The Ancients - Sulla

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Lucius Cornellius Sulla Felix is one of the most important Roman statesmen of antiquity. An inspiration to figures such as Julius Caesar, Sulla rose to prominence during the late second and early first centuries BC, and was a military man turned dictator after his brutal victory over Marius and Cinna at the Battle of the Colline Gate.Today, Tristan is joined by Dr Alex Petkas to discuss what the sources say about Sulla, how he rose to power, and what we know of his role in the downfall of the Roman Republic.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight. Senior producer was Elena Guthrie.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, we are talking through the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla,

one of the most extraordinary Roman statesmen of antiquity. Hailing from a noble family, Sulla rose to prominence in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC, so more than 2,000 years ago. A military man, he partook in campaigns and battles in North Africa, Italy, Asia Minor, Greece, not to mention a brutal siege of the prestigious city of Athens. But Sulla was also the victor of a horrific Roman civil war, ultimately gaining the title of dictator. Often derided as a leading contributor to the downfall of the Roman Republic, as an inspiration for later figures such as Julius Caesar, Sulla's story is an incredible

one. And to talk through it, I was delighted to be joined by Dr. Alex Petkus, a classicist and host of the Cost of Glory podcast. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Alex. Alex, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Great to be here, Tristan. I'm a fan. Well, I mean, it's always wonderful to meet another podcaster who does ancient history and a stellar person like yourself who focuses in on all of these lives of figures from the ancient world. And what a topic we have today, Sulla. I can't believe we haven't tackled this guy earlier, but Alex, this guy feels pivotal in the decline, the end of the Roman Republic. Absolutely. And he's such a pivotal figure. And I think a fascinating figure for the different kind of reactions he provokes in people. I began my podcast looking at Sertorius and Marius. So when I came to Sulla after those guys, I was really primed to see him as the bad guy, as the person whose fault it was that everything went wrong in Rome.

whose fault it was that everything went wrong in Rome. And he has this history of when he won the Civil War, he went on this purge of his enemies, bloody, bloody proscriptions. And yet, I sort of was surprised to find myself kind of liking him at the end, despite knowing the other side of the conflict from the eyes of Sertorius and Marius. And of course, Sulla goes on to become such a bugbear, a boogeyman in the memories of Romans for decades afterwards. But he really set the tone for the next 40 years of Roman politics. You can explain so much of what happened with the fall of the Roman Empire and the figure of Julius Caesar and Augustus. They're looking back at the example of what Sulla did, either trying to not do what he did or trying to deal

with the fallout of the circumstances that he started, or trying to do exactly what he did in the case of Octavian later on. So he's a fascinating, pivotal figure. Absolutely fascinating figure. I love how you mentioned the boogeyman, the fall of the Republic and ultimately the rise of this imperial period. You also mentioned names there like Sertorius, who I can't believe we haven't done an episode on. We will have to do an episode on him too in the future. What a guy. But today is all about Sulla. Now, you mentioned when you went to have a look at the sources about Sulla. What types of sources are available for learning about this figure? Well, the most coherent single source is, of course, Plutarch's biography of Sulla,

which is not unproblematic because one of the main sources Plutarch had was Sulla's own memoirs. Sulla spent a lot of his later years composing his version of the story. And not only did he do that, and he was an authoritative dictatorial figure with a lot of allies that stayed on after he died, but he was also a really good writer. He was a really good storyteller. He spent his youth carousing around the theaters, wrote some plays, and he knew how to tell a story that stuck. So that's one of the sources, Plutarch's biography of Sulla. And those memoirs also affect the other main source for this period, which is Appian's Civil Wars, also Appian's Mithridatic

Wars. Those are two of the main ones. And then we have various attestations and bits and bobs from other sources. But I think Plutarch is really a great source for Sulla because he also gives a lot of insight into the character of the man too, like so many of the figures from this period. If we start at the beginning, what do we know about Sulla's background? Well, Sulla was a late bloomer in Roman politics. Unlike somebody like Julius Caesar, who you can tell from childhood almost, from his early years, he's destined to become Julius Caesar. Looking at Sulla when he was 25, you really would not have guessed that he would be the man on top after all that happened. He was from the Cornelii Soli clan. The Cornelius clan is very old, of course, Roman clan. The

Scipios are from the Cornelii. But he is from a branch of it that's kind of minor. He has an ancestor who was a praetor but essentially by the time that Sulla comes around his father never really accomplished much and he died rather young in Sulla's life and so Sulla spent all the inheritance and Sulla just didn't have a whole lot of money. Yet enough money to have fun but not enough money to be ambitious in Roman politics, which of course requires tremendous outlays of cash for campaigns, bribery and such. And so, yeah, he spent his time just kind of having fun. And Sallust, who's another source that I forgot to mention for Sulla's earlier career, Sallust says that basically Sulla didn't

even have the usual military training that you would have expected from an ambitious Roman future politician. He didn't go out on campaign and, you know, apprentice under some great man in his 20s like you would have expected. Everything changed for Sulla when he inherited some money from two women that were close to him that died. And I think that the fact that he inherited money from these women really illustrates something. So one of the women was his stepmother, his father's second or third wife, who he charmed enough that she considered him her favorite second son. And then there was also a courtesan, a wealthy courtesan, Nicopolis, that of all the men, Sulla was her favourite. And she bequeathed her inheritance to him when she died young.

But the beginning of his career is coming to that wealth and running for office. It's interesting, Sulla the party guy during those very early years indeed, isn't it? But so he receives this wealth. How does this allow him to move forward in his career? What are his next steps now that he has access to this money? Well, his next step is to basically, at the very end of his eligibility, he's really kind of on the older end, but he runs for the office of quaestor, which is the first rung on the ladder of the Roman cursus honorum. And so once he becomes quaestor, he has the opportunity to go and serve under a great man conducting a great campaign. And that is Gaius Marius, fighting the war as consul in Numidia. This is really Sulla coming

on to both the political and the military scene, his time in Numidia with Gaius Marius, his future nemesis, his future rival. But he begins as the trusted lieutenant, the wunderkind on the campaign in Numidia as quaestor. Right, so you said the name Numidia there. So let's kind of set the scene. What are we talking about? Why are the Romans fighting in this area with this man called Gaius Marius who seems to be this big figure at the time?

Yeah, so this is the Great War with Jugurtha. It's told at length by Sallust, a great read. And Jugurtha is a former Roman ally, a client king of Numidia, who, through a series of misunderstandings and abuses and insults, ends up fighting a war with, at first, unwilling Romans. And this war drags on for a long time. And Gaius Marius is actually able to rise to power as consul because he's promising to put the war to a swift end. And this is in North Africa, around Tunisia and Algeria. And so that's where this is all happening right across the pond from Rome, which is strategically important for a lot of Roman

businessmen there at the time. So it's a very important and painful war that has a lot of political significance for Rome at home. It evokes that the leadership is corrupt in Rome and that Gaius Marius is going to clear out the corruption and put a stop to all the nonsense and just get it done. So this is more than something like 100 years after Hannibal, isn't it? And yet the Romans are still fighting in that area of North Africa. And as you highlighted there, it sounds like this war, it's not easy for the Romans and Sulla is thrown into it. Do we know much about how he fares, if this is almost his first senior posting in the military, how he fares in the Jugurthine war? Yeah. So he's a very talented reader of people,

and he's very good at ingratiating himself to the people that he needs to. of people, and he's very good at ingratiating himself to the people that he needs to. This starts with the rank-and-file troops. He's always sharing pleasures and business affairs, as Sallust says. He's partying with them. He's joking around. He's getting into deals with them, and he's working harder than them. He's always seen around camp. He's always doing favors for people and never asking anything in return. Sallust sees it as a sign that he's building his political career, building his constituency. So he wins himself over with the rank and file. And then with Gaius Marius too,

he's always going the extra mile and making Marius look good in this difficult war, which is difficult because it's kind of a guerrilla campaign in a lot of ways. The Numidians have very strong cavalry and they're able to kind of appear out of nowhere, do some raids and run away before the Romans are able to capture them. The terrain is very challenging for the Romans to deal with. The way that the Romans eventually end the war is not through a strategic victory, but through tricking Jugurtha into putting himself into a compromising position. Basically, they personally capture Jugurtha to end the war. And the man that pulls it off is not Marius himself, but Sulla when Marius entrusted him

with this great mission. And I think that this whole story that we probably would take a while to tell in Sallust illustrates Sulla is able to win the trust of people and pull off this elaborate heist where he essentially uses his own person as bait to trick Ugartha into dismissing his guards in front of Bocas. Essentially, it's through these personal qualities of intrigue and charm and diplomacy that Sulla is able to eventually get that mission done. Even though Marius takes credit for the victory,

he parades Ugartha in a triumph and he's the guy who won the war. Later, as Sulla and Marius have a falling out, Sulla starts claiming credit for the victory himself. And this really, really angers Marius later on. But so much happens. It's just this microcosm of the future quarrel between the two, the war against Ugartha and Numidia. But you mentioned future quarrels. That's really interesting, Alex. So actually, at the time when Ugartha is captured through the machinations of Sulla, and you mentioned this other figure, Boccus, right then, Sulla doesn't try to take the glory from Marius.

He gives the glory still to Marius, and it's only at a later date that it becomes a source of tension. So actually, at the end of the war, the relationship between Marius and Sulla, it's still quite good. Yeah, that's right. And the falling out between them really happens in the next war that they fight almost immediately after this, which is the great conflict against the Cimbri and the Teutones, the Gauls and Germans, this coalition of Nordic long-haired, blonde barbarians impinging on the border in Transalpine Gaul and eventually Cisalpine Gaul, basically in Northern Italy. Hundreds of thousands,

according to the sources of these warriors, are essentially trying to take all their stuff, these warriors are essentially trying to take all their stuff, carts and wives and kids and all, and occupy Roman territory. And Marius is the man picked to lead the war against the Cimbri, which is another one of these wars that has been dragging on to the noble, either incompetence or corruption or both. Marius, again, solves the problem. And it's in this conflict that Sulla and Marius kind of have a falling out. And Sulla later told the story that Marius got jealous of his own successes. And eventually Marius sends Sulla to another theater of the war. He ends up fighting in the retinue of the other consul, whose catalyst. And you can also see in the Cimbrian War, Marius and Sulla aligning into

the pattern that will set the tone for the next two decades. Marius is a populist. He's a new man from the Italian provinces. He's an upstart in Roman politics, and he uses popular will to kind of help him make up for his lack of noble credentials. Whereas Sulla is, you know, this member of an old distinguished family, and he's fighting in the retinue after Marius dispatches him, redetails him of Catullus, who's a bastion of the nobility. You can see that political alignment happen even in the course of that war. And in the final battle of the Cimbrian War, Sulla and Marius and Catullus, they unite all their forces together in this great battle of Vercelli. And before the battle torches have even gone out quarrels start to form over who actually was

responsible for the victory and they even bring in some of the local leaders of the towns to come and adjudicate a dispute over whose soldiers spears were really the vanguard of the romans turning the lines of the gauls and so it's fascinating to see how these things play out. But that's where the falling out happens. Things kind of calm down. That's around 100 BC. For about a decade, things are relatively calm between Sulla and Marius, although the tensions are building. During this period, Sulla has this ringmaid that depicts King Bocchus handing over Ugartha to him in chains. and he shows it around town at parties. And he's like, well, here's what really happened at the Ugarthine war. It was Sulla who won.

So that's kind of where these tensions are starting to build in politics that eventually erupt. Because that decade, I know there's another war there, quite a few wars in the story of Sulla, and we'll get to the next one soon. But if we have a quick stop at that decade between 100 BC and 90 BC, if there is that growing tension, you mentioned that it does cool a bit, but still seems that tensions are there in the background with that ring and so on. How does that affect Sulla during this decade? Does he continue to rise through the curse of Sonorum, or what do we know about this decade? So this decade, the sources are really thin for the 90s. One of the big political issues was the

Italian citizenship. They have Romans fight with all these allies, and they don't give them citizenship. They reward them in other ways, but they can't run for office. And this is kind of the background of what eventually happens. But he's eventually elected praetor. He lost his first race for praetorship because, as he tells the story later, he was kind of skipping a rung of edel. The edel is an office that stages games. And he says that the reason that he lost was that the Roman people wanted him to be edel first because they knew that they would have a really good time if Sulla were edel. wanted him to be Edel first because they knew that they would have a really good time if Sulla were Edel. So he runs for Edel, as he tells the story later in his memoirs, ingratiates the

population himself. And then he eventually does become Praetor at his second try. And I think he has to kind of ally with the traditional nobility a little bit tighter. He marries one of the noble families of this period and eventually becomes Praetor. The only thing that we really know about his praetorship in the historical record is he threw a gigantic party, the Apolline Games, Ludi Apollinare, which were actually founded by an ancestor of his. So he felt like he had to really do it right. So yeah, he does eventually, by the time that the social war breaks out with the Italians over this exact issue of Italian citizenship around 91. Sulla

has Praetorian rank. He's one of Rome's top generals, and he's ready to go for the social wars, which is yet another existential conflict for the state of Rome, which happens in this short period of time. I mean, yeah, another existential conflict, which happens in Italy proper, which is quite mad when you think of all of Roman history. But come on then, Alex. So you have the outbreak of the Social War. What role does Sulla play in this war? Well, the Social War is a conflict that pits all of Rome's top talents against the most mortal threat that they've ever faced because these Italians, they know how to fight Romans. They've been fighting in the Roman lines. A lot of their officer corps are, you know, Roman junior and senior officers in the allied forces. So these are tough, tough people that know exactly the

Romans' weaknesses. So it takes everything they've got. Gaius Marius is fighting out there and other generals. Marius doesn't make a great showing. He's getting kind of old at this point, but Sulla clearly emerges as the number one general that Rome has. He's detailed on the Samnites in the south, especially. And as the war goes on, he's winning victory after victory. Marius is struggling and not making a great showing. And the age difference between the two of them starts to appear. And Sulla and his friends are certainly circulating stories about Marius, the fat old man who's kind of over the hill. And Sulla uses his success actually in the social war to build a campaign and eventually get elected consul in 88, as he's kind of wrapping up

the final holdouts in the south of the social war. And that conflict kind of sets the stage for the even bigger conflict between him and Marius. Quick tangent before we go on with the story. You mentioned how he was positioned in the south of Italy to fight against the Samnites, these age-old foes of Rome. I mean, is it fair to say that these age-old foes of Rome. I mean, is it fair to say that Sulla and the Samnites, away from Marius, these are two people who have a massive hostility and hatred for each other, which lasts for a long time? Oh yeah. The Samnites and Sulla, they eventually come back to haunt him in the Civil War, actually, in the famous Battle of the Colline Gate. And it's the Samnites, like 70,000 actually, in the famous Battle of the Colline Gate. And it's the Samnites, like 70,000 Italians who would love nothing more than personally to destroy Sulla, you know,

the person they blame for all of their woes over the past decade. And they're the people that have been a problem for the Romans ever since the fourth century and the days of Pyrrhus and on and on. These mountain peoples from south central Italy are kind of the most warlike of all the tribes and the most resentful that the Romans are in charge of the whole peninsula. So you have the end of the social war. Rome is victorious, but it is a difficult war against their Italian allies. At the end of the war, Sulla, as you say, his star is very much rising. But what happens to him following the end of this war? While this war is going on, the great king of Pontus, the poison king, Mithridates,

sees an opportunity. He's long been resentful of the Romans' reign in the east. They have a province in Asia Minor called Asia. Not all of Turkey, but it's the wealthiest portion. Asia Minor, called Asia. Not all of Turkey, but it's the wealthiest portion. And Mithridates is off in Pontus a few hundred miles to the east. And he sees, all right, the Romans have their hands tied with the social war. Their allies hate them. Everybody in the east hates them, if I have anything to do with it. If we give them a strong enough push, we can topple them off the top of the pyramid forever. And so he sees this as his opportunity to sweep through Asia. And there's this famous kind of Kristallnacht of the East where all of these Roman businessmen, apparently tens of thousands of Roman equestrians are all murdered in a single night, orchestrated by Mithridates, that sparks this new war in the east

in 89, 88 BC. And this becomes the new bone of contention between Sulla and Marius. Who is going to fight the war against Mithridates? Which, of course, promises to be fabulously lucrative. I mean, these aren't, you know, long-haired, bearded, hut-dwelling, skin-wearing barbarians like the Kimberi were. They're not desert people like the Numidians. This is like the richest part of the whole Mediterranean. This is where all the gold and the history and fertile valleys. And, you know, maybe Marius was telling himself that this was going to be an easy war to fight. And so Marius wants to lead the war, even though he's kind of over the hill.

But Sulla's the consul, and the Senate picks Sulla. And what eventually happens, and this is how the civil war begins, really, the seeds of it at least are laid. civil war begins, really. The seeds of it at least are laid. Sulla marches south again, southern Italy. He's got a few holdouts. He's sieging Nola or Capua at the time. And he's about to embark his troops to go to the east to fight this war with Mithridates. And then he gets word that Marius has actually done a really daring political move. And essentially, he's found a tribune of the plebs, this is important office in the Roman constitution, to conduct a plebiscite vote, which they have the right to do. And it's Marius knows how to get these people on his side and to use them to kind of push extra constitutional measures through.

these people on his side and to use them to kind of push extra constitutional measures through, he manages to get the people of Rome to vote the command to himself. And this has never been done before. Marius has done similar things to help his own career using the office of the Tribune of the Plebs, which is this kind of constitutional wildcard. And Sulla never forgets this lesson, that the Tribune of the Plebs is an office that can essentially cause all kinds of mayhem in Roman politics. But, you know, the legates come to take Sulla's insignia of generalship. They come to southern Italy. Sulla, the command has been reassigned to Marius, though will be accepting your resignation now. And Sulla calls a meeting of his troops, and he essentially asks them what their opinion of the matter is.

20,000 men who are loyal to him have been fighting with him throughout the social wars. And so they grab the emissaries and they just lynch them. And he marches on the city of Rome, captures it, drives Marius and Marius' friends out, declares them public enemies. A couple of them he manages to catch and execute. And essentially he reestablishes order in Rome. But, you know, Marius took one unprecedented move by reassigning the command of a war, which was the Senate's prerogative.

Bibian's not supposed to mess with that. And Sulla then ups the ante and takes another unprecedented move that obviously Marius never thought in a million years that Sulla would do this. And he marches on Rome at the head of an army, never been done before in Roman history. But Sulla was not one to let precedent restrain what he thought was in his best interests. I mean, absolutely not. And they said this is an unprecedented move to march on Rome in force. Marius, as you say, he does flee the city, but is this march really successful for Sulla or does this leave a very bad taste in the mouth after he's done this very unprecedented move? Yeah, I think you're right the way you put it. Because although most of the Senate probably

were upset at Marius, that's very bad form to do what he did. It was much worse form to do what Sulla did, to turn Roman spears against the walls. And so Sulla leaves after a few months, after settling affairs, kind of with duct tape, as it were. He actually holds consular elections. So when he leaves the city, he's not consul. He's a pro-consul. Cinna is one of Marius's friends, and he actually allows Cinna to get elected consul. So he's not like imposing a dictatorial regime at that point.

But he knows he has to get out of the city. The war is turning worse in the east with Mithridates and Sulla kind of wants to get out of there and win some credit with a victory. But while he's away, shortly after he leaves, Marius comes back and he and Cinna capture the city back in an even more violent siege and they starve the city out and capture it. It gets very ugly and Marius goes on a series of reprisals against Sulla's friends. They burn Sulla's house and his wife and his friends flee to Greece. They meet him in Greece, you know, step two of the escalation and it gets even worse of course.

Before we go back to Italy and continue that part of the story, let's have a look at Sulla, you mentioned in Greece, so Sulla fighting the war against Mithridates. Alex, how does he fare in this war? Because first and foremost, I have in my notes, because it seems to be a massive event tied to this period,

which is the city-state of Athens. Always seems to be a troublesome city-state, Athens, in their long, prestigious history, the pride they have. And it's no different with Sulla and this war. Yeah. So Athens is persuaded that Mithridates is going to be a liberator and restore Greek freedom. And this is the pitch that Mithridates is making to all the Greeks, get rid of the Romans, return to the old ways. And Sulla besieges Athens. He besieges the Piraeus. Because he's been cut off

from supplies from Rome, because his enemies control the city now, he doesn't have a lot of funds. He doesn't really have a fleet. He has a few boats, but not really a fleet. And so the Piraeus is particularly difficult. It's a fortified harbor, and it's being supplied from the sea. And so he has a tremendous time cracking open that sea. She has to requisition funds from all of the oracles and temples throughout Greece from Olympia and from Delphi. And the god of Delphi tried to resist and Sulla was able to persuade the Delphians that actually Apollo was on his side. And he cuts down all the sacred groves around Athens. He cuts down the groves of the Academy

and the Lyceum and the Kounosarges. And so Sulla just kind of levels the forests of Athens all to build siege towers, to crack the walls of the Piraeus and to build a trench all around Athens and a fortification. And he essentially starves the Athenians out. And there's this one amazing scene that kind of illustrates what you were talking about, the arrogance of Athens, I think. These emissaries come out,

and it's actually being ruled by a tyrant, to give the Athenians a little bit of credit. Aristeion is the tyrant of Athens at the time. And his emissaries come out, or as Plutarch calls them, his fellow revelers, because the way Plutarch calls them, his fellow revelers, because the way Plutarch depicts it, I think it's the way Sulla depicted it in his memoirs, that the tyrant was just kind of partying and ignoring the people as they were starving. Well, anyway, these emissaries come out and they make all these speeches about Athens's great glory from the past. And they're kind of ready to end the siege if they can get good terms. And they don't say anything to the point in Sulla's opinion. They just tell stories about how the Persian Wars and

Theseus and Eumolpus, and we have this great history, benefits to mankind, school of Hellas. And Sulla cuts them off in the middle of their speeches. He says, my blessed friends, be gone and take your speeches with you. The Roman people did not send me to Athens to get a history lesson, but to subdue its rebels. And so I think that that gets to Sulla's ability to cut through the nonsense. He's a great storyteller himself, but he's also unaffected by the poses that other people take. teller himself, but he's also unaffected by the poses that other people take. And of course, eventually Sulla storms the city of Athens and they sack it. He asks his troops merely to spare the buildings. It's this horrific, bloody memory burned into the memory, even in Plutarch's day, 150 years later, you know, there's an oral traditions of what happened in Athens when Sulla came to town. It's rivers of blood flowing through the Keramicus. I mean,

it was a horrific event. And Sulla, I think he wanted to make an example of Athens in particular because people thought he wouldn't. You know, the Athenians thought that nobody would dare to give Athens that kind of treatment. And this is precisely why Sulla did it, to send a message to all the rest of the Greeks. Like, you can't stand on your pretense. Rome's coming for you. This is how we deal with rebels. This is how we've always dealt with rebels. Though he could be really cold-blooded in that way. You did mention earlier, before we tackled the topic of Athens and Sulla's bloody siege, the fact that back in Italy, in Rome, his enemies have come back and taken over, removed his own supporters. So I'm presuming that it's around this time in Greece, if you

mention that his family flee out to Sulla in Greece, that he hears word of what's going on back home. But at the same time, he's still got a war to fight against Mithridates. I mean, Alex, how does he solve this conundrum? I think it's one of the most amazing things of the whole Solus story that the odds he was up against in the Mithridatic wars, he ends up finding the funds from the various temples, as we mentioned, the regime of Senna and Marius. They even send another army east to relieve him of his command and take over the war from him, and it doesn't work out. So he fights two battles against Mithridates, his lieutenant. He doesn't actually fight Mithridates in the war, but his lieutenant. And two battles, grossly outnumbered, 40,000 to 100,000 kind of extreme

odds against him. But the way that he wins these battles, first the Battle of Chaeronea, which is in Plutarch's backyard, where he's from, and then the Battle of Orcomunus. The way that he wins without kind of going into the details is he's very good at taking the initiative and catching the enemy off guard. You know, he's moving his army into a little valley and he gets the enemy to follow him. They're trying to cut off his supplies and all of this kind of moving back and forth as ancient generals do to get the ideal position for the battle. Sulla is able to strike them right at the right moment. The forces of Mithridates have these scythe chariots and great cavalry, but because of the terrain in the pinched valley of Chaeronea, he's able to kind of neutralize that threat.

And I think throughout this campaign in Greece, these two amazing victories that he won, you see this pattern of both in politics and in war, he had this confidence and this willingness to act on intuition immediately. And he even said this, that of all the actions that he took, the ones that turned out the best were the ones that he didn't plan very well for, but just did what occurred to him in the moment. And he just went with it. And this is part of his old storytelling around himself as the lucky, Sulla Felix, as he eventually officially changed his title to when he won the Civil War. It gives him this incredible confidence and initiative. And so he eventually wins these two battles and he's able to bring Mithridates to terms. There's a famous scene where, you know, Lucullus and Pompey end up fighting Mithridates for the next two decades, but they don't actually get to meet him face to face.

Sulla meets him face to face. He's like, you know, six threes, this giant, beautiful man, about 50. Sulla's about 50. And they have this meeting right outside of Troy. And Mithridates begins the negotiations by extending his hand for a handshake. Sulla just stands there and Mithridates lowers his hand and he remains silent. Sulla says, surely it's the part of the victors to be content with silence, whereas the suppliants are called on to speak first. And so Mithridates is trying to kind of benchmark their negotiations off of friendship. Okay, we fought, but now, you know, we're coming to terms, we're friends. And Sulla just denies that benchmarking of the negotiations right from the start. And he just completely unfazed by Mithridates' kind of subtle power moves. And he's eventually able to get Mithridates to make incredible concessions. Actually, you know, he is blamed later,

considering what happened. Mithridates goes on to, you know, fight Rome for the next 20 years. considering what happened, Mithridates goes on to, you know, fight Rome for the next 20 years. And Sulla is sometimes blamed for kind of ending the war on unfavorable terms so that he could go back and crush his enemies at Rome, which is kind of true, because he didn't eliminate Mithridates. But, you know, considering the circumstances, I think he got pretty good terms from Mithridates. He gets Mithridates to fund a fleet for him to take his troops back to Italy and fight the war. So yeah, another just fascinating turn of events for this incredible character. Turn of events indeed. And he's dealt with Mithridates. As you say, Mithridates will return for other Romans in the future, but that's for another podcast episode.

So he's got this fleet, he's got this army who are incredibly loyal to him, and he's got his eyes set once again on Italy. He's coming for Rome a second time. That's right. He's bringing the hammer back. And Marius is dead by this time of natural causes. But the man in Rome who is leading the opposition against Sulla is Cinna. And another stroke of amazing luck for Sulla is right before Sulla arrives back in Italy,

Cinna is killed in this weird scuffle with some of his troops. So the figurehead of the anti-Sulla resistance is eliminated right before Sulla even arrives back in Brundisium in the heel of Italy. back in Brundisium in the heel of Italy. And even though Sulla is, again, greatly outnumbered, outfunded, the fact that the opposition is kind of in disarray, there's not a clear figurehead, there's Carbo, but Carbo just doesn't have the same kind of auctoritas as Cinna. And Sulla has the best troops, you know, these battle-hardened veterans who were fearsome. And he wins a couple of early victories when he gets back. You know, the Senate doesn't want to fight a war. They call on the consuls to lay down arms and come to negotiations with Sulla and Sinha and Carbo before Sinha dies. They're like, yeah, thank you for your advice. We're just going to keep raising

our army. And so the war happens as soon as he returns to Italy. And he has all of these handicaps in a way, but then quickly the momentum comes into his favor pretty quickly. After a couple of victories, people start kind of throwing their cards in with Sulla. And he's able to, over the course of a year and a half or two of hard-fought battles, win this incredibly bloody civil war for the fate of Rome. And that ends in, you mentioned it earlier, when we were talking about Sulla against the Samnites, this Battle of the Colline Gate, which is right outside the walls of Rome itself.

That's right, yeah. And Sulla actually takes control of the vicinity of Rome rather early in the war, but he doesn't enter the city. That would imply laying down his pro-consular authority, among other things. So the war keeps going on. And the battle itself, the Battle of the Coline Gate, which really kind of decides the war, interestingly is one, Sulla is there, he fights it, but the crucial victory in the battle goes to Crassus, who is a young, you know, the future richest man in Rome,

the future triumvir. Crassus is one of these people, Sulla was very good at attracting and retaining young talent, ambitious young talent. Crassus, and most famously, probably Pompey, who he gave the name of Magnus to, Pompey the Great, was great because Sulla called him great first. And they both joined his side early in the war. They'd take a big bet on him and bring troops. And it really proves to be decisive. And in the Battle of the Colline Gate, Crassus is the one who defeats the Samnites. Sulla, actually, people think that he lost the battle at first. He retreats to a place by the walls of Rome and he doesn't know where Crassus is or where the Samnites are.

But late in the evening, he gets this word from Crassus that he's at Antimni and he's requesting Sulla to bring him dinner. And so Crassus saved the day there. And with that, the civil war is basically over. And he begins trying to write things. So he has won this civil war, let's call it what it is but of course he still has got enemies

in rome and i guess elsewhere too but what does sulla do to now try and consolidate his own rule what does he do to his enemies well famously the first thing that he does is he publishes a list of 80 men. He puts their names up in the forum on a tablet. He proscribes them, writes them up. And everybody on that list, their property is to be confiscated for the state and their heads are to be brought to Sulla and a reward given to whoever brings the head as proof of that he's been done away with. And these are, you know, top, top enemies of Sulla that managed to survive the Civil War so far at first. And so Sulla needs the money. He confiscates their estates and he starts selling them at auction to raise quick cash. He needs to pay his soldiers. He has all kinds of uses for money. But, you know But after those initial 80,

he comes back the next day and he has another 220 to make around 300. And then the next day he comes back with another 220. And so the list keeps growing of proscribed men. And in the circumstances, A, he needs the cash and he really does have a whole lot of enemies. There is a sense of justice, I think, motivating him and also a sense of expedience that he wants to make sure that nobody's there to resist. But in these circumstances, a lot of people start to get opportunistic. You know, people start to come and remind Sulla of other people. Oh, shouldn't we get so and so and so and so? Either they're personal enemies or their wealthy? And the proscriptions end up being kind of the biggest black mark on

his career because many innocent men were killed and it ended up something like a thousand of the wealthiest and most powerful Romans, many equestrians were proscribed and either exiled or executed, their properties confiscated. And it was an incredibly decisive but also effective purge of all of Sulla's enemies. And that was kind of step one of restoring Rome in his eyes. I don't think we have time to explore the stories of many of these figures who fall foul of Sulla in these prescriptions, but we will talk about one who, of course, is one of the biggest titans of ancient Roman history. And you probably know who I'm going to say. He has a run-in, an encounter with Julius Caesar, who is very young at this time, but he also is on the list.

What's his story here? Yeah, so Caesar was about 18 years old, and he's married to the daughter of Cinna, the living figurehead of the former regime. And Sulla demands that Caesar divorce his wife. And on that condition, he'll be allowed to live. And Caesar incredibly says, no way, I love my wife. And so Sulla proscribes him, and Caesar ends up going into exile. And eventually some of Caesar's, some mutual friends of theirs intercede on behalf of Caesar and they get Sulla to spare him. And famously Sulla says, fine, but you're fools if you don't see many Marius's in that boy. And so just an amazing story. And Caesar, of course, would eventually take up the mantle of Marius, the populist mantle. And part of what Caesar built his own reputation off of

is I'm the anti-Sulla. I'm not going to do what Sulla did to my enemies. It's his virtue of Clementius, pardoning his enemies in the civil war and in politics as well. So I think that's just branded onto everybody's mind that Caesar's probably the best example of that. Ah, there you go. That kind of legacy of Sulla right there and his harsh dealing of his enemies. I wish we had time to also explore the figure of Sertorius and how he almost continues the fight against Sulla in Spain

for a few more years, doesn't he? But let's kind of focus in a bit more on Sulla in control. After the prescriptions. Does he stay leader of Rome for long? What do we know about this period after the prescriptions and after he's won the civil war? So in 82, he's won the civil war and he's proscribed many of his enemies. But what he does is he thinks that the causes of the civil war are identifiable and they have to do with constitutional problems in Rome, the chief

among them being the office of tribune of the plebs. And so what he does is he has himself elected dictator and he resurrects this ancient office that had been defunct since the Punic Wars. Fabius Maximus was the dictator. Resurrects this ancient office that basically gives you unlimited authority, more or less, for a specific period of time. But Sulla says, let's do away with the whole term limit thing. This might take a while. And he has himself elected dictator basically for restoring the constitution.

Not for a military purpose, but to kind of rewrite the Roman political system. And there's a number of things that he does. He has to replenish the Senate, which is severely depleted, but he also doubles its size. And part of that has to do with the court reform. But I think that for me, the most interesting of the reforms is he strips the Tribune of the Plebs of all of its significant powers. Basically, the key power was that it was able to have these plebiscite votes where you propose a law to the people directly, even though you're supposed to consult the Senate. You don't have to. No more sell us. No more tribunes can't make laws. Only the higher magistrates, the consuls and praetors can make laws. And not only that, but if you become tribune of the plebs, you can't run for any more office, which is really key.

So he strips it of a talent pool because the Tribune office had been used by the Gracchi before and Sulpicius and Saturninus, many other people that try to use this office to put you in a position to do great favors for great men through your ability to write laws and then kind of go on to a brilliant career. Basically, he strips it of its most important powers and its talent pool. And I think it's really interesting because Sulla dies in 78 shortly after really winning in the scheme of things. But his two most brilliant talented protégés, Crassus and Pompey, only eight years after Sulla dies, when they have a joint consulship in 70, they restore all of the powers of the Tribune of the Plebs. It was like the people of Rome, the Roman politicians, there was too much power in this office to just let it lie fallow like that. So they undo that key part of Sulla's constitution. Others they leave in place, though. And I think because of Sulla's coldness

and brutality politically, all of the children of the proscribed were not eligible for office. And that actually was something that was left in place for many decades. Because none of these men were able to run for office, a lot of Sulla's other reforms were left in place besides the tribune office. Of course, the tribune is eventually that stick of dynamite that ends up really destroying Rome, you might say. Absolutely. I want to get to that very, very quickly. But you mentioned how he dies not long after. Do we know how he dies? Is it a natural death or is there a more infamous belief surrounded?

There's multiple accounts. There's an account in Plutarch that I think really illustrates what Plutarch thought of the man in the end, where Zola, you know, from his long life of debauchery and womanizing and partying, he develops an infection, especially in the kind of lower GI tract where he's just, his body is just consumed with worms and disgusting evidence of his corruption of his flesh getting into his bath and his clothes and his food. I mean, it's just really just a gross out story. And he eventually dies screaming at somebody, at his henchmen, to execute some low-status provincial that pissed him off, and he bursts a blood vessel in his brain and just dies in this fit of rage.

That may have been how he died. The other story is Appian, in which he just has a fever one day, a very quick fever, and was just working right up to the end and died in peace while retired on his estate. And apparently there was an entry in his memoirs two days before he passed away, where he saw in a vision, a dream of a son of his that had died very young, and the son was beckoning him to put aside his cares and come and take a rest with him and his mother, who was also late. So yeah, I think it's fascinating. Even in his death, there's multiple accounts and afterwards there's a big debate over whether they should give him a state funeral or not. Eventually they do. But right after the man dies, you know,

the story goes on and we don't have time to tell it, but you know, the revolt of Lepidus and the Sertorian War goes on. And for all of his attempts to kind of put a lid on the boiling Roman pot, I think in the end, he wasn't able to do it. talking about his legacy, which we've mentioned in passing over the course of this episode, this interview, is he the figure who lays the groundwork for later figures like Julius Caesar and ultimately Octavian to see the way that they are able to get power in the Republic and retain power and ultimately to create their own dictatorships that will ultimately in turn lead to the creation of the Roman imperial period, the Roman Empire. You can definitely make that case. And Caesar, even though he's the anti-Sullivan, he does end up taking up that office of dictator. But Octavian decides we don't need the office of dictator. That has so much connotation. This is one of

the reasons that Caesar was assassinated. The dictator was unpopular already in Sulla's day, and he kind of gave the idea to Julius Caesar. Octavian, of course, he eventually uses the tribunician power as the bundle of authority that he ended up creating this imperial authority from. imperial authority from. But Julius Caesar spares his enemies in the Civil War and famously spares Cassius after the battle with Pompey. And it's the very people that he spared that end up killing him. And so Octavian decided that was one lesson that he'd rather learn from Sulla than from Caesar. Proscriptions were something that he and Antonius and Lepidus ended up resurrecting, and in their triumvirate, the political purges actually worked, turned out. So that was something that they kept. But I think another final point that people point to with Sulla and also Marius

is the ability of these Roman commanders in this period to recruit armies and to train them up as loyal to them instead of to the Roman state. But still, I mean, Sulla's army, they wouldn't have sided with Sulla in that first revolt from Nola against Marius at Rome if they hadn't really believed that he had been wronged. And he had been wronged, that doesn't happen again, basically, until Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon. It's a threat that kind of hangs over the head of Roman politics. People are worried that Pompey's going to do it when he comes back from the East, from fighting the Mithridatic Wars in the 60s, but Pompey probably wouldn't have done it. Crassus made this ostentatious gesture of fleeing town

and feigned terror when Pompey was returning. So it's kind of a political story that you can tell, but I think it's probably fair to say that the dynamic with Caesar was different enough that it's not entirely fair to blame Sulla for that thing going haywire in Roman politics. Well, there we go. Alex, this has been an absolutely fantastic chat. Lastly, what is this podcast that you run, another ancient history podcast that explores the lives of figures like Suther and so many others? Thanks, Tristan. Yeah, it's called The Cost of Glory, available anywhere you get your podcasts. I focus on the biographies of great figures from Plutarch's lives, but I also

do some highlights from other ancient texts. And we do Greeks and Romans. And it's a blast. A blast indeed. Alex, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you as well. It's been a pleasure. Well, there you Dr. Alex Petkus talking through the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the most extraordinary Roman statesmen of antiquity,

at least in my opinion. I really do hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's about time we headed back to ancient Rome after a brief hiatus looking at lots of other extraordinary ancient cultures, as we will always continue to do. Now, last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the podcast, whether it's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or elsewhere,

make sure that you are following the ancients, that you are subscribed so you don't miss out on the new episodes we release twice every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode when we go back to the Ice Age.