138-78 B.C. page 5
This was the mythology of the
wisest of the Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge
beyond other men. Whilst the senate sat in consultation with the
soothsayers, concerning these prodigies, in the temple of Bellona, a
sparrow came flying in, before them all, with a grasshopper in its
mouth, and letting fall one part of it, flew away with the
remainder. The diviners foreboded commotions and dissensions between
the great landed proprietors and the common city populace; the latter,
like the grasshopper, being loud and talkative; while the sparrow
might represent the "dwellers in the field."
Marius had taken into alliance Sulpicius, the tribune, a man
second to none in any villainies, so that it was less the question
what others he surpassed, but rather in what respects he most
surpassed himself in wickedness. He was cruel, bold, rapacious, and in
all these points utterly shameless and unscrupulous; not hesitating to
offer Roman citizenship by public sale to freed slaves and aliens, and
to count out the price on public money-tables in the forum.
He
maintained three thousand swordsmen, and had always about him a
company of young men of the equestrian class ready for all
occasions, whom he styled his Anti-senate. Having had a law enacted,
that no senator should contract a debt of above two thousand drachmas,
he himself, after death, was found indebted three millions.
This was
the man whom Marius let in upon the Commonwealth, and who, confounding
all things by force and the sword, made several ordinances of
dangerous consequence, and amongst the rest one giving Marius the
conduct of the Mithridatic war. Upon this the consuls proclaimed a
public cessation of business, but as they were holding an assembly
near the temple of Castor and Pollux, he let loose the rabble upon
them, and amongst many others slew the consul Pompeius's young son
in the forum, Pompeius himself hardly escaping in the crowd.
Sylla,
being closely pursued into the house of Marius, was forced to come
forth and dissolve the cessation; and for his doing this, Sulpicius,
having deposed Pompeius, allowed Sylla to continue his consulship,
only transferring the Mithridatic expedition to Marius.
There were immediately despatched to Nola tribunes to receive the
army, and bring it to Marius; but Sylla, having got first to the camp,
and the soldiers, upon hearing the news, having stoned the tribunes,
Marius, in requital, proceeded to put the friends of Sylla in the city
to the sword, and rifled their goods.
Among other great changes
that happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of
divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more
successful in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent
from God, and then, again, in another generation declines as low,
becoming mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future
events by dim and uncertain intimations.