Anton Korolenkov

The author challenges the accepted view that the 88 BC plebeian tribune P. Sulpicius’ bills brought him to conflict with the Senate and were backed up by the equites whose interests he defended. In the author’s opinion, most senators were relatively well disposed to Sulpicius’ drafts, while the equites were not his main supporters: they supported him inasmuch as they were connected with the patres favourably disposed to the reformer. Following E. Badian, the author considers the data on the so-called Antisenatus to be unreliable and those on his law limiting senators’ debts to 2000 denarii to be out of context and ambiguous (these data being the most usual proofs of the mutual hostility of the Senate and Sulpicius). Nor could the bill on accepting the cives novi to all the 35 tribes have caused the senators’ strong disapproval, as it was just a continuation of the laws of 90–89 BC promoting rights of the Italians. The senators who opposed the tribune’s bills most of all were the consuls Sulla and Pompeius Rufus. Their opposition caused the interference of the army, thus launching the civil war.