High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Gaius Marius Minor, also known in English as Marius the Younger or informally "the younger Marius" (110 BC/108 BC - 82 BC), was the son of the Gaius Marius who was seven times consul and a famous military commander. His mother Julia was paternal aunt to the dictator Julius Caesar. Other sources say, however, that he was the nephew and adopted son of Gaius Marius. In his youth, Marius was educated with Titus Pomponius Atticus and Marcus Tullius Cicero by Greek tutors. Like his father, Marius advanced his political career through popularist tactics. When his father died in 86 BC, he assumed control of his faction. He is said to have lacked his father's charisma and courted popularity on the family name. He was elected to the consulship for 82 BC. This was a political move by Carbo, his consular colleague, to drum up popular support and enthusiasm for the war against Sulla; Marius was much too young to be a legally elected consul. Two talented and better-qualified men among the populares, his cousin Marius Gratidianus and Quintus Sertorius, were passed over in favor of the younger Marius's symbolic value.