Marius and the Seven Consulships: The Professionalisation of the Roman Army
Marius held the consulship seven times, opened the legions to men without property, and made the army loyal to its general. He was a new man from Arpinum, without consular ancestors, who rose through military service and married into the Julian family — Julius Caesar was his nephew by marriage. His first consulship in 107 BC came by attacking his own commander Metellus in the war against Jugurtha of Numidia, promising the assembly a quick victory, and getting the command transferred by popular vote over the senate's head. To raise troops he abandoned the property qualification. The Roman army had been recruited from smallholders who supplied their own equipment, and the class had been shrinking for a century; Marius enrolled the capite censi, the propertyless, equipped them at state expense, and thereby created a professional soldiery with no farm to return to and every reason to look to a commander who would provide land on discharge. The senate refused to legislate for the veterans, and the commanders started doing it themselves. He also reorganised the legion around the cohort, standardised the equipment, and had the men carry their own kit, which is why they were called Marius's mules. He then destroyed two migrating Germanic peoples at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae in 102 and 101 BC and was consul five years running. His later career was a disaster of vendetta with Sulla, and he died in 86 BC in his seventh consulship. The change he made to recruitment is the one that ended the Republic. An army whose land depended on its general's political success had an interest in his political success, and Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and Octavian all used the fact within fifty years.
- Year: 107 BCE
- Category: Military
