Salve Luci Valeri

The Caecilii Metelli remained. Bourbons and Romanoffs survived revolutions, too, as there are always survivors to any massacre. This was a little different, not a modern revolution that was so class conscious, and yet not like previous reactions as had occured at Rome in the past. Compare the lists of censors and consuls from earlier eras to the list of names in the Senate after Sulla's death. Who are among the missing? Fulvii, Pompilii, Livii, Perperna, Fabricii, Sempronii, Atilii, Postumii, to name a few. In gens Cornelii you still find Lentuli, the Cethegi are reduced to pedarii, while other Cornelii families are missing. Other nobiles appear among the tribuni, such as Gaius Popillius of 68, but Sulla had barred tribunes from holding higher offices. The Civil War brought division even in some families. Papirius Carbo was the last Republican consul, having fled to Africa, while his brother fought for Sulla. The Fabii Maximi are missing from Sulla's Senate, a Fabius Maximus resurfaced under Caesar, as do some other families. The proscriptions ordered individuals to be killed, their property seized. So family members of the proscribed did survive but no longer did they hold position as before. There was even a C. Marius who survived and later reappeared.

Once unleahed there is little control over a revolution. Sulla's action in 88 set off the revolution. The time of his proscriptions was only one phase, just as the Terror was one phase of the French Revolution or the Bolshevik was one phase in the Russian Revolution. Not all of the missing were due to Sulla's followers. Purges were made as well in other phases before Sulla's proscriptions. You are right that it was often Sulla's followers rather than himself who determined who was proscribed. That is an aspect that was different from earlier, say in comparison to the suppression of the supporters of the Gracchi. The war was between factions in the elite, initially between individuals, but the final phase took things to a new level. It was not merely individuals who were now purged, but families reduced and excluded from power, while a new group rose into positions of power.

We are not dealing with only two competing factions of Marians against Sullans. As in all revolutions there were a multitude of vying forces, with shifting alliances as time progressed. Revolutions pass through phases as one group or another gets the upper hand. In 88 Sulla revolted against the Roman government. Different factions pulled together to oppose him. The Marians came into the picture only after Sulla had left for the east. When Sulla returned in 83 he was joined by Licinius Crassus, Pompeius,and Metellus Pius. Was Pompeius Strabo a supporter of Sulla in 88 when he allowed, or perhaps instigated the lynching of Pompeius Rufus? Was his son Pompeius Magnus a supporter of Sulla when he fought for Cinna? By 83 things had changed at Rome with the government having accepted Marians into its fold. So men like Pompeius and Scaurus reevaluated where they stood in the political currents of that day.

The situation was complex and fluid. To consider who held power at any one time, who survived, who won out and why, I think you have to break down the competing forces more than to simply say Marians fought Sullans, or pose the later factions that grew out of the Civil War as simply Populares and Optimates. The Caecilii Metelli pose an interesting group at the center of all the political conflicts from around 147 on. I think I would start with them as a way of sorting out what divisions existed among the senatorials during the transition from the Post Gracchan period to the Post Sulla period. Then we might see what groups were behind which phases of the revolution. That would also shed some light on later politics, where the Optimates and Populares were made up of different groups from the earlier period, and survivors from still other groups were still around.