To such minds as naturally incline to the democratic side of political controversies, whether past or present, the character of Sulla will be apt to appear as perhaps that character in all Roman history most absolutely without a redeeming trait.
Sulla's military triumphs consisted in the reconquest of provinces which had been goaded into rebellion by the terrible exactions of the Roman tax collectors and the unspeakable atrocities of the Roman slave hunters.
The historians of the reactionary and aristocratic school, while they are able to find much to praise in the life and work of this bitterest of the enemies of human lives and liberty, are nevertheless compelled to qualify their praise because of the many features of his character and the many acts of his life which even they are compelled to condemn. The historian Charles Merivale has made perhaps as strong a plea for Sulla as it is possible to make, in the following words:
"The personal rivalry of her two most fortunate generals becomes now the main channel of the history of Rome herself. In the year which closed the contest of the republic with her dependent allies (88), Sulla was forty-nine years old, Marius was about seventy. The former was enjoying the full breeze of popularity and renown, while the latter, wearied but not sated with accumulated honours, was moodily throwing away the advantages he had earned in his earlier career. From campaign to campaign Sulla, as we have seen, had dogged the steps of the elder warrior, always ready to step in and seize the opportunities which the other cast recklessly in his way. Not that Marius in his exalted station was even from the first indifferent to this incipient rivalry. He was deeply jealous of his subordinate. He felt chagrin at the contrast presented by their respective birth and origin; for Sulla, though needy in point of fortune, was a scion of the illustrious house of the Cornelii, and plumed himself on the distinction and advantage such a lineage conferred. Sulla, moreover, was trained in the accomplishments of Hellenic education, which Marius, conscious of his want of them, vainly affected to despise. Sulla wrote and spoke Greek; his memoirs of his own life became the text-book of the Greek historians of Rome, from whom we principally derive our acquaintance with him. But this varnish of superior culture seems to have failed in softening a rough plebeian nature. Sulla was one of many noble Romans who combined with pretensions to literary taste the love of gross debauchery, and pleasure in the society of mimes and vulgar jesters. He was a coarse sensualist, and by his disregard of the nuptial tie offended even the lax morality of his age. His eyes, we are told, were of a pure and piercing blue, and their sinister expression was heightened by the coarseness of his complexion and a countenance disfigured by pimples and blotches, compared by the raillery of the Greeks to a mulberry sprinkled with meal. His manners, except when he unbent in the society of his inferiors, were haughty and morose; nor is there any act of kindliness or generosity recorded of him. The nobles who accepted him as their champion had no personal liking for him. But selfish and ambitious though he was, the aggrandisement of his party and order was with Sulla a species of fanaticism. He despised the isolated ascendency of a Marius, and aspired to rule in Rome at the head of a dominant oligarchy....
"Slowly and with many a painful struggle the Roman commonwealth had outgrown the narrow limits of a rustic municipality. The few hundred families which formed the original nucleus of her citizenship, and which in her earliest and simplest days had sufficed to execute all the functions of her government, had been compelled to incorporate allies and rivals in their own body, to enlarge their views, and to expand their institutions. The main object of Sulla's policy was to revive at least the spirit of the old restrictions. The old families themselves had perished almost to a man; he replaced them by a newer growth; but he strove to pare away the accretions of ages, and restore the government of the vast empire of Rome to a small section of her children. It contravened the essential principle of national growth; while the career of conquest, to which the Romans devoted themselves, required the most perfect freedom of development.
"Nevertheless the legislation of Sulla was undoubtedly supported by a vast mass of existing prejudice. He threw himself into the ideas of his time, as far as they were interpreted by history, by tradition, and by religious usage. The attempt to enlarge the limits of the constitution was in fact opposed to every acknowledged principle of polity. It was regarded equally by its opponents and its promoters as anomalous and revolutionary. It had as yet no foundation in argument, or in any sense of right, as right was then understood. Society at Rome was in a highly artificial state; and Sulla, with many of his ablest contemporaries, mistook for the laws of nature the institutions of an obsolete and forgotten expediency. But nature was carrying on a great work, and proved too strong for art. Ten years sufficed to overthrow the whole structure of this reactionary legislation, and to launch the republic once more upon the career of growth and development. The champions of a more liberal policy sprang up in constant succession, and contributed, perhaps unconsciously, to the great work of union and comprehension, which was now rapidly in progress. The spirit of isolation which had split Greece and Italy into hundreds of separate communities was about to give way to a general yearning for social and moral unity. The nations were to be trained by the steady development of the Roman administration.
"But though Sulla's main policy was thus speedily overthrown, he had not lived in vain. As dictator he wasted his strength in attempting what, if successful, would have destroyed his country; but as proconsul he has saved her. The tyranny of the Roman domination had set the provinces in a blaze. Mithridates had fanned the flame. Greece and Asia had revolted. The genius of the king of Pontus might have consolidated an empire, such as Xerxes might have envied, on either shore of the Ægean Sea. But at this crisis of her fate, hardly less imminent than when Hannibal was wresting from her allies and subjects within the Alps, Rome had confided her fortunes to the prowess of Sulla. The great victory of Chæronea checked the dissolution of her empire. The invader was hurled back across the Ægean; the cities of Greece returned reluctantly to their obedience, never more to be tempted to renounce it. Sulla followed Mithridates into Asia; one by one he recovered the provinces of the republic. He bound his foe by treaties to abstain from fomenting their discontents. He left his officers to enforce submission to his decrees, and quartered the armies of Rome upon the wretched populations of the East. The pressing danger of the moment was averted, though it took twenty years more to subdue the power of Mithridates, and reduce Asia to passive submission. Rome was relieved from the last of her foreign invaders; and this was the great work of Sulla, which deserved to immortalise his name in her annals."
CHAPTER IX
Pompey
Sulla had hoped by his proscriptions to so completely crush the popular party in Rome that the aristocratic party would be able to enjoy a long period of undisputed authority and absolute power. Hardly was Sulla buried, however, before the popular party began to show signs of life and renewed resistance. The consuls at the time of Sulla's death were Lepidus and Catulus, both of them elected on account of their supposed absolute loyalty to the policies of Sulla and their disregard of popular rights. The first named, however, soon began to manifest symptoms of justice and humanity, and the Senate, alarmed at these views and his increasing popularity, sought to remove him from participation in Roman politics by sending him as proconsul to govern the (then considered) remote province of Cisalpine Gaul. This move only strengthened the position of Lepidus, however, by providing him with an army. This army being augmented by recruits consisting partly of enthusiastic adherents of the popular cause and partly of desperate adventurers, Lepidus considered himself strong enough to brave the chances of war, and began a march toward Rome. His army, however, was intercepted by the senatorial army sent to meet him, and Lepidus, completely defeated, fled to Sardinia, where he soon died.
One of the leading lieutenants of Lepidus in this campaign was Brutus, the father of the Brutus who was to be one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar. The elder Brutus was taken prisoner at this time and put to death.