Lucius Sulla
historical figure · 5 works · 5 mentions · 6 anchored passages
Sulla · that man
in the texts
Consolation to Marcia
Roman dictator known for the surname Felix ('the fortunate'), who lost a son without it diminishing his fortune or fierceness.
Lucius Sulla lost a son, and that loss neither blunted his malice and his fierce valour against enemies and citizens, nor made it appear that he had falsely usurped that surname—which he assumed after losing his son—fearing neither the hatred of men, by whose ill those too-favourable fortunes of his were upheld, nor the envy of the gods, whose reproach it was that Sulla was so fortunate.
On Anger
Roman dictator who ordered the piecemeal torture and killing of Marcus Marius
Marius was worthy to suffer those things, Sulla to command them, Catiline to do them, but the republic was unworthy to receive into its own body alike the swords of its enemies and of its avengers.
Upon Marcus Marius, to whom the people had set up statues quarter by quarter, to whom they offered incense and wine, Lucius Sulla ordered the legs to be broken, the eyes torn out, the tongue cut off, the hands cut off, and, as though he killed him as often as he wounded him, mangled him little by little and limb by limb.
On Benefits
Roman dictator, cited as an example of ingratitude and cruelty for his proscriptions and massacre of surrendered legions.
3 Ungrateful Lucius Sulla, who healed his country with remedies harsher than the perils were, who, when he had marched through human blood from the citadel of Praeneste all the way to the Colline gate, gave other battles in the city, other slaughters:
On Mercy
Roman dictator described as insatiably cruel, responsible for the massacre of seven thousand citizens and dismissive of the bloodshed before the Senate.
But of Sulla more presently, when we inquire how one ought to be angry with enemies—especially if citizens, broken off from the same body, have gone over to the name of enemy;
for both Dionysius the Elder can rightly and deservedly be preferred to many kings, and what forbids Lucius Sulla to be called a tyrant, for whom only the lack of enemies set an end to killing?
Though he may have stepped down from his dictatorship and given himself back to the toga, yet what tyrant ever drank human blood so greedily as that man who ordered seven thousand Roman citizens to be butchered, and, when, sitting nearby at the temple of Bellona, he had heard the cry of so many thousands groaning beneath the sword, said to the terrified senate:
On the Shortness of Life
Roman dictator credited with introducing unfettered lions to the circus and with being the last to extend the pomerium.
that Sulla was the last of the Romans to extend the pomerium, which by the custom of the ancients it was usual to extend when Italian, but never when provincial, land had been gained.
Will you allow anyone to care, too, about this—that Lucius Sulla was the first to let loose lions in the circus, though otherwise they were exhibited in fetters, with javelin-throwers sent by King Bocchus to dispatch them?