in triumph through the streets, and elected him by a great majority as their tribune.  Saturninus and Glaucia sought to control the more important consular election by the expedient for the removal of inconvenient competitors which had been tried in the previous year; the counter-candidate of the government party, Gaius Memmius—­the same who eleven years before had led the opposition against them(9)—­was suddenly assailed by a band of ruffians and beaten to death.  But the government party had only waited for a striking event of this sort in order to employ force.  The senate required the consul Gaius Marius to interfere, and the latter in reality professed his readiness now to draw for the conservative party the sword, which he had obtained from the democracy and had promised to wield on its behalf.  The young men were hastily called out, equipped with arms from the public buildings, and drawn up in military array; the senate itself appeared under arms in the Forum, with its venerable chief Marcus Scaurus at its head.  The opposite party were doubtless superior in a street-riot, but were not prepared for such an attack; they had now to defend themselves as they could.  They broke open the doors of the prisons, and called the slaves to liberty and to arms; they proclaimed—­ so it was said at any rate—­Saturninus as king or general; on the day when the new tribunes of the people had to enter on their office, the 10th of December 654, a battle occurred in the great market-place—­the first which, since Rome existed, had ever been fought within the walls of the capital.  The issue was not for a moment doubtful.  The Populares were beaten and driven up to the Capitol, where the supply of water was cut off from them and they were thus compelled to surrender.  Marius, who held the chief command, would gladly have saved the lives of his former allies who were now his prisoners; Saturninus proclaimed to the multitude that all which he had proposed had been done in concert with the consul:  even a worse man than Marius was could not but shudder at the inglorious part which he played on this day.  But he had long ceased to be master of affairs.  Without orders the youth of rank climbed the roof of the senate-house in the Forum where the prisoners were temporarily confined, stripped off the tiles, and with these stoned their victims.  Thus Saturninus perished with most of the more notable prisoners.  Glaucia was found in a lurking-place and likewise put to death.  Without sentence or trial there died on this day four magistrates of the Roman people—­a praetor, a quaestor, and two tribunes of the people—­and a number of other well-known men, some of whom belonged to good families.  In spite of the grave faults by which the chiefs had invited on themselves this bloody retribution, we may nevertheless lament them:  they fell like advanced posts, which are left unsupported by the main army and are forced to perish without aim in a conflict of despair.