A coin of Sulla shows Ceres on one side, on the other a ploughman with yoked oxen: the images, accompanied by the legend " conditor ", claim his rule ( a military dictatorship ) as regenerative and divinely justified.

A few men were executed but ( according to Plutarch ), many Romans disapproved of Sulla's actions ; some who opposed Sulla were actually elected to office in 87 BC.

Much credit for this victory has been given to the actions of Proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus's legate, Lucius Cornelius Sulla who led the Roman and allied Italian cavalry.

Sulla captured it in 89 BC by setting on fire the wooden breastwork by which it was defended, and new fortifications were erected.

Caesar himself commanded the cavalry, he posted the notorious tenth legion on his right under Sulla, with the undermanned eighth and possibly the ninth on his left under Antonius.

Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix, married to his daughter Claudia Antonia, was only descended from Octavia and Antony on one side — not close enough to the Imperial family to prevent doubts ( that did not stop others from making him the object of a coup attempt against Nero a few years later ).

While looting the city, Sulla seized some of the incomplete columns and transported them back to Rome, where they were re-used in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill.

After the Marian purges and the sudden death subsequently of Gaius Marius, the surviving consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna ( better-known as father-in-law of Julius Caesar ) imposed proscriptions on those surviving Roman senators and equestrians who had supported Lucius Cornelius Sulla in his 88 BC march on Rome and overthrow of the traditional Roman political arrangements.

He was given command of the right wing in the Battle of the Colline Gate when the remaining Marian adherents and the surviving Samnites marched on Rome in a last-ditch bid to oust Sulla from Rome.

His problem was that despite his military successes, he was eclipsed by his contemporary Pompey the Great who blackmailed the dictator Sulla into granting him a triumph for victory in Africa over a rag-tag group of dissident Romans ; a first in Roman history on a couple of counts.

Various theories on who supported him and why are postulated based on what he did while in office, but all agree that Sulla was correct in his distrust.

Much of what Cinna ’ s attention while ruling Rome was focused on was dealing with Sulla.

He had been working to transport his troops across the Adriatic in order to meet Sulla on foreign soil.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla, age 50, becomes the first Roman commander to march on Rome with his army and to capture the city by force.

* Battle of the Baetis River: A force of Democratic exiles under Sertorius defeat the legal Roman army of Lucius Fulfidias in Hispania, starting the Sertorian War, Quintus Metellus Pius takes command on behalf of Sulla.

The Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis promulgated by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the 2nd century BC became an important source of late medieval and early modern European law on witchcraft.

The place often served as a base for attacks on the latter, and Sulla, after his defeat of Gaius Norbanus, gave the whole of the mountain to the temple.

Sulla fought Mithridates VI on several occasions over the next three years, and finally in 85 BC, Mithridates VI sued for peace, and was allowed to retain his kingship in Pontus after paying a heavy fine.

Marius ' quaestor in 107 BC had been Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, the son of a patrician family that had fallen on hard times.

Sulla and his supporters in the Senate passed a death sentence on Marius, Sulpicius and a few other allies of Marius.

While Sulla was on campaign in Greece, fighting broke out between the conservative supporters of Sulla, led by Octavius, and the popular supporters of Cinna.

However he was, in part, responsible for the breakdown in relations with Sulla which led to Sulla's march on Rome.

During the reforms of Sulla in 81 BC, the minimum age for a quaestorship was set at 30 for patricians and at 32 for plebeians, and election to the quaestorship gave automatic membership in the Senate.

Cinna was elected at a time when Sulla ( the current consul ) was very unpopular with the lower classes and the Latin allies, because he had sided with the Roman Senate, blocking the advancement of their rights as citizens.

This left only Octavius and the Senate to defend the causes of Sulla in Rome.

Sulla also sent a letter to the Senate regaling them of his victories over Mithridates and assuring them that he had received those exiled by Cinna and that he would provide swift retribution to those who were guilty of causing himself and the Senate to suffer.

Marius did not avail himself of this potential source of support, but in less than two decades Marius ' ex-quaestor Sulla would use it against the Senate and Marius.

The choice before the Senate was to put either Marius or Sulla in command of an army which would aid Rome's Greek allies and defeat Mithridates.

The Senate chose Sulla, but soon the Assembly appointed Marius.

Sulla left Rome and traveled to the army waiting in Nola, the army the Senate had asked him to lead against Mithridates.

The Senate passed a law exiling Sulla, and Marius was appointed the new commander in the eastern war.

It was a title held with great pride: Pompey was hailed imperator more than once, as was Sulla, but it was Julius Caesar who first used it permanently-according to Dio, this was a singular and excessive form of flattery granted by the Senate, passed to Caesar's adopted heir along with his name and virtually synonymous with it.

As consul, Sulla prepared to depart once more for the East, to fight the first Mithridatic War, by the appointment of the Senate.

Sulla consolidated his position, declared Marius and his allies hostes ( enemies of the state ), and addressed the Senate in harsh tones, portraying himself as a victim, presumably to justify his violent entrance into the city.

Sulla acknowledged Metrobius as his lover in his final speech to the Roman Senate.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon accompanied by the thirteenth legion to take power from the Senate in the same way that Sulla had done in the past.

In 82 BC, after a 120-year lapse, and the end of the civil war between the forces of Marius and Sulla, the latter was appointed by the Senate to an entirely new office, dictator legibus faciendis et rei publicae constituendae (" dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution ").

Sulla proceeded to have the Senate draw up a list of those he considered enemies of the state and published the list in the Roman Forum.

The Roman Senate kept tight control over the Sibylline Books ; Sibylline Books were entrusted to the care of two patricians ; after 367 BC ten custodians were appointed, five patricians and five plebeians, who were called the decemviri sacris faciundis ; subsequently ( probably in the time of Sulla ) their number was increased to fifteen, the quindecimviri sacris faciundis.

The first of these was Sulla, who prevented an overthrow of the republic by Gaius Marius but became a sort of " lord protector " of the Senate until his death ( 78 BC ).

Such was his purpose when the conservative Optimate, the noble and Roman general Sulla ( 138-78 ), seized state power by military force ; yet he sought without permanent success to restore the Senate nobility to its former power.

This was also the first time a victorious general had openly defied the Senate and it would not be the last ; in 88 BC, Sulla, in defiance of both the Senate and tradition, would lead his troops into the city of Rome itself.

It was the second law to do so ( the first being passed after the Second Punic War, replacing the Dictatorship with the final decree of the Senate ); however, the earlier law had essentially been nullified by the subsequent Dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar.