nce, but effective and even dreaded by
reason of his pungent wit; and his better and abler associate, Lucius
Appuleius Saturninus, who even according to the accounts of his enemies
was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by
motives of vulgar selfishness. When he was quaestor, the charge of the
importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been
withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on
account of maladministration, as in order to confer this--just at that
time popular--office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus
Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of
the ruling families. This mortification had driven the aspiring and
sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition; and as tribune of
the people in 651 he repaid what he had received with interest.
One scandalous affair had at that time followed hard upon another.
He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome
by the envoys of king Mithradates--these revelations, compromising in
the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his
life. He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus
Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept
him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without
bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus--the expulsion
with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of
the revision of the senatorial roll--had only miscarried through the
remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus. Saturninus mainly had
carried that exceptional commission against Caepio and his associates(6)
in spite of the most vehement resistance by the government party; and in
opposition to the same he had carried the keenly-contested re-election
of Marius as consul for 652. Saturninus was decidedly the most
energetic enemy of the senate and the most active and eloquent leader
of the popular party since Gaius Gracchus; but he was also violent
and unscrupulous beyond any of his predecessors, always ready to
descend into the street and to refute his antagonist with blows
instead of words.

Such were the two leaders of the so-called popular party, who now made
common cause with the victorious general. It was natural that they
should do so; their interests and aims coincided, and even in the
earlier candidatures of Marius Saturninus at l