Sulla’s 10,000 Cornelii

ABSTRACT

The 10,000 Cornelii were ex-slaves of the proscribed, manumitted and enfranchised by Sulla. Appian, our only source, describes them as Sulla’s clients and argues that their function was to exercise political control in the city of Rome. Scholars treat them as a political gang, bodyguard, or voting block. This article proposes that the 10,000 Cornelii were first informally manumitted by their own proscribed masters. It was a strategy to reduce the value of their confiscated estates and to create a body of clients with a vested interest in regime change to confirm their freedman status and grant them citizenship. It was to remove this threat, not simply to enhance his retinue of clients, that Sulla granted them freedom and citizenship in his own name.