This unpleasant business concluded, Sulla called for a mass meeting to address all the citizens of Rome. As he had done so many times before, Sulla was ready to share his plans to create an honest bond of trust between them all. He planted himself in the Forum and announced he was resigning the Dictatorship; he now stood before them as a citizen of Rome and was ready to answer all questions or challenges. Then he dismissed his official bodyguards and walked out into the streets. He was no longer dictator of Rome. He was simply citizen Sulla. But in an amusing coda to his voluntary renunciation of power, when Sulla departed the Forum he was followed by a boy who heckled him mercilessly. Entering his house and leaving the obnoxious jeers behind, Sulla wryly quipped, “This young man will prevent any future holder of such power from laying it down.”33
But Sulla was himself serious about shedding power. He and Pius were elected consuls for 80, but after this further year governing Rome not as dictator but as consul, Sulla was ready to move on. When the Assembly returned Sulla as consul for 79, he declined to serve. He accepted an almost honorary proconsulship in Cisalpine Gaul but never visited the province. Instead, he moved down to a country villa in Campania. There he lived at the center of a country court that signaled a freewheeling embrace of his old carefree ways. He hosted his old friends in the theater community, intellectuals from across the Mediterranean, and the political elite from across the known world. Sulla never stopped paying close attention to Roman politics—and Roman politics never stopped paying attention to Sulla—but the Sullan era was truly over.34
Back in Rome, the Sullan faction was for the most part united around Sulla’s constitutional reforms, but that did not mean they were united in purpose. Their allegiance to one another had come from a shared allegiance to Sulla. Now that he was withdrawing, everyone was free to pursue their own factional backbiting. Metellus Pius was too imperious. Pompey too arrogant. Crassus too greedy. Sulla’s republic may have tried to confine these disputes to a healthy give-and-take in the political arena, but that did not mean there would be harmony.
In between drinking sessions, Sulla spent much of his time composing an enormous memoir that would explain and justify everything he had ever said or done. He filled it with detailed accounts of every campaign he fought in, every office he held, every piece of public business he had transacted, why his friends were his friends and why his enemies were his enemies. This memoir was meant to paint a clear picture of Sulla as the chosen son of Fortuna who was guilty only of courage, fidelity, patriotism. Sulla’s final plan to control events was a masterful success, as later historians relied heavily on the memoir as a primary source. Our own understanding of Sulla some two thousand years later is still very often
WHEN HE RETIRED, Sulla was still only about sixty years old—not young by any means, but also nowhere near death. As Sulla completed his memoirs, he no doubt looked forward to at least another decade of honorable retirement. His wife Metella had recently died, but he had taken a new bride and had another new baby on the way. But he also had premonitions of his imminent demise. He described a dream where his dead son “appeared to him… and besought his father to pursue an end to anxious thoughts, and come with him to his mother Metella, there to live in peace and quietness with her.” But even these unsettling dreams did not deter him from working on his memoir or transacting business that presented itself.36
But while conducting a piece of public business in 78, Sulla was suddenly stricken. A local magistrate had been caught embezzling money from the city treasury, and while Sulla yelled at the thief, something ruptured inside his body and he spurted blood out of his mouth. Almost certainly caused by liver failure or a huge ulcer, Sulla collapsed in a heap of blood and bile and was carried back home, where he spent “a night of wretchedness.” By morning, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was dead.37
When word of the dictator’s death reached Rome, a debate erupted over how to respond. Some believed that it was already time to mark his career infamous and deny funeral rights. Sulla had murdered his fellow citizens and made himself tyrant. But Pompey stepped forward and retorted that he believed that a great man like Sulla deserved an elaborate public funeral, and he couldn’t believe it was even a question. The elaborate funeral was duly staged. But the debate over Sulla’s legacy was only beginning. In later years, what one thought of Sulla spoke volumes about one’s character.38
