{UAH} Could It Be That Most African Leaders Are Mirror Images of Lucius Cornelius Sulla?

Uganda: Could It Be That Most African Leaders Are Mirror Images of Lucius Cornelius Sulla?

BY IAN, 23 JANUARY 2014

OPINION

This is the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an Ancient Roman general and statesman. I find his life fascinating and want to share with my followers over here.

They say that he was unprepossessing and took revenge upon life for having made him at once patrician and penniless. When he conquered money, he made it serve his appetites without qualm or restraint.

He was well versed in Greek as well as Roman literature, was a discriminating collector of art (usually by military means), had the works of Aristotle brought from Athens to Rome as part of his richest spoils, and found time between war and revolution to write his memoirs "for the misguidance of posterity."

They say he was a jolly companion and generous friend, devoted to wine, women, battle and song. He lived extravagantly yet pleasure never interfered with his duties except that his conduct as a husband might have been more honorable.

He made his way rapidly especially in the army which was his happiest medium. He treated his soldiers as comrades, shared their work, their matches and their dangers.

His only effort was not to allow anyone to surpass him in wisdom or bravery. He believed in no gods but many superstitions. He was the most realistic as well as the most ruthless of the Romans.

His imagination and his feelings were always under the control of his intellect. It was said of him that he was half lion and half fox; and that the fox in him was more dangerous than the lion.

Living half the time on the battlefield, spending the last decade of his life in civil war, he nevertheless preserved his good humor to end, graced his brutalities with epigrams, filled Rome with his laughter, made 100,000 enemies, achieved all his purposes and died in bed.

After defeating the rebellious army of Marius, the senate appointed him dictator. He then issued a series of edicts designed to establish a permanently aristocratic constitution for he was certain that only a monarch or an aristocracy could administer an empire.

After two years of absolute rule, he resigned all his powers and retired to private life. He was safe for he had killed all who could be suspected of planning his assassination. So he dismissed his guards, walked unharmed in the forum and offered to give an account of his official actions to any citizen who would dare to ask for it.

Then he went to spend his last years at his villa at Cumae. Tired of war, power, and glory; tired perhaps of men, he surrounded himself with singers, dancers, actors and actresses.

Then he wrote his commentaries, hunted and fished, ate and drank to his fill. His men called him Sulla Felix because he had won every battle, known every pleasure, reached every power and lived without fear or regret.

He married five women, divorced four and made up for their inadequacies with mistresses. Before he died, he dictated his epitaph: "No friend ever served me and no enemy ever wronged me whom I have not paid in full."

What a man and what a life he led!!!

Let me hear your views of him and which LEADER RESEMBLES HIM MOST TODAY???

___________________________________

Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower