the practice; and the army, with a new drill, and no longer consisting of Romans or even Italians, but of men of all nations, became as effective as of old, if not more so, and at the same time a body detached from the State. [Sidenote:  The army ceases to be a citizen army.] The citizen was lost in the professional, and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favourite commander or their own selfishness.  Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king.

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CHAPTER VII.

SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.

[Sidenote:  Attitude of Marius.] With such a weapon in his hand Marius came back to Rome, intoxicated with success.  He thought his marches in two continents worthy to be compared with the progresses of Bacchus, and had a cup made on the model of that of the god.  He spoke badly; he was easily disconcerted by the disapproval of an audience; he had no insight into the evils, or any project for the reformation, of the State.  But the scorn of men like Metellus had made him throw himself on the support of the people from whom he sprang; and they, idolising him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their natural leader, and the creator of a new era.  Indeed it needed no stimulus from without to whet his ambitious cravings.  That seventh consulship which superstition whispered would be surely his he had yet to win; and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous insanity.  But while he hoped to use all parties for his own advancement—­a game in which he of all men was least qualified to succeed—­other and abler politicians were bent on using him for the overthrow of the optimates.

[Sidenote:  Saturninus.] The harangues of Memmius had shown that the spirit of the Gracchi was still alive in Rome; and now Lucius Apuleius Saturninus took up their revolutionary projects with a violence to which they had been averse, but for which the acts of their adversaries had become a fatal precedent.  Of Saturninus himself we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker, and a resolute though not over-scrupulous man at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self-martyrdom or self-effacement. [Sidenote:  Glaucia.] In something of the same relation in which Camille Desmoulins stood to Danton, Caius Servilius Glaucia, a wit and favourite of the people, stood towards the sombre and imperious Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their aims by the aid of Marius.  If they are to be judged by their acts alone we can