It is unclear whether or not Marius was already present and serving in Numantia with the previous commander, Quintus Pompeius, the consul for 141 BC, when Aemilianus arrived. In 134 BC, Marius joined the personal legion of Scipio Aemilianus as an officer for the expedition to Numantia. Later, as consul, he decreed that the eagle would be the symbol of the Senate and People of Rome. Since eagles were considered sacred animals of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Romans, it was later seen as an omen predicting his accession to the consulship seven times. There is a legend that Gaius, as a teenager, found an eagle’s nest with seven chicks in it – eagle clutches hardly ever have more than three eggs, even if two females used the same nest, and finding seven offspring in a single nest would be exceptionally rare.
In fact, his family’s resources were definitely large enough to support not just one member of the family in Roman politics, but two: Marius’ younger brother, Marcus Marius, also entered Roman public life. While many of the problems he faced in his early career in Rome show the difficulties that faced a “new man” (novus homo) in being accepted into the stratified upper echelons of Roman society, Marius – even as a young man – was not poor or even middle-class he was most assuredly born into inherited wealth, gained most likely from large land holdings. Although Plutarch claims that Marius’ father was a labourer, this is almost certainly false since Marius had connections with the nobility in Rome, he ran for local office in Arpinum, and he had marriage relations with the local nobility in Arpinum, all of which when taken together indicate that he was born into a locally important family of equestrian status.
#CASSIUS DIO ON THE BATTLE OF ARAUSIO FULL#
Only in 188 BC, thirty years before his birth, did the town receive full citizenship. The town had been conquered by the Romans in the late 4th century BC and was initially given Roman citizenship without voting rights (Civitas sine suffragio).
Marius was born in Cereatae in 157 BC, a small village near the Latin town of Arpinum in southern Latium. After losing a short civil war against Sulla, being exiled, returning, and then militarily seizing Rome in 87 BC, Marius became consul for the seventh time and died shortly after assuming office. His life and career, by breaking with many of the precedents that bound the ambitious upper class of the Roman Republic together and instituting a soldiery loyal not to the Republic but to their commanders, was highly significant in Rome’s transformation from Republic to Empire. For his victory over invading Germanic tribes in the Cimbrian War, he was dubbed “the third founder of Rome” (the first two being Romulus and Camillus). Rising from a well-off provincial Italian family in Arpinum, Marius rose to high office on his excellent record of military victories.
#CASSIUS DIO ON THE BATTLE OF ARAUSIO PROFESSIONAL#
He set the precedent for the shift from the militia levies of the middle Republic to the professional soldiery of the late Republic he also improved the pilum, a javelin, and made large-scale changes to the logistical structure of the Roman army.
He was also noted for his important reforms of Roman armies.
Victor of the Cimbric and Jugurthine wars, he held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. Gaius Marius (c. 157 BC – 13 January 86 BC) was a Roman general, politician, and statesman.