dients which an honourable man could not approve, but without which
in fact the object of their efforts could not be attained, he attempted,
in the fashion usual with men whose ideas of political morality are
confused, to wash his hands of participation in those crimes and at the
same time to profit by their results. There is a story that the general
once conducted secret negotiations in two different rooms of his house,
with Saturninus and his partisans in the one, and with the deputies of
the oligarchy in the other, talking with the former of striking a blow
against the senate, and with the latter of interfering against the
revolt, and that under a pretext which was in keeping with the anxiety
of the situation he went to and fro between the two conferences--a story
as certainly invented, and as certainly appropriate, as any incident in
Aristophanes. The ambiguous attitude of Marius became notorious in the
question of the oath. At first he seemed as though he would himself
refuse the oath required by the Appuleian laws on account of the
informalities that had occurred at their passing, and then swore it with
the reservation, "so far as the laws were really valid"; a reservation
which annulled the oath itself, and which of course all the senators
likewise adopted in swearing, so that by this mode of taking the oath
the validity of the laws was not secured, but on the contrary was for
the first time really called in question.

The consequences of this behaviour--stupid beyond parallel--on the part
of the celebrated general soon developed themselves. Saturninus and
Glaucia had not undertaken the revolution and procured for Marius
the supremacy of the state, in order that they might be disowned and
sacrificed by him; if Glaucia, the favourite jester of the people, had
hitherto lavished on Marius the gayest flowers of his jovial eloquence,
the garlands which he now wove for him were by no means redolent of
roses and violets. A total rupture took place, by which both parties
were lost; for Marius had not a footing sufficiently firm singly to
maintain the colonial law which he had himself called in question and
to possess himself of the position which it assigned to him, nor were
Saturninus and Glaucia in a condition to continue on their own account
the work which Marius had begun.

Saturninus Isolated
Saturninus Assailed and Overpowered

But the two demagogues were so compromised that they could not recede;
they had