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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.

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.

[[Category:Biographies]]

[[Category:Biographies]]