In the dying days of the Roman Republic, the old guard held the keys to power with an iron grip. To the elite patricians of the Senate, Gaius Marius was a "barbarian"—an uneducated provincial from Arpinum with no family name and no future in politics.They were wrong.This is the story of the early years of Gaius Marius. We trace his journey from a rugged childhood in the Italian countryside to the bloody sieges of Spain under Scipio Aemilianus. Witness the rise of a soldier who realized that if the doors of the Senate wouldn't open, he would have to break them down.