became a Consul in order that he might be a General. The toga was made
to give way to the sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets.
We, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are
prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read
the future. In the days of Marius there was probably no man so wise.
Caesar was the first to see it. Cicero would have seen it, but that
the idea was so odious to him that he could not acknowledge to himself
that it need be so. His life was one struggle against the coming
evil--against the time in which brute force was to be made to dominate
intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma togae" was a scream, an
impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done or Caesar was about
to do. The mischief had been effected years before his time, and
had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. Only, in
considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what was good
and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good
was still within reach.

Marius in his way was a Caesar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very
efficient Caesar-having that great gift of ruling his own appetites
which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others.
It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the
two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was
not equal in strategy to anything that Caesar accomplished in Gaul. It
is probable that Caesar learned much of his tactics from studying the
manoeuvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became
hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and
how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been
handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and
the official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest
only of power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law