Who recalls the days when Sulla was a lad, Homeless and shoeless with not a coin to be had? And how did he pull himself up from this hole? How did he rise to his fate, to his role? Through a hole! Through a hole!. Through the gaping cavern of well-worn size. That yawned between Nicopolis's thighs!
The audience howled with laughter. Sulla shook his head disdainfully and pretended to glower. On the couch next to him, Chrysogonus practically glowed with delight. At the same table Hortensius was whispering in the ear of the young dancer Sorex, while Rufus looked bored and disgusted. Across the room the rewritten poet blanched fish-belly white.
With each succeeding verse the song grew increasingly ribald and the crowd laughed more and more freely. Soon Sulla himself was laughing out loud. Meanwhile the poet chewed his lip and squirmed, changing colours like a coal in the wind, blanching white at each impiety and blushing scarlet at each tortured rhyme. Having finally caught the joke, he seemed at first relieved — no one would blame him for the travesty, after all, and even Sulla was amused. He managed a timid smile, but then he withdrew into a sulk, no doubt offended at the wreckage that had been made of his patriotic homage. The other young men at his table, having failed to tease him to laughter, turned their backs on him and laughed all the louder. Romans love the strong man who can laugh at himself, and despise the weak man who cannot. The song continued.
It is not true that Lucius Cornelius Sulla was homeless as a boy. Neither, I imagine, was he ever without shoes, but in every account of his origins, his early poverty is stressed.
The patrician Cornelii were once a family of some influence and prestige, generations ago. One of them, a certain Rufinus, held the consulship, back in the days when the office actually denoted a man of integrity and character. His career ended in scandal — imagine those righteous days when it was illegal for a citizen to own more than ten pounds of silver plate! Rufinus was expelled from the Senate. The family declined and dwindled into obscurity.
Until Sulla. His own childhood was blighted by poverty. His father died young, leaving him nothing, and in his younger days Sulla lived in tenements among ex-slaves and widows. His enemies have charged that his rise to power and wealth, after such humble beginnings, was a sure sign of corruption and depravity. His allies and Sulla himself like to dwell on the mystique of what they call his good fortune, as if some divine will, rather than Sulla's own purpose and character, propelled him to so many triumphs and so much bloodshed.
His youth gave no sign of the great career to come. His education was haphazard. He moved among theatre people — acrobats; comedians, costumers, poets, dancers, actors, singers. Metrobius was among his first lovers, but far from the only one. It was among the vagabonds of the stage that his lifelong reputation for promiscuity began.
They say that young Sulla was quite charming. He was a big-boned, square-jawed lad with a stocky frame, his wide soft middle compensated by muscular shoulders. His golden hair made him stand out in a crowd. His eyes, so I have heard contemporaries recount, were as extraordinary then as now — piercing and pale blue, dominating all in their gaze and confounding those who gazed back, appearing merely mischievous while he perpetrated the most atrocious crimes, looking terrible and severe when he was merely intent on pleasure.
Among his first conquests was the wealthy widow Nicopolis.
Her favours were notoriously accessible to virtually any young man who wanted them; it was said that she had resolved to give her body to all men but her heart to none. By all accounts, Sulla fell genuinely and deeply in love with her. At first she scoffed at his devotion, but ultimately his persistence and charm undid her resolve, and she found herself in love at the age of fifty with a youth less than half her age. "When she died of a fever she left everything to Sulla. His good fortune had begun.
Another legacy came from his stepmother, his father's second wife, who in her widowhood had inherited a considerable sum from her own family. She died leaving Sulla her only heir, thus establishing him with a moderate fortune.
Having conquered the mysteries of flesh and gold, Sulla decided to enter politics through military service. Marius had just been elected to the first of his seven consulships; Sulla got himself appointed quaestor and became the great populist's protege. In Africa to fight Jugurtha, Sulla engaged in marital derring-do, espionage, and the diplomacy of the perfectly timed double cross. The tortuously complicated details are all in his Memoirs, the first volumes of which are already circulating around Rome in purloined copies. The vanquished Jugurtha was brought to the city naked and chained and died shortly after in his dungeon cell, half-crazy from torture and humiliation. Marius had overseen the campaign, but it was Sulla, at the risk of his own life, who had persuaded the King of Numidia to betray his doomed son-in-law. Marius was afforded a triumphal parade, but many whispered that it was Sulla who deserved the credit.
Praise for Sulla rankled the old populist, and though Marius continued to use Sulla, elevating his rank with each campaign, soon the old man's jealousy drove Sulla to seek other patrons. Taking command of the troops of the consul Catulus, Sulla subdued the wild tribes of the Alps. When premature winter storms trapped the legions in the foothills without adequate food, Sulla did an expert job of rerouting and supplying fresh provisions — not only to his own troops, but also to those of Marius, who became livid with indignation. The long, withering rivalry between Sulla and Marius, which was ultimately to cause so much grief and chaos in Rome, began with such incidents of petty jealousy.
Sulla travelled east, where Fortune led him to further victories in Cappadocia. On diplomatic business he ventured as far as the
Euphrates, and became the first Roman official ever to hold friendly discourse with that kingdom that owns the rest of the world, the Parthians. His charm (or else his blind arrogance) must have worked a wicked spell upon the Parthian ambassador, who actually allowed himself to be seated on a lower dais than Sulla, as if he were a suppliant of a Roman overlord. Afterwards the King of Parthia put the ambassador to death — having lost face, the man subsequently lost his head, a joke Sulla never tired of repeating.
Every powerful man must have omens of greatness attached to his legend — stars fell from the firmament at the birth of Alexander, Hercules strangled a snake in his cradle, eagles battled overhead when Romulus and Remus were torn from their mother's womb. It was while entertaining the Parthian retinue that Sulla's career begins to take on the patina of legend. Truth or fiction, only Sulla now knows for certain, but the story goes that a Chaldean savant attached to the Parthian retinue performed a study of Sulla's face, plumbing his character by using principles of science unknown in the West. Probably he was searching for weaknesses he could report to his Parthian masters, but instead the wise man drew back in astonishment. Sulla, never guilty of false modesty, recounts the old Chaldean's reaction word for word in his Memoirs: 'Can a man be so great and not be the greatest of all men on earth? It astounds me — not his greatness, but the feet that even now he abstains from taking his place as first in all things above his fellow men!'
When Sulla returned to Rome, Marius was not happy to see him.