Great causes need an historical figure to personify their interests and tendencies. The man once adopted, his faults, his very crimes are forgotten, and his great deeds alone remembered. Thus, the vengeance and massacres of Marius had faded away from memory at Rome. Only his victories, which had preserved Italy from the invasions of the Cimbri and the Teutones, were recalled; his misfortunes were pitied, his hatred to the aristocracy vaunted. The preferences of public opinion were clearly manifested by the language of the orators, even those most favourable to the Senate. Thus Catulus and Cicero, speaking of Sylla or of Marius, the tyranny of both of whom had been substantially almost equally cruel, thought themselves obliged to glorify the one and to brand the other;[840] yet the legislation of Sylla was still in full vigour, his party omnipotent--that of Marius dispersed and powerless.[841] The struggle, which was perseveringly continued for sixty-three years against the Senate, had never succeeded, because the defence of the people had never been placed in hands either sufficiently strong or sufficiently pure. To the Gracchi had been wanting an army; to Marius a power less disgraced by excesses; to the war of the allies a character less hostile to the national unity of which Rome was the representative. As to Spartacus, by rousing the slaves he went beyond his aim, and his success threatened the whole of society; he was annihilated. To triumph over a long accumulation of prejudices, the popular cause needed a chief of transcendent merit, and a concurrence of circumstances difficult to foresee. But then the genius of Cæsar was not yet revealed, and the vanquisher of Sertorius was the only one who dominated the situation by his antecedents and high achievements. [Sidenote: Consulship of Pompey and Crassus.] II. By a line of conduct quite opposite to that of Cæsar, Pompey had greatly risen during the civil wars. From the age of twenty-three he had received from Sylla the title _Imperator_, and the name of “Great;”[842] he passed for the first warrior of his time, and had distinguished himself in Italy, Sicily, and Africa against the partisans of Marius, whom he caused to be pitilessly massacred.[843] Fate had ever favoured him. In Spain, the death of Sertorius had made victory easy to him; on his return, the fortuitous defeat of the fugitive remains of the army of Spartacus allowed him to assume the honour of having put an end to that formidable insurrection; soon he will profit by the success already obtained by Lucullus against Mithridates. Thus a distinguished writer has justly said that Pompey always came in time to terminate, to his own glory, the wars which were just going to end to the glory of another.[844]