Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was consul of Rome in the early first century BC. He made Rome's first professional army, substituting it for the old system in which only landholding citizens could be soldiers. Marius hired citizens with no land and payed them well. He gained much support from his faithful army. A civil war broke out between the Senate, which supported Marius, and the General Assembly, which supported a general named Cornelius Sulla. Sulla eventually took power and executed Marius and all his followers.