THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.
The Jugurthine war ended in 105 B.C. In one way it had been of real
service to Rome. A terrible crisis was at hand, and this war had given
her both soldiers and a general worthy of the name. Before, however,
the story of the struggle with the Cimbri is told, something must be
said about what had been going on at Rome, about the man who had now
most influence there, and about his rivals. [Sidenote: Recommencement
of the social struggle at Rome.] The great social struggle had
recommenced. The personal rivalry between Marius and Sulla had begun
before the Cimbric war. During that war men held as it were their
breath in terror, but nevertheless it was as if only an interlude in
that deadly civil strife, for which each of the contending parties was
already arrayed. C. Marius was now fifty years old. Cato, the censor,
was of opinion that no man can endure so much as he who has turned the
soil and reaped the harvest. Marius was such a man. His family were
clients of the Herennii. His father was a day-labourer of Cereatae,
called today Casamare, after his illustrious son, and he himself
served in the ranks in Spain. [Sidenote: Previous career and present
position of Marius.] Soon made an officer, he won Scipio's favour as a
brave, frugal, incorruptible, and trusty soldier, who never quarrelled
with his general's orders, even when they ran as counter to his own
inclinations as the expulsion of all soothsayers from the camp before
Numantia. On coming home he was lucky enough to marry the aunt of
Julius Caesar, whose high birth and wealth opened the door to State
honours, which to a man of his origin was at this time otherwise
virtually closed. In 119 B.C. he was tribune, and had by the measures
previously noticed won the reputation of an upright and patriotic
politician, who would truckle neither to the nobles nor the mob. From
this time, however, the feud with the Metelli began; for he ordered L.
Caecilius Metellus, the consul, to be cast into prison for resisting
his ballot-law, though, as the Senate yielded, the order was not
carried into effect. In 115 he gained the praetorship, and an
absurd charge of bribery trumped up against him indicated a rising
disposition among the nobles to snub the aspiring plebeian. He was
propraetor in Spain the next year, and showed his usual vigour there
in putting down brigandage. With the soldiers he was as popular as Ney
was with Napoleon's armies, for he was one of them, rough-spoken as
they were, fond of a cup of wine, and never scorning to share their
toils. While he was with Metellus at Utica, a soothsayer prophesied
that the gods had great things in store for him, and he asked Metellus
for leave to go to Rome and stand for the consulship. Metellus replied
that when his own son stood for it it would be time enough for Marius.
The man at whom he sneered resented sneers. There is evidence that the
simple nature of the rough soldier was becoming already spoiled by
constant success. He was burning with ambition, and would ascribe
the favours of heaven to his own merits. He at once set to work
to undermine the credit of his commander with the army, the Roman
merchants, and Gauda, saying that he himself would soon bring the war
to an end if he were general. Metellus can hardly have been a popular
man anywhere, and his strictness must have made him many enemies. Thus
he scornfully refused Gauda a seat at his side, and an escort of Roman
horse. Gauda and the rest wrote to Rome, urging that Marius should
have the army. Metellus with the worst grace let him go just twelve
days before the election. But the favourite of the gods had a fair
wind, and travelled night and day. The artisans of the city and
the country class from which he sprang thronged to hear him abuse
Metellus, and boast how soon he would capture or kill Jugurtha, and he
was triumphantly elected consul for the year 107.
How his after achievements turned his head we shall see. Already there
were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus
who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil
knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done
by the former. The _coup de théâtre_ which completed it revealed
the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by
these aristocrats; and when Bocchus dedicated on the Capitol a
representation of Sulla receiving Jugurtha's surrender, he could not
conceal his wrath. [Sidenote: L. Cornelius Sulla.] In Sulla he perhaps
already recognised by instinct one who would outrival him in the end.
He was the very antipodes of Marius in everything except bravery and
good generalship, and faith in his star. He was an aristocrat. He was
dissolute. He was an admirer of Hellenic literature. War was not his
all in all as a profession. If he had a lion's courage, the fox in him
was even more to be feared. He, like Marius, owed his rise partly to a
woman, but, characteristically, to a mistress, not a wife, who helped
him as Charles II.'s sultana helped the young Churchill. If the
boorish nature of the one degenerated with age into bloodthirsty
brutality, the other was from the first cynically destitute of
feeling. He would send men to death with a jest, and the cold-blooded,
calculating, remorseless infamy of his entire career excites a
repulsion which we feel for no other great figure in history, not even
for the first Napoleon. Sulla's whole soul must have recoiled from the
coarse manners of the man under whom he first won distinction, and,
while he scorned his motives, he must, as he saw him gradually
floundering into villainy, have felt the serene superiority of a
natural genius for vice. But at present it was not his game to show
his animosity. Though Marius had given fresh umbrage to the optimates
by coming from his triumph (Jan. 1, 104 B.C.) into the Senate wearing
his triumphal robes, with the people he was the hero of the hour, and
when the storm in the North broke, it was the safest course for Sulla
to follow the fortunes of his old commander, who in his turn could not
dispense with so able a subordinate.
[Sidenote: Frontier wars of Rome previous to the Cimbric invasion.]
The Romans were constantly at war on the frontiers. Besides the
natural quarrels which would arise between them and lawless
barbarians, it was the interest of their generals to make small wars
in order to gain sounding names and triumphs. Such wars, however, by
no means always ended in Roman victories; and while in the last thirty
years of the second century before the Christian era there were
many wars, there were also many defeats. [Sidenote: The Iapydes.]
Sempronius Tuditanus had a triumph for victories over the Iapydes,
an Illyrian nation; but he was first beaten by them. [Sidenote: The
Salyes.] In 125 the Salyes, a Ligurian people, who stretched from
Marseilles westwards to the Rhone and northwards to the Durance,
attacked Marseilles. Flaccus went to its aid, and triumphed over the
Salyes in 123. [Sidenote: The Balearic Islands.] Quintus Caecilius
Metellus subdued the Balearic Islands in the same year, and relieved
Spain from the descents of pirates, who either lived in those islands
or used them as a rendezvous. The Salyes again gave trouble in 122,
and Calvinus took their capital, which was most probably the modern
Aix, establishing there the colony of Aquae Sextiae. This colony was
the _point d'appui_ for further conquests. The most powerful nations
of Gaul were the Aedui and Arverni, whose territory was separated by
the Elaver, the modern Allier. The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui
and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same latitude, but on
the east of the Rhone. The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and
the proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the
Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the
king of the Salyes. [Sidenote: The Allobroges.] The Allobroges were
helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near
Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men. Fabius succeeded Domitius, and
marched northwards across the Isara. [Sidenote: The Arverni.] Near its
junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous
carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges. [Sidenote:
Defeat of the Arverni, B.C. 121.] The number of the slain amounted, it
is said, to 120,000 or 150,000. The king of the Arverni was caught and
sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects. It was the
year of the death of Caius Gracchus, of the famous vintage, and of a
great eruption of Mount Etna. [Sidenote: The Staeni.] In 118 B.C. M.
Marcius Rex annihilated the Staeni, probably a Ligurian tribe of the
Maritime Alps, who were in the line of the Roman approach to South
Gaul, and for this success he gained a triumph. In the same year it
was resolved, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, to colonise
Narbo, which was the key to the valley of the Garonne, and was on
the route to the province of Tarraconensis. Thus was established the
province named from the time of Augustus the Narbonensis, embracing
the country between the Cevennes and the Alps, as far north-east as
Geneva; and a road, called Via Domitia, was laid down from the Rhone
to the Pyrenees. [Sidenote: The Dalmatae.] In 117 B.C. L. Caecilius
Metellus triumphed over the Illyrian Dalmatae whom he had attacked
without cause, or never attacked at all, as it was said, for which he
was surnamed Dalmaticus. [Sidenote: The Karni.] In 115 M. Aemilius
Scaurus, whose name we have met with before, triumphed over the Karni,
a tribe to the north of the Adriatic. C. Porcius Cato, consul in 114,
was not so lucky. [Sidenote: The Scordisci.] He lost his army in
defending the Macedonian frontier against a tribe of Gauls called
Scordisci, who were in their turn defeated by M. Livius Drusus in 112,
and M. Minucius Rufus in 109 B.C. The year between their first victory
and first defeat was remarkable, not, indeed, because one Metellus
triumphed for what he had done in Sardinia, and another for what he
had done in Thrace; but in that year the Cimbri came in collision with
Rome. [Sidenote: First collision with Cimbri.] Cn. Papirius Carbo, the
consul, was sent against them as they had crossed or were expected to
cross the Roman frontiers. Some were in Noricum, and to them he sent
to say that they were invading a people who were the friends of Rome.
They agreed to evacuate the country; but Carbo treacherously attacked
them, and was disgracefully beaten at a place called Noreia.
[Sidenote: Defeat of Silanus.] Four years later, in the year 109, M.
Junius Silanus, colleague of Marius, met the same barbarians, who had
now crossed the Rhine, in the new province of South Gaul, and was in
his turn defeated.
[Sidenote: The Cimbri rouse the Helvetii.] The movements of the Cimbri
made the Helvetii restless. [Sidenote: Defeat of Longinus.] One of
their clans, the Tiguroni, which dwelt between the Jura, the Rhone,
and the lake of Geneva, defeated and slew the consul Longinus in 107
B.C., and forced his lieutenant, Popillius Laenas, to go under the
yoke. Tolosa thereupon rose against the Romans, and put the troops
which garrisoned it in chains. By treachery Q. Servilius Caepio
recovered the town, and sent off its treasures to Marseilles.
[Sidenote: The gold of Tolosa.] The ill-gotten gold, however, was
seized on the way by robbers, whom Caepio himself was accused of
employing. His name was destined, however, to be linked with a great
disaster as well as a thievish trick. The Cimbri, who had hitherto
petitioned the Romans for lands to settle on, were now meditating a
raid into Italy. On the left bank of the Rhone, in 105, they overthrew
M. Aurelius Scaurus, whom they took prisoner and put to death. Cnaeus
Mallius Maximus commanded the main force on that side of the river,
and he told Caepio, who as consul was in command on the right bank, to
cross and effect a junction. But Caepio was as wilful as Minucius had
shown himself towards another Maximus in the Second Punic War. When
his superior began to negotiate with the Cimbri, he thought it was
a device to rob him of the honour of conquering them, and in his
irritation rashly provoked a battle, in which he was beaten and lost
his camp. [Sidenote: Defeat of Caepio and Maximus.] The place of his
defeat his camp is not known. Maximus was also defeated, and the
Romans were reported to have lost 80,000 men and 20,000 camp
followers. There was terrible dismay at Rome. The Gaul seemed again
to be at its gates. [Sidenote: Consternation at Rome. Marius elected
consul for 104.] The time of mourning for the dead was abridged. Every
man fit for service had to swear not to leave Italy, and the captains
in Italian ports took an oath not to receive any such man on board.
Marius also was elected consul for 104.
[Sidenote: The Cimbri move off towards Spain.] But fortune helped the
Romans more than all these precautions. The Cimbri, after wilfully
destroying every vestige of the spoils they had taken, in fulfilment,
probably, of some vow, wandered westward on a plundering raid towards
the Pyrenees, the road thither having been lately provided, as it
were, for them by Domitius. [Sidenote: Beaten back by Celtiberi, they
are joined by the Teutones in South Gaul.] In the Celtiberi they met
with foes who sold too dearly the little they had to lose, and again
they surged back into South Gaul, where they were joined by the
Teutones, and once more threatened Italy. [Sidenote: How the Romans
had been occupied meanwhile.] But meantime the generals of the
Republic had not been idle. Rutilius Rufus, the old comrade of Marius,
had been diligently drilling troops, having engaged gladiators to
teach them fencing. Probably Marius was engaged in the same work at
the beginning of 104, and then went to South Gaul, where, as we
hear of Sulla capturing the king of the Tectosages, he was no doubt
collecting supplies and men, and suppressing all disaffection in the
province. He also cut a canal from the Rhone, about a mile above
its mouth, to a lake supposed to be now the Étang de l'Estouma; for
alluvial deposits had made access to the river difficult, and he
wanted the Rhone as a highway for his troops and commissariat.
[Sidenote: Marius consul in 103 and 102 B.C.] In 103 he was made
consul for the third time, and again in 102. And now he was ready to
meet the invaders.
[Sidenote: Nationality of the Cimbri.] Who these invaders were has
been a matter of hot dispute. Were they Celts? Were they Teutons? Did
they come from the Baltic shores, or the shores of the Sea of Azof; or
were they the Homeric Cimmerii who dwelt between the Dnieper and the
Don? Or did their name indicate their personal qualities, and not
their previous habitation? The following seems the most probable
conjecture. In the great plain which runs along the Atlantic and the
southern shore of the Baltic, from the Pyrenees to the Volga, there
had been in pre-historic times a movement constantly going on among
the barbarous inhabitants like the ebb and flow of a great sea. The
Celts had reached Spain and Italy on the south, and Germany and the
Danube on the east. Then, making the Rhine their frontier, they had
settled down into semi-civilised life. Now the Teutonic tribes were
in their turn going through the same process of flux and reflux; and
impelled probably at this time by some invasion of other tribes, or
possibly, as Strabo says, by some great inundation of the sea, these
invading nations, for they were not armies but whole nations, came
roaming southwards in search of a new home. Celts there were among
them, for the Helvetii had joined them, and therefore Helvetic chiefs.
But the names still exist in modern Denmark and near the Baltic.
Caesar did not think they were Celts. The light hair and blue eyes of
the warriors, and the hair of old age on the heads of children,
which excited the astonishment of the Romans, are not Celtic
characteristics. We may therefore set them down as Teutonic by race.
The name Cimbri is probably derived from some word of their own,
Kaemper, meaning champions or spoilers, and their last emigration was
from the country between the Rhine, the Danube, and the Baltic. They
were a tall, fierce race, who fought with great swords and narrow
shields, and wore copper helmets and mail. [Sidenote: Their mode
of fighting, etc.] The men in their front ranks were often linked
together so as to make retreat impossible. Their priestesses cheered
them on in battle, and, when prisoners were taken, cut their throats
over a great bowl, and then, ripping them up, drew auguries from their
entrails.
[Sidenote: Plan of the invaders.] The plan of the invaders was that
one body, consisting of the Teutones, Ambrones, and Tugeni, should
descend into Italy on the west, the Cimbri on the east. Whence the
Teutones had come to join the Cimbri we do not know. They joined them
in South Gaul. [Sidenote: The Ambrones.] The Ambrones may have been a
clan of the Helvetii, as the Tugeni were. [Sidenote: Plan of Marius.]
Marius waited for the western division at the confluence of the Isara
and the Rhone, near the spot where Fabius had defeated the Arverni,
his object being to command the two main roads into Italy, over the
Little St. Bernard and along the coast. He did not follow the example
of his old commander Scipio Aemilianus, in expelling soothsayers
from his camp; for he had a Syrian woman, named Martha, with him to
foretell the future. The soldiers had their own pet superstitions.
They had caught two vultures, put rings on their necks and let them
go, and so knew them again as they hovered over the army. When the
barbarians reached the camp they tried to storm it. But they were
beaten back, and then for six days they filed past with taunting
questions, whether the Romans had any messages to send their wives.
Marius cautiously followed, fortifying his camp nightly. They were
making for the coast-road; and as they could not have taken their
wagons along it, they were marching, as Marius had seen, to their own
destruction. His strategy was masterly, for he was winning without
fighting; but accident brought on an engagement. [Sidenote: Scene of
the battle of Aquae Sextiae.] East of Aquae Sextiae (the modern Aix)
Marius had occupied a range of hills, one of which is to this day
called Sainte Victoire. The Arc flowed below. The soldiers wanted
water, and Marius told his men that they might get it there if they
wanted it, for he wished to accustom them to the barbarians' mode of
fighting. Some of the barbarians were bathing; and on their giving the
alarm, others came up, and a battle began. The first shock was between
the Ambrones and Ligurians. The Romans supported the latter, and the
Ambrones fled across the Arc to the wagons, where the women, assailing
both pursuers and pursued with yells and blows, were slain with the
men. So ended the first day's fight.
All night and next day the barbarians prepared for a final struggle.
Marius planted an ambuscade of mounted camp-followers, headed by a
few foot and horse in some ravines on the enemy's rear. [Sidenote:
Circumstances of the battle.] He drew the legions up in front of the
camp, and the cavalry went ahead to the plain. The barbarians charged
up the hill, but were met by a shower of 'pila,' which the legionaries
followed up by coming to close quarters with their swords. The enemy
were rolled back down the hill, and at the same time with loud cries
the ambuscade attacked them from behind. Then the battle became a
butchery, in which, it was said, 200,000 men were slain, and among
them Teutoboduus, their king. Others, however, say that he was taken
prisoner, and became the chief ornament of Marius's triumph. Much of
the spoil was gathered together to be burnt, and Marius, as the army
stood round, was just lighting the heap, when men came riding at full
speed and told him he was elected consul for the fifth time. The
soldiers set up a joyful cheer, and his officers crowned him with
a chaplet of bay. The name of the village of Pourrières (Campus de
Putridis) and the hill of Sainte Victoire commemorate this great fight
to our day, and till the French Revolution a procession used to be
made by the neighbouring villagers every year to the hill, where a
bonfire was lit, round which they paraded, crowned with flowers, and
shouting 'Victoire, Victoire!'
[Sidenote: The Cimbri.] Meanwhile Catulus was waiting for the Cimbri
on the east. A son of M. Aemilius Scaurus fled before them in the pass
of Tridentum, and in 102 B.C., about the time of the battle of Aquae
Sextiae, they poured down the valley on the east of the Athesis
(Adige). [Sidenote: Catulus on the Adige.] Catulus was posted just
below Verona on the west bank, with a bridge connecting him with a
smaller force on the other side. When the foe appeared his men took to
flight; but the detachment on the east side stood its ground, and kept
the enemy from crossing the bridge in pursuit. The Cimbri admired
their bravery, and when they had forced the bridge let its defenders
go. Pursuing Catulus, they cut him off from a river for which he was
making, probably the Ticinus, though according to some, the Po. He
then pretended to encamp on a hill as if for a long stay. The Cimbri
dispersed over the country, and Catulus immediately came down,
assaulted their camp and crossed the river, where he was joined by
the victorious army of Gaul and by Marius, who had been to Rome.
[Sidenote: Battle with the Cimbri, July 30, 101 B.C.] The village
festival on the hill of Sainte Victoire was held in May. The battle
with the Cimbri was fought on July 30, 101. More than a year therefore
had elapsed since the Teutones were defeated. But it was the
barbarians' custom not to fight in winter, and they were in a rich
country which had not been invaded for a century, where they were
revelling in unwonted comforts. So they spread themselves over the
land as far as the Sesia; and when Marius came, they sent, it is
said, and asked for land for the Teutones whom they were awaiting.
[Sidenote: Story of the Cimbric embassy to Marius.] Marius replied
that their brothers had all the land they wanted already. Upon which
they requested him to name a field and a day for battle. Marius
answered that Romans never consulted their foes on such points, but he
would humour them, and named the Campi Raudii, near Vercellae. Such a
story bears falsehood on the face of it. It is absurd to suppose that
the Cimbri had not heard of the defeat of the Teutones, which had
taken place more than a year before. Very likely they asked for land,
and finding that they would only get hard blows, determined to bring
matters to a crisis at once. Sulla's memoirs were Plutarch's authority
for what followed, and Sulla hated Marius. [Sidenote: Story of
Marius's jealousy of Catulus.] He said that Marius, expecting that the
fighting would be on the wings, posted his own men there, that they
might gain the glory, but that the brunt of the battle was borne by
Catulus in the centre; and that such a dust rose that Marius was for a
long time out of the battle, and knew not where he was. It seems that
the barbarian cavalry feigned a flight, hoping to turn and take the
Romans between themselves and their infantry. But the Romans drove
back the cavalry on the infantry. [Sidenote: Circumstances of the
battle.] However this may be, Marius had shown his usual good
generalship. He had fed his men before the battle, and so manoeuvred
that sun, wind, and dust were in the enemy's faces. His own men were
in perfect training, and in the burning heat did not turn a hair. But
the Northmen were fresh from high living, and could not bear up long.
When they gave way, the same scenes as at Aquae Sextiae took place
among the women. One hundred and twenty thousand men, it is said, were
killed--among them the gallant Boiorix, their king--and 60,000 taken
prisoners. Disputes rose as to who had really won the day. Marius
generously insisted on Catulus sharing his triumph. But it was to him
that the popular voice ascribed the victory, and there can be little
doubt that the popular voice was right.
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