If You're Interested: Notes on Sulla

I'm posting this more for my own benefit, and to show how I like to prepare for an essay. Below the cut is my notes. referencing has been done in this way: "quotation" (book number from bibliography, page number).

I made a half-hearted attempt to colourcode my notes to correspond with what paragraphs I want to do.

Economic      Politic      Individualistic

Having done this though, I'm seriously rethinking my essay structure. Sulla's reforms were mostly politic in nature, with economic reforms mostly influenced by politics. Really, individual cases are only noteworthy in the case of the Great Proscription, which I am considering making its own paragraph.

New notes are in yellow and enjoy ruining the formatting

The Great Proscription	Benefit	·         introduced a Capital Levy on the wealthy men behind the revolution ·         the equites were, “deprived of its politically prominent elements, at the same time as it was deprived of power and conspicuous distinction as a class” (1, 24) ·         presented as, "confiscation by the State of the property of political outlaws" (2, P. 261) o    allowed punishment of the guilty o    "removal of dangerous sources of future rebellion" (2, P. 261) §  "whole towns were put up for auction" (4, 183) §  Spoletum, Praeneste, Interamna and Florentia o    "removal of great amounts of wealth from hands which had misused it to others which would (...in political theory) use it better" (2, P. 261) §  included 40 Senators and 1,600 equites, c.w. Marius: 50 and 1,000 (2, P. 263). §  equites were part of the aristocracy, below the patricians §  punished more those, "whose only offense was their wealth" (2, P. 264), than those who physically versed him §  ie. those who funded Marius §  "4,700 persons were entered on the public records as having fallen in the proscriptions" (4, 183) §  "shameless violence" (4, 186) o    the profits of the proscription, "filled the public treasury to overflowing" (2, 265) §  despite, "two talents" (4, 182), being given to those who killed a wanted man §  despite the incredibly  low prices §  "sold to allied and friendly cities their freedom and independence" (8), and was, "daily confiscating and selling at public auction the wealthiest and greatest estates" (8) §  produced "350,000,000 sesterces" (4, 183) o    purchases, "bound the buyers to his interests and ensured their wishing to uphold his acts after his death" (4, 183)
	Cost	·         the Great Proscription was abused to some extent o    Lucius Sergius Catilina, "legalised his position by getting his brother's name included in the proscription list" (2, 264) o    Sextus Roscius of Ameria, "was placed upon the list of the proscribed; murdered by two of his kinsmen, and his wealth seized" (2, 264) §  "by the complicity of Chrysogonus, Sulla's secretary" (2, 264) §  "they charged the son with having killed his father" (4, 182) o    "it is improbable that Sulla either intended, or would voluntarily have allowed, such disgraceful scandals as these" (2, 265) §  "there are faint indications that he resisted abuses where he could" (2, 265) §  "Crassus received no furher official employment" (2, 265) §  seized the property of someone not officially proscribed §  "Sulla owed Crassus too much for severity to be possible" (2, 265) §  "he owed a great many people too much" (2, 265) §  "there is nothing...to suggest that he would deliberately unravel with one hand the fabric of law and order he was attempting to weave with the other" (2, 265) o    "public opinion at large did not distinguish between any hypothetically legitimate or illegitimate method in these things" (2, 266) §  "it seems to have taken the view that the whole scheme was a scandalous one" (2, 266) ·         "no amount of enquiry can square a political proscription with the laws of ethics" (2, 266)
Destruction of Samnium	Benefit	·         "the Samnites had been a disruptive force" (2, P. 259) ·         role of absolute power allowed for removal of political instabilities ·         "they had always been ready to wreck Roman government in the interests of their own independence" (2, P. 260)
Creation of the Cornelians	Benefit	·         around 10,000 men ·         "he selected from the slaves of the proscribed...the best men he could find" (2, 272) ·         "deliberate and careful choice of new blood for citizenship" (2, 272) ·         "gave the new men a peculiarly strong interest in the maintenance of the new constitution" (2, 272)
Created the Modern Nation	Benefit	·         "the old City State ceased to exist, and the modern nation was born" (2, 272) ·         “realised that the Italian upper class had to be used for stabilising the republic” (1, 22) o    “commit[ed] himself to recognising their rights” (1, 23) §  “Equal sacrifice demanded equal recognition” (1, 22) o    “it finally threatened to destroy the state” (1, 22) o    “recognised as vital to the survival of the republic” (1, 25) ·         made any Italian citizen a citizen of Rome o    "all distinction between the old and the new citizens was swept away" (2, 272) ·         "instituted a definite scheme of local self-government" (2, 273) o    each city given a constitution to manage its own affairs o    Roman magistrates retained power of control over general policy o    "democracy impossible in the new Rome" (2, 274) §  due to distance
Stabilised the farmers	Benefit	·         "120,000 small holdings to the discharged soldiers of his armies" (2, 274) o    "resettling Italy with precisely the class of small farmer who was most needed" (2, 274) o    "fortifying his new arrangements with the zealous support of men who had everything to lose by their alteration" (2, 274) ·         made the land inalienable to solidify their claim ·         removed the corn dole which had previously, "destroy[ed] the small Italian farmer" (2, 274) ·         basically tried to make the settlements permanent
Reformed the Courts	Benefit	·         created 8 judicial courts o    separated civil from criminal justice, "for the first  time in the history of law" (2, 275) §  civil cases tried by a single judge §  criminal cases tried a jury o    one court was for treason §  made it less likely that a partisan tribunal (think Quintus Varius), "would ever again be set up" (2, 275) o    'De Repetundis' was put in place to avoid repetition of the events leading to the Mithradatic war o    Aim was to “take from the Comitia the settlement of criminal cases” (4, 196) §  “obviate the necessity for appointing special commissions” (4, 196) ·         practically abolished the death penalty o    assembly had the right to sentence to death, but did not have power in the courts ·         judices were drawn, “from the senators instead of the equites”
Reformed the Senate	Benefit	·         made senators irremovable o    previously the censor had been used to pass its friends into the senate and remove, "as many men of enlightenment from it as possible" (2, 275) ·         entrance into senate was now by popular election ·         “his main object was to restore the authority of the senate, and to do more than restore it, to give it such power as might, if it was true to itself, secure it from mob-rule on the one hand and tyranny on the other” (4, 190) ·         “deliberating on a measure before it was submitted to the vote of the Comitia” (4, 191) o    “one security against any measures being carried against its wishes” (4, 191) ·         “legislative power was placed wholly in the Senate’s hands” (4, 191) ·         “the answer was to give the state a single head again…that head could only be the senate” (1, 23) ·         “the senate became supreme beyond challenge” (1, 23), in all areas
Reorganised the Magistracies	Benefit	·         increased numbers o    "to deal with the increasing amount of business that passed through their hands" (2, 276) ·         kept civil and military apart o    "impossible for a civil magistrate to hold at the same time a military office" (2, 276) ·         made it illegal to have an office for several years in succession ·         this had several aims o    "prevented the magistracies from becoming the close preserve of a clique" (2, 276) o    allowed work to be done by "properly elected men" (2, 276) with "official experience, who knew something of the business of administration" (2, 277)
Reduced the Influence of the equites	Benefit	·         removed their control over the courts, "back to the senatorial order" (2, 274) ·         The creation of the equites by Gracchus, “ma[de] the state two-headed” (1, 22) o    “lead to serious discord” (1, 22) o    “it was a disturbing and not a regulating influence: power without responsibility, political leverage without political interests or indeed policies” (1, 22) o    “threatened to produce…anarchy, to make the state ungovernable” (1, 22) o    "chief anarchic force of the nineties" (1, 23) ·         “the political differences between the two leading orders were significantly reduced by the adlection of so many eminent equites into the Senate” (1, 25) ·         "swept away all the privileges that had made them a definite class in the State" (2, 274) o    Removal, “of the reserved seats appropriated to the equites at public services” (4, 197) ·         removed the capacity to farm the taxes o    "converted the taxes into fixed amounts" (2, 274)
Minor Changes to the Citizen Assembly	Benefit	·         could only assent or veto legislation that had passed the senate ·         also known as the Comitia Tributa
Changed the Requirements to be Consul	Benefit	·         to reduce chance of a repeat of Marius, “to prevent any individual again obtaining undue influence” (4, 193) ·         “to exalt the Senate’s authority at its expense” (4, 193) ·         Made it so one could not be consul, “till he had been first quaestor and then praetor” (4, 193) ·         Could not be consul again, “till after a period of ten years” (4, 193)
Introduced Marriage and Sumptuary Laws	Cost	·         "introduce marriage and sumptuary laws for the citizens" (8) o    laws to restrict lavishness basically o    "while he himself was living in lewdness and adultery" (8) o    "Sulla, who knew no restraint in his extravagance, tried to bring the citizens into ways of sobriety" (8) ·         “sumptuary law, which is said to have limited the price of certain luxuries” (4, 198) o    “it would have encouraged instead of checking gluttony” (4, 198)
Stabilised Country	Benefit	·         "he despatched Pompeius to Sicily and Africa, to recover those provinces and to resettle them" (2, P. 259) ·         "restored [Athens] to freedom and independence" (8), even though it fought against him in favour of Mithridates
Reduced the Influence of the tribunate	Cost	·         “amongst Sulla’s measures was an attempt to deprive the tribunate of its strength and power”(3, 9) o    “for ten years this was an issue of conflict until gradually all the prerogatives of the tibunes were restored” (3, 9) o    “tribunes…play[ed] an important supporting role in this final phase of the Republic” (3, 9) §  ie. the fall of the Republic §  “closely linked to the great military commanders. For it was they who often proposed the laws that granted generals their commands” (3, 9) o    “Deprived of the power of proposing a measure at will to the Comitia Tributa” (4, 191) o    “lose the power of prosecuting anyone before it” (4, 191) o    “those who had been tribunes should be ineligible to other offices” (4, 191) o    “right of veto seems to have been left to them” (4, 191) ·         “gagged free speech by the disabilities attached to the tribunate” (4, 198)
Led to Republic’s Fall	Cost	·         “some form of predominance had become regularised” (3, 9) ·         “a system which could endure only by the repression not only of hostile interests but of the  ambition of its own adherrents carried in itself the seeds of early dissolution” (4, 198) ·         “abdication only revealed monarchy, and the broad road which Sulla had laid over the breakers and quicksands of a revolution in reality paved the way to a throne” (3, 198) ·         “Sulla’s example postponed [the Civil War’s] coming” (1, 29) o    “corruption in the senatorial law courts was so blatant that even eminent senators agreed it must be reformed…to remoe it from the sphere of political agitation” (1, 29) o    “had lost the will and the confidence to govern” (1, 30) o    “Sulla had left a legacy of guilt” (1, 30) o    “the Sullan oligarchy had a fatal flaw: it governed with a guilty conscience” (1, 30) ·         Republic “had no sense of mission” (1, 30) o    Between 78 and 59, “when ordered government may be said to have ceased” (1, 30), over half the consuls, “are not attested in provincial government” (1, 30) §  “did not want to leave the excitement of the city, or the pleasures of their villas, for the duties of service abroad” (1, 30) o    In trying to, “provide against excessive ambition” (1, 31), he allowed for, “inertia and irresponsibility” (1, 31)
Intensified Competition for Positions	Cost	·         “the reforms of Sulla made the intensity of competition for high office even greater” (3, 69) §  Doubled the number of quaestors (from 10 to 20) §  Added only two to the praetors (from 8) §  Retained a consulship of two men ·         “more men than ever before, entering the quaestorship would have had their hopes of a political career raised; more than ever before would have found the higher echelons of that career impossible to reach” (3, 69) o    Intensified competition ·         “more members of the Roman elite were prepared to resort to illicit tactics to secure the offices they wanted” (3, 69) o    Institutions, “were by-passed as ambitious politicians found that violence was a more effective way of achieving their goals” (3, 69) ·         Ultimately impacted on the effective governing of Rome o    “political leaders were prevented from going to meetings for fear of their lives” (3, 70) o    “the new year sometimes opened with major magistrates still not elected, because of constant (potentially violent) obstruction of elections” (3, 70) o    “the years 53 and 52 opened without consuls having yet been elected” (3, 70)

Sulla’s measures were repealed		·         In the seventies and sixties, “four new provinces were created…yet no more magistrates were appointed” (1, 28) ·         Tribunal revived in the seventies o    “the reforms of 70 which completed it and recalled the equites to…the major share in the courts and hence to renewed political power” (1, 28) ·         “the res publica that had broken down for lack of concordia and had been replaced by Sulla’s radical reform was now restored, with concordia no nearer” (1, 28)
Set example for ultimate rule	cost	·         “Sulla could not abolish his own example” (1, 28) o    “Sulla’s example also did much to prevent real imitation” (1,, 28) §  horror of proscriptions o    Caesar, “imitat[ed] his technique” (1, 29)