The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform Marius Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained municipal rights as Cereatae Marianae and still at the present day bears the name of "Marius' home" (Casamare).

He was reared at the plough, in circumstances so humble that they seemed to preclude him from access even to the municipal offices of Arpinum: he learned early--what he practised afterwards even when a general--to bear hunger and thirst, the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and to sleep on the hard ground.

As soon as his age allowed him, he had entered the army and through service in the severe school of the Spanish wars had rapidly risen to be an officer.

In Scipio's Numantine war he, at that time twenty-three years of age, attracted the notice of the stern general by the neatness with which he kept his horse and his accoutrements, as well as by his bravery in combat and his decorous demeanour in camp.
He had returned home with honourable scars and warlike distinctions, and with the ardent wish to make himself a name in the career on which he had gloriously entered; but, as matters then stood, a man of even the highest merit could not attain those political offices, which alone led to the higher military posts, without wealth and without connections.
The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the Julii.
So by dint of great efforts and after various miscarriages he succeeded, in 639, in attaining the praetorship, in which he found opportunity of displaying afresh his military ability as governor of Further Spain.
How he thereafter in spite of the aristocracy received the consulship in 647 and, as proconsul (648, 649), terminated the African war; and how, called after the calamitous day of Arausio to the superintendence of the war against the Germans, he had his consulship renewed for four successive years from 650 to 653 (a thing unexampled in the annals of the republic) and vanquished and annihilated the Cimbri in Cisalpine, and the Teutones in Transalpine, Gaul--has been already related.

In his military position he had shown himself a brave and upright man, who administered justice impartially, disposed of the spoil with rare honesty and disinterestedness, and was thoroughly incorruptible; a skilful organizer, who had brought the somewhat rusty machinery of the Roman military system once more into a state of efficiency; an able general, who kept the soldier under discipline and withal in good humour and at the same time won his affections in comrade-like intercourse, but looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the proper time.