I DEFINING THE LEGACY OF SULLA

In the first book of the Civil Wars Appian discusses in vivid terms the events of the year 78 b.c. He devotes considerable attention to the funeral of Sulla and frames that spectacular public ceremony as the moment that brought the season of the Civil Wars of the 80s to a close and opened up a new phase in the troubled history of the late Republic.Footnote ¹ In that account, the debate that preceded the funeral is the first stage of the process in which Sulla's legacy is contested and eventually undone. According to the main surviving ancient narratives of the period, there had been no room for dissent since the Colline Gate battle (November 82 b.c.); the dominatio of the dictator was the time for systematic massacres and the distribution of rewards to the friends of the victor, not for open political debate.Footnote ² If we are to believe Plutarch, even when the junior (if well-born) senator C. Caecilius Metellus publicly asked Sulla when he intended to put an end to the massacres that followed the Civil War, he did not question Sulla's entitlement to pursue those that he was determined to punish.Footnote ³ In Appian's words, Sulla ‘ruled as he pleased’ after he killed Lucretius Afella (or Ofella) in the middle of the Forum to punish him for his decision to stand for the consulship, probably in early 81 b.c.Footnote ⁴ As Plutarch states, many may have had reservations on the system shaped by the new Leges Corneliae, especially shortly after they were passed, but there is no evidence that these were publicly voiced and discussed.Footnote ⁵ Cicero claims to have argued against the legitimacy of the Sullan law that deprived several communities of the Roman citizenship in a case concerning a woman from Arretium, which was heard during Sulla's lifetime. The outcome may well have been favourable to Cicero's client, but the issue was not resolved by that precedent.Footnote ⁶ Tellingly, the speech was not published.Footnote ⁷ The pro Roscio Amerino was delivered during Sulla's lifetime, probably in 80 b.c., and provided comprehensive factual evidence for the abuses perpetrated during the proscriptions. It also included a bitter attack on Chrysogonus, a freedman who had a close personal association with Sulla. Cicero's focus, however, was consistently on the case and its protagonists, and the speech is strikingly free from explicit criticism of Sulla and his political agenda.Footnote ⁸

There is a risk, as ever, of oversimplifying the nature of the political debate in light of the scant evidence that survives. A passing reference in Tacitus' Dialogus records that many eloquent speakers did not spare even Scipio, Sulla or Pompey. The reference to plurimi disertorum can hardly be just to the young advocate from Arpinum who took over the defence of the Arretine woman and of Sextus Roscius from Ameria.Footnote ⁹ It is impossible, however, to give any depth to the picture. In the accounts of most of the surviving sources, it is only with Sulla's departure from the political scene that open criticism of his use of power is voiced: in Appian's memorable narrative, by a boy who heckled Sulla on his way home on the day of his retirement to private life, and later by M. Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 78 b.c.), who put forward the unsuccessful proposal of denying Sulla a public funeral.Footnote ¹⁰ That ceremony was also the last moment at which Sulla's veterans acted as a united group in the city of Rome, as they took part en masse in the funeral of their commander. Unlike the veterans of Caesar, they never became a pressure group that fought to secure the survival of their former leader's political legacy. Their interests had been provided for, with varying degrees of success, before the death of their patron.Footnote ¹¹ The ‘10,000’ freedmen that Sulla had manumitted at the end of the Civil War and settled — if we are to believe Appian — in the city of Rome also disappear from the historical record.Footnote ¹²

In Appian's relatively straightforward (and no doubt oversimplified) account, the Sullan resettlement is an eventful interlude in the long history of the clash between optimates and populares. From 78 b.c. onwards, business resumes as usual, so to speak, and the familiar binary pattern of Roman politics takes over again. This view has met with wide approval. Most recently, V. Arena has set out to read the developments of the consulship of Lepidus and Catulus in 78 b.c. precisely in terms of a revival of the clash between populares and optimates.Footnote ¹³ Others have sketched different reconstructions. In a famous, if flawed, book, J. Carcopino argued that Sulla set out to create a monarchic regime, but quickly lost the support of the senatorial nobility, led by the Caecilii Metelli, and was eventually compelled to withdraw to private life.Footnote ¹⁴ In a recent contribution, A. Thein has drawn attention to the tension between the ancient depiction of Sulla as a tyrant, or at least as a forerunner of imperial power, and the evidence for the limits of Sulla's power and influence. In his fascinating definition, Sulla was a ‘weak tyrant’, who could never avoid coming to terms with a complex web of élite infighting, opposition, and consensus crippled by guilt.Footnote ¹⁵

The 70s of the first century b.c. have an awkward place in modern discussions of late Republican politics. To use an astronomical metaphor, they fall into a cone of shadow: they are not covered by what survives of Cicero's correspondence, which begins in the mid-60s; they witnessed hardly any memorable speeches of the great orator until the Verrines; the great men portrayed in Plutarch's biographies did not reach their prime in that decade, with the partial exception of Sertorius; Appian's Civil Wars concentrates on military developments, notably the wars of Lepidus, Sertorius, and Spartacus, but has very little to say about political developments in Rome.Footnote ¹⁶ Of course, this state of affairs is not representative of the evidence that was available in antiquity. The most ambitious historical work of Sallust, the Historiae, provided a continuous account of the political history of the 70s. Some of its fragments convey a sense of the wealth of insights and detail that the lost large-scale narrative contained.

There is also the risk of a sort of tunnel-vision. Much of what we know about the political life of this decade pertains to the consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70 b.c., a year when the Sullan reform of the tribunate was famously undone, under the watch of two men who had had, in their own different ways, a close and complex relationship with Sulla.Footnote ¹⁷ The significance of that year is unquestionable, although schematic and teleological solutions must be avoided. The complexity and liveliness of the preceding decade is worth exploring and bringing out in more detail. A biographical, or indeed prosopographical, focus would hardly be fit for purpose. The political itineraries of figures like Pompey, Crassus and Caesar in the 70s have received sustained attention. While this level of information is undoubtedly significant, providing an account of their position towards the Sullan resettlement and their ideological orientations (if any) is hardly a rewarding task. That the motives of prominent individuals may be hard to assess is powerfully illustrated by the case of M. Aemilius Lepidus. While the publicly stated agenda of the ‘subversive consul’ of 78 b.c. may be reconstructed with a reasonable degree of confidence, the relationship between his rise to the consulship (while Sulla was still alive) and his later decision to start a revolt in which the surviving enemies of Sulla played a crucial rôle is bound to remain enigmatic.Footnote ¹⁸ The impression that these matters may be unresolvable is strong. Exploring the allegiances of people at a lower level of the political spectrum is not a much more instructive exercise. The prosopography of the senators that are known to have been appointed in Sulla's levy in 81 b.c. reveals little about their backgrounds, personalities or visions.Footnote ¹⁹ Facile assumptions of continuity between one's allegiance in the age of the Civil War and one's political position after Sulla's death should be avoided: the political choices of C. Aurelius Cotta (cos. 75 b.c.), which will be discussed below, are a case in point.

The 70s witnessed varying degrees of political repositioning, in two different senses: towards the Sullan settlement and, more significantly, on a number of key policy issues. The two classic discussions of the period in English give strikingly different assessments. P. A. Brunt argued that the reform of the tribunate ‘destroyed the barrier to popular legislation Sulla had devised’ and that ‘the Sullan system was now in ruins’.Footnote ²⁰ Pompey was unwilling to accept a system in which the leading men in the State were to share a roughly equal amount of influence; his rise had in turn been made possible by the lack of military expertise within the senatorial élite that was caused, at least in the short term, by the Social and Civil Wars.Footnote ²¹ On this reading, the reform of the tribunate was the factor that brought about the demise of the Sullan settlement. Pompey was its ‘initial beneficiary’.Footnote ²² E. S. Gruen took the opposite view: ‘adjustment, rather than breakdown, was the hallmark of the 70s’, with a ‘broadened senatorial class’ that ‘remained in control throughout’.Footnote ²³ He also envisaged ‘a complex reshuffling of alignments and alliances’ that ‘dominated the political scene of the 70s’.Footnote ²⁴ Some progress may be reached by discarding — at least for the purposes of this discussion — the modern scholarly abstractions of the ‘Sullan constitution’, the ‘Sullan regime’ and the ‘Sullan oligarchy’, and turning our attention to the specific processes that led to changes on specific policy fronts.Footnote ²⁵ As H. Flower points out, we know more about the reforms that were put in place at the end of the decade than about the processes that brought about that series of changes.Footnote ²⁶

This paper is based on the contention that some progress is in fact possible in this area. The focus will be on several crucial fronts of internal politics, which appear to have been the areas that received closest attention and attracted the greatest controversy in the 70s.Footnote ²⁷ The discussion will be divided into four segments, which are all relevant to charting the main themes in the politics of the decade after Sulla's death and to singling out the priorities of the political élite at the time. The first step will be the discussion of the debate on the powers of the tribunes, which resumed immediately after Sulla's death, continued throughout the following decade, and found a controversial solution in 70 b.c., with its restoration during the consulship of Pompey and Crassus. Attention will then be turned to another issue that received sustained attention in the 70s and was one of the defining problems in late Republican politics: the legislation on corn distributions. A third major aspect of that political season was the new position of the Senate; the Sullan reorganization changed the profile and the rôle of that body to an unprecedented extent, and determined important political developments in the following years. The fourth section will be devoted to the Italian dimension, in which tensions over land and continuing disputes over citizenship were closely intertwined, and on which the census of 70 b.c. made a considerable impact. The conclusion will then draw some general points from the variety and complexity of political developments of the 70s, and will argue that the demise of the ‘Sullan system’ or the continuation of the supremacy of the ‘Sullan oligarchy’ were not the central themes of the political debate.

II THE TRIBUNATE

The events of 70 b.c. — the reform of the tribunate enacted by the consular pair of Pompey and Crassus, the revival of the censorship after more than fifteen years, and the reform of the criminal courts — form an impressive sequence.Footnote ²⁸ They should not necessarily be regarded, however, as the stages of a coherent political strategy in which the Sullan legacy as a whole came under attack. J.-L. Ferrary pointed out that the bill of the praetor L. Aurelius Cotta for the reform of the criminal courts appears to have been accepted, rather than actively supported, by Pompey, and was tellingly passed towards the end of the year.Footnote ²⁹ Other Sullan reforms remained unscathed.Footnote ³⁰ One of the key features of the Sullan resettlement, the law that reintroduced co-optation as the method for recruiting priestly colleges, was not undone until 63 b.c., when the tribune T. Atius Labienus passed a law that restored the provisions of the Lex Domitia;Footnote ³¹ unfortunately, the debate that preceded that further change in the legislation is not attested in the surviving evidence. Cassius Dio merely draws attention to the connection between Labienus and Caesar, who benefited from the new law a few months after its passing, when he stood for election to the supreme pontificate.Footnote ³² The wider political significance of the Lex Cornelia on priesthoods is indirectly confirmed by the choice of pseudo-Asconius to include it among the measures that harmed the interests of the people, along with the reforms of the tribunate and the courts.Footnote ³³ The increase of the membership of the priestly colleges, such as the augural and the (quin)decemviral ones, was a change from which — unsurprisingly, perhaps — there was no way back.Footnote ³⁴ This was not the only aspect of ‘Sulla's republic’ (to take up a notion recently explored by H. Flower) that remained in existence well after the end of the 70s. The new permanent criminal courts, the increased numbers of praetors and quaestors, the new law on maiestas, the organization of the province of Asia are all important Sullan innovations that made a significant impact and were not discontinued.Footnote ³⁵ The civic rights of the sons of the victims of the proscriptions were not restored until 49 b.c.Footnote ³⁶

Nonetheless, the significance of the reform of the tribunate in 70 b.c. cannot be underestimated: that was the defining political issue of that year and the central point of agenda of Pompey's consulship. It is possible that some who had previously supported the Sullan reform of the tribunate regarded the new set-up as an insignificant obstacle to the assertion and continuation of the supremacy of the nobility.Footnote ³⁷ Centuries of Republican history, and even recent experience (notably Livius Drusus in 122 b.c.), proved that the tribunate of the plebs was not incompatible with policies that in fact served the interests of the most conservative faction of the Senate. Others, however, held different views. Quintus Cicero's well-known attack on the tribunate in De legibus III includes firm praise of the Sullan reform and a strong attack on Pompeius noster (‘our Pompey’); the reform of 70 b.c. is emphatically singled out as a defining moment in the history of the Roman magistracies.Footnote ³⁸ Much recent scholarship on Cicero's philosophical work has shown that the statements of the characters should not be taken as evidence for their own views, and the arguments deployed in those texts cannot be used for the reconstruction of the late Republican political debate without some important qualifications.Footnote ³⁹ Nonetheless, the tone of Quintus' remarks strongly points to the conclusion that in some quarters the restoration of the powers of the tribunate was regarded as a political development that decisively shifted the balance of power within the res publica. The issue proved more divisive than modern scholars have often been prepared to acknowledge.Footnote ⁴⁰

That Quintus was an opponent of the reform is not suggested just by the De legibus. In a letter to his brother of 13 June 58 b.c., Cicero urged him to make sure that an episode from the past was not to damage his political prospects. A few years earlier, in 66 b.c., when he was standing for the aedileship, Quintus had been falsely accused of being the author of an epigram that criticized the restoration of the tribunate.Footnote ⁴¹ Cicero feared that the allegation would resurface — possibly on Hortensius' initiative — to hinder Quintus' relationship with Crassus and Pompey. It is remarkable that rumours of having been opposed to the reform of the tribunate would be deemed to seriously affect one's prospects more than a decade after the events; it powerfully indicates how polarizing the issue had been. The circulation of a text of that kind — the wording of which remains unknown — is also a symptom of how lively the debate was in the months preceding the reform. Even if Quintus was not the author of that epigram, it is likely that the rumour was the symptom of a view he genuinely held, and that he had indeed been an outspoken opponent of the reform of the tribunate.Footnote ⁴²

In order to gain a more comprehensive, and less anecdotal, appreciation of the political significance of the reform, it is worth tracing back the process that led to it being tabled and passed in 70 b.c.Footnote ⁴³ Granius Licinianus stresses that in 78 b.c. Lepidus publicly argued against the views of some tribunes who had made the case for reform.Footnote ⁴⁴ In his view, the restoration of the tribunician powers was not utile, ‘helpful’: a pragmatic argument, rather than one based on principle, which found some support, at least in the contio where it was set out.Footnote ⁴⁵ Without wanting to read too much into that brief summary, it may be argued that Lepidus sketched a different strategy for the pursuit of the commoda populi:Footnote ⁴⁶ measures in the interest of the populace could be tabled and carried through by consular initiative, without the involvement of a magistracy that relied on a direct, exclusive link with the people and had pursued highly divisive initiatives in the recent past.Footnote ⁴⁷

The close of Sallust's Oratio Lepidi, though, firmly puts the issue of reform on the political map of the following years. The call to civic freedom that the consul of 78 b.c. is made to voice at the end of his speech comes shortly after a highly critical reference to the curtailment of tribunician powers, and may be read as a forward-reference to the various attempts that were made to undo that aspect of the Sullan arrangements in the following years.Footnote ⁴⁸ It is a safe guess that the theme was at the centre of the narrative of the decade that Sallust set out in the Historiae; it certainly features prominently in one of the longest surviving fragments. The speech of the tribune Macer, purportedly pronounced in 73 b.c., provides a narrative framework that cannot be disregarded, even though its value as a historical source is problematic in various respects.Footnote ⁴⁹ In Macer's account, the death of Sulla was saluted by some as the end of an age of servitude (seruitium), but was followed by the rise of other despots; the people failed to rally behind the cause of their own freedom. In 76 b.c. the tribune L. Sicinius established a reputation as a source of constant disruption for the magistrates of his year, especially the two consuls, Cn. Octavius and C. Scribonius Curio; even Cicero acknowledges his wit in an otherwise derogatory discussion.Footnote ⁵⁰ The tribune's resolve in taking on the serving consuls was a powerful move that subverted the arrangement devised by the Sullan reform. Indeed, Macer depicts Sicinius as the first tribune who openly raised the issue of the reform of the tribunate (‘primus de potestate tribunicia loqui ausus’).Footnote ⁵¹ In his discussion, which is as rhetorically powerful as it is strikingly lacking in detail, it appears that Sicinius lost his life shortly after beginning his campaign; there is also a reference to C. Scribonius Curio (cos. 76 b.c.) and the rôle that he played in the demise of a guiltless tribune (‘exitium … insontis tribuni’).

Macer then argues that the Lex Aurelia of 75 b.c., which re-allowed former tribunes to hold other magistracies, was caused by the fear that the prospect of popular reaction raised within the senatorial élite.Footnote ⁵² He styles himself as part of a recent political tradition that has been promoting the revival of the tribunate. After Sicinius, in 74 b.c. L. Quinctius made calls for change, only to encounter the strong opposition of Lucullus. Macer claims to be fearlessly continuing in the same line.Footnote ⁵³ However, Macer fails to mention another notable case, that of a tribune of 75 b.c., L. Opimius, who — unlike Sicinius in the previous year — co-operated with one of the consuls, C. Aurelius Cotta, and supported his legislative initiative on the tribunate.Footnote ⁵⁴ This striking omission must be intentional. Much as Macer may have disapproved of him, a cursory reference in the Verrines suggests that Opimius did earn some enemies during his tenure and that he held radical views on tribunician powers. He was prosecuted in 74 b.c., during the praetorship of Verres, under the accusation of having misused his power of veto in the previous year. The actual reason for that initiative, though, was an attack he had launched against a powerful man that Cicero chooses not to name.Footnote ⁵⁵

The reform of 70 b.c. must not be regarded as the inevitable outcome of a coherent long-term process of deconstruction of the Sullan edifice. To be sure, this is the picture that is conveyed by Macer's speech, with its emphasis on the gradual awakening of the people's awareness and the mounting fear among the Optimates. That speech, however, like the Oratio Lepidi, is more an illustration of the mood of some political circles during a certain period than a factually accurate summary of a complex historical development. The narrative with which it frames the process that led to the reform of the tribunate is more valuable as a document of the reception of the theme in the late Republican debate than as an account of the political history of the 70s.Footnote ⁵⁶ The restoration of the tribunate was of course foregrounded by a number of developments that took place in the preceding decade, but must chiefly be explained in light of the developments of the year in which the Lex Pompeia Licinia that provided for it was passed.

On the other hand, the significance of the Lex Aurelia, which Macer dismisses as a marginal episode, deserves to be recognized. In Lepidus' vision, as we have seen, the interests of the people could be pursued and promoted without resorting to the political and legislative initiatives of the tribunes. Other sectors of the Roman political élite, however, had different views on the rôle of the tribunate and on the need to secure its survival. The law passed by the consul C. Aurelius Cotta in 75 b.c. restored the possibility for former tribunes to hold magistracies and probably reopened the tribunate to individuals who were not members of the senatorial order.Footnote ⁵⁷ Its focus, as far as the evidence suggests, was on the most punitive aspects of the Sullan legislation, which made the tribunate a most unappealing prospect for anyone who nursed political ambitions. Surely Cotta's proposal is better understood as an attempt to make the tribunate viable by securing a more constant intake of candidates than as the prologue to a full restoration of the powers of the magistracy.Footnote ⁵⁸ There is no reliable evidence for the debate on this proposal and Cotta's stated aims. His apparent earlier connection with Sulla is no proof that the bill was designed to bring about an innocuous adjustment of the ‘Sullan constitution’.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the speech of Macer he is labelled as a man ex factione media — an expression that is probably best translated as ‘from the heart of their faction’ — but he clearly was prepared to face some vocal opposition from his peers.Footnote ⁶⁰ According to Asconius, his bill met with the hostility of the nobilitas (‘inuita nobilitate’) and with the favour of the populace (‘magno populi studio’).Footnote ⁶¹ It is doubtful that the picture was so neatly polarized. There certainly was opposition to the prospect of a reform; a sector of the senatorial élite no doubt intended to keep the tribunate in the marginal position that had been devised by Sulla, while Cotta's law was driven by the ambition to make it a reasonably attractive public office and therefore preserve its existence.Footnote ⁶² We can only speculate on the psychological effect of a law of this kind and on whether it played a significant rôle in accelerating the developments of the following years. There is no positive evidence that it did. What is equally elusive is the impact that the passing of the law had on Cotta's future political prospects. A fragment of Cicero's Pro Cornelio preserved by Asconius mentions the lasting enmity (inimicissimi) that some members of the nobilitas had towards Cotta, and his assessment of the motives of these individuals is forceful: ‘qui non modo cum Sulla uerum etiam illo mortuo semper hoc per se summis opibus retinendum putauerunt’ (‘those people who not only with Sulla, but even after his death always thought that they should cling to this [scil. the diminished standing of the tribunate] with all their forces’, trans. R. G. Lewis, slightly modified).Footnote ⁶³ For some the age of the Civil War had not quite ended, and the mere possibility of a revival of the tribunate was a fatal threat to their political prospects.Footnote ⁶⁴

The close of Macer's speech points to the increasing readiness of the senatorial élite to reconsider the issue, although further progress was postponed till the return of Pompey from Spain.Footnote ⁶⁵ It also contains a forward-reference to the stand that Pompey would take upon his return. Macer notes that Pompey is now regarded with increasing hostility and diffidence by a large sector of the élite, after having been viewed as a champion of the senatorial cause when he was in Italy, and he predicts — no doubt with an exercise of hindsight on Sallust's part — that Pompey will decide to join forces with the people and advocate the restoration of the tribunician powers.Footnote ⁶⁶ Indeed, this is how things appear to have unfolded. Pompey's commitment to reforming the tribunate was expressed in a contio shortly after his election to the consulship, in the summer of 71 b.c., and was followed by further less specific pledges to address corruption in the provincial administration and in the courts. Cicero, who reports the episode in the first Verrine, emphasizes the enthusiastic reaction of the audience.Footnote ⁶⁷ A tribune, M. Lollius Palicanus, was also present at that contio.Footnote ⁶⁸ Palicanus is also listed among those who advocated the restoration of the tribunician powers and the reform of the courts, and Cicero records his initiative in support of Sthenius, one of the victims of Verres' malpractices.Footnote ⁶⁹ His Picene origin suggests that his connection with Pompey may have predated his tribunate, but should not be used as evidence that his actions were inspired by Pompey himself; it is quite possible that he had an influence on the consul elect.Footnote ⁷⁰

In the second half of the 70s people were not ‘waiting for Pompey’ with the same impatience and tension with which his arrival was awaited in the second half of the 60s, during his Eastern campaign. Still, the question of what steps the man would be taking after his victory against Sertorius was certainly on many people's mind.Footnote ⁷¹ Different, no doubt conflicting, guesses were made by many. As F. Millar noted, there is a striking lack of evidence for contemporary reactions — whether popular or senatorial — to the passing of the law on the tribunate.Footnote ⁷² By the late 70s many, like the distinguished consularis Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 78 b.c.), no doubt regarded the political position of the senatorial order — which was in control of the criminal courts while the powers of the tribunate were curtailed — to be increasingly less sustainable.Footnote ⁷³ However, it is likely that Pompey's support was the decisive factor that swayed the balance in favour of the cause of reform. At any rate, there is no compelling reason to maintain that the issue was less divisive in 70 b.c. than it had been in the previous years.

III FRUMENTARY LEGISLATION

On the whole, the picture conveyed by the surviving evidence for legislative production in the 70s is neither exciting nor illuminating.Footnote ⁷⁴ It does draw attention, however, to some issues that were at the centre of the debate in that decade.Footnote ⁷⁵ The corn supply of the city of Rome was the object of a legislative intervention of Lepidus in 78 b.c., during his consulship. We know about it through the invaluable passage of Granius Licinianus that has been discussed in the previous section from a different standpoint (p. 33.14–34.7 Flemisch = p. 27.4–28.2 Criniti). After having publicly argued that the restoration of tribunician powers was not desirable (utile), despite the opposite views of the serving tribunes, Lepidus passed a bill that introduced a distribution of five modii to the annona; the law was passed without opposition (‘nullo resistente’).Footnote ⁷⁶ Such unanimity is striking. A clue may be derived from the context in which Lepidus' bill was passed. Sulla is widely believed to have passed a law that abolished the corn distributions to the Roman populace.Footnote ⁷⁷ The only evidence for this, however, is a passage of the Oratio Lepidi in Sallust's Historiae, in which the consul points out that the Roman people, once the master of the world, does not even have access to the rations that pertain to slaves.Footnote ⁷⁸ This is hardly unimpeachable evidence: it may well refer to a reduction in the scope of the distributions, rather than to an outright abolition of the programme, and the risk of rhetorical overstatement is considerable.Footnote ⁷⁹ As C. Virlouvet has pointed out, Sulla may well have put in place a new organization of the corn supply of the city.Footnote ⁸⁰ It is far from clear, however, that a Lex Cornelia on corn distributions ever existed. It is not clear, at the same time, to what situation Lepidus' law might have responded (whether a short-term crisis or a long-term issue), in what respects, if any, it improved upon measures taken by Sulla, or how it related to the provisions of the law put forward by the tribune M. Octavius, probably between 99 and 87 b.c.Footnote ⁸¹

There is no evidence that Lepidus' corn law was abrogated after the former consul's defeat.Footnote ⁸² What is certain is that there were other interventions on corn supply in the following decade. For the year 75 b.c. Sallust speaks of ‘annonae intolerabilis saeuitia’; riots broke out in the city;Footnote ⁸³ the aedile Hortensius carried out a distribution of corn at a subsidised price.Footnote ⁸⁴ In the following year, the aedile Seius (himself a possible ‘Sullan’ senator, probably of Paelignian origin) took charge of a similar handout, when, according to Cicero, market prices were unsustainably high; he earned widespread popular gratitude.Footnote ⁸⁵ The following year witnessed a more robust intervention. In 73 b.c. the consuls M. Terentius Varro and C. Cassius Longinus put forward a bill that reorganized the corn supply of the city and had a direct impact on Sicily, where large quantities of corn were meant to be gathered. Its relationship to the law of Lepidus is unclear, and it is likely that it was intended to integrate, rather than to abolish its provisions.Footnote ⁸⁶ It has been argued that a consular initiative of that kind was an attempt to pre-empt possible radical interventions, and was the symptom of a conservative approach to the problem; this is how it is dismissed in Macer's speech in the Historiae.Footnote ⁸⁷ Such a highly tendentious piece, however, can hardly be used as safe evidence for the intentions of those who put forward the bill and for the contents of the bill itself. Lepidus' proposal was also a consular initiative, and it was put forward at a time when his anti-senatorial allegiance was not as clearly determined as it was a few months later: the bill came in the wake of Lepidus' public statement against the reform of the tribunate.Footnote ⁸⁸ The impression, which is also corroborated by Cicero's De frumento, is that of a sustained crisis in the corn supply of the city, which quite possibly predated the death of Sulla and required a number of interventions.Footnote ⁸⁹ Corn distributions had been a divisive, and for some indeed totemic, issue in the previous fifty years.Footnote ⁹⁰ The developments in the frumentary legislation during the 70s, which were initiated by Lepidus in 78 b.c., should not be narrowly understood as a reaction to the political legacy of Sulla. In fact, they should be removed altogether from the dossier of the alleged demise of the Sullan settlement. Corn supply could be, however, a testing ground for new political experiments that could potentially lead into uncharted territory. In 70 b.c., during his consular year, Crassus set up a distribution of corn entirely funded from his private resources, which took care of the needs of the urban populace for three months.Footnote ⁹¹ That extraordinary euergetic act forebode major political developments in the decades to come. Sulla's example, in that respect, was no longer relevant.Footnote ⁹²

IV THE SENATE

Easy dichotomies and straightforward solutions should be viewed with scepticism in other areas too. One of the most striking features of the Sullan resettlement was the reorganization of the Senate. Appian speaks of the appointment of 300 new senators in 81 b.c., which replenished a body that had been considerably affected by the Social and the Civil Wars.Footnote ⁹³ It is fairly safe to argue that the size of the Senate was in the region of 450 members at that point, and that it increased at a fairly steady pace in the following years as a result of the increase in the number of quaestors: every year twenty men became eligible to be admitted to the order.Footnote ⁹⁴ The view that Sulla doubled the size of the Senate from 300 to 600 members is unfounded; most importantly, however, it is not clear upon what sectors Sulla relied in his choice of the new senators.Footnote ⁹⁵ The evidence is on the whole too sparse to establish to what extent Sulla promoted the members of the equestrian order or indeed notables from selected circles of the Italian élites that had been included in the Roman citizen body.Footnote ⁹⁶ No doubt members of both these groups were included, as well as individuals of rather undistinguished background that had played a part in Sulla's army during the Civil War — the most notable example of whom is the ‘unspeakable Fufidius’, the ancilla turpis denounced in the Oratio Lepidi — but it is impossible to go beyond some bare generalizations and a brief list of names.Footnote ⁹⁷

C. Steel has recently put forward a reading of the Sullan reform of the Senate that persuasively challenges some long-held views.Footnote ⁹⁸ Far from bringing that august body back to the centre of the res publica and reasserting its authority and authoritativeness vis-à-vis the other institutions, the lectio of 81 b.c. created a considerably larger and significantly less efficient operation, which could not conceivably be a venue for serious political debate. An increase in the membership also fatally undermined the prestige of a body that had until then been far more exclusive. Moreover, the events of the previous decades had caused the disappearance of a large number of authoritative members of the Senate: when the lectio was carried out, only four consulares (excluding Sulla) are known to have been alive.Footnote ⁹⁹ In Steel's reading, this solution was fully consistent with a broader constitutional design, in which centre stage is taken up by elected, imperium-holding magistrates, who are in turn bound to the respect of a set of laws. Far from being the champion of senatorial auctoritas, Sulla took decisive steps for the political marginalization of the Senate. For many of its members, the chances of progressing beyond the quaestorship will have been negligible.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Two substantial, and indeed eminently practical, reasons had made the enlargement of the Senate a necessity. The Mithridatic War had shown the importance of a greater commitment to provincial administration and the need to secure higher and more stable levels of staffing: after Sulla's lectio, provincial legati could be recruited from a larger pool.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Moreover, the creation of new permanent criminal courts and the decision to restrict their membership to the senatorial order required a sizeable constituency of senators to staff them.Footnote ¹⁰² The political developments of the following decade soon relieved them of that task too. The reform of 70 b.c., which handed the control of the juries to a mix of senators, equites and the elusive tribuni aerarii, considerably eased that demand. It is surely no coincidence that in the same year the censors took the apparently unprecedented decision to excise from the senatorial roll sixty-four individuals: a gesture that is as impressive as it is under-documented, and may be explained both with political reasons (such as the wish to restore the prestige of the Senate, and possibly the intention to settle some political scores against former protégés of Sulla) and with the diminished need to staff the juries.Footnote ¹⁰³

V THE CENSUS AND THE ITALIANS

The revision of the senatorial roll, however, was not the most significant aspect of the census of 70 b.c., which took place after sixteen years of lapse.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Its most remarkable feature is the very fact that it took place. The censorship of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and L. Gellius Publicola was a major political and institutional development, and a turning-point in the relationship between Rome and Italy. Its historical significance is best understood by framing it within the developments of the preceding decade. The starting point, again, is the Sullan settlement.

The reasons that led Sulla not to perform the census after the victory in the Civil War are not see out in the ancient sources and may be at best the object of speculation. It may well be the case that Sulla envisaged the existence of the government without the censorship, but there is no indication of this choice in the surviving evidence.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Senatorial opposition may also have played a part in further delaying the census in the following years. The election of the censors had to be authorized by a senatorial decree, and many will have had reasons to fear the performance of a census and the revision of the senatorial album.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The outcome of the lectio of 70 b.c., which led to the expulsion of sixty-four senators, was to prove them right.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

That exercise, of course, also afforded the chance to fully revisit the issue of the inclusion of the Allies in the Roman citizen body and, at the same time, to renegotiate aspects of the impact of Sulla's victory on Italy. The political realignments that followed the age of Sulla's supremacy were not confined to the city of Rome; there is valuable evidence from a range of Italian contexts. To get a sense of the magnitude of the operation, it is necessary, once again, to go back to Licinianus' brief account of Lepidus' strategy in 78 b.c. After the corn bill was passed the consul raised a number of issues, on which he promised imminent action (‘alia multa pollicebatur’): the return of the exiles, the abolition of Sulla's acts (whatever that might have meant), and the reversal of the land assignments of Sulla to his soldiers.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In Appian's account, the latter point was the main focus of Lepidus' initiatives.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The round of colonial settlements launched by Sulla was a wide-ranging programme, which was closely intertwined with the retaliation against communities that had chosen the wrong side in the Civil War. Its scope is hard to determine precisely; an exhaustive list of Sullan settlements is impossible to sketch.Footnote ¹¹⁰ It is abundantly clear, however, that the foundation of colonies on the sites of already existing communities was accompanied by a series of land assignments in a number of areas where new colonies were not founded: Volaterrae is a case in point.Footnote ¹¹¹ It is also apparent that the success of the Sullan plan was not consistently strong across the peninsula. Broadly speaking, it was much more clearly noticeable in Campania than in Etruria.Footnote ¹¹² While there is evidence for tensions at Pompeii between the indigenous population and the colonists, these were not comparable to the events that are documented at Faesulae in North Etruria, where the locals launched a full-scale attack on the fortified settlements (castella) of the Sullan veterans.Footnote ¹¹³ Licinianus' account is frustratingly brief and, as B. Scardigli has pointed out, it is unclear whether the text that survives under Licinianus' name is by Licinianus himself or is an epitome of a lost work of Licinianus.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It draws attention not just to the effectiveness of the attack, but also to the sheer resolve of the Faesulani, who defended their actions when they were summoned to the Senate to justify them.Footnote ¹¹⁵ In Licinianus' text the commotion at Faesulae is immediately followed by the military response decided by the Senate, which entrusted the consuls of 78 b.c. with leading a campaign in Etruria.Footnote ¹¹⁶ A few months later, Lepidus took the lead in that revolt.Footnote ¹¹⁷

In Etruria the impact of years of warfare was exacerbated by the traumatic political consequences that Sulla's victory entailed for some communities.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The siege of Volaterrae lasted until 79 b.c. Licinianus singles out this city, along with Nola, as a centre that resisted the pressure of the Sullan troops most vigorously; when the city surrendered, its citizens delivered to the Sullan troops a number of proscribed that had been given shelter within the walls.Footnote ¹¹⁹ This gesture is not explained by Licinianus, but should probably be understood as an attempt to spare the city bleaker consequences, possibly even destruction. Volaterrae was later included among the communities that were the target of Sulla's retaliation, but the task was not brought to completion.Footnote ¹²⁰ The details of this process escape us; there is no evidence for how events unfolded in the town during the 70s. Local resistance probably did not fade away altogether; the events at Faesulae might have deterred many Sullan veterans from joining settlements in what appeared a highly unstable area.

It also appears that the Volaterrani found vocal and effective backers in Rome. In 69 b.c. Cicero delivered the pro Caecina, in which he took the defence of a prominent citizen of Volaterrae, A. Caecina, in a lawsuit that had considerable political implications.Footnote ¹²¹ Nearly ten years later, Cicero appears to have become a patron of the city. In a letter of March 60 b.c., he discusses the provisions of an agrarian bill put forward by the tribune Cn. Flavius and his own work on behalf of the communities of Volaterrae and Arretium: the land of those communities had been confiscated by Sulla, but had not been divided up and distributed.Footnote ¹²² Cicero managed to stop the envisaged assignments and to hand the land back to the inhabitants of those two cities, where he had established political connections. There is little doubt that Sulla had planned land distributions to his veterans in those sites. Even two decades later the confiscated land, by then ager publicus, was potentially liable to be included in a new round of assignments.

The land confiscations were part of a wider strategy of retaliation on Sulla's part. Arretium does not appear to have played the same central rôle in the Civil War that Volaterrae had, but suffered the same punishment: a law passed by Sulla withdrew the newly acquired citizenship of both communities. It is impossible to establish how many communities were affected by that decision. On balance, it seems unlikely that such a drastic measure was taken against only two cities. At any rate, the initiative proved short-lived. By 57 b.c., when he delivered the De domo, Cicero could state that the law put forward by Sulla had lasted for an even shorter time than the domination of Sulla himself. He also argued that the law included provisions for the confiscation of land belonging to the affected communities: while the decision on the land was within the remit of the popular assembly, a decision on citizenship was not.Footnote ¹²³ In the pro Caecina, more than a decade earlier, Cicero had claimed to have made the same point in a case concerning a woman from Arretium, which was heard by the decemuiri litibus iudicandis while Sulla was still alive. As suggested above, the case is unlikely to have proved conclusive; Cicero himself concedes that the issue was still debated in the courts a decade later.Footnote ¹²⁴ If we are to believe Cicero's version, a feature of the legislative programme of Sulla was publicly debated and challenged even before Sulla's death.Footnote ¹²⁵

Etruria, of course, was not the only focus of Sulla's efforts and concerns during and after the Civil War. It has often been claimed that the Samnites were the main target of his wrath at the end of the Civil War.Footnote ¹²⁶ This contention relies mainly on a well-known passage of Strabo, which depicts the firm opposition of the Samnites to Sulla and the reaction of the dictator against their leaders.Footnote ¹²⁷ When he was told that the reaction had been too harsh, Sulla allegedly replied that no Roman could be safe as long as the Samnites held on as a separate people. This statement should be read against a wider late Republican debate. As M. H. Crawford pointed out, a part of the tradition argued that the Samnite leader Telesinus had advocated the destruction of Rome on the day of the battle of the Colline Gate, using a similar image to Sulla's: the wolves would keep infesting Italy as long as the forest where they dwelled was still in existence.Footnote ¹²⁸

Such a rhetorically loaded statement can hardly be used as evidence for a strategy on Sulla's part to embark on the systematic destruction of the Samnites. An element of personal hostility to the Samnites on Sulla's part might have existed. He led major operations against Samnite contingents in the Social War, during which he developed an outstanding military record that played a major rôle in determining his bid for the consulship for 88 b.c.Footnote ¹²⁹ According to Appian, after the capture of Praeneste, he divided the prisoners into three groups — Romans, Praenestines, and Samnites — and exterminated the members of the second and third groups.Footnote ¹³⁰ The evidence for a concerted Sullan plan of retaliation against Samnium wiping out its civic life and its élites is, however, far from compelling. Strabo lists a number of communities that were hit by Sulla's vengeance and allegedly shrank from the status of city to that of village. His discussion is not based on first-hand knowledge of the region; some of his information may have derived from Posidonius and might have been based on direct autopsy, but archaeological work in the area brings out a much more complex picture. To confine the discussion to some of the communities listed by Strabo: Bovianum is numbered by Cicero as one of the communities that supported his client Aulus Cluentius (Clu. 69.197) — hardly fitting the status of ‘village’ evoked by Strabo (νυνὶ κῶμαι γεγόνασιν αἱ πόλεις); the material culture of Aesernia includes impressive funerary reliefs from the age of Caesar; perhaps most notably, a number of impressive public works were carried out at Telesia in the age of Sulla, including the city walls, and some have indeed speculated that it may have been a Sullan colony.Footnote ¹³¹ Strabo's picture of Samnium in the late Republican period requires, at a minimum, considerable qualification.Footnote ¹³² A considerable extent of local diversity must be envisaged, and it is likely that the Social War had a more damaging impact on the region than Sulla's victory. A differentiated picture also fits better in a context where Samnium was not home to a federal institution down to the age of the Social War, as has often been argued, but to a network of independent communities.Footnote ¹³³

It is conceivable, although not proven, that the picture of extensive destruction in Samnium was at least in part supported and circulated by Sulla. However, Sulla's approach to the Italians and the Italian question was straightforwardly pragmatic, at least from 83 b.c. onwards. Shortly after his arrival in Italy in 83 b.c., Sulla pledged not to alter the arrangements that had recently been made in his absence concerning the citizenship and the right to vote of the Italians: in the all too brief statement of Livy's epitomiser he is said to have concluded a treaty (foedus).Footnote ¹³⁴ The oddity of a treaty struck with communities of fellow-citizens is glaring and not easily solvable — unless we explain it with clumsy summarizing on the compiler's part.Footnote ¹³⁵ Still, the evidence of the Periocha may be problematic, but should not be lightly discounted. It is, to some extent, corroborated by Cicero's reference to the talks that Sulla and Scipio Asiagenus held between Cales and Teanum in 83 b.c., during which they discussed legal and political arrangements regarding the rôle of the Senate, the voting assemblies, and citizenship rights (‘de auctoritate senatus, de suffragiis populi, de iure ciuitatis’).Footnote ¹³⁶ Such a clear commitment on Sulla's part not to affect the citizenship and voting rights of the Italians would be hard to reconcile with the scenario of an outright annulment of the census of 86 b.c. On balance, it is preferable to maintain that a considerable number of Italians were registered as citizens in 86 b.c. and that their enfranchisement was not undone by Sulla.

Although many aspects of the picture remain elusive, there is no compelling evidence to argue that after his victory in the Civil War Sulla undid, interrupted or slowed down the enfranchisement of the Allies and their inclusion in the citizen body. Conversely, he was willing to use the political significance of the Roman citizenship in order to impose punishments on sectors of Italian communities with which he had hostile relations. It is conceivable that Sulla offered some reasons for the decision to discontinue a crucial institution like the censorship, and that these are not recorded in the surviving evidence. The Diuinatio in Caecilium, the speech in which Cicero set out his credentials as possible prosecutor of Verres, which was pronounced in January 70 b.c., provides a clear illustration of the political significance of the issue by the late 70s. The orator depicts a situation in which the current political debate is dominated by the issue of the reform of the courts, which are widely discredited; that in turn has caused discontent towards the set-up of the tribunate and has even prompted interest in the revival of the censorship, which had hardly been a focus of the people's attention before and has suddenly emerged as the object of wide and lively interest (populare).Footnote ¹³⁷ Regrettably, as pointed out above, the reasons that led Sulla to discontinue the census are not recorded in the surviving evidence.

There is no evidence that the revival of the census was debated shortly after Sulla's death. Sulla may have intended to fulfil the tasks of the censors in his capacity as dictator; it is unclear, however, what he envisaged in the long term, and notably how the key tasks of the censorship — the registration of the citizens and the review of the senatorial order — were to be fulfilled. In his classic discussion of the censorship in the last century of the Republic, T. P. Wiseman argued that Sulla and his factio chose not to perform the census after 86 b.c. because they wanted to avoid the expansion of the citizen body and the inclusion of the Italians into the centuriate assembly: it was, in the literal sense of the word, a reactionary measure, whose motives were implicitly revealed by the extraordinary outcome of the census of 70 b.c., in which 900,000 citizens were recorded, while 453,000 citizens had been registered in 86 b.c.Footnote ¹³⁸

A different reconstruction may be suggested. A problematic passage of the Pro Archia states that the census does not in itself prove the right of citizenship, but merely that one had declared to be a citizen before the census.Footnote ¹³⁹ If this argument is correct, there were other venues in which one's citizenship could be asserted and proved. In the aftermath of the Social War (and before Sulla's return to Italy) the newly enfranchised Allies were included in the thirty-five voting tribes and were able in that way to influence the vote of that assembly, which played an essential rôle in the law-making process.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ There was disagreement on how many tribes should receive the new citizens and how widely their influence was to be spread, but it was uncontroversial that they would be entitled to play a part in the comitia. The decision concerning the distribution of citizens among the thirty-five tribes was not linked to the census: Livy's Periocha records it shortly before Sulla's arrival and right after the concession of the suffragium to the new citizens under a senatusconsultum; it also notes that the freedmen were enrolled among all the thirty-five tribes.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The census, however, remained an essential step to be taken if the new citizens were to be included in the comitia centuriata: that was the moment at which the enrolment of a citizen into one of the centuriae took place. Until the census was carried out, no new citizen could vote in the comitia centuriata.Footnote ¹⁴² The situation of the years following the Social War was therefore paradoxical: the Italians could influence the decisions of the body that passed statutes, but many, indeed most, of them were excluded from the assembly that elected the senior magistrates; the consuls, in turn, had amongst their prerogatives that of steering the legislative process.

Some nuances, however, should be introduced. It is likely that a reasonably high number of Italians were registered as citizens well before Sulla's victory in the Civil War. The Lex Plautia Papiria that granted the citizenship to the Allies in 89 b.c. stated that the registration could happen by an application to the urban praetor within sixty days of the passing of the law.Footnote ¹⁴³ It is hard to establish how many people managed to meet that deadline in the highly disrupted context of Italy at the end of the Social War. The census of the same year was deemed unsuccessful (parum felix) because the censors failed to respect a point of augural law.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ The overview of the citizen body that was carried out on that occasion was not even remotely adequate in quantitative terms.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ A new census took place in 86 b.c. and was brought to completion.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ It has been argued that this census was annulled by Sulla after he seized power: Velleius Paterculus' generic statement that Sulla had invalidated the acts of his enemies has been brought as an argument in support, but cannot be used as hard evidence.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ The absence of the census of 86 b.c. from the Fasti Antiates, which on the contrary record that of 89 b.c., is strong evidence for contemporary disagreement on the validity of the two censuses; Wiseman even offers the speculative suggestion that the census of 86 b.c. was declared valid only after Sulla's death.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ No census was carried out in 81 b.c., of course. Even if one were to leave Sulla's own views or plans out of account, the year of the proscriptions and of the new colonization plan would hardly have been a suitable occasion for an orderly review of the citizen body. Moreover, to take a longer term view, after Sulla the census was brought to completion only on two occasions, in 70 and in 28 b.c. This is rightly regarded as a symptom of the disruption that undermined the functioning of the res publica for long stretches of the first century b.c.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ It also suggests that the administrative functions of the census were either taken up by other procedures or deliberately overlooked and discontinued. In 75 b.c. the consuls were entrusted by the Senate with the task of holding the auction for the collection of tributes (in locandis uectigalibus) — a prerogative that normally pertained to the censors. The people had ratified that decision.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

The decision to perform the census in 70 b.c. after a long intermission was certainly a deliberate departure from the precedent set by Sulla. In this respect, it chimed well with other aspects of the political agenda of that year. At the core of the process was the inclusion of the newly registered citizens into the comitia centuriata. The inclusion of the Italians into the citizen body appears to be the message of a coin issue struck by Q. Fufius Calenus and (P.?) Mucius Scaevola Cordus, probably in 70 b.c., which depicts on the reverse the reconciliation between Roma (in military garb with her right foot on a globe) and Italia (holding a cornucopia).Footnote ¹⁵¹ If the dating to 70 b.c. were indeed correct, the theme would have a special resonance in the context of a census that marked the registration of thousands of Italians.

The census of 70 b.c. might also have had important effects in its local ramifications. According to an attractive conjecture of F. Zevi, at Pompeii the long-standing dispute between the indigenous population and the Sullan settlers may have been resolved by a census that marked the end of the divide within the Colonia Veneria Pompeianorum and was sealed by the inauguration of the amphitheatre and its dedication ‘to the colonists’ (CIL 10.852: coloneis) by the duouiri quinquennales C. Quinctius Valgus and M. Porcius.Footnote ¹⁵² It is also impossible to ascertain whether the correspondence between general census and local census that is established in the Tabula Heracleensis (1.142–56) already applied to the census of 70 b.c. It is conceivable, but far from safely attested, that the first census to be performed since the end of the Civil War still entailed the obligation for the citizens that intended to be registered to turn up before the censors in Rome.Footnote ¹⁵³ Whatever the impact of the census may have been on some problematic local contexts, the war and the ensuing proscriptions had left a bitter memory of violence and fear throughout Italy, which endured well beyond the 70s. Their impact on the distribution of land ownership and the structure of élite fortunes had been considerable.

There is not sufficient evidence to chart the effects that the proscriptions had in that respect; the evidence tends to concentrate on remarkable cases of individual profiteers. The victor of the Civil War had certainly used considerable discretion in apportioning the proceedings of the confiscations, and a fragmentary source suggests that an attempt was made to address some of the most controversial implications of the problem. In the Historiae Sallust mentioned a bill put forward in 72 b.c. by the then consul Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. Sulla had exempted some of those who had bought the properties that had been auctioned after the confiscation from paying the treasury the amounts of money that they had agreed to pay; the bill demanded that these sums be paid back to the treasury.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ There is no solid evidence for the political allegiance of Lentulus Clodianus in the years preceding his consulship.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ The agenda that underpinned the bill is not much clearer. At first sight it appears to be a measure aimed at redressing the balance after the aberrations of the Sullan period; a move that would fit well in the climate leading to the demise of the Sullan legacy that is often sketched in modern scholarship. F. Hinard, however, plausibly reckoned that it may have been an attempt to protect the beneficiaries of the proscriptions: Sulla had set low prices for the goods that were sold after the proscription and requiring those prices to be paid would have made the assignments legally unassailable in exchange for the payment of a small sum.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ It is also unclear whether the bill was actually passed.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Cicero attests that by 70 b.c. a senatorial decree had been passed, asserting the same principle as Lentulus' bill.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Again, it is not apparent how and to what extent it was enforced.

A passage of Plutarch's Life of Cato the Younger draws attention to a later ramification of the problem. In 64 b.c., during his quaestorship, Cato realized that the treasury had a number of credits with and debts to private individuals, and he took firm steps to set things right in both respects. The extent of Cato's efforts raises doubts on the impact of the law of 72 b.c., and indeed on whether it was actually passed. Cato went further than Lentulus: he targeted those who had received a reward for committing a murder during the proscriptions and had them charged with peculatus; these prosecutions were in turn followed by murder trials.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Suetonius points out that in that very year Caesar presided over the quaestio de sicariis and took an active part in a legal process that had considerable political implications.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Plutarch summarizes them most clearly and provides a remarkable assessment of the climate in Rome at the time: many rejoiced when the convicted murderers were executed and viewed that moment as the end of the tyranny of Sulla.Footnote ¹⁶¹ In this account, the political realignment that brings to an end a major aspect of the Sullan age is made possible by a curious union sacrée that brings together Cato and Caesar — who will shortly afterwards find themselves on opposite sides in the handling of the Catilinarian affair. Equally curiously, this powerful attack on a highly divisive aspect of Sulla's legacy took place within the framework provided by one of the permanent courts created by the dictator, the quaestio de sicariis. The technicalities of the cases and the extent of the impact of Caesar's prosecutions remain unclear. It is possible, however, that they had a wide-ranging impact, well beyond Rome. A clause of the Tabula Heracleensis forbids access to the municipal senate to anyone who ‘has or shall have received money or reward or anything else for bringing in the head of a Roman citizen’ (1.122–3: ‘queiue ob caput c(iuis) Romanei) referendum pecuniam praemium aliudue quid cepit ceperit’). Although no explicit reference is made to the Sullan proscriptions, a connection is very likely, not least because of the similarity with the wording of Suetonius' account of Caesar's involvement in the prosecutions of 64 b.c.Footnote ¹⁶²

Charting the main issues in Italy during the 70s requires encompassing a range of different dossiers: the impact of, and resistance to, the Sullan retaliations on several communities, the slow and incomplete inclusion of the new citizens, the revival of the census. An ‘Italian’ agenda seems hardly detectable after the Civil War, and even in the years immediately before 70 b.c.Footnote ¹⁶³ There are, of course, the notable cases of some communities that had to devise strategies to respond to specific challenges. Perhaps for this reason, when one turns the spotlight on the affairs of Italy during this period, the legacy of Sulla appears to have been an even more prominent and contentious issue than was the case in Rome. This may be explained, however, with the emphasis of the surviving evidence on exceptional contexts, and should not necessarily be viewed as representative of the whole picture.