Sulla
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, commonly known as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman of the late Roman Republic. Coming to fame for his military exploits, he was the first general during the late republic to march on Rome and win a civil war. After purging his opponents, he assumed the dictatorship, sought to strengthen the republican system by means of reforms to the constitution, and resigned his plenary powers after their enactment.
Sulla held the office of consul twice and revived the dictatorship. A gifted general, he achieved successes in wars against foreign and domestic opponents. Sulla rose to prominence during the war against the Numidian king Jugurtha, whom he captured as a result of Jugurtha's betrayal by the king's allies, although his superior Gaius Marius took credit for ending the war. He then fought successfully against Germanic tribes during the Cimbrian War, and Italian allies during the Social War. He was awarded the Grass Crown for his bravery at the Battle of Nola. Sulla was closely associated with Venus, adopting the title Epaphroditos, meaning favoured of Aphrodite.
Sulla was elected consul for 88 BC. However, amid a dispute over the command of the war against Mithridates of Pontus – initially awarded to Sulla by the Senate but revoked as part of a political deal between Marius and the plebeian tribune Publius Sulpicius – Sulla as consul took his army and marched on Rome. Violently expelling or killing Marius, Sulpicius, and their allies, Sulla left with his army at the close of his consular term to fight Mithridates in Greece. While abroad, Marius returned with Lucius Cornelius Cinna and they purged their own opponents from the city, including Sulla, whom they declared a public enemy. In the East, Sulla crushed the Pontic armies at the battles of Chaeronea and Orchomenos, but offered a generous peace to Mithridates, so he could return to Rome. Although Marius and Cinna had by this point died, Sulla crushed the successors of their faction and won a decisive victory outside Rome at the Battle of the Colline Gate.
Forcibly taking control of Roman politics, Sulla revived the office of dictator, which had been dormant since the Second Punic War, over a century before. Even before his dictatorship he started proscriptions to purge his opponents and, with his dictatorial powers, he reformed Roman constitutional laws to restore the primacy of the Senate and limit the power of the tribunes of the plebs. He resigned his dictatorship at the start of 80 BC and assumed an ordinary consulship for the rest of the year. After that consulship, Sulla retired to private life and died shortly thereafter in 78 BC. Sulla left a lasting impression on the next generation of leaders, such as Pompey and Julius Caesar, who followed his precedent to attain political power through force.
Family and youth
Sulla, the son of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the grandson of Publius Cornelius Sulla, was born into a branch of the patrician gens Cornelia, but his family had fallen to an impoverished condition at the time of his birth. Publius Cornelius Rufinus, one of Sulla's ancestors and also the last member of his family to be consul, was banished from the Senate after having been caught possessing more than 10 pounds of silver plate. Sulla's family thereafter did not reach the highest offices of the state until Sulla himself. His father may have served as praetor; he did marry twice, giving Sulla a stepmother of considerable wealth, which helped the young man's ambitions.Stories of Sulla's childhood are much embellished. One story, also likely fictitious, relates that, when Sulla was a baby and his nurse was carrying him around the streets, a strange woman walked up to her and said, "Puer tibi et reipublicae tuae felix", which can be translated as, "The boy will be a source of luck to you and your state". After his father's death, around the time Sulla reached adulthood, Sulla found himself impoverished. He may have been disinherited but it is more plausible that there simply was nothing to inherit. Lacking ready money, Sulla spent his youth among Rome’s comedians, actors, lute players, and dancers. During these times on the stage, after initially only singing, he started writing comedic plays called Atellan farces. Plutarch mentions that during his last marriage to Valeria, he still kept company with "actresses, musicians, and dancers, drinking with them on couches night and day". Plutarch also singles out the actor Metrobius as one of Sulla's lovers and the one he carried on until the end of his life, when Metrobius himself was, in Plutarch's judgment, "past his prime."
Sulla almost certainly received a normal education for his class, grounded in ancient Greek and Latin classics. Sallust declares him well read, intelligent, and fluent in Greek. Regardless, by the standards of the Roman political class, Sulla was a very poor man. His first wife was called either Ilia or Julia. If the latter, he may have married into the Julii Caesares. He had one child from this union, before his first wife's death. He married again, with a woman called Aelia, of whom nothing is known other than her name. During these marriages, he engaged in an affair with the hetaira Nicopolis, who also was older than him. The means by which Sulla attained the fortune which later would enable him to ascend the ladder of Roman politics are not clear; Plutarch refers to two inheritances, one from his stepmother and the other from his mistress Nicopolis. Arthur Keaveney, a classicist and author of the Sullan biography Sulla: The Last Republican, accepts these inheritances as historical and places them around Sulla's turning thirty years of age.
Early career
After meeting the minimum age requirement of thirty, he stood for the quaestorship in 108 BC. Normally, candidates had to have first served for ten years in the military, but by Sulla's time, this had been superseded by an age requirement. He was then assigned by lot to serve under the consul Gaius Marius.Jugurthine War, 107–106 BC
The Jugurthine War had started in 112 BC when Jugurtha, grandson of Massinissa of Numidia, claimed the entire kingdom of Numidia in defiance of Roman decrees that divided it among several members of the royal family. After the massacre of a number of Italian traders who supported one of his rivals, indignation erupted as to Jugurtha's use of bribery to secure a favourable peace treaty; called to Rome to testify on bribery charges, he plotted successfully the assassination of another royal claimant before returning home. After the war started, several Roman commanders were bribed ; and one was defeated. In 109, Rome sent Quintus Caecilius Metellus to continue the war. Gaius Marius, a lieutenant of Metellus, returned to Rome to stand for the consulship in 107 BC. Marius was elected consul and, through assignment by tribunician legislation, took over the campaign. Sulla was assigned by lot to his staff.When Marius took command, he entrusted Sulla with organising cavalry in Italy that would be needed to pursue the mobile Numidians into the desert. If Sulla had married one of the Julii Caesares, this could explain Marius's willingness to entrust such an important task to a young man with no military experience, as Marius too had married into that family.
Under Marius, the Roman forces followed a plan very similar to that of Metellus, capturing and garrisoning fortified positions in the African countryside. Sulla was popular with the men; charming and benign, he built up a healthy rapport while also winning popularity with other officers, including Marius. Ultimately, the Numidians were defeated in 106 BC, due in large part to Sulla's initiative in capturing the Numidian king. Jugurtha had fled to his father-in-law, King Bocchus I of Mauretania ; Marius invaded Mauretania and, after a pitched battle in which both Sulla and Marius played important roles in securing victory, Bocchus was forced to betray Jugurtha. After the Senate approved negotiations with Bocchus, it delegated the talks to Marius, who appointed Sulla as envoy plenipotentiary. Winning Bocchus's friendship and making plain Rome's demands for Jugurtha's deliverance, Sulla successfully concluded negotiations and secured Bocchus's capture of Jugurtha and the king's rendition to Marius's camp. The publicity attracted by this feat for many years boosted Sulla's reputation and political prospects. Years later, in 91 BC, Bocchus paid for the erection of a gilded equestrian statue depicting Sulla's capture of Jugurtha.
Cimbrian War, 104–101 BC
In 104 BC, the Cimbri and the Teutones, two Germanic tribes who had bested the Roman legions on several occasions, seemed again to be heading for Italy. Marius, in the midst of this military crisis, sought and won repeated consulships, which upset aristocrats in the Senate; it is likely however that they acknowledged the indispensability of Marius's military capabilities in defeating the Germanic invaders. Amid a reorganisation of political alliances, the traditionalists in the Senate raised up Sulla – a patrician, even if a poor one – as a counterweight against the newcomer Marius.Starting in 104 BC, Marius moved to reform the defeated Roman armies in southern Gaul. Sulla then served as legate under his former commander and, in that stead, successfully subdued a Gallic tribe which revolted in the aftermath of a previous Roman defeat. The next year, Sulla was elected military tribune and served under Marius, and assigned to treat with the Marsi, part of the Germanic invaders, he was able to negotiate their defection from the Cimbri and Teutones. His prospects for advancement under Marius being stalled, however, Sulla started to complain "most unfairly" that Marius was withholding opportunities from him. He demanded and received transfer to the army of Catulus, Marius's consular colleague.
In 102 BC, the invaders returned and moved to force the Alps. Catulus, with Sulla, moved to block their advance; the two men likely cooperated well. But Catulus's army was defeated in the eastern Alps and withdrew from Venetia and thence to the southern side of the river Po. At the same time, Marius had annihilated the Cimbri's allies, the Teutones, at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae. Marius, elected again to the consulship of 101, came to Catulus's aid; Sulla, in charge of supporting army provisioning, did so competently and was able to feed both armies. The two armies then crossed the Po and attacked the Cimbri. After the failure of negotiations, the Romans and Cimbri engaged in the Battle of the Raudian Field in which the Cimbri were routed and destroyed.
Victorious, Marius and Catulus were both granted triumphs as the commanding generals. Refusing to stand for an aedileship, Sulla became a candidate for the praetorship in 99 BC. He was, however, defeated. In memoirs related via Plutarch, he claimed this was because the people demanded that he first stand for the aedilate so – due to his friendship with Bocchus, a rich foreign monarch, – he might spend money on games. Whether this story of Sulla's defeat is true is unclear. Regardless, Sulla stood for the praetorship again the next year and, promising he would pay for good shows, was elected praetor for 97 BC; he was assigned by lot to the urban praetorship.