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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Sulla Biography SULLA, LUCIUS CORNELIUS (surnamed FELIX ) (138-78 B.C.). A Roman general and statesman, born at Rome of a family belonging to the Gens Cornelia. In 107 B.C. he was elected quaestor, and sent to Africa with cavalry that the consul Marius (q.v.) required for prosecuting the war with Jugurtha (q.v.). He induced Bocchus, the Mauretanian King, to surrender Jugurtha (106 B.C.). In the campaigns that followed (104-101 B.C.) against the Cimbri and the Teutones, Sulla's reputation continued to rise. For several years after the destruction of the barbarians Sulla lived quietly, taking no part in public affairs: but in 93 B.C. he won the praetorship by a liberal distribution of money among the people. Next year he was sent to Cilicia as propraetor, to put Ariobarzanes back on the throne of Cappadocia, from which he had been driven by Mithridates. In the Social War (q.v.) the successes of Sulla threw those of Marius into the shade, and the mortification of the latter was bitter. In 88 B.C. Sulla was elected consul with Q. Pompeius Rufus, and the Senate conferred on him the command of the Mithridatic War. Allying himself with the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus, a political adventurer in difficulties, Marius placed himself at the head of the new Italian party, on whom the rights of Roman citizenship had been conferred, and Sulla was compelled to flee to his camp at Nola in Campania. There, finding the soldiers full of enthusiasm, he resolved to lead them against the pseudo-government at Rome. The Marian party was overthrown and Marius fled to Africa. Sulla was in the East, 87-83 B.C., and finally forced Mithridates to sue for peace, and returned to Italy 83 B.C. Marius was now dead, but his party was strong and again in revolt; yet before the close of 82 B.C. the Marian party in Italy was utterly crushed. In Spain, however, it held out under Sertorius (q.v.). Sulla caused himself to be appointed dictator, an office which he held until 79 B.C. In 81 came the fearful period of the proscriptions, the object of which was to extirpate the Marian party. His dictatorship was signalized by the framing of a series of laws the design of which was to restore the ancient power of the senate and the aristocracy. Consult: Plutarch, Life of Sulla, edited by H. A. Holden (New York, 1886); A. H. Beesly, The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla (ib., 1878); C. W. Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen (London, 1902); and the article "Cornelius III," in Friedrich Lübker, Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums, vol. i (8th ed., Leipzig, 1914). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 650. |