The Office of Perpetual Dictator.When Sulla had destroyed his enemies he turned to the work of reconstructing the government in the interests of the senate and the aristocracy. The first question with Sulla was, What office should he hold in order to accomplish all he wished to do? The Gracchi had exercised their great influence by being elected tribunes. Marius had risen to power through his successive consulships. But the office neither of tribune nor of consul was suited to the purposes of Sulla. He wished for absolute powerin fact, to hold the royal imperium. But since the fall of the Tarquins no man had ever dared assume the name of “king.” Sulla was shrewd enough to see how he could exercise absolute power under another name than that of king. The dictator was, in fact, a sort of temporary king. To make this office perpetual would be practically to restore the royal power. Accordingly, Sulla had himself declared dictator to hold the office as long as he pleased. All his previous acts were then confirmed. He was given the full power of life and death, the power to confiscate property, to distribute lands, to create and destroy colonies, and to regulate the provinces.
Military Support of Sulla’s Power.Sulla believed that a ruler to be strong must always be ready to draw the sword. He therefore did not mean to lose his hold upon his veteran soldiers. When his twenty-three legions were disbanded, they were not scattered, but were settled in Italy as military colonies. Each legion formed the body of citizens in a certain town, the lands being confiscated and assigned to the soldiers. The legionaries were thus bound in gratitude to Sulla, and formed a devoted body of militia upon which he felt that he could rely. By means of these colonies, Sulla placed his power upon a military basis.
Restoration of the Senate.It was one of Sulla’s chief purposes to restore the senate to its former position as the chief ruling body. In the first place, he filled it up with three hundred new members, elected by the comitia tributa from the equites. The senatorial list was no longer to be made out by the censor, but everyone who had been quaestor was now legally qualified to be a senator. In the next place, the jurors (iudices) in criminal trials were henceforth to be taken from the senate, and not from the equestrian order. But as the new senators were from this order, the two classes became reconciled; and Sulla succeeded in doing what Drusus had failed to accomplish. But more than all, no laws could hereafter be passed by the assembly of the tribes until first approved by the senate.
Weakening of the Assembly.Sulla saw that the revolutionary acts of the last fifty years had been chiefly the work of the comitia tributa under the leadership of the tribunes. The other assemblythat of the centurieshad, it is true, equal power to make laws. But the assembly of the tribes was more democratic, and the making of laws had gradually passed into the hands of that body. Sulla took away from the tribes the legislative power, and gave to the senate the authority to propose all laws to be submitted to the centuries. The tendency of this change was to limit the assemblies to the mere business of electing the officersthe lower officers being elected by the tribes, and the higher officers by the centuries. To keep control of the elections Sulla enfranchised ten thousand slaves, and gave them the right to vote; these creatures of Sulla were known as “Cornelii,” or Sulla’s freedmen.
Changes in the Magistrates.In Sulla’s mind the most revolutionary and dangerous office in the government was that of the tribune. This officer hitherto could practically control the state. He had had the chief control of legislation; and also by his veto he could stop the wheels of government. Sulla changed all this. He limited the power of the tribune to simple “intercession,” that is, the protection of a citizen from an act of official injustice. He also provided that no tribune could be elected to the curule offices. The other officers were also looked after. The consuls and praetors must henceforth devote themselves to their civil duties in the city; and then as proconsuls and propraetors they might afterward be assigned by the senate to the governorship of the provinces. Again, no one could be consul until he had been praetor, nor praetor until he had been quaestor; and the old law was enforced, that no one could hold the same office the second time until after an interval of ten years.
Reform of the Judicial System.The most permanent part of Sulla’s reforms was the creation of a regular system of criminal courts. He organized permanent commissions (quaestiones perpetuae) for the trial of different kinds of crimes. Every criminal case was thus tried before a regular court, composed of a presiding judge, or praetor, and a body of jurymen, called iudices. We must remember that whenever the word iudices is used in the political history of this period it refers to these jurors in criminal cases, who were first chosen from the senate, then from the equites, and now under Sulla from the senate again. The organization of regular criminal courts by Sulla was the wisest and most valuable part of his legislation.
Sulla’s Abdication and Death.After a reign of three years (B.C. 82-79), and after having placed the government securely in the hands of the senate, as he supposed, Sulla resigned the dictatorship. He retired to his country house at Puteoli on the Bay of Naples. He spent the few remaining months of his life in writing his memoirs, which have unfortunately been lost. He hastened his end by dissipation, and died the next year (B.C. 78). The senate decreed him a public funeral, the most splendid that Rome had ever seen. His body was burned in the Campus Martius. Upon the monument which was erected to his memory were inscribed these words: “No friend ever did him a kindness, and no enemy a wrong, without being fully repaid.”
Sulla was a man of blood and iron. Cool and calculating, definite in his purpose, and unscrupulous in his methods, he was invincible in war and in peace. But the great part of the work which he seemed to accomplish so thoroughly did not long survive him. His great foreign enemy, Mithridates, soon renewed his wars with Rome. His boasted constitution fell in the next political conflict. The career of Sulla, like that of the Gracchi and of Marius, marks a stage in the decline of the republic and the establishment of the empire.
SELECTIONS FOR READING
Merivale, Gen. Hist., Ch. 32, “Rivalry of Marius and Sulla” (1).1
Mommsen, Vol. III., Bk. IV., Ch. 10, “The Sullan Constitution” (2).
Mommsen, abridged, Ch. 22, “Marius as a Revolutionist” (2).
How and Leigh, Ch. 39, “The Social War” (1).
Shuckburgh, Ch. 38, “Mithridates in Asia and Greece” (1).
Taylor, Ch. 11, “Cinna and Sulla” (1).
Beesly, Ch. 15, “Sulla’s Reactionary Measures” (6).
Freeman, Essay on “Sulla” (3).
Plutarch, “Marius,” “Sulla” (11).
THE ROMAN SENATE.Gow, pp. 193-199 (8); Pelham, pp. 159-167 (1); Shuckburgh, pp. 206-208, 397-399 (1); How and Leigh, p. 298 (1); Merivale, Gen. Hist., pp. 209-212 (1); Mommsen, Vol. 1., pp 406-412 (2); Ramsay and Lanciani, pp. 254-263 (8); Harper’s Dict. Antiqq., “Senatus” (8).
1 The figure in parenthesis refers to the number of the topic in the Appendix, where a fuller title of the book will be found.