pretend to deal, although by far the most momentous of them were
crowded into the life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible,
show the condition of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain
what it was that he hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and
relate in a few words what it was that Marius and Sulla had done for
Rome.

Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly
concerned were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life.
Marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman
was born, and had become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of
humble parents, had pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with
Sulla had probably commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done
in the Jugurthine war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that
Marius had proved himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting
in this, that, by making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled
himself in his latter years to become the master of Rome.

Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of
the bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and
having been elected Quaestor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a
man with us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quaestor he was sent
to join Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into
his hands, as it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was
surrendered by his father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry
favor with the Romans. Thence came those internecine feuds, in which,
some twenty-five years later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause
of quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the
heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are not
much to us now; but the condition to which Rome had been brought, when