Sulla: Rome’s Brutal Butcher
Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BC) was born into a poor aristocratic family in Rome, a very unfortunate situation for an ambitious young patrician. Fortunately for him and not necessarily for the thousands who would have good reason to dread and fear him in later life, he was a man who always seemed to have luck on his side. As a young man with golden-blond hair, piercing grey-blue eyes, striking good looks and a charming personality, Sulla managed to create such a strong and lasting impression on one of Rome’s richest courtesans that when she died she left all her money to him, thus enabling him, along with an inheritance from his step-mother, to pursue the cursus honorum, the expected but costly career path for a male member of the Roman aristocracy. Thus, via a combination of good looks, luck and no-doubt careful cultivating of his political acquaintances, Sulla became the Consul Marius’s Quaestor in 107 BC. (The Quaestorship being the first step of the cursus honorum). After taking