Marius’s mules
Marius’s new legions did away with the baggage train, and the soldiers carried their own weapons, rations, and tools on forced marches, some forty kilos on their backs, joking of themselves as "Marius’s mules." The legions were standardized as units under the eagle standard — from Marius on, the eagle became the legion’s sole totem, and to lose it was the legion’s disgrace. This professional army that could march, dig, and fight swept the Mediterranean without an equal; the only problem was that it obeyed the general, not the Senate.
The old man on the ruins of Carthage
After losing his civil war with Sulla, Marius was outlawed and, hiding in a marsh, was captured. The Germanic horseman sent to execute him entered the cell, and out of the dark heard a roar: "Do you dare kill Gaius Marius?" The assassin dropped his sword and fled. Freed, Marius went into exile in Africa and sat on the ruins of Carthage, telling the governor’s messenger who came to drive him off: "Go and tell him you have seen Marius sitting amid the ruins of Carthage." Two ruins regarding each other. The next year he marched back into Rome with an army, took the consulship for the seventh time, and died of illness seventeen days later.