Though he had long denied it, Marius was an old man in bad health. He had recently undergone an operation for varicose veins, and just a few weeks after taking office, he contracted pneumonia. Before anyone realized how serious his condition was, Gaius Marius died. Just seventeen days after inaugurating his seventh consulship, with maps of Greece spread out on his desk and plans for a final showdown with Sulla in the works, Gaius Marius died one of the all-time anticlimactic deaths in history.
