Sulla

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was born in 138 BC into the Cornelii Sullae, a branch of an old patrician clan politically marginal for generations. Plutarch reports he passed his youth in a cheap apartment. Inheritances let him enter the cursus honorum. As quaestor in 107 BC he served under Marius in the Jugurthine War, talking King Bocchus of Mauretania into handing over Jugurtha himself, a coup Marius resented for life.

During the Cimbri war he transferred to Catulus, fighting at Vercellae in 101 BC. He served as praetor, governed Cilicia, and distinguished himself in the Social War. In 88 BC, at fifty, he became consul. When Mithridates VI massacred 80,000 Romans in Asia, the senate gave Sulla the command, but the tribune Sulpicius forced through a law transferring it to Marius.

Sulla's response broke a four-century taboo: he led six legions into Rome itself, with only Lucullus among senior officers. The march was later cited by Caesar and every imperial usurper; it rewrote the grammar of late-Republican politics. He declared Marius public enemy, then sailed east. In 86 BC he stormed Athens, defeated Archelaus at Chaeronea and Orchomenus, and forced the Peace of Dardanus in 85 BC. He stripped Delphi and Olympia and levied crushing indemnities on Asia.

Returning in 83 BC, he defeated Carbo and the younger Marius and entered Rome again. In 82 BC he was appointed dictator for the making of laws, the first in 120 years and the first without time limit. His proscriptions named some ninety senators and 1,600 equites. Yet his programme was meticulous: he doubled the senate to 600, restricted the tribunate, and codified post-magisterial governorship in the leges Corneliae, shaping the skeleton Augustus inherited.

Around 79 BC Sulla resigned and retired to Campania. The surrender of unlimited power is unique in the ancient record. He died in 78 BC at sixty. Plutarch records his epitaph: that no friend ever did him a favour, and no enemy a wrong, that he did not repay in full.