Seventy-eight BC. On the Campanian coast, at Puteoli, a man in his late fifties is dying in a house that looks like retirement. He writes. He hunts. He drinks with actors. He has been working on his memoirs — in which he explains, at length, that the gods liked him.
A year or two earlier he was the most dangerous man in the Roman world. Dictator. Reformer. Author of the lists. The first Roman commander to take a consular army and walk it into his own city as if the pomerium were a suggestion. They will add Felix. Favored. Lucky. He chose that himself.
The first of November, 82 BC, at the Colline Gate, is the reason Rome never forgot him. Samnite columns try to finish the war by taking the city. Sulla’s left wing buckles. He rides into it. By morning the gate still belongs to Rome. The people behind it will belong to Sulla.
The film follows a relatively poor Cornelius through Jugurtha, the Social War, the first march of 88, the Mithridatic East, the return, Praeneste, the proscriptions, the stacked Senate, the abdication, and the Campanian end. The next generation will not unlearn the lesson: the city can be taken, the lists can be posted, the constitution can be rewritten at sword-point — and if you call yourself lucky, you can then put the sword down and go fishing.
Chapters
The spine of the film
- 00Death at Puteoli
- 01The Colline Gate
- 02A poor Cornelius
- 03Jugurtha
- 04The Social War
- 05The first march, 88 BC
- 06Mithridates
- 07Return and the lists
- 08Dictator
- 09Abdication and legacy
Further reading
Start here
- Plutarch, Life of Sulla
- Appian, Civil Wars
- Arthur Keaveney; Federico Santangelo — modern treatments of the Sullan settlement
Stills
From the production package
Maps
Atlas plates
Schematic maps drawn for the documentary. Political fills and routes are interpretive.
