habitants were shut up with the domestic slaves whose revolt they daily dreaded; and Messana almost fell into the hands of Athenion. In the midst of their preparations to meet the Cimbri in Gaul, the Romans sent an army of 14,000 men into Sicily under the prætor L. Lucullus, who gained a complete victory near Sciacca. But, while he neglected to follow up his success, Athenion, who had been left for dead upon the field, rejoined the remains of the army under Tryphon, and animated them to fresh resistance. The fact that such a force could be thus rallied proves the success of his previous discipline. Neither Lucullus, nor his successor C. Servilius (B.c. 102), achieved anything further; and both were prosecuted for wilful negligence. It seemed as if the island, like Hayti in modern times, were about to become an independent state of self-emancipated slaves under Athenion, who succeeded to the royal title on the death of Tryphon (B.c. 102). At length the Romans made efforts commensurate with the danger. Manius Aquillius, who had distinguished himself under Marius in Gaul, was elected as his colleague in the consulship, and appointed to the province of Sicily (B.c. 101). It took him two years of an incessant and exterminating war to subdue the insurrection. Athenion is said to have fallen in battle by the hand of Aquillius. The prisoners were sent to Rome and condemned to fight with wild beasts; but they disappointed the spectators in the Circus by falling upon one another till all were slain. In B.C. 99, after five years of war, the province was restored to tranquillity, and Aquillius returned to Rome laden with the spoils of his extortions. Such was the state of the Roman republic, when, on the first day of the first century before Christ, Caius Marius entered on his sixth consulship, with the purpose of finally overthrowing the government of the nobles. How he fell from the height on which he now stood, will be related in the next chapter; and this may be closed by referring to the great men whose entrance on the world marks the present epoch. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO was born on the 3rd of January, B.C. 106; CNEIUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS on the last day of September in the same year;* and the sixth consulship of Marius was the natal year of his illustrious nephew, who was destined to achieve the work in which he failed. CAIUS JULIUS CESAR was born on the 12th of Quinctilis, the month which was afterwards called in his honour July, B.C. 100. When Pompey is said to have been born on the 30th of September, the date is adapted to the reformed calendar which did not yet exist. The 29th was the last day of September. T. Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, was born in B.C. 109. CHAPTER XXXIII. FIRST PERIOD OF CIVIL WARS.-MARIUS AND SULLA. B.C. 100 TO B. C. 78. "The ROMAN, when his burning heart His only glory was that hour Of self-upheld, abandon'd power."-BYRON. OF MARIUS IS HONOURED AS A SECOND CAMILLUS HIS DEFECTS-HE CREATES A STANDING OP ADVENTURES OF MARIUS-PROCEEDINGS OF SULLA CINNA ELECTED CONSUL-SULLA DEPARTS FOR ASIA ATTEMPT AT A COUNTER-REVOLUTION-CINNA DRIVEN OUT OF ROME-HE COLLECTS AN ARMY RETURN OF MARIUS TO ITALY-SIEGE AND CAPITULATION OF ROME-MASSACRE OF THE OPTIMATES-SEVENTH CONSULSHIP OF MARIUS -THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR CHARACTER OF MITHRIDATES VI.AFFAIRS OF CAPPADOCIA AND BITHYNIA-INVASION OF ASIA, AND MASSACRE OF THE ITALIANS -INSURRECTION OF GREECE SULLA LANDS IN EPIRUS, TAKES ATHENS, AND DEFEATS ARCHELAUS-PEACE WITH MITHRIDATES-THE CIVIL WAR EXTENDS TO ASIA -DEATHS OF FLACCUS AND FIMBRIA-SULLA RETURNS TO ITALY-GOVERNMENT AND DEATH OF CINNA-PREPARATIONS FOR WAR-SULLA DEFEATS NORBANUS-IS JOINED BY POMPEY AND OTHER LEADERS OF THE OPTIMATES-MARIUS THE YOUNGER AND PAPIRIUS CARBO-DEFEAT OF MARIUS-MASSACRE AT ROME-SULLA DEFEATS THE SAMNITES BEFORE THE COLLINE GATE-DEATH OF MARIUS-AUTOCRACY OF SULLATHE FIRST GREAT PROSCRIPTION-TRIUMPH, DICTATORSHIP, AND LEGISLATION OF SULLA HIS RETIREMENT, DEATH, AND FUNERAL. SINCE the day when Camillus, having rescued the city from the Gauls, consecrated the restored harmony between the orders of the state, no Roman had occupied a prouder position than Caius Marius, when he celebrated his double triumph (B.c. 101). Not only had he saved Rome: he was confessed to be the only man who could have saved her. In the libations at banquets his name was coupled with the gods, and men called him the third founder of Rome. While family legends invested Camillus with the glory VOL. III. G of that deliverance, which had in fact been purchased by a heavy ransom, and which secured only the retreat of the invaders, Marius had annihilated one barbarian host on its march to cross the Alps, and a second on the soil of Italy itself. But he was utterly destitute of those qualities which gave the ancient hero the right to set up the altar of Concord, the "ingenium civile," which the old Roman aristocracy, with all its faults, so conspicuously possessed. His long military career had made him almost a stranger at Rome, and his blunt nature was uncongenial with the society to the head of which he had now risen. His inability to converse in Greek, and his impatience of Greek plays, his growing addiction to deep drinking and the still more unpardonable fault of keeping a bad cook, and his contempt for official etiquette, exposed him to sarcasms, which were envenomed by his arrogance in prosperity. He was wont to compare his marches from Africa to Gaul, and from Gaul to Italy, to the processions of Bacchus from continent to continent, and he had a cup made after the model of that which the Greek poet calls "the shield of Dionysus." Nor was he endowed with the eloquence which at Rome commanded the respect of all parties; and he seems to have been alike ignorant of legal and political culture. This personal severance from the class among which he remained a stranger, after he had risen to its ranks, confirmed his hostility to their vices of corruption and extravagance, and threw him entirely into the arms of the people, who already idolized him for having humbled the oligarchy in conquering Jugurtha and the barbarians. The peculiar position in which he was thus placed, acting upon a nature undisciplined by polite culture, will go far to account for the horrors which marked the last period of his career. His military work being finished, he was now expected to complete the victory of the people over the Optimates, and he seemed to be furnished with an irresistible force in the new standing army which his changes had created. How little he was likely to be restrained from its use by constitutional scruples he had already shown, when he excused the act of giving the Roman franchise to two Italian cohorts, as the reward of their bravery at the Raudine plain, by declaring that he could not hear the laws amidst the din of arms. "If once, in more important questions, the interest of the army and that of the general should concur to produce unconstitutional demands, who could be security that then other laws would not cease to be heard? They had now the standing army, the soldier-class, the body-guard (or privileged prætorian cohort). As in the civil con stitution, so also in the military, all the pillars of the future monarchy were already in existence: the monarch alone was wanting. When the twelve eagles circled round the Palatine Hill, they ushered in the kings; the new eagle which Caius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed the advent of the Emperors." (Mommsen.) The time, however, had not yet come; public feeling would not suffer the laws to be silenced by the sword within Rome itself; and perhaps Marius abstained from the attempt through underrating the constitutional power still wielded by the Senate. He disbanded his army, as usual, after his triumph, and threw himself upon the support of the popular party and its leaders. Both had deteriorated since the fall of Caius Gracchus. The patriotic fervour which hailed the Sempronian reforms had degenerated, from causes which our narrative has developed, into hatred and contempt for the nobility. The popular leaders were no longer men who, like the Gracchi, had long pondered over the intolerable evils, which they felt an irresistible call to combat. They were either novices in political life, whose popular zeal soon subsided into a conservative reaction, like the tribune C. Memmius and the orator L. Crassus, both of whom had now gone over to the government; or adventurers who played the game of the demagogue with the rashness of men who had none but the last stake to lose. Such were Caius Servilius Glaucia, a shameless but witty mob orator, whom Cicero calls the Roman Hyperbolus, and the abler and more respectable L. Appuleius Saturninus, the most vehement opponent of the order from whom he had received a gross insult in his quæstorship. As tribune in B.c. 103, Saturninus had carried the bill for prosecuting Cæpio, and had mainly contributed to the re-election of Marius, with whom both he and Glaucia had the fellow-feeling of personal enmity to Metellus Numidicus. In the elections for B.C. 100, the coalition formed in order to secure the consulship for Marius, the prætorship for Glaucia, and a second tribuneship for Saturninus, had been successful, by bribery and open violence,* against the opposition of the Optimates, who put forward Metellus against Marius; and the time had now come both to revenge themselves and satisfy the popular demands. Saturninus proposed an Agrarian Law, to Nonius, the candidate of the Senate for the tribunate, was murdered on the eve of the election by a band composed chiefly, it was alleged, of the discharged soldiers of Marius. Some say that he was actually elected, and that Saturninus was chosen to fill the vacancy by a packed meeting called very early on the following morning. confer on the soldiers of Marius, Italians as well as Romans, the lands of which the Cimbri had obtained possession in Gaul, to devote to it the plundered treasures of the temple at Tolosa, which Cæpio and his associates had been sentenced to refund, and to place the distribution in the hands of Marius, whose continued re-election to the consulship was doubtless contemplated. In order to carry the measure, the people were bribed with a bill for a new distribution of corn at a nominal price which would have caused a national bankruptcy; an extension of judicial power was offered, to prevent the Equites from making common cause with the Senate; and the proposal to overawe the latter by the prospective sentence of expulsion and a heavy fine against any senator who refused to take an oath of obedience within five days, was expressly designed to secure the ruin of Metellus. A contest ensued, such as had never been seen in the Comitium. When the opposing tribunes uttered their veto, Saturninus ordered the voting to go on. When the Senate sent a messenger to say that thunder had been heard-a portent which always dissolved the assembly -they were told to keep quiet, or hail would follow. The command of the prætor Cæpio to the city bands to disperse the meeting was the signal for bringing forward the force which had been provided for such an event in the armed soldiers of Marius, and so the laws were carried. Saturninus now called the Senators to the Rostra to swear obedience to measures carried thus manifestly by means that made them null and void. Even Marius made the reservation, that he would obey the Appuleian laws so far as they were valid, and the rest of the Senate followed his example. Metellus alone refused; and the next day he was dragged from his seat in the Senate by order of the tribune. Not content with this humiliation, Saturninus proposed the exile of Metellus, who retired privately from the city, declining the offers of his friends to protect him by force. Of the tribune's other measures for carrying out the Gracchan scheme of colonization it is needless to speak, since all the Appuleian laws shared the fate of their author. With the political indecision that so often marks the mere soldier, Marius had kept aloof from these scenes of illegal violence, and he soon came to an open rupture with his associates. They found it necessary to pursue their headlong course without him. In spite of his remonstrances, Saturninus again offered himself for the tribuneship, and Glaucia, disregarding the interval of two years which the law demanded after the prætorship, came forward for the consulship. The candidates of the opposite party were |