This was not an option open to every Athenian, of course. In an economy run by and for the super-rich the wealthier a minority of citizens became, the more the resentments of the majority seethed. This was true of every society in the ancient world, but in Athens – the birthplace of democracy – perhaps uniquely so. Among the Athenian poor, dreams of independence were indissolubly linked to memories of the time when the power of the people had been more than just a slogan. Nothing, of course, could have been more designed to give big business the jitters. As it progressively tightened its grip on government, the institutions that had once maintained Athenian democracy were allowed to wither. However, they were not abolished altogether because, apart from anything else, they were good for the tourist trade. Visiting Romans enjoyed the quaint spectacle of democracy in action. Sometimes Athens offered the pleasures less of a museum than of a zoo.
Then suddenly, in 88 BC, everything was turned upside down. While the Athenian business elite watched in horror as Mithridates’ armies camped in triumph on the opposite shores of the Aegean, their impoverished countrymen crowed in delight. The old desperate longing for freedom, so long repressed, convulsed the city. An embassy was sent to Mithridates, who welcomed it with open arms. An agreement was speedily reached: in return for providing him with a harbour, Athens would have her democracy restored. The pro-Roman business classes, realising which way the wind was blowing, began to flee the city. Democracy was officially re-established, amid wild scenes of rejoicing, and even wilder scenes of slaughter. Out of the exploding class war a new government emerged, pledged to defending the city’s ancient order and traditions. Athens being Athens, the revolution was led by a philosopher, one Aristion, an old sparring partner of Posidonius who did not share his rival’s positive perspective on Rome. With Italy riven by war, however, and an alliance with the all-conquering Mithridates in the bag, Aristion did not expect too much trouble from the Romans. To the ecstatic Athenians, independence and democracy alike appeared secured. Then, in the spring of 87, Sulla landed in Greece.
He headed directly for Athens. Almost before they knew what had hit them, the Athenians found themselves with five vengeful legions commanded by Rome’s most ruthless general camped outside their walls. Confronted by this nightmare, Aristion’s only tactic was to compose rude songs about Sulla’s face, comparing it with a mulberry topped with oatmeal. These would be chanted from the city walls while Aristion himself yelled obscene witticisms about Sulla and his wife, complete with extravagant hand gestures. Proof, as Posidonius commented acidly, ‘that swords should never be placed in the hands of children’.8
Sulla, whose enjoyment of comedians had its limits, responded to Aristion with a few pointed insults of his own. He ordered the groves where Plato and Aristotle had taught to be chopped down and used to build siege engines. When an Athenian peace delegation did what Athenian peace delegations had always done and began to discourse windily on the glories of its city’s past, Sulla silenced the talk with a gesture of his hand. ‘Rome did not send me here to be lectured on ancient history.’9 With this dismissal, he sent the delegates back to their city to eat boiled shoe leather, and starve. Athens’ cultural capital had reached the limits of its overdraft.
When at length the city was stormed, and Sulla gave his troops licence to plunder and kill, many of the victims were suicides. They knew all too well what the fate of Corinth had been, and they dreaded the annihilation of their city. The destruction was certainly terrible: the port was obliterated and the Acropolis plundered; everyone who had served in the democratic government was executed; their supporters were stripped of the vote. The city itself, however, was not burned to the ground. Sulla, who had expressed such contempt for history, announced with a grand rhetorical flourish that he spared the living out of respect for the dead. Even as he spoke blood was spilling outwards from the city through the suburbs.
The wreckage was inherited by a government of the businessmen who had fled to Sulla when the trouble first began. They crawled back into a city from which every figleaf of independence and prosperity had been torn. Roman rule was soon confirmed beyond all doubt when Sulla, marching north from Athens, met and smashed two armies sent to Greece by Mithridates. Soon afterwards Sulla held a summit with Mithridates himself. Both men had good reason to come to an agreement. Mithridates, knowing that the game was over, was desperate to keep hold of his kingdom. Sulla, nervous of his enemies back in Italy, was eager to head home. In return for accepting controls on his offensive capability and the surrender of all the territory he had conquered, the murderer of eighty thousand Italians was rewarded by Sulla with a peck on his cheek. No one had ever emerged so unscathed from a war with the Republic before. Beaten he may have been, but Mithridates still sat on the throne of Pontus. The time would come when Rome would regret that he had not been finished off for good.
As it was, the immediate objects of Sulla’s vengeance were the wretched Greeks. In the province of Asia, Roman rule was briskly reimposed. Sulla, posing as the avenger of his murdered countrymen, despite the peck he had given Mithridates, applied the screws with relish. Not only were cities charged five years’ back-tax, but they were expected to pay the full costs of the war, and billet the garrisons sent to oppress them. Sulla, who liked to pretend that his terms had been generous, creamed off the tribute, and in 84 headed back to Greece. Now that Athens was no longer in arms against him he could display his respect for her cultural legacy in the traditional manner of victorious Roman generals – by pilfering it. The columns of the temple of Zeus were pulled down ready for transport to Rome. Athletes were rounded up, showpieces for Sulla’s triumph, leaving the Olympic Games so denuded of its stars that only the sprint could be staged. Most gratifying of all to Sulla’s sense of humour was the wholesale looting of Athenian libraries, which were stripped of their holdings. Henceforward, if anyone wanted to study Aristotle, they would have to do so in Rome. Sulla’s revenge on Athenian philosophy was sweet.
Even so, his capacity for vengeance had not yet been tested to the limits. As he pointed out proudly in a letter to the Senate, in barely three years he had won back all the territory annexed by Mithridates. Greece and Asia once again acknowledged the sway of Rome. Or so it suited Sulla to pretend. In fact, he no longer represented the Republic. The government he had established back in Rome had collapsed. Sulla himself had been condemned to death in absentia, his property razed, his family forced to flee. There was no one in the shattered East who could have doubted what Sulla’s response to these insults would be. Now that Greece had been tamed, he was ready to head back home. Still trusting in his luck and the protection of Venus, Sulla prepared to embark his troops and turn his vengeance back on his native city.
Once again, Rome would have to wait his arrival, and shudder.
RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Sulla Redux
On 6 July 83 BC the largest and holiest building in Rome was struck by lightning. The ancient temple of Jupiter loomed on the summit of the Capitoline Hill. Here, beneath a ceiling sheathed in gold, amid trophies of statues and shields, the guardian of Rome had his shrine. Back in the distant days of the kings, excavators digging the temple’s foundations had found a human head. Augurers, summoned to interpret this wonder, had explained that it foretold Rome’s future as the head of the world. Who could doubt, then, that it was Jupiter who had guided the Republic to its greatness? No wonder that the Senate should choose to hold its first meeting every year in the sanctum of the god. This was where Roman power was most touched by the divine.