triumphal costume in the senate!  In other respects too the plebeian character clung to him.  He was not merely—­according to aristocratic phraseology—­a poor man, but, what was worse, frugal and a declared enemy of all bribery and corruption.  After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond of his cups, especially in his later years; he knew not the art of giving feasts, and kept a bad cook.  It was likewise awkward that the consular understood nothing but Latin and had to decline conversing in Greek; that he felt the Greek plays wearisome might pass—­he was presumably not the only one who did so—­but to confess to the feeling of weariness was naive.  Thus he remained throughout life a countryman cast adrift among aristocrats, and annoyed by the keenly-felt sarcasms and still more keenly—­felt commiseration of his colleagues, which he had not the self-command to despise as he despised themselves.

Political Position of Marius

Marius stood aloof from the parties not much less than from society.  The measures which he carried in his tribunate of the people (635)—­a better control over the delivery of the voting-tablets with a view to do away with the scandalous frauds that were therein practised, and the prevention of extravagant proposals for largesses to the people(1)—­do not bear the stamp of a party, least of all that of the democratic, but merely show that he hated what was unjust and irrational; and how could a man like this, a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination, have been from the first a revolutionist?  The hostile attacks of the aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of the opponents of the government; and there he speedily found himself elevated in the first instance to be general of the opposition, and destined perhaps for still higher things hereafter.  But this was far more the effect of the stringent force of circumstances and of the general need which the opposition had for a chief, than his own work; he had at any rate since his departure for Africa in 647-8 hardly tarried, in passing, for a brief period in the capital.  It was not till the latter half of 653 that he returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double honours—­decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the same time a novice in politics.  It was certain beyond dispute, not only that Marius had saved Rome, but that he was the only man who could have saved it; his name was on every one’s lips; the men of quality acknowledged his services; with the people he was more popular than any one before or after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughness; he was called by the multitude a third Romulus and a second Camillus; libations were poured forth to him like the gods.  It was no wonder that the head of the peasant’s son grew giddy at times with all this glory; that