The decline of parliamentarism in the century which lies between the Gracchi and Caesar may be traced in the loss of these safeguards, one after another. Disorders at home, the pressure of wars abroad and the dominance of the army led to their disregard. A case in point occurred toward the close of the second century before our era. The senatorial leaders had shown great incompetence and venality in their campaigns against the Numidian king Jugurtha, and the popular party forced the election to the consulship of Marius, a man of humble birth, and gave him command of the forces in Africa. His brilliant success in this war made the people turn to him in 104, when the Cimbri and Teutons swept down into Italy and overwhelmed the aristocratic leaders. Once more he succeeded, and was elected to the consulship year after year, until, in the year 100, he held this office for the sixth time. The popularity of Marius brought his son to the consulship before he had reached his twentieth year. Twenty-five years later the senate itself was forced to give up an important feature of its policy. Sertorius, a brilliant democratic leader, had established himself in Spain; he had formed an alliance with Mithridates, Rome’s deadly enemy in the East, and threatened to return to Italy and restore the democracy to power. To avert this danger the senate made Pompey proconsul, although he had not yet held even the quaestorship, and sent him to Spain with 40,000 troops. A little later the Gabinian and Manilian laws, carried through by the democracy against the vigorous opposition of the oligarchy, entrusted him with extraordinary powers for a long term to carry on the wars against the Cilician pirates and against Mithridates. The dictatorship of Sulla in 82 B.C. and the sole consulship of Pompey in 52, both of which resulted from disorder in Rome, violated the principle of collegiality which was one of the most important safeguards of the oligarchy. Within one hundred years, then, of the time of the Gracchi all the bulwarks which the aristocracy had built up to protect its position were broken down. “New men” were put in the consulship. Popular favorites attained that office before reaching the minimum age required of candidates, and men were freely reëlected to it. The fixed “order of the offices” and the principle of collegiality were violated.