History of Julius Caesar | Page 4

so
if they would give her their bracelets; but, as she did not know the
name of the shining ornaments, the language she used to designate
them was, "Those things you have upon your arms." The soldiers
acceded to her terms; she opened the gates, and they, instead of giving
her the bracelets, threw their shields upon her as they passed, until the
poor girl was crushed down with them and destroyed. This was near the
Tarpeian Rock, which afterward took her name. The rock is now found
to be perforated by a great many subterranean passages, the remains,
probably, of ancient quarries. Some of these galleries are now walled
up; others are open; and the people who live around the spot believe, it
is said, to this day, that Tarpeia herself sits, enchanted, far in the
interior of these caverns, covered with gold and jewels, but that
whoever attempts to find her is fated by an irresistible destiny to lose
his way, and he never returns. The last story is probably as true as the
other.
[Sidenote: Escape of Sylla's wife.]
Marius continued his executions and massacres until the whole of
Sylla's party had been slain or put to flight. He made every effort to
discover Sylla's wife and child, with a view to destroying them also, but
they could not be found. Some friends of Sylla, taking compassion on
their innocence and helplessness, concealed them, and thus saved
Marius from the commission of one intended crime. Marius was
disappointed, too, in some other cases, where men whom he had
intended to kill destroyed themselves to baffle his vengeance. One shut
himself up in a room with burning charcoal, and was suffocated with
the fumes. Another bled himself to death upon a public altar, calling
down the judgments of the god to whom he offered this dreadful

sacrifice, upon the head of the tyrant whose atrocious cruelty he was
thus attempting to evade.
[Sidenote: Illness of Marius.] [Sidenote: Sylla outlawed.]
By the time that Marius had got fairly established in his new position,
and was completely master of Rome, and the city had begun to recover
a little from the shock and consternation produced by his executions, he
fell sick. He was attacked with an acute disease of great violence. The
attack was perhaps produced, and was certainly aggravated by, the
great mental excitements through which he had passed during his exile,
and in the entire change of fortune which had attended his return. From
being a wretched fugitive, hiding for his life among gloomy and
desolate ruins, he found himself suddenly transferred to the mastery of
the world. His mind was excited, too, in respect to Sylla, whom he had
not yet reached or subdued, but who was still prosecuting his war
against Mithridates. Marius had had him pronounced by the Senate an
enemy to his country, and was meditating plans to reach him in his
distant province, considering his triumph incomplete as long as his
great rival was at liberty and alive. The sickness cut short these plans,
but it only inflamed to double violence the excitement and the
agitations which attended them.
[Sidenote: Marius delirious.] [Sidenote: Death of Marius.]
As the dying tyrant tossed restlessly upon his bed, it was plain that the
delirious ravings which he began soon to utter were excited by the
same sentiments of insatiable ambition and ferocious hate whose
calmer dictates he had obeyed when well. He imagined that he had
succeeded in supplanting Sylla in his command, and that he was
himself in Asia at the head of his armies. Impressed with this idea, he
stared wildly around; he called aloud the name of Mithridates; he
shouted orders to imaginary troops; he struggled to break away from
the restraints which the attendants about his bedside imposed, to attack
the phantom foes which haunted him in his dreams. This continued for
several days, and when at last nature was exhausted by the violence of
these paroxysms of phrensy, the vital powers which had been for
seventy long years spending their strength in deeds of selfishness,

cruelty, and hatred, found their work done, and sunk to revive no more.
[Sidenote: Return of Sylla.] [Sidenote: Marius's son.] [Sidenote:
Proscriptions and massacres of Sylla.]
Marius left a son, of the same name with himself, who attempted to
retain his father's power; but Sylla, having brought his war with
Mithridates to a conclusion, was now on his return from Asia, and it
was very evident that a terrible conflict was about to ensue. Sylla
advanced triumphantly through the country, while Marius the younger
and his partisans concentrated their forces about the city, and prepared
for defense. The people of the city were divided, the aristocratic faction
adhering to the cause of Sylla, while the democratic influences sided