Background
Sulla's constitutional reforms did not occur in a vacuum. Over the period from the violent death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133, Roman republican politics were becoming increasingly violent and discordant; at various times, force was used against political opponents to suppress political opposition. Shortly before Sulla's first consulship in 88, the Romans fought the bloody Social War against their Italian allies, victorious mostly due to their immediate concession on the Italians' main war goal of gaining Roman citizenship. During his consulship in 88, Sulla had marched his army on Rome asSulla's constitution
Many newer studies from 1971 onwards "support the interpretation of ulla'sreform programme as a new republic rather than a restoration". The reforms "were dressed up as a return to traditional Roman practice utmany were nothing of the sort"; "Sulla was definitely not trying to 'turn back the clock', let alone to any particular period in Roman history". The rigidly legalised constitution, based on a system of laws enforced by senatorial courts, that Sulla put forward "did not correspond to the Roman experience of a traditional republic... based on deliberation in the senate, debate in front of the people, and on elaborate rituals of compromise and consensus building in both settings". It, however, was also not an ideologically consistent set of reforms, acting ad hoc to address various different issues identified in the state.Senate and the assembly
Sulla expanded the number of senators from some three hundred (before the civil war) to as many as six hundred, more than doubling its size, with new senators recruited from the ranks of the equites and the nobles of Italian towns. Before his expansion, the senate's ranks were skeletally thin: of former consuls, a mere five were known to be alive and able to participate in 82. He also increased the number of quaestores elected per year from eight to twenty and making induction to the senate automatic with the holding of the quaestorship; this meant that many of the new senators would likely never hold higher office and existed rather to serve as jurors in a large system of permanent jury courts. There would be at least seven courts, each under a praetor, with large juries to minimise the impact of bribery. In the past, from the time of the Gracchi onwards, these courts had been staffed by the equestrians, but the juries would be picked from members of the senatorial class. The consequences of Sulla's changes to the senate resulted in a "two-tiered... system in which the inner circle of the powerful opinion makers... were separated from those who spent their lives as jurors". The leading senators holding magistracies also were to spend their year in office in the capital rather than commanding troops abroad, making senate debates far more formal and providing an environment in which the consuls could repeatedly clash. The office of praetor also changed, put in charge of the courts during their magistracy before being sent to govern a province immediately afterwards. In the past, the senate had been composed of people recognised by the censors for their achievements in high office or of personal virtue; Sulla's lacked this, being composed mainly of his supporters and the winners of relatively undiscriminating elections to the quaestorship. Sulla's reforms also He also, according to Appian, required that laws be brought before the centuries rather than the tribes and that they first receive the approval of the senate. The requirement to bring laws before the centuries does not seem to have survived even Sulla's dictatorship, as he brought a law on the quaestorship before the tribes. Sulla settled instead on divesting the tribunes of their legislative initiative (see below) and allowing curule magistrates to call the tribes to hear legislative proposals. Consular legislation was rare before the Sulla's reforms, with most legislation being put by tribunes, but after Sulla, it became common to have consuls and praetors introduce bills before the people.Magistracies
He also made the traditional order in which offices were held ( la, cursus honorum, lit=course of honours) a legal requirement (e.g. to be elected consul, one had to have been praetor) and required a ten-year period between re-election to office with minimum ages to various offices. Among his other changes to elections, he neutered the plebeian tribunes, turning the office into a dead-end position with little power: their ability to veto public business was removed along with powers to propose legislation. Moreover, anyone elected to the tribunate was thence ineligible to future elected office. Their powers were reduced only to protecting citizens from a magistrate's arbitrary actions. The effects of these changes to the magistracies was profound. Citizens no longer would have tribunes call meetings, give political speeches, or vote on tribunician legislation. The process of electing magistrates, however, had little changed, with politicians still campaigning before the people. And while the people had not lost their sovereign power to make laws, they instead "were simply called upon to ratify laws that had already been approved by the senate and that were proposed by the highest magistrates". Limits also were placed on the discretion of governors in the field. Instead of appointing them to wage a campaign of some sort, Sulla required them to go to a province, defined as specific geographic area, and then stay there without deviating from instructions provided by the senate until relieved. The penalties for breaking these laws (cf Caesar) were also severe.Other
In the realm of religion, he repealed the ''lex Domitia de sacerdotiis'' of 104, which placed the election of priests into the hands of the people, returning to the older system of co-option. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline hill, which had burnt down in 83, was rebuilt, named after a close ally of Sulla's, Quintus Lutatius Catulus. He also abolished the grain dole and Roman state's subsidies to control food prices in the city. He also, as dictator, expanded Rome's sacred city boundary, the '' pomerium''.Fate of the Sullan constitution
Sulla resigned from his dictatorship at the end of 81 and promptly took office as consul for 80. Conceiving "of his dictatorship in quasi-republican terms, as a special office undertaken to... stablisha constitutional (republican) form of government" and imagining himself as a lawgiver, he became ordinary consul in the first year of his new republic. After his consulship, he retired and died in 78, with his funeral held in Rome at public expense, to the dismay of one of the then-consuls, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.Reforms to the tribunes and courts
His republic would prove to be a failure: "the content, style, and origins of Sulla's new republic were too revolutionary and too foreign to last in Rome" after his demise. The role of the senatorial juries in holding magistrates and governors accountable was undermined by Sulla's own example in being entirely immune from accountability by successfully marching on Rome. In the year of his death, proposals were already being made to overturn Sulla's limitations on the popular tribunes. This extended to Sulla's grain dole reforms: co-consul Lepidus carried a bill without opposition reintroducing or expanding the dole. Later in that year, Lepidus raised an army against the senate and his colleague in response to obstruction against his political reforms. Sulla required the consuls to conduct affairs in the city; within two years, disagreements between the consuls had started another civil war. A few years later in 75, one of the consuls, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, lifted the bar on tribunes holding future office, to much acclaim from the people. Sulla's removal of the grain dole also increased tensions in Rome, with the consuls being attacked on the ''via Sacra'' over the price of grain. The next year, Lucius Quinctius, then-tribune of the plebs, agitated in the Forum to restore tribunician rights. Sulla's reforms to the grain dole were further abrogated in 73, with the consuls carrying a law authorising further grain purchases from Sicily while popular agitation for tribunician rights continued. Just eight years after his death, his lieutenants during the civil war, Pompey andLonger term effects
Sulla's changes also had longer term effects by permanently altering the makeup of the senate. The permanently larger senate guaranteed from the intake of the twenty annual quaestors reached a size of around 600. The nature of the senate in Sulla's regime also made it difficult for Sulla's system of law courts to function: And the larger size of the senate after Sulla's reforms, along with the increased number of '' imperium''-possessing magistrates in the city, made the body dysfunctional, difficult to influence, and unpredictable. Moreover, its larger size— Sulla's interruption in the regular election of censors and the censuses which they conducted also persisted: after the census authorised during the consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70, the next completed census would have to wait until 28, when it was conducted bySee also
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* * * * {{Ancient Rome topics Roman Republic Roman law 80s BC 1st century BC in the Roman Republic Reform in the Roman Republic 80 BC 81 BC 82 BC Sulla