BY DR. JOSE MA. EDUARDO P. DACUDAO
82 BC – Rome had control over most areas around the Mediterranean Sea, from Europe to North Africa. After 25 years of service in the Roman military and many successful campaigns, the Roman General and politician Lucius Cornelius Sulla assembled 50,000 soldiers outside Rome and demanded that the Roman Senate give his soldiers land. Sulla had already been a quaestor, praetor, and consul in the past, all through legal civil means. Now he was going to take power by extra-legal means. Civilian authority was directly threatened by the military.
The Senators refused Sulla’s demands. The Republican nature of Roman society was at stake.
Sulla responded by posting a list of his political enemies (mostly from the party of his former commanding officer turned politician Gaius Marius) with cash rewards for their elimination. In the ensuing massacre, thousands died or were exiled. Sulla then appointed himself as dictator.
The future of Roman democracy was now in Sulla’s hands. If one of our own politicians were in Sulla’s position, how would he behave?
Remember that this was a first in Roman history. Sulla as a typical Roman would have been raised up imbued in the ideals of the Roman Republic. He would have grown up sincerely believing Rome’s motto, SPQR – Senatus Populusque Romanus- the Senate and People of Rome. He would have looked up to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus as a role model, as did most Romans at that time.
Instead of abusing his powers Sulla reformed the Roman constitution, aiming to restore the power of the Senate. He improved the system of criminal procedure by increasing the number of quaestiones perpetuae, the first permanent criminal courts established in Rome. In 79 BC he voluntarily retired to his home in Campania, where he died the following year.
Rome remained a Republic.
Unfortunately, a precedence had been set. For the first time in Roman history, a General had convinced his troops to support his political ambitions. The Roman military got politicized. From then on, the Roman army would have a strong influence on the civilian government.
In less than a hundred years, Julius Caesar would purposely take power through extra-legal means supported by the Roman military, and this man had no intention of retiring back to a farm. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, a power struggle ensued, which his grandnephew and adopted son Gaius Octavius (usually shortened to Octavian in English) won. By then there was no question of Rome going back to a Republic. Everyone assumed that Octavian would hold power as Emperor indefinitely. He did. (To be continued)/PN
