Sylla   

LUCIUS Cornelius Sylla was descended of a patrician or noble family.
Of his ancestors, Rufinus, it is said, had been consul, and incurred
a disgrace more signal than his distinction. For being found possessed
of more than ten pounds of silver plate, contrary to the law, he was
for this reason put out of the senate. His posterity continued ever
after in obscurity, nor had Sylla himself any opulent parentage. In
his younger days he lived in hired lodgings, at a low rate, which
in aftertimes was adduced against him as proof that he had been fortunate
above his quality. When he was boasting and magnifying himself for
his exploits in Libya, a person of noble station made answer, "And
how can you be an honest man, who, since the death of a father who
left you nothing, have become so rich?" The time in which he lived
was no longer an age of pure and upright manners, but had already
declined, and yielded to the appetite for riches and luxury; yet still,
in the general opinion, they who deserted the hereditary poverty of
their family were as much blamed as those who had run out a fair patrimonial
estate. And afterwards, when he had seized the power into his hands,
and was putting many to death, a freedman, suspected of having concealed
one of the proscribed, and for that reason sentenced to be thrown
down the Tarpeian rock, in a reproachful way recounted how they had
lived long together under the same roof, himself for the upper rooms
paying two thousand sesterces, and Sylla for the lower three thousand;
so that the difference between their fortunes then was no more than
one thousand sesterces, equivalent in Attic coin to two hundred and
fifty drachmas. And thus much of his early fortune.
His general personal appearance may be known by his statues; only
his blue, eyes, of themselves extremely keen and glaring, were rendered
all the more forbidding and terrible by the complexion of his face,
in which white was mixed with rough blotches of fiery red. Hence,
it is said, he was surnamed Sylla, and in allusion to it one of the
scurrilous jesters at Athens made the verse upon him-
"Sylla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal." Nor is it out of place
to make use of marks of character like these, in the case of one who
was by nature so addicted to raillery, that in his youthful obscure
years he would converse freely with players and professed jesters,
and join them in all their low pleasures. And when supreme master
of all, he was often wont to muster together the most impudent players
and stage-followers of the town, and to drink and bandy jests with
them without regard to his age or the dignity of his place, and to
the prejudice of important affairs that required his attention. When
he was once at table, it was not in Sylla's nature to admit of anything
that was serious, and whereas at other times he was a man of business
and austere of countenance, he underwent all of a sudden, at his first
entrance upon wine and good-fellowship, a total revolution, and was
gentle and tractable with common singers and dancers, and ready to
oblige any one that spoke with him. It seems to have been a sort of
diseased result of this laxity that he was so prone to amorous pleasures,
and yielded without resistance to any temptation of voluptuousness,
from which even in his old age he could not refrain. He had a long
attachment for Metrobius, a player. In his first amours, it happened
that he made court to a common but rich lady, Nicopolis by name, and
what by the air of his youth, and what by long intimacy, won so far
on her affections, that she rather than he was the lover, and at her
death she bequeathed him her whole property. He likewise inherited
the estate of a step-mother who loved him as her own son. By these
means he had pretty well advanced his fortunes.
He was chosen quaestor to Marius in his first consulship, and set
sail with him for Libya, to war upon Jugurtha. Here, in general, he
gained approbation; and more especially, by closing in dexterously
with an accidental occasion, made a friend of Bocchus, King of Numidia.
He hospitably entertained the king's ambassadors on their escape from
some Numidian robbers, and after showing them much kindness, sent
them on their journey with presents, and an escort to protect them.