ABSTRACT
Marius had gained his military reputation in North Africa against the Numidian king Jugurtha, who, chained and dejected, had been exhibited in Marius's triumph in Rome and would soon lose his mind in a Roman dungeon. Marius's campaign against the Teutones was a model of the Roman art of war in the later stages of the republic. In 107 B.C. Gaius Marius opened the army to all Roman citizens regardless of their wealth. It was the last, dramatic stage in the troops' proletarization. Sometime in the later second century B.C. the cohort must have become widespread; coexisting with the old terms, but it is only during Caesar's time that the term "cohort" was permanently substituted for the terms of the manipular legion. Dignity was the domain of the aristocracy, not of commoners, for the tools needed to gain it—knowledge of the law, public speaking, leadership on the battlefield— were usually not within the commoner's reach.
