Hello and welcome to this episode of Epoch's where I should be carrying on my narrative all about the decline of fall of the Roman Republic.

So in this episode I'm going to talk about Marius, Gaius Marius.

Didn't have a third name, Plutarch tells us, so it's just Gaius Marius, which gives

away straight off the bat that he wasn't noble when I talked about the Gracai brothers. They are very

aristocratic and nearly everyone involved in high politics in Rome in this

generation and for many generations to come will sort of have to be blue-blooded or aristocratic or well-to-do. The family steeped in honours and history, but Giesmaris

wasn't. But I've had to think very carefully about how to tell this story because in the next episode

I wanted to talk all about the career of Sula

Lusius Cornelius Sula. Now Sula's 20 years younger than Marius, but their stories are heavily, heavily entwined, and so it's sort of difficult, a bit difficult to separate the two narratives. So what I think I'll do is a two or three or

perhaps even four-part series about Marius and Sulla. And for this first episode

I'll be concentrating mostly almost entirely on Marius and mentioning Sula when he comes up.

And then next episode I'll talk more about the early career of Sula and then we can take the narrative

forward when their lives and careers fully collide and

intertwine.

So once again I'll be reading exclusively from Plutututut.

We do get a bit more in Appian. We begin to get a bit more detail in Appian, but more in

episodes two and three of this series. Still not a great deal or not really anything

on the early life of Marius in Appian.

So let's dive straight in.

Plutarch tells us a bit about the early life of Marius and as I said he was, he came from

almost nothing, not complete penury, they weren't utter, utter peasants living

in squaller and nearly starving to death, but not much above that, really.

...