Why, my son, do you so long for Ambition, that worst of deities? Oh, do not; the goddess is unjust; many are the homes and cities once prosperous that she has entered and left to the ruin of her worshippers.
EURIPIDES1
LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA WAS BORN IN ROME IN 138 BC. As a Cornelii he belonged to one of the oldest patrician families in Rome. But though he bore a noble name, and the easy arrogance that went with it, Sulla’s own particular branch of the family had long since faded into obscurity. No one in his family had risen beyond praetor for three generations, and Sulla did not seem particularly primed to restore the family to glory. As a young man he caroused with actors, poets, and musicians—the bottom feeders of the Roman social order. He and his friends drank and partied and lived their lives outside the stuffy confines of the respectable classes. During his youth, Sulla also began a romantic relationship with the actor Metrobius, who went on to become his lifelong companion. Even as Sulla married, had children, and climbed to the pinnacle of power, Metrobius remained by his side.2
Though Sulla was a carefree hedonist, he never neglected his studies. He had great natural intelligence and received a good education. By the time he was a teenager he was fluent in Greek and highly literate in art, literature, and history. Despite the low fortunes of his family, Sulla still spent his youth expecting to embark on a public career. But when his father died, Sulla discovered just how far the family fortunes had fallen. Sulla’s father was bankrupt and left his son no inheritance. Sulla could not even afford to join the legions as a cavalry officer, the prerequisite to any political career. So rather than spending his twenties in the legions, Sulla continued his dissolute life in Rome, renting an inexpensive apartment and living his life in the pursuit of wine, women, and song.3
Sulla cut a striking figure on the streets of Rome, with sharp gray eyes and light reddish hair. Though plagued by breakouts of red splotches on his face, Sulla was a handsome and charismatic young man who commanded the attention of any room: “He was eloquent, clever, and quick to make friends. He had a mind deep beyond belief in its power of disguising its purposes, and was generous with many things, especially with money.” He would never entirely leave his early life behind. The friends he made remained close at hand, and in the future, Sulla would live something of a double life: stern and composed while dealing with matters of business, and then, “once at table, he refused to be serious at all… he underwent a complete change as soon as he betook himself to good-fellowship and drinking.”4
Around age thirty, Sulla secured an advantageous marriage to a woman called only “Julia,” whom it is strongly suspected was a cousin of Gaius Marius’s wife Julia—creating an attachment to Marius just as Marius’s career was taking off. But though he was married, Sulla was not faithful. He was charismatic and indulged in numerous affairs, especially with older widows who were happy to help him maintain his libertine lifestyle. Sulla had a particularly prolonged affair with a woman known only by his pet name for her, “Nicopolis.” She died around 110 BC and named Sulla as her principal heir. Around this time, his stepmother also died and similarly left him all her property. Suddenly Sulla had wealth to match his ambitions. The fact that he had started with so little and acquired so much later made his enemies sneer: “How can you be an honest man,” they said, “when your father left you nothing, and yet you are so rich?”5
Sulla used his patrician advantage, plus a hefty fee, to bypass the required service time in the legion before standing for public office. Elected quaestor for 107, Sulla was attached to the command of newly elected consul Gaius Marius. The contrast between the two men was striking. As a novus homo, Marius had been forced to fight and scrape his way up the cursus honorum. He was not even allowed to stand for military tribune until he had spent a decade in the army. Sulla, on the other hand, walked out of the brothels, waived his patrician credentials, and purchased the job. Narrowing his eyes at this inexperienced dilettante, Marius ordered Sulla to stay behind in Rome to raise cavalry units, ensuring that he would not get in the way as Marius sailed for Numidia to finish the war against Jugurtha.6
WHEN MARIUS ARRIVED in Africa in early 107, Metellus was unable to overcome his rage at being cast aside, and so he refused the custom of personally handing over command to a successor. Instead, Metellus sent his second in command to greet Marius and hand over the army. Metellus, meanwhile, sailed back to Rome under a dark cloud of not entirely unjustifiable bitterness.7
