C. MARIUS
C. MARIUS. C. Marius was of obscure parentage, pursuing offices by his valor. He pretended to the chief
aedileship, and perceiving he could not reach it, the same
day he stood for the lesser, and missing of that also, yet
for all that he did not despair of being consul. Having a
wen on each leg, he suffered one to be cut, and endured
the surgeon without binding, not so much as sighing or
once contracting his eyebrows; but when the surgeon
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would cut the other, he did not suffer him, saying the cure
was not worth the pain. In his second consulship, Lucius
his sister's son offered unchaste force to Trebonius, a soldier, who slew him; when many pleaded against him, he
did not deny but confessed he killed the colonel, and told
the reason why. Hereupon Marius called for a crown, the
reward of extraordinary valor, and put it upon Trebonius's
head. He had pitched his camp, when he fought against
the Teutons, in a place where water was wanting; when
the soldiers told him they were thirsty, he showed them a
river running by the enemy's trench. Look you, said he,
there is water for you, to be bought for blood; and they
desired him to conduct them to fight, while their blood was
fluent and not all dried up with thirst. In the Cimbrian
war, he gave a thousand valiant Camertines the freedom of
Rome, which no law did allow; and to such as blamed
him for it he said, I could not hear the laws for the clash
of arrows. In the civil war, he lay patiently entrenched
and besieged, waiting for a fit opportunity; when Popedius
Silon called to him,Marius, if you are so great a general come
down and fight. And do you, said he, if you are so great
a commander, force me to fight against my will, if you can.
