The aftermath of the Italian War and the granting of citizenship to all freeborn Italians (on paper at least) did not bring stability to the Republic -- more brutal internal conflicts followed in its aftermath. The events of the 80s set patterns for the last decades of the Roman Republic. It is important to try to understand why these patterns of behavior were set on courses that were so much at odds with the interests of a Republican state that had traditionally been governed by a senatorial elite.
Some Questions: Although you have to depend on biographies -- the accounts of individual lives (in this case, those of Marius and Sulla) -- to interpret what is happening in this period, can you sight some general patterns and forces behind the personalities? What trends can you uncover that are continuities from the last decades of the second century BC? Why are these same patterns exacerbated in this period? Why is the Senate unable to exert greater control the high politics of the age? What is Sulla's program for setting the Roman state back on its course? Finally, how important were the powerful political men of this time as forces in their own right, and why?
Discussion and Questions Copyright 2000/2001, Prof. Brent D. Shaw.