hill, they ushered in the reign of the Kings;
the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed
the near advent of the Emperors.

Political Projects of Marius

There is hardly any doubt that Marius entered into the brilliant
prospects which his military and political position opened up to him.
It was a sad and troubled time. Men had peace, but they were not glad
of having it; the state of things was not now such as it had formerly
been after the first mighty onset of the men of the north on Rome, when,
so soon as the crisis was over, all energies were roused anew in the
fresh consciousness of recovered health, and had by their vigorous
development rapidly and amply made up for what was lost. Every one felt
that, though able generals might still once and again avert immediate
destruction, the commonwealth was only the more surely on the way to
ruin under the government of the restored oligarchy; but every one felt
also that the time was past when in such cases the burgess-body came to
its own help, and that there was no amendment so long as the place of
Gaius Gracchus remained empty. How deeply the multitude felt the blank
that was left after the disappearance of those two illustrious youths
who had opened the gates to revolution, and how childishly in fact it
grasped at any shadow of a substitute, was shown by the case of the
pretended son of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although the very sister of
the two Gracchi charged him with fraud in the open Forum, was yet chosen
by the people in 655 as tribune solely on account of his usurped name.
In the same spirit the multitude exulted in the presence of Gaius
Marius; how should it not? He, if any one, seemed the right man--he
was at any rate the first general and the most popular name of his time,
confessedly brave and upright, and recommended as regenerator of the
state by his very position aloof from the proceedings of party--how
should not the people, how should not he himself, have held that he was
so! Public opinion as decidedly as possible favoured the opposition.
It was a significant indication of this, that the proposal to have the
vacant stalls in the chief priestly colleges filled up by the burgesses
instead of the colleges themselves--which the government had frustrated
in the comitia in 609 by the suggestion of religious scruples--was
carried in 650 by Gnaeus Domitius without the senate having been able
even to venture a serious resistance. On