The Sword of Pleasure

The Sword of Pleasure

by

Peter Green

After reading Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series, I just had to read further about Rome and specific people who interested me, so I got this book on Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix by Peter Green. Supposedly based on Sulla's memoirs, which he wrote himself, entitled "The Sword of Pleasure." I've concluded that this is only one take on Sulla's memoirs which were somehow destroyed themselves but written about by people like Plutarch, so this is taken second hand and not directly from the original memoirs! I was not comfortable to have Sulla depicted as a monstrous, quasi handicapped individual, with hideous birthmarks on his face, which is why I've posted pictures of him, so that you can see for yourself what he looked like. The supposed splotchy marks on his face are explained by McCullough as a complication from a series of sunburns he received while on campaign or engaging in the battles in Asia Minor! His death apparently from a ruptured blood vessel from a gastric ulcer and not from a parasitic infestation as rumor has it...
yes, I've given him eyes, here possibly in his 40's...
the original bust of him, which I believe is in Munich, of all places...take it back to Italy, I say!I've given him eyes and a proper Roman nose; the fierce eye brows I have not smoothed out-they give him that lupine quality, with his pale grey eyes as luminescent as the moon, which the wolf would howl at, of course... He appears strong, fierce and a force to be reckoned with. He is handsome! McCullough goes even further to say that he had prominent canine teeth, further giving him a wolfish quality, which he tried to hide in certain situations as it frightened people... Sulla in his late 50's perhaps, having lost his hair and sporting a wig here, just prior to dying at age 60, amazing cheek bones...yes I've given him eyes! He lived between 138 and 78 BC. A slight family resemblance-WOW-are we related?Lvcivs Cornelivs Svlla Felix Epaphroditvs, you are not forgotten...