deeper depths of poverty; judicial decisions were sold for money; the
inhabitants of the provinces were looked upon by the nobles as fit
subjects for plunder, and the governors obtained their positions by
purchase; everywhere ruin stared the commonwealth in the face, though
there seems to have been no one with perceptions clear enough to
perceive the trend of affairs.

In this degenerate time there arose two men of the most diverse traits
and descent, whose lives, running parallel for many years, furnish at
once instructive studies and involve graphic pictures of public
affairs. The elder of them was with Scipio when Numantia fell into his
hands, and with Jugurtha, a Numidian prince, won distinction by his
valor on that occasion. Caius Marius was the name of this man, and he
belonged to the commons. He was twenty-three years of age, and had
risen from the low condition of a peasant to one of prominence in
public affairs. Fifteen years after the fall of Numantia we find him a
tribune of the people, standing for purity in the elections, against
the opposition of the optimates. Rough, haughty, and undaunted, he
carried his measures and waited for the gathering storm to furnish him
more enlarged opportunities for the exercise of his strength and
ambition.

The opponent and final conqueror of this commoner was but four years of
age when Numantia fell, and came into public life later than Marius.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla was an optimate of illustrious ancestry and
hereditary wealth, a student of the literature and art of Greece and
his native land, and he united in his person all the vices as well as
accomplishments that Cato had been accustomed to denounce with the
utmost vigor.