Talk:Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Has anyone read Roman Blood by Steven Saylor? It's a murder mystery set at the time of Sulla, and goes into detail about Sulla's history that isn't here. I'm just wondering if anyone knows how much of Saylor's work is true. RickK 03:16, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I haven't read it - there is some more known about Sulla's life, but part of it is known to have been falsified by ancient authors, and modern scholarly accounts generally have to be pretty careful about which bits they take at face value. Stan 04:52, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I share Stan's preocupations but just out of curiosity, Rick, can you tell us what he says about Sulla? Muriel Gottrop 09:57, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

He said that Sulla got his start in society by having an affair with a rich elderly widow, Nicopolis, and being named her heir in her will. It also says that his father's second wife inherited a great deal of money after Sulla's father's death, and he was HER heir as well, so that by the time his stepmother died, he was moederately wealthy. The King of Numidia, in commemoration of the defeat of Jugurtha, sent Rome a statue of himself, handing a chained Jugurtha to Sulla, and Marius was missing. When the statue was put up on the Capitoline, Marius became furious and demanded that it be taken down. When the Senate voted to send Sulla to Greece to fight Mithridates, the Marius faction, led by Sulpicius, pressured the Senate to name Marius the commander. Sulla left Rome and took the matter direct to the troops, who stoned their Marius-appointed officers to death. One of Sulpicius' slaves betrayed Sulpicius. In reward, Sulla had the slave freed, then thrown to his death from the Tapreian Rock. Sulla was the first Roman conqueror of Greece to sack the Greek temples instead of worshipping at them. He besieged Athens, starving the inhabitants, and then slaughtered them when the walls were breached. He then marched on Rome, and met the son of Marius in battle at Signia, where 20,000 Marian troops were killed and 8000 captured, whereas Sulla lost 23 men. Once he captured Rome again, he had the 6000 defending Samnites and Lucanians slaughtered in the Circus Maximus, their screams heard while he was addressing the Senate.

Saylor also mentions that Sulla married 5 times, divorcing his 4th wife on her death bed.

• the lover and stepmother are mentioned in Plutarch, so i will include them in a next version
• i only could find 4 wives: i think the 4th you mentioned must be Dalmatica
• i'm not sure about the statue story
• but the Sulpicius attempt to remove command is true, as well as the bloody greek campaign
• the circus maximus incident is unprobable: Sulla was ruthless, but in an elegant way...
• maybe Stan knows more
• Cheers, Muriel Gottrop 22:45, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
• PS: Dear Rick, maybe you can add these books to Fiction set in Ancient Rome

It looks like all this is just from Plutarch's life of Sulla. Googling "plutarch sulla" gets you dozens of online versions to review. How much is true? Well, the OCD article sums him up as "tantalizing and treacherous to the historian", and although Sulla was much closer to living memory than, say, Theseus, the Romans always seem to be very credulous when it comes to vicious rumors. We'll probably never know how much is real, how much is exaggerated, and how much is simply made up by Sulla's enemies (gee, sounds like I could be talking about the current administration! :-) ) Stan 04:46, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

According to Saylor, the wife Sulla divorced on her deathbed was Metella. RickK 04:50, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• Caecilia Metella Dalmatica ;) And Plutarch really has is favourites: he can write about Pompey, for instance, in an adoring way, comparing him to Alexander almost weeping his death. Like Stan said, it's not easy to distinguish truth and legend and so, i think we should avoid including bombastic theories, like the way Sulla earned his money to get into the Senate.

I don't know much Latin, but judging from other cognomina, shouldn't the names of Sulla's daughters/granddaughters be "Sullis," not "Sulla?" Kuralyov 19:18, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)