Sylla   

the camp, to order the rest of his affairs there, he sate brooding
at home, and at last hatched that execrable sedition, which wrought
Rome more mischief than all her enemies together had done, as was
indeed foreshown by the gods. For a flame broke forth of its own accord,
from under the staves of the ensigns, and was with difficulty extinguished.
Three ravens brought their young into the open road, and ate them,
carrying the relics into the nest again. Mice having gnawed the consecrated
gold in one of the temples, the keepers caught one of them, a female,
in a trap; and she bringing forth five young ones in the very trap,
devoured three of them. But what was greatest of all, in a calm and
clear sky there was heard the sound of a trumpet, with such a loud
and dismal blast, as struck terror and amazement into the hearts of
the people. The Etruscan sages affirmed that this prodigy betokened
the mutation of the age, and a general revolution in the world. For
according to them there are in all eight ages, differing one from
another in the lives and the characters of men, and to each of these
God has allotted a certain measure of time, determined by the circuit
of the great year. And when one age is run out, at the approach of
another, there appears some wonderful sign from earth or heaven, such
as makes it manifest at once to those who have made it their business
to study such things, that there has succeeded in the world a new
race of men, differing in customs and institutes of life, and more
or less regarded by the gods than the preceding. Among other great
changes that happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of
divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more successful
in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent from God,
and then, again, in another generation declines as low, becoming mere
guesswork for the most part, and discerning future events by dim and
uncertain intimations. This was the mythology of the wisest of the
Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge beyond other
men. Whilst the senate sat in consultation with the soothsayers, concerning
these prodigies, in the temple of Bellona, a sparrow came flying in,
before them all, with a grasshopper in its mouth, and letting fall
one part of it, flew away with the remainder. The diviners foreboded
commotions and dissensions between the great landed proprietors and
the common city populace; the latter, like the grasshopper, being
loud and talkative; while the sparrow might represent the "dwellers
in the field."
Marius had taken into alliance Sulpicius, the tribune, a man second
to none in any villainies, so that it was less the question what others
he surpassed, but rather in what respects he most surpassed himself
in wickedness. He was cruel, bold, rapacious, and in all these points
utterly shameless and unscrupulous; not hesitating to offer Roman
citizenship by public sale to freed slaves and aliens, and to count
out the price on public money-tables in the forum. He maintained three
thousand swordsmen, and had always about him a company of young men
of the equestrian class ready for all occasions, whom he styled his
Anti-senate. Having had a law enacted, that no senator should contract
a debt of above two thousand drachmas, he himself, after death, was
found indebted three millions. This was the man whom Marius let in
upon the Commonwealth, and who, confounding all things by force and
the sword, made several ordinances of dangerous consequence, and amongst
the rest one giving Marius the conduct of the Mithridatic war. Upon
this the consuls proclaimed a public cessation of business, but as
they were holding an assembly near the temple of Castor and Pollux,
he let loose the rabble upon them, and amongst many others slew the
consul Pompeius's young son in the forum, Pompeius himself hardly
escaping in the crowd. Sylla, being closely pursued into the house
of Marius, was forced to come forth and dissolve the cessation; and
for his doing this, Sulpicius, having deposed Pompeius, allowed Sylla
to continue his consulship, only transferring the Mithridatic expedition
to Marius.
There were immediately despatched to Nola tribunes to receive the
army, and bring it to Marius; but Sylla, having got first to the camp,