[84] 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 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.