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Sulla Felix1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. P. V. D. Balsdon
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Extract

Livy wrote of the great Scipio at the conclusion of the second Punic war ‘primus certe hic imperator nomine victae ab se gentis est nobilitatus’. But already more than half a century earlier M'. Valerius Maximus, consul of 263 B.C., who captured Messana and was honoured with the cognomen ‘Messalla’, had received a title from a conquest in war. In the century and a half after Scipio became Africanus, many such honourable cognomina were acquired by others. In only six cases is there evidence of the cognomen descending within the family: Valerius Messalla, Scipio Africanus, Scipio Asiaticus, Metellus Creticus, Servilius Isauricus, and (with a slight difference) Pompeius Bithynicus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1-2 , November 1951 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright ©J. P. V. D. Balsdon 1951. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

1

I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for the warm hospitality of the British School at Rome and for the opportunity of working in its library and in that of the former German Institute at Rome in the early spring of 1950, when this paper was written. I have since made certain changes in it in view of helpful criticism made by Professor E. Fraenkel on a paper (summarizing the conclusions which I seek here to sustain by close examination of the evidence) which I read to the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in London on 18th April, 1950. I am grateful to Professor H. J. Rose for wise advice on a number of points, and also to Professor F. E. Adcock and to Mr. Hugh Last, Principal of Brasenose College.

References

2 30. 45, 7.

3 CIL 1, I2, p. 22; Seneca, , De Brevitate Vitae 13, 5Google Scholar; Ovid, , Fasti I, 595Google Scholar; cf. Doer, B., Untersuchungen zur röm. Namengebung (Berlin, 1937), 50Google Scholar f.

4 Cf. Mommsen, Th., Röm. Forschungen I, 52 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 As Cassius Dio, fr. 44, suggests.

6 XXX, 45, 6: ‘Africani cognomen militaris prius favor an popularis aura celebraverit an, sicuti Felicis Sullae Magnique Pompei patrum memoria coeptum ab adsentatione familiari sit, parum compertum habeo.’

7 See below, p. 4, for the first date; the second is the date of Pompey's African triumph for which, in company with most historians, I accept 12th March, 79 B.C., rather than 12th March, 80 B.C. See CIL 1, I2, p. 178, for the sources: Frontinus, , Strat. IV, 5Google Scholar, 1, appears to me decisive.

8 ‘Superbum cognomen,’ Pliny, NH XXII, 12.

9 With this important difference, that Sulla's ‘Felix’ lacked the ‘Selbstsicherheit’ of the titles of the Hellenistic monarchs. ‘Was diesen vor sich und anderen den Wert gab, die persönliche Areté, die Leistung, das galt Sulla als belanglos’; Berve, H., ‘Sulla,’ Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung VII (1931), 676Google Scholar.

10 ‘Magnos et Felices et Augustos diximus’; Seneca, De dementia 1, 14, 2.

11 See below, p. 9. This view does not commend itself to the Editorial Committee, but I hold it very strongly. Harry Ericsson, on p. 77 of his excellent article, ‘Sulla Felix,’ Eranos XLI (1943), 77–89Google Scholar, also believes the title to have been conferred officially; he thinks it was conferred by popular decree.

12 Charisius 1, p. 110K; cf. Peter, H., H(istoricorum) R(omanorum) R(eliquiae) I 2, CCLXXI, n. 1Google Scholar.

13 See Mommsen, Th., Röm. Forschungen I, 34 ff.Google Scholar; E. Fraenkel, P-W XVI, 2, 1662 f., s.v. ‘Namenwesen’.

14 See Peter, , HRR I 2, cclxxiiGoogle Scholar, on the question of this book's title. Plutarch refers always to the ὑπομνήματα of Sulla. The fragments are to be found in Peter, , HRR I 2, 195–204Google Scholar. See also, on this work, Leo, F., Hermes XLIX (1914), 164–6Google Scholar.

15 Plutarch, , Sulla 37, 1Google Scholar; Suetonius, De Gramm. 12.

16 Marius 25, 6; 26, 6; 35, 4; Sulla 4, 5; 5, 2; 14, 3; 14, 10; 16, 1; 19, 8; 23, 5; 28, 15, and the passages quoted in the following note.

17 Sulla 6, 8; 17, 2; 27, 11; 37, 2; Moralia 786E (An sent r.p. gerenda sit 6).

18 Sulla 5, 11; 7, 4–13; 9, 5 f.; 9, 7 f.; 11, 1 f; 14, 12; 27, 14–16; 28, 7 f.; 29, 11 f.

19 De imp. Cn. Pomp. 28. He proceeds to discuss Pompey's ‘felicitas’ in sections 47 ff. I disagree with A. Passerini's interpretation of section 47 on pp. 93 ff. of his article, ‘Il concetto antico di Fortuna,’ Philologus xc (1935), 90–97Google Scholar. It is a mistake to generalize on the character of Sulla's Fortune, as Passerini does, from the story in Plutarch, , Sulla 35, 5 ffGoogle Scholar.

20 See below, n. 38.

21 See particularly Polybius X, 2, 5 ff.; 5, 8; 7, 3; 9, 2 f.; 11, 7, an d Livy XXVI, 19, 3 ff.

22 Plutarch, , Sertorius II, 2 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 See the references in n. 21 above.

24 Storia dei Romani III, 2, 452, and n. 16.

25 Lanzani, Carolina, Lucio Cornelio Silla Dittatore (Milan 1936), 287Google Scholar, ‘Noi non esiteremo a definire Silla, “un mistico”.’ Professor Lanzani is reminded by Sulla, just as De Sanctis is by Scipio Africanus, of Oliver Cromwell.

26 HRR I2, CCLXX.

27 Plutarch, , Sulla 6, 8Google Scholar.

28 Plutarch, , Sulla 6, 10Google Scholar.

29 ‘Chaldaei,’ Plutarch, , Sulla 37, 2Google Scholar.

30 P-W IV, 1526 f. A different view is held by Sadée, E., ‘Sulla im Kimbernkrieg,’ Rhein. Mus. LXXXVIII (1939), 43–52Google Scholar (a reference which I owe to Professor F. E. Adcock).

31 Valerius Maximus VII, 5, 5; Plutarch, , Sulla 5, 2Google Scholar.

32 Plutarch, , Pompeius 13, 1 ff.Google Scholar; 14, 4 f.; 15, 1 ff.

33 If credence is placed in the hypothesis of J. Carcopino, Sylla, chapters 12–14.

34 [Plutarch], Moralia 202E, which contains no other apophthegm of Sulla's but these. On his relations with Metellus, see Plutarch, , Sulla 6, 9Google Scholar.

35 See P-W IV, 1539 f., for the destruction which Sulla, in fact, did to the Peiraeus and at Athens.

36 See Hoffmann, W., Das literarische Porträt Alexanders d. Grossen im griechischen und römischen Altertum (Leipzig 1907), 34 ffGoogle Scholar.

37 ‘De Alexandri Magni Fortuna aut Virtute,’ Mor. 326D–345B; ‘De Romanorum Fortuna,’ Mor. 316B–326C with, for its starting words, αἱ πολλοὺς πολλάκις ἠγωνισμέναι καὶ μεγάλους ἀγῶνας, ᾿Αρετὴ καὶ Τύχη, πρὸς ἀλλήλας μέγιστον ἀγωνίζονται τὸν πάροντα περὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας. Even Polybius, it must not be forgotten, despite his rationalism, saw the operation of ΤύΧη in the growth of Rome (I, 4, 1).

38 The highest praise that a soldier could give to a general under whom he had served, Cicero, Pro Murena 38; cf. Sallust, , Jugurtha 95, 4Google Scholar (of Sulla), ‘multique dubitavere, fortior an felicior esset,’ and Appian, , BC 1, 104, 484Google Scholar, τοσοῦτον ἦν ἐν τῷδε τῷ ἀνδρὶ τόλμης καὶ τύχης. Cf., for th e opposite, Cicero, De prov. cons. 8, ‘protervior an infelicior.’

39 So Plutarch, De Laude Ipsius 11 (Mor. 542E)—of Sulla. Plutarch's own views on the subject are not very consistent. In his Sulla 6, 7, he gives alternative explanations of Sulla's attribution of his success to Fortuna: εἴτε κόμπῳ χρώμενος εἴθ᾿ οὕτως ἔχων τῇ δόξῃ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον. In Sulla 6, 5 f., he indicates, in the case of Timotheus, that disastrous results follow if a man objects to Fortune being given the credit for his successes.

40 For this as the date of their birth, see P-W IV, 1515. I find it difficult to believe with Carcopino, Sylla, III, n. 5, that the children were not given their names until late 82 B.C. On the naming of a son on the ninth day after birth, see Mommsen, , Röm. Forschungen I, 31Google Scholar, and B. Doer, o.c. (n. 3), 7 ff.

41 For references, see above, n. 13.

42 Cicero, , De Divinatione I, 102Google Scholar. Cf. Lucretius I, 100, ‘Exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur’; Livy XXVI, 18, 8, ‘Ominati sunt felix faustumque imperium’ (for Scipio Africanus).

43 To whom in the early Empire cult was paid on 9th October, with Victrix, Venus, CIL I, I2, p. 245Google Scholar (Fasti Amiternini), and p. 214 (Fasti Fratrum Arvalium). The temple, built after Caesar's death by M. Aemilius Lepidus, was on the site of Sulla's Curia Hostilia, which had been destroyed in 52 B.C. and afterwards rebuilt by Sulla's son Faustus (Dio XLIV, 5; cf. Platner-Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, s. vv. ‘Curia Hostilia’ and ‘Felicitas’).

44 Sulla 34, 3.

45 Appian, , BC I, 97, 452Google Scholar (see Mendelssohn-Viereck ad loc. on the uncertainty of the text: ‘Certe verba tradita paulum turbata’); Plutarch, , Sulla 34, 5Google Scholar.

46 Demosthenes, 2, 2 ff.

47 Sulla 34, 3; cf. Diodorus fr. XXXVIII 15, Ἐπαφρόδιτόν τε ὀνομάσας ἑαυτόν.

48 Apart from his curious blunder about the date of Metellus', dispatch to Spain in BC I, 97, 451Google Scholar.

49 BC 1, 97, 451–1 99, 464.

50 An honour which no Roman had received before him; Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus received it later (Cicero, , Phil, IX, 13Google Scholar; Velleius II, 61, 3; Suetonius, DJ 75). The inscription at the base of Sulla's statue (the statue itself is represented on a gold coin struck by Manlius, A. in the East, BMC (R.Rep.) II, 463Google Scholar, no. 16) is given by Appian, , BC I, 97, 451Google Scholar, as Κορνηλίου Σύλλα ἡλεμόνος Εὐτυχοῦς, and many scholars (e.g. Lommatzsch, E., in his note on CIL I, IIGoogle Scholar2, no. 721, and Groebe, P., in Drumann-Groebe, , Geschichte Roms II, 403Google Scholar) have claimed that ἡγεμών here must be a translation of ‘dictator’ on the strength of CIL I, II2, 721–4 (ILS 871–4), all ‘L. Cornelio L.f. Sullae Felici dictatori,’ no. 721 (ILS 872), for instance, being the base of a statue, the statue itself, it is suggested, having been a copy of the great statue facing the Rostra. Since CIL I, II2, 720 (ILS 870)—from Suessa—reads, ‘L. Corn. L.f. Sullae Feleici imperatori publice,’ however, and since Appian proceeds at a later stage in his account of Sulla (BC 1, 98, 456 ff.) to say a lot about dictators, using the word δικτάτωρ (so that he may be assumed, a few sections earlier, in using the word ἡγεμών, to have known what he was doing), it is reasonable to assume that Appian was right and that the statue was voted to Sulla before he became dictator. Similarly, the inscription at Suessa, as Dessau rightly thought, was set up before Sulla became dictator; it can be dated probably within a few weeks, to the end of 82 B.C.—unless the authorities at Suessa anticipated the Senate's decree, in which case it could be earlier.

51 Velleius 11, 27, 5, dates the assumption of the cognomen simply ‘occiso Mario’. Other writers give no date: Sallust, Jugurtha 95, 4; Seneca, , Consolatio ad Marciam 12, 6Google Scholar; Pliny, , NH VII, 137Google Scholar.

52 Sulla, 34, 4.

53 BC I, 97, 452. What was this γραφή ? Professor Lanzani (o.c. (n. 25), 48 f.) thinks it was the text of the senatorial decree. Cary, M., CR L (1936), 193 f.Google Scholar, suggests that it was a biography of Sulla (if so, one which Plutarch missed). That it was Greek, not Latin, seems certain; so Arnold, C. Franklin, Jahrb. f.cl. Phil., suppl. 13 (1882), 106Google Scholar.

54 This special source is evidently at the bottom of Appian, , BC I, 97, 452–5Google Scholar. The sentence in section 454 (Appian's own comment) is clearly misplaced; see Mendelssohn-Viereck, ad loc. I should be inclined to make it follow I, 97, 455, as a comment of Appian concluding his digression.

55 Ed. Stuart Jones, Oxford, 1925–40. Mommsen writes (Gey. Schr. v, 509) of the title ‘Epaphroditos’, ‘Dass der Name in dieser Ausdehnung officiell und titular gebraucht worden ist, kommt einigermassen unerwartet’, but is not tempted to probe further. Nor is B. Doer, o.c. (n. 3), 51 f.

56 Lanzani, Carolina, ‘La Venere Sillana,’ Historia I (1927), 3, 31–55Google Scholar, reprinted with slight alterations as an appendix (pp. 345–366) of her Lucio Cornelio Silla Dittatore (see n. 25 above). On Sulla's religious views in general and his supposed cult of Venus in particular, see H. Ericsson, o.c. (n. 11) quoted in n. 89 below; J. Carcopino, o.c. (n. 33), especially pp. 79–119; H. Berve, o.c. (n. 9), 673–682, and, in as far as it constitutes a healthy warning against facile syncretism, A. Passerini, o.c. (n. 19), 90–97. The suggestions of Pais, E., in Dalle guerre puniche a Cesare Augusta (Rome 1918) I, 227–251Google Scholar (‘Venere Vincitrice’), are mere conjectures which appear to have no basis in fact and little in probability.

57 o.c. (n. 33), 108–113. Compare H. Berve, o.c. (n. 9), 674, according to whom Sulla's belief was not ‘an die das Weltschicksal waltende Tyche, auch nicht an Fortuna…sondern an eine mächtige Herrin die, mindestens später, ihm als Venus erschien’.

58 One (CIL VI, 781 = 30831) was found not a very long way from the site of the Horti Sallustiani, the second (CIL VI, 782), a base of statues of Venus and Cupid, from the opposite end of Rome, the Vatican gardens.

59 CIL VI, 8710.

60 o.c. (n. 43), s.v. ‘Venus Felix, Aedes’. There is no foundation in the way of firm evidence for the statement of G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Romer 2 (1912) 291, ‘Sulla…verehrte die Venus insbesondere als Glücksgöttin unter dem Namen Venus Felix’.

61 Abellinum (also in Campania)—later ‘Colonia Ven(eria)†Livia†Augusta Alexandriana’—may derive its name ‘Veneria’ from Sulla, but equally it may derive it from Augustus. See Mommsen, Th., Ges. Schr. v, 206Google Scholar ( = Hermes XVIII, 1883, 164Google Scholar). Telesia, possibly Sullan, was ‘Colonia Herculanea Telesia’ (Mommsen, o.c. v, 209 ( = Hermes XVIII, 167 f.)). Otherwise we know of no case in which a colony—or possible colony—of Sulla's had a divine epithet.

62 For illustrations, see Helbig, W., Wandegemälde der verschütteten Städte Campaniens (Leipzig 1868)Google Scholar, nos. 7, 60, 65, 66, 295 (House of the Dioscuri), 296, and the wall painting from the Via dell'Abbondanza at Pompeii illustrated in Lanzani, o.c. (n. 25), 360.

63 The last three of the pictures referred to in the previous note.

64 G. Wissowa, De Veneris Simulacris Romanis (1882), esp. 15–21; ‘Röm. Götterbilder,’ Neue Jahrb.f.d. klass. Altertum I (1898), 170Google Scholar; Religion und Kultus 2, 291 f.

65 ‘Über die Venus des Lucrez,’ Bonner Studien, R. Kekulé gewidmet (Berlin 1890), 115–125Google Scholar and ‘Der Dichter Lucretius’, Neue Jahrb. f.d. klass. Altertum III (1899), 532–548Google Scholar.

66 o.c. (n. 25), 359 ff.

67 ‘Die Aphrodite von Aphrodisias in Karien,’ Ath. Mitt. XXII (1897), 361–380Google Scholar. For an illustration of the type, see Jahn, O., Die Entführung der Europa (Vienna, 1870), taf. 6Google Scholar.

68 Neue Jahrb. f.d. klass. Altertum III (1899), 543Google Scholar, ‘Die Göttin ward ohne Zweifel unter die Schutzgötter des Sullanischen Hauses aufgenommen, auf die Münzen Sullas und der Sullanischen Familien wurde ihr Bild gesetzt, die Sullanischen Veteranen, welche als neue Bewohner in der Stadt Pompeii einzogen, machten die himmliche Helferin ihres Feldherrn zur Stadtgöttin der neuen oskischrömischen Gemeinde.’

69 cf., e.g., Homeric Hymn (to Aphrodite) v, 4 f.; Orphic Hymn (to Aphrodite), LV, 4 ff.; Euripides, Hippolytus 447.

70 See above, note 68.

71 Bignone, E., Storia della letteratura latina (Florence 1945) II, 160 ff.Google Scholar, doubts whether it was to this C. Memmius that the poem was dedicated.

72 See BMC(R. Rep.) I, 204 ff.; I, 307 f., and I, 204, n. 2.

73 See, for example, the coinage of Sex. Caesar, Julius in 94 B.C., BMC(R.Rep.) I, 174Google Scholar, nos. 1140–2.

74 BMC(R.Rep.) I, 140 f.

75 See above, n. 73.

76 See above, n. 72.

77 BMC(R. Rep.) I, 209–211.

78 See above, n. 72.

79 BMC(R.Rep.) I, 336 f. Grueber ad loc. explains the reference as recalling the feast of Venus on 1st April (cf. CIL 1, i2, 314).

80 BMC(R.Rep) I, 347–351. Grueber ad loc. considers that the type refers to the earlier successes of Norbanus' father in Sicily, and the cult of Venus there.

81 BMC(R. Rep.) I, 357, with Grueber's note ad loc.

82 Plutarch, , Sulla 29, 11Google Scholar; Frontinus, , Strat. I, II, 11Google Scholar.

83 Plutarch, , Sulla 9, 7 fGoogle Scholar.

84 Val. Max. IX, 3, 8; Tacitus, , Hist. III, 72Google Scholar; Pliny, , NH, VII, 138Google Scholar.

85 BCH LXII (1938), 459.

86 Velleius II, 25, 4; CIL x, 3828.

87 For some sensible remarks on this point, see Passerini, o.c. (n. 19).

88 Plutarch, , Sulla 35, 5 ffGoogle Scholar. It is a mistake to focus attention on this one episode, as Passerini (o.c. (n. 19)) does.

89 It is as well to notice, in the case of Sulla's supposed responsibility for the great reconstruction of the Temple of Fortuna at Praeneste (eloquently imagined by Lanzani, o.c. (n. 25), 55–60 and taken for granted by Bradshaw, H. Chalton, ‘Praeneste: a Study for its Restoration,’ PBSR IX (1920), 233–262Google Scholar), that our evidence for Sulla's punishment of Praeneste is considerable (Appian, , BC I, 94, 438Google Scholar; Florus III, 21, 27; Strabo v, 3, 11 (239c)). That Sulla then established a colony there is reasonably certain (Mommsen, Ges. Schr. v, 209Google Scholar). For his effecting a great embellishment and reconstruction of the temple at Praeneste, the only evidence is the remark of the elder Pliny, (NH XXXVI, 189Google Scholar), ‘lithostrota coeptavere iam sub Sulla parvolis certe crustis; exstat hodieque quod in Fortunae delubro Praeneste fecit.’ (I have to thank Professor R. Syme for the punctuation of this passage.) That Sulla's favourite Aphrodite is identifiable with the Fortuna Primigenia worshipped at Praeneste (C. Lanzani, o.c. (n. 25), 291 f.) is sheer speculation, without even the support of probability. I agree wholeheartedly with Ericsson's account (o.c. (n. 11)) of Sulla's view of the gods: that, ‘ein typischer Vertreter der primitiven römischen religiositas’ (p. 80), ‘er betrachtete sie als übernatürliche Wesen, als wirkliche aber amoralische Mächte, und er glaubte an sie’ (p. 87); that (despite F. Leo, o.c. (n. 14), 165) there is no evidence of any belief, of a Hellenistic kind, in fortune as ‘sein Königsglück’.

90 CIL v, 4191.

91 Appian's special source connected the name ‘Epaphroditos’ with Aphrodite; about this there seems to me no room for doubt at all. And most scholars have accepted the connection without question. H. White, for instance, in the Loeb translation of Appian, , BC I, 97, 452Google Scholar, has a bald note on ‘Epaphroditos’: ‘the favourite of Venus.’ So Carcopino writes (o.c. (n. 33), 109), ‘Epaphroditos, c'est-à-dire le favori de Vénus Aphrodite.’ Yet, as Professor E. Fraenkel has pointed out to me, it is exceedingly doubtful whether in correct Greek Ἐπαφρόδιτος could mean, as I think Sulla intended it to mean, ‘The Favoured of Aphrodite.’ If I am right, and if Professor Fraenkel is also right, there is only one possible explanation—that Sulla, or Sulla's troops in the first instance, found the name in Greece and adopted it as one which, it seemed, could easily bear the meaning that he wanted it to have.

92 BC 1, 97, 453. Why does Plutarch know nothing about this oracle ? Because the record of it survived only in Rome, and was found there by Appian ? So Lanzani, o.c. (n. 25), 346. Yet Appian's source here—the γραφή—was almost certainly in Greek (see P. 5,n. 53 above). Did Sulla say nothing of it in his Commentarii ? If so, why ?

93 Plutarch, , Titus 12, 11 fGoogle Scholar.

94 Plutarch, , Sulla 12, 5 ffGoogle Scholar. and 19, 12; Appian, , Mith. 54, 217Google Scholar; Pausanias, IX, 7, 4 ff. These depredations of Sulla are discussed by Daux, G., Delphes au 2e et au Ier siècle (Paris 1936) 397–407Google Scholar; but Daux does not mention the oracle or speculate about its date. See Diodorus, fr. XXXVIII, 7, for Sulla's own light-hearted attitude to the loans.

95 Livy, XXIX, 10 f.

96 Appian, , BC 1, 97, 455Google Scholar,

I agree with the view that the second (pentameter) line is lost.

97 Plutarch, , Sulla 19, 9Google Scholar. Farnell, L. R., Cults of the Greek States II, 655Google Scholar, suggested that the mention of Aphrodite here was a recognition of the warlike character that may have belonged to the goddess in certain parts of Boeotia.

98 BMC(R. Rep.) II, 459 f., n.; 463 f.

99 He quoted, as apposite to himself, a line of Sophocles (Oedipus Rex 1080), ἔγω δ᾿ ἐμαυτὸν παῖδα τῆς Τύχης νέμων: Plutarch, Mor. 318D (De Fortuna Romanorum 4).

100 Plutarch, , Sulla 9, 7 fGoogle Scholar.

101 See above, p. 1, n. 6.

102 See above, p. 4.

103 (AV), De viris illustribus 75, 8, ‘Felicem se edicto appellavit. Proscriptionis tabulas primus proposuit.’

104 Sulla 34, 4.

105 Diodorus, it is true (XXXVIII 15), states that the cognomen was first used after the death of the younger Marius. There is considerable epigraphic evidence of its use for and by Sulla in 81 B.C. and later. IG VII, 264 and 372, dedications to Sulla and his wife Caecilia respectively at Oropus, cannot be dated, but probability, particularly in the latter case, is in favour of their having been erected when Sulla and Caecilia were in Greece. On the other hand, ILS 8771, from Halicarnassus (perhaps erected in 84 B.C.), names Sulla Λεύκιος Κορνήλιος Σύλλας; as appears to be the case also with IG XII, I, 48 (ILS 8772), from Rhodes, . IG VII, 413Google Scholar (SIG 3 747)—S. C. de Amphiarao—gives Sulla the cognomen Ἐπαφρόδιτος as consul in 80 B.C. (l. 52) but not in respect of his earlier decisions when in Greece itself (ll. 20, 26, 39, 42). An inscription from Cos (Riv. di fil. LXVI (NS XVI), 1938, 253 = AE 1939, 173) shows Sulla using the cognomen ‘Epaphroditos’ in a letter written as dictator in 81 B.C. OGIS 441 (S. C. de Stratonicensibus) belongs to 81 B.C. Sulla is there dictator, and carries the cognomen ‘Epaphroditos’.

106 To whom Plutarch, Mor. 317 D (De Fortuna Romanorum 3) well points as an outstanding example of a man whose luck was bad (just as Sulla's was good). C. Piso recorded (Plutarch, , Marius 45, 5Google Scholar) that, discussing the ups-and-downs of his own career a week before his death, Marius said that a man who trusted to luck was a fool—οὐκ ἔστι νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς ἔτι τῇ τύχῃ πιστεύειν ἑαυτόν—a remark made, no doubt, with Sulla in mind.