Events
News
Events via Email
Home > News and Events > Sulla, Athens and Mithridates
Sulla, Athens and Mithridates
May 28, 2012 19:30
Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens, Odos Notara, 51a Exarcheia, 106 83 Athens
Lecture
Speaker
Dr. Alexander Thein (University College Dublin)
Tel/Fax: +30-210-88-48-074
This paper offers an analysis of Sulla’s clemency during the first war with Mithridates (88-85 B.C.). Sulla tends not to be associated with the virtue of clemency. He is remembered instead for his legacy of violence and repression: in Italy the civil war and proscriptions, in the East the siege of Athens and the heavy indemnities imposed on the Greek cities of Asia. It is rather surprising, therefore, to find passages in several ancient writers, notably Appian and Plutarch, which praise Sulla explicitly for his clemency; above all in the aftermath of the siege of Athens in 86 B.C. Allusions to the theme of clemency can also be found in accounts of Sulla’s dealings with Mithridates and the Asian Greeks before and after the Peace of Dardanus (85 B.C.). This paper documents the evidence for Sulla’s clemency in the Greek East and offers an analysis of its logic and reception. Above all it seeks to explain how Sulla could be criticised by his political enemies at Rome for being too clement to Athens, Mithridates, and the Asian Greeks.