From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (15 page)

When Sulla landed at Brundisium in 83, he was soon joined by many of the younger generation who thought that he would win. M. Licinius Crassus, whose father (
cos.
97) had perished in the Marian terror, came from Spain; Metellus Pius, son of Numidicus, arrived in Italy from Africa; and above all, Strabo’s son, young Cn. Pompeius, raised a force in Picenum and, outman
uvring the opposing armies, reached Sulla with three legions. This mustering of support from the provinces, and still more the raising of a private army, augured ill for the future of the Republic. Sulla greeted Pompey with honour, perhaps even saluting him as
imperator
, appointed him as his legate, and soon gave him his step-daughter, Aemilia, in marriage. On his march northwards Sulla met no serious opposition until he faced the two consular armies in Campania (p. 61). He made short work of these: he defeated Norbanus near Capua, and then the fox in him triumphing over the lion, he negotiated with Scipio near Teanum, while Scipio’s army began to go over to him. He then disarmed another potential source of opposition by proclaiming that he would respect the rights of the new citizens. During the
winter he built up his forces, while his opponents also increased theirs by winning over some of the Samnite tribes against whom Sulla had fought during the Social War.
³³

The consuls of 82 were Carbo and the (? adoptive) son of Marius. While the former consolidated in the north, young Marius was to hold Rome. Sulla, however, soon brushed him aside; after defeating him at Sacriportus near Signia, he drove him into Praeneste where he was besieged. Sulla then entered Rome where he found that many leading senators, including the Pontifex Maximus Scaevola, had been massacred on the orders of young Marius. Hastening on northwards, where his lieutenants Pompey and Metellus had been harrying Carbo, he managed to hem in Carbo near Clusium. When news reached Carbo that Norbanus, who had replaced him in the north, had been defeated by Metellus at Faventia, that Cisalpine Gaul was lost to the Marian cause, and that Marius was faring ill at Praeneste, he threw up the sponge and fled to Africa. In fact three attempts to relieve Marius had already been thwarted, partly because of ‘The Narrows’ which in the absence of any corresponding natural features at Praeneste were probably some blockading lines which Sulla had constructed.
³⁴
In a final attempt to save the besieged, the Marian forces, which with their Samnite allies numbered some 70,000 men, made a sudden dash on Rome. Sulla raced there in the nick of time: on the afternoon of 1 November he met them outside the Colline Gate. It was a terrific struggle: at one moment Sulla himself on the left wing was at the point of defeat, but Crassus on the right turned the tide. Losses on both sides were heavy, while those Samnites that survived the battle were butchered in cold blood by Sulla’s order. Soon afterwards Praeneste fell: Marius committed suicide and most of the survivors were massacred. A few cities still resisted, Nola until 80 and Volterrae a year longer, but Sulla was clearly undisputed master of Italy.

A few ‘Marian’ governors in the provinces still remained to be dealt with. Q. Sertorius (p. 60), who had gone out as governor of Nearer Spain, was pushed out of the peninsula by Annius; and Sardinia was secured. To Sicily and Africa, where Carbo and Perperna were organizing resistance, young Pompey, aged twenty-four, was sent, first as Sulla’s legate and then with a senatorial grant of extraordinary propraetorian
imperium
. He quickly cleared Sicily and put Carbo to death: Pompey might be called ‘adulescentulus carnifex’, but this epithet belied his normally moderate temperament and he may well have acted on Sulla’s orders. Then, leaving his brother-in-law Memmius in charge of Sicily, he crossed to Africa with strong forces and defeated Cinna’s son-in-law Domitius Ahenobarbus who was supported by a Numidian pretender name Iarbas; Pompey restored the throne to Hiempsal. For this speedy and striking victory Pompey, whose troops had hailed him as
imperator
, hoped for a triumph, but at first his claim met with opposition
perhaps rather from Sulla than from the Senate. Sulla, however, finally yielded and even, though perhaps with a touch of sarcasm, called Pompey Magnus, a title which Pompey did not use as a
cognomen
for some time.
³⁵

In Italy Sulla’s butchery continued, against both individuals and communities. He was grimly determined to eliminate all potential political opposition and, despite the wealth he must have collected in the East, he needed money for land for his veterans and followers. After a period of indiscriminate murders, he was persuaded to post up proscription lists of his victims, by which they were outlawed with a price on their heads; these at first numbered 40 senators and 1600 Equites but no doubt the final figures were much larger (one author, Orosius, goes as high as 9000): the equestrian order suffered particularly severely. Besides confiscating his victims’ property, Sulla permanently debarred their sons and grandsons from office and the Senate. As a further safeguard he freed 10,000 of their slaves and turned them into an unofficial bodyguard, the Cornelii. He then wreaked his vengeance on those parts of Italy that had opposed him: the towns of Etruria, Samnium and central Italy suffered most. He needed land for his veterans and the vicious nexus between an army and its commander, which Marius’ career had first demonstrated, now began to get its stranglehold on Roman life. At least twenty-three legions had to be demobilized and Sulla ultimately secured land for over ten colonies for some 120,000 men. This naturally involved a major social and economic upheaval, but though the new colonists vastly increased the
clientela
of their new patron and would form a reserve of military strength on which Sulla could call in an hour of need, they did not necessarily all make good farmers and many tended to become restless.
³⁶

When Sulla re-entered Rome, his
imperium
technically lapsed, but the Senate, which proceeded obsequiously to confirm all his past acts as consul and proconsul, may have allowed him to retain it. It also decreed the erection of an equestrian statue to ‘Cornelius Sulla Imperator Felix’ facing the Rostra in the forum.
³⁷
As both consuls were dead, the Senate appointed an
interrex
, the Princeps Senatus L. Valerius Flaccus (
cos.
100). So far that was normal procedure, but Valerius instead of nominating
consules suffecti
followed Sulla’s hint and introduced a bill into the Comitia (
lex Valeria
) which appointed Sulla ‘dictator legibus scribundis et reipublicae constituendae’. Thus Sulla received full powers from the hands of the People to reorganize the constitution as dictator, an office which had lapsed since the Hannibalic War.
^37a
But apart from the name, Sulla’s office had little in common with the emergency magistrates whom the consuls used to name for periods of six months: Sulla
held supreme authority as long as he wished, though it should be noted that since he was not vested with the office in perpetuity, he was free to resign when and if he liked. The new dictator received twenty-four lictors, who attended him in the city where he was unhampered by such checks as the veto or right of appeal that curbed ordinary magistrates. Soon after this, he celebrated his triumph over Mithridates in January 81 and turned to his legislative reforms.

Sulla’s earlier career had not been that of an orthodox Optimate. Though he belonged to an old patrician family, it had long lived in obscurity and poverty. A legacy from his step-mother and another from a mistress helped him, somewhat late, to a public career. As Marius’ quaestor he had captured Jugurtha and won the royal friendship of Bocchus. During the Teutonic wars he had transferred from Marius’ staff to that of the aristocratic Catulus. He failed in 99 to win a praetorship, but secured one for 97, and after service in Cilicia, he rendered such a good account of himself in the Social War that he won the consulship for 88. Up to this point he may not have identified himself closely with the Optimates, but his marriage to Metella (the widow of Scaurus) brought him nearer to the nobility, while the attempt of the popular party and Marius to deprive him of the Mithridatic command forced his hand. As army-commander and dictator he could act with greater independence. He may not therefore always have been the fervent champion of the Senate that he has sometimes been depicted, but he probably came to realize that only if the Senate regained something of its old authority could Rome hope for peace and order.

That he had an innate desire for order and efficiency in public life can hardly be doubted, though it accorded ill with the disorderliness of his private life. His personality reflected a strange mixture, like his blotched face which was compared with a mulberry sprinkled with flour. A cynic, yet superstitious, self-indulgent yet energetic, scrupulous on occasion yet on others heartlessly cruel, fox and lion combined, he was forced to go on if only to secure his own personal safety. The only path that he saw led him through civil war to absolute power: a restoration of orderly government might follow, and then he could return to ease and private pleasures.

In carrying through his reforms Sulla observed constitutional procedure and passed them through the Comitia in a normal manner. He allowed consuls to be elected for 81, though they were in fact of little note. One candidate, Q. Ofella (or Afella) whom Sulla had put in charge of the siege of Praeneste, was not qualified to stand since he had not held even a quaestorship; when he
went on canvassing against Sulla’s orders, Sulla promptly had him killed. In the summer of 81 the proscription lists were at length closed.
³⁸
While continuing to hold the dictatorship Sulla allowed himself to be elected consul (a rare, but apparently legitimate combination of offices) with Metellus Pius for 80, but he refused re-election for 79. Early in his dictatorship he started his work of reconstruction.

If the Senate was to resume firm control and become an effective governing body once again, Sulla’s first task was clearly to increase its numbers, which through war and the massacres of Marius and Sulla had dropped to some 150 members. The new senators would naturally include Sulla’s own supporters, both men of senatorial families and others who had rendered him good service during the wars, but he also included 300 Equites. This appears surprising when it is recalled how bitterly hostile he had been towards the Knights in Rome. Many of those chosen, however, may have belonged to the eighteen equestrian centuries in which younger members of noble families were enrolled, but others probably came from the
ordo equester
in a wider sense and included some of the local aristocracy of the cities of Italy which had recently been enfranchised. Whether Sulla’s motive was to attempt to heal the breach between the two Orders or to blunt the opposition of the Equites by winning over some of their leaders, is not clear. One reason for the increase in numbers will have been to ensure an adequate supply of jurors for the law-courts which he intended to reorganize and to hand back to the Senate. The political result, however, was clear enough: in a new Senate of 500 or 600 members the majority would owe their position and allegiance to the dictator.
³⁹

Sulla also arranged for the automatic recruitment of the Senate in the future: the number of quaestors was raised from twelve to twenty and all ex-quaestors were to enter the Senate. This had two consequences: since quaestors were elected by the People, the Senate itself in the future would be indirectly elected by the People. Also the censors were deprived of one of their most important functions, the
lectio senatus
. Further, it is known that consuls handled some contracts (
censoriae locationes
) in 80 and again after a five-year interval in 75. It thus appears that Sulla was suspicious of the censorship and while not going so far as to abolish it, arranged to manage without it.
⁴⁰

Since the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus this office had increasingly become a powerful weapon in the armoury of the opponents of the Senate. Sulla decided to change that. Henceforth tribunes could not propose legislation to the People (except perhaps measures already sanctioned by the Senate); they were deprived of their judicial powers (the new senatorial
quaestiones
replacing tribunician impeachments); their right of veto was limited, perhaps being taken away in criminal cases; and above all, tribunes
were made ineligible for any other office. Thus the tribunate was disarmed and all ambitious young men would tend to avoid this political dead-end.
⁴¹

Sulla determined to curb the regular magistrates also. Although perhaps he did not make it obligatory for all magistrates (besides the tribunes) to secure the
patrum auctoritas
before presenting legislation to the People, since it was from the tribunes rather than from the consuls that he feared possible attacks on the constitution, he nevertheless decided to prevent young men gaining high office and political power too quickly. He therefore redrafted the
lex Villia Annalis
of 180 B.C.: the
cursus honorum
was rigidly enforced, and no man was to become quaestor before the age of thirty, praetor before thirty-nine and consul before forty-two; further, no man was to hold the same office twice within ten years.
⁴²
At the same time the number of quaestors was raised to twenty, and of praetors to eight. The principle of co-optation was restored to the college of pontiffs and augurs (cf. p. 45) and the membership of each body was increased to fifteen.

Magistrates at home were easier to control than magistrates abroad, and no one had demonstrated more clearly than Sulla himself what danger might threaten a government in Rome from a provincial proconsul backed by a loyal army. There were now ten provinces: Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, the two Spains, Macedonia, Africa, Asia, Cilicia, Gallia Narbonensis, and Cisalpine Gaul.
⁴³
Since the praetors had been increased to eight, they provided, with the two consuls, ten higher magistrates each year. Sulla probably did not establish by legislation a cut-and-dried scheme, but hoped that it would become normal practice for the magistrates of the year to remain in Rome or Italy and then as promagistrates to go out to govern provinces and command armies. The Senate would decide which provinces were to go to proconsuls and which to propraetors, and thus could partly control potentially dangerous men. Tenure of a province would normally be for one year only. Sulla also passed a
lex de maiestate
, a treason law which regulated the conduct of a promagistrate in his province, e.g. that he should not on his own initiative start a war, march his troops beyond the frontiers, or leave his province. By such measures Sulla hoped that magistrates both at home and abroad would be brought under the general control of the Senate.
⁴⁴

Other measures included the abolition of the corn distributions, some sumptuary laws and a forced levy on the empire, but by far the most lasting of his reforms was his handling of criminal justice. Since the establishment of the first standing court in 149 to try cases of extortion, some other similar courts may have been created. Sulla now undertook to increase and organize this method of trial, which was replacing trials before the People. Seven permanent
quaestiones
were organized in order to cover all major crimes: murder and poisoning, forgery, extortion, treason, electoral bribery, peculation and assault.
⁴⁵
Penalties were fixed and from the verdicts of these
iudicia publica
there was no appeal. The empanelling of them, which had become a burning political issue since they had been handed over by Gaius Gracchus to the Equites, was now decided in favour of the Senate, who were given the exclusive right to supply the juries. Though the jury question remained controversial for the next ten years, the main system established by Sulla endured throughout the Republic into the Principate.