86 CAITJS MARIUS.

wars and expeditions. This same house Cornelia bought for seventy-five thousand drachmas, and not long after Lucius Lucullus, for two million five hundred thousand ; so rapid and so great was the growth of Roman sumptu- osity. Yet, in spite of all this, out of a mere boyish pas- sion for distinction, affecting to shake off his age and weakness, he went down daily to the Campus Mar- tiusj and exercising himself with the youth, showed him- self still nimble in his armor, and expert in riding ; though he was undoubtedly grown bulky in his old age, and inclining to excessive fatness and corpulency. Some people were pleased with this, and went continu- ally to see him competing and displaying himself in these exercises ; but the better sort that saw him, pitied the cupidity and ambition that made one who had risen from utter poverty to extreme wealth, and out of nothing into greatness, unwilling to admit any limit to his high for- tune, or to be content with being admired, and quietly enjoying what he had already got : why, as if he still were indigent, should he at so great an age leave his glory and his triumphs to go into Cappadocia and the Euxine Sea, to fight Archelaus and Neoptolemus, Mith- ridates's generals ? Marius's pretences for this action of his seemed very ridiculous ; for he said he wanted to go and teach his son to be a general. The condition of the citv, which had lon^ been un- sound and diseased, became hopeless now that Marius found so opportune an instrument for the public destruc- tion as Snlpicius's insolence. This man professed, in all other respects, to admire and imitate Saturninus ; only he found fault with him for backwardness and want of spirit in his designs. He, therefore, to avoid this fault, got six hundred of the equestrian order about him as his guard, whom he named anti-senatoi's ; and with these confeder- ates he set upon the consuls, whilst they were at the