enemies was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by motives of vulgar selfishness.  When he was quaestor, the charge of the importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on account of maladministration, as in order to confer this—­just at that time popular—­office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of the ruling families.  This mortification had driven the aspiring and sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition; and as tribune of the people in 651 he repaid what he had received with interest.  One scandalous affair had at that time followed hard upon another.  He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome by the envoys of king Mithradates—­these revelations, compromising in the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his life.  He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus—­the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll—­had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus.  Saturninus mainly had carried that exceptional commission against Caepio and his associates(6) in spite of the most vehement resistance by the government party; and in opposition to the same he had carried the keenly-contested re-election of Marius as consul for 652.  Saturninus was decidedly the most energetic enemy of the senate and the most active and eloquent leader of the popular party since Gaius Gracchus; but he was also violent and unscrupulous beyond any of his predecessors, always ready to descend into the street and to refute his antagonist with blows instead of words.

Such were the two leaders of the so-called popular party, who now made common cause with the victorious general.  It was natural that they should do so; their interests and aims coincided, and even in the earlier candidatures of Marius Saturninus at least had most decidedly and most effectively taken his side.  It was agreed between them that for 654 Marius should become a candidate for a sixth consulship, Saturninus for a second tribunate, Glaucia for the praetorship, in order that, possessed of these offices, they might carry out the intended revolution in the state.  The senate acquiesced in the nomination of the less dangerous Glaucia, but did what it could to hinder the election of Marius and Saturninus, or at least to associate with the former a determined antagonist in the person of Quintus Metellus as his colleague in the consulship.  All appliances, lawful and unlawful, were put in motion by both parties; but the senate was not successful in arresting the