Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/946

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 education. He studied the Greek and Roman literature with diligence and success, and appears early to have imbibed that love for literature and art by which he was distinguished throughout his life. At the same time that he was cultivating his mind, he was also indulging his senses. He passed a great part of his time in the company of actors and actresses; he was fond of wine and women; and he continued to pursue his pleasures with as much eagerness as his ambitious schemes down to the time of his death. He possessed all the accomplishments and all the vices which the old Cato had been most accustomed to denounce, and he was one of those patterns of Greek literature and of Greek profligacy who had begun to make their appearance at Rome in Cato's time, and had since become more and more common among the Roman nobles. But Sulla's love of pleasure did not absorb all his time, nor did it emasculate his mind; for no Roman during the latter days of the republic, with the exception of Julius Caesar, had a clearer judgment, a keener discrimination of character, or a firmer will. The truth of this the following history will abundantly prove.

The slender property of Sulla was increased by the liberality of his step-mother and of a courtezan named Nicopolis, both of whom left him all their fortune. His means, though still scanty for a Roman noble, now enabled him to aspire to the honours of the state, and he accordingly became a candidate for the quaestorship, to which he was elected for the year 107. He was ordered to carry over the cavalry to the consul C. Marius, who had just taken the command of the Jugurthine war in Africa. Marius was not well pleased that a quaestor had been assigned to him, who was only known for his profligacy, and who had had no experience in war; but the zeal and energy with which Sulla attended to his new duties soon rendered him a useful and skilful officer, and gained for him the unqualified approbation of his commander, notwithstanding his previous prejudices against him. He was equally successful in winning the affections of the soldiers. He always addressed them with the greatest kindness, seized every opportunity of conferring favours upon them, was ever ready to take part in all the jests of the camp, and at the same time never shrunk from sharing in all their labours and dangers. Sulla, doubtless, had already the consulship before his eyes, and thus early did he show that he possessed the great secret of a man's success in a free state, the art of winning the affections of his fellow-men. He distinguished himself at the battle of Cirta, in which Jugurtha and Bocchus were defeated; and when the latter entered into negotiations with Marius, for the purpose of delivering the Numidian