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Updated: May 23, 2025
After the games seditious harangues were delivered by the tribunes of the commons upbraiding the multitude; "that stupified with admiration of those persons whom they hated, they kept themselves in a state of eternal bondage; and they not only had not the courage to aspire to the recovery of their hopes of a share in the consulship, but even in the electing of military tribunes, which elections lay open to both patricians and commons, they neither thought of themselves nor of their party.
XIII. These were the things worthy of commemoration in the consulship of Crassus. But his censorship passed over altogether without results, and without any active measures; for he neither revised the senate, nor inspected the equites, nor made a census of the citizens, though he had for his colleague Lutatius Catulus, the mildest of the Romans.
He taunted them with their inconsistency in honoring the man whom they had convicted of a base crime. "If I am innocent," said he, "why did you place such a stain on me? If I am guilty, why am I more fit for a second consulship than I was for my first one?"
This gave occasion to the populace to assail him with satirical songs; and many of the highest class were displeased at the marriage, as if they did not think him worthy of such a wife, whom they had judged to be worthy of the consulship, as Titus Livius remarks. Cæcilia was not the only wife that Sulla had.
A Verres could get himself made Prætor; a Lepidus some years since could receive the Consulship; or now an Antony, or almost a Catiline. The candidate would borrow money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus succeed perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he could achieve them.
But reverting to the question which class of citizens is more mischievous in a republic, those who seek to acquire or those who fear to lose what they have acquired already, I note that when Marcus Menenius and Marcus Fulvius, both of them men of plebeian birth, were made the one dictator, the other master of the knights, that they might inquire into certain plots against Rome contrived in Capua, they had at the same time authority given them by the people to investigate whether, in Rome itself, irregular and corrupt practices had been used to obtain the consulship and other honours of the city.
XXVIII. Though Marius was now discharging his fifth consulship, he was more anxious to obtain a sixth than others are about the first; and he endeavoured to gain favour by courting the people and giving way to the many in order to please them, wherein he went further than was consistent with the state and dignity of the office, and further than suited his own temper, for he wished to show himself very compliant and a man of the people, when in fact his character was altogether different.
The time was not come for his enemies to attack him; but that he had enemies was manifest. With one dangerous man he had the misfortune to come into collision in the year that followed his consulship. This was the Clodius of whom we have heard something in the preceding chapter. The two men had hitherto been on fairly good terms.
Instead of calling Scipio to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the contrary effect, and committed to him by special decree the conduct of the African war. He arrived in Utica at a moment when much was at stake.
Of him it was said that he "built the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best, and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was a native of Italica, in Spain. The family to which he belonged was probably Italian, and not Iberian, by blood. His father began life as a common legionary soldier, and fought his way up to the consulship and the governorship of Asia.
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