himself to death upon a public altar, calling down the judgments of the
god to whom he offered this dreadful sacrifice, upon the head of the
tyrant whose atrocious cruelty he was thus attempting to evade.

[Sidenote: Illness of Marius.]
[Sidenote: Sylla outlawed.]

By the time that Marius had got fairly established in his new position,
and was completely master of Rome, and the city had begun to recover a
little from the shock and consternation produced by his executions, he
fell sick. He was attacked with an acute disease of great violence. The
attack was perhaps produced, and was certainly aggravated by, the great
mental excitements through which he had passed during his exile, and in
the entire change of fortune which had attended his return. From being
a wretched fugitive, hiding for his life among gloomy and desolate
ruins, he found himself suddenly transferred to the mastery of the
world. His mind was excited, too, in respect to Sylla, whom he had not
yet reached or subdued, but who was still prosecuting his war against
Mithridates. Marius had had him pronounced by the Senate an enemy to his
country, and was meditating plans to reach him in his distant province,
considering his triumph incomplete as long as his great rival was at
liberty and alive. The sickness cut short these plans, but it only
inflamed to double violence the excitement and the agitations which
attended them.

[Sidenote: Marius delirious.]
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.]

As the dying tyrant tossed restlessly upon his bed, it was plain that
the delirious ravings which he began soon to utter were excited by the