1So when Marius saw that the soothsayer's words pointed the same way as the desire of his heart was urging him, he asked Metellus for leave to go home to stand for office. 1Although Metellus had courage, glory and the other things good men should wish for in abundance, there was still in him a disdainful spirit and arrogance, the common failing of the nobility. 2And so at first, startled by the unusual request, he expressed surprise at his plan and warned him, as if in friendship, not to embark on so perverse a course or to set his mind above his station: not everything was to be desired by everyone; he ought to be well enough content with his own position; 2finally, he should beware of asking the Roman people for what they would be right to refuse him.
3When he had said this and more of the same kind and Marius' mind was not turned, he replied that he would do what he asked as soon as public business allowed. 4And later, when Marius kept making the same demand, he is said to have told him not to be in a hurry to go: it would be soon enough for him to stand for the consulship together with his own son. 4The son was at that time serving there on his father's staff, about twenty years old. 4This had fired Marius fiercely, both towards the honour he was aiming at and against Metellus. 5So, with desire and anger, the worst of counsellors, he went on headlong; 5he held back from no deed and no word, provided only that it might win favour; 5the soldiers he commanded in winter quarters he kept under looser discipline than before; 5among the traders, of whom there was a great crowd at Utica, he spoke of the war at once in a fault-finding and a boastful way: if half the army were entrusted to him, he would have Jugurtha in chains within a few days; 5it was being dragged out on purpose by the commander, because he was a vain man with a king's arrogance and took too much delight in command.
6All this seemed the more convincing to them because the length of the war had ruined their fortunes, and for an eager mind nothing goes fast enough.