Gaius Marius, was one of the most important leaders in ancient Rome.
He was an accomplished military commander and politician who was acclaimed for saving Rome from the brink of collapse.
He was also noted for his important reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate cohorts.
Gaius Marius defeated the invading Germanic tribes (the Teutones, Ambrones, and the Cimbri), for which he was called “the third founder of Rome.”
His life and career were significant in Rome’s transformation from Republic to Empire.
The reforms proposed by Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, and the supremacy of General Gaius Marius, had deeply shaken the political world.
One of family was on the rise, the Julii Caesares. and their power rapidly increased, which is also indicated by their claim that they descended from the goddess Venus.
Gaius Marius married a patrician woman named Julia who later boasted a famous nephew, Julius Caesar, named after his father Gaius Julius Caesar.
The elder Gaius Julius Caesar’s career was never very impressive.
In 99 or 98, shortly after his wife Aurelia had given birth to his famous son, he was quaestor, and in 92 he was praetor.
Aurelia Cotta’s father, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, was Consul (top job in the Roman Republic) like his father before him.
His relatives served the state as Consul and Aedile, but war had broken out with the allies.
Aedile iseither of two (later four) Roman magistrates responsible for public buildings and originally also for the public games and the supply of grain to the city.
Then , a second war broke out with king Mithridates of Pontus, who occupied the province of Asia from which Gaius Julius Caesar had just returned.
To make matters worse, two generals, Gaius Marius and Felix Sulla started a civil war, both wanted to be supreme commander.
In his Life of Marius, Plutarch writes that Gaius Marius’s return to power was a particularly brutal and bloody one, saying that the consul’s “anger increased day by day and thirsted for blood, kept on killing all whom he held in any suspicion whatsoever.”
Among these included the orator Marcus Antonius, grandfather of Mark Antony.
Felix Sulla marched on Rome and expelled the Marians.
Plutarch relates an opinion that Marius contracted pleurisy; .
Marius died on January 13, 86 BC, just seventeen days into his seventh consulship.
Though , unrelated ,Gaius Julius Caesar also died , but his son, at 16, became the head of the family.
His father had seen to his education by one of the best orators of Rome, Marcus Antonius Gnipho.
Deciding that belonging to the priesthood would bring the most benefit to the family, he managed to have himself nominated as the new High Priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis).
As a priest not only had to be of patrician stock, but married to a patrician so, Caesar broke off his engagement to a plebian girl and married the patrician, Cornelia, daughter of a high profile and influential member of the Populares, Lucius Cinna.
When the Roman ruler Sulla declared himself dictator, he began a systematic purge of his enemies and particularly of those who held to the Populare ideology.
Caesar was targeted and fled Rome but his sentence was lifted through the intercession of his mother’s family.
Still, he was stripped of his position as priest and his wife’s dowry was confiscated.
Left without means of supporting himself or his family, Caesar joined the army.
Shorly after the Roman Senate, the “Assembly of the People” subsequently ratified the decision, with no limit set on his time in office,
Felix Sulla had total control of the city and Republic of Rome, except for Hispania ,(present day Spain).
In total control of the city and its affairs, Sulla instituted a series of proscriptions (a program of executing those whom he perceived as enemies of the state and confiscating their property).
Plutarch states in his “Life” of Sulla (XXXI): “Sulla now began to make blood flow, and he filled the city with deaths without number or limit”, further alleging that many of the murdered victims had nothing to do with Sulla, though Sulla killed them to “please his adherents”.
The proscriptions are widely perceived as a response to similar killings which Marius and Cinna had implemented while they controlled the Republic during Sulla’s absence.
Marius was a seven time Roman consul who opposed Sulla’s capture of Rome.
The life of Julius Caesar came under threat due to his familial ties to Marius.
In reference to this , Sulla said, ” I see more than one Marius in that boy.
Caesar began his military career at the Siege of Mytilene in 81 BC
The island city, situated on Lesbos, was suspected of helping local pirates.
From the start he was a brave soldier and was decorated with the Civic Crown during the siege.
It was during his evasion of Sulla, that Caesar was captured by Pirates, effectively kidnapping him.
Plutarch’s account of the event was
“Caesar was not satisfied to be overlooked at first by Sulla, who was busy with a multitude of proscriptions, but he came before the people as candidate for the priesthood, although he was not yet much more than a stripling. “
This priest position was of great importance, prestige and power, so if Sulla felt threatened before , he felt it even deeper now which is why Plutarch noted,
“Sulla secretly opposed him, and took measures to make Caesar fail in it, and when he was deliberating about putting him to death and some said there was no reason for killing a mere boy like him, he declared that they had no sense if they did not see in this boy many Mariuses. Sulla stripped Caesar of his inheritance and priestly office. Caesar on being informed of his comparison to Marius, concealed himself for a considerable of time in the country of the Sabine and kept out of the way , often changing his quarters at night.
One night as he was moving from one house to another on account of his health, he fell in with soldiers of Sulla who were searching those parts to apprehend anyone who had absconded.
Caesar by a bribe of two talents , prevailed with Cornelius, their captain to let him go and was immediately let go, but he put to sea toward Bithynia, after a short stay there with Nicomedes, in his passage back he was taken near an island by pirates, who with large fleets of ships and countless small vessels infested the seas everywhere.
The pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing the value of their prisoner and voluntaily engaged who their captive was, and of his own accord ato give them fifty.
After that, he had sent dispatches to various cities to procure the money and was left with one friend and two attendants among Cilicians, most bloodthirsty murderers in the world, he held them in such disdain that whenever he lay down to sleep he would send and order them to stop talking.
For eight and thirty days, as if the men were not his watchers, but his royal body-guard, he shared in their sports and exercises with great unconcern
He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians, and often laughingly threatened to kill them all.
The pirates were delighted at this, and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth
But after his ransom had come from Miletus and he had paid it and was set free, he immediately manned vessels and put to sea from the harbor of Miletus against the robbers.
He caught them, too, still lying at anchor off the island, and got most of them into his power.
Their money he made his, but the men themselves, he lodged in the prison at Pergamum, and then went in person to Junius, the governor of Asia, on the ground that it belonged to him, as praetor of the province, to punish the captives.
But since the praetor cast longing eyes on their money, which was no small sum, and kept saying that he would consider the case of the captives at his leisure, Caesar left him to his own devices, went to Pergamum, took the robbers out of prison, and crucified them all, a punishment he would threaten them with when he was in their hands and they little dreamed he was serious.
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The power dynamics by Caesar in this story are compelling.
This is some high lever maneuvering, these pirates never stood a chance.
No wonder why he was laughing at them.
This is about seeing oportunity and capitalizing on it.
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Sulla comes for Caesar’s head.
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Caeser evades them.
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He then gets captured by pirates who wanted money , so he preyed on that desire.
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He promised and delivered a ridiculous amount of money for his ransom.
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He laughed at them about their small demands then tripled and quadrupled it.
