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[79]
20. “But stay,” someone will object, “when1
the prize is very great, there is excuse for doing
wrong.”
Gaius Marius had been left in obscurity for more2
than six whole years after his praetorship and had
scarcely the remotest hope of gaining the consulship. It looked as if he would never even be a
candidate for that office. He was now a lieutenant
under Quintus Metellus, who sent him on a furlough
to Rome. There before the Roman People he
accused his own general, an eminent man and one
of our first citizens, of purposely protracting the war
and declared that if they would make him consul,
he would within a short time deliver Jugurtha alive
or dead into the hands of the Roman People. And
so he was elected consul, it is true, but he was a
traitor to his own good faith and to justice; for by a
false charge he subjected to popular disfavour an
exemplary and highly respected citizen, and that
too, although he was his lieutenant and under leave
of absence from him.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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