portents in his case. Now if they had
befallen him when a private citizen, they would have pertained to him
alone, but since he was consul they had a bearing on all alike. They
included the following incidents: the figure of the Mother of the Gods on
the Palatine formerly facing the east turned around of its own accord
to the west; that of Minerva held in honor near Mutina, where the most
fighting was going on, sent forth after this a quantity of blood and
milk; furthermore the consuls took their departure just before the Feriae
Latinae; and there is no case where this happened that the forces fared
well. So at this time, too, both the consuls and a vast multitude of the
people perished, some immediately and some later, and also many of the
knights and senators, including the most prominent. For in the first
place the battles, and in the second place the assassinations at home
which occurred again as in the Sullan regime, destroyed all the flower of
them except those actually concerned in the murders.

[-34-] Responsibility for these evils rested on the senators themselves.
For whereas they ought to have set at their head some one man of superior
judgment and to have cooeperated with him continuously, they failed to do
this, but made proteges of a few whom they strengthened against the
rest, and later undertook to overthrow these favorites as well, and
consequently they found no one a friend but all hostile. The comparative
attitude of men toward those who have injured them and toward their
benefactors is different, for they remember a grudge even against their
wills but willingly forget to be thankful. This is partly because they
disdain to appear to have been kindly treated by any persons, since
they will seem to be the weaker of the two, and partly because they are
irritated at the idea that they will be thought to have been injured by
anybody with impunity, since that will imply cowardice on their part.
So those senators by not taking up with some one person, but attaching
themselves to one and another in turn, and voting and doing now something
for them, now something against them, suffered much because of them
and much also at their hands. All the leaders had one purpose in the
war,--the abolition of the popular power and the setting up of a
sovereignty. Some were fighting to see whose slaves they should be, and
others to see who should be their master; and so both of them equally
wrought havoc, and each of them wo