Sylla

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was by birth a patrician, of the class one might call the well-born; and among his ancestors, they say, was a certain Rufinus who had been consul, though his disgrace became more famous than his honor. For he was found to possess more than ten pounds' weight of wrought silver, which the law forbade, and on this account he was expelled from the senate. Those who came after him lived on in reduced circumstances, and Sulla himself was raised on no great abundance of his father's property.

As a young man he lodged with others, paying no great rent, a fact which was later thrown in his face as undeserved good fortune; for when, after his campaign in Libya, he was giving himself airs and speaking grandly, one of the noble and good men is said to have remarked to him, "How can you be an honest man, when your father left you nothing and yet you have come to possess so much?"

For indeed, since men's lives no longer kept to a straight and pure standard of conduct but had declined and taken up a taste for luxury and extravagance, it was held an equal reproach both to those who had squandered an existing fortune and to those who had failed to preserve their inherited poverty.

Later, when Sulla was already in power and putting many men to death, a freedman, thought to be hiding one of the proscribed and about to be hurled from the rock for it, reproached Sulla, saying that for a long time they had lodged in the same tenement house, he himself paying two thousand sesterces for the upper rooms and Sulla three thousand for those below, so that the difference between their fortunes came to a thousand sesterces, which amount to two hundred and fifty Attic drachmas. Such, then, are the stories told about Sulla's early fortune.

As for his bodily appearance, the rest is visible in his statues, but the fierce, cold blue-grey of his eyes was made more terrible to look upon by the color of his face. For a rough redness broke out over it, scattered here and there among the white; and from this, they say, came the nickname given him for his complexion, and one of the jesters at Athens made a joke on it in verse: "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with barley-meal."

It is not out of place to use such evidence concerning a man who is said to have been by nature so fond of jesting that, when young and still without reputation, he lived and caroused among mimes and buffoons, and later, once he had become master of all things, he would gather the most impudent performers from the stage and theater and spend his days drinking and trading wisecracks with them, conduct thought unbecoming his age and, besides disgracing the dignity of his office, one that let slip many matters requiring his attention.

For Sulla, while at dinner, could never be brought to anything serious; though at other times he was active and rather grim, he underwent a sudden transformation the moment he gave himself over to company and drink, becoming tame toward mimic actors and dancers and pliable and easily approached by anyone. From this relaxation there seems to have grown, as a kind of disease, his readiness for love affairs and the free flow of his pleasure-seeking, which he did not give up even in old age.

He continued, while still young, to be in love with a certain Metrobius, one of the stage performers. And this is what happened to him: having begun an affair with a common but wealthy woman named Nicopolis, through familiarity and the charm he had from his youth, he came to occupy the position of her beloved, and when she died he was left her heir. He also inherited from his stepmother, having been loved by her as a son; and from these sources he came into moderate wealth.

Having been appointed quaestor under Marius in his first consulship, he sailed with him to Libya to make war on Jugurtha. Once at the camp he made himself distinguished in various ways, and when the occasion offered, he used it well and won the friendship of Bocchus, king of the Numidians. For when Bocchus's envoys, having escaped a Numidian band of robbers, were received by Sulla with kindness, he gave them gifts and a safe escort and sent them back.

Bocchus, who had for a long time hated and feared Jugurtha, his son-in-law, and who now, since Jugurtha had been defeated and fled to him, was plotting against him, summoned Sulla, wishing the capture and surrender of Jugurtha to be effected through him rather than through himself. Having conferred with Marius and taken a few soldiers, Sulla undertook the greatest of dangers, since, trusting a barbarian faithless even to his closest kin, he placed himself in another's hands in order to take that other captive.

Nevertheless Bocchus, once he had both men in his power, and having put himself under the necessity of betraying one or the other, and after much wavering of mind, at last confirmed his first act of treachery and handed Jugurtha over to Sulla. So it was Marius who celebrated the triumph over this; but the glory of the success, which Marius's jealousy attributed to Sulla, quietly vexed Marius.

For Sulla himself, being by nature boastful, and now for the first time, having risen from a humble and obscure life, held in some regard among the citizens and tasting the sweetness of honor, carried his love of distinction so far that he had a signet ring engraved with a depiction of the deed, and wore it, using it continually ever after. The design showed Bocchus handing over Jugurtha and Sulla receiving him.

These things vexed Marius; and yet, still reckoning Sulla too small a man to be jealous of, he continued to employ him in his campaigns, in his second consulship as legate, in his third as tribune, and through him many useful things were accomplished. For as legate he captured Copillus, the chieftain of the Tectosages, and as tribune he persuaded the Marsi, a large and thickly settled people, to enter into friendship and alliance with the Romans,

and from this, perceiving that Marius was displeased with him and no longer gladly offering him opportunities for action but rather obstructing his advancement, he attached himself to Catulus, Marius's colleague in office, a decent man but rather sluggish in warfare; and being trusted by him with the first and greatest matters, he advanced at once in power and reputation.

In war he captured a great part of the barbarians in the Alps, and when the army's supply of grain ran short, he took charge of the matter and produced such abundance that, while Catulus's soldiers lived in plenty, he was able to supply Marius's men as well besides. He says himself that this vexed Marius exceedingly.

Thus the enmity between them, taking so slight and boyish a beginning, and then proceeding through civil bloodshed and irremediable factions to tyranny and the confounding of all affairs, proved Euripides a wise man and one skilled in the diseases of states, when he counseled that ambition be guarded against as the most deadly and worst of spirits for those who cultivate it.

Sulla, thinking that the reputation he had won from his military exploits would suffice for a political career, gave himself over, straight from the campaign, to seeking the favor of the people, and stood for the office of city praetor, and was defeated; the blame for this he lays upon the mob. For he says that they, knowing his friendship with Bocchus, and expecting that if he held the office of aedile before the praetorship he would put on splendid hunting shows and contests of Libyan beasts, elected others as praetors so as to force him into the aedileship.

But it appears that Sulla, in not admitting the true cause of his failure, is refuted by the facts themselves. For in the following year he did obtain the praetorship, having won over the people partly by flattery and partly by money. Hence, when he was praetor and had spoken angrily to Caesar, saying he would use his own official authority against him, Caesar laughed and said, "You are right to call the office your own, for you have bought it."

After his praetorship he was sent to Cappadocia, with the ostensible purpose of the expedition being to restore Ariobarzanes, but the true reason being to check Mithridates, who was meddling and gathering to himself a power and dominion no less than what he already had. He set out with no sizable army under his personal command, relying instead on the eager help supplied by the allies, and having killed many Cappadocians and even more Armenians who came to their aid, he drove out Gordius and established Ariobarzanes as king.

While he was staying by the Euphrates, there came to meet him Orobazus the Parthian, an envoy of King Arsaces, the two nations never before having had any dealings with one another; and this too is thought to have been a mark of Sulla's great good fortune, that he should be the first Roman with whom the Parthians, in need of alliance and friendship, entered into negotiation. It is said that on that occasion he set out three seats, one for Ariobarzanes, one for Orobazus, and one for himself, and sat between the two of them to conduct the business.

For this the king of the Parthians afterward put Orobazus to death, while some praised Sulla for having lorded it over the barbarians, others blamed him as vulgar and out of season in his self-importance. It is recorded that one of the men who had come down with Orobazus, a Chaldean, gazing intently upon Sulla's face and studying carefully the movements of both his mind and his body,

and examining his nature according to the principles of his art, said that it was inevitable this man should become supremely great, and that he wondered even now how he could bear not to be first of all men. On his return, Censorinus brought against him an indictment for bribery, on the ground that he had collected great sums of money contrary to law from a friendly and allied kingdom; but Censorinus did not appear at the trial, and dropped the accusation.

Yet the strife between him and Marius was fanned anew, taking as fresh occasion the vanity of Bocchus, who, currying favor with the people at Rome and at the same time gratifying Sulla, set up on the Capitol statues bearing trophies, and beside them a golden figure of Jugurtha being handed over by himself to Sulla.

At this Marius was deeply angered and tried to have the statues torn down, while others rallied to defend Sulla, and the city was on the very point of being set ablaze by the two of them, when the Social War, long smoldering, flared up against Rome and for the time checked their quarrel. In this war, which proved the greatest and most varied and brought the Romans the most numerous and gravest dangers, Marius, unable to accomplish anything great, showed that the skill of war requires the vigor and strength of youth, while Sulla, by his many notable deeds, won the reputation of a great commander among the citizens, of the greatest among his friends, and of the most fortunate even among his enemies.

But he did not suffer the same fate as Timotheus, son of Conon, who, when his enemies attributed his successes to Fortune and had paintings made showing him asleep while Fortune cast her net over the cities, took it ill and grew angry at those who did this, as though they were robbing him of the glory of his achievements, and once said to the Athenian people, on returning from a campaign that seemed to have gone well, "In this campaign at least, men of Athens, Fortune has no share."

Against Timotheus, then, for showing himself so jealous of his honor, the divine power is said to have retaliated so childishly that he accomplished nothing brilliant thereafter, but failed utterly in his undertakings and, coming into collision with the people, was at last driven from the city. Sulla, on the other hand, not only gladly welcomed such congratulation and enthusiasm for his good fortune, but even magnified it and joined in deifying his own successes, attaching them to Fortune, whether out of boastfulness or because he was truly so disposed toward the divine,

for indeed he has written in his memoirs that of the actions he thought he had planned well, those undertaken not according to calculation but on the spur of the moment turned out for the better. And further, from the things he says about being better suited to fortune than to war, he seems to assign more to fortune than to his own valor, and to make himself altogether the creature of the divine power; for he even attributes to a kind of divine good luck his harmony with Metellus, a man of equal rank and his kinsman by marriage, since Metellus, who was expected to cause him much trouble, proved instead the gentlest of partners in his command,

and further, in the memoirs which he dedicated in writing to Lucullus, he advises him to consider nothing so certain as whatever the divine power enjoins upon him by night; and he records that when he himself was being sent out with an army against the Social War, a great chasm opened in the earth near Laverna, out of which much fire burst forth and a bright flame shot up toward the sky.

The diviners, he says, declared that a good man, distinguished and extraordinary in appearance, would take command and free the city from the troubles then afflicting it; and Sulla says that he himself was this man, for it was peculiar to his appearance that his hair had a golden gleam, and he was not ashamed to bear witness to his own valor after such fine and great deeds. So much, then, for his claims to divine favor. In other respects he seems to have been an uneven man and inconsistent with himself — taking away much, granting still more, honoring beyond reason, insulting beyond reason, courting those he needed, playing the coquette toward suppliants, so that it was hard to know whether he was by nature more disdainful or more obsequious.

As for the inconsistency of his punishments — flogging some men to death for the slightest causes, and again bearing the greatest wrongs with mildness, and reconciling himself to irreparable injuries with easy good humor, while pursuing small and trivial offenses with executions and confiscations of property — one might explain it by saying that he was by nature harsh in anger and vindictive, but that he would relax his severity when calculation showed it to be to his advantage,

In this very Social War, when his soldiers had used clubs and stones on a man of generalship, a legate named Albinus, he let so great a wrong pass and did not pursue it, but even boasted and spread the story that they would be more eager for the war on this account, healing their fault through manly courage. He gave no thought to those who accused him of this, for he was already intent on overthrowing Marius, and since the war against the allies seemed to be reaching its end, he was courting the army under his own command with a view to being appointed general against Mithridates.

And on returning to the city he was elected consul together with Quintus Pompeius, being fifty years of age, and he made a most illustrious marriage with Caecilia, daughter of Metellus the high priest. At this many songs were sung against him by the common people, and many of the foremost men resented it, thinking that a man they had judged worthy of the consulship was not worthy of the woman,

as Titus says. Nor was she the only wife he married, but first, while still a young man, he had Ilia, who bore him a little daughter; then after her, Aelia; and third, Cloelia, whom he put away as barren, honorably and with kind words, adding gifts besides; yet a few days later, when he took Metella to wife, he seemed for this reason not to have accused Cloelia fairly.

Metella, however, he continued in all things to court, so that even the Roman people, when they desired to bring back the exiles of Marius' party and Sulla refused, begged Metella to intercede in supplication. It seemed too that even toward the Athenians, once he had taken their city, he behaved more harshly because they had mocked and reviled Metella from the wall with taunting verses. But these things belong to a later time.

At that time, however, he considered the consulship a small thing compared to what was to come, and his mind was aflutter over the Mithridatic war. Opposed to him rose Marius, driven by mad ambition and love of honor, passions that never grow old, a man heavy now in body and lately worn out from his campaigns by old age, yet yearning for wars abroad and across the sea.

And when Sulla had set out to the camp to attend to the unfinished business, Marius himself, staying at home, was fashioning that most ruinous sedition — one that all the wars together had not done such harm to Rome as it did — even as the divine power foreshowed it to them. For fire flared up of its own accord from the standard-poles that bore the military emblems and was with difficulty put out, and three ravens brought their young out into the road and devoured them, then carried the remains back again into the nest.

And when mice gnawed at gold dedicated in a temple, the temple-keepers caught one female in a trap, and she, giving birth right there in the trap, consumed three of her own five young. And greatest of all, out of a cloudless and clear sky there sounded the voice of a trumpet, drawing out a shrill and mournful note, so that all were struck out of their senses and cowered at its immensity. The learned men of the Etruscans declared that the portent signified a change to another race and a recasting of the world,

for there are, they say, eight races in all, differing from one another in their ways of life and character, and to each a number of years has been allotted by god, determined by the revolution of a Great Year. And whenever this comes to its end, and another begins, some marvelous sign moves from earth or heaven, so that it becomes clear to those who have studied such matters and learned them at once that men have come to be using different manners and different modes of life, and are cared for by the gods either less or more than those before them.

For in other respects too, they say, great innovations occur at the changing of the races, and divination at one time increases in honor and hits the mark in its predictions, sending forth clear and manifest signs from the divine, while at another time, in a different race, it fares humbly, being for the most part improvised and grasping at the future through dim and obscure instruments. Such were the tales told by the most learned of the Etruscans, those who were thought to know more of these things than the rest.

While the Senate was occupied with the seers over these matters and sitting in the temple of Enyo, a sparrow flew in, in full view of all, carrying a cicada in its beak, and dropping part of it, left it behind, while carrying off the rest as it departed. The diviners of prodigies suspected sedition and a quarrel between the landed men and the urban and marketplace crowd — for the latter was vocal like the cicada, while the countryfolk were like creatures of the fields.

Marius then took on as an ally Sulpicius, who was tribune of the people, a man second to none in extremity of vice, so that one need not ask whom else he surpassed in wickedness, but only in what respect he surpassed himself — for cruelty and boldness and greed were in him unchecked by any shame or any evil whatsoever, he who openly sold Roman citizenship to freedmen and resident aliens, counting out the price at a table set up in the marketplace,

and he maintained three thousand sword-bearers, and kept about him a multitude of young horsemen ready for anything, whom he called his 'counter-senate.' Though he had passed a law that no senator should owe more than two thousand drachmas, he himself left behind at his death a debt of three million. This man, let loose upon the people by Marius, and having thrown all affairs into confusion by violence and the sword, drafted laws — other wicked ones, and also one granting Marius the command of the Mithridatic war.

And when the consuls, because of these things, decreed a suspension of public business, Sulpicius brought a mob against them as they were holding assembly near the temple of the Dioscuri, and among many others he killed the young son of Pompeius the consul, right there in the forum; Pompeius himself escaped unnoticed. Sulla, driven and pursued into the house of Marius, was compelled to come forth and rescind the suspension of business.

And for this reason, though Sulpicius removed Pompeius from his command, he did not take the consulship away from Sulla, but transferred only the campaign against Mithridates to Marius; and he sent tribunes at once to Nola to take over the army and lead it to Marius.

But Sulla got there first and escaped to the camp, and when the soldiers learned of these things they stoned the tribunes to death; Marius' party in turn began killing Sulla's friends in the city and plundering their property, and there were removals and flights, some fleeing from the camp into the city, others from the city out to the camp,

and the Senate was no longer its own master, but was governed by the decrees of Marius and Sulpicius. Learning that Sulla was marching on the city, it sent two praetors, Brutus and Servilius, to forbid him to advance. These men addressed Sulla with too much boldness, and the soldiers rushed to kill them; instead they broke their rods of office and stripped them of their purple-bordered robes, and after much abuse sent them off, so that they returned in dire humiliation, seen bereft of the marks of their command, reporting that the sedition was no longer containable but had become incurable.

Marius' party, then, were making their preparations; but Sulla, leading six full legions together with his colleague, set out from Nola, seeing that his army was eager to march at once upon the city, though he himself was hesitating in his own mind and fearing the danger. The seer Postumius, having examined the signs after Sulla's sacrifice, stretched out both hands to him and asked to be bound and kept under guard until the battle, being willing, if all things were not swiftly and well accomplished, to suffer the ultimate penalty.

It is said too that in his sleep a goddess appeared to Sulla, one whom the Romans worship, having learned her from the Cappadocians — whether she is Selene, or Athena, or Enyo. This goddess, Sulla thought, stood over him and placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and naming each of his enemies in turn bade him hurl it against them, and that they fell as they were struck and vanished. Emboldened by this vision, and having told his colleague, he led his army toward Rome at daybreak.

And when an embassy met him near Picta and begged him not to march straight in upon the city — for all just demands, they said, would be granted once the Senate had voted — he agreed to encamp there and gave orders, as was his custom, for his officers to measure out the ground for the camp, so that the envoys departed trusting him. But once they had gone, he immediately sent out Lucius Basillus and Gaius Mummius, and through them seized the gate and the walls around the Esquiline hill; then

he himself pressed on with all haste to join them. But when Basillus' men had burst into the city and were prevailing, the great unarmed populace, hurling tiles and stones from the rooftops, checked their advance and drove them back to the wall. At this point Sulla himself arrived, and seeing what was happening, cried out for the houses to be set afire, and taking a burning torch he himself went forward first, and ordered the archers to use fire-arrows, aiming them up over the rooftops, with no regard for consequence,

but carried away by passion and having surrendered command of his actions to anger, seeing only his enemies, taking no account whatever of friends, kinsmen, or household, and with no pity, he advanced through fire, which made no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. While this was happening, Marius, driven out to the temple of Earth, called by proclamation on the household slaves, offering them freedom; but when the enemy came on he was overpowered and driven from the city.

Sulla, having assembled the Senate, had it vote the death sentence against Marius himself and a few others, among whom was Sulpicius the tribune. Sulpicius was slaughtered, betrayed by a slave whom Sulla had freed and then had thrown down from the rock; on Marius he set a price, ungraciously and unstatesmanlike, on the very man who a little before, when Marius had him helpless in his own house, had let him go unharmed.

And yet at that time, when Marius did not let Sulla go but let him off at Sulpicius' urging, it was in his power to master everything; still he spared him, and a few days later, when given the same opportunity, he did not receive the same treatment. For this Sulla secretly vexed the Senate, while the people's hostility and resentment toward him were made plain by their deeds.

For when Nonius, his nephew, and Servius stood for office, the people voted them down and heaped insult on them, setting up other men as magistrates instead, thinking that by honoring these especially they would most vex Sulla; but he pretended to be pleased at this, as though the people, by doing as they wished, were enjoying their freedom through his doing, and to court the hatred of the multitude he had Lucius Cinna, of the opposing faction, made consul, having bound him beforehand by curses and oaths to be well-disposed toward his own interests.

Cinna went up onto the Capitol holding a stone, and there he swore an oath, invoking a curse on his own head — that he be driven from the city just as he now flung this stone from his hand — should he fail to keep faith and goodwill toward Sulla; and so, before many witnesses, he hurled the stone down to the ground. But once he had taken office he at once set about disturbing the established order, and prepared a lawsuit against Sulla, and set up Verginius, one of the tribunes, to prosecute him — a man whom Sulla, dismissing along with his court, left behind as he set out for Mithridates.

It is said that in those very days when Sulla was setting his fleet in motion from Italy, many other divine signs befell Mithridates as he was lingering about Pergamum; among them, a Victory bearing a crown, being lowered down upon him by the Pergamenes by means of certain machinery from above, when it was on the very point of touching his head, broke apart, and the crown, falling out, went tumbling down over the theater, shattering as it fell — so that it caused a shudder in the people, and great despondency in Mithridates, even though his affairs at that time were progressing beyond his hopes.

For he himself, having taken from the Romans Asia and from the kings Bithynia and Cappadocia, sat at Pergamum, distributing riches and dominions and tyrannies to his friends, while of his sons one held the ancient realm in Pontus and the Bosporus as far as the uninhabited lands beyond the Maeotis, with none to trouble him, and Ariarathes was advancing upon Thrace and Macedonia with a great army,

while his other generals, with forces of their own, were seizing other places, the greatest of them Archelaus, who with his fleet held mastery of nearly the whole sea, was enslaving the Cyclades islands and all the others within Cape Malea, and held Euboea itself, and setting out from Athens was detaching the peoples of Greece as far as Thessaly, meeting only a slight check near Chaeronea.

For there Bruttius Sura confronted him, a legate of Sentius, the praetor of Macedonia, a man distinguished for both boldness and good sense; he, standing firm for the longest time against Archelaus, who was sweeping through Boeotia like a torrent, and fighting three battles near Chaeronea, drove him back and forced him again to the sea.

But when Lucius Lucullus ordered him to withdraw before the advancing Sulla and to leave to him the war that had been voted to him, he at once abandoned Boeotia and marched back to Sentius, even though his affairs were progressing beyond hope and Greece was well disposed toward changing sides because of his own honorable conduct. But these things were the most brilliant of Bruttius' achievements.

Sylla found the other cities immediately sending embassies to him and inviting him in, but Athens, forced under the tyranny of Aristion, he had to invest in full force, encircling the Piraeus and laying siege to it, bringing every kind of engine to bear and fighting battles of every sort.

And yet, had he waited only a little while, he could have taken the upper city without danger, since it was already reduced by famine to the last extremity of need for necessities; but pressing on toward Rome and fearing the revolution brewing there, he hastened the war at the cost of many dangers, many battles, and great expense, for which, apart from the rest of his preparations, the work on siege-engines alone was supplied by ten thousand yoke of mules, kept working every day in this service.

When timber ran short because much of the machinery, breaking under its own weight, kept being smashed to pieces and set on fire by the continual missiles of the enemy, he laid hands on the sacred groves, and stripped the Academy, the most thickly wooded of the suburbs, and the Lyceum as well. And since he also needed great sums of money for the war, he plundered the inviolable sanctuaries of Greece, sending for the finest and costliest of the dedicated offerings, some from Epidaurus, some from Olympia.

He also wrote to the Amphictyons at Delphi that it would be better for the god's treasures to be brought to him, since he would either guard them more safely, or, if he made use of them, would repay no less an amount; and he sent one of his friends, Caphis the Phocian, instructing him to take delivery of every object after it was weighed. Once at Delphi, however, Caphis could not bring himself to lay hands on the sacred objects, and in front of many of the Amphictyons he wept openly at what the task demanded of him.

When some claimed to have heard the lyre in the inner sanctuary sounding of itself, whether he believed it or wished to instill superstitious fear in Sylla, he wrote to report it; but Sylla wrote back mockingly that he was amazed Caphis did not understand that singing was the sign of a joyful, not an angry god — so that he should take courage and receive the treasures, since the god was glad and giving them freely.

Now the rest of what was sent out escaped the notice of most of the Greeks, but the silver jar, which was still left over from the royal offerings, proved too heavy and bulky for the pack animals, so the Amphictyons had no choice but to break it apart into sections, a task that brought to mind Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, and Aemilius Paullus as well — of whom the first drove Antiochus out of Greece, while the others defeated the kings of Macedon, and yet not only kept their hands off the sanctuaries of the Greeks, but even added gifts, honor, and great reverence toward them.

But those men, being of sound mind and trained to submit their hands in silence to their commanders as the law required, were themselves kingly in spirit but modest in expenditure, keeping to moderate and fixed outlays, thinking it more shameful to flatter their soldiers than to fear their enemies.

But the generals of that later time, gaining the foremost place by force rather than by merit, and needing arms more against one another than against the enemy, were compelled to court popular favor even while commanding, and then, having to pay for the labor of their soldiers with what they spent on their soldiers' pleasures, without noticing it they made their whole homeland something bought and sold, and made themselves slaves to the worst men for the sake of ruling over the better. This is what drove out Marius, and then in turn brought back Sylla against him; this is what made the associates of Octavius do murder for Cinna's sake, and the associates of Flaccus for Fimbria's.

And it was Sylla, not least of all, who gave openings to these things, by lavishing money to corrupt and win over men enlisted under other commanders, bringing them over to his own and spending freely on them, so that, corrupting others toward betrayal and his own men toward extravagance at the same time, he needed great sums of money, especially for that siege.

For some terrible and inexorable passion possessed him to take Athens — whether out of a kind of rivalry with the city's ancient renown, now fighting only shadows of itself, or out of anger at the jeers and buffooneries with which the tyrant Aristion, mocking him and his wife Metella from the walls with obscene gestures and dances, kept goading him — a man whose soul was compounded equally of wantonness and cruelty,

who had gathered into himself the worst of the diseases and afflictions that had flowed together from the Mithridatic cause, and now, laying upon the city — which had escaped countless wars, many tyrannies and factions before — as it were a fatal disease in its last extremity: under him, when a medimnus of wheat was selling in the city for a thousand drachmas, and people were eating the parthenium that grew around the Acropolis,

boiling down their shoes and oil-flasks to eat, while he himself continually gave himself over to daytime drinking bouts and revels, dancing the pyrrhic and playing the clown before the enemy, let the sacred lamp of the goddess go out for want of oil, and when the high priestess begged him for half a measure of wheat, sent her pepper instead; and when the councillors and priests came as suppliants, begging him to pity the city and come to terms with Sylla, he scattered them by shooting arrows at them.

Only very late, and reluctantly even then, did he send out two or three of his drinking companions to negotiate for peace; and when these men, offering nothing of any saving worth, began solemnly invoking Theseus and Eumolpus and the Persian Wars, Sylla said, "Be off, you blessed men, and take these speeches of yours with you; for I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to study, but to subdue rebels."

Meanwhile, it is said that some of the old men in the Ceramicus were overheard talking among themselves and reproaching the tyrant for failing to guard the approach and point of assault by the Heptachalcum, the only place where it was possible, and easy, for the enemy to get over the wall — and that this was reported to Sylla.

He did not disregard it, but went and looked at the place by night, and finding it assailable, set to the work at once. Sylla himself says in his memoirs that the first man to mount the wall, Marcus Ateius, when an enemy soldier opposed him, struck him a downward blow on the helmet that broke his own sword, but did not give ground for that, but stood his ground and held the position. It was from there, then, that the city was taken, as the oldest Athenians used to relate.

Sylla himself, after leveling and razing the space between the Piraic gate and the sacred gate, marched in about midnight, a terrifying sight amid trumpets and many horns, with the shouting and clamor of the army let loose by him for plunder and slaughter, sweeping through the narrow streets with drawn swords, so that no count could be made of the slain, but even now the multitude is reckoned by the extent of ground over which the blood flowed.

For apart from those killed elsewhere in the city, the slaughter around the marketplace covered the whole of the Ceramicus within the Dipylon; and many say the flood of blood even passed through the gates and drenched the suburb. But of those who died in this way, however many there were, no fewer were those who destroyed themselves out of pity and longing for their homeland, believing it was about to be annihilated. For it was this that led the best of them to despair and give up hope of safety, expecting nothing merciful or moderate from Sylla.

But then, partly at the pleading and prostration of the exiles Meidias and Calliphon before him, partly because the senators serving with him interceded for the city, and Sylla himself now being sated with vengeance, he made some complimentary remark about the ancient Athenians and said that he was extending mercy toward the majority on account of a handful, and toward the living on account of the dead.

In his own memoirs he states that Athens fell to him on the Kalends of March, a day which corresponds most closely to the new moon of the month Anthesterion, in which, by coincidence, many rites are performed commemorating the destruction and ruin caused by the great deluge, as if that catastrophe had fallen most nearly at that same time of year,

and once the city was taken, the tyrant fled to the Acropolis and was besieged there, Curio being assigned to this task; and after holding out a long while, he surrendered himself, overcome by thirst, and the divine power immediately gave a sign of it — for on that very day and hour that Curio brought him down, clouds gathered out of a clear sky and a great downpour of rain broke and filled the Acropolis with water. Sylla also took the Piraeus not long after, and burned most of it, including the arsenal of Philo, a work greatly admired.

Meanwhile Taxiles, Mithridates' general, had come down from Thrace and Macedonia with a hundred thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and ninety scythed four-horse chariots, and was summoning Archelaus, who was still riding at anchor off Munychia, unwilling either to give up the sea or eager to engage the Romans, but preferring to drag out the war and deprive them of supplies.

Sylla, seeing this far more clearly than Archelaus did, withdrew into Boeotia from a region too meager and unable to sustain an army even in peacetime, and to most people it seemed a miscalculation that, abandoning Attica, which was rugged and unsuited to cavalry, he should throw himself into the flat, open country around Boeotia, when he could see that the barbarian strength lay in chariots and horses.

But, as has been said, fleeing famine and want, he was forced to court the danger of battle. He was further alarmed by Hortensius, a skilled and combative commander, whom the barbarians were watching for in the narrow passes as he led a force from Thessaly to join Sylla. For these reasons Sylla withdrew into Boeotia; and as for Hortensius, Caphis, one of our own countrymen, deceived the barbarians by other routes and led him down through Parnassus to a point just beneath Tithora, not yet as great a city as it now is,

but a stronghold cut off by a sheer cliff, into which long ago the Phocians, fleeing before the advance of Xerxes, had gathered their belongings and been saved. Encamping there, Hortensius beat off the enemy by day, and by night, descending by the rough paths to Patronis, joined forces with Sylla, who had come to meet him with his army.

Having joined forces, they together seized a hill standing in the middle of the plains of Elatea, rich in soil, well-shaded, and with water at its foot; it is called Philoboeotus, and Sylla praises admiringly both its nature and its position. When they had encamped, they appeared to the enemy to be altogether few, for their cavalry numbered no more than fifteen hundred, and their infantry fewer than fifteen thousand.

Whereupon the other generals forced Archelaus's hand and drew up their forces, filling the plain with horses, chariots, shields, and long shields. The shouting and clamor of so many nations forming into rank at once was more than the air could hold; and along with it, the boastfulness and ostentation of their splendor was neither idle nor useless for striking terror, for the gleam of their weapons, adorned splendidly with gold and silver,

and the dyed colors of their Median and Scythian tunics, mingled with gleaming bronze and iron, presented a fiery and fearsome sight as they surged and shifted about, so that the Romans drew themselves in under their rampart; and Sylla, unable by any argument to remove their dread of them, and unwilling to force men who wanted to flee, chose to remain quiet, though bearing it hard as he watched the barbarians insulting them with boasting and laughter — yet this, more than anything, worked to his advantage,

for the enemy, out of contempt, fell into great disorder, being in any case ill-disciplined toward their generals owing to the multitude of commanders; so that only a few held their position steadily within the camp, while the greater mass, lured on by plunder and pillage, scattered over a journey of many days' distance from the camp. And they are said to have wiped out the city of the Panopeans, sacked that of the Lebadeans, and plundered the oracle there, with no general having given any such order.

Sylla, distressed and grieved to see cities being destroyed before his very eyes, would not let his soldiers stand idle, but brought them forward and made them divert the Cephisus from its channel and dig trenches, giving no one any rest, and standing over those who slackened as an inexorable enforcer, so that, worn out by the labor of the work, they might come to welcome the danger of battle.

And this is just what happened; for on the third day of their labor, as Sylla was passing by, they begged him with shouting to lead them against the enemy. He replied that this was the talk not of men willing to fight, but of men unwilling to work; but if they truly had the spirit for battle, he ordered them to go there at once under arms, pointing out to them the former acropolis of the Parapotamians,

But by then the city had been destroyed, and there was left only a rocky and precipitous hill, separated from Mount Hedylium by the space over which the Assus runs, then meeting the Cephisus at its very base and, roughened along with it, making the height a strong place to camp on. For this reason Sylla, seeing the bronze-shielded troops of the enemy pushing toward it, wanted to seize the spot first, and he did seize it, using the eagerness of his soldiers.

But when Archelaus was driven back from there and set out for Chaeronea, the men of Chaeronea who were serving with Sylla begged him not to abandon their city, so he sent out one of his tribunes, Gabinius, with a single legion, and let the Chaeroneans go too — though they were willing, they were not able to outrun Gabinius. So good and eager was he to save people beyond what those needing saving asked for. Juba, however, says it was not Gabinius who was sent but Ericius. So our city escaped that danger by so narrow a margin.

From Lebadea and the shrine of Trophonius favorable reports and victory-prophesying oracles were sent to the Romans. About these the locals tell more, but as Sylla himself relates in Memoirs book ten, a certain Quintus Titius, not lacking standing among the Greek business community, approached him after he had already won the battle at Chaeronea, reporting that Trophonius foretold a second battle and victory on that same spot within a short time,

and after him a man serving in the ranks named Salvenius brought back from the god a prediction of what outcome the affairs in Italy were going to have. Both men gave the same report about the divine voice, for they said that in beauty and in size it resembled Olympian Zeus.

When Sylla had crossed the Assus, he passed below Hedylium and camped alongside Archelaus, who had thrown up a strong palisade between Mount Acontium and Hedylium, near the place called Assia. The spot where Archelaus pitched his camp is still called after him to this day. After letting one day pass, Sylla left Murena with a legion and two cohorts to harass the enemy as they were drawing up in battle order,

while he himself performed sacrifice by the Cephisus, and when the rites were done he advanced toward Chaeronea, both to take up the army stationed there and to look over the place called Thurium, which had been seized beforehand by the enemy. It is a rugged, cone-shaped peak, which we call Orthopagus, and below it, where the stream of the Molus and the Thurius meet, stands a temple of Apollo. The god is named after Thuro, the mother of Chaeron, who is recorded to have been the founder of Chaeronea.

Others say that the cow given by the Pythian god as guide to Cadmus appeared there, and that the place was named after her — for the Phoenicians call a cow "thor." As Sylla approached Chaeronea, the tribune stationed in the city, leading out his armed soldiers, met him bringing a crown of laurel,

and when Sylla had received it, he greeted the soldiers and roused them for the coming danger. Then two men of Chaeronea, Homoloichus and Anaxidamus, came to him, undertaking to dislodge the men holding Thurium if he would give them a few soldiers — for there was a path unknown to the barbarians leading from the place called Petrachus past the Museum to Thurium along the ridge, by which, if they went, they would easily fall upon the enemy from above and either stone them down or drive them together into the plain,

and when Gabinius vouched for the men's courage and loyalty, Sylla ordered the attempt made. He himself drew up the phalanx and divided the cavalry between the two wings, keeping the right for himself and giving the left to Murena. Galba and Hortensius, his legates, took the reserve cohorts and posted themselves last, at the heights, as guards against encircling movements — for the enemy could be seen preparing, with their many horsemen and swift light-armed troops, to swing their easily-bent and mobile wing far around so as to encircle the Romans.

Meanwhile the men of Chaeronea, having taken Ericius as their leader from Sylla and having made their way unseen around to Thurium, then showed themselves, and there was great confusion and flight among the barbarians, and most of the slaughter came from their own hands upon one another — for they did not stand their ground but, rushing headlong down the slope, fell upon their own spears and hurled each other over the cliffs as they pushed one another, while the enemy pressed upon them from above and struck at their exposed bodies, so that three thousand fell around Thurium.

Of those fleeing, some Murena, who had already formed up his line, cut off and destroyed by meeting them head-on, while others, pushing toward their own camp and falling in disorder upon the phalanx, filled most of it with fear and confusion, and caused a delay for the generals which did them no small harm. For Sylla, moving quickly against the men who were in disarray and closing the gap between the lines with speed, took away the scythed chariots' capacity to work.

For it is above all the length of the run that gives such chariots their force and momentum in the charge, while short bursts are ineffective and blunted, like arrows shot without being drawn taut. And this is what happened to the barbarians then too: the first of the chariots, driven out sluggishly and colliding feebly, the Romans knocked aside with clapping and laughter and called for more, as spectators are accustomed to do at the theatrical horse-races.

From there the infantry forces clashed, with the barbarians thrusting forward their long sarissas and trying, by locking their shields together, to keep the phalanx in order, while the Romans threw down their javelins on the spot, drew their swords, and knocked aside the sarissas, eager to close with the enemy as quickly as possible out of rage.

For they saw drawn up in front of the enemy line fifteen thousand slaves, whom the king's generals had freed by proclamations from the cities and enrolled into companies among the hoplites. And a certain Roman centurion is said to have remarked that only at the Cronia had he ever known slaves to share in free speech.

These men, then, being pushed back slowly on account of their depth and density and daring to hold their ground against nature itself, were turned back and thrown into confusion by the slingers and javelin-throwers, whom the Romans in the rear used without stint.

As Archelaus was bringing his right wing around to encircle them, Hortensius sent his cohorts forward at a run so as to strike them on the flank. But Archelaus quickly wheeled his own two thousand horsemen about, and Hortensius, crushed by their numbers, was forced back toward the hills, being gradually torn away from the phalanx and surrounded by the enemy,

and when Sylla learned of this from the right wing, which had not yet come to grips with the enemy, he set out to help him. But Archelaus, judging by the dust cloud of the advance what it was, let Hortensius go and, wheeling about himself, rushed toward the place Sylla had left for the right wing, intending to seize it now that it was without its commander, while at the same time Taxiles brought the bronze-shields against Murena, so that with the shouting carried from two directions and the mountains echoing it back, Sylla halted, at a loss as to which side he ought to go to help.

Deciding that he should resume his own position, he sent Hortensius with four cohorts to aid Murena, and ordering the fifth cohort to follow, he himself hurried to the right, where his line was already holding its own against Archelaus even by itself, and when he appeared they drove the enemy back completely, and, gaining the upper hand, pursued them as they fled headlong toward the river and Mount Acontium,

Sylla, however, did not neglect Murena, who was in danger, but hurried to help those there; but seeing that they were winning, he then joined the pursuit instead. Many of the barbarians were cut down on the plain, and the greatest number were slaughtered as they pressed against the palisade, so that out of so many tens of thousands only ten thousand made their way through to Chalcis, while Sylla says he lost only fourteen of his own soldiers, of whom, moreover, two turned up again by evening,

and for this reason he inscribed on his trophies the names of Ares, Nike, and Aphrodite, as one who had achieved success in the war no less through good fortune than through skill and force. This trophy stands where the battle in the plain occurred, at the point where Archelaus's men first gave way, by the stream of the Molus; there is another one standing on the summit of Thurium, at the spot of the encirclement of the barbarians, marked in Greek letters as honoring Homoloichus and Anaxidamus for their valor.

For this victory he held games at Thebes, having built a stage around the spring of Oedipus. Those who judged were Greeks summoned from the other cities, since toward the Thebans themselves he was implacable; he cut off half their territory and consecrated it to Pythian Apollo and to Olympian Zeus, ordering that from its revenues the money he himself had taken be repaid to the gods.

After this, learning that Flaccus, chosen consul by the opposing faction, had set his army on a course over the Ionian sea, nominally to face Mithridates yet actually aimed at Sylla, he set out for Thessaly to meet him. But while he was near the city of Melitea, reports arrived from many quarters that the country behind him was again being ravaged by a royal army no smaller than the previous one.

For Dorylaus had put in at Chalcis with a large fleet, bringing eighty thousand men, trained and organized as the finest of Mithridates's forces, and without delay pushed into Boeotia, seizing hold of the land, keen to draw Sylla into battle, paying no heed to Archelaus's warnings against it, and spreading a story about the previous battle, that so great a host could not have been destroyed without treachery.

But Sylla, quickly turning back, showed Dorylaus that Archelaus was a sensible man and the one most experienced in Roman valor, so that after a small skirmish with Sylla near Tilphossium, he became the first to concede that they ought not to decide the matter by battle, but wear down the war through expense and time. All the same, the place near Orchomenus, where they encamped, gave Archelaus some confidence, being extremely well suited for a force strong in cavalry to fight in.

For the finest and largest of the Boeotian plains, that which stretches out from the city of Orchomenus, lies level and treeless as far as the marshes in which the river Melas is consumed — a river which rises abundant and navigable at its very springs beneath the city of Orchomenus, alone among Greek rivers, and which swells at the summer solstice, like the Nile, and bears growths similar to those there, except that they bear no fruit and do not grow tall.

It does not flow far, but for the most part disappears at once into blind, marshy lakes, while a small part joins the Cephisus, near which spot the lake seems especially to produce the reed used for pipes.

When they had encamped close to one another, Archelaus kept quiet, while Sylla dug ditches on both sides, so that, if he could, by cutting the enemy off from the firm, horse-friendly ground he might force them into the marshes. But they would not endure this; instead, once let loose by their generals, they drove forward vigorously and in full force, and not only were Sylla's men at the earthworks scattered, but most of the drawn-up line was thrown into confusion as it fled.

At that moment Sylla himself leapt down from his horse, snatched up a standard, and pushed his way through the fleeing men toward the enemy, shouting: "For me, Romans, it is a fine thing to die right here; but as for you, when men ask where you betrayed your commander, remember to say: at Orchomenus." These words turned the men back, and two cohorts from the right wing came up to help; bringing these forward, he routed the enemy.

Having withdrawn a little way back and given his men their meal, he again began digging a trench around the enemy's camp, and they again attacked, this time in better order than before. And Diogenes, the son of Archelaus's wife, fighting bravely on the right, fell in full view of all; and the archers, being pressed hard by the Romans, having no room to turn, kept striking at them with their arrows in bunches, hand to hand as if with swords, and beat them back; but at last, shut up within their palisade, they spent a wretched night amid wounds and slaughter. When day came, Sylla again brought his soldiers up to the palisade and dug his trench.

When the greater part of the enemy came out as if for battle, he engaged and routed them, and since none of them, in their fear, stood their ground, he took the camp by storm. And the dying filled the marshes with blood and the lake with corpses, so that even now, after nearly two hundred years have passed since that battle, many barbarian bows and helmets and torn fragments of iron breastplates and swords are still found soaked in the swamp. Such, then, is what is said to have happened around Chaeronea and near Orchomenus.

While Cinna and Carbo in Rome were treating the most distinguished men lawlessly and violently, many, fleeing their tyranny, came streaming down to Sulla's camp as if to a harbor, and in a short time there had come to be around him something like the shape of a senate. And Metella, having barely managed to steal herself and her children away, arrived with news that his house and country estates had been burned by his enemies, and begging him to help those at home.

While he was at a loss, unwilling either to neglect his fatherland while it suffered such wrongs or to leave unfinished so great a task, the war against Mithridates, and was pondering what to do, there arrived a merchant of Delos, Archelaus, bringing certain hopes and proposals secretly from the king's own Archelaus. Sulla was so pleased with the matter that he himself hastened to a conference with Archelaus.

And they came together by the sea near Delium, where the temple of Apollo is. When Archelaus began to speak, urging Sulla to give up Asia and Pontus and sail for the war in Rome, taking money and triremes and as large a force as he wished from the king, Sulla took him up and told him to stop worrying about Mithridates, and instead to become king himself in his place, becoming an ally of the Romans and handing over the ships.

When Archelaus recoiled at the idea of such treachery, Sulla said, "So then, Archelaus, you, a Cappadocian and slave — or if you prefer, friend — of a barbarian king, will not stoop to shame for such great advantages, yet you dare to speak of treachery to me, a Roman commander and Sulla, as if you were not that same Archelaus who fled from Chaeronea with a scant remnant out of a hundred and twenty thousand, who hid for two days in the marshes of Orchomenus, and who left Boeotia impassable for the multitude of corpses?"

At this Archelaus changed his tone, and doing obeisance he begged Sulla to end the war and be reconciled with Mithridates. Sulla accepted the proposal, and terms were agreed: Mithridates was to give up Asia and Paphlagonia, withdraw from Bithynia in favor of Nicomedes and from Cappadocia in favor of Ariobarzanes, hand over two thousand talents to the Roman treasury, and supply seventy ships fitted with bronze beaks along with their tackle; Sulla, for his part, was to confirm Mithridates in the rest of his rule and have him voted an ally of Rome.

These terms agreed, Sulla turned back and marched through Thessaly and Macedonia toward the Hellespont, keeping Archelaus with him in honor. When Archelaus fell dangerously ill near Larissa, Sulla halted the march and cared for him as one of his own commanders and generals.

This, together with other things, gave rise to slander about the affair at Chaeronea, as though it had not been fought fairly, and because Sulla, after returning the other friends of Mithridates whom he held captive, put to death only the tyrant Aristion by poison — a man at odds with Archelaus; but above all it was the land given to the Cappadocian, ten thousand plethra in Euboea, and his being enrolled by Sulla as friend and ally of the Romans. Concerning these matters Sulla himself defends himself in his memoirs.

At that time envoys arrived from Mithridates saying that he accepted the other terms but asked that Paphlagonia not be taken from him, and that he would not agree at all about the ships. Angered, Sulla said, "What is this you say? Mithridates lays claim to Paphlagonia and denies the matter of the ships — the man I expected would prostrate himself before me, if I only left him the right hand with which he killed so many Romans?

He will soon sing a different tune, though, once I have crossed into Asia — but for now, sitting in Pergamum, he is directing a war he has never seen." The envoys, frightened, kept quiet, but Archelaus begged Sulla and soothed his anger, taking hold of his right hand and weeping. In the end he persuaded Sulla to let him be sent himself to Mithridates, for he would arrange the peace on the terms Sulla wanted, and if he could not persuade him, he would kill him himself.

On these terms Sulla sent him off, and himself invaded Maedica, and after ravaging much of it he turned back again to Macedonia, where he received Archelaus near Philippi bringing word that everything was going well — but that Mithridates was altogether eager to come to a personal meeting with him.

The chief cause of this was Fimbria, who had killed Flaccus, the commander of the opposing faction, and after defeating Mithridates' generals was marching against Mithridates himself. Fearing this, Mithridates preferred rather to become Sulla's friend.

So they met in the Troad, at Dardanus. Mithridates had there two hundred decked ships and, of infantry, twenty thousand hoplites, six thousand cavalry, and a good number of scythed chariots; Sulla had four cohorts and two hundred cavalry. When Mithridates came forward and held out his right hand, Sulla asked him whether he would bring the war to a close on the conditions that Archelaus had settled; and when the king said nothing, Sulla said, "But surely it is for those in need to speak first, while it is enough for the victors to keep silent."

When Mithridates, beginning his defense, tried to blame some of the war on the gods and some on the Romans themselves, Sulla took him up and said that he had long heard from others, and now himself had come to know, that Mithridates was a most formidable speaker, since even for deeds so wicked and lawless he had not lacked for words to make them seem respectable.

Having bitterly exposed and denounced what Mithridates had done, he again asked whether he would carry out the terms arranged through Archelaus. When Mithridates said he would, Sulla greeted him warmly, and embracing him kissed him, and then, bringing forward the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in turn, reconciled them with him. Mithridates, having handed over seventy ships and five hundred archers, sailed off to Pontus.

Sulla, perceiving that his soldiers were angered at the settlement — for they thought it a terrible thing to see the most hateful of kings, the man who had arranged for a hundred and fifty thousand Romans in Asia to be slaughtered in a single day, sailing away with wealth and spoils, after plundering and taxing Asia for four years without pause — defended himself to them, saying that he could not have made war on Fimbria and Mithridates at the same time, had the two joined forces against him.

Setting out from there against Fimbria, who was encamped near Thyateira, Sulla pitched camp nearby and drew a trench around it. Fimbria's soldiers, in their bare tunics, came out from their camp and greeted Sulla's men and eagerly helped them with their work. Fimbria, seeing this change of heart, and fearing Sulla as implacable, took his own life in the camp.

Sulla fined Asia as a whole twenty thousand talents, and privately ruined individual households through the insolence and oppression of the billeted soldiers. For it had been ordained that each host give his guest, every day, four tetradrachms and provide him dinner along with as many friends as he wished to invite, and that a company commander receive fifty drachmas a day, and have one set of clothes for staying at home and another for going out into the marketplace.

Putting out with all his ships from Ephesus, on the third day he came to anchor at Piraeus, and having been initiated into the Mysteries, he took for himself the library of Apellicon of Teos, in which were most of the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, not yet at that time clearly known to the many. It is said that when it was brought to Rome, Tyrannio the grammarian arranged most of it, and that from him Andronicus of Rhodes, having obtained copies, published them and drew up the catalogues now current.

The older Peripatetics appear to have been in themselves cultivated and fond of learning, but they had not come upon the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus in any number or with any accuracy, because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus left the books, passed into the hands of men without ambition or learning.

While Sulla was spending time near Athens, a numbing pain with heaviness fell upon his feet, which Strabo says is a stammering form of gout. So he sailed across to Aedepsus and made use of the hot springs there, taking his ease and spending his days with the theatrical performers devoted to Dionysus. As he was walking by the sea, some fishermen brought him some very fine fish. Pleased with the gift, and learning that they were from Halae, he said, "So some Halaeans are still alive?"

For it had happened that, when he was pursuing the enemy after his victory in the battle near Orchomenus, he had also laid waste to a trio of Boeotian towns — Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae. The people there, struck dumb with fear, he told with a smile to go away rejoicing, since they had come not to petty men nor men deserving to be disregarded as suppliants. From this the people of Halae say that, taking heart, they came together again into their city.

Sulla, going down through Thessaly and Macedonia to the sea, prepared to cross from Dyrrachium to Brundisium with twelve hundred ships. Close by lies Apollonia, and beside it the Nymphaeum, a hallowed spot where flames continually break out here and there from a lush glade and meadows.

There, it is said, a satyr was caught sleeping, such as sculptors and painters imagine, and being brought before Sulla was asked through many interpreters who he was; but when he uttered something barely intelligible, a rough voice mixed mostly of a horse's neighing and a goat's bleating, Sulla was terrified and drove him away with rites of aversion.

When he was about to ferry his soldiers across, and was afraid that once they laid hold of Italy they would scatter each to his own city, they first swore of their own accord to stay with him and to do no willing harm to Italy; then, seeing that he needed much money, they made a contribution, each giving from his own means as he was able. Sulla did not, however, accept the offering, but after praising and encouraging them he made the crossing, as he himself says, against fifteen enemy generals with four hundred and fifty cohorts, the god most plainly foreshowing his good fortune to him.

For when he sacrificed immediately upon landing at Tarentum, the liver was seen to bear the shape of a laurel crown, with two garlands hanging from it; and a little before the crossing, in Campania near Mount Tifata, two great he-goats were seen by day clashing together and doing and suffering all that happens to men fighting. It was in fact an apparition, and little by little, rising from the ground, it dispersed in many directions through the air, like dim phantoms, and then vanished.

Not long after, in that very place, when the younger Marius and the consul Norbanus brought up great forces, Sulla, without even forming his own army into ranks or companies, but relying on the strength of their common eagerness and the sweep of their daring, routed the enemy and shut Norbanus up in the city of Capua, killing seven thousand.

This, he says, was the reason his soldiers were not scattered to their several cities, but stayed together and grew contemptuous of the enemy though many times more numerous; and at Silvium, he says, a slave of Pontius, possessed by a god, met him and said he brought word from Bellona of mastery in war and victory — but that if he did not make haste, the Capitol would be burned down. And this indeed came to pass on the very day the man had foretold, which was the day before the Nones of Quintilis, which we now call July.

Furthermore Marcus Lucullus, one of Sulla's commanders, drawn up near Fidentia with sixteen cohorts against fifty of the enemy, trusted in the eagerness of his soldiers but hesitated because most of them were unarmed. While he was deliberating and delaying, a gentle breeze, blowing from a meadow in the nearby plain, cast and scattered many flowers over the army, which settled of their own accord and lodged upon their shields and helmets, so that they appeared to the enemy to be wearing garlands.

Made more eager by this, they joined battle and, winning, killed eighteen thousand and took the enemy camp. This Lucullus was the brother of the Lucullus who later warred down Mithridates and Tigranes.

Sulla, seeing that the enemy still surrounded him on all sides with many camps and great forces, made his attack everywhere both by force and by deception, calling upon Scipio, one of the two consuls, to come to terms.

When he had received him, meetings were held and conversations took place more than once, but Sulla, always introducing some delay and pretext, was corrupting Scipio's men with his own soldiers, who were trained in every kind of deception and trickery just like their commander. For entering the enemy's camp and mingling with them, they won some over at once with money, others with promises, others by flattering and

cajoling and persuading them. Finally, when Sulla approached with twenty cohorts, some greeted Scipio's men, others returned the greeting and went over to them; and Scipio, left alone in his tent, was seized but released, while Sulla, having enticed forty of the enemy's cohorts with his twenty as though they were decoy birds, led them all away to his camp — at which they say Carbo remarked that in fighting against Sulla he was warring against both a fox and a lion, and it was the fox that troubled him more.

After this, near Signium, Marius, having eighty-five cohorts, kept challenging Sulla. And Sulla was quite eager to fight it out on that very day, for he had happened to see the following vision in his sleep. It seemed that old Marius, long dead, was advising his son Marius to be on his guard against the coming day, since it would bring him great misfortune. For this reason Sulla was eager to fight, and he sent for Dolabella, who was encamped

some distance away. But since the enemy had taken position on the roads and were blocking them, Sulla's men, fighting as they advanced and clearing the way, grew exhausted, and a heavy rain that came on along with their labors wore them down still more; so the company commanders came to Sulla and begged him to put off the battle, pointing out at the same time the soldiers lying flung down from weariness and resting on the ground with their shields propped beneath them.

When he had reluctantly agreed and given the order to make camp, and as they were beginning to throw up a palisade and dig a trench in front of the encampment, Marius rode up boldly, advancing on horseback ahead of his men, as if to scatter them in their disorder and confusion. Then the divine voice from Sulla's dream fulfilled itself: for anger seized his soldiers, and abandoning their work they planted their javelins by the trench, drew their swords, and with a shout closed hand to hand with the enemy.

These did not hold out for long, but a great slaughter of them followed as they turned to flight. Marius, fleeing to Praeneste, found the gates already shut; but a rope being let down from above, he fastened it about himself and was drawn up to the wall. Some, however — among them Fenestella — say that Marius was not even aware of the battle, but, worn out from sleeplessness and toil, had lain down on the ground in some shade, and when the signal was given had fallen into sleep, and only with difficulty was roused once the rout had begun,

In this battle Sulla says he lost only twenty-three men, while he killed twenty thousand of the enemy and took eight thousand alive. And in other respects, too, things prospered equally well through his generals — Pompey, Crassus, Metellus, Servilius. For these, meeting little or no resistance, crushed great forces of the enemy, so that Carbo, who held together the opposing faction more than anyone, fled by night with his own army and sailed off to Libya.

Yet in the final contest, like a fresh challenger thrown against an exhausted athlete, the Samnite Telesinus came close to tripping and throwing Sulla down at the very gates of Rome. For he hastened, together with Lamponius the Lucanian, having gathered a great force, toward Praeneste, meaning to snatch

Marius from the siege; but when he perceived that Sulla was hurrying against him from the front and Pompey from the rear, being a warrior experienced in great struggles and now shut off from advance and retreat alike, he set off by night with his whole army against Rome itself. And he very nearly succeeded in falling upon it unguarded; but stopping ten stadia short of the Colline Gate, he encamped before the city, exulting in high spirits and lifted up in hope at having outmaneuvered so many and such great commanders.

At daybreak, when the most brilliant of the young nobles rode out against him, he cut down many others and among them Claudius Appius, a man of noble birth and good character. As confusion, naturally, arose in the city, with the shrieking of women and people running about as though it were already being taken by storm, the first to be seen was Balbus, riding at full speed from Sulla with seven hundred horsemen. Pausing only long enough to let the horses' sweat cool, he then bridled them again and quickly fell upon the enemy.

Meanwhile Sulla himself appeared, and ordering the foremost men to breakfast at once, he drew them up in battle order. Though Dolabella and Torquatus begged him strongly to hold back and not risk everything with men who were exhausted — for it was not Carbo and Marius but the Samnites and Lucanians, the tribes most hostile to Rome and most warlike, that they would be engaging — he pushed them aside and ordered the trumpets to sound the advance, though the day was already turning toward its tenth hour.

A battle followed such as no other; on the right wing, where Crassus was stationed, victory was brilliant, but on the left, which was struggling and faring badly, Sulla came to the rescue, riding a white horse of great spirit and swiftest speed — by which two of the enemy, recognizing him, aimed their spears to strike him down. He himself did not notice it in time, but his groom, striking the horse, carried him forward just enough that the spears, converging where the horse's tail had been, struck fast into the ground.

It is said that he always carried into battle, in his bosom, a small golden statue of Apollo from Delphi, and that on this occasion too he kissed it and said: "O Pythian Apollo, having lifted the fortunate Cornelius Sulla so bright and great through so many contests, will you now cast him down here at the gates of his homeland, to perish most shamefully together with his own fellow citizens?"

They say that as Sulla was thus invoking the god, he entreated some men, threatened others, and physically seized still others; but finally, when his left wing was shattered, he mingled with the fleeing men and took refuge in the camp, having lost many of his companions and acquaintances. Not a few of those who had come out from the city to watch the spectacle also perished and were trampled underfoot,

so that the city believed itself already destroyed, and the siege of Marius came very close to being lifted, since many of the routed men pushed on there and urged Ofella Lucretius, who had been posted to conduct the siege, to break camp at once, on the ground that Sulla was lost and Rome was in the hands of the enemy.

It was already deep in the night when men came to Sulla's camp from Crassus asking for dinner for him and his soldiers: for after defeating the enemy, they had pursued them to Antemnae and made camp there. On learning this, and that most of the enemy had perished, Sulla came to Antemnae at daybreak, and when three thousand of them sent heralds to him, he promised to grant them safety if they would first do some harm to the rest of the enemy and then come over to him,

and they, trusting him, attacked the rest, and many were cut down by one another. Nonetheless, Sulla, having gathered these together with the survivors of the others — some six thousand in all — near the Circus, summoned the senate to the temple of Bellona. And even as he himself began to speak, the men appointed for the task were cutting down the six thousand.

As, naturally, the shouting of so many being slaughtered in a small space carried through, and the senators were terrified, Sulla, exactly as he happened to be speaking, with unchanged and composed countenance, told them to attend to his words and not to concern themselves with what was happening outside — for, he said, some of the wicked were being disciplined at his order.

This made even the slowest of the Romans to understand that what had happened was a change of tyranny, not a release from it. For Marius, harsh from the start, only intensified in the exercise of power, never changing his nature; but Sulla, who at first behaved moderately and in a statesmanlike way toward his fortune and won a reputation as an aristocratic and public-spirited leader,

and who had, moreover, from his youth been fond of laughter and inclined to pity, so that he easily wept — such a man, not surprisingly, brought upon great power the slander that it does not allow characters to remain in their original disposition, but makes them frenzied, vain, and inhuman. Whether this is a movement and change of nature caused by fortune, or rather the uncovering, under power, of an underlying vice, is a matter some other treatise might determine.

When Sulla had turned to slaughter, and was filling the city with killings that had neither number nor limit — many being put to death even over private feuds that had nothing to do with Sulla, since he permitted it and indulged those around him — one of the younger men, Gaius Metellus, dared to ask Sulla in the senate what end there would be to these evils, and how far he must go before people could expect the present state of things to stop.

"For we do not beg," he said, "on behalf of those whom you have resolved to destroy, from your vengeance, but for those whom you have resolved to spare, from this uncertainty." When Sulla answered that he did not yet know whom he would release, Metellus took him up and said, "Then declare whom you intend to punish." And Sulla said he would do this.

Some say it was not Metellus but a certain Fufidius, one of those who curried favor with Sulla, who said this last thing. In any case, Sulla immediately posted the names of eighty men, having consulted none of the magistrates. And when everyone was indignant, after letting one day pass he posted another two hundred and twenty, and then on the third day again no fewer.

Addressing the people about these matters, he said that he was proscribing as many as he happened to remember, and that those who now escaped his notice he would proscribe later. He decreed that for anyone who received and preserved a proscribed man, the penalty for such kindness would be death — making no exception for brother, son, or parents — while for the one who killed him, the reward for the murder would be two talents, even in cases where a slave had slain his own master, or a son had struck down his own father. Most unjust of all, however, was his stripping the sons and grandsons of the proscribed of their citizen rights, and seizing the property belonging to every one of them.

The proscriptions took place not only in Rome but in every city of Italy; and amid the killings there was no temple of a god left undefiled, no hearth sacred to hospitality, no ancestral home — men were slaughtered before their own wedded wives, and children before their mothers. Those who perished from anger or personal enmity were no part at all of those slaughtered for their money; indeed, it became common for those carrying out the punishments to say that this man was killed by his great house, that one by his garden, another by his hot springs.

Quintus Aurelius, a man who had no part in public affairs and thought he shared in the general troubles only to the extent of sympathizing with others' misfortunes, went to the forum and read through the list of the proscribed; and finding his own name there, he said, "Woe is me, my estate at Alba is hunting me down." And going a little further, he was cut down by someone who had pursued him.

Meanwhile Marius, when about to be captured, killed himself, and Sulla, coming to Praeneste, at first judged and punished men individually; but then, since there was no time for this, he gathered them all together at once, twelve thousand in number, and ordered them slaughtered, granting immunity only to his host. But this man declared nobly that he would never owe his safety to the murderer of his country, and willingly mingling with the citizens was cut down together with them.

What happened concerning Lucius Catiline was thought to be the strangest thing of all. For this man, before matters had even been decided, having killed his brother, asked Sulla to proscribe the man as though he were still alive — and he was so proscribed. In repayment for this favor to Sulla, Catiline killed a certain Marcus Marius, of the opposing faction, and brought his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum; then, going to the purification basin of Apollo nearby, he washed his hands.

Apart from the killings, other things too distressed the people. For he proclaimed himself dictator, reviving after a hundred and twenty years this kind of office. Immunity was voted him for everything he had done, and for the future, authority over life and death, confiscation, allotment of land, founding of colonies, destruction of cities, the power to take away kingdoms and to bestow them on whomever he wished.

He conducted the sales of confiscated properties so arrogantly and despotically, sitting on the tribunal, that his gifts were more oppressive than his seizures — bestowing on beautiful women, on lyre-singers, on mimes, and on the vilest of freedmen the revenues of nations, lands, and cities, and in some cases forcing unwilling women into marriage.

Wishing to attach Pompey the Great to himself, Sylla ordered him to put away the wife he had, and, tearing Aemilia, the daughter of Scaurus and of Metella his own wife, away from Manius Glabrio while she was pregnant, joined her in marriage to him; but the girl died at Pompey's house while giving birth.

When Lucretius Ofella, who had besieged and captured Marius, asked for and sought the consulship, Sylla at first tried to prevent him; but when the man, courted eagerly by many, pushed his way into the forum, Sylla sent one of the centurions about him and had the man cut down, while he himself sat upon a tribunal in the temple of the Dioscuri and watched the killing from above. When the crowd seized the centurion and brought him to the tribunal, Sylla ordered those who were making an uproar to be silent, and said that he himself had ordered this to be done, and commanded that the centurion be released.

His triumph, however, made splendid by the extravagance and novelty of the royal spoils, found a greater ornament and a finer spectacle still in the exiles: for the most illustrious and powerful of the citizens, wearing garlands, walked along in the procession, calling Sylla their savior and father, since it was through him that they were returning to their fatherland and bringing back their children and wives.

Now that everything had been gathered together, he made before the assembly an accounting of his deeds, reckoning up his good fortunes with no less eagerness than his acts of valor, and at the end he ordered that he himself be called, on the strength of these, Fortunate (Eutyches); for this is chiefly what Felix wishes to signify. He himself, however, when composing letters and conducting negotiations addressed to the Greeks, styled himself Epaphroditus, and among us too, on the trophies, he is thus inscribed: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus.

Furthermore, when Metella bore him twin children, to the boy he gave the name Faustus, and to the girl, Fausta: for what is fortunate and cheerful the Romans call "faustum." So much indeed did he trust in his good fortunes rather than in his deeds, that, although vast numbers had been slain by him, and so great an innovation and change had taken place in the city, he laid down his office and made the people master of the consular elections, while he himself did not come forward as a candidate, but went about in the forum offering his person, accountable like a private citizen, to any who wished.

And a certain bold man, contrary to his judgment and one hostile to him, was expected to be elected consul—Marcus Lepidus—not through his own efforts, but because Pompey was eagerly canvassing and pleading with the people, who were glad to gratify him.

For this reason, when Sylla saw Pompey rejoicing in the victory and departing, he called him to himself and said, "How fine a piece of statesmanship of yours, young man, to have proclaimed Lepidus—the most reckless of all men—ahead of Catulus, the best of them! It is time indeed for you not to sleep, since you have made your rival stronger against yourself." Now this Sylla spoke, as it were, prophetically: for Lepidus, quickly growing insolent, soon set himself at war against Pompey's party.

Sacrificing a tenth of his whole property to Heracles, Sylla gave lavish feasts to the people; and the provisioning was so far in excess of what was needed that a vast quantity of delicacies was thrown into the river every day, and wine forty years old and older was drunk.

In the midst of this feasting, which lasted for many days, Metella died of illness. And since the priests would not allow Sylla to approach her nor his house to be defiled by the mourning, he wrote out a bill of divorce from her while she was still living and ordered her to be carried to another house. This point of religious observance he kept exactly, out of superstition; but the law he himself had introduced fixing the expense of burials he himself transgressed, sparing no expenditure.

He also transgressed the regulations he had set concerning the frugality of dinners, consoling his grief with drinking-bouts and banquets full of extravagance and buffoonery. When a few months had passed, there was a gladiatorial show, and since the seating was not yet separated but the theater was still mixed with men and women together, it happened that a woman of handsome appearance and of illustrious family sat near Sylla:

For she was the daughter of Messalla and sister of Hortensius the orator, and her name was Valeria; it had recently happened that she was separated from her husband. She, passing behind Sylla, leaned her hand upon him and, pulling away a small tuft of wool from his garment, continued on to her own seat; and when Sylla looked at her in surprise, she said, "Nothing terrible, Imperator, but I too wish to have some small share in your good fortune."

Sylla heard this not unpleasantly, and indeed was at once clearly a little smitten; for he sent secretly to ask her name, and learned her family and manner of life. From this there came exchanges of glances between them, and continual turnings of faces toward one another, and interchanges of smiles, and at last agreements and compacts about marriage—blameless, perhaps, on her part, but Sylla, even though he married a woman most temperate and noble, did not begin from a temperate and honorable beginning, but was drawn on, like a young man, by looks and wanton allure, by the sort of things that naturally stir up the basest and most shameless passions.

Nevertheless, even while he had her in his house, he kept company with actress mimes and lyre-girls and stage performers, drinking with them from morning onward on couches. For those who had the greatest power with him at that time were Roscius the comic actor, Sorex the chief mime, and Metrobius the female-role singer, whom, although he had passed his prime, Sylla continued to the end to love, not denying it.

From this he nourished a disease that began from a slight cause, and for a long time did not know that his internal organs had become filled with corruption, from which his very flesh, being corrupted, turned entirely into lice, so that although many people removed them day and night, what was cleared away was no part of what kept coming on, but all his clothing and bathwater and washing-basin and food became infected with that discharge and corruption—so much did it break out.

For this reason he often got into water many times a day, washing and cleansing his body. But it was of no use: for the transformation overcame him in swiftness, and the multitude of the vermin got the better of every purification. It is said that among the very ancient, Acastus the son of Pelias died of lice-disease; and among later men, Alcman the lyric poet, and Pherecydes the theologian, and Callisthenes of Olynthus while under guard in prison, and further Mucius the jurist.

And if one should also mention those of no worth but otherwise well known, it is said that the man who began the servile war in Sicily, a runaway slave named Eunus, after his capture, while being led to Rome, died of the lice-disease.

Sylla not only foreknew his own death, but has in a way even written about it: for he stopped writing the twenty-second book of his memoirs two days before he died, and he says that the Chaldeans foretold to him that, having lived well, he must end his life at the height of his good fortunes.

He also says that his son, who had died a little before Metella, appeared to him in his sleep standing beside him in shabby clothing and begging his father to cease from his cares, and to come with him to his mother Metella and live with her quietly and free from trouble; nevertheless he did not cease from conducting public affairs,

for ten days before his death he reconciled those at war among themselves at Puteoli and wrote a law for them by which they were to be governed; and one day before, learning that the magistrate Granius, being in debt to the public treasury, was not paying it back but was waiting for his death, sent for the man to his chamber, and having his attendants stand around him, ordered him to be strangled; and by his shouting and struggling he burst an abscess and discharged a great quantity of blood.

After this, his strength failing, he passed the night in wretched condition and died, leaving behind two young children by Metella. For Valeria, after his death, gave birth to a little daughter, whom they called Postuma; for the Romans thus name those who are born after the death of their fathers.

Many indeed set out and banded together with Lepidus, intending to prevent the body from receiving the customary burial rites; but Pompey, although he had a grievance against Sylla—for he alone among his friends had been left out of his will—turned some aside by favor and entreaty, others by threat, and escorted the body to Rome, and provided both security and honor for the burial,

and it is said that the women brought so great a quantity of spices for him that, apart from the amount borne along on some two hundred ten separate litters, a large image of Sylla himself was fashioned, and a lictor too was fashioned, out of costly frankincense and cinnamon. Since the day was overcast from early morning, and rain from heaven was expected, they scarcely managed to lift the corpse before the ninth hour.

But when a bright wind swept down upon the pyre and roused a great flame, the body, having already been consumed just as the pyre was dying down and the fire departing, a great downpour poured out and continued until night, so that his fortune seemed to remain by him and to help bury the body along with it.

Now his tomb is in the Campus Martius, and the epitaph, which they say he himself composed and left behind, has as its main point that none of his friends surpassed him in doing good, nor any of his enemies in doing harm.

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