Waiting for Sulla
By E. Badian
The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 52, Parts 1 and 2 (1962)
Introduction: There are many periods of history – and unfortunately not always the least important – that survive, for us, entirely or mainly in one version. Ever since the development of modern critical historiography it has been recognized that it is the historian’s duty to test that version, and highly skilled methods in the use of evidence have been worked out in order to enable him to do so. We all know some of the outstanding results in our field: the age of Augustus, once seen through the eyes of court literature; the ages of Tiberius and Claudius, once known only through the resentment of those who had suffered under tyranny; one could name many other periods that have gained a new reality in the last few generations and that now stand out in three dimensions.
Surprisingly, the age of Marius and Sulla does not appear to be among them. Until quite recently it could hardly be said that new methods had been brought to bear upon it: we seemed still to be in the pre-scientific age of historiography, when, if there were several ancient judgments, the historian was free to make up his mind according to his prejudices, and where this convenience of a ready-made alternative was not vouchsafed, the consensus had to be followed. In recent years this has begun to improve. The foundations for a proper history of the period are at last beginning to be laid, even though that history has not yet been-perhaps cannot yet be-written. However, those crucial years in the eighties of the first century B.C., when for the first time the governing oligarchy of the Roman Republic had to face, not a mere demagogue, but a Patrician general at the head of a victorious army-those years, oddly enough, have so far failed to challenge scholars to probe behind the screen of the ancient literary tradition. Yet a study of that testing-time must inevitably have much to contribute to a proper evaluation of the late Republic, of the character and morale of its rulers and the causes of its downfall.
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