Caesar. Life of a Colossus (Adrian Goldsworthy) Yale University Press (10 page)

Waiting for Sulla

The years when Cinna and his supporters dominated Rome are not recorded in any detail by our sources. Yet it is probably not merely this lack of information that suggests he made no attempt at major reforms. Although he had appealed to the newly enfranchised Italians and to other discontented groups before his victory, Cinna made little attempt to satisfy their demands afterwards. Rome’s first period of civil war – and indeed the latter conflicts

– had little to do with conflicting ideology or policies, but were violent extensions of the traditional competition between individuals. Cinna had no revolutionary ambitions to reform the Republic, but craved personal power and influence within the existing system. Therefore, once he had won these things through the use of force, his chief priority was to retain them. Already consul for 86 BC, Cinna made sure than he was elected to the office for 85

and 84 – quite probably only his name and that of a chosen colleague were allowed to be put forward as candidates. As consul he held
imperium
and so had a legal right to command the armies that he would need to protect himself from Sulla or any other rival. As a magistrate he was exempt from prosecution, for it seems that there was some activity in the courts at Rome, although a few prominent advocates appear to have chosen to cease appearing. Cinna and Marius had killed some senators and caused others to flee abroad, but the majority of the Senate remained in Rome and continued to meet. Many senators were not strong supporters of Cinna and his associates, but equally had no particular love for Sulla. The Senate’s debates appear to have been comparatively free and at times it voted for measures that were not particularly pleasing to Cinna, for instance, when it began negotiations with Sulla. Yet it could not restrain him or prevent his consecutive consulships, for in the end he controlled an army and the Senate did not. In Cinna’s Rome the Senate convened, the courts functioned and elections were held, creating at least a veneer of normality. There was a remarkable elasticity in the main institutions of the Republic, which tended 52

the first dictator

to continue running in some form under almost any circumstances, interrupted only temporarily by riot and bloodshed. Senators’ lives revolved around the doing of favours to win support, gaining influence and seeking office. Whatever the circumstances, they naturally continued to try and do these things as far as was possible.8

Cinna’s position was incompatible with a properly functioning Republic, for in the end his position rested on his army and he showed no signs of giving this up, while his repeated consulships denied others the chance at high office and also limited the number of magistrates available to govern the provinces. Yet Cinna could not feel secure while Sulla remained at large and in command of his legions. Marius had been allocated the war against Mithridates as his province in 86 BC, but had died before he had even set out. His replacement as consul, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, also inherited his province and did at last go to the east with an army. It was soon evident that Sulla was not about to allow himself to be replaced, but Flaccus may well have attempted to negotiate with him with a view to their joining forces against Mithridates. However, Flaccus was promptly murdered by his own quaestor, Caius Flavius Fimbria, who took over the army and tried to defeat Pontus on his own. Showing less talent for warfare than he had for treachery and murder, Fimbria eventually committed suicide after his soldiers had mutinied. Over the next few years, the Senate made a few approaches to Sulla, hoping to reconcile him with Cinna and avoid further civil war, but neither of the leaders showed much enthusiasm for this. Sulla maintained that he was a properly elected magistrate, sent as proconsul by the Senate to wage war against an enemy of the Republic, and must be acknowledged as such and left to complete his task. By 85 BC as it became clear that the war with Mithridates was drawing to a close, Cinna and his associates threw themselves into raising troops and massing supplies for what they saw as the inevitable clash with Sulla.9

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was a man of striking appearance, with exceptionally fair skin, piercing grey eyes and reddish hair. In later life his appearance was marred by a skin condition that speckled his face with red patches. (An obscure piece of military law from several centuries later also claims that he had only one testicle, and that his achievements make it clear that such a defect was no bar to becoming a successful soldier.) Sulla could be very charming, winning over soldier and senator alike, but many aristocrats remained deeply uncertain of him. In spite of his late entry into public life he had been reasonably successful, and demonstrated his military skill on repeated occasions. His consulship came when he was fifty, which 53

the rise to the consulship, 100–59 bc

was unusually old for a first term, and in the preceding decade it had taken two attempts for him to win the praetorship. Many senators probably found it hard to forget the poverty of his youth and the decay of his family. It is common for those who flourish under any system to feel that the failure of others is deserved. Sulla had been poor and revelled in the company of actors and musicians, professions considered extremely disreputable. Such behaviour was bad enough in his youth, and far worse for a senator and magistrate, but Sulla remained loyal to his old friends throughout his life. He was a heavy drinker, enjoyed feasting and was widely believed to be very active sexually, taking both men and women as lovers. For much of his life he publicly associated with the actor Metrobius, who specialised in playing female roles on stage, and the pair were believed to be having an affair. The inner elite of the Senate were fairly grudging in their acceptance of Sulla’s political success, although at times evidently preferring him to some of the other alternatives. This in itself may not have mattered to him, but he was unshakeable in his determination to have his success publicly acknowledged and not be robbed of his achievements. In 88 BC he marched on Rome claiming that he was the legitimate representative of the Republic and that he needed to free Rome from the unlawful domination of a faction. Afterwards he always presented himself as a proconsul of Rome, denying the validity of Marius’ and Cinna’s declaration proclaiming him an enemy of the State. Sulla was a man whose self-proclaimed epitaph would be that he had never failed to do good to a friend or harm to an enemy.10

As far as Sulla was concerned his
imperium
and command were legitimate, and his opponents had acted illegally and as enemies of the Republic. Therefore it was both his right and duty to suppress them by any means necessary. It was also important for him to protect his own
dignitas
, for his achievements deserved respect for himself and his family. The Romans openly stressed the great part played by luck in all human activities, especially warfare, and – anticipating Napoleon – believed that being lucky was one of the most important virtues of a general. Commanders were not supposed to rely on blind chance, and were to make every preparation possible to ensure success, but in the chaos of war the best plans could fall apart and victory or defeat depend on chance. Sulla paraded his good fortune throughout his career. Being fortunate implied divine favour, in his case the support of Venus and, on occasions, Apollo and others. Sulla claimed that he had had prophetic dreams before many of the great events in his life, in which a god or goddess urged him to take the action he planned and promised him success. Marius had similarly been inspired by oracles foretelling his 54

the first dictator

great future, most famously that he would hold seven consulships. Both men were ruthlessly ambitious, but the belief that their success was divinely ordained and therefore right, further boosted their already considerable selfconfidence. Nor should modern cynicism blind us to the fact that such claims of divine favour often made highly effective propaganda.11

Sulla had used force once already to defend his position. The brutality of Cinna’s own capture of the city cannot have led him to anticipate any milder behaviour from his enemy. In 85 BC Sulla signed the Peace of Dardanus concluding the war with Mithridates. It was not a complete victory by Roman standards, for the King of Pontus remained independent and still possessed considerable power, but he had been expelled from Roman territory and his armies humiliatingly defeated in battle. Sulla was not able to return to Italy immediately, for there was much administrative work to be done to settle the eastern provinces. In 84 BC Cinna had decided to fight his rival in Greece rather than Italy, but there were severe delays when the weather in the Adriatic turned bad and one convoy of soldiers was blown back to Italy. Soon afterwards the soldiers mutinied – probably through a reluctance to fight other Romans, although our sources are contradictory on this point –

and Cinna was killed by his own men. The leadership of his supporters was taken over by Cnaeus Papirius Carbo, who was his fellow consul in this and the preceding year. In 82 BC he would hold a third term as consul with Marius’ son as his colleague, in spite of the fact that the latter was too young for the post. A growing number of senators had already either decided that Italy was no longer safe for them, or perhaps guessed which way the wind was blowing, and had fled to join Sulla in the east. More would rally to his cause when he finally landed at Brundisium (modern Brindisi) in southern Italy in the autumn of 83 BC.12

The odds against Sulla were huge, but his opponents consistently failed to make the most of their numbers, and army after army was defeated, or on one occasion persuaded to defect en masse. Few of the leaders opposing him displayed much military talent. After a lull during the winter months the campaign resumed and Sulla was able to take Rome in 82 BC. A sudden enemy counter-offensive led to a desperate battle outside the Colline Gate. During the fighting Sulla himself narrowly escaped being killed and one wing of his army collapsed, but in the end the remainder of his troops carried on to win a victory. As their fortunes failed the enemy leaders became more vindictive. The Younger Marius ordered the execution of Scaevola, the
Pontifex
Maximus
, an action that his mother Julia is supposed to have condemned. Marius himself was besieged in Praeneste and either killed or committed 55

the rise to the consulship, 100–59 bc

suicide when the city surrendered. When his head was taken to Sulla the victor commented that such a stripling ought to have ‘learned to pull an oar before he tried to steer the ship’. Carbo escaped to Sicily to continue the resistance, but was defeated and executed by one of Sulla’s subordinates.13

Just as the Marian capture of Rome had greatly surpassed Sulla’s march on the City in the scale of massacre and execution it brought, now both were eclipsed by the savagery of Sulla’s return. Addressing the Senate in the Temple of Bellona on the outskirts of Rome, the victor’s speech was accompanied by the screams of thousands of captured soldiers – mostly Italians who were treated more harshly than Romans – being executed a short distance away. It was not simply the rank and file of the enemy who suffered. Most prominent leaders were executed as soon as they were taken or anticipated this outcome by taking their own lives. Many more senators and equestrians seen to be hostile to Sulla were killed by his men in the aftermath of victory.14

At first the executions occurred without warning, but complaints from a nervous Senate wishing to know just who was going to suffer led to the process becoming more formal. Sulla ordered that the proscriptions – lists of names of men who thereby lost all protection of law – be posted up in the Forum, and copies were subsequently sent to other parts of Italy. Those proscribed could be killed by anyone and a reward claimed on presentation of their severed heads to Sulla, who had them displayed on and around the Rostra. Usually the victim’s property was confiscated and auctioned off, much of it being purchased at a knock-down price by Sulla’s associates. The victims were principally either senators or equestrians. Several lists were posted and, though we have no precise figure, the total amounted to some hundreds. Most had opposed Sulla, but other names were added simply because of a man’s wealth. One equestrian who had taken little interest in public life is supposed to have seen his name on one of the lists and declared that his Alban estate wanted to see him dead. He was soon killed.15 Many private hatreds were exercised, and there were more than a few cases of names being added to the lists after the man had been killed in order to legitimise murder. Sulla does not appear to have supervised the process too closely, but he did form a bodyguard of the freed slaves of many of the proscribed and these were widely accused of abusing their new-found power. The proscriptions formally ended on 1 June 81 BC, but their horror lived on and scarred the Romans’ collective consciousness for the rest of the century.16

Sulla’s power came directly from his control of an army that had defeated all his rivals, but the man who had done so much to defend his legitimacy as 56

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proconsul soon gave himself a more formal position to justify his domination of the State. At times of severe crisis the Republic had occasionally set aside its fear of the rule of one man and had appointed a dictator, a single magistrate with supreme
imperium
. It had always been a temporary post, laid down after six months, but Sulla discarded these restrictions and set no time limit to his office. He was named
dictator legibus faciendis et rei publicae
constituendae
(dictator to make laws and reconstitute the State) by a vote in the Popular Assembly. His office was unprecedented, as was the violence he used to crush any opposition. On one occasion he casually ordered the execution of his own senior officer in the Forum because the man persisted in standing for the consulship in defiance of the dictator’s orders.17

Fugitive

Caesar was about eighteen when Sulla’s army took Rome for the second time. He had not taken any part in the civil war. His father-in-law Cinna was dead and there is no evidence to suggest a particularly close relationship with the Younger Marius. More importantly he was probably already expected to follow the rules laid down for the
Flamen Dialis
even if he had not yet formally been invested with the priesthood. The same restrictions that prevented him from going to war should have meant that he was in Rome when the city was taken and the great battle fought outside the Colline Gate, and that he witnessed the bloodbath of the proscriptions. The
flamen
was not supposed to see a corpse, but it must have been difficult to have avoided doing so at this time. Whether he saw them or not, the youth must have been aware of the heads of so many prominent Romans being displayed in the city’s heart. At one point it seemed as if his own would shortly join them. Caesar himself was neither important enough nor sufficiently wealthy to warrant his inclusion in the proscriptions. However, he was married to Cinna’s daughter Cornelia and such a connection was not one to win favour with the new regime. Sulla instructed the youth to divorce his wife. He had given similar orders to other men, at times arranging a more favourable match for them, often involving some of his own female relations. The most famous case was of Cnaeus Pompey, the son of Pompeius Strabo and one of Sulla’s most effective commanders, who was told to divorce his wife and instead marry the dictator’s stepdaughter. The latter was both already married and heavily pregnant, but this did not prevent a rapid divorce and equally speedy union with Pompey. We know of at least one other man who 57