en structure
of the state. He remained--where birth and culture placed him--in the
circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual routine of
offices; he had no occasion to exert himself, and left such exertion
to the political working bees, of whom there was in truth no lack.
Thus in 647, on the allotment of the quaestorial places, accident
brought him to Africa to the headquarters of Gaius Marius.
The untried man-of-fashion from the capital was not very well received
by the rough boorish general and his experienced staff. Provoked
by this reception Sulla, fearless and skilful as he was, rapidly
made himself master of the profession of arms, and in his daring
expedition to Mauretania first displayed that peculiar combination
of audacity and cunning with reference to which his contemporaries
said of him that he was half lion half fox, and that the fox in him
was more dangerous than the lion. To the young, highborn, brilliant
officer, who was confessedly the real means of ending the vexatious
Numidian war, the most splendid career now lay open; he took part
also in the Cimbrian war, and manifested his singular talent for
organization in the management of the difficult task of providing
supplies; yet even now the pleasures of life in the capital had far
more attraction for him than war or even politics. During his
praetorship, which office he held in 661 after having failed in a
previous candidature, it once more chanced that in his province,
the least important of all, the first victory over king Mithradates
and the first treaty with the mighty Arsacids, as well as their first
humiliation, occurred. The Civil war followed. It was Sulla
mainly, who decided the first act of it--the Italian insurrection--
in favour of Rome, and thus won for himself the consulship by his
sword; it was he, moreover, who when consul suppressed with
energetic rapidity the Sulpician revolt. Fortune seemed to make
it her business to eclipse the old hero Marius by means of this
younger officer. The capture of Jugurtha, the vanquishing of
Mithradates, both of which Marius had striven for in vain, were
accomplished in subordinate positions by Sulla: in the Social war,
in which Marius lost his renown as a general and was deposed,
Sulla established his military repute and rose to the consulship;
the revolution of 666, which was at the same time and above all a
personal conflict between the two generals, ended with the outlawry
and fli