passing of the Baebian law, it was said that among all the
citizens there were only 2,000 wealthy families. And between the
years 123 and 109 B.C. four sons and probably two nephews of Quintus
Metellus gained the consulship, five of the six gained triumphs, and
one was censor, while he himself had filled all the highest offices
of the State. Thus, as Sallust says, the nobles passed on the chief
dignities from hand to hand.

There must have been many of the Gracchan party, now left without a
head, who burned for deliverance from such despicable masters. But
they were for the time disorganized and cowed. [Sidenote: Caius
Marius.] There was one man whom Scipio Aemilianus was said to have
pointed out in the Numantine war as capable, if he himself died, of
taking his place; and the rough soldier had already come forward as a
politician, on the one hand checking the optimates by protecting the
secrecy and efficiency of the ballot, and on the other defying the mob
by opposing a distribution of corn; but for the present no one could
tell how far he would or could go, and though he had already been made
praetor, the Metelli could as yet afford to despise him. The death of
Caius prolonged the Senate's misrule for twenty years. Twenty years
of shame at home and abroad--the turpitude of the Jugurthine war--a
second and more stubborn slave revolt in Sicily--the apparition of
the Northern hordes inflicting disaster after disaster upon the Roman
armies, which in 105 B.C. culminated in another and more appalling
Cannae--these things had yet to come about before the cup of the
Senate's infamy was full, and before those who had drawn the sword
against the Gracchi perished by the sword of Marius, impotent,
unpitied, and despised.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.

[Sidenote: Attalus of Pergamus.] Attalus III., the last of that
supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often
treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to
the Republic. He had begun his reign by massacring all his father's
friends and their families, and ended it as an amateur gardener and
dilettante modeller in wax; so perhaps the malice of insanity had
something to do with the bequest, if indeed it was not a forgery.
Aristonicus, a natural son of a previous king, Eumenes II., set it at
naught and aspired to the throne.

[Sidenote: Aristonicus usurps the kingdom of Pergamus.] At