Empires: Rome -Sulla: Dictator Part Three

After retirement Sulla began to relive the wild and edgy days of his youth. In reality he had never lost his taste for this lifestyle. When Sulla was dictator, he had put together the largest parties in Rome's history. They had to have been-for the whole city was invited. Huge amounts of food and vintage wines were consumed-in fact wine had even flowed from the public fountains. Sulla's parties were now much more smaller and intimate affairs now that he was a private citizen. He entertained members of the old crowd of people of his younger days: drag queens, actors, dancers and those with simply no talent at anything at all. These people were given money to never perform again. Sulla was as true to his old friendships as he was a feared and hated spectre to his enemies. All of Sulla's old entourage had been given something from the estates of those he had vanquished whether they had talent or not. Sulla did seem to enjoy his retirement at his villa in Campania immensely. In his mind he had restored the Republic and brought the glorious days of old back. However, even if many agreed with him, the good times had been bought with brutality and bloodshed.

Cities very close to Sulla's retirement villa bore witness to this, as they still had their battle wounds from trying to fight him. The rebel fortress city of Nola finally fell in 80 BC. Nola had held out for almost a decade, its resolved made all the stronger by witnessing the awful atrocities that had led other towns to incinerate themselves rather than surrender. Sulla established a colony of his veterans in the city-both to punish it and occupy it. This was one of many such colonies imposed across Samnium and Campania. To further humiliate Nola he gave it a new name- Colonia Felix-the Felix part referring back to himself. In another show of how he could never forgive or forget old enemies, even dead ones-he sold Marius's exquisite villa at a very low price to his daughter Cornelia. Sulla's outrageous cruelty would never be forgotten or forgiven. He had given Romans their first taste of what it was like to live under a tyrant. Also, after Sulla had marched on Rome he had shown that there really were no barriers that couldn't be broken in the quest for ultimate power.

As horrible as Sulla was in so many ways, he had also worked furiously to see that he would not have a successor. It isn't strange at all that historians of the future who were used to all power being held by one man found Sulla such an enigma. We can surely agree with their bewilderment, as they found it bizarre that he had voluntarily walked away from absolute power. The contradictions would remain until the very end. When Sulla died in 79 BC, there wasn't even agreement on how to deal with his funeral. One consul wanted to deprive him of any funeral honors at all, the other wanted to give him a state funeral. This dispute was solved, quite appropriately in Sulla's case, by the threat of violence. A huge escort of Sulla's veterans brought their general from Campania to Rome, and the Roman people were "as terrified of Sulla's army and his corpse as if he were still alive." (Appian, 1. 106). The image is one of the more complimentary busts of Sulla. I have much more done that is ready to go-I just do not want to promise anything in case net connection problems come back. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!