[Sidenote:  Death of Marius.] Marius did not live much longer.  He had had his revenge.  He had gained his seventh consulship.  It is said that, telling his friends that after such vicissitudes it would be wrong to tempt fate further, he took to his bed and after seven days died.  He drank hard, was seized with pleurisy, and in his last hours became delirious.  He fancied that he was in Asia, and by shouts and gestures cheered on the army of his dreams, and with ’such a stern and iron-clashing close’ died January 13 or 17.  He was more than seventy years old, and had enjoyed his seventh consulship for either thirteen or seventeen days.

Lucius Valerius Flaccus succeeded Marius as consul, and passed a law making one-fourth of a debt legal tender for payment of it; and probably in the same year the denarius was restored to its standard value.  A census was also held, which would include the new Italian citizens, and Philippus, whose opposition to Drusus on this very question had helped to kindle the Social War, was censor. [Sidenote:  Settlement of Italian disabilities by Cinna.] Cinna, as he was pledged to do so, must have carried some measure for enrolling the Italians in the old tribes; but we can only conjecture what was actually done.  Sulpicius had already carried such a measure, but it had been probably revoked by Sulla before he left Italy.  In 84, just before his return, the Senate, it is said, gave the Italians the right of voting, and distributed the libertini, or freed slaves, among the thirty-five tribes.  Perhaps this was a formal ratification of what had been passed before under Cinna’s coercion.

[Sidenote:  Cinna’s supremacy.] Cinna was now all-powerful at Rome.  For four successive years, 87 to 84 B.C., he was consul; and with the exception of Asia, Macedonia, Greece, and Africa, where Metellus had escaped and was in arms, the whole Roman world was at his feet.  But he did not know how to use his power.  He may have removed the restrictions on grain, and did proclaim Sulla and Metellus outlaws; but, though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sulla’s return, he did worse than nothing, and, instead of Sertorius, sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus.  The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the next chapter.  When Cinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and that either he must act promptly or Sulla would be in Rome, he hastened to Ancona, where he sent one division of the army across to the opposite coast.  But the second division was driven back by a storm; and the soldiers then dispersed, saying that they would not fight against their own countrymen.  On this the rest of the army refused to embark.  Cinna went to harangue them, and one of his lictors in clearing a way struck a soldier.  Another soldier struck him. [Sidenote:  Cinna slain at Ancona.] Cinna told his lictors to seize this second mutineer, and in the tumult that