The Italian Plot Against the Republic

A History of Mankind (204)

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Marius was protected from a violent fate such as Saturninus’. He had married into one of the most prominent patrician families, the Julii, and remained a popular military hero. He had promoted his brother-in-law Gaius Julius Caesar – father to a son he also named Gaius, born in 100 BC – to a position in a land allotment commission that spread Marius’ veterans far and wide through recently conquered lands throughout the Mediterranean basin.

Later, Marius’ influence sufficed to send Julius Caesar the elder to a lucrative governorship in wealthy Asia, from which he returned to Rome, much wealthier, in the late 80s BC, just before he died suddenly — leaving the younger Julius Caesar as a rich, brash, ambitious heir with ties to Marius’ party.

However, as Julius Caesar was still a toddler, Marius was already growing old – he was almost sixty by now – and cautious, and he left Rome for a long tour of Anatolia. During this tour, he supposedly met Mithridates, who had continued clashing with Bithynia, on and off, despite increasingly stern Roman warnings to behave or else. It’s hard to see how meeting a man who seemed to be semi-retired from Roman politics may have been of much interest to Mithridates, but the encounter re-energized Marius, who returned to Italy willing to dabble in politics again.