Sulla

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Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix.

This is a subject which has been covered endlessly, and I will not try to better it here.  Suffice it to say that when Sulla got back from the eastern wars, he reformed Rome, slaughtering thousands to do so, illegally assumed the Dictatorship, a very rare conference of power in Roman history, and remade the Senate and the rules for election.  One of the very few to defy him was Caesar, Julius, who refused to divorce his wife when ordered to do so.  (Such an order was a political move that meant a great deal in Rome, and to defy it was a certain death sentence).  Caesar got away with this, just.  He found it expedient to go take up an appointment in the provinces where he managed to get captured by pirates, which was the equivalent of a flat tire on a journey today.  He later crucified the pirates, as he told them he would.  And Caesar was an effeminate swish, or so people thought until it was too late.  But I digress.


 
 Here Cicero puts the nail into Cataline's coffin.  Cicero was a slippery customer who had no real character.  Cataline may or may not be one of the most slandered men in history.  This extraordinary painting by Cesare Maccari depicts the action, incorrectly, in the Temple of Jupiter and not the Senate Romanus.  The man depicting Cataline is one of history's great casting choices.  Just perfect.
 

    I identify with Mr. Felix.  After he gained supreme power, Sulla gave it all up and lived as a common citizen, unguarded, with a retinue of actors, gladiators, and libertines of all stripes.  No one ever harmed him.  A boy once taunted him as he walked home, and he ignored him.


Sulla made much of a transvestite in his court, Metrobius, but he seems to have had a bizarre sense of humor.  It makes no difference.  For all his crimes, he had absolute power, relinquished it, and died at home.  I find him most admirable.  Not, of course, that I have ever fantasized about seizing power and stacking up heads.  Heaven forfend!


(Painting by Vasily Vershchagin, The Apotheosis of War. 1871). 
 
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.  They kill us for their sport.

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