Patrician Rome turned out and besieged them, and Marius had to interfere.
The demagogues and their friends surrendered, and were confined in the
Curia Hostilia till they could be tried. The noble lords could not allow
such detested enemies the chance of an acquittal. To them a radical was a
foe of mankind, to be hunted down like a wolf, when a chance was offered
to destroy him. By the law of Caius Gracchus no citizen could be put to
death without a trial. The persons of Saturninus and Glaucia were doubly
sacred, for one was tribune and the other praetor. But the patricians were
satisfied that they deserved to be executed, and in such a frame of mind
it seemed but virtue to execute them. They tore off the roof of the senate
house, and pelted the miserable wretches to death with stones and tiles.




CHAPTER VI.


Not far from the scene of the murder of Glaucia and Saturninus there was
lying at this time in his cradle, or carried about in his nurse's arms, a
child who, in his manhood, was to hold an inquiry into this business, and
to bring one of the perpetrators to answer for himself. On the 12th of the
preceding July, B.C. 100,[1] was born into the world Caius Julius Caesar,
the only son of Caius Julius and Aurelia, and nephew of the then Consul
Marius. His father had been praetor, but had held no higher office.
Aurelia was a strict stately lady of the old school, uninfected by the
lately imported fashions. She, or her husband, or both of them, were rich;
but the habits of the household were simple and severe, and the connection
with Marius indicates the political opinions which prevailed in the
family.