Late Roman Republic, Sulla (c.60; fl.106-78 BC): Dictatorship of Sulla (82-79 BC), Legislative Reform

Dictatorship of Sulla

In late 82 BC as consuls for the year were dead Sulla ordered the Senate to appoint an interrex and they chose the princeps senatus (the leading member of the Senate), ¹¹Valerius Flaccus. Sulla then had Flaccus pass the lex Valeria that made him dictator for as long as he wished and charged himself with the redrafting of the republican constitution.

Sulla then issued an edict, proscribing his enemies. In practice this meant publishing a list of those held to be enemies of the state and by depriving them of all their rights it became no crime to kill them. A reward of 12,000 denarii was paid per head – a literal head, which would be publicly exposed in Rome. The reward for slaves was their freedom.

His victims’ estates were confiscated and auctioned off to the benefit of his political supporters; their children and grandchildren were deprived of their civic rights, they could not stand for magistracy or hold any other honour. The first lists included some forty senators and sixteen hundred equestrians. For his own protection Sulla freed ten thousand slaves who had belonged to those that he proscribed and turned them into his personal bodyguard, the Cornelii. The power for the enforcement of his design seems to have been conceded to him later by the lex Cornelia de proscriptione et proscriptis.

Land was also taken from towns that had opposed Rome during the Social War or himself in the ensuing civil war in Italy. These confiscated municipal lands were allocated to retired soldiers, which served the double purpose of rewarding his veterans and providing pockets of loyal armed supporters in potentially hostile regions of the Italian mainland.

One such veteran colony was settled at Pompeii. Estimates of its size range from two thousand to five thousand soldiers, who became the new masters of the city. One of the three men in charge of establishing the colony was the dictator’s nephew, Publius ³⁸Cornelius Sulla (died 45 BC).

• Legislative Reform

Sulla sided with the senatorial aristocracy in its long standing battle with the plebeian population. His aim was to restore the Senate to its position as the preeminent authority within the Republican government by increasing its size, reclaiming the powers that had been taken from it, and restricting the tribunate and the Assembly.

Leges Cornelia: restoration of the aristocratic republic
de XX quaestoribus	increased number of quaestors to 20	81
de tribunus plebis	reduced power of tribunes	81
de magistratibus	age limits for holding office	81
de praetoribus	increased number of praetors to 8	81
de sacerdotiis	increased number of pontiffs to 15	81

The wars and massacres of Marius and Sulla had reduced the Senate to a body of about one hundred and fifty men. He increased it to six hundred by appointing many of his men who had served him well in his military campaigns, and recruiting three hundred equestrians, many of whom were from important families in the newly enfranchised Italian towns. Increasing its size meant that the number of magistrates had also to be increased in order to fill the greater number of vacancies that would as a consequence naturally occur.

Under the lex Cornelia de viginti magistratibus the number of quaestors was raised from twelve to twenty and all ex-quaestors automatically became members of the Senate. The members were now indirectly chosen by the people and the censors no longer decided who should enter the Senate. (If 30 years is assumed to be the average period of service for a senator then the entire Senate needed to be replaced over the same period at the rate of 600/30=20 new members per year.)

Since the time of Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC) the tribunate had been used to challenge the Senate’s authority. Sulla’s ~de tribunus plebis reduced tribunician power by requiring Senate’s approval before bills could be brought to the people, revoked the tribunes’ right to veto acts of the Senate and prevented ex-tribunes from election to other magistracies.

To prevent young men gaining high office and political power too quickly, Sulla redrafted the lex Villia annalis of 180 BC. His ~de magistratibus rigidly fixed the order in which offices could be held in the cursus honorum, and no man was to become quaestor before the age of thirty, praetor before thirty-nine and consul before forty-two, or hold the same office twice within ten years.

The ~de praetoribus increased the number of praetors to eight, ensuring a praetor for each of the two civil jurisdictions and six criminal courts. Sulla’s plan was for the two consuls and eight praetors as the ten higher magistrates to remain in Italy attending to their duties during their terms of office; and the following year each go as a promagistrate to one of the ten provinces – Africa, Asia, Cilicia, Gallia Cisalpina, Corsica and Sardinia, Gallia Narbonensis, Hispania Citerior, Hispania Ulterior, Macedonia, Corsica and Sardinia, and Sicily. Sulla by law thus established an absolute distinction between the civil magistrate and the military promagistrate. 

For the Romans, religion was inextricably bound up with public life. They believed that no public act and no enterprise could succeed without the approval of the gods. To ensure the success of his legislation Sulla directed his building programme almost entirely towards restoring the temples that had been destroyed in the recent wars. With the ~de sacerdotiis he increased the number of the pontiffs and augurs to fifteen; and restored to the priestly colleges the principle of co-optation (election into a body by the votes of its existing members) which had been taken from them by Domitius (3). 

An important turning point in the history of Roman criminal law was the creation of the quaestiones perpetuae (permanent jury courts to deal with criminal cases). The first of these was established after the lex Calpurnia repetundarum in 149 BC was passed to try extortions committed by provincial governors. In 81 BC Sulla’s statutes introduced additional courts for other crimes; his lex Cornelia iudiciaria restored the quaestiones to the senators.

Leges Cornelia: criminal justice
de repetunda	extortion	81
de ambitus	election bribery	81
de peculatus	misappropriation of public funds	81
de maiestate	treason	81
de sicariis et veneficis	murder and poisoning	81
de iniuria	violence	81
de falsus	fraud	81

He created or reformed seven quaestiones perpetuae (standing courts) having senators as jurors and presided over by a praetor. Four of these courts were concerned primarily with maladministration of office: (1) quaestio de repetunda, extortion, (2) ~ambitus, electoral bribery, (3) ~peculatus, misappropriation of public funds, (4) ~maiestate, treason. The remainder were concerned with common crimes: (5) ~sicariis et veneficis, murder and poisoning, (6) ~iniuria, violence (7) and ~falsus (fraud).

In 80 BC Sulla as well as being dictator shared the consulship with ¹¹Caecilius Metellus. In 79 BC Sulla retired to his lands in Campania and died the following year. His hope of restoring law and order under the Senate died with him. He had shown that violence could be used to overthrow the government. In future many were to pursue power for themselves and neglect the interests of the state.