m. They
appeared together at the gates of the city, and Rome capitulated.

There was a bloody score to be wiped out. Marius bears the chief blame
for the scenes which followed. Undoubtedly he was in no pleasant
humor. A price had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed,
his property had been confiscated, he himself had been chased like a
wild beast, and he had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy
when but for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the
Germans. His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused
it for party purposes. The Senate had no reason to complain of him. He
had touched none of their privileges, incapable and dishonest as he
knew them to be. His crime in their eyes had been his eminence. They
had now shown themselves as cruel as they were worthless; and if
public justice was disposed to make an end of them, he saw no cause
for interference.

Thus the familiar story repeated itself: wrong was punished by wrong,
and another item was entered on the bloody account which was being
scored up year after year. The noble lords and their friends had
killed the people in the Forum. They were killed in turn by the
soldiers of Marius. Fifty senators perished, not those who were
specially guilty, but those who were most politically marked as
patrician leaders. With them fell a thousand equites, commoners of
fortune, who had thrown in their lot with the aristocracy. From
retaliatory political revenge the transition was easy to pillage and
wholesale murder; and for many days the wretched city was made a prey
to robbers and cut-throats.

So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city
had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the year
ensuing, and a witches' prophecy was fulfilled, that Marius should
have a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun
was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a
fortnight after his inauguration, and he died in his bed on the 13th
of January, at the age of seventy-one.

"The mother of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "cast the dust of her
murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius."

JULIUS CAESAR

By E. SPENCER BEESLY, M.A.

(100-44 B.C.)

[Illustration: Julius Caesar.]

Rome solved the great political problem of the ancient world in the
best practicable, if not in the best conceivable, way. To Caesar it
fell to put the crownin