Caius Marius

Marius haunts Cicero's argument as the supreme Roman example of a life that climbed to the Capitol and ended in the marshes, so that even his triumphs became evidence for how little death should frighten the fortunate. His career embodies the tension between glory earned and glory lost, and Cicero uses him to press the question of whether a man can lose everything and still not lose himself. For readers entering the Tusculan Disputations, Marius is the hinge on which the whole first book's case against fearing death begins to turn.