his substantial military and political achievements: an undying, if somewhat dubious, fame. For centuries afterwards a motley crew of moralists and rhetoricians cited his case to illustrate the primitive simplicity of ancient Roman manners and the severity with which those who offended against them were punished.³ More immediately his disgrace seems to have led to the partial political eclipse of his family. It did not actually vanish from public life, but none of its members reached a position comparable with that of Rufinus, and by the time of Sulla it was regarded as being of little consequence.

A son of the luckless Rufinus, P. Cornelius Sulla, became Flamen Dialis around 250. Although this priesthood brought with it much honour, it was so hedged round with archaic ritual taboos – every day was a holiday for the Flamen, the Romans said – that its holder was effectively barred from taking any part in politics. This man has one other claim on our attention. He was the first member of the family to bear the name Sulla.⁴ The name, in typical Roman fashion derives from a physical characteristic of the bearer and may be a corruption of the word sura (calf of the leg).⁵ Sulla himself was, as we shall shortly see, accounted a handsome man and we may suspect that some of his ancestors, too, had figures which they displayed to universal admiration. On the other hand, the name may be connected with the golden or reddish hair which Sulla himself possessed and which the name Rufinus indicates as being characteristic of the family.⁶ The Flamen’s son, also called P. Cornelius Sulla, was praetor in 212 and it was he who, after consulting the Sibylline books, instituted the Ludi Apollinares.⁷ It was no doubt because of this connection with the prophetic books that two mistaken notions arose. It was believed in some quarters that the name Sulla derives from Sibylla and that the praetor of 212 was the first to bear it.⁸ His son, yet another P. Cornelius Sulla, was Sulla’s grandfather and he, too, reached the praetorship in 186.⁹ About Sulla’s father, L. Cornelius Sulla, we know next to nothing. It has been conjectured that he also held a praetorship, but this cannot be proved. Some indeed go much further than this and suggest that as a promagistrate he served in the east and actually encountered Sulla’s future enemy Mithridates. Sadly all of this rests on nothing more then a misunderstanding of an ancient source. Probably the only thing we know for certain about Sulla’s father is that he was married twice and his second wife, Sulla’s stepmother, was a woman of considerable wealth, a circumstance which was to be of no small importance to the young Sulla.¹⁰

The family, then, into which Sulla was born in 138 had not risen above the praetorship for several generations. Of his childhood we know nothing, since the one story related of it is as false as it is charming. According to this account, while Sulla was still a baby his nurse was carrying him through the streets of Rome one day when she was stopped by a strange woman who said puer tibi et reipublicae tuae felix (the infant will be a source of felicity to you and the state). The woman then disappeared and was never seen again. We do know, however, that the family was in reasonably comfortable circumstances, since Sulla received the education normal for a young Roman of his class. He was thoroughly grounded in the Greek and (such as existed at the time) Latin classics and in consequence was imbued with a love of letters which he never lost throughout his life. But some time during his teens, possibly around the time he donned the toga virilis Sulla’s fortune took a decided turn for the worse. His father died and left him nothing in his will. We cannot say for certain if this was because the two had fallen out or whether the father had, in fact, nothing to leave, but subsequent events will show that the latter hypothesis is the more likely.¹¹

At any rate, Sulla was reduced to poverty as a result of his father’s will. The one detail we know about his circumstances at this time concerns his domestic arrangements. Apparently he rented a ground floor apartment. Above him was a slave who paid only a thousand sesterces less for his quarters.¹² There has been some debate as to what kind of income these details imply. This much can however be safely said. Sulla was never actually reduced to poverty or faced the possibility of starvation.¹³ It does mean, however, that in those circles which mattered in Rome he was nothing. His tiny income might appear impressive when compared with that of a manual worker, but no Roman noble, least of all Sulla himself, who throughout his life manifested a fierce aristocratic pride, would ever dream of making such a comparison. The Roman nobles, who now occupied the places once filled by Sulla’s ancestors, would measure the young man’s resources against the huge fortunes held by themselves and would account them as being nothing. By the standards of the class to which he rightfully belonged – and, if we are to understand Sulla’s position at this time, these are the standards we must apply – Sulla was a very poor man. He was poor in the eyes of the Roman nobility and in his own. His poverty was to play a great part in moulding Sulla’s character and forming his outlook.

One vital consequence flowed from this poverty of Sulla’s. He could not embark on the only career open to a man of his class, that is he could not enter public life. The amount of his wealth fell short of the equestrian census which meant that he could not perform the compulsory military service imposed on every Roman, in that part of the levy which would qualify him, once his time was finished, to stand for office. In brief, Sulla had become declassé. His present status was commensurate neither with his birth, the position of his ancestors nor, as we shall see in the course of this biography, with his own expectations. As another famous Roman remarked later, poverty made you ridiculous, and in a small town like Rome Sulla’s plight must have been common knowledge. In a fiercely competitive timocratic society he was branded as the representative of a decayed patrician family who could no longer aspire to the kind of status his ancestors had enjoyed. He had sunk low.¹⁴

In these circumstances, with upper-class Roman doors firmly shut in his face by the pathologically caste-conscious nobility, it was natural that the warm-blooded Sulla, with his strong capacity for forming friendships, should turn to where he would find a welcome: among theatrical folk, a clique generally despised at Rome. They did not care if he had few coins to jingle in his pocket nor did they worry about the number of ancestral portrait busts which adorned his atrium.

They welcomed him into their demi-monde for himself alone and the qualities he possessed. And Sulla, with his natural affability and willingness to do anyone a good turn, rapidly found favour with that egalitarian society. With his fine singing voice he played his part to the full at the actors’ parties and drinking bouts, and happily swapped witticisms and insults with his free-spoken friends. For these theatrical companions of his Sulla the littérateur willingly turned his hand to play-writing. Not surprisingly, considering the company he kept and his own fondness for a good jest, he produced not tragedies but Atellan farces. This particular genre – a species of rough rustic comedy – had hitherto been largely improvised, but now it began to be written down and took on...