Good evening. This is Walter Concretus, reporting to you on a TV set not yet invented from the city of Rome. The year is 79 B.C. Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, master of Rome by sword and decree, has shocked the Republic. He has resigned his office, disbanded his bodyguard, and returned quietly to private life.
Tonight, we take you inside a popina*, where the common citizens of Rome react to this extraordinary event. The tavern is crowded. Soldiers who fought in Sulla’s campaigns drink beside merchants and freedmen. The marble counter is lined with steaming pots of lentils and spiced wine. Dice clatter on wooden boards, but conversation turns again and again to one subject: Sulla’s retreat from power. At one table, a grizzled veteran insists that the Republic is safe again, that no man will dare follow Sulla’s path.
At another, a young tribune shakes his head — he warns that ambition is not so easily retired. Across the room, the tavern-keeper pours another cup, muttering that Rome has seen strongmen come and go, but the poor still pay for bread and wine. This evening, the popina* echoes with speculation. Will the Senate truly govern? Or has Sulla’s march shown every ambitious general the way to seize power?
For now, Rome celebrates its dictator entering his favorite popina as a private citizen.
But in the years ahead, history may remember 79 B.C. not as an ending, but as a beginning.
This is Walter Concretus, CBS News. You are there.
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