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88-82 BCEPrimary source · 3 sourcesWell documented

Sulla Marches His Legions Across Rome's Sacred Boundary

On the timeline · around 88-82 BCE · The RepublicThe RepublicThe PrincipateSulla Marches His Legions Across Rome's Sacred Boundary200 BCE175 BCE150 BCE125 BCE100 BCE75 BCE50 BCE25 BCE1 CE

What happened

In 88 BCE the tribune Sulpicius Rufus stripped Consul Sulla of his command against Mithridates of Pontus and handed it to the aging general Gaius Marius, whose earlier reforms had opened army recruitment to landless citizens for the first time. Marius sent two military tribunes to remove Sulla; Sulla's soldiers stoned them to death, and Sulla marched six legions into Rome itself, crossing the pomerium, the sacred boundary within which no citizen could legally bear arms. It was the first time a Roman general had led an army against the city, and many of his own officers deserted rather than take part. Sulla purged his enemies, then left to fight Mithridates while Marius returned and killed his opponents in turn. Sulla came back in 83 BCE, crushed the opposing forces at the Colline Gate in 82 BCE, executed thousands of captured prisoners, and posted proscription lists in the Forum naming enemies of the state whose killers could legally claim their property and a cash reward, even if the killer was the victim's own slave or son. The Senate made Sulla dictator, he pushed through constitutional reforms, then voluntarily retired in 79 BCE and died the following year.

Why it matters

Sulla's march broke a taboo that had held for roughly four and a half centuries of the Republic, that Roman soldiers did not turn on Rome itself. Once it had happened once, the deterrent was gone: the same act was repeated by Roman commanders in the civil wars that followed, culminating in Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon four decades later. Sulla's own voluntary retirement did not undo the precedent, it only proved that a general who marched on Rome could win, rule, and walk away unpunished, a lesson later commanders drew very different conclusions from.

How we know

Plutarch's Life of Sulla, drawing on now-lost contemporary sources, is the source for the proscription reward and its explicit extension to slaves killing masters and sons killing fathers. Appian's Civil Wars supplies the narrative of the march itself and the Colline Gate battle. The religious significance of the pomerium as a boundary that made Sulla's crossing a specific, recognized transgression rather than just a military maneuver is well established in Roman religious and legal tradition.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →