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But when Marius, stained with the blood of his fellow-citizens,
whom the rage of party had sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and
driven from the city, it had scarcely time to breathe freely, when,
to use the words of Cicero, "Cinna and Marius together returned and
took possession of it. Then, indeed, the foremost men in the state
were put to death, its lights quenched. Sylla afterwards avenged this
cruel victory; but we need not say with what loss of life, and with
what ruin to the republic." For of this vengeance, which was more
destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been committed with
impunity, Lucan says: "The cure was excessive, and too closely
resembled the disease. The guilty perished, but when none but the
guilty survived: and then private hatred and anger, unbridled by law,
were allowed free indulgence." In that war between Marius and
Sylla, besides those who fell in the field of battle, the city,
too, was filled with corpses in its streets, squares, markets,
theatres, and temples; so that it is not easy to reckon whether the
victors slew more before or after victory, that they might be, or
because they were, victors. As soon as Marius triumphed, and
returned from exile, besides the butcheries everywhere perpetrated,
the head of the consul Octavius was exposed on the rostrum: Caesar
and Fimbria were assassinated in their own houses; the two Crassi,
father and son, were murdered in one another's sight; Bebius and
Numitorius were disembowelled by being dragged with hooks; Catulus
escaped the hands of his enemies by drinking poison; Merula, the
flamen of Jupiter, cut his veins and made a libation of his own blood
to his god. Moreover, every one whose salutation Marius did not
answer by giving his hand, was at once cut down before his face.
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