Marius
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CAIUS (mā'ri-us), a Roman soldier; born near Arpinum, Italy, about 155 b. c. Having entered the army, he became known to Scipio Africanus, and acquired so much repute that he was elected tribune 119 or 120 B. c., prætor 116, and governor of Spain, 115. In 109 he joined Metellus as one of his lieutenants in the Jugurthine War, and twe years afterward supplanted him in the command of the army. He brought the war to a close in 106, when Jugurtha, King of Numidia, was treacherously delivered into his hands by his ally, Bocchus. Marius remained in Africa a year longer, and was then recalled to take the field against the Cimbri and Teutones, at that time menacing the Roman empire. In 102 he defeated the combined forces of the Ambrones and Teutones, near Aix; and in 101, having joined his forces with those of Catulus, he obtained an equally decisive victory over the Cimbri in the neighborhood of Vercellæ. He was now hailed "The Third Founder of Rome" and rewarded with a fifth consulate-followed by a sixth, which, it is said, was gained by corrupt practices. Marius was the avowed chief of the plebeians, and Sulla became chief of the patricians. The latter, flushed with his recent success against the army of Mithridates, refused to yield the command to Marius, but marched against his party in the capital and disputed the city street by street Marius was defeated, and finally lodged in prison. He escaped and sought refuge in Africa, from whence, in 87 B. C., he was recalled by Cinna, at that time consul, to take arms against his old adversary. The combined forces of Marius, Cinna, Sertorius, and Carbo soon entered Rome, and the bloody proscriptions which have consigned the name of Marius to infamy, now took place. Caius Marius now served as consul for the seventh time, with his new ally; and the same year, 86 B. c., he died.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The narrative Collier's gave in 1921 — Arpinum, Jugurtha handed over by Bocchus, the Teutones crushed near Aix (Aquae Sextiae) in 102 and the Cimbri at Vercellae in 101, seven consulships, death in 86 BC — is still the narrative told today, since it rests on Plutarch, Sallust and Appian, and no new evidence has displaced them. One sequence needs correcting: Sulla's first march on Rome came in 88 BC, before he fought Mithridates, not "flushed with his recent success" against him; his eastern victories preceded his second march, in 82, after Marius was dead. The larger shift is interpretive. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers credited Marius with a sweeping military reform — scrapping the property qualification and creating a professional army loyal to its general — and recent scholarship has picked that apart, arguing the recruitment of the propertyless was a gradual drift already underway and that the "Marian reforms" are largely a modern package.
Written for this edition, 2026.