Sulla the Fortunate

This biography provides a redemptive view of the bloody career of Roman general and consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a fearless commander and ruthless politician wholly devoid of inhibitions, and the direct forerunner of Julius Caesar, who based his own grab for power on Sulla's methods. Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BC), soldier, politician, and statesman, set the standard of dictator for the generations that followed his death—the most famous dictator to follow Sulla's systematic path to power was Julius Caesar. In his lifetime, Sulla faced issues such as the decay of religious faith, the end of the aristocracy, the rise of the proletariat, and the growth of international finance. It was unquestionably a momentous era in the world's history, and Sulla's story is a tale of the Roman ambition par excellence: alliances, battles against rival Roman armies, plots, assassinations, and a civil war initiated by Sulla himself in which he seized power.