War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius, Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna, master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and challenged them to pass over his body.[706] Death delivered Pompeius Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe. According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.
The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them.[707]
Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms, that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about 150,000 men.[708] Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb: the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow _fairly_.[709]