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Scholarship on Sulpicius Rufus has long been guided by an old paradigm of prosopography, which dictated that political events in the Roman Republic were based on long term alliances built through kinship ties and mutual ideology. While modern scholarship has changed to view Roman political alliances more fluidly, views of Sulpicius have not changed. Most scholars accept the view that Sulpicius was little more than a lackey of Marius, who switched to Marius' side after a bitter split with his former comrades, the optimates. Sulpicius' tribunate was a time of great change in Rome, at the eve of the Social War and the dawn of a new era of civil wars. Thus it is key to re-evaluate his actions and motives in light of more recent studies that give evidence of independent agency among Roman politicians, and especially among tribunes. Thus, this paper discusses the nature of power politics and the institution of the tribunate in the late Republic as well as argues that Sulpicius Rufus acted as an independent agent who made his own decisions rather than be the tool of another.