-townsman was born, and had
become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had
pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably
commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine
war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved
himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by
making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter
years to become the master of Rome.

Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of the
bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having
been elected Quaestor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with
us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quaestor he was sent to join
Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as
it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his
father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the Romans.
Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years
later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of quarrelling between
these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from
the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the
condition to which Rome had been brought, when two such men could
scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives,
friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by
those who would understand what Rome had been, what it was, and what it
was necessarily to become.

When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put
on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the
father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian allies who
were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its
bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that war. But
Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times Consul; and
he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared
that all Italy would be occupied. What was not within the power of such
a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could
prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the
mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that
General six times Consul?

Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then a
General; and b