Faustus Cornelius Sulla (senator)

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Faustus Cornelius Sulla (81 BC-46 BC) was a Roman senator. Faustus was eldest surviving son of the Dictator of Rome Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Cecilia Metella (4th wife), born in Arrentium (another source states he was born shortly before his father's consulship in 88 BC, in Greece where his mother had fled between 86 and 81 BC).

Faustus Cornelius Sulla was the head of the branch of the Patrician family Cornelius cognimated Sulla, a family consisting only of himself, and his cousin Publius Cornelius Sulla, adherent to Faustus' nephew by marriage Julius Caesar. As a member of one of the most ancient patrician families, the Cornelii, and the son of the great dictator, promising things were prophesied for the young Sulla, doubly so as, after his father's death in 78 BC, he and his twin sister Fausta were brought up by his guardian, his father's friend Lucullus.

Faustus married Pompeia Magna, daughter of the notable Pompey. Faustus accompanied Pompey into Asia, and became the first to climb over the walls of the Temple of Jerusalem in 63 BC. He was quaestor in 54 BC. The senate commissioned him to rebuild the Curia Hostilia in 52 BC which had been burned down after the riots which followed the murder of Clodius. After that the Curia was known as the Curia Cornelia. Faustus was at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, joining the leaders of his party in Africa subsequently.

His career as an advocate was cut short, however, by the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. He, as Lucullus' ward and Pompey's son-in-law, sided with the former. After the Battle of Thapsus, he tried to escape to Mauretania, but was caught by P. Sittius and brought to Julius Caesar, where he was killed in a minor skirmish with the Caesarian troops in 46 BC.

With Pompeia Magna he had at least two children.^[1] From one of them is presumably descended Faustus (II) Cornelius Sulla, suffect consul in 31 AD.

[edit] References

• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography VII by W. Smith & C. Anthon

1. ^ Ps.-Caesar: De bello Africo 95: Pompeiae cum Fausti liberis.