Gaius Marius

• 1. Introduction

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  Gaius Marius died on the 13th of January, 86 BC, within a fortnight of taking office as consul for the seventh time. No Roman before him had ever held that office more than twice in succession. By the time he died, he had saved Rome from Germanic invasion, triggered the first civil war in the city's history, and unleashed a political violence that would not be resolved until the Republic itself ceased to exist. He was born around 157 BC in Cereatae, a small village near Arpinum in south-east Latium, to a family of local standing and inherited land. He died in a city he had seized by force, with the heads of six former consuls on pikes in the Forum. What drove a man from a provincial village to the highest office in the Roman world seven times over? And what did that ambition cost the Republic he claimed to defend?

• 2. A New Man in Rome

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  Arpinum received full Roman citizenship only in 188 BC, thirty years before Marius was born there. That timing mattered. Marius entered Roman public life carrying the label novus homo, a new man, someone without ancestors who had held consulships to smooth the path. His family had local standing in Arpinum and sufficient wealth to send two sons into Roman politics; his younger brother Marcus also entered public life. But wealth in the provinces did not translate automatically into acceptance at Rome.

  His first significant military posting came in 134 BC, when he joined the personal legion of Scipio Aemilianus for the expedition against Numantia. Plutarch preserves a story from that campaign: after dinner one evening, conversation turned to generals, and someone asked Scipio where Rome would find a worthy successor to him. Scipio gently tapped Marius on the shoulder and said, according to Plutarch, "Perhaps this is the man."

  Election to military tribune followed, won on the strength of his record even though the voters had never seen him in person. He won the support of the Metelli, specifically Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, for his election as tribune of the plebs in 119 BC. As tribune, he pushed through a law narrowing the passages through which voters walked to cast their votes, preventing wealthy citizens from watching or harassing voters. Cicero, writing later, described the resulting lex Maria as straightforward and uncontroversial, even if Plutarch dramatized it as a confrontation.

  In 116 BC, he barely won election as praetor, coming in last, and was immediately charged with electoral corruption. He won acquittal. He then governed Further Spain for roughly two years, clearing bandits from mining areas and returning to Rome with his personal wealth substantially enlarged. He received no triumph on his return, but he did marry Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar.

• 3. Jugurtha and the Rise to Command

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  The Jugurthine War began in 112 BC after the Numidian king Jugurtha, who had killed his half-brothers and bribed prominent Romans, provoked Roman exasperation to the point of military action. Two early Roman armies failed embarrassingly. The first was apparently bribed to withdraw; the second was defeated and forced to pass under the yoke in humiliation. Public confidence in the aristocracy's management of foreign affairs collapsed.

  In 109 BC, Marius attached himself to the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus as his senior legate in Numidia. At the Battle of the Muthul, Jugurtha cut the Roman army off from the river where they needed to refill water. Numidian cavalry scattered Roman detachments across the desert. Marius reorganized a few of those detachments, led a column of two thousand men through the Numidian lines to reach Metellus, and together they drove the Numidian infantry from a hill and attacked the cavalry's rear. The Romans recovered the initiative.

  By 108 BC, Marius wanted to stand for the consulship. Metellus refused to let him return to Rome, allegedly suggesting Marius wait until Metellus's own son was old enough to run, which at twenty years of age meant a campaign decades away. Marius began canvassing for votes among the Italian traders and merchants attached to the army, telling them he could capture Jugurtha in days with half of Metellus's forces. They wrote home praising him. Metellus, unsettled by an increasingly resentful subordinate, eventually let him go.

  Marius won the consulship for 107 BC, with the concilium plebis overriding the Senate's decision to keep Metellus in command. Marius's newly appointed quaestor was Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Though Marius was reportedly unhappy at receiving the young Sulla, Sulla proved a highly capable officer and was well liked by the men. The war ended not through open battle but through a diplomatic arrangement: Bocchus of Mauretania handed Jugurtha over in chains to Sulla, and Jugurtha was thrown into the Tullianum prison in Rome. He died after being led through the streets of the city in Marius's triumph in 104 BC.

• 4. The Germanic Threat

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  In 109 BC, a migrating Germanic tribe called the Cimbri appeared in Gaul and routed a Roman army under Marcus Junius Silanus. Two years later, the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus was killed and his army was defeated by the Tigurini; the survivors were forced to surrender half their baggage and pass under the yoke. In 105 BC came the worst: at the Battle of Arausio, modern Orange, the Cimbri annihilated two Roman armies totalling tens of thousands of men, with one general's routed troops crashing into the other's, pinning both against the Rhone. The disaster reached Rome just as Marius completed his campaign against Jugurtha.

  The Republic elected Marius consul in absentia for a second time, setting aside the legal requirement that barred consecutive consulships. He was returned again for 103, 102, and 101 BC, meaning five consecutive consulships in total. He used the years before the Germans returned from Hispania to rebuild the Gallic legions, raise an army of roughly thirty thousand Romans and forty thousand Italian allies, train them intensively, and establish a fortified base at Aquae Sextiae, modern Aix-en-Provence.

  In 102 BC the Teutones and Ambrones moved toward Italy along the coast while the Cimbri attempted to cross the Alps by the Brenner Pass. Marius denied the Teutones battle, staying inside his fortified camp. An accidental encounter between Roman camp servants fetching water and bathing Ambrones sparked a spontaneous engagement in which the Romans killed around thirty thousand Ambrones. The next day, the Teutones and Ambrones counterattacked up a hill against the Roman position. A flanking column of three thousand men under Marcus Claudius Marcellus turned the battle into a slaughter. Marius sent his legate Manius Aquillius to Rome with a report stating that thirty-seven thousand Romans had defeated over one hundred thousand Germans in two engagements.

  In late July 101 BC, at the Battle of Vercellae, the Romans annihilated the Cimbri. Caught off guard by Sulla's cavalry, pinned by the infantry of Marius's colleague Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and flanked by Marius himself, upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand Cimbri perished. The Tigurini abandoned their attempt to enter Italy from the northeast and went home. Catulus and Marius shared a joint triumph. Plutarch records that Marius was hailed as the third founder of Rome, though he notes this characterization was probably a later invention.

• 5. The Sixth Consulship and Its Fallout

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  During 100 BC, the tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus pushed through legislation giving land to the veterans of the Cimbric wars, including Italian allies, and drove Marius's old commander Metellus Numidicus into exile. Marius worked with Saturninus to pass these bills. When Saturninus and his ally Glaucia had a political opponent killed during the consular elections for 99 BC, the Senate issued a senatus consultum ultimum, ordering magistrates to take whatever actions they felt necessary to restore order. It was the first time such a decree had ever been directed against other sitting magistrates.

  Marius cut the water supply to the Capitoline hill where Saturninus had fortified himself and forced a quick surrender. He tried to protect the prisoners by holding them in the senate house to await formal prosecution. A mob broke in and killed them by tearing off the roof tiles and hurling them down. Glaucia was dragged from a house and killed as well.

  The scholar A.N. Sherwin-White wrote that Marius "wanted to end his days as vir censorius", an elder statesman, like other celebrated new men of the previous generation. But the episode gained him nothing. When he left office, the relatives of the exiled Metellus Numidicus pursued him through the streets in mourning dress. Plutarch states that Marius had alienated both senators and the people. He entered a period of semi-retirement.

  In 98 BC, he travelled to Galatia, ostensibly to fulfill a vow to the goddess Magna Mater. While there, he lost his candidature for the censorship of 97. Yet he was, while still absent, elected in absentia to the college of priestly augurs, an unprecedented honour. His mere presence at the trial of his former colleague Manius Aquillius in 98 BC was enough to secure acquittal for a man who was apparently guilty.

• 6. Civil War and the Seventh Consulship

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  In 91 BC, Rome's Italian allies revolted in the Social War, named from the Latin word for allies, socii. Marius served as a senior legate and won several engagements, including a victory over the Marsi on hilly ground south of the Fucine Lake, where Herius Asinius, a praetor of the Marrucini, was killed. Plutarch preserves an exchange from that campaign: the Marsic leader Poppaedius Silo challenged Marius, asking why he would not come down from his fortifications and fight; Marius replied, "Well, if you think you are any good a general, why don't you try to make me?" He was eventually relieved of command, possibly due to illness or perceived passiveness.

  With Sulla elected consul for 88 BC and assigned command of the war against Mithridates of Pontus, Marius positioned himself for a seventh consulship and worked with the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus on voting reforms that would distribute the new Italian citizens across all thirty-five voting tribes. A riot in the Forum forced Sulla to take shelter in Marius's own house, where a compromise was reached. After Sulla left Rome to join his army at Nola, Sulpicius passed his measures into law and appended a rider transferring the Mithridatic command to Marius, who held no office in the state. Marius sent two legates to take command from Sulla.

  Sulla refused. All but one of his own subordinates opposed him. He killed Marius's legates, rallied his army, and marched on Rome. No Roman army had ever done this before. It was forbidden by law and ancient tradition. Marius tried to organize a defence with gladiators. He was defeated and fled. Sulla proscribed twelve men and issued death sentences on Marius, his son, and their allies. Marius escaped to Africa and eventually found safety among his veterans.

  In 87 BC, while Sulla was fighting in Greece, civil conflict broke out between the consuls Gnaeus Octavius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna over voting rights for the Italians. Cinna fled the city and assembled roughly ten legions, including the Samnites. Marius returned from Africa with forces he had raised in Etruria, placed himself under Cinna's command, and demanded the tribunes lift his banishment by law. Cinna's army outnumbered the defenders and the Senate opened the gates. The purge that followed killed fourteen notable individuals, including six former consuls; their heads were displayed in the Forum. Within a fortnight of being elected consul for the seventh time, Marius was dead.

• 7. What Marius Left Behind

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  Plutarch quotes the philosopher Posidonius as attributing Marius's death to pleurisy. Another account, attributed to Gaius Piso, describes Marius walking with friends and discussing all of his accomplishments before his end. Plutarch also records a tradition that in his final days Marius fell into a delusional state in which he believed himself commanding the Mithridatic War. And on his deathbed, the same Plutarch writes, Marius lamented that he had not achieved all of which he was capable, despite having been chosen consul more times than any man before him.

  Modern historians have revisited much of what was attributed to him in the nineteenth century. The so-called Marian reforms, including the shift to a professional army and a new design of the pilum, are now widely regarded by specialists as a construct of modern scholarship. The recruitment of men without property in 107 BC appears to have been a one-time measure; there is little sign it permanently altered the social composition of the legions. Armies of the late Republic were still predominantly drawn from rural populations and raised largely by conscription.

  What Marius did change was the structure of political competition. His repeated use of the popular assemblies to override Senate-controlled commands removed collective governance from Roman foreign policy. The precedent of using the assemblies to strip a sitting commander of his post, and of a general marching on Rome to protect that post, proved irreversible. The scholar Evans wrote that Marius's five successive consulships, while seen at the time as necessary for Roman survival, placed unprecedented power in the hands of a single man for an unprecedented length of time. The inherited republic, built on short terms and equality between colleagues, could not survive it. Cinna and his later consular colleague Carbo eventually fell to Sulla's army in the civil war that followed Marius's death; Sulla made himself dictator, and the shape of the Roman state was altered permanently.