as a return to traditional Roman practice [but] many were nothing of the sort"; "Sulla was definitely not trying to 'turn back the clock', let alone to any particular period in Roman history".

The rigidly legalised constitution, based on a system of laws enforced by senatorial courts, that Sulla put forward "did not correspond to the Roman experience of a traditional republic... based on deliberation in the senate, debate in front of the people, and on elaborate rituals of compromise and consensus building in both settings". It was also