Empires: Rome -Sulla: Dictator Part One

Many Romans felt that if the census was not done properly the whole fabric of society would crumble. Sulla had chosen an ironic place to keep prisoners of war, and that 'irony' was about to become more terrible. He had sent orders for the Senate to meet him at the temple of Bellona, which was within hearing range of the Villa Publica. It was Bellona who had warned Sulla to win victory quickly or see the Capitol destroyed. With his choice of her temple to give his speech to the senators at, Sulla was going to make two things known at least. He was favored by the gods-in his case it would be very appropriate to add goddesses-he also felt favored by the goddess Venus, and was sent by divine power to be the savior of Rome. When Sulla began speaking of victory over Mithridates, the senators began to hear screams of agony coming from the Samnite prisoners in the Villa Publica. "Some criminals are receiving their punishment, there is no need for worry, it is all being done on my orders," Sulla told his 'captive' audience. (Plutarch, Sulla.30.). Sulla was making a gesture that wasn't lost on anyone, by executing the Samnite prisoners in the Villa Publica. If the very census was flawed upon which rested the hierarchies of status and prestige that it decreed, then the very bedrock upon which the whole edifice rested was corrupt and needed desperate intervention. Sulla-with divine blessings would perform the necessary repairs, no matter how much blood would be spilled.

Sulla left Rome for Praeneste-the final holdout of the Marian cause to make his victory complete. On his way there he learned that the city had surrendered and Marius's son was dead. Rome was now without consuls. Sulla wasn't worried about this at all-he celebrated the vanquishing of his most hated enemy's bloodline by awarding himself the title of Felix- "The Fortunate One." The reign of Sulla was to be a ferocious and savage bloodbath. His death squads began killing even as the Samnites were being slaughtered in the Villa Publica. Even Sulla's most ardent supporters, so used to blood being spilled, were appalled at the carnage. In the early stages of the purge a list was posted in the Forum. It condemned the entire Marian leadership to death. Their properties were declared forfeit. Their sons and grandsons were barred from holding office. Anyone who helped to hide or protect them was also condemned to death. Eventually more lists appeared-hundreds and maybe thousands of names were involved. Names were being put on the lists who had no Marian sympathies whatsoever. However, the wealth of these people made them targets. Swimming pools, villas and pleasure gardens could now be the equivalent of a death sentence. A large part of the surfeit of wealth that was gained from the execution of people on the proscription lists wound up in the hands of Sulla's supporters and proteges.

The severed heads of those killed in the bloodbath would be brought back to Rome. Sulla might keep a prized victims head as a trophy in his house, after he had given the bounty hunter the promised fee. This grotesque system of accounting finally led to a break in the relationship between Sulla and Crassus. Crassus who had exploited the system of the proscription lists so much to add to his own wealth-of which he already had plenty, had only gotten away with so much of it because he was Sulla's ally of the battle of the Colline Gate. Sulla's patience with him had finally snapped when Crassus had put the name of an innocent millionaire on a death list with a little too much insouciance. Crassus was one of the few men in Rome who could afford not to care about a break with Rome's new master. Sulla's conservative nature had not changed a bit over the years. He had a patrician's contempt for new ideas, even after bringing the massive cycles of bloodshed and upheavals upon Rome. Sulla, who once had made his bed in flophouses was now the richest man in Roman history. He didn't wish to impose a radical new system of government on Rome, but he had to find a way to 'legalize' his position because he was too scared to put himself before the judgment of the voters.

Lucky as ever, there was an example in Rome's ancient past when citizens had wielded absolute power without being elected. Sulla 'lightly' strongarmed the Senate into bringing out the antiquated old office of dictator and appoint him to it. Not a believer in term limits, Sulla said he was to remain dictator until the constitution had been 'revised.' Of course, only he would be the decider of when this task was complete. Sulla had twenty-four lictors compared to a consuls twelve, and this summed up nicely how greatly out of proportion Sulla's power was to that of other magistrates. A huge irony that cast a very large shadow over Sulla's 'revising' of the consitution was that his job as dictator was to make sure that no man in the future could do the very things he had done to gain power in Rome. Sulla felt he had to be perceived as without guilt in starting the civil war. He also voiced the idea through his propaganda that overarching ambition had tempted Marius and Sulpicius into puttin themselves above the Republic and that it was the corruption and decay or the Republic's own institutions that had helped them to rise to power. But as always Sulla was portrayed as the savior and corrector of problems such as these. Sulla must have got a psychological kick out of changing some the the laws. For instance, each magistracy was to have an age barrier, and Sulla who had courted prostitutes and other streetwise types in his twenties, must have delighted in the fact that these new laws would discriminate against young rising stars. The new laws Sulla enacted made sure that there would only be a single path to the ultimate prize of the consulship with no short-cuts or side-stepping. Sulla's revisions also made middle-age the 'appropriate' age when a man became powerful. The image is a model of the Campus Martius as it would have appeared around 300 AD. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lictor