he last scene in the life of Demosthenes. He wrote on a tablet that
he had taken off his official cap when opening his veins, so as to
avoid the sacrilege of a flamen of Jupiter dying with it on his head.
[Sidenote: Catulus.] Marius had behaved generously once to Q. Lutatius
Catulus, his old colleague against the Cimbri; but Catulus had helped
to drive him into exile, and there was to be no second mistake of that
sort. 'He must die,' he said, when the relatives of Catulus pleaded
for his life. It is not unlikely that disease, and drinking, and his
late hardships had made the old man insane. He had been occasionally
good-natured in former days; now he seemed to gloat in carnage. For
every sneer cast at him, for every wrong done to him in past years, he
took a horrible revenge. When Cinna had summoned him, he had said that
he would settle the question of enrolment in the tribes once for all.
He wished not to select victims, but to massacre all the leading
optimates. Sertorius begged Cinna to check the slaughter. Cinna did
try to curb the outrages of the slave bands; but he dared not break
with Marius, whom he named as joint consul with himself for the year
86. But as soon as his colleague was dead, he and Sertorius surrounded
the ruffians and killed them to a man.

[Sidenote: Death of Marius.] Marius did not live much longer. He had
had his revenge. He had gained his seventh consulship. It is said
that, telling his friends that after such vicissitudes it would be
wrong to tempt fate further, he took to his bed and after seven days
died. He drank hard, was seized with pleurisy, and in his last hours
became delirious. He fancied that he was in Asia, and by shouts and
gestures cheered on the army of his dreams, and with 'such a stern and
iron-clashing close' died January 13 or 17. He was more than seventy
years old, and had enjoyed his seventh consulship for either thirteen
or seventeen days.

Lucius Valerius Flaccus succeeded Marius as consul, and passed a
law making one-fourth of a debt legal tender for payment of it; and
probably in the same year the denarius was restored to its standard
value. A census was also held, which would include the new Italian
citizens, and Philippus, whose opposition to Drusus on this very
question had helped to kindle the Social War, was censor. [Sidenote:
Settlement of Italian disabilities by Cinna.] Cinna, as he was pledged
to do so, must have carried some measure for enrolling the Italians