Caius Marius

Some, then, were pleased to have him thus engaged, and would go down into the Campus and witness his emulation in competitive contests; but the better part were moved to pity at the sight of his greed and ambition, because, though he had risen from poverty to the greatest wealth and from obscurity to the highest place, he knew not how to set bounds to his good fortune, and was not content to be admired and enjoy quietly what he had,

but as if in need of all things, and after winning triumphs and fame, was setting out, with all his years upon him, for Cappadocia and the Euxine sea, to fight it out with Archelaüs and Neoptolemus,the satraps of Mithridates. And the justification for this which Marius offered was thought to be altogether silly; he said, namely, that he wished to take part personally in the campaign in order to give his son a military training.

These things brought to a head the secret disease from which the state had long been suffering, and Marius found a most suitable instrument for the destruction of the commonwealth in the audacity of Sulpicius, who was in all things an admirer and an imitator of Saturninus, except that he charged him with timidity and hesitation in his political measures.