PART I
CHAPTER 1
The victory of L. Cornelius Sulla in his civil war against Marius and Cinna was a watershed moment in Roman history. Certainly Sulla saw it that way; in his memoir, he depicted himself as a divinely appointed savior of the state inaugurating a new age for Rome.1 His memoir, rich in political theology, was his response to a shared sense of crisis at Rome; and his depiction of his role in that crisis built on a foundation of narrative and performative acts pioneered by other Romans before him. Principal among these forerunners was his opponent Marius, whose propaganda Sulla would seek to overturn.2 Sulla rose to prominence at a time when Rome was in the midst of a bitter war with the Italians. The war had a strongly religious component, and there were assassinations of Roman magistrates, as well as unsuccessful plots against them, at festivals in Italian towns.3 Prophecies of a change in saecula circulated, and prodigies were seen in great number.4 To hopeful Italians, the situation portended an eclipse of Roman power and the rise of a new hegemon in Italy. In the East, Mithradates flooded Asia with a vision of himself as a messianic figure who would rid the East of Roman oppression and usher in a new age.5 The slaughter of thousands of Italians at the hands of Greeks must have seemed to many Romans to be further evidence that the cosmos was in disarray. The people of Rome may have looked for a savior who would turn aside the chaos and bring the city and its empire a new lease on life.
This chapter examines the theological self-fashioning and performances through which Sulla sought to prevail against the various challenges that threatened Rome and his own position therein. To show himself able to meet the challenges at hand, Sulla presented himself as favored by the gods. Anointing himself as the favored champion of Rome necessarily required distinguishing himself from competitors, particularly Marius. The present discussion begins with an examination of the theological and performative portrait of Marius that is preserved in the extant sources. Although the nature of the sources makes it more difficult to distinguish confidently between Marius' own efforts at self-fashioning and his legend, anecdotes about Marius' arrivals and departures illustrate what Sulla may have been responding to in constructing his own theological position. After all, for some time before the death of Marius, the two sides had been competing with each other in presenting their respective leaders as men favored of the gods.6
Marius: Reditus cum Felicitate
Gaius Marius rose to prominence through his military leadership in the Jugurthine War and his rescue of the city from the Cimbri and Teutones, who threatened to invade Italy. Thanks to victories over enemies who conjured memories of such past existential threats to the city as the Gauls and Hannibal, Marius held a string of consulships, many of which he obtained from the people.7 Marius' felicitas, that quality that seems to bring abundance and success to its bearer, was evocative of the memory of Scipio Africanus' charisma.8 It inspired jealousy among the members of the old nobility, whose collective incompetence in meeting the same threats had inspired the people of Rome to look elsewhere for leadership.9 Marius' competitors within that nobility, including Sulla, were thus forced to adapt by forwarding their own personal theologies of power, which drew on pre-existing family lore but also included the emergence of novel theological expressions. In monument and text, one of Marius' competitors, Q. Lutatius Catulus, who fought alongside Marius at Vercellae, promoted a view of his role in the Battle of Vercellae that emphasized the role of a special Fortuna in his victory.10 Catulus built a dazzling and innovative temple to this god, Fortuna Huiusce Diei, who had manifested on the battlefield to give him victory, and he wrote of the events in his autobiography.11 Clearly Marius' popularity and achievements were prompting his peers to invent new ways of promoting themselves as charismatic leaders.
In examining Marius, the present task is to consider the theological portrait that he and his followers constructed to explain his success and to demonstrate how he was the right man to meet the challenges of his time, since his competitors necessarily engaged this theology. Central to understanding the emergence of the new performative and theological model of Roman leadership is Marius' self-presentation as Rome and Italy's savior.12 Because of difficulties with the sources, the subject can only be discussed in terms of a Marian tradition preserved in a variety of sources through which the material is refracted in the service of each author's own agenda. For the purposes of the present argument, however, the positive representation of Marius, as it exists or can reasonably be extrapolated from the negative portrait, will be accepted provisionally as at least generally accurate in reflecting efforts to fashion a pro-Marian myth. That myth began to take shape in Marius' lifetime, through his efforts and with his approval. Marius' success in war elevated him in the eyes of Romans to a mythic level that placed him on par with Romulus and Camillus as a founder of the city and that made him the first attested example of a living Roman who received unofficial cult in Rome.13
According to the pro-Marian tradition, the first intimation of Marius' special fortune occurred after the siege of Numantia. When the younger Scipio Africanus was asked who would succeed him as leader in the next generation, Africanus tapped Marius on the shoulder and said that young warrior would perhaps be the one.14 The story is highly significant because it uses, much in the manner of the stories of the close association of the Diadochoi with Alexander the Great, the personal intimacy of two successive generations of leaders to symbolize the transfer of leadership and its attendant charisma.15 Here, Marius, although not of the family of Cornelius Scipio, is marked out as the successor to the special mystique of the two Africani (perhaps in specific response to Sullan claims to be the heir of the Cornelian mystique). In Aemilianus' case, this mystique may have included a prophecy of world rule, if one accepts the authenticity of the Clunia oracle reported by Suetonius.16
The tap on Marius' shoulder is reminiscent of the scene in which Valeria plucks cloth from the mantle of Sulla and explains that she wanted a piece of his felicitas.17 Scipio's gesture of tapping Marius may also signify a special endowment of felicitas.18 Plutarch remarks that Marius viewed the incident as prophetic. It is also interesting that the event occurs in connection with the successful end of the long siege of Numantia, a city that had been a thorn in the side of the Romans for years during the war in Spain. One of the crowning expressions of a leader's felicitas was his ability to conquer a city successfully. The conquest of Numantia, having been particularly difficult, was further evidence of the surpassing felicitas of Scipio, the man who destroyed the ancient city of Carthage. The setting of this symbolic transfer of charisma seems to have been calculated to indicate the promise of Marius as a leader of similar ability and divine felicity.
The consultation of the gods before departing on an important journey was a standard feature of Roman military practices, but remarkable examples marked out men destined for greatness. When Marius was serving under Metellus in Africa, a haruspex, reading the entrails of the sacrifices made to the gods of Utica, told Marius that he should test his fortune (fortuna) as often as possible, since everything he set out to do would turn out well (cuncta prospere eventura).19 This consultation parallels scenes in the life of Sulla on the eve of Sulla's marches on Rome, as will be shown later in this chapter. Marius, greatly desiring to be consul, decided to return to Rome to seek the office, which he did despite Metellus' resistance.20 The declaration of the haruspex directly before Marius' successful bid for the consulship perhaps addressed the sense that Marius lacked either the noble heritage or extraordinary success that Rome expected in their highest magistrates.21 Furthermore, the special emphasis on the declaration of the haruspex may address theologically a perceived disparity between Marius' lowly background and his remarkable success. Even though he lacked the noble background of men like Metellus or even a distinguishing achievement, Marius was shown to possess a divine gift of fortune or endowment of felicitas that compensated, allowing him to obtain not just one consulship but, eventually, a total of seven.
Elected consul, Marius returned to Africa as commander in Metellus' place. After Marius' victory in the Jugurthine War, Marius put on a triumphal performance that was as transgressive as it was unique. Returning to Rome, he took to drinking from a cantharus cup in imitation of the god Dionysus, conqueror of the East.22 He further timed his triumph to land on the Kalends of January, the same day he would assume the consulship for the third time. When Marius called the Senate into session for the first meeting of the year, he appeared in triumphal robes, thus offending his fellow senators.23
Marius was then called on to face the threat of the Cimbri and Teutones, after the catastrophe at Arausio—which had been the worst Roman defeat since Cannae and had awakened memories of invading Gauls and Hannibal. The end of Rome seemed to be a real possibility. Marius availed himself of all forms of divine guidance that he thought might help him in the campaign and instill confidence in his men. He kept an exotically costumed Syrian prophetess named Martha in his train, on whose orders he would offer sacrifice.24 This prophetess was perhaps a devotee of Atargatis, the divine patron of the rebel Eunus. Other evidence suggests that Marius favored the eastern Great Mother of the gods. A priest of Cybele from Pessinus, Battaces, came to Rome to announce that the goddess had declared that the Romans would be victorious against the invaders.25
Subsequently, Marius effectively destroyed the northern threat and was widely regarded as Rome's savior. As he returned to Rome, Marius played the role of world conqueror by again drinking from a cantharus as though he were Dionysus or perhaps the god's most famous protégé, Alexander the Great.26 Fittingly, the people hailed Marius as third founder of Rome and brought food and drink offerings to the victor and the gods from their homes, where they were celebrating their salvation.27 Although Marius had won the ultimate victory at Vercellae with the proconsul Catulus, the people credited Marius alone, perhaps since he was consul and the more militarily successful man. The people went so far as to demand that Marius celebrate the triumph by himself, something he wisely declined to do.
Extant accounts of Marius' returns to Rome reveal a man innovatively styling himself as a charismatic conqueror who enjoyed divine favor.28 Of particular interest here is his strategic use of the triumph as a tool for amplifying his charisma. While it was customary to use the laureled letter and adventus speech to advertise one's martial successes, in hopes of gaining a triumph and obtaining subsequent election to high office, Marius went further by adopting a Dionysiac pose and timing his triumph to coincide with the first day of his next term as consul.29 Although it is not explicitly stated, the timing of his triumph would have allowed him to process up the Capitoline as a triumphator and then immediately make the New Year's vows of the consul before proceeding to his first meeting with the Senate.30 None of this would have necessarily been problematic, if Marius had not decided that, instead of delivering his triumphal robes to Jupiter as was customary, he would continue to wear the vestis triumphalis during his first meeting with the Senate.31 This gesture was offensive in that, first, Marius appeared to be exercising his imperium militiae in carrying out his domestic duties and, second, his triumphal costume had both regal and divine associations.32 Perhaps it appeared to Marius' peers that he was presenting himself as a king or even Jupiter in the Curia, just as he had taken on Dionysiac trappings on his journey to Rome. It is also likely that Marius never dismissed his lictors—such dismissal being the traditional act symbolizing the end of one's imperium—since he went straight from triumph to inauguration.33
Sulla: A New Theology of Power
Marius' success as both commander and self-promoter excited envy in others and inspired attempts to outdo him. This sparked even more emphasis on an already existing tradition of theological self-promotion and competition among members of the Roman elite. Marius' colleague at Vercellae, the proconsul Catulus, made every effort to capture some of the credit for the victory against the Cimbri, both by carefully tallying his army's successes in the aftermath of the battle and by promoting his role in the victory once he was back at Rome.34 It was, however, Sulla, lieutenant of both Marius in Africa and Catulus on the day of victory over the Cimbri, who most effectively exploited the lessons of theological representation that he learned from his former commanders, to fashion a portrait of himself as the savior of Rome in a time of national crisis.
Sulla's theology of power can be accessed principally through Plutarch's use of Sulla's memoir.35 When Sulla set out to write his memoir, he faced the challenge of providing for posterity a justification of the war he had waged against Rome. In nearly five centuries of the history of the Republic, he had been the first and only commander to cross the pomerium with Roman soldiers and fight a pitched battle within the city. Although he subsequently reformed the Roman constitution through the special legal authority he obtained as dictator, the manner in which he had seized power threatened to undermine the legitimacy of his actions.36 Historians and scholars have drawn attention to this contradiction, yet the slender remnants of anti-Sullan propaganda in antiquity may suggest that the dictator's self-justification was remarkably successful, at least among those authors whose work remains. Cicero does not directly speak of Sulla's rise to power in negative terms until the time of the conflict between Pompey and Caesar.37 After the death of Caesar, Sallust wrote his speech of Lepidus in which he implicitly compared Sulla's march on Rome with Peisistratus' conquest of Athens and disparagingly called Sulla iste Romulus.38 Doubtless, Sulla's detractors were not in short supply, but the minimal extant criticism of his early career suggests, at the very least, that Sulla's legacy and the Sullan Republic's ruling class were deeply intertwined and that this post-Sullan ruling class generally upheld the legacy of the man to whom it owed so much.
Among the factors that contributed to the pervasive influence of Sulla's political theology over the rest of the first century, two in particular bear on the current discussion. First, Sulla rose to political prominence during a conflict that was already viewed as having epoch-changing significance: the Social War. Second, Sulla successfully presented himself to others as a person whose divine favor and destiny qualified him to save Rome and its empire at a time of chaos and calamity. The shared sense among Romans and Italians that there was indeed a great historical change in the offing afforded Sulla the opportunity to make a case that he was the destined savior that Rome needed at that critical juncture. This section of this chapter will elucidate the circumstances that gave Sulla an opening to make his unusual case justifying his ruthless acts and then will look more closely at the details of the theological argument Sulla presents through the wonders that occurred as he set out for war and returned to liberate Rome from the Cinnan faction.
Sulla's budding reputation got a big boost from Bocchus of Mauretania when Bocchus built a monument depicting himself handing over Jugurtha to Sulla to bring an end to the drawn-out and embarrassing Jugurthine War.39 One might argue that Sulla's role in securing Jugurtha was, in a sense, the beginning of the Sullan myth, but there was another event that, though less tangible, Sulla chose to signify as the first in a chain of events that led ultimately to Sulla's victory at the Battle of the Colline Gate and his subsequent dictatorship. That event was the Lavernan prodigy. Near the time that Sulla set out to fight in the Social War, a chasm opened near Laverna, and fire shot heavenward out of the earth.40 Plutarch's account of the prodigy is taken from Sulla's dedication of his memoir to Lucullus, or, in other words, the opening of the memoir.41 The haruspices interpreted this sign as indicating that a man of virtus with a striking appearance would take control of the government and free the city from its current woes.42 Sulla, with his mottled complexion, gleaming gray eyes, and record of brave deeds, believed the omen applied to him.43 It appears almost as though the haruspices tailored their interpretation so that one would hardly have thought of anyone else. Of course, this sense of inevitability is likely the product of Sulla's own, ex eventu fashioning of the story.
The Lavernan prodigy occurred during Sulla's profectio, a time when Romans customarily looked out for omens.44 Commanders and governors setting off on assignment sacrificed and sought signs indicating divine approval for their exodus from the city. Those who set out after having failed to obtain the right signs or to carry out the right rituals risked the anger of the gods—and future failure. Consider the account of Flaminius, who failed to attend to the cycle of rituals through which a man entered his consulship and prepared to leave on campaign. Flaminius instead secretly departed the city to take up his command and was, unsurprisingly, then defeated at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.45 Cicero wrote of the horrible signs that attended the departure of Crassus for the East; Crassus was defeated, and both he and his son were brutally tortured and killed by the Parthians.46
In comparison, promising signs observed before a properly conducted departure portended great success. Looking back on his career after retiring to Cumae, Sulla saw in the Lavernan prodigy an excellent point of departure for the story of how he came to control the government and settle affairs for both Rome and Italy. The significance of the location of the omen is fairly obvious. The grove of Laverna was located on the Via Salaria, which branched out from Rome at the Porta Collina.47 It was, in other words, located near the place where Sulla's forces would clash with and defeat the Samnites in the Battle of the Colline Gate. This battle was Sulla's last struggle before he gained control of Rome; the defeat of the Samnites was, according to Sulla's reckoning, the final clash of the Social War. Sulla's report of the Lavernan prodigy at the opening of his memoir therefore points forward to his victorious reditus in defeating the Samnites at the Porta Collina and to his subsequent triumph.48 Lucullus, who was perhaps present for Sulla's departure and the prodigy but only heard of the Battle of the Colline Gate from Asia, would have immediately grasped the significance of placing the Lavernan prodigy at the opening of Sulla's memoir.
Modern readers who approach an understanding of the Lavernan prodigy through the brief account in Plutarch's biography of Sulla may easily miss the prodigy's larger significance. But Sulla would have expected his readers to understand it in the context of other prodigies and wonders at that time, concerning the eruption of the Social War and the advent of a new saeculum.49 Plutarch may have followed Sulla in folding the declaration of a new saeculum into the conflict between Marius and Sulla, when its historical significance initially concerned the Social War.50 The secular prophecy of Vegoia—which addressed Italian anxieties concerning property rights, a prevalent concern in the relations between Rome and the Italians since the time of the Gracchi—likewise looked forward to the imminent end of the saeculum. The prophecy of Vegoia was probably circulated before 88 BCE and thus forms part of the context in which Plutarch, following Sulla, placed the declaration of the new saeculum's advent.51 Sulla took hold of the related Lavernan prophecy and applied it to himself perhaps as early as the time of the Social War, and it would continue to inform his self-presentation as the divinely chosen savior of the city during the civil war and all the way up to the end of his life.52 Indeed, the connection between the Lavernan prodigy and the declaration of a new saeculum in 88 was likely even clearer in Sulla's memoir than it is in Plutarch's account.
To modern readers, Sulla's manipulation of a prophecy related to Italian unrest in order to connect his advent to the opening of a new saeculum may seem ridiculously self-aggrandizing. Yet the struggle between Marius and Sulla was ultimately played out, at least in part, through exploiting the continuing grievances of the Italians.53 After Sulla's departure to fight Mithradates, Octavius expelled Cinna from Rome for trying to distribute the new Italian citizens throughout the thirty-five tribes, and Cinna and his allies stirred up Italian cities to revolution.54 Marius promised to grant the Samnites everything they could not get from Caecilius Metellus, in order to end their hostilities against Rome.55 According to Dio Cassius, the Samnites wanted citizenship.56 Although Dio's account looks suspiciously like an interpolation added at a much later date, it provides a rationale for the otherwise unusual brutality of Sulla's slaughter of Samnites in the Villa Publica after his victory in the Battle of the Colline Gate.57 The census was conducted in the Villa Publica, and, according to the fragmentary version of Dio, Sulla reportedly stated his intention to gather the prisoners as if they were going to be enrolled as citizens.58 Sulla's brutal execution of Samnites was an inversion of what Marius had promised to give them. Instead of becoming Roman citizens, they were cut down in the very place where men were enrolled as such. While this slaughter was being perpetrated, Sulla addressed the Senate in the Temple of Bellona.59 The senators could hear the cries of the Samnites being butchered as Sulla calmly addressed them. Those senators who had been Cinna's allies would have found this spectacle especially chilling. Soon they would experience their own horrific “enrollment” in the proscriptions.60
Sulla's decision to weave his own career into the grand tapestry of secular time had an impact every bit as profound as his decision to march across the pomerium with his legions. In fact, one might argue that Sulla drew a connection between his march on Rome and the opening of a new saeculum in such a way that advancing on Rome was rendered a more attractive strategy for subsequent revolutionaries. The breaking of such a taboo required a powerful rationale, and one could hardly provide one stronger than a divine destiny to take up the government of Rome and inaugurate a new age. The act of breaking the taboo readily lent itself to being understood as a sign indicating a monumental turning point in history. After all, the founding of Rome was indelibly connected with Romulus' first wall on the Palatine and Remus' death. Sulla would break the taboo against crossing the pomerium under arms, but then he would extend the pomerium as an act of refoundation.61 The refoundation of the city may be interpreted as implying that the city was in a dilapidated state prior to Sulla's intervention, thereby further suggesting that the crossed pomerium was not intact in the first place. The transgression thus anticipated the act of salvation and therefore provided a contradictory but compelling form of justification. Furthermore, since various concepts of time were malleable—birth, death, saeculum, and aetas were subject to human perception and acts of signification—the profectio and adventus, in which concepts of space and time were closely wedded together in a living performance, served as fitting strategies for demarcating the passage from one age to another.62 In Sulla's memoir, by the careful design of the dictator, the eschatological ideas contained in the saeculum were joined to the departure and arrival of one man, the secular savior and refounder of the city.
The success of Sulla's strategy as an apologetic for the acquisition and exercise of supreme power can be measured by the extent to which subsequent dynasts and would-be dynasts utilized the same narrative of a prophesied leader and savior of Rome who would inaugurate a new age. When Marius and Cinna marched on Rome, the prophecies of Cornelius Culleolus were circulating in the city, probably in support of the Sullan cause.63 The Culleolus in question may have been an ancient prophet of the gens Cornelia, whose predictions were called into service at a time when divine support for a Cornelius was desired.64 One of these prophecies may have predicted the rise of a “Third Cornelius” to rule in Rome, such as the prophecy that surfaced two decades later in support of the claims of Cornelius Lentulus Sura during the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy.65
Events of the sixties may shed more light on the eighties. According to Cicero's account of the Catilinarian conspiracy of which Sura was allegedly a part, the plot to take over Rome involved an act of arson that was billed as a kind of ekpyrosis, a cosmic conflagration that would bring about a renewal of things.66 In 88, a time of great anxiety about the saeculum's end, Sulla, who had identified himself as the savior figure portended by fire coming out of the earth, threatened to use fire on private houses during his own invasion of the city, to chase citizens off the roofs from which they had been throwing projectiles at his men.67 Sura thus seems to have drawn on the savior images pioneered by Sulla, to promise the building of a new age after the destruction of the old world. Indeed, Cicero's account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, with its negative allusions to prophecy and eschatological ideas, may be a continuation of the theological competition that occurred in the eighties. In styling himself as the Third Cornelius of prophecy, Sura viewed both Cinna and Sulla as his predecessors.68
In the war of competing images and invective between the factions of civil war in the eighties, Cinna and Marius, the ultimate losers, came off worse, as one might expect. Although they, too, made claims to being saviors of Rome and Italy, the extant ancient sources depict the two men as sacrilegious murderers instead of divinely appointed saviors. By contrast, one of their victims is fairly described as a holy man. After the ejection of Cinna, the Senate elected the flamen Dialis, Lucius Cornelius Merula, to take Cinna's place.69 One is prompted to ask whether the Romans were convinced by the circulating Cornelian prophecies that Rome needed a Cornelius in the consulship at this time.70 When Cinna returned, the Senate hesitated to depose Merula on account of his priestly office, and although Cinna had promised not to harm Merula, he brought up charges against him.71 Merula, driven by this persecution to commit suicide by opening his veins over the altar of Capitoline Jupiter, called curses down on the heads of Marius and Cinna as his life slipped away.72 He piously removed his flamen's cap before doing so.
The Conquest of Athens and the New Age
As depicted in his memoir, divine signs of success and the inauguration of a new epoch attended both of Sulla's marches on Rome. On his first return, organized to chase off Sulpicius and Marius for trying to steal his campaign against Mithradates, Sulla hesitated to lead his men on Rome, until the haruspex Postumius read the omens and agreed to undergo any punishment at Sulla's hands if the attack did not come off successfully.73 Sulla also had a dream in which he saw the goddess Bellona handing him thunderbolts to strike down his enemies.74 Predictions by a haruspex and a slave ecstatically prophesying again pointed to victory in Sulla's return and war against the Cinnans. These were not, however, the only city conquests that Sulla framed as epoch-making events. Sulla later saw divine significance in the timing of his conquest of Athens: the Kalends of March.75
Before the shift of the inauguration of new consuls to the Kalends of January, the Kalends of March had marked the beginning of the ancient Roman New Year. Plutarch's biography contains the further observation that Athens had fallen at the time of the Chytroi ritual in the month of Anthesterion, when Athenians celebrated the receding of the waters of the flood sent by Zeus that destroyed all but Deucalion and his wife.76 Whether this fact was mentioned by Sulla or originated in Plutarch is unclear. The tyrant Aristion had held out on the Acropolis up until that day, but thirst finally forced him to surrender. Plutarch remarks that as soon as Aristion was brought down from the Acropolis, the god sent rain that fell on the Acropolis and filled it with water.77
Even if Plutarch provided a Greek interpretation of the significance of this rain miracle based on his knowledge as a religious expert and scholar, miraculous weather manifestations of this kind appeared numerous times in Roman military narratives. More specifically, it is reminiscent of the divine aid that P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus received from Neptune during the siege of Carthago Nova, wherein the god lowered the tides so that his soldiers could cross through the shallows to attack the city at a vulnerable point.78 Aemilianus, Sulla, Cinna, and, later, Sura all seem to have appealed to the memory of the mystique surrounding Africanus. If Sulla did not associate the rainstorm after the surrender of Aristion with Chytroi, he most likely still offered his own testimony of the miracle that Jupiter performed in withholding rain until the surrender of Aristion, which Plutarch then reinterpreted in his own Hellenic terms. Similar miracles are later attributed to Titus in the Jewish War, to Hadrian during his visit to Africa, and to Marcus Aurelius when he was campaigning in Dacia.79
There is, however, some reason to think that the detail of the Chytroi was contained in Sulla's own memoir.80 The flood was, like the trumpet blast announcing the end of the eighth saeculum, an epoch-marking event, here specifically the cataclysm that signaled the conclusion of the Age of Bronze. Since Sulla opened his memoir with the programmatic gesture of referring to the sign that indicated his role in inaugurating a new age, he may have continued the theme of axial shifts as he recounted the story of his siege of Athens. Sulla may also have been responding to Mithradates' self-styling as a messianic savior of the East from the power of Rome. Sulla would steal Mithradates' thunder as the true savior and allow Mithradates to fulfill his role as the new King Xerxes I.81 Accordingly, he would lay the blame for the destruction of Athens at the feet of this most recent Xerxes through the irresponsible and blasphemous actions of his puppet Aristion, while he depicted the support he received from the gods Apollo and Zeus in securing safety for the West from the threat of the new Persian king.82
On his second visit to Athens, Sulla would receive pledges of loyalty from the Athenian elite and go through initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries.83 The Athenians, in return, honored him with a statue and games in his honor, the Sylleia. Santangelo suggests that these games, which were strikingly similar in form to the Theseian games honoring Athens' founder-hero, were actually celebrated in conjunction with the Theseia.84 Once the Athenians had celebrated Sulla as a new founder, he was perhaps inspired to recontextualize his conquest of the city in light of such an honor. Returning to Rome, Sulla re-centered world empire at its new seat on the Tiber. There he instituted Ludi Victoriae Sullanae, which would bear a striking resemblance to the Theseia.85 It is possible that when the Athenians celebrated Sulla as a new founder, it inspired him to continue to present himself as such in Rome.86
The Invasion of Italy
Important prodigies pointing to Sulla's ultimate success marked the path of his campaign against his Roman and Italian enemies. Sulla's interactions with the gods in this narrative point toward the effort he invested in representing his invasion of Italy as divinely ordained and supported. When Sulla landed near Tarentum, a haruspex examined the liver of the sacrificial victim and found a laurel wreath with two fillets on it, signifying victory.87 At Silvium, an Apulian town on the Via Appia, the slave of the Samnite commander Pontius Telesinus fell into a prophetic trance and reported to Sulla that Bellona had foretold his victory and triumph but that the Capitoline Temple would burn down on the sixth of July if Sulla did not hasten to Rome.88 The army of Sulla's lieutenant Lucullus was miraculously showered by flowers in such a way that it appeared to be crowned with garlands.89 The night before Sulla encountered the young Marius at Signia, he had a dream in which the older Marius told the younger Marius that he would experience a calamity on the following day.90 When Marius attacked Sulla's men as they were pitching camp on the next day, Sulla and his men warded him off, and Marius fled to Praeneste, where he later committed suicide. During the Battle of the Colline Gate, Sulla took out a little statue of Apollo that he carried with him, kissed it, and prayed to it in desperation over his flagging fortunes in the battle.91 Upon taking Rome, Sulla met with the Senate in the Temple of Bellona, while his men slaughtered Samnite prisoners in the Villa Publica.92
An examination of the struggle between Sulla and Marius (and Sulla and Cinna) in terms of the performance and representation of a theology of power yields a number of interesting insights that greatly enhance one's understanding of how these Roman leaders used the relationship between gods and men to think through imperial power relationships in Rome, Italy, and the Mediterranean. Both Marius and Sulla sought to carve out a unique position for themselves in domestic and broader imperial politics through performances and representations of their relationships with the gods. What particularly set the careers of these two men apart from their predecessors was the fortuitous conjunction of their mutual competition in the Social War and the threat of Mithradates during the momentous transition from one saeculum to another. Both Marius and Sulla were probably aware of the significance of this timing, although the extant evidence explicitly attests only to Sulla's conscious use of the theme. By his own testimony, Sulla saw the turning of saecula as a crucial juncture for settling issues of power and the relationship between Rome and its empire. According to this view, a special leader would be able to inaugurate a new age by weaving together an empire out of the diversity of the Mediterranean world, with Rome as its head. This kind of theology found its most successful proponent in Sulla.93
The most crucial theological relationship in the city of Rome was between the city and its tutelary deity Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The triumph offered a unique opportunity for a leader to demonstrate his special relationship with the god who conferred imperium, by displaying his surpassing success to the city, by performing an identity that likened the triumphator to the god, and by both sacrificing and dedicating offerings to Rome's chief tutelary deity. Both sides of the civil war between Sulla, on the one hand, and Marius and Cinna, on the other, seem to have realized the importance of showing a special relationship between the leading faction and Rome's chief patron deity. Marius had attempted to express his special claim to imperium and his unique relationship with Jupiter by joining his triumph directly to his inauguration as consul and his first meeting with the Senate. What appears to be an unwitting gaffe was actually a provocative assertion of a preeminence over his peers, which they sternly rejected. As a Cornelius, Sulla exploited the legacy of Scipio Africanus' special relationship with Jupiter. The god had delivered his thunderbolts to Sulla through the agency of Bellona, and she had warned him that unless he hastened to Rome, the Capitoline Temple would burn down, which it did.
In Sulla's absence, there was a struggle between Cornelii over the consulship. What catches one's attention and makes this struggle pertinent to the present discussion is that, in the absence of Cornelius Sulla, the consul who agitated for the enrollment of Italian citizens in the thirty-five tribes was Cornelius Cinna. When the other consul, Octavius, ejected Cinna, the Senate replaced Cinna with Cornelius Merula, who also happened to be the flamen Dialis. Because of the restrictions of his priesthood, Merula was of limited value as consul under normal circumstances, but he was thought to be particularly suitable at a time of chaos in Rome's leadership.94 As consul, he brought together the Jupiterian mystique of the Cornelian name, the unique access to the god that only a flamen Dialis had, and the exercise of an imperium that would be safely anchored in Rome. Merula's curse in the Capitoline Temple may very well have been one explanation provided for the structure's destruction in 83 BCE.95 If so, such an explanation would have been most useful to Sulla in the way it laid the blame for the destruction of the temple on the Cinnan faction. When Sulla returned to Rome and took the city, he celebrated a triumph. The returning exiles hailed him as savior and father in the triumphal procession, which took the traditional route up the Capitoline Hill, even though Jupiter's temple was conspicuously in ruins.96 Sulla's partisan Q. Lutatius Catulus, son of Marius' co-commander at Vercellae and rival, would rebuild the temple, but the loss of this great edifice was surely one of the key calamities of the civil war that inspired fear that Rome might possibly come to an end. The loss of the temple of Rome's patron deity, a structure that was built at the beginning of the Republic, could easily be taken as an omen of the Republic's end and Rome's fall.97
Sulla and the Gods of Italy
There is some evidence to suggest that Sulla cultivated associations with Italian gods as he sought to portray himself as the savior of all of Italy, not just Rome. In doing so, he may have been responding to a pre-existing Marian claim to the title of savior of Italy, which is mentioned in the story of Marius' flight from Rome. According to the anecdote recounted by Plutarch, as Marius departed into exile, he was allowed to pass through a sacred grove of the goddess Marica, where an old man serendipitously declared that Marica would not deny passage to Marius, the man the locals viewed as the savior of Italy.98 It should be recalled that the first divine sign of Sulla's memoir, the fire that issued forth from the chasm, occurred at the grove of an Italian goddess. Laverna, a goddess of thieves, may have been considered a fitting deity to point forward to Sulla's defeat of those Samnites who had sought, with the help of Marius and Cinna, to usurp the rights of Roman citizenry.99 The haruspices' interpretation of the prodigy, which mentioned Rome's troubles, would have been viewed as pertaining to the exercise of Roman power over Italy and, perhaps retrospectively, to the troubled issue regarding Italians and Roman citizenship. Laverna's sign of Sulla's role as a savior, as interpreted by Sulla in his memoir, thus answers and improves on the similar Marian claim.
Although Sulla's first sign came through Laverna, Bellona most clearly played the role of divine benefactor to Sulla, especially in his return to Rome. Most modern discussion about Bellona emphasizes her assimilation to the eastern goddess Ma, noted by Plutarch, whom Sulla supposedly encountered during his mission to the East in the nineties.100 The suggestion is attractive, but it is not at all clear why Ma-Bellona should have appeared to Sulla in connection with his march on Rome. Appius Claudius Caecus built Rome's first Temple of Bellona in fulfillment of a vow made while fighting the Etruscans and Samnites.101 That Sulla first referred to Bellona close to the aftermath of his campaign against the Samnites in the Social War suggests that Sulla followed the precedent of Caecus in seeking the aid of the Italian Bellona, not the Cappadocian Ma he encountered in his eastern journey of 96.
The references to Bellona in Plutarch's biography of Sulla support the idea that Italian Bellona, rather than Ma, was the deity Sulla depicted as his patroness in his memoir. During Sulla's consulship in 88, when the haruspices interpreted the trumpet blast as the opening of the new saeculum, they met with the Senate in the Temple of Bellona to discuss this prodigy and others.102 During the meeting, a sparrow flew in with a grasshopper in its mouth. It dropped part of the grasshopper in the temple and left with the rest of it. According to Plutarch, the diviners interpreted this to refer to a conflict between the city and the country, or between the plebs and the wealthy landholders. Regardless of the particulars of the interpretation reported by Plutarch, the passage demonstrates that Sulla established Bellona's significance to the relationship between Rome and Italy at the time of the Social War and the changing of saecula. Over the course of Sulla's memoir, Bellona would continue to surface in relation to Italian and Roman issues. When Bellona appeared to Sulla in a dream and handed him the thunderbolt of Jupiter to knock down his enemies, Sulla was near Nola, a city that was in the sphere of the Samnites, who continued to resist Rome and who would side with Marius against Sulla.103 Given this background, Sulla's meeting with the Senate in the Temple of Bellona, although in accordance with the usual traditions for generals returning in victory, would have taken on new significance as his men simultaneously slaughtered Samnites in the Villa Publica in fulfillment of Bellona's commission, thereby completing a circle in Sulla's narrative that began with the report of the secular prodigy during his earlier profectio. Having conquered the forces of chaos threatening Italy and Rome, Sulla set about the refoundation of the city by becoming a radical “censor” who killed all those undermining the city by usurping citizenship or betraying it.
Sulla's Theology and Empire
As the discussion of Sulla's conquest of Athens has shown, Sulla's political theology included parts of the empire beyond Italy and Rome. The pieces of Sulla's memoir that are preserved in Plutarch accordingly suggest that Sulla conceived of his Mithradatic campaign in theological terms that were an extension of what one would expect of a Roman commander operating in Italy. In advance of his departure for the East, Sulla dedicated an ax to the divine ancestress of the Romans, Aphrodite. While traveling in the East, he styled himself “Epaphroditus,” a name that both suggested the favor of Aphrodite and alluded to Roman descent from the goddess.104 As previously argued, Sulla saw the circumstances of his conquest of Athens as evidence of the favor of Jupiter that was characteristic of the Cornelii, whose relationship with the god was evident not only in the Africanus mystique but also in the clan's regular occupation of the flamonium Diale. In crossing the major boundaries of the empire, Sulla behaved as one would expect of any Roman commander operating in Italy. He sought divine direction as he crossed major natural boundaries. He consulted the oracle near Apollonia before he crossed back to Italy.105 Upon landing near Tarentum, he sacrificed and had his haruspex read the entrails.106 Favorable signs indicated his imminent success at fulfilling the destiny about which he had learned when he set off for the Social War. The circle was completed upon his return to Rome, and Sulla thus redrew the map of Roman power through divinely assisted conquests that took in the vast expanse from Rome to Asia.
Scholars have long considered Sulla to have been an unusually superstitious person. Such a judgment is almost impossible to prove. Thus it is probably not worth engaging the question of Sulla's relative credulity in the first place. The evidence does support that, in his memoir, Sulla proffered a religious argument to justify what he had done in taking Rome by force and in substantially altering its constitution. The theological framework of that argument was built around the traditional magisterial cycle: Sulla's departure (profectio) from Rome and return (reditus/triumphus) provided the structure for explaining how his felicitas and divine support eventually brought about the salvation of Rome as had been predicted during his initial embarkation on campaign in the Social War. What made Sulla's theology distinctive was his use of secular doctrine to tie the events of his career to a broader cosmological vision in which Rome played a central role. Sulla was not simply saving the city from extinction; in his view, he was saving the cosmos from chaos, by ensuring the continuation of Roman hegemony. The latter view is suggested in his use of a similar axial narrative in connection with his conquest of Athens, wherein Sulla presented himself as a force for order, acting in concert with Zeus-Jupiter against Aristion and the destructive forces of chaos. In doing so, he may have been prompted by Mithradates' claims to be a cosmic savior.
The view that the world was on the brink of collapse and needed a divinely appointed savior to prevent disaster provided a dangerous precedent for the justification of subsequent revolutions at Rome. This framework would open up the possibility that others would seek to repeat Sulla's attack on the city and employ similar justification—something that happened almost immediately after his death, in Lepidus' march on the city. Not all would attempt to follow the Sullan model to the same extent. As will be discussed in the next chapter, Pompey would be the first successful heir to the Sullan legacy of combining aggressive action to reform/refound the state and a theological articulation of that action, but he did so without even threatening violence.
1. On the idea of Sulla as a savior (salus rerum), see Sumi 2002b, 422–25. The exiles Sulla marched in his triumph hailed him as savior and father. Cf. Plu. Sull. 34.1. Lucan (2.221) refers to Sulla as the salus rerum. Although Lucan is a relatively late source, this title is consistent with Sulla's propaganda.
2. Scipio Aemilianus is another possible forerunner of Sulla in the claim to be a divinely appointed ruler. The Clunia prophecy (Suet. Gal. 9.2), which predicted the rise of a world ruler in Spain two hundred years before Galba, quite possibly indicated Aemilianus: virginis honestae vaticatione, tanto magis quod eadem illa carmina sacerdos Iovis Cluniae ex penetrali somnio monitus eruerat ante ducenos annos similiter fatidica puella pronuntiata (see Hillard 2005). If so, it would render the stories connecting Aemilianus and Marius, as well as those about Marius' Dionysiac pose, more intelligible (see discussion later in this chapter).
3. On a Latin plot to assassinate Roman consuls during the Feriae Latinae, see D.C. 28.96.4; Flor. Epit. 2.6.8; De vir. ill. 66.12. For the murder of the praetor at a festival in Asculum, see D.S. 37.12.
4. Plu. Sull. 7.
5. McGing 1986, 102–5. Lincoln (1983, 143–53) provides insight into the Persian apocalyptic elements of the construction of Mithradates as a messianic figure.
6. Keaveney 2005b, 36–38; Luce 1968; Frier 1967; 1971. On Marian and Sullan propaganda concerning Victoria in particular, see Fears 1981c, 786–96.
7. Sal. Jug. 73, 84; Plu. Mar. 11.1, 12.1, 14.7, 28.1. On Marius' popular politics, see Yakobson 1999, 13–19.
8. On felicitas, see Versnel 1970, 361–71; Wagenwoort 1954; 1947; Erkell 1952, 50–66; Ericsson 1943, 89.
9. On Marius' mystique, see Gilbert 1973; Avery 1967. On Sulla's mystique, see Thein 2009; Wiseman 2009a; Keaveney 1983.
10. Plu. Mar. 26.3; Inscr. Ital. 2.179, 488. See Flower 2006, cxii; Evans 1994, 88–90.
11. On the memoir of Catulus, see Candau 2011, 147–54; Marasco 1984. On the temple, see NTDAR s.v. Fortuna Huiusce Diei, Aedes.
12. On Marius as savior of Rome (implicit in the notion of Marius as Third Founder of Rome) and savior of Italy, see, respectively, Plu. Mar. 27.5–6, 39.3–4.
13. Ibid. 27.4–5. This is to except, of course, Romulus. Plutarch states that Marius was hailed as third founder of the city. On Camillus as second founder, see Plu. Cam. 31.2. The historical authenticity of this identification of Marius as third founder has been rejected by Classen (1962, 182), Muccioli (1994), and Miles (1997, 104–5) but accepted by Alföldi (1952, 205), Carney (1970, 39 n. 109), and Gabba (1972, 801). Liv. Per. 68.8 attests to the fact that the primores civitatis confessed that he had saved the state (conservatam ab eo rem. p.). According to Santanglo (2007b, 216 n. 8), this passage may indicate a decree of the Senate granting Marius the title of servator r. p. Muccioli (202–5) argues that Plutarch relies on Posidonius for the reference to Marius as founder, but that Plutarch is both critiquing his source and using the designation of third founder to emphasize how Marius ultimately fell short of the title. Regardless of Plutarch's own designs, it is possible that Marius was popularly acclaimed a new conditor of Rome on his return from defeating the Cimbri and Teutones. It should not be forgotten that the idea of being reputed a founder is known to Plautus (Epid. 523: legum atque iurum fictor, conditor cluet). Cicero (Catil. 3.2) refers to Romulus as qui hanc urbem condidit. Sallust (J. 89.4), writing in the late forties BCE, refers to the Libyan Hercules as the conditor of Capsa. Finally, Marius' self-styling as a Dionysiac conqueror, which Muccioli also attributes to Posidonius, is consistent with other Hellenistic practices such as hailing the ruler as founder (ktistês). See n. 22 in the present chapter. In this author's view, however, there is no compelling reason to discount Plutarch's account of popular acclamations of Marius as conditor on his return to Rome after defeating the Cimbri and Teutones or to attribute all Hellenistic elements of different accounts of Marius to a single historian.
14. Plu. Mar. 3.3. Evans (1994), 28: “Thus the story of Scipio's commendation of Marius (Plu. Mar. 3.3) may simply be a topos, which is found elsewhere, but possibly preserves a memory of sterling deeds by the young Arpinate.” Cf. V. Max. 8.15.7.
15. Palagia 2000; Sawada 2010, 400–401.
16. Suet. Gal. 9.2.
17. Plu. Sull. 35.4. For Sulla's felicitas, cf. Cic. S. Rosc. 22; Plu. Sull. 6.8–9, 19.8–10, 27.12. For modern scholarship, see Carcopino 1932, 108–13; Alföldi 1976b; Sumi 2002, 415–16.
18. The presence of elements of the felicitas theme here in Plutarch's biography contradicts a suggestion by Avery (1967), who views Sallust's portrait of Marius as a possessor of felicitas as the author's own creation, designed to point toward Marius' future eclipse by Sulla.
19. Sal. Jug. 63: per idem tempus Uticae forte C. Mario per hostias dis supplicanti magna atque mirabilia portendi haruspex dixerat: proinde quae animo agitabat, fretus dis ageret, fortunam quam saepissume experiretur; cuncta prospere eventura. [2] at illum iam antea consulatus ingens cupido exagitabat, ad quem capiundum praeter vetustatem familiae alia omnia abunde erant: industria, probitas, militiae magna scientia, animus belli ingens domi modicus, lubidinis et divitiarum victor, tantummodo gloriae avidus. The scene will later serve as the model for Tacitus' account of Vespasian in Alexandria (see Hist. 2.8). Marius' fortuna has been identified also in a fragment of the Histories, a passage that Konrad interprets as a description of Marius' landing at Sicily on his return journey to Rome. See Konrad 1997.
20. Evans (1994), 63–66. Farney (1997) argues that it was actually the conviction of C. Galba that gave Marius hope that he could obtain the consulship, since the conviction marred Galba's chances for obtaining it.
21. For the funeral's role in building a family's fama, see Plb. 6.53.2, 53.4, 53.7–8. Flower (2000a, 16–31) discusses the importance of illustrious ancestors in political campaigning, with particular reference to a campaign speech of Marius at Sal. Jug. 85. She (19) suggests that Sallust may have consulted an actual Marian speech in crafting his version.
22. V. Max. 3.6.6: iam C. Marii paene insolens factum; nam post Iugurthinum Cimbricumque et Teutonicum triumphum cantharo semper potavit, quod Liber pater Indicum ex Asia deducens triumphum hoc usus poculi genere ferebatur, ut inter ipsum haustum vini victoriae eius suas victorias compararet. Cf. Plin. Nat. 3.11.
23. Plu. Mar. 12.2.5.
24. Ibid. 17.1–3.
25. Ibid. 17.5–6; D.S. 36.13; Rawson 1974, 201–2.
26. Plin. Nat. 33, 11, 53, 150; V. Max. 3.6.6.
27. Plu. Mar. 27.5–6. See n. 13 in the present chapter.
28. See n. 9.
29. Beard 2007, 201–2. On laurelled letters, see Liv. 5.28.13, 45.1.6; Cic. Pis. 39; Plin. Nat. 15.133; App. Mith. 77. On Marius' speech to the Senate and the Senate's deliberations, see Bonnefond-Coudry 1989, 143–49, 269–74. On his Dionysiac affectations, see n. 22 in the present chapter.
30. Beard (2007, 280) explains, “The connection—however it was originally formed—between triumph and the consulship went back into the Republic. It points to the Janus-like face of the ceremony, not only a backward-looking commemoration of past success but an inaugural moment in the political order.”
31. Liv. Per. 67; Plu. Mar. 12.5. Beard (2007, 230) asks, “If the general's costume was properly returned to the god's statue at the end of the parade, then what did Marius wear to give offense in the senate?”
32. On the Jovian associations of the triumphator's costume and ancient testimonia, see Versnel 1970, 56–62. Beard (2007, 225–38) has questioned the degree to which one can know how literally to take the regal and divine associations of the vestis triumphalis, but she maintains that the Romans still saw regal and divine associations in the garb.
33. On the dismissing of lictors as symbolic of laying down imperium, see Cic. Att. 3.9.1; Plu. Fab. 4.2.
34. Plu. Mar. 27.4. Catulus had his name carved on the spears of his soldiers so that, after the battle, he could count the number of enemy soldiers slain by his men. Arbitrators were called in from Parma to settle the dispute between the two armies over who contributed most to the victory.
35. Thein 2009, 91–92; Valgiglio 1975.
36. On the legal process to make Sulla dictator through the lex Valeria, see App. BC 1.98–99; Plu. Sull. 33.1; Vell. 2.28.2. For discussion, see Vervaet 2004.
37. Dowling 2000, 306–13; Ridley 1975.
38. Sal. Hist. 1.55.
39. Plu. Sull. 6.1; Sal. Jug. 105–13; Flor. Epit. 36.16–18. Dio's text (26.89.5–6) is very fragmentary at this point and does not mention Sulla's role.
40. Plu. 6.6–7; cf. App. BC 1.97. See Valgiglio 1960, 29; Keaveney 2005b, 39.
41. The choice to begin with the Lavernan prodigy also made sense in the context of a dedication to Lucullus, since Lucullus, depending on the date of the Lavernan sign (90 or 89), either was under Sulla's command at the time the sign occurred or joined Sulla the following year. Cf. Plu. Luc. 2.1. Lewis (1991, 515) places Sulla's statement about his concordia with his consular colleague Metellus, which precedes the report of the Lavernan prodigy in Plutarch, in Sulla's preface as well. The entire text of Plu. 6.5–7 is, perhaps, a compressed version of the preface of Sulla's memoir. Livy (pr. 13) would later employ the profectio theme at the beginning of his work: cum bonis potius ominibus votisque et precationisbus deorum dearumque, si, ut poetis, nobis quoque mos esset, libentius inciperemus, ut orsis tantum operis successus prosperos darent. For the profectio as a programmatic device, see Feldherr 1998, 77–78. Thein (2009, 101) suggests that early memoirs, such as that of Catulus, might have ended with the author's triumph, thereby showing the positive outcome of a journey that began under favorable auspices.
42. Plu. Sull. 6.7.12–13: εἰπεῖν δὴ καὶ τοὺς μάντεις ὡς ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ὄψει διάφορος καὶ περιττὸς ἄρξας ἀπαλλάξει τῇ πόλει ταραχὰς τὰς παρούσας.
43. See Plu. Sull. 2.1 for the author's description of Sulla.
44. Cic. Div. 1. 29–30; Sumi 2005, 37–38.
45. Liv. 21.63.5–9. Simón 2011.
46. Sumi 2005, 37.
47. Var. L. 5.163–64; Hor. Ep. 1.16.10; Fest. 104–5 L; NTDAR s.v. Porta Lavernalis; Lintott 1986, 217. Cf. TDAR s.v. Porta Lavernalis.
48. Sulla's description of his participation in the Social War appeared in a later book of his memoir than his instructions to Lucullus. This monograph follows the hypothetical structure that Lewis (1991, 515–16) proposed for the memoir, in which the first books cover Sulla's instructions to Lucullus and his family background. Naturally, a detailed account of the Social War would not be possible in those first books. The Laverna episode belongs in the first book, with Sulla's instructions to Lucullus, because the episode sets up the importance of felicitas to his life and is the pivotal event for establishing a divine commission for Sulla's leadership. On the place of felicitas in his instructions to Lucullus, Lewis (515) writes, “Felicitas, in fact, was clearly one of the dominant and recurrent themes of the whole work, and there is no difficulty in supposing that in Book I Sulla gave it considerable emphasis and elaboration, with a suitable array of examples, not least by way of advice to Lucullus never to ignore divine presages of all kinds, but most of all to heed those conveyed in dreams.” For discussion and bibliography on Sulla's felicitas, see Sumi 2002b, 414–16.
49. Plu. Sull. 7. Other lists of prodigies announcing the coming war appear in Cic. Har. 18; Div. 1.99; Plin. Nat. 2.199, 7.34–35, 8.221; Obseq. 54; Oros. 5.18.3–9; August. C.D. 3.23. The transition from one saeculum to another was announced by ostenta saecularia, which had to be interpreted by priests. See Van Son 1963, 272; Serv. ad Buc. 9.46; A. 8.526; Plu. Sull. 7; Censorinus DN 17.5–6; Thulin 1909, 67–68. The dream of Caecilia Metella (Cic. Div. 1.4), daughter of Balearicus, which prompted the Romans to restore the sanctuary of Juno Sospita in response to anxieties over Latium during the Social War, occurred in 90 BCE. See Schultz 2006a, 207–27. The suggestion of Poe (1984, 61–64) that expiatory rites to Juno may have influenced the Secular Games may indicate a more direct connection between Caecilia's dream and the opening of a new saeculum. In these rites, however, Regina was the Juno to whom matrons appealed. The preference for Sospita of Lanuvium over Regina on the Aventine in this circumstance had to do with the need to appeal to the Latins, whose defection from the Italians would prove a decisive factor in the outcome of the war.
50. The obscuring of the significance of the saeculum for the Social War may be due partly to Appian's lack of interest in religious matters during that period, a point that is noted by Schultz (2006a, 207): “[U]nlike the prominence accorded religious events in some treatments of the Hannibalic War, divine matters in general are outside the scope of treatments of the Social War—in all likelihood a reflection of the absence of religious themes from Appian BC 1.150–231, our most important source for the war.”
51. Heurgon 1959; Jannot 2005, 13; Valvo 1988. Adams (2003, 182) dates the prophecy to the imperial period, but that dating does not exclude the possibility that the imperial version was based on an earlier Republican-era tradition.
52. Turfa (2006, 82) writes, “Likewise, the temporal quanta of Etruscan belief, the saecula, must have been discussed with a sharp eye to their applicability to current political changes—certainly they were published (or outright manipulated) by Sulla as announcing a regime change for the better (Plu. Sull. VII.6–9; Censorinus DN XVII.6).”
53. The Italian context of the fight between Marius and Sulla is emphasized by Gabba (1972, 805).
54. App. BC 1.64–65.
55. Ibid. 1.68. Plutarch (Mar. 41) briefly recounts Marius' efforts to draw Italians to his cause in Etruria and elsewhere.
56. D.C. 31.102.8.
57. Str. 5.249; V. Max. 9.2.1; De vir. ill. 75; Luc. 2.197; Sen. Cl. 1.12.2; Liv. Per. 88.2; Flor. Epit. 2.9.24; D.C. 33 fr. 109.5. Plutarch (Sull. 30.2–3) sets the slaughter in the Circus Flaminius.
58. Var. R. 2.4; Apul. Apol. 1; D.C. 33 fr. 109.5. On this fragment of Dio, see Urso 2010,158–61.
59. Plu. Sull. 30.2–3.
60. Passed in the Assembly, the lex Cornelia de proscriptione gave Sulla a power akin to that of a censor in that he had the ability to divorce people of citizenship, life, and property, merely by placing a nota next to a person's name. On the lex, see Hinard 1985, 67–74. Flower (2006, 91–92) compares the proscription lists with public auctions but then speaks in more general terms not only of the loss of life and citizenship but also of the family's loss of status. All of this suggests something rather like a perverse census.
61. Sen. Dial. 10.13.8; Tac. Ann. 12.23; Gel. 13.4.4; D.C. 43.50.1, 44.49.1. Cf. Sordi 1987; Gros 1990, 843–44; Ramage 1991, 119–20; Giardina 1995, 135–36; Sumi 2002b, 425–28; Santangelo 2007b, 221–22; Hinard 2008, 69–70. Tacitus (Ann. 12.23) notes that the only two Romans to extend the pomerium before Claudius were Sulla and Augustus. If Hinard (2008, 69–70) is correct about Claudius being the originator of the idea that the right to extend the pomerium followed upon conquest, Sulla and Augustus would fit those criteria. Hinard argues that Sulla extended the pomerium in response to the extension of Roman citizenship up to the Transpadane region of Italy. All three men, however, also inaugurated a new age for Rome. Augustus and Claudius both celebrated the Secular Games. Sulla exploited secular prophecy to promote the view that, as refounder, he would secure Rome's empire in the transition to a new saeculum.
62. The symbolic connection between arrival and departure with the passage of time is built into the expulsion of Mamurius Veturius, or “Old Man Mars,” who represented the passing year, to make way for New Mars, whose birthday the Salii celebrated at the opening of the New Year. See Versnel 1993, 297–98; Loicq 1964; Illuminati 1961.
63. One cannot, however, exclude the possibility that the prophecy supported the cause of Cornelius Cinna. Sulla is the likely intended beneficiary of the prophecy because of his established predilection for exploiting divine signs and prophecies. Cf. Cic. Div. 1.2: ex quo genere saepe hariolorum etiam et vatum furibundas praedictiones, ut Octaviano bello Cornelii Culleoli audiendas putaverunt. For a brief discussion on Culleolus as a hariolus, see Wiseman 1994, 58–59. For a recent discussion of harioli, see Santangelo 2013, 151–85. On known harioli, see Montero 1993.
64. Such a prophecy at the time of the Octavian War would have followed the precedent of the ancient prophet speaking of contemporary events in the conveniently discovered prophecy of Marcius after the devastating defeat at Cannae during the Second Punic War. See Liv. 25.12.2–15; Macr. 1.17.27–28. The name Culleolus is suggestive of the punishment visited on parricides, the poena cullei, the brutality and bizarreness of which had an ominously archaizing character. The appearance of the name L. Culleolus in Cicero's correspondence is interesting but not necessarily evidence that the prophet Culleolus was alive and active in the eighties (pace Wiseman 1994, 58–59). See Shackleton-Bailey 2004, 353.
65. Cic. Catil. 3.9; Plu. Cic. 17.5. Surely the idea of a Third Cornelius was a creative variation on the praise of Marius as Third Founder of Rome.
66. On ekpyrosis in Stoicism, see Mansfeld 1979.
67. App. BC 1.58.
68. Cic. Catil. 3.4.9: Cinnam ante se et Sullam fuisse.
69. App. BC 1.65. To construct an image of the pious Merula, Appian mentions that Merula wore the flamen's cap at all times, whereas other flamines only wore it at sacrifices.
70. Katz (1979, 164–65) suggests that the election was motivated by the need to choose an innocuous person and thereby prevent the election of another candidate. The choice of another Cornelius with a particularly special connection to Jupiter, however, is suggestive of a religious consideration as well.
71. App. BC 1.70.
72. Ibid. 1.74. On the cursing, see Vell. 2.22.
73. Plu. Sull. 9.3.
74. Ibid. 9.4.
75. Ibid. 14.6. On Sulla and the Athenians, see Santangelo 2007b, 35–45.
76. Theopompus FGrH F 347b; Paus. 1.18.7–8; Riu 1999, 81–82. Robertson (1993, 199–203) argues that mistaken association of Chytroi with the Anthesteria festival is an error propagated in the scholia. Most scholars attribute the observation concerning the coincidence of the Athenian date of Sulla's conquest of Athens to Plutarch. See ibid., 201 n. 6. See also Burkert 1972a, 268 n. 16; Nilsson 1900, 137.
77. Plu. Sull. 14.7.
78. Plb. 8.6–9.2, 11.7, 14.11–13.
79. On Titus, see J. BJ 5.409–11; on Hadrian, SHA Hadr. 22.14; on Marcus Aurelius, D.C. 71.8.10; SHA Marc. 24.4.
80. On Romans' long-standing, nuanced engagement with Hellenic religion, see Feeney 1999, 25–28. Feeney (27) writes, “Our earliest [Roman] texts show a delight in juxtaposing religious ideas from different registers, combining Homeric and cult epithets for Jupiter, or turning the epic hero Anchises into a proto-decemvir who consults sacred books.”
81. On Darius, see App. Mith. 112; Just. Epit. 38.7.1; on Cyrus, Just. Epit. 38.7.1. On the descent from Achaemenes, see Tac. Ann. 12.18.4; on the descent from one of the “Seven Persians” who destroyed the Magus, Plb. 5.43.2; Flor. Epit. 1.40.1. On Mithradates' legendary genealogy, see Meyer 1925, 31–38; McGing 1986, 13, 95.
82. According to Sulla's reckoning, Apollo allowed Sulla access to the god's treasures at Delphi. Cf. Plu. Sull. 12.5. Sulla consecrated half of the territory of the Thebans to Apollo and Zeus, a strong indication that he felt he owed his success in Greece to these two gods. Cf. ibid. 19.6.
83. On the second trip to Athens, see Santangelo 2007b, 214–16.
84. Santangelo 2007b, 215–16 n. 6. On the Sylleia, see Raubitschek 1951.
85. Vell. 2.27.6; [Asc.] Cic. Ver. 1.10.13. See Bernstein 1998, 313–50; Behr 1993, 136–43; Keaveney 2005b, 156–57; Latte 1960, 38.
86. Santangelo 2007b, 216.
87. Plu. Sull. 27.4.
88. Ibid. 27.6.
89. Ibid. 27.7.
90. Ibid. 28.4.
91. Ibid. 29.6.
92. Ibid. 30.2–3.
93. The timing during a festival of the initial uprising that became the Social War suggests that there was a religious component to the motivation behind this rebellion. Not only had the Latins planned to assassinate the consuls during the Feriae Latinae in 91 (D.C. 28.96.4; Flor. Epit. 2.6.8; De vir. ill. 66.12), prior to the war, but the murder of a Roman praetor and other Roman citizens in Asculum that sparked the war also took place during a festival. See D.S. 37.12. As such, the initial attack's timing during a festival might fall into the pattern of providing a rebellion theological justification, similar to Mithradates Eupator's use of prophecy in the East.
94. There was, however, no prohibition against the flamen Dialis being a magistrate. See Vanggaard 1988, 59–69. For an opposing view, see Ryan 1998, 164–67.
95. Flower 2008, 80–81.
96. For the acclamation of savior and father, see Plu. Sull. 34.1.
97. Flower (2008, 92) writes, “[The Capitoline Temple's] destruction mirrored the Romans' deepest fears about the loss of the Republic and of their historical identity.”
98. Plu. Mar. 39.3–4.
99. For Laverna as a goddess of thieves, cf. Hor. Ep. 1.16.60–62; Fest. 104 L: Laverniones: fures antiqui dicebant. quod sub tutela deae Lavernae essent, in cuius luco obscruo abditoque solitos furta praedamque inter se luere. Hinc et Lavernalis porta vocata est.
100. Plu. Sull. 9.4: λέγεται δὲ καὶ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους αὑτῷ Σύλλᾳ φανῆναι θεὸν ἣν τιμῶσι ῾Ρωμαῖοι παρὰ Καππαδόκων μαθόντες. Plutarch's interpretation is generally accepted as accurate. Orlin (2010, 168–69) notes that there is no evidence that Sulla ever attempted to incorporate Ma into Rome's state religion. No specific shrine to Ma was built in Rome, and no festival to Ma was added to the Roman calendar.
101. On Claudius' vow of a temple to Bellona, see Liv. 10.19.17; Plin. Nat. 35.12; Ov. Fast. 6.205. On the dedication of the temple, see Ov. Fast. 6.201.
102. Plu. Sull. 7.6.
103. Ibid. 9.3. Nola was also the place where Sulla claimed to have won the corona graminea, a fact recounted in Sulla's memoir and preserved in Pliny (Nat. 22.12). Sulla's dream of Bellona is perfectly suited to this context and also suggests that the enemies to whom she referred were not simply Roman ones but also Samnites.
104. Plu. Sull. 34.2; De fort. Rom. 318D; App. BC 1.97. For an examination of Sulla's use of the name Epaphroditus in his dealings with the East, see Santangelo 2007b, 206–13.
105. Plu. Sull. 27.1–2.
106. Ibid. 27.4.