in their power to crush him. On the subject of Marius’ birth, even the ancients were not agreed. Some of them make him out to have been of a very low origin; others (Velleius Paterculus) place him somewhat higher: certain it is that his ancestors were clients of a municipal family in Arpinum, from which, however, it does not follow that they were serfs. The name is Oscan, and it is likely that his family had come from Campania to Arpinum, where it had entered into the clientship of the Herennii. At all events, he was poor, and had served as a private soldier, and before that, even as a day labourer. His extraordinary qualities must have displayed themselves very soon: at an early age, he was known at Rome as an able centurion; and when he applied for the military tribuneship, he was elected with great applause. Otherwise, it was very seldom indeed--particularly in those later times--that any one who had been in the ranks, was ever raised to the higher military commands. Marius rose without the help of any connexions or relations; yet he must have made some money, or he could not have stood for the ædileship, on which occasion he failed. Notwithstanding this repulse, he got the prætorship, which office he discharged very creditably; and though the oligarchs even then gave him trouble by charging him with _ambitus_, he kept his ground against them. In was in those days already most common for candidates to spend money; and yet every one would try and fix this charge upon his opponents, that he might drive them out of the field. He was now with the army of Metellus as a _legatus_: for the higher employments were by no means permanent. For a _homo novus_ to become a prætor, was at that time not at all a thing unheard of; but that he should have risen to the consular dignity, was, according to Sallust’s description, all but an impossibility. Of the six prætors moreover, four, as a matter of course, could not become consuls: the children of a prætor, however, were not _homines novi_.