Sulla in the context of "Gaius Marius"

The Lyceum (Ancient Greek: Λύκειον, romanized: Lykeion) was a temple in Athens dedicated to Apollo Lyceus ("Apollo the wolf-god").

It was best known for the Peripatetic school of philosophy founded there by Aristotle in 334 BC. Aristotle fled Athens in 323 BC, and the university continued to function after his lifetime under a series of leaders until the Roman general Sulla destroyed it during his assault on Athens in 86 BC.

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Latin: [ˈŋnae̯.ʊs pɔmˈpɛjjʊs ˈmaŋnʊs]; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey (/ˈpɒmpi/ POM-pee) or Pompey the Great, was a Roman general and statesman who was prominent in the last decades of the Roman Republic. As a young man, he was a partisan and protégé of the dictator Sulla, after whose death he achieved much military and political success himself.

A member of the senatorial nobility, Pompey entered into a military career while still young. He rose to prominence serving Sulla as a commander in the civil war of 83–81 BC. Pompey's success as a general while young enabled him to advance directly to his first consulship without following the traditional cursus honorum (the required steps to advance in a political career). He was elected as consul on three occasions (70, 55, 52 BC). He celebrated three triumphs, served as a commander in the Sertorian War, the Third Servile War, the Third Mithridatic War, and in various other military campaigns. Pompey's early success led dictator Sulla to give him the cognomen Magnus – "the Great" – after his boyhood hero Alexander the Great. His adversaries gave him the nickname adulescentulus carnifex ("teenage butcher") for his ruthlessness.

The First Mithridatic War (89–85 BC) was a large conflict in Anatolia and ancient Greece that opposed the Roman Republic and the Pontic kingdom ruled by Mithridates VI Eupator. Although the Roman general Sulla was largely victorious on the battlefield, factional struggle in Rome forced him to end the war on a precarious stalemate.

The war began after more than a decade of geopolitical manoeuvring by Mithridates, who managed to considerably extend his realm despite constant Roman attempts to restrain him. In 90 BC, a Roman delegation headed by Manius Aquillius provoked Mithridates into war, as Aquillius hoped to receive its command. The following year, Mithridates rapidly captured the Roman province of Asia, exploiting local resentment of Roman tax collectors to massacre the Roman settlers. Taken by surprise while it was fighting a large revolt of its allies in Italy, Rome was initially unable to respond. This allowed Mithridates to encourage more defections from Greek cities, most notably Athens, where he installed the tyrant Aristion.

The princeps senatus (pl. principes senatus), in English the leader of the senate, was the first member by precedence on the membership rolls of the Roman Senate. Although officially out of the cursus honorum and possessing no imperium, this office conferred prestige on the senator holding it.

The position was created in the first half of the third century BC and retained its prominence for two centuries. The principes were often the most famous Roman politicians of the period, such Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Scipio Africanus, and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It lost its importance after the reforms of the dictator Sulla in 82–80 BC, but might have been temporarily restored for Cicero, its possible last incumbent during the struggle between Mark Antony and the Senate in 43 BC. The Roman emperors merged the princeps senatus' prerogatives with their own, although there are occasional mentions of distinctive principes during the later Empire.

The March on Rome of 88 BC was a coup d'état by the consul of the Roman Republic Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who seized power against his enemies Marius and Sulpicius, after they had ousted him from Rome. It was the first time in Roman history that a general ordered his army to march against the Republic.

In 88 BC, Sulla was elected consul and given the command of the war against the king of Pontus Mithridates, who had recently invaded the Roman province of Asia. The same year, Sulla and his colleague Quintus Pompeius Rufus opposed the attempt of the tribune of the plebs Publius Sulpicius to enrol the Italians who received the Roman citizenship at the end of the Social War (91–87 BC). To bypass the consuls' opposition, Sulpicius sought the support of the popular Gaius Marius, who had already been consul six times. Marius demanded for his help that Sulpicius pass a law transferring Sulla's command to him. Using armed gangs to intimidate the tribal assembly, Sulpicius removed Pompeius' consulship and forced Sulla to flee from Rome, after which he enrolled the Italians and gave the Mithridatic command to Marius.

Sulla's civil war was fought between the Roman general Sulla and his opponents, the Cinna-Marius faction (usually called the Marians or the Cinnans after their former leaders Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna), in the years 83–82 BC. The war ended with a decisive battle just outside Rome itself. After the war the victorious Sulla made himself dictator of the Roman Republic.

Sulla's proscription was a reprisal campaign by the Roman proconsul and later dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to eliminate his enemies in the aftermath of his victory in the civil war of 83–82 BC.

Following his victory at the battle of the Colline Gate, Sulla wanted to take his revenge against the former supporters of Marius and Cinna, who had declared him a public enemy in 87 BC. After having obtained a positive vote from a popular assembly, he published two lists with the names of his enemies among senators and equites, the two tiers of the Roman aristocracy. The lists contained 520 names, of which 75 are known. Those on the lists had their lives and property forfeit; rewards were given to those who assassinated the victims. Several henchmen, as well prominent politicians who supported Sulla, massively profited from the proscription, collecting bounties and receiving seized properties at concessionary prices.

The constitutional reforms of Sulla were a series of laws enacted by the Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla between 82 and 80 BC, reforming the constitution of the Roman Republic in a revolutionary way.

In the decades before Sulla had become dictator, Roman politics became increasingly violent. Shortly before Sulla's first consulship, the Romans fought the bloody Social War against their Italian allies, victorious mostly due to their immediate concession on the Italians' war goal of gaining Roman citizenship. Sulla's dictatorship followed more domestic unrest after the war and was a culmination in this trend for violence, with his leading an army on Rome for the second time in a decade and purging his opponents from the body politic in bloody proscriptions.