Authors Michael Gerber
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This is Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Roman general and dictator. Right-wing strongman of the 90s-70s BCE.
I've been thinking a lot about Sulla this past week, and people like him.
Ever heard of him? I bet not. 1/
You've certainly heard of Julius Caesar who (the story goes) ended the Roman Republic, and was slaughtered by freedom-loving patriots.
But everything Caesar did--marching on Rome, setting up one-man rule, remaking the Senate--had been done by Sulla 40 years before. 2/
So what's the difference? Both men were fantastically wealthy oligarchs--but within that spectrum, Caesar was considered a liberalizer, and Sulla a conservative.
Caesar said he was going to change things; Sulla said he was re-establishing the old ways. 3/
Rome didn't have a written Constitution. Instead they had a set of customs called the "mos maiorum," or "way things are done." We'd call them "norms."
If you asked Sulla and his supporters what they were fighting for, they would've said the mos maiorum.
Which was a lie. 4/
And we KNOW it was a lie, because invading the pomerium (sacred boundary) of Rome was overturning the heaviest norm there was.
Sulla did that in 88 BC, over a personal slight. He was mad he didn't get a generalship.
Is now where I make a modern equivalence? No, I'll wait. 5/
I've been thinking a lot about Sulla this past week, and people like him.
Ever heard of him? I bet not. 1/
Sulla\u2019s March on his own capital #Rome in 88BC and his destruction, chaos and terror led directly to the destruction of the Republic by Pompey and Julius Caesar half a century later. pic.twitter.com/voJSciVSw3
— Paul Harrison (@PaulHar77393852) January 7, 2021
You've certainly heard of Julius Caesar who (the story goes) ended the Roman Republic, and was slaughtered by freedom-loving patriots.
But everything Caesar did--marching on Rome, setting up one-man rule, remaking the Senate--had been done by Sulla 40 years before. 2/
So what's the difference? Both men were fantastically wealthy oligarchs--but within that spectrum, Caesar was considered a liberalizer, and Sulla a conservative.
Caesar said he was going to change things; Sulla said he was re-establishing the old ways. 3/
Rome didn't have a written Constitution. Instead they had a set of customs called the "mos maiorum," or "way things are done." We'd call them "norms."
If you asked Sulla and his supporters what they were fighting for, they would've said the mos maiorum.
Which was a lie. 4/
And we KNOW it was a lie, because invading the pomerium (sacred boundary) of Rome was overturning the heaviest norm there was.
Sulla did that in 88 BC, over a personal slight. He was mad he didn't get a generalship.
Is now where I make a modern equivalence? No, I'll wait. 5/