The lex Valeria and Sulla's Empowerment as Dictator (82-79 BCE)

Abstract

In November 82 BCE, the victorious proconsul L. Cornelius Sulla (cos. 88) revived the dictatorship to restore law and order in the battered Republic. L. Valerius Flaccus (cos. 100), then princeps senatus, was appointed interrex by the patrician patres. After obtaining the necessary clearances from the Senate and the augural college, Flaccus passed a law ordering him to appoint Sulla to an unprecedented dictatura legibus scribundis et rei publicae constituendae, and himself to the office of magister equitum, and this ad tempus incertum, until the completion of their vast commission. Although Sulla was thus invested with a series of spectacular extraordinary powers, he still scrupulously bothe..