ery of the
world. His mind was excited, too, in respect to Sylla, whom he had not
yet reached or subdued, but who was still prosecuting his war against
Mithridates. Marius had had him pronounced by the Senate an enemy to his
country, and was meditating plans to reach him in his distant province,
considering his triumph incomplete as long as his great rival was at
liberty and alive. The sickness cut short these plans, but it only
inflamed to double violence the excitement and the agitations which
attended them.

[Sidenote: Marius delirious.]
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.]

As the dying tyrant tossed restlessly upon his bed, it was plain that
the delirious ravings which he began soon to utter were excited by the
same sentiments of insatiable ambition and ferocious hate whose calmer
dictates he had obeyed when well. He imagined that he had succeeded in
supplanting Sylla in his command, and that he was himself in Asia at the
head of his armies. Impressed with this idea, he stared wildly around;
he called aloud the name of Mithridates; he shouted orders to imaginary
troops; he struggled to break away from the restraints which the
attendants about his bedside imposed, to attack the phantom foes which
haunted him in his dreams. This continued for several days, and when at
last nature was exhausted by the violence of these paroxysms of phrensy,
the vital powers which had been for seventy long years spending their
strength in deeds of selfishness, cruelty, and hatred, found their work
done, and sunk to revive no more.

[Sidenote: Return of Sylla.]
[Sidenote: Marius's son.]
[Sidenote: Proscriptions and massacres of Sylla.]

Marius left a son, of the same name with himself, who attempted to
retain his father's power; but Sylla, having brought his war with
Mithridates to a conclusion, was now on his return from Asia, and it was
very evident that a terrible conflict was about to ensue. Sylla advanced
triumphantly through the country, while Marius the younger and his
partisans concentrated their forces about the city, and prepared for
defense. The people of the city were divided, the aristocratic faction
adhering to the cause of Sylla, while the democratic influences sided
with Marius. Political parties rise and fall, in almost all ages of the
world, in alternate fluctuations, like those of the tides. The faction
of Marius had been for some time in the ascendency, and it was now its
turn to fall. Sylla found, therefore, as he adv