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[60] Thus the seditions proceeded from strife and contention to murder, and from murder to open war, and now the first army of her own citizens had invaded Rome as a hostile country.1 From this time the civil dissensions were decided only by the arbitrament of arms. There were frequent attacks upon the city and battles before the walls and other calamities incident to war. Henceforth there was no restraint upon violence either from the sense of shame, or regard for law, institutions, or country. Now Sulpicius, who still held the office of tribune, together with Marius, who had been consul six times, and his son Marius, also Publius Cethegus, Junius Brutus, Gnæus and Quintus Granius, Publius Albinovanus, Marcus Lætorius, and others with them, about twelve in number, fled from Rome, because they had stirred up the sedition, had borne arms against the consuls, had incited slaves to insurrection, had been voted enemies of the Roman people, and anybody meeting them had been authorized to kill them with impunity or to drag them before the consuls, and their goods had been confiscated. Detectives were in pursuit of these men. They caught Sulpicius and killed him.

1 This is what Mommsen aptly terms "the interference of the sabre with the constitutional rule of the bludgeon."

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