Elon Musk is wrong. America doesn’t need a modern-day Sulla.

World’s richest person, engineer and successful business mogul, Elon Musk is a modern-day renaissance man. In some ways, he’s the embodiment of the American dream—being an immigrant with an entrepreneurial spirit who has achieved great things.

While Musk has had plenty of million-dollar ideas and has a knack for mastering whatever he puts his mind to, he’s certainly not infallible. In fact, as is evident from a recent Twitter exchange, ancient Roman history might not be his forte.

“In the days of the Roman Republic, Senatorial families were oft paid patronage by foreign kings. A family which had fallen on hard times was not expensive to retain yet could yield immense returns when Rome was persuaded to intervene on the king’s behalf,” Tweeted David Sacks along with an article suggesting that the Biden family has accepted bribes.

Sacks’ point is pretty clear. He believes that some American political leaders are acting like corrupt Roman senators from the waning days of the Roman Republic. Musk responded to Sacks, writing “Perhaps we just need a modern day Sulla.” While it isn’t evident whether Musk’s endorsement of Sulla was light-hearted sarcasm or dead serious, Sulla was no hero.

As a Roman historian, I’ve written about Sulla fairly extensively, including in my first book, “Gaius Marius: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Saviour,” and I can say with certainty that Sulla isn’t someone to emulate. Rather politicians with his character should be eschewed nearly at all costs.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was an ancient Roman who proved to be an adept military commander and competent politician, but he was petty, violent and lacked scruples. In 88 BC, the Romans tasked him with leading the campaign to defeat the bellicose Pontic King known as Mithridates. This war promised to be incredibly lucrative to the Roman who won, but after raising an army and preparing to depart for the East, Sulla experienced a setback.

Legendary general and politician Gaius Marius—known as the third founder of Rome—worked within the constitutional framework to have this military command transferred to himself. This was done in a legal—albeit unusual—way, but Sulla refused to obey the law.

Instead of relinquishing his power peacefully, Sulla turned his Roman legionaries on Rome, and they entered the eternal city as an invading force. It was the first time that this had happened in Rome’s history, and it set the stage for many other civil wars. Without an army, Marius understandably fled, and once in control of the city, Sulla declared Marius and 11 of his associates public enemies and summarily condemned them to death in absentia.

With Sulla’s intimidating soldiers watching, the general had the command officially transferred back to him. Then sometime in 87 BC, Sulla set out to defeat Mithridates, and the Roman handily routed his forces. With Sulla gone, however, the Roman state turned against him—declaring him a public enemy this time. Once more, Sulla refused to accept this, and he invaded Rome a second time, which resulted in a bloody civil war. Sulla was ultimately victorious, but he was not a gracious victor.

He slaughtered thousands of soldiers who had surrendered to him, and in 82 BC, he declared himself dictator for as long as he saw fit. While in power, he initiated the proscriptions—approving the murders of anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 of his political enemies whose property was then seized. Sulla posted many of their heads around the Forum as a warning. He even had the body of Marius—who died naturally in 86 BC—exhumed so that his lackeys could abuse the corpse.

During his reign of terror, “Sulla used his unlimited power to unilaterally reform the Republic into his ideal form of government,” I previously wrote. This might be why Musk thinks a modern-day Sulla would be a benefit because he saw a dysfunctional republic in need of changes and took action, but he did it the wrong way. He ignored Rome’s constitution, invaded Rome twice and killed many thousands of people.

Whatever the case, Sulla supposedly wrote his own epitaph, which demonstrates how he embraced his tyrannical and murderous approach. “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.” Dead by 78 BC, Sulla’s example and activities were inextricably linked to a sequence of events that led to the Roman Republic’s eventual fall.

It’s obvious that Sulla isn’t a person Americans should admire. Rather Musk—and everyone else—should look to Roman senators like Cato the Younger and Marcus Tullius Cicero. While they were imperfect politicians, they were largely men of integrity who sought to preserve liberty and the Republic, and they strove to do it the right way.