paign, to find himself neglected and forgotten. To these
discontents were added the distress of debtors, who, amid the financial
troubles of the war, were unable to pay the interest on their debts, and
were yet inexorably pressed by creditors.

(M971) It was then, in this state of fermentation and demoralization, that
the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus proposed that every senator who owed
more than two thousand denarii (L82) should forfeit his seat in the
Senate; that burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts should have
liberty to return home; and that the new burgesses should be distributed
among all the tribes, in which the freed men should also have the
privilege of voting. These proposals, although made by a patrician, met
with the greatest opposition from the Senate, but were passed amid riots
and tumults. Sulla was on the best terms with the Senate, and Sulpicius
feared that he might return from his camp at Nola, and take vengeance for
these popular measures. The tribune, therefore, conceived the plan of
taking the command from Sulla, who was then consul, and transfer it upon
Marius, who was also to conduct the war against Mithridates, in Asia.

(M972) Sulla disobeyed the mandate, and marched to Rome with his
army--little more than a body of mercenaries devoted to him. In his eyes,
the sovereign Roman citizens were a rabble, and Rome itself a city without
a garrison. Sulla had an army of thirty-five thousand men, and before the
Romans could organize resistance he appeared at the gate, and crossed the
sacred boundary which the law had forbidden war to enter. In a few hours
Sulla was the absolute master of Rome. Marius and Sulpicius fled. It was
the conservative party which exchanged the bludgeon for the sword. Sulla
at once made null the Sulpician laws, punished their author and his
adherents, as Sulpicius had feared. The gray-haired conqueror of the
Cimbri fled, and found his way to the coast and embarked on a
trading-vessel, but the timid mariners put him ashore, and Marius stole
along the beach with his pursuers in the rear. He was found in a marsh
concealed in reeds and mud, seized and imprisoned by the people of
Minturnae, and a Cimbrian slave was sent to put him to death, The ax,
however, fell from his hands when the old hero demanded in a stern voice
if he dared to kill Gaius Marius. The magistrates of the town, ashamed,
then loosed his fetters, gave him a vessel, and sent him to AEnaria
(Ischia). There,