Antony and Cleopatra by Adrian Goldsworthy Read Free Book Online Page A

control of the city. Fighting continued for some time – one of the Marian commanders would continue the struggle in Spain for another decade. Both of the consuls of 82 BC, who included Marius’son, were killed, but Sulla did not replace them. Instead, he was made dictator by a law passed in the Popular Assembly.
    The dictatorship was an ancient emergency measure that gave one man supreme executive power. The office lasted for just six months and could not be renewed, so in this way the principle of preventing any individual from gaining supreme permanent power was preserved. A dictator was appointed rather than elected and, unlike a consul, he did not have a colleague but a subordinate known as the Master of Horse
(Magister Equitum).
The commonest reason to name a dictator was to supervise consular elections when no consul was available. Once these were complete, the dictator resigned his office, often after only having held office for a few days. On a few occasions – for instance at times of crisis during the Punic Wars – a dictator had been appointed to take command in the field. The last occasion was in 216 BC.
    Sulla used the old title, but added new powers that would last for as long as he chose to retain them, hence the need for a specific law. He was
dictator legibus scribundis et rei publícete constituendae –
dictator to make laws and restore the Republic. At the same time he presided over mass executions that were both bloodier and far more organised than Marius’ purge. Lists of names were posted and anyone included on them lost all legal rights. They could be killed with impunity and their murderers granted a share in their property as a reward. We do not know how many men – and it was only men – were proscribed in this way. Some senators perished and many more equestrians, who had fought against Sulla or were associated in some way with his enemies. Others were killed so that their wealth could be confiscated and many of Sulla’s subordinates were believed to have added names to the lists for their own profit. One wealthy equestrian is supposed to have greeted the news that he was on a proscription list with the dry comment that his Alban estates wanted him dead. 10
    Once again Roman slaughtered Roman, bodies floated in the Tiber and heads were nailed up to the speaker’s platform in the Forum. Alongside the massacres went reform. Sulla tried to legislate to prevent any provincial governor from leading his army outside of his province – in a sense to stop anyone copying his own example. He also severely restricted the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, the office used by the Gracchi and more recently by Marius’ allies to secure him the command against Mithridates.
    Sulla’s reforms shifted the balance of power in favour of the Senate and senior magistrates. Yet more important than the legislation was the Senate itself, which was supposed to guide the state. The proscriptions removed a number of senators, and still more had been killed by one side or the other during the civil war. Many new members were enrolled by the dictator, doubling the size of the Senate to around six hundred. With his enemies removed and the council packed with his own sympathisers, in 79 BC Sulla gave up the dictatorship and retired to private life. His health was poor and, in spite of a rapid marriage to a lively young widow, he died a year later. His self-composed epitaph was that no one had ever been a better friend or worse enemy. 11
CRETICUS
    Antony’s father was part of Sulla’s Senate. We do not know whether he had played an active part on the dictator’s side in the civil war, but the murder of his father clearly made him unfriendly to the Marians. As a member of an established family with a highly distinguished father, he was an important man and stood out from the hundreds of recently enrolled senators. Civil war and proscriptions had also severely thinned