Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius (Latin: [ˈɡaːijʊs ˈmarijʊs]; c. 157 BC – 13 January 86 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. Victor of the Cimbric and Jugurthine wars, he held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his important reforms of Roman armies. 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.
Rising from a well-off provincial Italian family in Arpinum, Marius acquired his initial military experience serving with Scipio Aemilianus at the Siege of Numantia in 134 BC. He won election as tribune of the plebs in 119 BC and passed a law limiting aristocratic interference in elections. Barely elected praetor in 115 BC, he next became the governor of Further Spain where he campaigned against bandits. On his return from Spain he married Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar.
Marius attained his first consulship in 107 BC and became the commander of Roman forces in Numidia, where he brought an end to the Jugurthine War. By 105 BC Rome faced an invasion by the Cimbri and Teutones, and the Assembly elected Marius consul for a second time in order to face this new threat. Marius was consul every year from 104–100 BC, and he defeated the Teutones at Aqua Sextiae and the Cimbri at Vercellae. For his victories he was hailed as “the third founder of Rome” (the first two being Romulus and Camillus). However, Marius suffered political setbacks during his sixth consulship in 100 BC and afterwords entered a period of semi-retirement from public life.
The Republic fell into crisis with the outbreak of the Social War in 91 BC, and Marius fought in the war but his military success was limited. He then became embroiled in a conflict with the Roman general Sulla which resulted in him being exiled to Africa in 88 BC. Marius returned to Italy during the War of Octavius, seized Rome, and began a bloody reign of terror in the city which culminated in him being elected consul a seventh time and then dying at the beginning of his consulship, in 86 BC. 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, were highly significant in Rome’s transformation from Republic to Empire.