fortunes in dissipation, and, in a word, all whom vice and villainy
had driven from their homes, had flocked to Rome as a general
receptacle of impurity. In the next place, many, who thought of the
success of Sylla, when they had seen some raised from common soldiers
into senators, and others so enriched as to live in regal luxury and
pomp, hoped, each for himself, similar results from victory, if they
should once take up arms. In addition to this, the youth, who, in the
country, had earned a scanty livelihood by manual labor, tempted by
public and private largesses, had preferred idleness in the city to
unwelcome toil in the field. To these, and all others of similar
character, public disorders would furnish subsistence. It is not at
all surprising, therefore, that men in distress, of dissolute
principles and extravagant expectations, should have consulted the
interest of the state no further than as it was subservient to their
own. Besides, those whose parents, by the victory of Sylla, had been
proscribed, whose property had been confiscated, and whose civil
rights had been curtailed,[193] looked forward to the event of a war
with precisely the same feelings.

All those, too, who were of any party opposed to that of the senate,
were desirous rather that the state should be embroiled, than that
they themselves should be out of power. This was an evil, which, after
many years, had returned upon the community to the extent to which it
now prevailed.[194]

XXXVIII. For after the powers of the tribunes, in the consulate of
Cneius Pompey and Marcus Crassus, had been fully restored,[195]
certain young men, of an ardent age and temper, having obtained that
high office,[196] began to stir up the populace by inveighing against
the senate, and proceeded, in course of time, by means of largesses