pulace to assail him
with satirical songs; and many of the highest class were displeased at
the marriage, as if they did not think him worthy of such a wife, whom
they had judged to be worthy of the consulship, as Titus Livius[188]
remarks. Caecilia was not the only wife that Sulla had. When he was a
very young man he married Ilia, who bore him a daughter; his second
wife was AElia; and his third wife was Cloelia, whom he divorced on the
ground of barrenness, yet in a manner honourable to the lady, with an
ample testimony to her virtues and with presents. But as he married
Metella a few days after, it was believed that his alleged ground of
divorce was merely a pretext. However, he always paid great respect to
Metella, which induced the Romans, when they wished to recall from
exile the partisans of Marius, and Sulla refused his assent, to apply
to Metella to intercede for them. After the capture of Athens also, it
was supposed that he treated the citizens with more severity, because
they had cast aspersions upon Metella from their walls. But of this
hereafter.

VII. Sulla looked on the consulship as only a small matter compared
with what he expected to attain: the great object of his desires was
the command in the war against Mithridates. But he had a rival in
Marius, who was moved by an insane love of distinction and by
ambition, passions which never grow old in a man, for though he was
now unwieldy and had done no service in the late campaigns by reason
of his age, he still longed for the command in a distant war beyond
the seas. While Sulla was with the army completing some matters that
still remained to be finished, Marius kept at home and hatched that
most pestilent faction which did more mischief to Rome than all her
wars; and indeed the deity[189] showed by signs what was coming. Fire
spontaneously blazed from the wooden shafts which supported the
military standards, and was quenched with difficulty; and three crows
brought their young into the public road, and after devouring them,
carried the fragments back to their nest. The mice in a temple gnawed
the gold which was kept there, and the keeper of the temple caught one
of the mice, a female, in a trap, which produced in the trap five
young ones, and devoured three of them. But what was chief of all,
from a cloudless and clear sky there came the sound of a trumpet, so
shrill and mournful, that by reason of the greatness thereof men were
beside themselves and