Down below in the Forum Romanum the procession was forming, as the long crocodile which had wended its way from the house of Marcus Minucius Rufus met up with the equally long crocodile originating at the house of Spurius Postumius Albinus. The knights came first, not as many as on a fine sunny New Year's Day, but a respectable enough gathering of seven hundred or so; as the light improved but the rain grew a trifle harder, they moved off up the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus to where, at the first bend in this short and hilly track, the priests and slaughtermen waited with two flawless white bulls on spangled halters, their horns gilded and their dewlaps garlanded. At the rear of the knights strolled the twenty-four lictors of the new consuls. After the lictors came the consuls themselves, and after them the Senate, those who had held senior magistracies in purple-bordered togas, the rest of the House in plain white togas. And last of all came those who did not by rights belong there, sightseers and a host of the consuls' clients. Nice, thought Marcia. Perhaps a thousand men walked slowly up the ramp toward the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the Great God of Rome, rearing its impressive bulk in highest place of all on the more southerly of the two hills constituting the Capitol. The Greeks built their temples on the ground, but the Romans built theirs on lofty platforms with many steps, and the steps which led up to Jupiter Optimus Maximus were indeed many. Nice, thought Marcia again as the sacrificial animals and their escort joined the procession, and all went on together until at last they clustered as best they could in the restricted space before the great temple on high. Somewhere among them were her husband and her two sons, a part of the governing class of this mightiest of all cities of the world.

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Somewhere  among  them  too  was  Gaius Marius. As an ex-praetor, he wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta, and on his dark red senatorial shoes he wore the crescent-shaped buckle his praetorship permitted. Yet it wasn't enough. He had been a praetor five years earlier, should have been consul three years ago. But he knew now that he would never be allowed to run for the consulship. Never. Why? Because he wasn't good enough. That was the only reason why. Who had ever heard of a family called Marius? No one.