3.A REIGN THAT IS CRUEL IS STORMY
2. THOUGH HE ABDICATED THE DICTATORSHIP
When he so conducted himself in governing the state, he assumed the dictatorship, an office previously customary with the Roman people, and to which was entrusted the supreme authority. For the dictators held free sway over the lives of the citizens, nor did they comply with the inter- positions of the tribunes, and they were almost above the laws, practically endowed with royal power. For this reason care was taken that the
dictators give up their office in the sixth month from the time they had taken office, lest their great power, which was believed dangerous, might become permanent. But Sulla took the office upon himself for a period of 120 years. Julius Caesar followed his example. But the latter having once received the power, never relinquished it; while the former gave it up in the assembly of the people, venturing if anyone should ask, to set forth a reckoning of his conduct of office. For this reason Caesar cavilled at him, saying: Sulla was an ignorant fellow to abdicate the dictatorship [Suet., Jul.
Caes., 77]. And the rhetoricians among their declamatory exercises, used to discuss Sulla’s address to the people on laying down the dictatorship [Quint., Inst., 3.8.53]. Juvenal alludes to this [Sat., 1.1517]: I too / Have counseled Sulla to retire from public life / And sleep his fill. Since those who assumed rule to this degree abused the license of this power, the name (“dictator”) was abrogated forever during the consulate of Antony. This was the reason that Augustus afterward [Suet., Aug., 52] when the people
strongly importuned him… bent down on one knee, with his toga thrown off his shoulders, and his breast exposed to view, begging to be excused.
Seneca’s words therefore have this meaning: although contrary to the custom of tyrants he finally withdrew from the tyranny and returned to the status of private citizen, yet there was no tyrant who, even preserved in office until death, was more greedy to quaff blood than he.
AND RESUMED THE TOGA
Lucan [Phars., 7.266f] makes Caesar use the same expression:
My own desire is to return to private life And, in plebeian toga, to live as an ordinary citizen.
The toga signifies private status, for the praetexta was the sign of
magistracy. Asconius [Comm. Cic. Verr., 5.36]: The toga was the common dress of men and women, the praetexta of honorable persons, the toga of persons of low station. Yet this is not enough. For Sulla, after giving up the dictatorship, retained senatorial rank. It seems appropriate to touch briefly on what I think. First of all, the wearers of the praetexta were magistrates, as was said, and Pliny shows this in his Panegyr. [56.4]: Shall I admire the consulate discharged by you yet not willingly accepted by you? It was not an office discharged in the quiet of Rome and in the innermost bosom of peace, but in the face of barbarous nations, after the fashion of those men accustomed to exchange the toga praetexta for the military cloak. [Ibid., 61.8]: They have just put off the toga praetexta; let them put it back on.
They have just ordered their lictors to depart; to them recall them... And Livy [10.7.9] lists the insignia of those receiving a triumph and of magistrates: curule chairs, the toga praetexta, the tunic embroidered with palm branches, the colored toga, the triumphal croton, the laurel. Some others also commonly used the praetexta, that is consular and praetorian men, and like persons serving high offices, or those who had attained that honor in the state by their own merits. Cicero [Verr., 2.5.14.36], when he speaks of his aedileship: Priority of speech, the praetexta, the curule chair, the right of leaving my portrait as a memorial to those mho follow me...
Also in his Pro Cornelio Balbo [25.57]:... mho secure by privilege of the laws the right of giving their opinion amongst the praetors and of meaning the praetexta. Not even they always appeared in public wearing the praetexta, but when celebrating supplications, or other solemn rites and
certain other public festivals. Cicero, Philipp. [2.43.110]: Why are me not meaning the praetexta? Why do me permit an honor granted to Caesar under your lain to be neglected? By the wearing of the toga, we therefore very clearly understand private citizens, either senators or plebeians.
YET WHAT TYRANT DRANK SO GREEDILY OF HUMAN BLOOD
This expression is frequently used when writers wish to describe someone who delights in punishments: They say “he thirsts after and drinks
blood.” Pliny [14(22). 28.148]: He vomited the book, so that anyone can see he is drunken with the blood of citizens, and therefore a thirst for more.
Hence that poem flung against Tiberius [Suet., Tib., 59.1]:
Instead of wine he thirsted for before, He mallows now in floods of human gore.
Caesar in Lucan [Phars., 1.330-331]:
Accustomed so to lick the blade of Sulla, You still retain, 0 Great Pompey, that thirst.
WHO ORDERED SEVEN THOUSAND ROMAN CITIZENS Augustine [DCD, 3.28] recounts this same history, and Plutarch also in his Life of Sulla [30.2f]. Plutarch disagrees with Seneca on the number. He writes that six thousand were killed: nor does he quote Sulla’s proud and cruel reply. In Augustine one reads that certain wicked persons were punished, not A FEW. But Seneca adds this ad auxesin in order to increase our hatred of Sulla. Augustine agrees with Seneca on the number.
AT THE TEMPLE OF BELLONA
In this temple the senate was often convened, especially when it received the emissaries of a foreign power, who were not permitted to enter the city, or when generals were about to claim a triumph; these customarily did not enter the city unless in triumph. There are examples of both kinds in Livy [30.21.12], concerning the ambassadors of the Carthaginians: As they mere forbidden to enter the city, they were lodged in an inn on the public highway, and given an audience before the Senate at the temple of Bellona. [Ibid., 28.38.2]: Having obtained an audience of the senate outside
the city, in the temple of Bellona, he gave an account of the services he had performed in Spain. For it was located near the Circus Maximus outside the city, consecrated by Appius Pulcher, according to Ovid, Fasti [6.
201205]:
On this day Bellona is said to have been enshrined, during the Tuscan War; she, auspicious ever, favors Latium.
Appius was the builder: he, who, when peace )vas refused to Pyrrhus, Saw clearly in his mind, though blind in eye.
The small temple area looks on the Circus from behind.
etc. Understand that day as the day before the Nones of June or June fourth. That Appius Pulcher vowed it, is attested by Livy [10.19.17], but by whom it was consecrated, or at what time, he does not recall.
Nevertheless one reads in Livy that the first decree of the senate made there was when Marcellus returned as victor from Syracuse and demanded a triumph on account of his accomplishments. C. Calphumius the Praetor convened the senate [Livy, 26.21.1]. On the Goddess Bellona, read Cicero [In Verr., 2.5.16] and Lactantius [Div. Inst., 1.21]. To return to Sulla: he could easily have heard the clamor. For those seven thousand men who had given themselves up and entrusted themselves to him, had gathered in the Circus Maximus, not far from the temple of Bellona.