Cassius Dio’s Sulla: Exemplum of Cruelty and Republican Dictator

Abstract

The image of Sulla as a monster of cruelty, that was consolidated since the Late Republic, is endorsed by Cassius Dio too. But in Caesar’s speech after Thapsus, in the triumvirs’ allocution to the people during the proscriptions, in Tiberius’ epitaph for Augustus, and in Otho’s last address to the soldiers, Sulla’s cruelty is remembered in terms which remind the reader of the speech of Severus in 197, who, in turn, had praised it as an exemplum worth following. Thus a historiographical topos becomes for Dio a means to criticize the emperor, a way to express his judgment on the civil war of his times. But Dio’s criticism of Sulla’s cruelty did not imply a rejection of the work done as a legislator and reformer during his dictatorship. For Dio, Sulla did not aim to absolute power and his dictatorship was conformed to Roman traditions. The one responsible for the transformation of this magistracy into a means to exert a “monarchic” power was not Sulla, but Caesar.