command Gnaeus
Mallius Maximus, and numerous other men of note were condemned: a
tribune of the people, who was a friend of Caepio, with difficulty
succeeded by the sacrifice of his own civic existence in saving at
least the life of the chief persons accused.(23)

Marius Commander-in-Chief

Of more importance than this measure of revenge was the question how
the dangerous war beyond the Alps was to be further carried on, and
first of all to whom the supreme command in it was to be committed.
With an unprejudiced treatment of the matter it was not difficult to
make a fitting choice. Rome was doubtless, in comparison with earlier
times, not rich in military notabilities; yet Quintus Maximus had
commanded with distinction in Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and
Quintus Minucius in the regions of the Danube, Quintus Metellus,
Publius Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Marius in Africa; and the object
proposed was not to defeat a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal, but again
to make good the often-tried superiority of Roman arms and Roman
tactics in opposition to the barbarians of the north--an object which
required no genius, but merely a stern and capable soldier. But it
was precisely a time when nothing was so difficult as the unprejudiced
settlement of a question of administration. The government was, as
it could not but be and as the Jugurthine war had already shown, so
utterly bankrupt in public opinion, that its ablest generals had to
retire in the full career of victory, whenever it occurred to an
officer of mark to revile them before the people and to get himself as
the candidate of the opposition appointed by the latter to the head of
affairs. It was no wonder that what took place after the victories of
Metellus was repeated on a greater scale after the defeats of Gnaeus
Mallius and Quintus Caepio. Once more Gaius Marius came forward, in
spite of the law which prohibited the holding of the consulship more
than once, as a candidate for the supreme magistracy; and not only was
he nominated as consul and charged with the chief command in the Gallic
war, while he was still in Africa at the head of the army there, but
he was reinvested with the consulship for five years in succession
(650-654)--in a way, which looked like an intentional mockery of
the exclusive spirit that the nobility had exhibited in reference
to this very man in all its folly and shortsightedness, but was also
unparalleled in the annals of the republic, and in fact absol