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Line 1: − 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 and boasted that a soothsayer had prophesied he would hold seven consulships. + − A civil war broke out between the Senate, which supported Marius, and the General Assembly, which supported a patrician general named [[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]]. Sulla took the unprecedented step of marching on Rome with his legions and took over the city. Gaius Marius fled to Africa. + − Later Marius allied with [[Cinna]] and took over Rome when Sulla was campaigning in Greece, stepping up to his seventh consulship. But one month after entering the city he died.+ − + + + +
My version
{{Rome}}A Roman General and seven-time [[consul]] who lived from 157 to 86 BC. Full name Caius Marius, Marius was born as a plebian, making his rise to the consulship all the more remarkable: he was, in essence, the first [[novus homo]], or "new man," meaning plebian that rose the patrician ranks of his own skill.
He established a professional army, including instituting for the first time the use of the weapon known as the [[pilum]] - a thrown spear designed to shatter upon impact so that the enemy could not re-use it after thrown by a Roman legionnaire.
He also established the army as an institution more related to the individual general than the state, by for the first time personally rewarding his [[Roman veteran| veterans]]. In this sense, Marius is said to have "forged the sword that slew the state," in that he created the idea of a [[personal army]], which [[Pompey| Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus]] and [[Julius Caesar]] would later use in the civil wars that led to the fall of the [[Roman Republic]].
[[Category:Biographies]]
After leading a successful military career, Marius, instead of retiring, attempted to become engaged in Roman political life by joining in the conflict between [[Sulla| Lucius Cornelius Sulla]] and the [[Roman Senate]]. The Greek historian [[Plutarch]] tells us that Marius was incredibly inept at politics, and uses his life in the book [[Parallel Lives]] as an example of what happens when a man stretches himself too far, and refuses to be content with his already-memorable legacy.
== References ==
Plutarch, ''Parallel Lives'', "Life of Caius Marius."