Eggplant, Peterike, Tcobb. I have written about Sulla several times.

He was the general who put down the proto-Marxist Marius, who as 7year Consul was seen as polluting Rome by granting his Latin allies citizenship in Rome.

Sulla became the first Roman Dictator — actually a position allowed in their republic — since Cincinnatus 400 years earlier. He wiped out the Marians in a civil war, and outlawed (forced into exile) all of Marius’ acolytes. Julius Caesar was one of those exiles — and by poor luck, winding up the prisoner of Silesian pirates (the subject of one of his books).

Crassus being played by Olivier was speaking the words of Hollywood. But there’s more to the irony. The script had him being prideful in the extreme in case you didn’t notice. Why would Crassus want to have troops in Rome at the very moment he had her in his grasp, don’t you see? It would have been crass — no pun intended — for him to use force when his politics had given him the power over the grateful Rome in a manner that surpassed both Sulla and Marius.

But he did not succeed in doing that, as suggested by the movie (Spartacus). He wound up plotting with Pompey and Caesar as the money man in the First Triumvirate, the famous conspiracy wherein they acted in public like adversaries, but it was kept a close secret between the three. It wasn’t until they appeared on the same stage simultaneously, backing the popular Caesar, that they revealed their pact. Too late for the republic it turned out, but not too late for republican forces to try and build an opposition. Meanwhile Crassus was killed in the far East fighting the Parthians. And Caesar defeated Pompey (who Ptolemy foolishly had murdered thinking to please Caesar). It took another 10 years or so for Caesar to discover the ides of March.

The point I wish to point out given the thoughts you’ve tossed about, was that it was the sort of thing — designing to prevent a General Marius or Sulla or Crassus or Caesar from coming to power at the head of an army — was one of the separations of power that the American founders foresaw in providing that the CIC must be a civilian while in office.

In my humble opinion, Petraeus would never be a Sulla. As revealed by his more recent activities, he’s much too much a Marius (a bureaucratic man) than an Sulla (a man of the old guard who wanted to restore the old Roman mores).