The Storm Before the Storm полностью

Despite the irregular way Sulla entered the Dictatorship, this was all mostly in keeping with the ancient powers of the office. He even appointed a Master of the Horse, the traditional partner of the dictator who answered to no one but the dictator. But there was a large and unprecedented omission from the law naming him dictator: an expiration date. Old Roman dictators never served terms longer than six months, a limit literally written into the law that created their dictatorship. But Sulla conveniently left that part out. After hinting to the Senate that six months might not be enough to restore the Republic, Sulla implied his dictatorship was to be held in perpetuity. With no legal obligation to ever set his vast array of powers aside, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was now Dictator for Life.²⁰

Despite all the constitutional reforms he was about to unveil to restore the proper order of the Old Republic in the next generation, the mundane rules of republican order paled in comparison to the example of a single man holding unlimited power indefinitely. And it would be the Dictatorship of Sulla, not the Republic of Sulla, that would be his lasting legacy.

SULLA HAD ALREADY revealed much of what he planned for the Republic after his first march on Rome. Before leaving to take command of the Mithridatic War, he carried laws to expand the power of the Senate, including moving all voting to the less democratic Centuriate Assembly, expanding the rolls of the Senate, and requiring the Senate’s consent before a bill could be presented to the Assembly. After Cinna took over Rome these reforms were canceled, but now they returned as a part of Sulla’s final constitutional settlement. To his original kernel of reforms, the dictator Sulla introduced a package of new laws to place the Senate back at the center of the Republic.²¹

With the tribunate so often used to lob antisenatorial bombs, Sulla severely curtailed their power. Originally designed to protect the individual rights of plebeians, the office had morphed into a dangerous instrument of demagogues and tyrants. So in addition to requiring a tribune to seek permission from the Senate before introducing a bill, Sulla also abolished the all-purpose, all-powerful veto. A tribune could now only levy a veto in matters pertaining to individual requests for clemency. But more important than these procedural restrictions, Sulla decreed that men elected tribune were barred from all other magistracies. This prohibition ensured that ambitious young leaders would never seek the office again. What once had been a springboard into politics was now a dead end.²²

The tribunes contained, Sulla then formalized the rest of the republican list of magistracies. Until now, rules of progression up the cursus honorum from quaestor to consul had always been vague and unspoken. Sulla formalized the path. He also expanded the ranks of offices, doubling the number of quaestors to twenty and adding two more praetors. Rome was long overdue to add more official administrative posts to match their expanded empire. Sulla also decreed that two years had to elapse in between offices no matter what, and ten years had to pass before a man could run for the same office. There would not be repeat consulships in Sulla’s republic.²³

Sulla did not want repeated governorships either. With eight praetors and two consuls now serving annually, there would be no need to keep men in provinces for more than a year or two. But this was not about improving provincial administration. Provincial assignments gave men access to wealth, connections, and power. Keeping a high rate of turnover in the provinces did nothing to help Roman provincials, but it helped maintain the balance of power back in the Senate. It went without saying that all provincial assignments would be also controlled by the Senate. The Assembly would have nothing to do with it.²⁴

To match the expanded cursus honorum, Sulla also doubled the rolls of the Senate from three hundred to six hundred. As dictator, Sulla naturally took the liberty to assign all the new senators. The course of the civil wars had dwindled the number of living senators below two hundred anyway, so over the course of his dictatorship he regularly elevated loyal officers and virtuous friends into the Senate. But even Sulla did not personally know four hundred worthy candidates; he took suggestions from various parties and created a whole cohort of grateful senators, loyal not just to Sulla, but to the reformed Republic he created.²⁵

With an expanded Senate now filling up, Sulla could also restore control of the courts. The fight that had been ongoing back to the days of the Gracchi would now be settled once and for all. The jury pool for permanent courts would be the Senate. The decree enlarging the Senate was partly meant to give the Senate sufficient manpower to dispense justice in the array of permanent courts Sulla now established.²⁶