Rome was thus broken up into two camps, not as of yore broadly marked off by palpable distinctions of rank, property, or privilege, but each containing adherents of all sorts and conditions, though in the Senate the opponents of Sulpicius had the majority.  When Sulpicius proposed to enrol the Italians in the old tribes, the consuls proclaimed a justitium, or suspension of all public business for some religious observances.  It is said by some modern writers that the object of Sulpicius in proposing to enrol the Italians in the old tribes was to secure the election of Marius to the command against Mithridates.  It is certain, indeed, that Marius longed for it. [Sidenote:  Attitude of Marius.] Daily he was to be seen in the Campus Martius exercising with the young men, and, though old and fat, showing himself nimble in arms and active on horseback—­conduct which excited some men’s good-humoured sympathy, but shocked others, who thought he had much better go to Baiae for the baths there, and that such an exhibition was contemptible in one of his years.  Sulpicius may have thought Marius quite fit for the command, and was warranted in thinking so by the events of the Social War; but there is no more ground for supposing that the election of Marius was his primary object than for considering Plutarch’s diatribe a fair estimate of his character. [Sidenote:  Connection of Marius and Sulpicius explained.] He was the friend and successor of Drusus, and his alliance with Marius was a means to the end which in common with Drusus he had in view, and not the end itself.  This consideration is essential to a true understanding of the politics of the time, and just makes the difference whether Sulpicius was a petty-minded adventurer or deliberately following in the lines laid down for him by a succession of statesmen. [Sidenote:  Street-fighting.] To the manoeuvre of the consul he replied by a violent protest that it was illegal.  Rome was being paraded by his partisans—­3,000 armed men, and there was a tumult in which the lives of the consuls were in danger.  One, Pompeius Rufus, escaped, but his son was killed.  The other, Sulla, annulled the justitium, but is said to have got off with his life only because Marius generously gave him shelter in his own house.  In these occurrences it is impossible not to see that the consuls were the first to act unfairly.  Sulpicius had been intending to bring forward his laws in the regular fashion.  They thwarted him by a trick.  Whether he in anger gave the signal for violence, or whether, as is quite as likely, his Italian partisans did not wait for his bidding, the blame of the tumult lay at the door of the other side.  In such cases he is not guiltiest who strikes the first blow, but he who has made blows inevitable.