The Historians' History of the World 05

For a few days Cinna and Marius allowed these ruffians to riot unchecked. At last they deemed it necessary to arrest their career of systematic murder and pillage. Sertorius was charged with the task of repressing them with a military force, and the assassins themselves were made to feel the edge of the sword they had so long wielded with impunity. But the new rulers of the city continued to destroy by the forms of judicial process the victims who had escaped tumultuary violence. Cinna could not pardon the illustrious Merula the crime of having succeeded to the consulship of which he had been himself deprived. The flamen of Jupiter opened his own veins, after a solemn declaration in writing that he had previously laid aside his tufted cap of office, that he might not involve his country in the guilt of sacrilege. Catulus, the noble colleague of Marius in the last battle against the Cimbri, threw himself on his knees, and vainly begged for life. “You must die,” was the only response vouchsafed him; and he was compelled to suffocate himself with charcoal in a newly plastered chamber.

[87-86 B.C.]

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Cinna and Marius now began to reorganise the government of the state. Not deigning even to summon the assembly of the tribes, they nominated themselves by their own authority to the highest magistracy. Marius became consul for the seventh time. At the age of seventy, with his health broken and strength failing, which had borne him through so many fatigues, he reached the summit of his aspirations and accomplished the prediction, the assurance of which had nerved his courage in such dire vicissitudes. Nevertheless, while Cinna reserved for himself the administration of affairs in Italy, the old general was destined to resume the command of the legions, and wrest from Sulla the conduct of the war against Mithridates.

Sulla, indeed, it was already reported, had driven the king of Pontus to sue for peace, and was about to return and measure himself once more with the usurpers of the commonwealth. Marius, upon whom the auguries of his young rival’s ultimate success had made no less impression than the prognostications of his own triumphs, shuddered at the approaching contest, in which he felt himself doomed to be worsted. Harassed by terrific dreams, or worn out by nightly watchings, he sought escape from his own thoughts by constant intoxication.[91] Wearied with life, he could hardly wish to protract the existence which had become so intolerable a burden to him. One evening, it was related, while walking with some friends after supper, he fell to talking of the incidents of his life, beginning with his boyhood; and after enumerating his triumphs and his perils, no man of sense, he said, ought to trust fortune again after such alternations; upon which he took leave of his friends, and keeping his bed for seven days successively, thus died. We are tempted to suspect that, impelled by disgust and despair, he shortened his last days by suicide. The deceased consul’s obsequies were celebrated with pomp, and accompanied, if we may believe the story told us, with a frightful ceremony. In ancient times, according to tradition, it had been customary to slaughter slaves or captives on the tomb of the departed hero; but if any such usage had actually prevailed among the Romans, it had been long softened at least into an exhibition of gladiatorial combats.

On this occasion, however, the tribune Flavius Fimbria determined to immolate a noble victim to the manes of the dead. He therefore caused the venerable Mucius Scævola, the chief of Roman jurists, to be led before the pyre, and bade the sacrificer plunge a sword into his bosom. The wounded old man was allowed to be carried off and tended by his friends, under whose care he recovered. But when Fimbria heard that he still lived, he brought him to the bar of judgment, and being asked what charge he had against him, coldly replied, “Having escaped with life.” The story thus told by Valerius Maximus is founded, perhaps, on a misapprehension of a passage in Cicero, who only says that Fimbria required Scævola to be wounded.[92] If the tribune had intended to make a sacrifice, he would hardly have suffered it to remain incomplete. Only eleven years before, human sacrifices had been abolished by a decree of the senate. But in many expiatory and lustral rites, the shedding of a drop of blood was retained as a type of the ancient usage with which it has been frequently confounded. It may be added, that the historians have passed over this shocking occurrence in total silence; and the actual death of Scævola will be related at a later period.b

IHNE’S ESTIMATE OF MARIUS