Top Highlights

• Lucius Cornelius Sulla. He started life with the great advantage of Patrician birth, but also the huge disadvantage of lack of sufficient wealth to support that birth, and to help him make the expected ascent of the cursus honorum to which his Patrician blood entitled him.
• Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. He saw himself as the greatest man in Rome and, despite his youth, very nearly proved it to be so.
• Thapsus, on 6 April 46 BC. On that occasion, fighting the supporters of Pompey’s sons, his men massacred 10,000 of the defeated side, while they were trying to surrender!
• Gaius Marius suffered a series of strokes, which seriously affected his mental capacities. After his second stroke he became almost a monster of cruelty, destroying all those who defied him, friend and foe alike, but he is still openly referred to as the ‘great’ Gaius Marius!
• During that time he was awarded the Corona Graminea outside the walls of Nola, and conquered Pompeii which then became known as Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum or Sulla’s Colony of Venus.