For more Roman content: I just read an article about Sulla in the nineties and it claimed that Sulla was (at this point) never thinking about going for the consulship but was happy with the praetorship. It also claims that Sulla was politically relatively insignificant during that time. What do you think about Sulla in the nineties? ( If you want to talk about this topic, of course)

hi elaine!! thanks for sending this to me, cos it looks perfect for the first episode of……….. trash takes tuesday

TRASH TAKE IN QUESTION is p.f. cagniart (1991) “l. cornelius sulla in the nineties: a reassessment”. the gist is pretty much what elaine’s summarised.

so I had a read, and I think it’s an interesting article. it is interesting. cagniart gives a fairly sound argument, using the huge time gaps between sulla’s offices as evidence. in fact, sulla could well have not expected that he could have ever become consul. but that’s not the real problem. the real problem is the assumption that sulla didn’t become consul simply because he had no ambitions for it.

you can be ambitious to gain certain things without gaining them, or even being able to gain them. it’s not logical for cagniart to say that sulla was happy with just being a praetor. knowing what we do about roman politics, it’s too much of an anomaly.

and why not? well… the consulship was the crowning glory. the consulship provided the ultimate glory. a praetorship was cool, but not amazing. the consulship was it. what aristocrat did not want to become consul the second he stepped onto the first rung of the cursus honorum? rome’s politics was fuelled by this competition (see: hölkeskamp 1993 for a neat analysis on that). for sulla, whose family had fallen into obscurity in the last generation, a consulship was more than about raising his family back to praetorian rank, but proving that he was the one who could do it and supercede expectations with the consulship.

one of cagniart’s other points was that sulla had a notorious reputation for hanging out with theatre people, and this put voters off electing him—and he was aware of and fine with this impression. cagniart here seems to have forgotten the existence and function of the censor, who could strike people off the senatorial lists for moral misconduct. seeing as one of his ancestors was struck off the lists, I find it difficult to imagine that sulla would jeopardise his place in the senate by continuing to pursue his interest in theatre so publicly.

so, why might sulla not have had more offices? well, for starters, campaigns were expensive. sulla likely did not come from as abject a poverty as he claimed in his memoirs, but he would have been relatively poor compared to other senators—particularly without, it seems, much support from his surviving family. his jugurthine excursion did not likely furnish him with much wealth, even if it did raise his status somewhat. this lack of funds is likely also why he skipped the aedileship; it was unnecessary, and he could not afford it. during his praetorship (which he won only on the second go), he threw games thanks to bocchus sending him animals as a gift. 

sulla was also not quite as eminent during the 90s. his capture of jugurtha had caused a stir, but marius had also claimed credit as the general and he was otherwise rather unattached and unknown. there were brilliant young men aplenty, and there was war aplenty for them to prove themselves. just looking at his second and third wife, whom he must have married around this time, we realise how un-eminent he was. their names are completely humdrum. the social war provided a fortuitous opportunity for sulla to command as legate, and blaze his way through campania to eminence, wealth, and the consulship. but to say that he had no ambition for the consulship before this war is to misunderstand the roman politician’s psyche. it is radical but not right to suggest that sulla only stepped into the consulship by the chance of the moment.

and then I must come to cagniart’s conclusion that sulla retroactively doctored his past to portray himself as “felix”. there is no reason to think so cynically. if sulla had desired the consulship all his life but did not think he had, until the social war, the means to grasp it, then he must have been overjoyed when he finally won it. he must’ve thought he had been blessed by the gods. he must have thought he was in their favour. that is: he must have thought that he was felix. and his career only looked up from then on. there is no need to doctor anything or manipulate his image. sulla genuinely thought himself to be felix.

every forlorn bastard who descends from the hills chanting "sulla was sexy" raises my blood pressure and draws me directly closer to an untimely demise

- gaius marius