n of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a
standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but
only by a king.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII.

SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.

[Sidenote: Attitude of Marius.] With such a weapon in his hand Marius
came back to Rome, intoxicated with success. He thought his marches in
two continents worthy to be compared with the progresses of Bacchus,
and had a cup made on the model of that of the god. He spoke badly; he
was easily disconcerted by the disapproval of an audience; he had no
insight into the evils, or any project for the reformation, of the
State. But the scorn of men like Metellus had made him throw himself
on the support of the people from whom he sprang; and they, idolising
him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their
natural leader, and the creator of a new era. Indeed it needed no
stimulus from without to whet his ambitious cravings. That seventh
consulship which superstition whispered would be surely his he had yet
to win; and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided
by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous
insanity. But while he hoped to use all parties for his own
advancement--a game in which he of all men was least qualified to
succeed--other and abler politicians were bent on using him for the
overthrow of the optimates.

[Sidenote: Saturninus.] The harangues of Memmius had shown that the
spirit of the Gracchi was still alive in Rome; and now Lucius Apuleius
Saturninus took up their revolutionary projects with a violence
to which they had been averse, but for which the acts of their
adversaries had become a fatal precedent. Of Saturninus himself we
do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and
a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be
scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement.
[Sidenote: Glaucia.] In something of the same relation in which
Camille Desmoulins stood to Danton, Caius Servilius Glaucia, a wit
and favourite of the people, stood towards the sombre and imperious
Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their aims by the aid of Marius.
If they are to be judged by their acts alone we can hardly condemn
them. [Sidenote: Defence of their policy.] They tried to do what the
Gracchi had attempted before them, what Drusus attempted after them,
and what, when they and Drusus had fallen, as the Gr