PART II.
DECEMBER until JANUAR
Year of the Consulship of Decula and Dolabella,
673 A.U.C (81 B.C.)
Things, decided Lucius Cornelius Sulla early in December, were going very
nicely. the amount of money and property confiscated from the proscribed was soaring. It was money and property, of course, which had directed Sulla's footsteps down this particular path; from somewhere had to come the vast sums Rome would need in order to become financially solvent again. Under more normal circumstances it would have come out of the coffers of the provinces, but given the situations in the east and the fact that Quintus Sertorius had managed to create enough trouble in both the Spains to curtail Spanish incomes, the provinces could not be squeezed of additional revenues for some time to come.
Therefore Rome and Italy would have to yield up the money-yet the burden could not be thrust upon the ordinary people, nor upon those who had conclusively demonstrated their loyalty to Sulla's cause. Sulla had never loved the Ordo Equester-the ninety-one Centuries of the First Class who comprised the knight-businessmen, but especially the eighteen Centuries of senior knights who were entitled to the Public Horse. Among them were many who had waxed fat under the administration of Marius, of Cinna, of Carbo; and these were the men Sulla resolved would pay the bill for Rome's economic recovery. A perfect solution! Not only would the Treasury fill up; it would also eliminate the enemies of the republic.
It was religion, however, which chiefly occupied Sulla's mind.
So before he turned his energies toward rectifying Rome's creaky institutions and laws, he must first purify Rome's aether, stabilize her godly forces and allow them to flow properly. How could Rome expect good fortune when a man could be so lost as to what was fitting that he could stand and screem out her secret name?1
How could Rome expect to prosper when men plundered her temples and murdered her priests? In the burning of the temples there was an implicit message, as any good citizen would know.
To the Greeks, their gods were essentially human beings owning superhuman powers; they could not conceive a being more complex than a man.
So Zeus, who was king of their pantheon, functioned like a Roman Consul, powerful but not omnipotent-and handed out jobs to the other gods, who took delight in tricking him, blackmailing him, and behaving a bit like tribunes of the plebs.
A proper Roman, knew the gods were far less tangible than the Greeks would have them: they weren't humanoid and they didn't have eyes in their heads or hold conversations, nor did they wield superhuman powers, nor go through the integration and differentiation of thought processes akin to a man's.
A Roman knew that the gods were specific forces which moved specific events or controlled other forces inferior to themselves. They fed on life-forces, they needed order and method in the living world as much as they did in their own, because order and method in the living world helped maintain order and method in the world of forces.
There were forces pervaded storage cupboards and barns and silos and cellars, -they were called Penates. There were forces that kept ships sailing and crossroads together and a sense of purpose among inanimate objects- they were called Lares.
There was a force that gave a few men luck and good fortune, but gave most men less, and a few men nothing-it was called Fortuna.
And the force called Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the sum total of allother forces, the connective tissue which bound them all together in a way logical to forces, if mysterious to men.
It was clear that Rome was losing contact with her gods, her forces.
Why else had the Temples burned down?2
Men were forgetting the secrets, the strict formulae and patterns which channeled godly forces
And it had been given to Sulla to halt the chaos, correct the present drift toward utter disorder. If he did not, then doors supposed to be shut would fly open, and doors supposed to be open would slam shut.
The next day Sulla published the first of his laws aimed at regulating the State religion by fixing them to the rostra and the wall of the Regia:
it turned out to be a list of the men who were now members of the various priestly colleges, major and minor. Fifteen of each, divided between patricians and plebeians (with the plebeians in the majority) and the invalidation of the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis.3
The day after, he published an addendum containing only two name. The name of the new Pontifex Maximus; Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius.
And one new name for the proscription list, a man of Patricain status.The (now former) flamen Dialis, the young man Gaius Julius Caesar.4
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1) Amor, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Valerius_Soranus
2) In otl only the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus burned, TTL the temple of Ops, the god of Romes public wealth, burned down as well. This is the actual POD
3) The law the stipulated that Priest weare elected. Sulla law also increases the number of priest.
4) We really dont know if Ceasar was flamen Dialis, we do know that Gaius Marius and Cinna talked about apointing him, and we do know that Sulla striped him off a priesthood in OTL. Her the worse temple fire, and the fact that Ceasar, who was married to Cinna daughter, and a nephew of Gaius Marius is enough that he is kept on the lists. Neither he nor his wife are Roman citizens anymor and thus cant be the flaminat.