Sulla

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was a Roman general and politician whose rivalry with Marius helped turn political conflict into civil war. He marched an army on Rome, campaigned successfully against Mithridates and returned to defeat his opponents. As dictator he issued proscriptions that killed enemies and transferred their property, then rewrote constitutional rules to strengthen the senate and limit popular magistrates. Sulla unexpectedly resigned and died in private life in 78 BC.

Sulla is a central character in Colleen McCullough’s The First Man in Rome and The Grass Crown. Historical fiction often portrays him as brilliant, cultured and terrifying, capable of personal charm and organised mass murder. His voluntary retirement remains one of the most striking features of a career that demonstrated how military command could destroy republican norms.

In non-fiction, Sulla is discussed in Sallust’s Catiline’s War, the Jugurthine War, Histories, Plutarch’s Fall of the Roman Republic, Appian’s The Civil Wars, Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar, and Cicero’s Murder Trials. In Sallust’s Catiline’s War, the Jugurthine War, Histories, Sallust’s surviving histories are useful sources for three late-republican crises: the Catilinarian conspiracy in Rome in 63 BCE, the Jugurthine War in Numidia from 112 to 105 BCE, and the political instability that followed Sulla.