The Historians' History of the World 05

Meantime, the imposing forces of the Romans had induced the Cimbrians to enter into negotiations. Cæpio, seeing the consul in negotiation with the delegates of the barbarians, and thinking that he was desirous of keeping all the honours of victory for himself, attacked them without delay. As a result his troops were entirely destroyed and his camp was taken. After this the Cimbrians engaged in battle with the troop under Mallius and utterly defeated them. The Romans suffered this terrible reverse near the town of Arausio (Orange). On the Roman side eighty thousand soldiers and forty thousand men belonging to the commissariat are said to have been killed, only ten men being saved, amongst whom was Cæpio.

The earlier defeats had already so terrified the Italians that the raising of fresh soldiers presented difficulties; but now, after the defeat of Arausio the “Cimbrian panic” reached its height. Besides panic, the people also felt a burning rage, particularly against the corrupt government of the nobility which had jeopardised the state. Against certain individuals their indignation was extreme, particularly against Cæpio, whose insubordination had been the main cause of the defeat. By decision of the people he was now deposed from the proconsulate, and his property was confiscated; by a second decision of the people he was driven from the senate, and when, long after, in consequence of the malversation and high treason practised in Gaul, a court of judicial inquiry was convened, on the instigation of several of the people’s tribunes, Cæpio narrowly escaped the death sentence. He was banished, and went to Smyrna. Mallius Maximus and several other men of distinction were tried at the same time. The senate and their generals had lost all confidence; only one man seemed to be able to save the state in these perilous times—C. Marius, he who at the end of the Jugurthine War was regarded as the greatest general of his time. Whilst he was still in Africa he was chosen consul for the year 104, although it was against the rule to elect any one who was absent, or any one who had already been a consul at any time during the previous ten years. On the same day—January 1—on which Marius celebrated his triumph over Jugurtha, he entered upon his second consulate; and the same office was conferred upon him every succeeding year until the Cimbrian danger was over.

[103-102 B.C.]

When Marius with his force reached the Rhone, the Cimbrians, always hasty in their movements, had wandered off through southern Gaul towards the west and had entered Spain. Marius accordingly spent some time restoring the disorganised and disintegrated Gallic peoples to a sense of their duty; he raised auxiliary troops from the allied states and by dint of unswerving severity and unremitting exertions made his troops once more fit for action. Once let a soldier under Marius be accustomed to his severity of mien, his rough voice and wild looks, once let him learn never to fail in his duty, never to be insubordinate, and his fear of Marius would be changed into confidence; the man of terror would seem formidable only to his enemies. But his chief attraction for his men was his strict justice and impartiality. It was probably in the year 103, that the Cimbrians returned to Gaul from Spain, where they had encountered a stout resistance from the Celtiberians. They marched through the country along the Atlantic coast to the Seine on the borders of Belgium. Here they were joined by Teuton tribes of the same family under their king Teutobodus, tribes which, driven like the Cimbrians from their home on the Baltic, were moving aimlessly about the world. Notwithstanding their united forces they met with such resistance from the brave Belgians that they gave way, and finally decided to go to Italy. They again divided, perhaps for convenience in obtaining supplies, into two hosts. The Cimbrians, with the Helvetian Tigurini, who seem only recently to have joined them, went back to Noricum in order to enter Italy at the same point as before. The Teutones with the Ambrones, probably a Celtic people, proceeded towards the Rhone, in order to go from thence over the western Alps.