Out on the Campus only a few structures stood on its flat and open expanse. Of these, the largest in area was an enclosure filled with barriers and aisles, of the kind used to pen livestock. The Romans called it the Ovile, or ‘sheepfold’. This was where elections to the magistracies were held. The voters would be herded down the aisles in separate blocs. It was the nature of the Republic to thrive on complexity, and the organisation of these blocs varied confusingly from election to election. To vote for tribunes, for instance, the citizens would be divided into tribes. These were fabulously ancient in origin, and had been tweaked over the centuries in typically Roman manner as the Republic expanded and changed. With the enfranchisement of the Italians, they had been reorganised once again to cope with the influx of new citizens. Every member of every tribe was entitled to his vote, but since this had to be delivered in person at the Ovile the practical effect was to ensure that only the wealthiest out-of-towner could afford to travel to Rome to exercise his right. Inevitably, this served to skew the voting in favour of the rich. To most Romans, this seemed only fair. After all, the rich were the ones who contributed most to the Republic, and so it was generally conceded that their opinions should carry the greatest weight. Disproportionate voting power was yet another perk of rank.
Nowhere, however, was this principle more clearly expressed than in elections to the most senior magistracies of all. It was in these that the original functions of classes and centuries still maintained a ghostly after-life. Citizens assembled to vote for the consuls in the same way that their earliest ancestors had massed to go to war. Just as in the days of the kings, a military trumpet would be blown at daybreak to summon them to the Campus. A red flag would flutter on the Janiculum Hill beyond the Tiber, signalling that no enemies could be seen. The citizens would then line up as though for battle, with the richest at the front and the poorest at the rear. This meant that it was always the senior classes who were the first to pass into the Ovile. Nor was that their only privilege. So heavily weighted were their votes that they usually served to decide an election. As a result, there was often little point in the other classes even turning out. Not only were their votes worth a fraction of those of the equestrians, but they would only rarely be called on to register them anyway. Since they received no financial compensation for a day spent queuing outside the election pens, most of the poor must have decided that they had better things to do with their time. The equestrians no doubt agreed.
Even so, for those who could afford to succumb to election fever, the tension of voting day was one of the greatest excitements of Roman civic life. The candidates in their specially whitened togas, the milling crowds of their supporters, the tumult of yells and jeers, all contributed to the sense of occasion. Not until late in the day would heralds announce the results – at which point the successful candidates would be greeted with a great roar, and escorted amid further cheering from the Ovile towards the Capitol. Most voters chose to stay and wait for the spectacle of this climax. On a hot day, however, with clouds of brown dust scuffed up by the crowds, this might require some stamina. There were few public amenities on the Campus. Most weary voters tended to head for the Villa Publica, a walled complex of government buildings set just back from the Ovile. Here they could gossip, fan themselves and stay out of the sun.
And here it was too that Sulla, after the Battle of the Colline Gate, ordered his Samnite captives brought. They were penned beyond the arches of the central building, a square, two-storeyed reception hall, its rooms magnificently ill-suited to serve as cells for prisoners of war. The splendour of the statues and paintings that adorned these rooms reflected their decisive role in the life of the Republic, for the Villa Publica was where the hierarchies of Roman society were maintained and reviewed. Every five years a citizen had to register himself there. He also had to declare the name of his wife, the number of his children, his property and his possessions, from his slaves and ready cash to his wife’s jewels and clothes. The state had the right to know everything, for the Romans believed that even ‘personal tastes and appetites should be subject to surveillance and review’.4 It was knowledge, intrusive knowledge, that provided the Republic with its surest foundations. Classes, centuries and tribes, everything which enabled a citizen to be placed by his fellows, were all defined by the census. Once the raw information had been collated by scribes, it would then be carefully scrutinised by two magistrates, who had the power to promote or demote each citizen according to his worth. The office of these magistrates, the censorship, was the most prestigious in the Republic; even more than the consulship it was regarded as the climax of a political career. So sensitive were the duties of a censor that only the most senior and reputable of citizens could be entrusted with them. The maintenance of everything that structured the Republic depended on their judgement. There were few Romans who doubted that if the census were not conducted adequately, then the entire fabric of their society would fall apart. No wonder that it was universally regarded as ‘the mistress and guardian of peace’.5
By locking up his prisoners of war where he did, then, Sulla was once again demonstrating his taste for irony in even the grimmest of circumstances. The irony was soon to darken further. In the shadow of the Capitol, but within hearing distance of the Villa Publica, stood the temple of Bellona. Sulla sent orders to the Senate to meet him there. As they hurried to obey him, the senators would have glanced up and seen the charred ruins of Jupiter’s temple on the hill high above them. It was Bellona who had warned Sulla to win his victory quickly or see the Capitol destroyed. By choosing her temple as the venue for his address to the Senate, Sulla neatly reminded his audience that he stood before them as the favourite of the gods, divinely sent to be the saviour of Rome. What this might mean in practical terms was soon to be made brutally apparent. As Sulla launched into his address, describing his victory over Mithridates, the senators began to hear the muffled sounds of shrieking from the Samnite prisoners. Sulla continued, apparently oblivious to the screams, until at last he paused and ordered the senators not to be distracted from what he had to say. ‘Some criminals are receiving their punishment,’ he explained dismissively. ‘There is no need for worry, it is all being done on my orders.’6
The massacre was total. In the cramped conditions of the slaughter-house the bodies piled up high. Once the executions had been completed, the corpses were dragged across the Campus and flung into the Tiber, clogging the banks and bridges with pollution, until ‘at last the river’s currents cut a swath of blood through the azure open sea’.7 The stains on the Villa Publica itself were not so easily removed. The census had been held there only three years previously. Now the rooms in which the rolls had been completed were filthy with gore. The symbolism was shocking and obvious: Sulla rarely made any gesture without a fine calculation of its effect. By washing the Villa Publica with blood he had given dramatic notice of the surgery he was planning to perform on the Republic. If the census were illegitimate, then so too were the hierarchies of status and prestige that it had affirmed. The ancient foundations of the state were unstable, on the verge of collapse. Sulla, god-sent, would perform the repairs, no matter how much bloodshed the task might require.