Lepidus

Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence of a man with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any one who might please to give himself forth as the champion of oppressed popular freedom; and in this way it came to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan, who from motives more than ambiguous deserted to the camp of the democracy.  Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as governor of Sicily, so scandalously plundered the province that he was threatened with impeachment, and, to evade it, threw himself into opposition.  It was a gain of doubtful value.  No doubt the opposition thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either in council or in the field.  Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him, and the new leader of the democrats succeeded not only in deterring his accusers from prosecuting the attack on him which they had begun, but also in carrying his election to the consulship for 676; in which, we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of Pompeius to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this occasion what he could do.  Now that the opposition had, on the death of Sulla, found a head once more in Lepidus, and now that this their leader had become the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.

The Emigrants in Spain
Sertorius

But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain.  The soul of this movement was Quintus Sertorius.  This excellent man, a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was from the first of a tender and even soft organization—­as his almost enthusiastic love for his mother, Raia, shows—­and at the same time of the most chivalrous bravery, as was proved by the honourable scars which he brought home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars.  Although wholly untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession of his address.  His remarkable military and statesmanly talent had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party with statesmanlike energy.  His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in war.  He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare talent of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness in attracting foreign nations to his