Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of Rome from republic to empire. He was a student of Roman general Sulla as well as the political ally, and later enemy, of Julius Caesar.
80s BC is the time period from 89 BC – 80 BC.
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelia gens.
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. Victor of the Cimbric and Jugurthine wars, he held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his important reforms of Roman armies. He set the precedent for the shift from the militia levies of the middle Republic to the professional soldiery of the late Republic; he also improved the pilum, a javelin, and made large-scale changes to the logistical structure of the Roman army.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, commonly known as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman. He won the first large-scale civil war in Roman history and became the first man of the Republic to seize power through force.
The Social War, also called the Italian War or the Marsic War, was fought from 91 to 87 BC between the Roman Republic and several of its autonomous allies in Italy. The Italian allies wanted Roman citizenship, not only for the status and influence that came with it, but also for the right to vote in Roman elections and laws. They believed that they should be treated equally to the Romans, given that they had formed cultural and linguistic connections with the Roman civilization, and had been their loyal allies for over two centuries. The Romans strongly opposed their demands, and refused to grant them citizenship, thus leaving the socii with fewer rights and privileges.
The Battle of Vercellae, or Battle of the Raudine Plain, was fought on 30 July 101 BC on a plain near Vercellae in Gallia Cisalpina. A Germanic-Celtic confederation under the command of the Cimbric king Boiorix was defeated by a Roman army under the joint command of the consul Gaius Marius and the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. The battle marked the end of the Germanic threat to the Roman Republic.
The First Man in Rome is a 1990 historical novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough, and the first in her Masters of Rome series.
The First Mithridatic War was a war challenging the Roman Republic's expanding empire and rule over the Greek world. In this conflict, the Kingdom of Pontus and many Greek cities rebelling against Roman rule were led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against Rome and the allied Kingdom of Bithynia. The war lasted five years and ended in a Roman victory which forced Mithridates to abandon all of his conquests and return to Pontus. The conflict with Mithridates VI later resumed in two further Mithridatic Wars.
The Third Mithridatic War, the last and longest of the three Mithridatic Wars, was fought between Mithridates VI of Pontus and the Roman Republic. Both sides were joined by a great number of allies dragging the entire east of the Mediterranean and large parts of Asia into the war. The conflict ended in defeat for Mithridates, ending the Pontic Kingdom, ending the Seleucid Empire, and also resulting in the Kingdom of Armenia becoming an allied client state of Rome.
Manius Aquillius was a Roman politician and general during the late Roman Republic. He was a member of the ancient Roman gens Aquillia, probably a son of Manius Aquillius, consul in 129 BC. Aquillius served as Consul of Rome with Gaius Marius in 101 BC. Before his consulship, during the Cimbrian War, he had served as a legate under Marius in Gaul. He played a pivotal role during the Battle of Aquae Sextiae where he surprised the Teutones by attacking them from behind. As consul he crushed a slave revolt in Sicily. At the start of the First Mithridatic War he was defeated and captured by Mithridates VI of Pontus who had him executed by pouring molten gold down his throat.
Rome's military was always tightly keyed to its political system. In the Roman Kingdom the social standing of a person impacted both his political and military roles, which were often organised into familial clans such as the Julia. These clans often wielded a large amount of power and were huge influences through the Roman Kingdom into the Roman Republic. The political system was from an early date based upon competition within the ruling elite, the patricians. Senators in the Republic competed fiercely for public office, the most coveted of which was the post of consul. Two consuls were elected each year to head the government of the state, and would be assigned a consular army and an area in which to campaign. From Gaius Marius and Sulla onwards, control of the army began to be tied into the political ambitions of individuals, leading to the First Triumvirate of the 1st century BC and the resulting Caesar's civil war. The late Republic and Empire was increasingly plagued by usurpations led by or supported by the military, leading to the Crisis of the third century in the late empire.
This article concerns the period 99 BC – 90 BC.
Cappadocia was a province of the Roman Empire in Anatolia, with its capital at Caesarea. It was established in 17 AD by the Emperor Tiberius, following the death of Cappadocia's last king, Archelaus.
Lucius Valerius Flaccus was the suffect consul who completed the term of Gaius Marius in 86 BC. In the Roman Republic, Marius had fought a series of civil wars against Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, both leaders of their respective factions. Flaccus was considered a staunch supporter of Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna, the latter of whom shared his consulate and succeeded Marius as faction leader.
Quintus Pompeius Rufus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 88 BC. His colleague in office was the future dictator Sulla.
Gaius Marcius Censorinus was a late Roman Republican politician and soldier who participated in the first civil war of the Roman Republic, against Sulla.
The siege of Athens and Piraeus was a siege of the First Mithridatic War that took place from Autumn of 87 BC to the Spring and Summer of 86 BC. The battle was fought between the forces of the Roman Republic, commanded by Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix on the one hand, and the forces of the Kingdom of Pontus and the Athenian City-State on the other. The Greek Pontian forces were commanded by Aristion and Archelaus.
The Fimbrian or Valerian legions were two Roman legions which served and fought in all three wars against King Mithridates of Pontus, one of the Roman Republic's chief adversaries during the 80s, 70s and 60s BC. They became a body of long serving legionaries known for their fierce fighting reputation and also, more infamously, for mutiny and abandoning their commander. The legions take their name from the consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who first recruited them in 86 BC, and from his subordinate, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who took command of the legions after inciting a mutiny and murdering Flaccus.
The Battle of Tridentum took place in a valley just beyond Tridentum in the Autumn of 102 BC. The Germanic Cimbri almost succeeded in overrunning a Roman camp in the middle of the Roman strategical retreat. The Romans were saved by the heroic charge of the men from the Samnite legion which bought the rest of the army enough time to cross the river and escape. Despite some light losses a disaster was averted.
