Episode 35. Sulla, Part Three: Dictatorship, Reform, and the Resignation

Sources and Historiography

The proscriptions and the dictatorship are covered by Plutarch's Life of Sulla and Appian's Civil Wars. The proscription numbers—roughly ninety senators and several thousand equestrians—come from Appian and are treated as plausible upper bounds rather than precise figures by most modern scholars. The first list, published as a proconsular edict shortly after Sulla's victory, is better documented than the subsequent lists, which grew as Sulla's supporters exploited the mechanism to settle private scores.

The central historiographical debate about Sulla has been stable for several decades and splits broadly between two positions. The first, represented most forcefully by Arthur Keaveney's Sulla: The Last Republican, holds that Sulla was a genuine constitutionalist who believed in the senatorial Republic, used necessary force to restore it, and resigned because he meant what he said about stepping down when the work was done. The second, associated with a range of scholars including Ernst Badian and Erich Gruen, is more skeptical: the resignation may have been sincere, but the methods were incompatible with the institutions Sulla claimed to be restoring, and the contradiction undermined everything he built. Both positions agree that Sulla's reforms showed political intelligence; they disagree about whether the man behind them deserves the benefit of the doubt.

The question of what the Sullan settlement meant for what came after is a historiographical question in its own right. Tom Holland's Rubicon and Mike Duncan's The Storm Before the Storm both argue that Sulla demonstrated the template Caesar would use; Cicero's famous attribution to Pompey—“if Sulla could do it, why can't I?”—is recorded in De Imperio Cn. Pompei and represents a contemporaneous Roman assessment that the demonstration had been made and understood.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Book I. Detailed account of the proscriptions, the numbers killed, the mechanism of the lists.
• Cicero. Various. For the “if Sulla could do it, why can't I?” attributed to Pompey, and for contemporary assessments of the regime.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar.” For the Caesar-Sulla confrontation over Cornelia.
• Plutarch. “Life of Pompey.” For the Sulla-Pompey relationship, the Imperator exchange, and Pompey's role in the civil war.
• Plutarch. “Life of Sulla,” chapters 30–38 cover the dictatorship, reforms, and retirement. The account of Sulla walking unguarded in the Forum is here, as is the death scene. Essential.

Secondary Sources

• Duncan, Mike. The Storm Before the Storm. 2017. Covers the Sullan period as the opening of the late Republican crisis.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. 2003. Excellent popular account of the full Sullan period; the dictatorship and resignation chapters are particularly strong.
• Keaveney, Arthur. Sulla: The Last Republican. 2005. Essential; strongly defends the view that Sulla was a genuine reformer and that the resignation was sincere.
• Seager, Robin. “Sulla.” Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. IX. The most careful academic assessment; nuanced on the question of Sulla's motives for resigning.

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