Sulla

“ If Sulla wished, he would send on the Moorish escort, or leave it where it was and ride with him alone.
It was one of those situations which are the supreme tests of the qualities of a man. Sulla knew that his life depended on the caprice, or the momentary sense of self-interest, of a barbarian who was believed to have shrunk from no crime and on whose head Rome had put a price. Yet he did not hesitate. He passed with Volux through the lines of Jugurtha's camp, and the desperate Numidian never stirred. ”

“ It does not greatly matter, for our present purpose, what precise view we are to take of Sulla's personal character and genius. The high-born voluptuary who, tearing himself away from dinner-parties and actresses, condescends to become the greatest soldier and then the greatest statesman of his age, and finally, having made these sacrifices, returns to the pursuits of his choice, has naturally exercised the imagination of literary artists. ”

“ The fever of revenge, and the apprehension of what might follow on Sulla's return, drove sleep from his eyelids. A brave soldier, he was incompetent to play the part of a statesman. He went to his grave with the curse of all parties resting upon him.
RETURN OF SULLA.—Sulla refused to do any thing against his adversaries at home, or for the help of the fugitive nobles who appealed to him, until the cause of the country was secure abroad. He captured Athens in 86, defeated Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, in a great battle at Chaeronea ”

“ Without Sulla's personal vices he might have played Sulla's part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus—words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordsman's nature—showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. ”

“ Sulla's whole soul must have recoiled from the coarse manners of the man under whom he first won distinction, and, while he scorned his motives, he must, as he saw him gradually floundering into villainy, have felt the serene superiority of a natural genius for vice. ”

“ He had formed an army in Campania out of the legions which had served against the Italians. He had made his soldiers devoted to him. They were ready to go anywhere and do anything which Sulla bade them. After so many murders, and so many commotions, the constitution had lost its sacred character; a popular assembly was, of all conceivable bodies, the least fit to govern an empire; and in Sulla's eyes the Senate, whatever its deficiencies, was the only possible sovereign of Rome. ”

“ The first of the Scipios, who had won Spain from the Carthaginians, had not asked for this honor because he wanted this qualification. Was it to be given to a beardless youth, too young even to sit in the Senate?" But the beardless youth insisted. He even had the audacity to hint that the future belonged not to Sulla but to himself. "More men," he said, "worship the rising than the setting sun." Sulla did not happen to catch the words, but he saw the emotion they aroused in the assembly, and asked that they should be repeated to him. ”

“ Then he sent a slave to assassinate Sulla; and the discovery of this attempt so maddened Sulla's soldiers that Fimbria dared not trust even Sulla's promised safe-conduct and slew himself. [Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] Sulla incorporated his troops with his own army, and proceeded to regulate the affairs of Asia. Those towns which had remained faithful to Rome or had sided with him were liberally rewarded. All slaves who refused to return to their masters were slain. The towns that resisted were punished and their walls destroyed. The ringleaders in the massacre were put to death. ”

“ Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the resistance he met with, and determined on a terrible vengeance. He could not enter the city till he was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, so the Senate came out to meet him in the temple of Bellona. As they took their seats, they heard dreadful shrieks and cries. "No matter," said Sulla; "it is only some wretches being punished." The wretches were the 8000 Samnite prisoners he had taken at the battle of Præneste, and brought to be killed in the Campus Martius ”

“ XCVI Now Sulla, as I have already said, after he came with his cavalry to Africa and the camp of Marius, although he was without previous experience and untrained in war, soon became the best soldier in the whole army. Moreover, he was courteous in his language to the soldiers, granted favours to many at their request and to others of his own accord, unwilling himself to accept favours and paying them more promptly than a debt of money. He himself never asked for payment, but rather strove to have as many men as possible in his debt. ”

“ Sulla did not march immediately upon Italy, but went to Ædepsus, in Eubœa, for the benefit of the hot baths, though he did not limit himself to the waters, for he addicted himself to the spirits abounding in the neighbourhood. He amused himself in the society of those who are sometimes said to live upon their wits, though their existence is really derived from the want of wit in others. ”

“ Sulla’s proscriptions, the murder and banishment of innumerable families and the seizure of their goods and estates, to be divided among their enemies, left behind them a deep hatred between those who had triumphed and those who had been defeated. After Sulla’s death the sons and grandsons of the proscribed began to come back, and what had once been the Popular Party, led by Marius and Cinna, built itself up again. At first it had no leaders. The men who were to be its leaders were still too young. ”

“ Of all men, too, Sulla had the best reason to appreciate the dangers to be feared from the growing independence of governors and generals in the provinces, and from the transformation of the old civic militia into a group of professional armies, devoted only to a successful leader, and with the weakest possible sense of allegiance to the state. He had himself, as proconsul of Asia, contemptuously and successfully defied the home government, and he, more than any other Roman general, had taught his soldiers to look only to their leader, and to think only of booty. ”

“ The name of Sulla carried victory with it. The troops of Fimbria deserted their general, who put an end to his own life. Sulla now prepared to return to Italy. After exacting enormous sums from the wealthy cities of Asia, he left his legate, L. Licinius Murena, in command of the province of Asia, with two legions, and set sail with his own army to Athens. While preparing for his deadly struggle in Italy, he did not lose his interest in literature. He carried with him from Athens to Rome the valuable library of Apellicon of Teos, which contained most of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. ”

“ They quickly depart to the winter quarters of the Romans, and then being surrounded on their march by some Gætulian robbers, spoiled and fearful, and in shameful plight they come to Sulla, whom the consul setting out upon his expedition had left as prætor. He did not treat them as fickle enemies as they deserved, but attentively and generously. By which thing the barbarians believed the report of the Roman avarice to be false, and Sulla on account of his munificence to be their friend. For even then the practice of giving was unknown to many, nobody was thought generous, but only of good will ”

“ But Sulla by gladly accepting such felicitations on his prosperity and such admiration, and even contributing to strengthen these notions and to invest them with somewhat of a sacred character, made all his exploits depend on Fortune; whether it was that he did this for the sake of display, or because he really had such opinions of the deity. Indeed he has recorded in his memoirs, that the actions which he resolved upon without deliberation, and on the spur of the moment, turned out more successfully than those which appeared to have been best considered. ”

“ But what shall we say to Sulla himself? He had the form of a man; his limbs were well-shapen; his mind was clever; yet his deeds were brutal. When he arrived in Italy he made his way toward Rome. It was his intention to crush down the people's party—the plebeians. He belonged to the upper class, or patricians. All over Italy there were brave and honest men who worked hard in field or trade, or served in the Roman armies, and yet were not allowed to rank as freemen, and had no vote in public affairs. Many of these men had raised a rebellion, and some had received the title of freemen ”

“ Catil. 5) , regard Sulla as a diminutive of Sura, which was a cognomen in several Roman gentes [Sura] , and we are disposed to accept this as the most probable explanation of the word. It would be formed from Sura on the same analogy as puella from puera, and tenellus from tener (comp. Schneider, Elementarlehre der lateinischen Sprache, vol. i. p. 47, &c.) . There is no authority for writing the word Sylla, as is done by many modern writers. On coins and inscriptions we always find Sula or Sulla, never Sylla. ”

“ Nothing lay farther from Sulla than systematic ambition. He had too much sense to regard, like the average aristocrats of his time, the inscription of his name in the roll of the consuls as the aim of his life; he was too indifferent and too little of an ideologue to be disposed voluntarily to engage in the reform of the rotten structure of the state. He remained—where birth and culture placed him—in the circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual routine of offices ”

“ Sulla at first was astonished at the request, but contemptuously replied, 'Let him triumph; let him have his triumph.'
[Sidenote: Sulla has Ofella slain.] Two other officials of Sulla gave him trouble. One, Ofella, stood for the consulship against his wishes, and went about with a crowd of friends in the Forum. But with a man like Sulla it was foolish to presume on past services. He had no notion of allowing street-riots again, and sent a centurion who cut Ofella down. The people brought the centurion to him, demanding justice. [Sidenote: Sulla's parables.] ”

“ Fifty senators and a thousand knights (peers and gentlemen we should call them) were put to death, almost all of them without any kind of trial. Sulla himself was outlawed. But he had an army which he had led to victory and had enriched with prize-money, and which was entirely devoted to him; and he was not inclined to let his enemies triumph. He hastened back to Italy, and landed in the spring of 83. In the November of the following year, just outside the walls of Rome, was fought the final battle of the war. ”

“ And that was Sulla's ending.'
To the student of history the story of such a funeral seems like the prostration of a nation of barbarians before the car of some demon-god. If the strong personality of the man—with all that dauntless bravery, that unerring sagacity, that trenchant tongue—still after two thousand years fascinates attention, if we are forced to own that for sheer power of will and intellect he stands in the very foremost rank of men, yet we feel also that in the case of such superhuman wickedness tyrannicide would, if it ever could, cease to be a crime. ”

“ With the death of the younger Marius, who killed himself after the surrender of Praeneste, the civil war was at an end, and Sulla was master of Rome and of the Roman world. Then came the memorable “proscription,” when for the first time in Roman history a list of men declared to be outlaws and public enemies was exhibited in the forum, and a reign of terror began throughout Rome and Italy. The title of “dictator” was revived and Sulla was in fact emperor of Rome. ”

“ Subsequently when Sulla was in the possession of power and was putting many to death, a man of the class of Libertini, who was suspected of concealing a proscribed person, and for this offence was going to be thrown down the Tarpeian rock, reproached Sulla with the fact that they had lived together for some time in one house ”

“ Cæsar had just married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, and was ordered by Sulla to divorce her. But he resolutely refused to allow the word of the dictator to come between him and his wife, and was obliged to leave Rome by night to escape Sulla's vengeance. He fled into Samnium, but was followed there by Sulla's soldiers, taken prisoner and brought back to Rome. And Sulla would certainly have put him to death if some powerful men had not interceded for him and asked for his life. ”

“ But a system which could endure only by the repression not only of hostile interests but of the ambition of its own adherents carried in itself the seeds of early dissolution. Almost before the reaction was complete a counter-reaction had begun. Abdication only revealed monarchy, and the broad road which Sulla had laid over the breakers and quicksands of revolution in reality paved the way to a throne. ”

“ No fewer than 120,000 allotments were made and twenty-three legions provided for. There was in it a plausible mimicry of the democratic scheme of colonies which Sulla must have thoroughly enjoyed. Thus in Italy he provided a standing army to support his new constitution. [Sidenote: The Cornelii.] In Rome itself, by enfranchising 10,000 slaves whose owners had been slain, he formed a strong body of partisans ever ready to do his bidding; these were all named Cornelii. A man is known by his adherents, and the worst men were Sulla's protégés. ”