Probably the pertinent bit: “Sulla revived the office of dictator, which had been dormant since the Second Punic War, over a century before. He used his powers to purge his opponents (“Sulla’s proscription”), and reform Roman constitutional laws, to restore the primacy of the Senate and limit the power of the tribunes of the plebs. Resigning his dictatorship in 79 BC, Sulla retired to private life and died the following year. Later political leaders such as Julius Caesar followed the precedent set by Sulla with his military coup to attain political power through force.”

Dude made himself dictator, reformed laws, purged his political rivals then gave it all up to go live in his villa once he felt he’d achieved his goals of putting the republic back on the rails. Julius Caesar later remarked that the one mistake Sulla made was that he gave up the power he had seized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla

“Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf

There were humans who lived through both the final fall of the (eastern half of) the Roman Empire (May 29, 1453) and the European discovery of the Americas (October 12, 1492). The time between these two critical milestones in European history seems like it should have been much longer than 39 years, 4 months, and 13 days.