served in so many wars and campaigns.  It is said that Cornelia bought this house for seventy-five thousand;[118] and that no long time after it was purchased by Lucius Lucullus for two millions five hundred thousand; so quickly did extravagant expenditure spring up and so great was the increase of luxury.  But Marius, moved thereto by boyish emulation, throwing off his old age and his infirmities, went daily to the Campus Martius, where he took his exercises with the young men, and showed that he was still active in arms and sat firm in all the movements of horsemanship, though he was not of a compact form in his old age, but very fat and heavy.  Some were pleased at his being thus occupied, and they came down to the Campus to see and admire his emulation and his exercises; but the wiser part lamented to witness his greediness after gain and distinction, and they pitied a man who, having risen from poverty to enormous wealth, and to the highest station from a low degree, knew not when to put bounds to his good fortune, and was not satisfied with being an object of admiration and quietly enjoying what he had, but as if he was in want of everything, after his triumphs and his honours was setting out to Cappadocia and the Euxine to oppose himself in his old age to Archelaus and Neoptolemus, the satraps of Mithridates.  The reasons which Marius alleged against all this in justification of himself appeared ridiculous; he said that he wished to serve in the campaign in order to teach his son military discipline.

XXXV.  The disease that had long been rankling in the State at last broke out, when Marius had found in the audacity of Sulpicius[119] a most suitable instrument to effect the public ruin; for Sulpicius admired and emulated Saturninus in everything, except that he charged him with timidity and want of promptitude in his measures.  But there was no lack of promptitude on the part of Sulpicius, who kept six hundred of the Equestrian class about him as a kind of body-guard and called them an Opposition Senate.  He also attacked with a body of armed men the consuls while they were holding a public meeting; one of the consuls made his escape from the Forum, but Sulpicius seized his son and butchered him.  Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made his escape into the house of Marius, where nobody would have expected him to go, and thus avoided his pursuers who ran past; and it is said that he was let out in safety by Marius by another door and so got to the camp.  But Sulla in his Memoirs says that he did not fly for refuge to Marius, but withdrew there to consult with him about the matters which Sulpicius was attempting to make him assent to against his will by surrounding him with bare swords and driving him on towards the house of Marius, and that finally he went from the house of Marius to the Rostra, and removed, as they required him to do, the Justitium.  This being accomplished, Sulpicius, who had now gained a victory, got the command conferred