Gaius Marius the younger

Gaius Marius
Consul of the Roman Republic
In office 82 BC – 82 BC Serving with G. Papirius Carbo
Personal details
Born	110/108 BC
Died	82 BC Praeneste
Political party	Populares
Spouse(s)	Licinia (~92 BC; his death)
Children	None
Parents	Gaius Marius and Julia
Religion	Roman Polytheism

Gaius Marius Minor, also known in English as Marius the Younger or informally "the younger Marius" (110 BC/108 BC – 82 BC), was a Roman general and politician who became consul in 82 BC alongside Gnaeus Papirius Carbo. He committed suicide that same year at Praeneste, after his defeat at the hands of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Marius the Younger was the son of the Gaius Marius who was seven times consul and a famous military commander. His mother, Julia, was an aunt of Julius Caesar.

In his youth, Marius was educated with Titus Pomponius Atticus and Marcus Tullius Cicero by Greek tutors. Like his father, Marius advanced his political career through popularist tactics. During the Social War, he served under Lucius Porcius Cato, whom one source claims Marius killed at the Battle of Fucine Lake over Cato's claims that Cato's achievements were on par with the elder Marius's victory over the Cimbri. Seeking to strengthen his political alliances, the elder Marius married his son to Licinia, a daughter of Lucius Licinius Crassus.

In the political turmoil launched by his father in 88 BC to strip his rival Lucius Cornelius Sulla of command of the Roman forces in the First Mithridatic War, the Younger Marius accompanied his father into exile when Sulla unexpectedly marched on Rome, forcing them both to flee. At Ostia, young Marius went on ahead of his father and sailed to Africa. There he went to the court of Hiempsal II of Numidia to seek his help against Sulla, but the king decided to hold him captive instead. He managed to escape with the help of one of Hiempsal’s concubines whom the young Marius had seduced. He then joined up with his father who had also come to Africa, and they escaped to the Kerkennah Islands. Learning of Cinna’s fight to retain his consulship in 87 BC, father and son returned to Rome, where Marius the elder took control of the situation, gathering an army of slaves and gladiators, and murdering his enemies, both real and imagined. According to Cassius Dio, the younger Marius inaugurated his father’s seventh consulship by murdering one Plebeian Tribune and sending his head to the newly installed consuls, while having another tribune thrown from the heights of the Capitoline Hill. He also banished two praetors, ordering that neither should receive fire or water from any Roman citizen.

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