Talk:Sulla/Archive 2

Chronologically, the indication are that Sulla, as proconsul did the proscriptions and murdering. Once he was complete, he induced Flaccus, as interrex, to move a bill in the comitia centuriata to have him created dictator. Included in that bill was ratification of his prior acts, which included the proscriptions.^[1] The ancient sources largely concur with this chronology:

All that having been said, the extant evidence, most of it hostile to Sulla, places the proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations all before Sulla became dictator, while Sulla was still a proconsul and acting in effect as warlord conqueror of Rome. The sequence of events in Appian runs as follows: Sulla marched on Rome and made battle with the Marian defenders before the Colline Gate ... Q. Lucretius Ofella accepted Praeneste’s surrender ... Sulla garrisoned Italy, sent Pompey against Carbo, and after intimidating the assembled Romans in a speech began proscribing his enemies ... Only after he had eliminated the Marian threat in Italy ... did he begin reforming the Roman political state. Still acting by fiat, he had his actions as consul and proconsul indemnified by legislation ... He then called upon the senate to name an interrex, and it was at this point that he had this official inform the people of the necessity of a dictator ... Only now, after the proscriptions and the slate-clearing indemnification, was Sulla made dictator ...

This is not a matter of the historian telling things in something other than chronological order; Appian’s narrative is clear that the proscriptions were conducted by Sulla the proconsul, who had marched on Rome (and Praeneste and Norba) and had fought the revolutionaries at the Colline Gate. Only after the Marians were extinguished and he could safely stand down from his role as warlord did he turn to the work of rescuing the Roman constitution, for which purpose he brought about his appointment as dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae caussa (“on account of there being a need for making laws and regulating the state”). Plutarch ... who reportedly had access to Sulla’s memoirs, related the sequence of events in almost exactly the same way. Only after Sulla had proscribed his enemies (Sulla 31) and taken Praeneste (32) did he “proclaim himself dictator,” indemnify his past actions, and begin governing Rome (33). Livy concurred: the proscriptions and executions throughout Italy and Marius the Younger’s suicide were related in book 88, the appointment to the dictatorship and the constitutional reforms in book 89.^[2]

This is also clear in the narrative in CAH² 9: on pages 197 et seq it discusses how "the first list [of the proscriptions] was published before the fall of Praeneste... it was swiftly followed by two more... In November 82, the senate decreed that all of his acts, both as consul and proconsul, should be ratified". Then it discusses how he induced the creation of the dictatorship: "First he instructed the senate to appoint an interrex, for both consuls had been proscribed and both were now dead... Next Sulla wrote putting his own views to Flaccus[, the interrex]: he thought that in the present situation the appointment of a dictator would be beneficial... So Flaccus promulgated a law". The proscriptions have to precede the dictatorship if it was created by an interrex who was elected in the absence of consuls who had been proscribed.

Similarly, the first piece of legislation he passed "was probably that which, retrospectively and till 1 June, authorised the proscriptions".^[3]

The chronology in the main article should be revised. Ifly6 (talk) 20:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your assessment of the chronology, and I'm not aware of anyone who has disputed the fact that Sulla ordered the murder of his political opponents prior to his assumption of the Dictatorship. The question hangs on the legal aspects of the Proscriptions, and the fact that it was only after he became Dictator that he was in a position to enact the proscriptions legally. All of his ordered killings while Proconsul were illegal; the retrospective nature of the legislation was a legal construct to indemnify his actions.

It is clear that the legislation that permitted the proscriptions to occur was passed at a fixed point in time, after a number of political murders had occurred and (I agree with the CAH) occurring after the legislation that appointed Sulla as Dictator. I would suggest that if the murders that predated the legislation were included under the overall banner of the proscriptions, it basically agrees with Sulla's position that the murders were legal. The dividing line of the proscription legislation allows historians to accurately demarcate Sulla's actions prior to the legislation and those following it, allowing people to draw their own conclusions about the legality of the pre-proscription murders.

That being said, I do agree that the article would benefit if the pre-proscription murders were explicitly mentioned, and the retrospective nature of the legislation to prevent future charges from being laid against Sulla for those murders was also included. Oatley2112 (talk) 00:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

My objection is the phrasing in the current article like so: At the end of 82 BC or the beginning of 81 BC, the Senate appointed Sulla dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa ("dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution") ... In total control of the city and its affairs, Sulla instituted a series of proscriptions. This phraseology in the current article gets it backward.

I disagree that the proscriptions are "legal" or should be seen in legal terms. In the conditions of civil war that Sulla was engaged in, "legal" is first a largely meaningless term; second, the proscriptions were an action of putting up a list of people to murder and confiscate property from. That Caesar and Cato were still prosecuting the beneficiaries of the proscriptions years after they occurred (in 64 BC; eg MRR 2.162, Caesar as president of the quaestio de sicariis) indicates that "legal" might be a bit mutable. Ifly6 (talk) 05:12, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

There seem to be four major sources in the current article: Holland's Rubicon, Matyszak's Cataclysm, Telford's Sulla, and Keaveney's Sulla.

Holland's Rubicon doesn't seem to be that positively reviewed as a piece of classical scholarship (praise for it as a piece of literature is ample).^[1] He also isn't formally trained as a classicist.

As to Matyszak's Catclysm, I don't know to what extent we accept Pen & Sword. It seems to be a private company specialising in history publications, but that isn't the same as being an academic publisher. I am, however, largely willing to accept Matyszak's books as reliable at least on Roman topics inasmuch as it seems that he holds a DPhil in Roman History from Oxford.^[2]

Telford's book is also published by Pen & Sword. The statement on Google Books under "About the author" says she is "passionate about history" and "a member of the Richard III Society" and that her interests include the "late Roman Republic, particularly the social wars [sic] and the career of [Sulla]" and "monasticism, with emphasis of the Cistercian order".^[3] There don't seem to be any indications of her being an expert on Roman history; Sulla apparently received no academic reviews.

Keaveney's Sulla is an academic book. It seems to be largely reliable. It was reviewed (I would characterise it as lukewarmly positive) in the BMCR shortly after publication of its second edition. But the changes from the first edition are "hardly sweeping". The first edition's reviews are decidedly "mixed": Those in the "rather negative" camp were Badian, Briscoe,^[4] Stockton;^[5] Boren was "mildly negative"; two reviews by Paterson and Richard were positive.^[6] I can't find Badian's review in Ancient Society but I can find Briscoe's in JRS. It does not avoid punches. Among other things, Briscoe says:

• "K has no interest in the political, social, and economic structure of Roman society",
• "K displays a contemptuous attitude towards modern scholarship on his subject",
• "Badian's view that Sulla made a compromise peace with Mithridates [n. I believe this is the modern orthodoxy] in order to deal with his domestic enemies is dismissed in a note as 'baseless'",
• "discussion of the reliability of the ancient sources is a notable omission from the book... K accepts almost all the anecdotal material without hesitation", and
• "Doubts about K's own scholarship readily arise" (as to factual, geographic, and citation errors).

That said, Keaveney as an author in general is well cited by the "gold standard" books like CAH². Some 11 of his works are cited in CAH² 9, Sulla (1st ed, 1982) included.

Regardless, in general, my comments aside: to what extent should these sources be considered "reliable"? Ifly6 (talk) 06:01, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I personally do not consider Pen & Sword reliable. Of the four sources, Telford is definitely not a RS and could be removed immediately. I have the same view of Holland and Matyszak, but other editors have sometimes used them; I think that they are dispensable if replaced by better sources. Matyszak's thesis could be used though. I rate Keaveney a bit better; Routledge is an academic publisher and he is cited by others (something that never happens with Holland and Matyszak, which is telling), but as you mentioned he got destroyed in reviews by monuments like Badian and Briscoe, to whom you can also add Elizabeth Rawson and François Hinard. By the way, the latter published three books largely on Sulla (if you can read French). I remember that I wanted to use Keaveney as a base to rewrite the article on Sulla, but was put-off by his apology of him.

You can also safely remove Abbott (1901). T8612 (talk) 12:38, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I removed Abbott in this edit. [Edit. Telford also excised.] I don't read French well, though I'll certainly take a look. If you want to cooperate on a rewrite draft, I'd be interested. Certainly the portions relating to the civil wars and the dictatorship can be rewritten with CAH² as a base; earlier life could be filled in perhaps by Keaveney? Ifly6 (talk) 20:39, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible. I have started to make a list of the men he proscribed here after Hinard. Check also this and that. T8612 (talk) 21:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

As to Matyszak's thesis, which could possibly be a useful source, it is not seemingly available online. It appears that the most forthcoming prospect for acquiring it would be to gain admittance to or employment at Oxford University and then to request it from their library services. Needless to say, this is not something I will soon be doing. Ifly6 (talk) 18:17, 25 July 2022 (UTC)