Plutarch, a Greek from Chaeronea writing around AD 100, composed Parallel Lives, paired biographies of Greeks and Romans. This is his life of Gaius Marius, set beside Pyrrhus: two restless captains whose cities could not hold them.

Marius was a farmer's son from Arpinum in central Italy. He turned the legion — a Roman army unit once filled by property-holders — into a professional force of men who had nothing but their pay. He crushed Jugurtha in North Africa, then the Teutones and Cimbri, northern peoples who had terrified Italy, at Aquae Sextiae in what is now southern France and on the Raudine Plain in the north. He held the consulship, one of two offices elected to run Rome for a year, seven times. Then Sulla marched on Rome, and revenge filled the streets. Old, drunk on blood and fear, Marius died in his seventh consulship. The city learned what a savior costs when he will not leave. The new army would remember who first paid it.