to check the pursuit.  Pompeius was playing a waiting game, ready to join the strongest, or crush both parties, as he saw his chance.  And now within the city starvation set in, and a pestilence spread.  Marius had blocked up the Tiber, and occupied the outlying towns on which the communications of the capital depended.  Nor could the Senate trust its own troops. [Sidenote:  Death of Pompeius.] Pompeius was killed by a thunder-bolt—­not less suspicious than that which slew Romulus—­and his body had been torn from the bier, and dragged through the streets by the people. [Sidenote:  Disaffection in the Senate’s troops.] The soldiers of Octavius cheered Cinna when he marshalled his troops opposite them near the Alban Mount.  Moreover the leaders themselves were at variance.  Octavius, seeing the humour of his men, was afraid to fight, but would concede nothing.  Metellus wished for a compromise.  Both armies were now outside the city, the pestilence probably having driven the Marians to withdraw.  But Marius had command of the Via Appia, the Tiber, and most of the neighbourhood; and the famine became sorer in Rome. [Sidenote:  Incompetence of Octavius and Metellus.] The soldiers wished Metellus to take the command from Octavius, and, on his refusal, deserted in crowds to the enemy.  So also did the slaves, to whom Octavius would not promise freedom, as Cinna gladly did. [Sidenote:  The Senate submits to Cinna.] At last the Senate sent to make terms with Cinna; but while they were stickling about acknowledging his title of consul, he advanced to the gates.  Then they surrendered at discretion, only begging him to swear to shed no blood.  Cinna, refusing to be bound by this condition, promised that he would not voluntarily do so.  For he saw by his side the grim figure of the man to whom he had given pro-consular powers, who had already taunted him with weakness for conferring with the Senate at all, and in whose sullen, unshorn face he read a craving for vengeance which nothing but blood would satisfy.

[Sidenote:  A massacre at Rome.] When Cinna entered the city, Marius, with savage irony, said that an outlaw had no business within the walls, and he would not come in till the sentence had been formally rescinded by a meeting of the people in the Forum.  But the gates, when once he had passed them, were closed, and for five days and five nights Rome became a shambles.  Appian says that Marius and Cinna had both sworn to spare the life of Octavius.  But Marius was never a liar, and the story is false on the face of it; for just before this Appian relates how, when Cinna had promised to be merciful, Marius would make no sign. [Sidenote:  Death of Octavius.] Octavius is said to have seated himself in his official chair, dressed in his official robes, on the Janiculum, and to have awaited the assassins there.  His head was fastened up in front of the Rostra in emulation of the ghastly precedent set by Sulla.  He was an obstinate, dull man; and if this burlesque of the