Unsupported major,minor version 51.0

Question

I am trying to make a simple spring rest application using a maven project in eclipse mars. The maven version is 3.3, java version is 1.8 and apache tomcat version is 7.

The pom.xml is as below :

    <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.restdemo</groupId>
  <artifactId>FirstRestDemo</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>FirstRestDemo Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <dependencies>
   <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
   <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
   <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
   <version>3.1.0</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
   <version>${spring.version}</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
   <version>${spring.version}</version>
  </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>FirstRestDemo</finalName>
    <plugins>
   <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.1</version>
    <configuration>
     <source>${jdk.version}</source>
     <target>${jdk.version}</target>
    </configuration>
   </plugin>
  </plugins>
  </build>
  <properties>
  <spring.version>4.2.1.RELEASE</spring.version>
  <jdk.version>1.8</jdk.version>
 </properties>
</project>

When i am trying to do a maven build, it shows me below error-

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/apache/maven/cli/MavenCli : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClassFromSelf(ClassRealm.java:401)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy.loadClass(SelfFirstStrategy.java:42)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.unsynchronizedLoadClass(ClassRealm.java:271)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:254)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:239)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.getMainClass(Launcher.java:144)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:266)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:229)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:415)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:356)

can anyone please help me here?