o anticipate the inevitable
condemnation opened his veins, and at the altar of the Supreme
Jupiter whose priest he was, after laying aside the priestly
headband as the religious duty of the dying Flamen required,
breathed his last; and still more the death of Quintus Catulus
(consul in 652), once in better days the associate of the most
glorious victory and triumph of that same Marius who now had no
other answer for the suppliant relatives of his aged colleague
than the monosyllabic order, "He must die."

The Last Days of Marius

The originator of all these outrages was Gaius Marius.
He designated the victims and the executioners--only in exceptional
cases, as in those of Merula and Catulus, was any form of law
observed; not unfrequently a glance or the silence with which he
received those who saluted him formed the sentence of death, which
was always executed at once. His revenge was not satisfied even
with the death of his victim; he forbade the burial of the dead
bodies: he gave orders--anticipated, it is true, in this respect
by Sulla--that the heads of the senators slain should be fixed to
the rostra in the Forum; he ordered particular corpses to be dragged
through the Forum, and that of Gaius Caesar to be stabbed afresh
at the tomb of Quintus Varius, whom Caesar presumably had once
impeached;(6) he publicly embraced the man who delivered to him
as he sat at table the head of Antonius, whom he had been with
difficulty restrained from seeking out in his hiding-place,
an slaying with his own hand. His legions of slaves, and in
particular a division of Ardyaeans,(7) chiefly served as his
executioners, and did not neglect, amidst these Saturnalia of
their new freedom, to plunder the houses of their former masters
and to dishonour and murder all whom they met with there. His own
associates were in despair at this insane fury; Sertorius adjured
the consul to put a stop to it at any price, and even Cinna was
alarmed. But in times such as these were, madness itself becomes
a power; man hurls himself into the abyss, to save himself from
giddiness. It was not easy to restrain the furious old man and
his band, and least of all had Cinna the courage to do so; on the
contrary, he chose Marius as his colleague in the consulship for
the next year. The reign of terror alarmed the more moderate of
the victors not much less than the defeated party; the capitalists
alone were not displeased to see that another hand lent its