thrown out, and trodden upon in the streets, it was not pity which they excited; it was horror and dismay. But what shocked the people much more, was the conduct of the Bardiæans; who after they had murthered the masters of families, exposed the nakedness of their children, and indulged their passions with their wives. In short, their violence and rapacity were beyond all restraint; till Cinna and Sertorius determined in council to fall upon them in their sleep, and slew them to a man. At this time, the tide of affairs took a sudden turn. Intelligence was brought, that Sylla had put an end to the Mithridatic war; and that, after having reduced the provinces, he was returning to Rome with a large army. This gave a short respite, a breathing from these inexpressible troubles; as the apprehensions of war had been universally prevalent. Marius was now chosen for the seventh time consul; and as he was walking out on the calends of January, the first day of the year, he ordered Sextus Lucinus to be seized and thrown down the Tarpeian rock; a circumstance, which occasioned an unhappy presage of approaching evils. The consul himself, worn out with a series of misfortunes and distress; found his faculties fail, and trembled at the approach of battles and conflicts. For he considered that it was not an Octavius or a Merula, the desperate leaders of a small sedition, with which he had to contend; but with Sylla, who had formerly driven him from his country, and had recently cooped up Mithridates near the coasts of the Euxine. Thus agitated, and revolving the miseries and flights and dangers which he had experienced both by land and sea, his inquietude affected him even by night, and a voice seemed continually to pronounce in his ear; Dread is the den, even of the distant lion. Unable to support the painfulness of watching, he had recourse to the bottle, and indulged in excesses by no means suitable to his years. At last, when by intelligence from sea he was convinced of Sylla's approach, his apprehensions were heightened to the greatest de gree and partly by his fear of the future, partly by the burthen and satiety of the present, under a slight trepidation of the balance he was thrown into a pleuritic fever; and in this state Posidonius, the philosopher, informs us he found him, when he went to speak to him upon some affairs of his embassy. But Caius Piso 74 the historian relates, that walking out with his friends one evening at supper, he gave them a short history of his life from its commencement; and, after expatiating on the uncertainty of fortune, concluded that it was beneath the dignity of a wise man to live in subjection to that fickle deity. Upon this, he bade farewell to his friends; and, betaking himself to his bed, died within seven days. There are some who impute his death to the excess of his ambition, which, according to their account, threw him into a delirium; insomuch that he fancied he was carrying on the war against Mithridates, exhibiting all the various motions and attitudes, and uttering all the loud and characteristic expressions used in an engagement. Such was the strength and violence of his passion for that command! Thus, at the age of seventy, distinguished by the unparalleled honour of seven consulships, and possessed of a more than regal fortune, Marius died with the chagrin of an unfortunate wretch, who had not obtained what he desired. Plato at the point of death congratulated himself, in the first place, that he had been born a man; next, that he had the happiness of being a Greek, not a brute or barbarian; and, last of all, that he was the contemporary of Sophocles. Antipater of Tarsus likewise, a little before his death, collected the several advantages of his life, not forgetting even his successful voyage to Athens. In settling his accounts with fortune, he gratefully entered and preserved every favour in that excellent account-book of agreeable things, his memory. The negligent and unthinking gradually forget every blessing 74 There were many Roman writers of this name, but Vossius thinks the one here mentioned was the C. Calpurnius Piso, mentioned by Cicero in his Brutus; though he is there mentioned as an orator, and not as an historian. (Histt. Latt, i. 6.) # which they have received, record nothing, renounce for airy hope the solid substance, and while they are idly grasping at the future, forego the enjoyment of the present! Though the future is in the power of fortune, and the present out of it, they despise her present blessings, as foreign to man, and dream of future uncertainties. But they are justly punished for it. Before philosophy and the cultivation of reason have laid a proper foundation for the management of extrinsic goods, they pursue and court them with avidity, but can never gratify their insatiable cravings. Marius died on the seventeenth day of his seventh consulship. His death was productive of the greatest joy in Rome, and the citizens looked upon it as an event that freed them from the worst of tyrannies. It was not long, however, before they found that they had changed an aged tyrant for one who had youth and vigour to carry his cruelties into execution. Such they found the son of Marius to be, whose sanguinary spirit displayed itself in the destruction of numbers of the nobility. His martial intrepidity and ferocious behaviour at first procured him the title of the Son of Mars,' but his subsequent conduct denominated him 'the Son of Venus.' When he was besieged in Praneste, and had tried every little artifice to escape, he put an end to his life, to avoid falling into Sylla' hands. 58 PYRRHUS AND CAIUS MARIUS COMPARED. Ir from the lives and actions of these illustrious men, we proceed to draw their parallel, we shall discover in them strong traits of resemblance, and still stronger of dissimilitude. Pyrrhus was of royal extraction, and his lineage reached upward to the gods. Marius, the child of indigence, passed the chief part of his youth in obscurity. But nature compensated this difference in their natal fortunes by a more equal distribution of loftier qualities. Both owed to themselves their elevation, and were the sole artists of their own glory. In this respect, however, the Roman general appears preferable to the king of Epirus. The latter, it must be admitted, was exposed in his infancy to considerable danger: but he had the assistance of princes to replace him on the throne. At the age at which he was tranquilly enjoying his regal dignity, Marius was still the unknown inhabitant of a country-village; and from this dark abode he suddenly burst into a degree of military splendour, and civil honours, before unparalleled. Pyrrhus had the effectual aid of great alliances, to forward his designs: whereas Marius, in almost all his objects, had to struggle against a host of powerful competitors. They both received an education exclusively military. That of Marius, rude and coarse, rendered him totally unfit for every thing but war. Pyrrhus, with a choice of pursuits, preferred the taste that led him to arms; and indulged, as a passion, what the other prac tised as a habit. The Greek discarded, the Roman despised, every thing elegant and refined. Hence the latter, in war courted for his talents, was in peace neglected for his austerity. In nothing indeed were they more unlike each other than in their moral characters. Pyrrhus, with an air calculated to inspire rather terror than respect, was soft, affable, and humane: seldom provoked, and easily pacified, he was backward to revenge, and munificent to reward. Marius, of a temper naturally bad and fierce, in power became terrible and untractable: passionate and vindictive to excess, he yielded to every impulse of resentment, and pertinaciously acted under its impression. One of his most prominent features was ingratitude. Metellus, his first benefactor, he caused to be banished from Rome. From this reproach however Pyrrhus himself, in his treatment of the Sicilian cities, is not wholly free. They had both a strong attachment to their soldiers, as the associates of their toils, and the instruments of their glory: but in Marius, this attachment appears more the result of a sense of interest; as his followers were not less useful to him by their suffrages in the Comitia, than by their services in the field. From avarice Pyrrhus was completely exempt: Marius, though he had amassed a more than royal fortune, was still insatiable; and one of his principal motives for soliciting, at the age of seventy, the command against Mithridates, was his lust of gold. To great austerity Marius united great arrogance, and great inflexibility; of these we have instances in his haughty treatment (when tribune) of one of the consuls, and the persevering insolence of his conduct toward the nobles, during his canvas for the consulship. His civil conduct, however, is not universally reprehensible. After having declared himself the zealous friend of the people, he strenuously and effectually opposed a popular bill, as prejudicial to the interests of the state. In general, with the exception of the case of Turpilius, whom he caused to be condemned as Metellus' friend, his early public decisions were rigorously just. His sublime reply to the officer, who was sent to |