Sulla the Fortunate: suggested discussion points

Sulla the Fortunate: Roman General and Dictator

1. G.P. Baker's writing style.
2. Can we discern his thought processes? How much did the 1920s geopolitical events shape his overall view?
3. Baker's introduction to his story, i.e. what ancient Britons would have seen if they had traveled to Early Rome
4. Assessment of Sulla, p. 36 (X.)
5. Events that shaped Sulla
6. "The Astute Psychologist"
7. Sulla's addiction to drama (Baker writes on Sulla's taking of Athens: The emperor Nero must often have regretted that he had neither the opportunity nor the ability to take Athens.)
8. As the story is told from the Gracchi to Sulla's death, it seems to unfold as a series of dramas in the Greek sense
9. The character of Marius
10. Under: Sulla Comes Home, II: Baker's thoughts on the later "first triumvirate", and "The Perfect Aristocrat"
11. Baker's defense of the proscription, does he have a point?
12. Aim of Sulla's dictatorship, but also: comparatively brief treatment of Sulla's reforms
13. "The Death of Sulla's World", Baker's assessment of Sulla

Karl Christ closes his biography, Sulla, eine Römische Karriere, with this paragraph (my translation): 

With his last, comprehensive systemization of the dominance of the Roman aristocracy, Sulla stands at the zenith of the history of the late Roman republic. His shadow looms over the entire subsequent era, however much his pre-eminent successors, Caesar and Augustus, might have distanced themselves from him.

A. Keaveney, in Sulla; The Last Republican:

[It] is impossible not to conclude that Sulla, despite all his great talents and all he accomplished, is nevertheless one of the great failures of history ... As he himself would probably agree, [all his achievements] were surely nought when set against the fact that the last republican, who had both the will and the means, could not, for all his striving, save the Roman Republic.

March 15 & April 5, 2006 Background   2006 Reading List   PDF

(updated April 2, 2006)