V. After the tribuneship he was a candidate for the greater ædileship. Now there are two classes of ædileships: one, which derives its name (curule[56]) from the seats with curved feet on which the ædiles sit when they discharge their functions; the other, the inferior, is called the plebeian ædileship. When they have chosen the higher ædiles, they then take the vote again for the election of the others. Now as Marius was manifestly losing in the votes for the curule ædileship, he forthwith changed about and became a candidate for the other ædileship. But this was viewed as an audacious and arrogant attempt, and he failed in his election; but though he thus met with two repulses in one day, which never happened to any man before, he did not abate one tittle of his pretensions, for no long time after he was a candidate for a prætorship,[57] in which he narrowly missed a failure, being the last of all who were declared to be elected, and he was prosecuted for bribery.[58] What gave rise to most suspicion was the fact that a slave of Cassius Sabaco[59] was seen within the septa mingled with the voters; for Sabaco was one of the most intimate friends of Marius. Accordingly Sabaco was cited before the judices; he explained the circumstance by saying that the heat had made him very thirsty, and he called for a cup of cold water, which his slave brought to him within the septa, and left it as soon as he had drunk the water. Sabaco was ejected from the Senate by the next censors, and people were of opinion that he deserved it, either because he had given false testimony or for his intemperance. Caius Herennius also was summoned as a witness against Marius, but he declared that it was contrary to established usage to give testimony against a client[60] and that patrons (for this is the name that the Romans give to protectors) were legally excused from this duty, and that the parents of Marius, and Marius himself, originally were clients of his house. Though the judices accepted the excuse as valid, Marius himself contradicted Herennius, and maintained that for the moment when he was declared to be elected to a magistracy, he became divested of the relation of client; which was not exactly true, for it is not every magistracy which releases a man who has obtained it, and his family, from the necessity of having a patron, but only those magistracies to which the law assigns the curule seat. However, on the first days of the trial it went hard with Marius, and the judices were strongly against him; yet on the last day, contrary to all expectation, he was acquitted, the votes being equal.