When Marius became junior consul in 107 BC and was appointed the task of concluding the war with Jugurtha, he had no army. The army Metellus had commanded in Africa was assigned to the senior consul, Lucius Cassius Longinus, to expel the Cimbri, who were once again encroaching on the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul (Gallia Transalpina). Marius had no troops with which to conduct the war in Africa, as the eligible citizenry from whom he could recruit an army was severely depleted by previous military disasters and the expansion of the latifundia at the expense of small landowners. It was becoming clear that a consequence of having a temporary army based principally on volunteers with inflexible eligibility requirements was a limited availability of recruits and short-term military shortages. To overcome that problem, he introduced a number of reforms.