According to Dio, Bulla Felix operated an extensive intelligence network tracking travel and transport into the port at Brundisium and out of Rome. Bulla was a sophisticated and surprisingly educated leader, which helped him organise, plan and gather information on the size of parties making trips from and into Rome and what they were carrying. His band of 600 brigands included runaway slaves who had been mistreated, and a significant number of imperial freedmen, former slaves of the emperor's household who would have been skilled or educated, and who had been cheated of their compensation. These imperial freedmen may have been ousted from privileged positions as a result of the civil wars following the death of Commodus, from which Septimius Severus had emerged to reign as emperor (193–211). Elsewhere, Dio indicates that a band of brigands with this kind of organizational capacity might also include men cashiered from the Praetorian Guard, the followers of usurpers, and those who had lost their property through confiscation during the civil wars. In Dio's view, the Severan reform of the Praetorian Guard that made it no longer a privilege of Italian youth left them at loose ends to become brigands and gladiators.