Caius Marius   

being very importunate to be gone, after several delays, he was
dismissed about twelve days before the election of consuls; and
performed that long journey from the camp to the seaport of Utica in
two days and a night, and there doing sacrifice before he went on
shipboard, it is said the augur told him that heaven promised him some
incredible good fortune, and such as was beyond all expectation.
Marius, not a little elated with his good omen, began his voyage,
and in four days, with a favourable wind, passed the sea; he was
welcomed with great joy by the people, and being brought into the
assembly by one of the tribunes, sued for the consulship, inveighing
in all ways against Metellus, and promising either to slay Jugurtha or
take him alive.
He was elected triumphantly, and at once proceeded to levy
soldiers contrary both to law and custom, enlisting slaves and poor
people; whereas former commanders never accepted of such, but bestowed
arms, like other favours, as a matter of distinction, on persons who
had the proper qualification, a man's property being thus a sort of
security for his good behaviour. These were not the only occasions
of ill-will against Marius; some haughty speeches, uttered with
great arrogance and contempt, gave great offence to the nobility;
as, for example, his saying that he had carried off the consulship
as a spoil from the effeminacy of the wealthy and high-born
citizens, and telling the people that he gloried in wounds he had
himself received for them, as much as others did in the monuments of
dead men, and images of their ancestors. Often speaking of the
commanders that had been unfortunate in Africa, naming Bestia, for
example, and Albinus, men of very good families, but unfit for war,
and who had miscarried through want of experience, he asked the people
about him if they did not think that the ancestors of these nobles had
much rather have left a descendant like him, since they themselves
grew famous not by nobility, but by their valour and great actions?
This he did not say merely out of vanity and arrogance, or that he
were willing, without any advantage, to offend the nobility; but the
people always delighting in affronts and scurrilous contumelies
against the senate, making boldness of speech their measure of
greatness of spirit, continually encouraged him in it, and
strengthened his inclination not to spare persons of repute, so he
might gratify the multitude.
As soon as he arrived again in Africa, Metellus, no longer able to
control his feelings of jealousy, and his indignation that now when he
had really finished the war, and nothing was left but to secure the
person of Jugurtha, Marius, grown great merely through his ingratitude
to him, should come to bereave him both of his victory and triumph,
could not bear to have any interview with him; but retired himself,
whilst Rutilius, his lieutenant, surrendered up the army to Marius,
whose conduct, however, in the end of the war, met with some sort of
retribution, as Sylla deprived him of the glory of the action as he
had done Metellus. I shall state the circumstances briefly here as
they are given at large in the life of Sylla. Bocchus was king of
the more distant barbarians, and was father-in-law to Jugurtha, yet
sent him little or no assistance in his war, professing fears of his
unfaithfulness, and really jealous of his growing power; but after
Jugurtha fled, and in his distress came to him as his last hope, he
received him as a suppliant, rather because ashamed to do otherwise
than out of real kindness; and when he had him in his power, he openly
entreated Marius on his behalf, and interceded for him with bold
words, giving out that he would by no means deliver him. Yet privately
designing to betray him, he sent for Lucius Sylla, quaestor to Marius,
and who had on a previous occasion befriended Bocchus in the war. When
Sylla, relying on his word, came to him, the African began to doubt
and repent of his purpose, and for several days was unresolved with
himself, whether he should deliver Jugurtha or retain Sylla; at length
he fixed upon his former treachery, and put Jugurtha alive into
Sylla's possession. Thus was the first occasion given of that fierce