XXXV. The disease that had long been rankling in the State at last broke out, when Marius had found in the audacity of Sulpicius[119] a most suitable instrument to effect the public ruin; for Sulpicius admired and emulated Saturninus in everything, except that he charged him with timidity and want of promptitude in his measures. But there was no lack of promptitude on the part of Sulpicius, who kept six hundred of the Equestrian class about him as a kind of body-guard and called them an Opposition Senate. He also attacked with a body of armed men the consuls while they were holding a public meeting; one of the consuls made his escape from the Forum, but Sulpicius seized his son and butchered him. Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made his escape into the house of Marius, where nobody would have expected him to go, and thus avoided his pursuers who ran past; and it is said that he was let out in safety by Marius by another door and so got to the camp. But Sulla in his Memoirs says that he did not fly for refuge to Marius, but withdrew there to consult with him about the matters which Sulpicius was attempting to make him assent to against his will by surrounding him with bare swords and driving him on towards the house of Marius, and that finally he went from the house of Marius to the Rostra, and removed, as they required him to do, the Justitium. This being accomplished, Sulpicius, who had now gained a victory, got the command conferred on Marius by the votes of the, assembly, and Marius, who was prepared to set out, sent two tribunes to receive the army of Sulla. But Sulla encouraging his soldiers, who were thirty-five thousand men well armed, led them to Rome. The soldiers fell on the tribunes whom Marius had sent, and murdered them. Marius also put to death many of the friends of Sulla in Rome, and proclaimed freedom to the slaves[120] if they would join him; but it is said that only three slaves accepted the offer. He made but a feeble resistance to Sulla on his entering the city, and was soon compelled to fly. On quitting Rome he was separated from his partisans, owing to its being dark, and he fled to Solonium,[121] one of his farms. He sent his son Marius[122] to get provisions from the estates of his father-in-law Mucius, which were not far off, and himself went to Ostia,[123] where Numerius, one of his friends, had provided a vessel for him, and without waiting for his son he set sail with his stepson Granius. The young man arrived at the estates of Mucius, but he was surprised by the approach of day while he was getting something together and packing it up, and thus did not altogether escape the vigilance of his enemies, for some cavalry came to the spot, suspecting that Marius might be there. The overseer of the farm, seeing them approach, hid Marius in a waggon loaded with beans, and yoking the oxen to it, he met the horsemen on his road to the city with the waggon. Marius was