that his time was come.
He hurried to Etruria, where he was joined by a party of his friends and
five hundred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans formed another army
under Quintus Sertorius, and the Samnites, who had begun the war,
overpowered the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, declaring
they would have no peace till they had destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinna
and an army were advancing on another side, and, as he was really
consul, the Senate in their distress admitted him, hoping that he would
stop the rest; but when he marched in and seated himself again in the
chair of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in rags.

[Illustration: ISLAND ON THE COAST.]

They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was, beginning with the
consul, Caius Octavius, who had disdained to flee, and whose head was
severed from his body and displayed in the Forum, with many other
senators of the noblest blood in Rome, who had offended either Marius or
Cinna or any of their fierce followers. Marius walked along in gloomy
silence, answering no one; but his followers were bidden to spare only
those to whom he gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged the
houses, murdered many on their own account, and everything was in the
wildest uproar, till the two chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion to
restore order.

Then they named themselves consuls, without even asking for an election,
and thus Marius was seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the East
and take the command from Sulla, but his health was too much broken, and
before the year of his consulate was over he died. The last time he had
left the house, he had said to some friends that no man ought to trust
again to such a doubtful fortune as his had been; and then he took to
his bed for seven days without any known illness, and there was found
dead, so that he was thought to have starved himself to death.

Cinna put in another consul named Valerius Flaccus, and invited all the
Italians to enroll themselves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went out
to the East, meaning to take away the command from Sulla, who was
hunting Mithridates out of Greece, which he had seized and held for a
short time. But Flaccus' own army rose against him and killed him, and
Sulla, after beating Mithridates, driving him back to Pontus, and making
peace with him, was now to come home.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXV.

SULLA'S PROSCRIPTION.

88-71.

There was great f