on Marius by the votes of the, assembly, and Marius, who was prepared to set out, sent two tribunes to receive the army of Sulla.  But Sulla encouraging his soldiers, who were thirty-five thousand men well armed, led them to Rome.  The soldiers fell on the tribunes whom Marius had sent, and murdered them.  Marius also put to death many of the friends of Sulla in Rome, and proclaimed freedom to the slaves[120] if they would join him; but it is said that only three slaves accepted the offer.  He made but a feeble resistance to Sulla on his entering the city, and was soon compelled to fly.  On quitting Rome he was separated from his partisans, owing to its being dark, and he fled to Solonium,[121] one of his farms.  He sent his son Marius[122] to get provisions from the estates of his father-in-law Mucius, which were not far off, and himself went to Ostia,[123] where Numerius, one of his friends, had provided a vessel for him, and without waiting for his son he set sail with his stepson Granius.  The young man arrived at the estates of Mucius, but he was surprised by the approach of day while he was getting something together and packing it up, and thus did not altogether escape the vigilance of his enemies, for some cavalry came to the spot, suspecting that Marius might be there.  The overseer of the farm, seeing them approach, hid Marius in a waggon loaded with beans, and yoking the oxen to it, he met the horsemen on his road to the city with the waggon.  Marius was thus conveyed to the house of his wife, where he got what he wanted, and by night made his way to the sea, and embarking in a vessel bound for Libya, arrived there in safety.

XXXVI.  The elder Marius was carried along the coast of Italy by a favourable wind, but as he was afraid of one Geminius, a powerful man in Terracina, and an enemy of his, he ordered the sailors to keep clear of that place.  The sailors were willing to do as he wished, but the wind veering round and blowing from the sea with a great swell, they were afraid that the vessel could not stand the beating of the waves, and as Marius also was much troubled with sickness, they made for land, and with great difficulty got to the coast near Circeii.[124] As the storm increased and they wanted provisions, they landed from the vessel and wandered about without any definite object, but as happens in cases of great difficulty, seeking merely to escape from the present evil as worst of all, and putting their hopes on the chances of fortune; for the land was their enemy, and the sea also, and they feared to fall in with men, and feared also not to fall in with men, because they were in want of provisions.  After some time they met with a few herdsmen, who had nothing to give them in their need, but they recognised Marius and advised him to get out of the way as quickly as he could, for a number of horsemen had just been seen there riding about in quest of him.  Thus surrounded by every difficulty and his attendants fainting for