Cimon, I do admire your ability to be broad-minded about Sulla, and I'm sure - somewhere, somehow - there's SOMETHING to be said for Sulla.

However, I was re-reading with delight Steven Saylor's "Roman Blood" (the trial of Sextus Roscius for parracide). It reminds me just how nasty the proscriptions under Sulla were. It was not only the sheer brutality, but the corruption - the sources confirm that people's names were put on the "destroy" list JUST so Sulla and his cohorts could get their hands on particularly rich estates. Chrysogonous (don't depend on my spelling!), Sulla's ex-slave and ex-lover, was proved by Cicero to have proscribed the murdered man just so he could get his pickings from his 6,000,000 hs. fortune.

What I hate about Sulla is that he showed that the WORST sides of human nature could not only be promoted, but could be tremendously successful. He helped lower a psychological bar that the Republic never recovered from. Am I right that formal proscriptions of 'traitors' and confiscation of their property - particularly, the PAYMENT to denouncers of a portion of the spoils - had never been seen in Rome's long history?