Entre vícios e virtudes: as caracterizações de Lúcio Cornélio Sula na República e no Principado (Sécs I a.C./II d.C.)

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the different ways in which Lucius Cornelius Sulla, protagonist of two Civil Wars and Roman Dictator at the beginning of the first century BC, was characterized throughout Roman history. In order to do so, we have chosen three textual documents written in different contexts, whose interpretations of this Roman figure clearly diverge. By understanding the elements outside the text itself – such as context, author's aims and genre – we interpret these documents not only as products of appropriations of the past but also as producers of new representations of it, serving as transmitters and reframers of memory. Thus, the Jugurthine War that Sallust wrote during the Second Triumvirate, the Parallel Lifes written by Plutarch of Chaeronea in the last decades of the first century AD and the Roman History that Appian wrote during the reign of the Antonines at the end of the second century AD are studied to demonstrate how, over time, the view on the Sulla's trajectory have undergone significant change.