, and being introduced to
the popular assembly by one of the tribunes, he began by violent abuse
of Metellus, and ended with asking for the consulship and promising
that he would either kill Jugurtha or take him alive.

IX. Being declared consul by a great majority, he immediately set
about levying soldiers in a way contrary to law and usage, by
enrolling a great number of the poorer sort and of slaves, though
former generals had never admitted men of this kind into the army, but
had given arms, as they would anything else that was a badge of
honour, only to those who had the due qualification, inasmuch as every
soldier was thus considered to pledge his property to the State. It
was not this however which made Marius most odious, but his insolent
and arrogant expressions, which gave offence to the nobles, for he
publicly said that he considered his acquisition of the consulship a
trophy gained over the effeminacy of the noble and the rich, and that
what he could proudly show to the people was his own wounds, not the
monuments of the dead or the likenesses[68] of others. And he would
often speak of the generals who had been defeated in Libya, mentioning
by name Bestia[69] and Albinus, men of illustrious descent indeed, but
unskilled in military matters, and for want of experience
unsuccessful; and he would ask his hearers whether they did not think
that the ancestors of Bestia and Albinus would rather have left
descendants like himself, for they also had gained an honourable fame;
not by noble birth, but by their virtues and their illustrious deeds.
This was not said as a mere empty boast, nor simply because he wished
to make himself odious to the nobles; but the people, who were
delighted to hear the Senate abused, and always measured the greatness
of a man's designs by the bigness of his words, encouraged him and
urged him on not to spare the nobles if he wished to please the many.

X. When Marius had crossed over to Libya, Metellus, giving way to his
jealousy, and vexed to see the crown and the triumph, when he had
already completed the war and it only remained to seize the person of
Jugurtha, taken from him by another, a man too who had raised himself
to power by ingratitude to his benefactor, would not stay to meet
Marius, but privately left the country, and Rutilius, one of his
legati, gave up the army to the new consul. But at last retribution
for his conduct overtook Marius; for he was deprived of the glory of