Now that we have told the story of Sulla’s life, it is time for us, at its close, to draw together some of the disparate threads which run through the narrative in order to present a coherent picture of the man himself and to make some assessment of his place in the history of Rome.
As we were at some pains to emphasise in the beginning of our work, the ability to make friends easily was undoubtedly one of the characteristics of Sulla which most struck his contemporaries. Endowed with a striking appearance, tractable manners and a ready wit, he had no difficulty in winning the hearts of many of those with whom he came in contact. He obviously possessed what the present-day descendants of his race would call the bella figura and he deployed it to the best advantage. At the same time there was nothing about him of the flashy superficiality which that phrase sometimes implies; nor can his ease of manner be dismissed as the smarminess of the professional politician, for his facility in making friends was matched by the steadfast loyalty he maintained towards them. He himself, as we know, boasted of this loyalty in his epitaph, and it is displayed most strikingly in his attitude to his actor friends; long after they could have been of any use to him he continued to seek their company, despite the disapproving growls of the Roman nobility. And the steadfastness he showed in friendship awoke a like steadfastness in others. Given his experiences, it is unlikely that Sulla cared much for the members of the Roman aristocracy, but even here he found at least one true friend whose devotion he took care to repay in full. In 88, when his other officers deserted, Lucullus remained at his side. In return Sulla, without stint, taught his protégé all he knew about war, politics and the gods and, finally, paid him the signal honour of making him guardian of his children.
It would be no exaggeration, then, to describe Sulla’s nature as warm- blooded. Passionate, in fact, might not be too strong a word to apply to someone who, we are told, did not hesitate to shed tears in public. However,
such a nature had its darker side. That type of temperament which led Sulla to cherish his friends also led him to nurse his injuries and to seek revenge from those responsible for them. His capacity for loving was equalled, in full measure, by his capacity for hatred. With his quick temper he was not slow to take offence and, being ever a vengeful man, he prided himself on returning ill for ill. So those who, like the Athenians and the Asiatics, had had the misfortune to arouse his ire felt his hand heavy upon them, and individual enemies, such as Norbanus, found to their cost that there was no place in the Roman world where they might be secure from Sulla’s revenge. It is, however, pleasant to record that at all times this desire to settle scores went hand in hand with a strict sense of justice. So not all of the cities of Asia or of Italy suffered to the same degree. Sulla, throughout his life, believed in meting out chastisement in what he, at any rate, believed to be in proportion to the guilt. Even in the midst of the proscriptions, when his habitual thirst for vengeance expressed itself in a new and more perverted form, he still took care, as he always had done, that the innocent should not suffer in any way. It is also pleasant to recall that Sulla was not totally inexorable. He always showed a commendable readiness to forgive, provided his enemy was prepared to be reconciled. The men of Halae certainly had reason to be grateful to this quixotic trait of his. Nor will it be forgotten that, throughout an increasingly bitter civil war, many of his enemies found him perfectly ready to compose their differences, even though the offences they had committed had often been grievous. Indeed what seems to have weighed most with Sulla’s sensitive and volatile nature was the attitude displayed by his foe rather than the extent of the injury done. Thus it some- times came about that those who had done him great wrong were forgiven, if they sought reconciliation, whereas many, whose crimes were of lesser moment, were pursued relentlessly, if they remained obdurate in their hostility.1
By the same token, Sulla did not always live up to his boast of having given his friends their due. He deserted his old chief Marius in order to join with his bitterest enemies, and he did not hestitate to divorce his third wife, Cloelia, on the flimsiest of pretexts. This falling off from his own high standards is directly attributable to one thing, his ambition. To put it starkly, from the day he entered public life Sulla was determined to revive, in his own person, the fortunes of his house and to emulate, or rather surpass, the achievements of his ancestors. Nothing or nobody was to be allowed to stand in the way of the fulfilment of these aims, and so, when it became politically expedient, Marius and Cloelia were unceremoniously dumped. This burning desire, nay dominant obsession, to make something of himself coloured much of Sulla’s behaviour. A naturally haughty man, he nevertheless did not scruple to fawn upon powerful men who might aid him in the
canvass or obtain for him a coveted post. It led him constantly to push himself forward in order to achieve prominence on campaign and, with what Plutarch, probably mistakenly, terms a natural boastfulness, he never tired of reminding the electorate of what he had achieved in the field. The decision to march on Rome in 88 may, in part, be attributed to this ambition of his. Twice humiliated at the hands of Marius and Sulpicius and with the coveted Mithridatic command about to be lost, he must have feared he was about to be thrust back into the oblivion whence he had but lately emerged. Rather than endure this, he elected to resort to arms to defend what he regarded as his.2
The notion that Sulla possessed felicitas is closely bound up with his ambition, since, as we saw, it fed and encouraged it by leading him to believe he would be successful in whatever he undertook. On it, too, is grounded the concept of Sulla as a divinely inspired lawgiver who would give Rome a constitution which would fit her for the new age that was about to begin. It has, of course, been suggested that Sulla’s religious beliefs were only a sham and a fraud, designed to enable him to overawe the gullible mob. Such a view, however, rooted as it is in late twentieth-century scepticism, results from a failure to exercise historical imagination and, worse, it ignores the ancient evidence at our disposal. Strange as we may find some of Sulla’s beliefs, we must recognise that, in his own day, they were not regarded as bizarre. On the contrary, the views Sulla expressed about the nature of the gods and their relationship with men were views sincerely shared by the vast majority of his fellow countrymen. Thus, a priori, there is no reason why he, too, should not subscribe as wholeheartedly to them as did the other Romans of his day.
In fact, what we know of him suggests that this was precisely the case. Scrupulosity and consistency are the two dominant features he displays. As a prime example of the former, we may cite his treatment of the dying Metella. Although it was not required of him, he nevertheless divorced her; so fearful was he that she, in any way, might pollute his augurate. Behaviour such as this, I would submit, can hardly be regarded as harmonising with the picture of somebody interested in manipulating the state religion for his own political end. Again, we must draw attention to the fact that Sulla, throughout his life, displayed a consistency of outlook and revealed a coherence in his beliefs which, to say the least, would have been difficult to maintain had he been engaged in a mere fraud. His impassioned plea to Apollo during the supreme peril of the Colline Gate amply illustrates this point. Is it not rooted in a lifetime’s real and unswerving, rather than assumed and fraudulent, devotion? Finally, we may trace, with some confidence, what appears to be a genuine spiritual development within Sulla himself. To describe it as the growth of a soul might not be altogether exaggerated. So,
we may, with reasonable certainty, claim that the Chaldean was probably the first to awaken in Sulla the idea that he possessed felicitas. Our next step is to find Sulla himself publicly subscribing to the notion. He does this at the time of the Social War, when not only does he proclaim his virtus, but also announces that the gods have appointed him as a lawgiver. Parallel with this gradual acceptance – the actual steps by which he arrived at it are, of course, lost to us – of the idea that he possessed felicitas and of the role of lawgiver which went with it, we find that Sulla’s devotion to his patron deities was also something which grew slowly and by stages. Apollo’s worship he inherited from his ancestors, and so it is no surprise to find this is the first deity he honours. In contrast, Ma-Bellona engaged his attention only in Cappadocia, and it was not until the Mithridatic War that he paid Venus any heed at all. The picture we come away with is not one of a man carefully assuming a series of poses, but rather of one undergoing a genuine and spontaneous development in his religious outlook.
But, though we accept his religiosity as genuine, we should not, at the same time, approach it without a certain measure of caution. Most of our information on his beliefs comes ultimately from Sulla’s own Memoirs and, since we believe these were written with an ulterior purpose in mind, we must suspect that some editing was done on the evidence in order to present the case for Sulla’s felicitas as favourably as possible. This would apply parti- cularly to the marks of divine favour which he received during his lifetime. Thus dreams, so often incoherent and fuzzy, would be presented to the reader in a more rounded-out form. Mention of ill omens could be suppres- sed, while favourable signs, whose import did not become clear until long after they were given, could be represented as being immediately intelligible to the recipient. It does not, of course, follow that such a work of polishing convicts Sulla of shamming. It is surely not inconsistent with a deeply held belief that he should want to present that very belief as effectively as possible, not by falsifying anything, but by offering it to the world under the fairest possible guise. The very fact that his life was successful, that the gods did ultimately favour him, was his justification for highlighting individual episodes.
What we have to bear in mind here, and indeed in all scrutiny of Sulla’s career, is that religious faith is a subtle and complex thing. He who has such a faith is not only imbued with a set of beliefs but also has the capacity for dealing with situations where their validity might seem to be called in question. Faith is flexible and adaptable. It has within itself the capacity to deal with adversity. He who believes he is the special favourite of heaven does not, when confronted by something which seems to suggest the contrary, simply abandon faith in despair. Rather, he uses an in-built defence mechanism which allows him to cope with the stressful moment. In Sulla’s
case we may easily guess how such a mechanism would operate. Should a seemingly favourable omen or prophecy be received and should the subsequent action be disastrous, then the event could be explained in a number of ways. The sign had, perhaps, been misinterpreted. It had really been evil. Again, it could be said that it had not been fully understood. A good example of this is what happened to Sulla in Cappadocia in the 90s. The Chaldean may have seemed to promise Sulla the consulship, but it was obviously wrong to assume, as Sulla perhaps did, that he would get it right away. Furthermore, the seer was also promising the dictatorship, but nobody could see that at the time the prediction was made. Again, the discovery of the satyr might be taken as a warning to Sulla not to invade Italy in 83 but, when he did so, he immediately received a number of favourable signs. In brief, we may say that Sulla believed, and expressed that belief very firmly in his Memoirs by carefully glossing over setbacks, that any unfavourable omen or doubtful prophecy, with their attendant misfortunes, could only represent a temporary reverse and that ultimately he would succeed in his career for his life, as a whole, was crowned with felicitas.3
The intensely Roman nature of Sulla’s religious beliefs hardly needs comment. It is enough to recall that he had to find some kind of substitute for his title Felix, since it was totally unintelligible to Greek ears. This is of a piece with the rest of his character. He was, in almost every respect, a typical Roman of his time and class. None of the more exotic elements in his make-up negate this view. Ma was certainly a strange goddess, but she was quickly assimilated to the comfortably familiar Bellona. Sulla was certainly an avowed phil-Hellene who was completely at home in the Greek world, but there is no evidence to suggest that anything he found there in any way shaped his outlook or influenced his political thinking. To speak of Sulla displaying a complete detachment in these matters would probably be going too far. It might be more correct to say that he was careful always to compartmentalise this side of his nature and keep it strictly apart from all of his other concerns. Even his well-known proclivity for the company of actors, a taste which was definitely not shared by his fellow nobles, can hardly be said to make him atypical, since, here again, it was never allowed to interfere with his conduct of the business of state.4
In public life, indeed, he behaved with all the dignity and more often with all the arrogance that one would expect from someone in his position. He may have had to be deferential to those whose help he needed in advancing his career, but, at the same time, he never let slip any opportunity of behaving haughtily to those who might require his own aid. 5 Foreigners,
in particular, became familiar with this trait of his. Across two thousand years one still detects something of the pride with which he reminded Archelaus that he was a Roman. And it will also be recalled that Archelaus’
master, the great conqueror Mithridates himself, had to meekly endure a ferocious tongue lashing from the same source. This arrogance must have become notorious in Rome from a very early date, since it can hardly have been by accident that his enemies chose to represent his treatment of the Parthian ambassador as yet another example of what was already a well- known trait.
Apart from the somewhat late start, there was certainly nothing about his career, prior to 88, which was in any way out of the ordinary. Like others of his kind, he toiled his way gradually, despite vicissitudes and setbacks – relying on his record as a soldier, for he had no talent for oratory – up the ladder of the cursus honorum towards the coveted goal of the consulship. What did distinguish him from many of his contemporary toilers was the outstanding ability he already showed in the diplomatic and military spheres. Nothing illustrates better Sulla’s capacity to charm and his skill in handling people than his success as a minister of his country. As we have already seen, from his love of things Greek, he had, despite all his Roman pride, a capacity for understanding people of a cultural background different from his own. It was this which allowed him to woo successfully, in turn, an African kinglet, a savage German tribe and the ambassador of a great Eastern power.
As a soldier one of his most outstanding characteristics was the rapport he was able to establish with his men. In the camp, hauteur had no place and Sulla, without constraint, mingled as easily and naturally with his men as he did with his actor friends, and yet never sacrificed the respect due to himself as commander. Two results flowed from this. In the first place, the affection he thus won from his adoring soldiers ensured their absolute loyalty. When, as at the battle in the Esquiline Forum or at Orchomenus, they seemed to be about to waver, a display of personal courage was sufficient to make them rally behind their chief. Second, Sulla’s personal knowledge of those he commanded ensured that he understood their moods and whims and thus, by the exercise of psychology, he was able to exploit them to the full. He knew when it was fitting to be stern and when to be indulgent. Thus, in Athens he thought it proper to let them have their heads, but when they proposed to pursue the defeated Mithridates, he skilfully reined them in. Expressing the hope that the troops would wish to atone for the murder of Albinus by a display of valour ultimately achieved more than any conventional punishment for such a crime. And even when Sulla was unsure of the feelings of his troops, he still knew how best to divine them, as was shown in 88. Then, it will be recalled, he couched his appeal in ambiguous terms which would allow him to elicit the response he must have half expected, but which would also permit him to withdraw unscathed should it prove unforthcoming.
recklessness, which reminds us that he began his career as a dashing cavalry commander. One recalls his first ill-advised assault on the Piraeus or his own claim, if it is true, that he once won a battle without even putting his