Roman Civil War: Master of the Republic (Part 4)

The Rest Is History

This episode concludes the story of Lucius Cornelius Sulla's rise to power, detailing his return from victory in the East and his ruthless c

Key takeaways

• Sulla was the first Roman general to march his army on Rome, breaking a long-standing taboo and setting a precedent for future dictators like Caesar and Augustus.
• The conflict between Sulla and the Marians was driven by personal rivalry rather than ideological differences, highlighting that Roman civil wars were about power and revenge, not principles.

Main topics

• Sulla's military campaigns against Mithridates
• The political rivalry between Sulla and Gaius Marius' son

Notable quotes

"Once a taboo is broken, it's very difficult to restore it."

Conclusion

Sulla's victory marked a turning point in Roman history—his brutal yet constitutionally motivated rule

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) On the 6th of July, 83 BC, the largest and holiest building in Rome was struck by lightning. The ancient Temple of Jupiter loomed on the summit of the Capitoline Hill. Here, beneath a ceiling sheathed in gold, amid trophies of statues and shields, the Guardian of Rome had his shrine. But now Jupiter had decided to destroy his temple with a thunderbolt. What was the cause of the gods' anger? As the crowds gathered to watch the disaster, the flames billowed sparks and smoke across the forum. This was the heart of Rome, stretching all the way from the capital, Hill of the Gods, to the palatine, Hill of Power. The forum, along with the Circus Maximus, was one of two open spaces within the city walls where Rome's citizens could mix freely. Here was the comitium, where citizens gathered to hear orators address them from the rostra, the curved speaker's platform made from the prows of long-ago-captured ships. Immediately adjacent to it was the Curia, where the Senate met, and a little to its south the Temple of Castor and Pollux, where the assemblies would be summoned to debate and vote on laws. Along this axis of buildings and open spaces lay the great theatre. of the Republic's political life, Rome's most potent expression of her citizens' liberties and values. All the more portentous, then, that as the fire on the Capitol raged, it dyed the forum below it angry red. Red, the colour of Mars, the god of war and bloodshed. So, if you think that was a very melodramatic reading, charged with the sort of port wine soaked tones of one of London's greatest club men. You would be right. That was from Rubicon by our very own Tom Holland, describing an ominous moment in the descent of the Roman Republic into its first civil war. The gods are angry, but Tom, with whom? Well. Speaker 3 (2:30) I mean, that is the question, isn't it? Because we left you last time with the Republic in the shadow of two great patrician strongmen. And the first of these is Sulla, a man who is at once completely charming and utterly sinister. He's very cultured. He's unbelievably brutal. He is a conservative, but he is also a revolutionary because he is the first man ever to lead a Roman army on Rome. So Sulla had led his army on Rome in 88 BC and in the intervening years, so between his march on Rome and the burning of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. He has achieved remarkable things. So he has taken the war to Mithridates, who was this bold and ruthless and vindictive king who had conquered the Roman province of Asia and invaded Greece. And in only three years, Sulla had reversed all of Mithridates' conquests. He had brought Greece and the province of Asia once again to acknowledge the might of Rome. And Mithridates had retreated to within his own borders, and he was obliged to accept Roman weapons inspectors to make sure that he wasn't rebuilding his offensive capabilities. So you would think that back in Rome, the news of Sulla's triumphs would be greeted with praise and with thanksgiving and with all kinds of celebrations, but not a bit of it. Because back in Rome, the city is ruled by Sulla's enemies, and they have responded to Sulla's great feats by declaring him a public enemy and raising his house and running his family and friends out of the city. And Sulla is not happy about this. This is not a man that you offend recklessly. And in 84, he had written a letter to the Senate and Arian, the Greek historian, describes what he said. He said he would be back very soon to take his vengeance on behalf of all those who had been wronged and on behalf of Rome itself upon the guilty men. So a very, very ominous Speaker 2 (4:52) threat. Oh, a chilling warning. Sulla has lots of enemies, but there's one in particular, isn't there? Particularly formidable, but also the particular object of his hatred and for completely understandable reasons. Now, we talked about him last time. This is a man called Sinha, who is very able, very ruthless, very opportunistic, who is just as dedicated to the pursuit of victory and total defeat of his opponent as Sulla is. And remind us about Sinha. So Sinha... He'd been elected as consul, hadn't he, just before Sulla went off to fight his war. And Sulla had said, you've got to swear an oath that you won't attack me. Speaker 3 (5:31) And Speaker 2 (5:32) Cinna had Speaker 3 (5:32) said, fine. And then the moment Sulla went, he stabbed Sulla in the back. And basically for the past three years, while Sulla's been away fighting Mithridates, Cinna has been the dominant figure in Roman politics. And he had upheld his power in a completely unconstitutional manner by holding consulship after consulship after consulship. in succession. By 84 BC, when Sulla sent that threatening letter, Cinna was on to his fourth consecutive consulship. This is basically the closest to being ruled by a permanent autocrat that the Roman Republic has yet experienced. So again, a kind of ominous portent perhaps of the way that things are going. However, as Cinna prepares for Sulla's return, he's not alone. because he's dependent for his position of authority on the support of a quite sizable faction. And these are the Marians, the followers of Gaius Marius, who for decades had been Rome's most successful and celebrated general until Sulla had replaced him. And Marius and Sulla had ended up as very, very bitter rivals. Now, Marius himself by this point is dead. He'd had this kind of massive bender and essentially kind of collapsed of overindulgence, very elderly by this point, kind of in 70, I think. So in the Mafia sense, he has left his family, his familia. He has a lot of supporters, a lot of people who have always backed Marius and have grown very rich off backing him. And just because Marius himself has gone doesn't mean that his familia is now dead. And the guy who is inherited The leadership of this familia is the son of Marius, who by 84 is 26 years old. But by virtue of being the head of this kind of Marian clan, he's already a very serious player in Roman politics, even though he hasn't as yet held any magistracies at all. And we mentioned him, we described him last time. He's very good looking. He's a playboy. And he's eager to show himself his father's son. Speaker 2 (7:44) Wants to prove himself a chip off the old block, I guess. And just on the Marian faction. So in the previous episodes, we talked about how Marius had been a provincial outsider, how he'd appealed to the masses, the populares, all of this kind of thing. Is that class element? and sort of as it were regional elements, I suppose, is that still an element of the civil war between Sinner and his people and Sulla and his people? Or is this generated into a kind of Wars of the Roses struggle between the elites? On one level, Speaker 3 (8:14) because Marius was an out-of-towner and he'd always favoured enfranchisement of the Italians who've been in this great war. We might come to that in a minute. So he is backed by the Italians, basically, and they view Sulla as their great enemy. But in general, the fact that a powerful Roman aristocrat or player appeals over the head of the Senate to the people doesn't mean that they're socialist or that they themselves are necessarily identifying themselves with the masses of the plebeians in the Roman slums any more than the fact that, I don't know, Donald Trump is very popular. with people who don't have high incomes mean that Donald Trump himself is from the masses. Essentially, the Romans, it's less about policy. It's more about vibe. It's about whether you are seen to be on the side of the people, whether you like them, I guess, whether you enjoy their pleasures. And if you don't, then you are part of the aristocratic faction. But basically, everybody is aristocratic in the upper echelons of Roman society. and it's important to keep all that in mind. Ultimately, it's not a civil war about principle. It's a civil war about power. This is why someone like Sinha, someone like Marius Junior they are never going to arrive at an accommodation with Sulla. They are complete diehards. And it's not over points of principle. It's over issues of personal ambition and rivalry. Speaker 2 (9:48) Yeah. But they don't underestimate Sulla, though, do they? I mean, they know by now what an absolutely implacable and formidable opponent he is. I mean, he's an outlaw. His property has been confiscated and the property of his supporters. He doesn't have a voice in Rome. And yet, on the other hand, He's an extremely practiced and accomplished commander. He has his legions, whose loyalty to him, I'm assuming, because they fought in the East, Speaker 3 (10:14) must Speaker 2 (10:16) be absolutely unwavering at this point. Speaker 3 (10:19) Yeah, because Sulla's provided them with enormous amounts of loot. Of course. I mean, they all absolutely love him. Speaker 2 (10:26) So how are Cinna and the Marians going to... I mean, what do they have to compete with that? Well, Cinna has Speaker 3 (10:31) legions as a consul. Marius has supporters by virtue of his name. And then, of course, there are the Italians, the people who had been at war with the Romans a decade before and now have largely been pacified, and lots of them are being enfranchised. So essentially, the way that the Romans had solved that war had stopped the Italians from breaking away. There was a kind of two-pronged strategy. So one of them was to give actually what the Italians had always been fighting for, which was access to full Roman citizenship. And from the beginning of the war, the Senate had been saying to Italian communities that didn't revolt or laid their arms down, look, you can have the citizenship. But also this had been combined with very brutal military suppression of those who were still up in arms. And Sulla's role in these twin strategies had not made him popular with the Italians. So when it came to the enfranchisement of the Italians, Sulla was always dragging his feet. He was felt by the Italians not to be keen on this process. He was clearly not an enthusiast for it. He was agreeing to it reluctantly. And as a field commander in the war, he had been by far the most lethal and brutal of all the generals and therefore the most successful as well. particularly targeted are people called the Samnites. Yeah, Speaker 2 (11:56) we talked about them. Speaker 3 (11:57) The guys who are prone to shaving their private parts in public. But they're also... They're very effective fighters, and for this reason, Sulla had particularly targeted them. The Samnites had borne the brunt of Sulla's reprisals. Samnium, which is this stretch of the Apennines, which rise to the east of the Bay of Naples, south of Rome, this remains largely un-pacified. So here, should the Marians wish to employ them, I think there is a third ready resource of men who are willing to oppose Sulla. So you have Sinner's armies, you have the Marians, and potentially you have the Samnites as well. Speaker 2 (12:40) Right. So what is Sinner's plan? What's his strategy? He could wait for Sulla to land in Italy and deal with him then, or he could take the offensive and go after him in Greece. I have to say people going after Roman adversaries in Greece doesn't tend to end well. Anyway, let's see what happens to Sinner. Well, Speaker 3 (13:00) I mean- You're right. Basically, every Roman general who crosses to Greece to fight civil war, it all goes wrong. And Cinna's attempt to do this is the first in a long line. So what does he do? He and his fellow consul, they raise their armies, they go down with the Marians, they go to a port called Ancona, which is in Piscinum, this region on the east coast of central Italy. And an initial contingent crosses the Adriatic. All is looking well. And then there's a second fleet crosses with men, and this is hit by a storm and the ships are forced back into harbor. When the storm dies down and Cinna says, okay, we're ready to go. Can you board the ships and we'll continue with the crossing? They say they're not going to go. There's a mass process of desertion and the mutiny starts to spread throughout the camp. Cinna is furious at this. He's being directly insulted. He's being disobeyed. He is a consul of the Roman people, and so he summons his men to an assembly to remind them of their duty. The men gather in a great assembly. Cinna starts to march through them to take the rostrum. But as he's pushing his way through the mass of soldiers and his lictors, his bodyguards, each consul has 12 of these lictors armed with rods, they're kind of beating away through. One of the rods catches a soldier painfully. and the soldier hits the lictor in the face. And there is then an absolutely massive pile on. The soldiers start to throw stones at Sinner and his bodyguard. They then draw their swords and they stab Sinner to death. What? So Sinner never even makes it across the Greece. He is dead in this port town of Ancona. Sinner, Speaker 2 (14:44) what an end for him. Oh my God, no one saw that coming. Speaker 3 (14:47) Yeah. Well, it's a massive stroke of luck for Sulla. Speaker 2 (14:52) Well, he was Felix, wasn't he? He was blessed with the fortune by Venus, I think. Yes. And so he's laughing. He's absolutely laughing once again. He absolutely is. Speaker 3 (15:02) I think for two reasons. And the first is that Sinner himself, despite the fact that he's got himself murdered by his own troops, I mean, he is an effective figure, the most effective of Sulla's opponents. And so his loss is a real blow. to the cause of those who want to oppose Sulla because really the only heavyweight who's left is Marius Junior. Speaker 2 (15:26) But Speaker 3 (15:27) we've said he's only 26 and a 26-year-old could never become a consul. That would be impossible. So essentially, the Marians are left with a massive leadership vacuum. The second reason why this is great news for Sulla is that the contrast between the evident devotion that is felt by Sulla's troops for their general and the death of Cinna in a mutiny is a terrible look for the Marians. And I think that it helps to persuade a number of key waverers, people who've been sitting on the fence wondering which way to jump. actually that they should probably throw their lot in with Sulla. He has the look of a winner, even though ostensibly he's outnumbered. Among the ranks of those who at this point start to join with Sulla, there are two of them in particular who will become very famous. Both of them at this point are very young. The first of these is the head of a family, celebrated, or you might say notorious, for its wealth. This is a man called Marcus Licinius Crassus. Great to have him on Speaker 2 (16:45) the show. Great to have him Speaker 3 (16:46) on the show. Crassus' father was a very reputable family. He'd had a dazzling political career, but he'd also had a very unsanatorial interest in the import-export business. Senators were not supposed to busy themselves with trade. but Crassus' dad had. And as a result, he'd become obscenely rich and he'd won himself the nickname Deves or the rich moneybags. And Crassus' dad had been an opponent of Marius and so he had been killed in the pogrom of 87 when Speaker 2 (17:22) Marius returned and was psychotic and killing all his enemies. Speaker 3 (17:26) and Crassus' elder brother as well. And so that had left the young Crassus, who at this point was still only in his early 20s, as the heir to the family name and crucially to its fabulous wealth. But Crassus too, of course, he's being targeted by the Marians too. And so he flees Italy and he takes ship for Spain, where his father had been a governor. And so he has