The Peoples of the North
Relations of Rome to the North
The Country between the Alps and the Pyrenees
Conflicts with the Ligurians and the Salassi
From the close of the sixth century the Roman community ruled over
the three great peninsulas projecting from the northern continent into
the Mediterranean, at least taken as a whole. Even there however--in
the north and west of Spain, in the valleys of the Ligurian Apennines
and the Alps, and in the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace--tribes
wholly or partially free continued to defy the lax Roman government.
Moreover the continental communication between Spain and Italy as
well as between Italy and Macedonia was very superficially provided
for, and the countries beyond the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkan
chain--the great river basins of the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Danube--
in the main lay beyond the political horizon of the Romans. We have
now to set forth what steps were taken on the part of Rome to secure
and to round off her empire in this direction, and how at the same
time the great masses of peoples, who were ever moving to and fro
behind that mighty mountain-screen, began to beat at the gates of the
northern mountains and rudely to remind the Graeco-Roman world that
it was mistaken in believing itself the sole possessor of the earth.
Let us first glance at the region between the western Alps and the
Pyrenees. The Romans had for long commanded this part of the coast
of the Mediterranean through their client city of Massilia, one of
the oldest, most faithful, and most powerful of the allied communities
dependent on Rome. Its maritime stations, Agatha (Agde) and Rhoda
(Rosas) to the westward, and Tauroentium (Ciotat), Olbia (Hyeres?),
Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice) on the east secured the
navigation of the coast as well as the land-route from the Pyrenees
to the Alps; and its mercantile and political connections reached far
into the interior. An expedition into the Alps above Nice and Antibes,
directed against the Ligurian Oxybii and Decietae, was undertaken by
the Romans in 600 partly at the request of the Massiliots, partly
in their own interest; and after hot conflicts, some of which were
attended with much loss, this district of the mountains was compelled
to furnish thenceforth standing hostages to the Massiliots and to pay
them a yearly tribute. It is not improbable that about this same
period the cultivation of the vine and olive, which flourished in this
quarter after the model set by the Massiliots, was in the interest
of the Italian landholders and merchants simultaneously prohibited
throughout the territory beyond the Alps dependent on Massilia.(1)
A similar character of financial speculation marks the war, which was
waged by the Romans under the consul Appius Claudius in 611 against the
Salassi respecting the gold mines and gold washings of Victumulae (in
the district of Vercelli and Bard and in the whole valley of the Dorea
Baltea). The great extent of these washings, which deprived the
inhabitants of the country lying lower down of water for their fields,
first gave rise to an attempt at mediation and then to the armed
intervention of the Romans. The war, although the Romans began it
like all the other wars of this period with a defeat, led at last to
the subjugation of the Salassi, and the cession of the gold district
to the Roman treasury. Some forty years afterwards (654) the colony of
Eporedia (Ivrea) was instituted on the territory thus gained, chiefly
doubtless with a view to command the western, as Aquileia commanded
the eastern, passage of the Alps.
Transalpine Relations of Rome
The Arverni
These Alpine wars first assumed a more serious character, when Marcus
Fulvius Flaccus, the faithful ally of Gaius Gracchus, took the chief
command in this quarter as consul in 629. He was the first to enter
on the career of Transalpine conquest. In the much-divided Celtic
nation at this period the canton of the Bituriges had lost its
real hegemony and retained merely an honorary presidency, and the
actually leading canton in the region from the Pyrenees to the Rhine
and from the Mediterranean to the Western Ocean was that of the
Arverni;(2) so that the statement seems not quite an exaggeration,
that it could bring into the field as many as 180,000 men. With
them the Haedui (about Autun) carried on an unequal rivalry for the
hegemony; while in north-eastern Gaul the kings of the Suessiones
(about Soissons) united under their protectorate the league of the
Belgic tribes extending as far as Britain. Greek travellers of
that period had much to tell of the magnificent state maintained by
Luerius, king of the Arvernians--how, surrounded by his brilliant train
of clansmen, his huntsmen with their pack of hounds in leash and his
band of wandering minstrels, he travelled in a silver-mounted chariot
through the towns of his kingdom, scattering the gold with a full
hand among the multitude, and gladdening above all the heart of the
minstrel with the glittering shower. The descriptions of the open
table which he kept in an enclosure of 1500 double paces square, and
to which every one who came in the way was invited, vividly remind us
of the marriage table of Camacho. In fact, the numerous Arvernian
gold coins of this period still extant show that the canton of the
Arvernians had attained to extraordinary wealth and a comparatively
high standard of civilization.
War with Allobroges and Arverni
The attack of Flaccus, however, fell in the first instance not on
the Arverni, but on the smaller tribes in the district between the Alps
and the Rhone, where the original Ligurian inhabitants had become mixed
with subsequent arrivals of Celtic bands, and there had arisen a
Celto-Ligurian population that may in this respect be compared to the
Celtiberian. He fought (629, 630) with success against the Salyes
or Salluvii in the region of Aix and in the valley of the Durance,
and against their northern neighbours the Vocontii (in the departments
of Vaucluse and Drome); and so did his successor Gaius Sextius Calvinus
(631, 632) against the Allobroges, a powerful Celtic clan in the rich
valley of the Isere, which had come at the request of the fugitive
king of the Salyes, Tutomotulus, to help him to reconquer his land, but
was defeated in the district of Aix. When the Allobroges nevertheless
refused to surrender the king of the Salyes, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus,
the successor of Calvinus, penetrated into their own territory (632).
Up to this period the leading Celtic tribe had been spectators of the
encroachments of their Italian neighbours; the Arvernian king Betuitus,
son of the Luerius already mentioned, seemed not much inclined to enter
on a dangerous war for the sake of the loose relation of clientship
in which the eastern cantons might stand to him. But when the Romans
showed signs of attacking the Allobroges in their own territory,
he offered his mediation, the rejection of which was followed by
his taking the field with all his forces to help the Allobroges;
whereas the Haedui embraced the side of the Romans. On receiving
accounts of the rising of the Arverni, the Romans sent the consul
of 633, Quintus Fabius Maximus, to meet in concert with Ahenobarbus
the impending attack. On the southern border of the canton of the
Allobroges at the confluence of the Isere with the Rhone, on the
8th of August 633, the battle was fought which decided the mastery
of southern Gaul. King Betuitus, when he saw the innumerable
hosts of the dependent clans marching over to him on the bridge
of boats thrown across the Rhone and the Romans who had not a
third of their numbers forming in array against them, is said to have
exclaimed that there were not enough of the latter to satisfy the dogs
of the Celtic army. Nevertheless Maximus, a grandson of the victor
of Pydna, achieved a decisive victory, which, as the bridge of boats
broke down under the mass of the fugitives, ended in the destruction
of the greater part of the Arvernian army. The Allobroges, to whom
the king of the Arverni declared himself unable to render further
assistance, and whom he advised to make their peace with Maximus,
submitted to the consul; whereupon the latter, thenceforth called
Allobrogicus, returned to Italy and left to Ahenobarbus the no longer
distant termination of the Arvernian war. Ahenobarbus, personally
exasperated at king Betuitus because he had induced the Allobroges
to surrender to Maximus and not to him, possessed himself
treacherously of the person of the king and sent him to Rome, where
the senate, although disapproving the breach of fidelity, not only kept
the men betrayed, but gave orders that his son, Congonnetiacus, should
likewise be sent to Rome. This seems to have been the reason why
the Arvernian war, already almost at an end, once more broke out, and
a second appeal to arms took place at Vindalium (above Avignon) at
the confluence of the Sorgue with the Rhone. The result was not
different from that of the first: on this occasion it was chiefly
the African elephants that scattered the Celtic army. Thereupon
the Arverni submitted to peace, and tranquillity was re-established
in the land of the Celts.(3)
Province of Narbo
The result of these military operations was the institution of a
new Roman province between the maritime Alps and the Pyrenees.
All the tribes between the Alps and the Rhone became dependent
on the Romans and, so far as they did not pay tribute to Massilia,
presumably became now tributary to Rome. In the country between
the Rhone and the Pyrenees the Arverni retained freedom and were not
bound to pay tribute to the Romans; but they had to cede to Rome
the most southerly portion of their direct or indirect territory-
the district to the south of the Cevennes as far as the Mediterranean,
and the upper course of the Garonne as far as Tolosa (Toulouse).
As the primary object of these occupations was the establishment of
a land communication between Italy and Spain, arrangements were made
immediately thereafter for the construction of the road along the
coast. For this purpose a belt of coast from the Alps to the Rhone,
from 1 to 1 3/4 of a mile in breadth, was handed over to the Massiliots,
who already had a series of maritime stations along this coast, with
the obligation of keeping the road in proper condition; while from
the Rhone to the Pyrenees the Romans themselves laid out a military
highway, which obtained from its originator Ahenobarbus the name
of the -Via Domitia-.
Roman Settlements in the Region of the Rhone
As usual, the formation of new fortresses was combined with
the construction of roads. In the eastern portion the Romans chose
the spot where Gaius Sextius had defeated the Celts, and where the
pleasantness and fertility of the region as well as the numerous hot
and cold springs invited them to settlement; a Roman township sprang
up there--the "baths of Sextius," Aquae Sextiae (Aix). To the west
of the Rhone the Romans settled in Narbo, an ancient Celtic town on the
navigable river Atax (Aude) at a small distance from the sea, which is
already mentioned by Hecataeus, and which even before its occupation
by the Romans vied with Massilia as a place of stirring commerce, and
as sharing the trade in British tin. Aquae did not obtain civic rights,
but remained a standing camp;(4) whereas Narbo, although in like
manner founded mainly as a watch and outpost against the Celts,
became as "Mars' town," a Roman burgess-colony and the usual seat
of the governor of the new Transalpine Celtic province or, as it
was more frequently called, the province of Narbo.
The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy of the Restoration
The Gracchan party, which suggested these extensions of territory
beyond the Alps, evidently wished to open up there a new and
immeasurable field for their plans of colonization,--a field which
offered the same advantages as Sicily and Africa, and could be more
easily wrested from the natives than he Sicilian and Libyan estates
from the Italian capitalists. The fall of Gaius Gracchus, no doubt,
made itself felt here also in the restriction of acquisitions of
territory and still more of the founding of towns; but, if the design
was not carried out in its full extent, it was at any rate not wholly
frustrated. The territory acquired and, still more, the foundation of
Narbo--a settlement for which the senate vainly endeavoured to prepare
the fate of that at Carthage--remained standing as parts of an
unfinished structure, exhorting the future successor of Gracchus
to continue the building. It is evident that the Roman mercantile
class, which was able to compete with Massilia in the Gallo-Britannic
traffic at Narbo alone, protected that settlement from the assaults
of the Optimates.
Illyria
Dalmatians
Their Subjugation
A problem similar to that in the north-west had to be dealt
with in the north-east of Italy; it was in like manner not wholly
neglected, but was solved still more imperfectly than the former.
With the foundation of Aquileia (571) the Istrian peninsula came
into possession of the Romans;(5) in part of Epirus and the former
territory of the lords of Scodra they had already ruled for some
considerable time previously. But nowhere did their dominion reach
into the interior; and even on the coast they exercised scarcely a
nominal sway over the inhospitable shore-belt between Istria and
Epirus, which, with its wild series of mountain-caldrons broken neither
by river-valleys nor by coast-plains and arranged like scales one above
another, and with its chain of rocky islands stretching along the
shore, separates more than it connects Italy and Greece. Around the
town of Delminium (on the Cettina near Trigl) clustered the confederacy
of the Delmatians or Dalmatians, whose manners were rough as their
mountains. While the neighbouring peoples had already attained a
high degree of culture, the Dalmatians were as yet unacquainted with
money, and divided their land, without recognizing any special right
of property in it, afresh every eight years among the members of
the community. Brigandage and piracy were the only native trades.
These tribes had in earlier times stood in a loose relation of
dependence on the rulers of Scodra, and had so far shared in the
chastisement inflicted by the Roman expeditions against queen
Teuta(6) and Demetrius of Pharos;(7) but on the accession of king
Genthius they had revolted and had thus escaped the fate which involved
southern Illyria in the fall of the Macedonian empire and rendered it
permanently dependent on Rome.(8) The Romans were glad to leave the
far from attractive region to itself. But the complaints of the Roman
Illyrians, particularly of the Daorsi, who dwelt on the Narenta to
the south of the Dalmatians, and of the inhabitants of the islands of
Issa (Lissa), whose continental stations Tragyrium (Trau) and Epetium
(near Spalato) suffered severely from the natives, compelled the Roman
government to despatch an embassy to the latter, and on receiving the
reply that the Dalmatians had neither troubled themselves hitherto
about the Romans nor would do so in future, to send thither an army
in 598 under the consul Gaius Marcius Figulus. He penetrated into
Dalmatia, but was again driven back as far as the Roman territory.
It was not till his successor Publius Scipio Nasica took the large
and strong town of Delminium in 599, that the confederacy conformed
and professed itself subject to the Romans. But the poor and only
superficially subdued country was not sufficiently important to be
erected into a distinct province: the Romans contented themselves, as
they had already done in the case of the more important possessions in
Epirus, with having it administered from Italy along with Cisalpine
Gaul; an arrangement which was, at least as a rule, retained even
when the province of Macedonia had been erected in 608 and its north
western frontier had been fixed to the northward of Scodra.(9)
The Romans in Macedonia and Thrace
But this very conversion of Macedonia into a province directly
dependent on Rome gave to the relations of Rome with the peoples
on the north-east greater importance, by imposing on the Romans
the obligation of defending the everywhere exposed frontier on
the north and east against the adjacent barbarian tribes; and in
a similar way not long afterwards (621) the acquisition by Rome of
the Thracian Chersonese (peninsula of Gallipoli) previously belonging
to the kingdom of the Attalids devolved on the Romans the obligation
hitherto resting on the kings of Pergamus to protect the Hellenes here
against the Thracians. From the double basis furnished by the valley
of the Po and the province of Macedonia the Romans could now advance
in earnest towards the region of the headwaters of the Rhine and towards
the Danube, and possess themselves of the northern mountains at least
so far as was requisite for the security of the lands to the south.
The Tribes at the Sources of the Rhine and along the Danube
Helvetii
Boii
Taurisci
Cerni
Raeti, Euganei, Veneti
In these regions the most powerful nation at that time was the great
Celtic people, which according to the native tradition(10) had issued
from its settlements on the Western Ocean and poured itself about the
same time into the valley of the Po on the south of the main chain of
the Alps and into the regions on the Upper Rhine and on the Danube to
the north of that chain. Among their various tribes, both banks of
the Upper Rhine were occupied by the powerful and rich Helvetii, who
nowhere came into immediate contact with the Romans and so lived in
peace and in treaty with them: at this time they seem to have stretched
from the lake of Geneva to the river Main, and to have occupied the
modern Switzerland, Suabia, and Franconia Adjacent to them dwelt
the Boii, whose settlements were probably in the modern Bavaria and
Bohemia.(11) To the south-east of these we meet with another Celtic
stock, which made its appearance in Styria and Carinthia under the
name of the Taurisci and afterwards of the Norici, in Friuli, Carniola,
and Istria under that of the Carni. Their city Noreia (not far from
St. Veit to the north of Klagenfurt) was flourishing and widely known
from the iron mines that were even at that time zealously worked
in those regions; still more were the Italians at this very period
allured thither by the rich seams of gold brought to light, till the
natives excluded them and took this California of that day wholly into
their own hands. These Celtic hordes streaming along on both sides of
the Alps had after their fashion occupied chiefly the flat and hill
country; the Alpine regions proper and likewise the districts along
the Adige and the Lower Po were not occupied by them, and remained
in the hands of the earlier indigenous population. Nothing certain
has yet been ascertained as to the nationality of the latter; but they
appear under the name of the Raeti in the mountains of East Switzerland
and the Tyrol, and under that of the Euganei and Veneti about Padua
and Venice; so that at this last point the two great Celtic streams
almost touched each other, and only a narrow belt of native population
separated the Celtic Cenomani about Brescia from the Celtic Carnians
in Friuli. The Euganei and Veneti had long been peaceful subjects of
the Romans; whereas the peoples of the Alps proper were not only still
free, but made regular forays down from their mountains into the
plain between the Alps and the Po, where they were not content with
levying contributions, but conducted themselves with fearful cruelty
in the townships which they captured, not unfrequently slaughtering
the whole male population down to the infant in the cradle--the practical
answer, it may be presumed, to the Roman razzias in the Alpine valleys.
How dangerous these Raetian inroads were, appears from the fact that
one of them about 660 destroyed the considerable township of Comum.
Illyrian Peoples
Japydes
Scordisci
If these Celtic and non-Celtic tribes having their settlements upon and
beyond the Alpine chain were already variously intermingled, there was,
as may easily be conceived, a still more comprehensive intermixture
of peoples in the countries on the Lower Danube, where there were no
high mountain ranges, as in the more western regions, to serve as
natural walls of partition. The original Illyrian population, of
which the modern Albanians seem to be the last pure survivors, was
throughout, at least in the interior, largely mixed with Celtic
elements, and the Celtic armour and Celtic method of warfare were
probably everywhere introduced in that quarter. Next to the Taurisci
came the Japydes, who had their settlements on the Julian Alps in the
modern Croatia as far down as Fiume and Zeng,--a tribe originally
doubtless Illyrian, but largely mixed with Celts. Bordering with these
along the coast were the already-mentioned Dalmatians, into whose rugged
mountains the Celts do not seem to have penetrated; whereas in the
interior the Celtic Scordisci, to whom the tribe of the Triballi
formerly especially powerful in that quarter had succumbed, and who
had played a principal part in the Celtic expeditions to Delphi,
were about this time the leading nation along the Lower Save as far
as the Morava in the modern Bosnia and Servia. They roamed far and
wide towards Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and fearful tales were
told of their savage valour and cruel customs. Their chief place of
arms was the strong Segestica or Siscia at the point where the Kulpa
falls into the Save. The peoples who were at that time settled in
Hungary, Transylvania, Roumania, and Bulgaria still remained for the
present beyond the horizon of the Romans; the latter came into contact
only with the Thracians on the eastern frontier of Macedonia in
the Rhodope mountains.
Conflicts on the Frontier
In the Alps
It would have been no easy task for a government more energetic than was
the Roman government of that day to establish an organized and adequate
defence of the frontier against these wide domains of barbarism; what
was done for this important object under the auspices of the government
ment of the restoration, did not come up to even the most moderate
requirements. There seems to have been no want of expeditions against
the inhabitants of the Alps: in 636 there was a triumph over the Stoeni,
who were probably settled in the mountains above Verona; in 659 the consul
Lucius Crassus caused the Alpine valleys far and wide to De ransacked
and the inhabitants to be put to death, and yet he did not succeed in
killing enough of them to enable him to celebrate a village triumph and
to couple the laurels of the victor with his oratorical fame. But as
the Romans remained satisfied with razzias of this sort which merely
exasperated the natives without rendering them harmless, and, apparently,
withdrew the troops again after every such inroad, the state of matters
in the region beyond the Po remained substantially the same as before.
In Thrace
On the opposite Thracian frontier they appear to have given themselves
little concern about their neighbours; except that there is mention
made in 651 of conflicts with the Thracians, and in 657 of others with
the Maedi in the border mountains between Macedonia and Thrace.
In Illyria
More serious conflicts took place in the Illyrian land, where complaints
were constantly made as to the turbulent Dalmatians by their neighbours
and those who navigated the Adriatic; and along the wholly exposed
northern frontier of Macedonia, which, according to the significant
expression of a Roman, extended as far as the Roman swords and spears
reached, the conflicts with the barbarians never ceased. In 619 an
expedition was undertaken against the Ardyaei or Vardaei and the Pleraei
or Paralii, a Dalmatian tribe on the coast to the north of the mouth
of the Narenta, which was incessantly perpetrating outrages on the sea
and on the opposite coast: by order of the Romans they removed from
the coast and settled in the interior, the modern Herzegovina, where
they began to cultivate the soil, but, unused to their new calling,
pined away in that inclement region. At the same time an attack was
directed from Macedonia against the Scordisci, who had, it may be
presumed, made common cause with the assailed inhabitants of the coast.
Soon afterwards (625) the consul Tuditanus in connection with the able
Decimus Brutus, the conqueror of the Spanish Callaeci, humbled
the Japydes, and, after sustaining a defeat at the outset, at length
carried the Roman arms into the heart of Dalmatia as far as the river
Kerka, 115 miles distant from Aquileia; the Japydes thenceforth appear
as a nation at peace and on friendly terms with Rome. But ten years
later (635) the Dalmatians rose afresh, once more in concert with
the Scordisci. While the consul Lucius Cotta fought against the latter
and in doing so advanced apparently as far as Segestica, his colleague
Lucius Metellus afterwards named Dalmaticus, the elder brother of the
conqueror of Numidia, marched against the Dalmatians, conquered them
and passed the winter in Salona (Spalato), which town henceforth
appears as the chief stronghold of the Romans in that region. It is
not improbable that the construction of the Via Gabinia, which led
from Salona in an easterly direction to Andetrium (near Much)
and thence farther into the interior, falls within this period.
The Romans Cross the Eastern Alps and Reach the Danube
The expedition of the consul of 639, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, against
the Taurisci(12) presented more the character of a war of conquest.
He was the first of the Romans to cross the chain of the eastern Alps
where it falls lowest between Trieste and Laybach, and contracted
hospitable relations with the Taurisci; which secured a not
unimportant commercial intercourse without involving the Romans,
as a formal subjugation would have involved them, in the movements
of the peoples to the north of the Alps. Of the conflicts with the
Scordisci, which have passed almost wholly into oblivion, a page,
which speaks clearly even in its isolation, has recently been brought
to light through a memorial stone from the year 636 lately discovered
in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. According to it, in this year
the governor of Macedonia Sextus Pompeius fell near Argos (not far from
Stobi on the upper Axius or Vardar) in a battle fought with these
Celts; and, after his quaestor Marcus Annius had come up with his
troops and in some measure mastered the enemy, these same Celts in
connection with Tipas the king of the Maedi (on the upper Strymon)
soon made a fresh irruption in still larger masses, and it was with
difficulty that the Romans defended themselves against the onset of
the barbarians.(13) Things soon assumed so threatening a shape that
it became necessary to despatch consular armies to Macedonia.(14)
A few years afterwards the consul of 640 Gaius Porcius Cato was
surprised in the Servian mountains by the same Scordisci, and his
army completely destroyed, while he himself with a few attendants
disgracefully fled; with difficulty the praetor Marcus Didius
protected the Roman frontier. His successors fought with better
fortune, Gaius Metellus Caprarius (641-642), Marcus Livius Drusus
(642-643), the first Roman general to reach the Danube, and Quintus
Minucius Rufus (644-647) who carried his arms along the Morava(15) and
thoroughly defeated the Scordisci. Nevertheless they soon afterwards
in league with the Maedi and the Dardani invaded the Roman territory
and plundered even the sanctuary at Delphi; it was not till then
that Lucius Scipio put an end to the thirty-two years' warfare with
the Scordisci and drove the remnant over to the left bank of the
Danube.(16) Thenceforth in their stead the just-named Dardani
(in Servia) begin to play the first part in the territory between
the northern frontier of Macedonia and the Danube.
The Cimbri
But these victories had an effect which the victors did not
anticipate. For a considerable period an "unsettled people" had
been wandering along the northern verge of the country occupied by
the Celts on both sides of the Danube. They called themselves the
Cimbri, that is, the Chempho, the champions or, as their enemies
translated it, the robbers; a designation, however, which to all
appearance had become the name of the people even before their
migration. They came from the north, and the first Celtic people
with whom they came in contact were, so far as is known, the Boii,
probably in Bohemia. More exact details as to the cause and
the direction of their migration have not been recorded by
contemporaries,(17) and cannot be supplied by conjecture, since the
state of things in those times to the north of Bohemia and the Main
and to the east of the Lower Rhine lies wholly beyond our knowledge.
But the hypothesis that the Cimbri, as well as the similar horde of
the Teutones which afterwards joined them, belonged essentially not
to the Celtic nation, to which the Romans at first assigned them,
but to the Germanic, is supported by the most definite facts: viz.,
by the appearance of two small tribes of the same name--remnants
apparently left behind in their primitive seats--the Cimbri in
the modern Denmark, the Teutones in the north-east of Germany in
the neighbourhood of the Baltic, where Pytheas, a contemporary of
Alexander the Great, makes mention of them thus early in connection
with the amber trade; by the insertion of the Cimbri and Teutones in
the list of the Germanic peoples among the Ingaevones alongside of
the Chauci; by the judgment of Caesar, who first made the Romans
acquainted with the distinction betweenthe Ge rmans and the Celts,
and who includes the Cimbri, many of whom he must himself have seen,
among the Germans; and lastly, by the very names of the peoples and
the statements as to their physical appearance and habits in other
respects, which, while applying to the men of the north generally,
are especially applicable to the Germans. On the other hand it is
conceivable enough that such a horde, after having been engaged in
wandering perhaps for many years and having in its movements near to
or within the land of the Celts doubtless welcomed every brother-in-arms
who joined it, would include a certain amount of Celtic elements; so
that it is not surprising that men of Celtic name should be at
the head of the Cimbri, or that the Romans should employ spies
speaking the Celtic tongue to gain information among them. It was
a marvellous movement, the like of which the Romans had not yet seen;
not a predatory expedition of men equipped for the purpose, nor
a "-ver sacrum-" of young men migrating to a foreign land, but a
migratory people that had set out with their women and children, with
their goods and chattels, to seek a new home. The waggon, which had
everywhere among the still not fully settled peoples of the north a
different importance from what it had among the Hellenes and the
Italians, and which universally accompanied the Celts also in their
encampments, was among the Cimbri as it were their house, where,
beneath the leather covering stretched over it, a place was found for
the wife and children and even for the house-dog as well as for the
furniture. The men of the south beheld with astonishment those tall
lank figures with the fair locks and bright blue eyes, the hardy and
stately women who were little inferior in size and strength to the
men, and the children with old men's hair, as the amazed Italians
called the flaxen-haired youths of the north. Their system of warfare
was substantially that of the Celts of this period, who no longer
fought, as the Italian Celts had formerly done, bareheaded and with
merely sword and dagger, but with copper helmets often richly adorned
and with a peculiar missile weapon, the -materis-; the large sword was
retained and the long narrow shield, along with which they probably
wore also a coat of mail. They were not destitute of cavalry; but
the Romans were superior to them in that arm. Their order of battle
was as formerly a rude phalanx professedly drawn up with just as many
ranks in depth as in breadth, the first rank of which in dangerous
combats not unfrequently tied together their metallic girdles with
cords. Their manners were rude. Flesh was frequently devoured raw.
The bravest and, if possible, the tallest man was king of the host.
Not unfrequently, after the manner of the Celts and of barbarians
generally, the time and place of the combat were previously arranged
with the enemy, and sometimes also, before the battle began, an individual
opponent was challenged to single combat. The conflict was ushered
in by their insulting the enemy with unseemly gestures, and by a
horrible noise--the men raising their battle-shout, and the women
and children increasing the din by drumming on the leathern covers
of the waggons. The Cimbrian fought bravely--death on the bed of
honour was deemed by him the only death worthy of a free man--but
after the victory he indemnified himself by the most savage brutality,
and sometimes promised beforehand to present to the gods of
battle whatever victory should place in the power of the victor.
The effects of the enemy were broken in pieces, the horses were killed,
the prisoners were hanged or preserved only to be sacrificed to the gods.
It was the priestesses--grey-haired women in white linen dresses and
unshod--who, like Iphigenia in Scythia, offered these sacrifices, and
prophesied the future from the streaming blood of the prisoner of war
or the criminal who formed the victim. How much in these customs was
the universal usage of the northern barbarians, how much was borrowed
from the Celts, and how much was peculiar to the Germans, cannot
be ascertained; but the practice of having the army accompanied
and directed not by priests, but by priestesses, may be pronounced
an undoubtedly Germanic custom. Thus marched the Cimbri into
the unknown land--an immense multitude of various origin which had
congregated round a nucleus of Germanic emigrants from the Baltic--
not without resemblance to the great bodies of emigrants, that in our
own times cross the ocean similarly burdened and similarly mingled, and
with aims not much less vague; carrying their lumbering waggon-castle,
with the dexterity which a long migratory life imparts, over streams
and mountains; dangerous to more civilized nations like the sea-wave
and the hurricane, and like these capricious and unaccountable, now
rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding.
They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished;
and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was
no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the
marvellous meteor. When men afterwards began to trace the chain,
of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched
the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living
knowledge of it had long passed away.
Cimbrian Movements and Conflicts
Defeat of Carbo
This homeless people of the Cimbri, which hitherto had been
prevented from advancing to the south by the Celts on the Danube,
more especially by the Boii, broke through that barrier in consequence
of the attacks directed by the Romans against the Danubian Celts;
either because the latter invoked the aid of their Cimbrian
antagonists against the advancing legions, or because the Roman attack
prevented them from protecting as hitherto their northern frontiers.
Advancing through the territory of the Scordisci into the Tauriscan
country, they approached in 641 the passes of the Carnian Alps, to
protect which the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo took up a position
on the heights not far from Aquileia. Here, seventy years before,
Celtic tribes had attempted to settle on the south of the Alps, but
at the bidding of the Romans had evacuated without resistance the
ground which they had already occupied;(18) even now the dread of
the Transalpine peoples at the Roman name showed itself strongly.
The Cimbri did not attack; indeed, when Carbo ordered them to evacuate
the territory of the Taurisci who were in relations of hospitality
with Rome--an order which the treaty with the latter by no means bound
him to make--they complied and followed the guides whom Carbo had
assigned to them to escort them over the frontier. But these guides
were in fact instructed to lure the Cimbri into an ambush, where the
consul awaited them. Accordingly an engagement took place not far
from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained
the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss;
a storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete
annihilation of the Roman army. The Cimbri might have immediately
directed their attack towards Italy; they preferred to turn to the
westward. By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than by
force of arms they made their way to the left bank of the Rhine and
over the Jura, and there some years after the defeat of Carbo once
more threatened the Roman territory by their immediate vicinity.
Defeat of Silanus
With a view to cover the frontier of the Rhine and the immediately
threatened territory of the Allobroges, a Roman army under Marcus
Junius Silanus appeared in 645 in Southern Gaul. The Cimbri
requested that land might be assigned to them where they might
peacefully settle--a request which certainly could not be granted.
The consul instead of replying attacked them; he was utterly defeated
and the Roman camp was taken. The new levies which were occasioned
by this misfortune were already attended with so much difficulty, that
the senate procured the abolition of the laws--presumably proceeding
from Gaius Gracchus--which limited the obligation to military service
in point of time.(19) But the Cimbri, instead of following up their
victory over the Romans, sent to the senate at Rome to repeat their
request for the assignment of land, and meanwhile employed themselves,
apparently, in the subjugation of the surrounding Celtic cantons.
Inroad of the Helvetii into Southern Gaul
Defeat of Longinus
Thus the Roman province and the new Roman army were left for the
moment undisturbed by the Germans; but a new enemy arose in Gaul
itself. The Helvetii, who had suffered much in the constant conflicts
with their north-eastern neighbours, felt themselves stimulated by
the example of the Cimbri to seek in their turn for more quiet and
fertile settlements in western Gaul, and had perhaps, even when the
Cimbrian hosts marched through their land, formed an alliance with
them for that purpose. Now under the leadership of Divico the forces
of the Tougeni (position unknown) and of the Tigorini (on the lake
of Murten) crossed the Jura,(20) and reached the territory of the
Nitiobroges (about Agen on the Garonne). The Roman army under the
consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, which they here encountered, allowed
itself to be decoyed by the Helvetii into an ambush, in which the
general himself and his legate, the consular Lucius Piso, along with
the greater portion of the soldiers met their death; Gaius Popillius,
the interim commander-in-chief of the force which had escaped to
the camp, was allowed to withdraw under the yoke on condition of
surrendering half the property which the troops carried with them
and furnishing hostages (647). So perilous was the state of things
for the Romans, that one of the most important towns in their
own province, Tolosa, rose against them and placed the Roman
garrison in chains.
But, as the Cimbri continued to employ themselves elsewhere, and
the Helvetii did not further molest for the moment the Roman province,
the new Roman commander-in-chief, Quintus Servilius Caepio, had full
time to recover possession of the town of Tolosa by treachery and to
empty at leisure the immense treasures accumulated in the old and
famous sanctuary of the Celtic Apollo. It was a desirable gain for
the embarrassed exchequer, but unfortunately the gold and silver vessels
on the way from Tolosa to Massilia were taken from the weak escort by
a band of robbers, and totally disappeared: the consul himself and
his staff were, it was alleged, the instigators of this onset (648).
Meanwhile they confined themselves to the strictest defensive
as regarded the chief enemy, and guarded the Roman province
with three strong armies, till it should please the Cimbri
to repeat their attack.
Defeat of Arausio
They came in 649 under their king Boiorix, on this occasion seriously
meditating an inroad into Italy. They were opposed on the right bank
of the Rhone by the proconsul Caepio, on the left by the consul Gnaeus
Mallius Maximus and by his legate, the consular Marcus Aurelius
Scaurus, under him at the head of a detached corps. The first onset
fell on the latter; he was totally defeated and brought in person as
a prisoner to the enemy's head-quarters, where the Cimbrian king,
indignant at the proud warning given to him by the captive Roman
not to venture with his army into Italy, put him to death. Maximus
thereupon ordered his colleague to bring his army over the Rhone:
the latter complying with reluctance at length appeared at Arausio
(Orange) on the left bank of the river, where the whole Roman force
now stood confronting the Cimbrian army, and is alleged to have made
such an impression by its considerable numbers that the Cimbri began
to negotiate. But the two leaders lived in the most vehement discord.
Maximus, an insignificant and incapable man, was as consul the legal
superior of his prouder and better born, but not better qualified,
proconsular colleague Caepio; but the latter refused to occupy a
common camp and to devise operations in concert with him, and still,
as formerly, maintained his independent command. In vain deputies from
the Roman senate endeavoured to effect a reconciliation; a personal
conference between the generals, on which the officers insisted, only
widened the breach. When Caepio saw Maximus negotiating with the
envoys of the Cimbri, he fancied that the latter wished to gain the
sole credit of their subjugation, and threw himself with his portion of
the army alone in all haste on the enemy. He was utterly annihilated,
so that even his camp fell into the hands of the enemy (6 Oct. 649);
and his destruction was followed by the no less complete defeat
of the second Roman army. It is asserted that 80,000 Roman soldiers
and half as many of the immense and helpless body of camp-followers
perished, and that only ten men escaped: this much is certain, that only
a few out of the two armies succeeded in escaping, for the Romans had
fought with the river in their rear. It was a calamity which materially
and morally far surpassed the day of Cannae. The defeats of Carbo,
of Silanus, and of Longinus had passed without producing any permanent
impression on the Italians. They were accustomed to open every war
with disasters; the invincibleness of the Roman arms was so firmly
established, that it seemed superfluous to attend to the pretty numerous
exceptions. But the battle of Arausio, the alarming proximity of
the victorious Cimbrian army to the undefended passes of the Alps,
the insurrections breaking out afresh and with increased force both
in the Roman territory beyond the Alps and among the Lusitanians,
the defenceless condition of Italy, produced a sudden and fearful
awakening from these dreams. Men recalled the never wholly forgotten
Celtic inroads of the fourth century, the day on the Allia and
the burning of Rome: with the double force at once of the oldest
remembrance and of the freshest alarm the terror of the Gauls came
upon Italy; through all the west people seemed to be aware that
the Roman empire was beginning to totter. As after the battle
of Cannae, the period of mourning was shortened by decree of
the senate.(21) The new enlistments brought out the most painful
scarcity of men. All Italians capable of bearing arms had to swear
that they would not leave Italy; the captains of the vessels lying
in the Italian ports were instructed not to take on board any man fit
for service. It is impossible to tell what might have happened, had
the Cimbri immediately after their double victory advanced through
the gates of the Alps into Italy. But they first overran the territory
of the Arverni, who with difficulty defended themselves in their
fortresses against the enemy; and soon, weary of sieges, set out
from thence, not to Italy, but westward to the Pyrenees.
The Roman Opposition
Warfare of Prosecutions
If the torpid organism of the Roman polity could still of itself reach
a crisis of wholesome reaction, that reaction could not but set in
now, when, by one of the marvellous pieces of good fortune, in which
the history of Rome is so rich, the danger was sufficiently imminent
to rouse all the energy and all the patriotism of the burgesses, and
yet did not burst upon them so suddenly as to leave no space for the
development of their resources. But the very same phenomena, which
had occurred four years previously after the African defeats, presented
themselves afresh. In fact the African and Gallic disasters were
essentially of the same kind. It may be that primarily the blame
of the former fell more on the oligarchy as a whole, that of the
latter more on individual magistrates; but public opinion justly
recognized in both, above all things, the bankruptcy of the government,
which in its progressive development imperilled first the honour and
now the very existence of the state. People just as little deceived
themselves then as now regarding the true seat of the evil, but
as little now as then did they make even an attempt to apply the
remedy at the proper point. They saw well that the system was
to blame; but on this occasion also they adhered to the method
of calling individuals to account--only no doubt this second storm
discharged itself on the heads of the oligarchy so much the more
heavily, as the calamity of 649 exceeded in extent and peril that of
645. The sure instinctive feeling of the public, that there was no
resource against the oligarchy except the -tyrannis-, was once more
apparent in their readily entering into every attempt by officers
of note to force the hand of the government and, under one form
or another, to overturn the oligarchic rule by a dictatorship.
It was against Quintus Caepio that their attacks were first
directed; and justly, in so far as he had primarily occasioned the
defeat of Arausio by his insubordination, even apart from the probably
well-founded but not proved charge of embezzling the Tolosan booty;
but the fury which the opposition displayed against him was essentially
augmented by the fact, that he had as consul ventured on an attempt
to wrest the posts of jurymen from the capitalists.(22) On his account
the old venerable principle, that the sacredness of the magistracy
should be respected even in the person of its worst occupant, was
violated; and, while the censure due to the author of the calamitous
day of Cannae had been silently repressed within the breast, the author
of the defeat of Arausio was by decree of the people unconstitutionally
deprived of his proconsulship, and--what had not occurred since
the crisis in which the monarchy had perished--his property was
confiscated to the state-chest (649?). Not long afterwards he was
by a second decree of the burgesses expelled from the senate (650).
But this was not enough; more victims were desired, and above all
Caepio's blood. A number of tribunes of the people favourable to the
opposition, with Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Norbanus at their
head, proposed in 651 to appoint an extraordinary judicial commission in
reference to the embezzlement and treason perpetrated in Gaul; in spite
of the de facto abolition of arrest during investigation and of the
punishment of death for political offences, Caepio was arrested and
the intention of pronouncing and executing in his case sentence of
death was openly expressed. The government party attempted to get
rid of the proposal by tribunician intervention; but the interceding
tribunes were violently driven from the assembly, and in the furious
tumult the first men of the senate were assailed with stones.
The investigation could not be prevented, and the warfare of
prosecutions pursued its course in 651 as it had done six years
before; Caepio himself, his colleague in the supreme command Gnaeus
Mallius Maximus, and numerous other men of note were condemned: a
tribune of the people, who was a friend of Caepio, with difficulty
succeeded by the sacrifice of his own civic existence in saving at
least the life of the chief persons accused.(23)
Marius Commander-in-Chief
Of more importance than this measure of revenge was the question how
the dangerous war beyond the Alps was to be further carried on, and
first of all to whom the supreme command in it was to be committed.
With an unprejudiced treatment of the matter it was not difficult to
make a fitting choice. Rome was doubtless, in comparison with earlier
times, not rich in military notabilities; yet Quintus Maximus had
commanded with distinction in Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and
Quintus Minucius in the regions of the Danube, Quintus Metellus,
Publius Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Marius in Africa; and the object
proposed was not to defeat a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal, but again
to make good the often-tried superiority of Roman arms and Roman
tactics in opposition to the barbarians of the north--an object which
required no genius, but merely a stern and capable soldier. But it
was precisely a time when nothing was so difficult as the unprejudiced
settlement of a question of administration. The government was, as
it could not but be and as the Jugurthine war had already shown, so
utterly bankrupt in public opinion, that its ablest generals had to
retire in the full career of victory, whenever it occurred to an
officer of mark to revile them before the people and to get himself as
the candidate of the opposition appointed by the latter to the head of
affairs. It was no wonder that what took place after the victories of
Metellus was repeated on a greater scale after the defeats of Gnaeus
Mallius and Quintus Caepio. Once more Gaius Marius came forward, in
spite of the law which prohibited the holding of the consulship more
than once, as a candidate for the supreme magistracy; and not only was
he nominated as consul and charged with the chief command in the Gallic
war, while he was still in Africa at the head of the army there, but
he was reinvested with the consulship for five years in succession
(650-654)--in a way, which looked like an intentional mockery of
the exclusive spirit that the nobility had exhibited in reference
to this very man in all its folly and shortsightedness, but was also
unparalleled in the annals of the republic, and in fact absolutely
incompatible with the spirit of the free constitution of Rome.
In the Roman military system in particular--the transformation of which
from a burgess-militia into a body of mercenaries, begun in the African
war, was continued and completed by Marius during his five years of a
supreme command unlimited through the exigencies of the time still more
than through the terms of his appointment--the profound traces of this
unconstitutional commandership-in-chief of the first democratic general
remained visible for all time.
Roman Defensive
The new commander-in-chief, Gaius Marius, appeared in 650 beyond the
Alps, followed by a number of experienced officers--among whom the
bold captor of Jugurtha, Lucius Sulla, soon acquired fresh distinction--
and by a numerous host of Italian and allied soldiers. At first he
did not find the enemy against whom he was sent. The singular people,
who had conquered at Arausio, had in the meantime (as we have
already mentioned), after plundering the country to the west of
the Rhone, crossed the Pyrenees and were carrying on a desultory
warfare in Spain with the brave inhabitants of the northern coast
and of the interior; it seemed as if the Germans wished at their very
first appearance in the field of history to display their lack of
persistent grasp. So Marius found ample time on the one hand to
reduce the revolted Tectosages to obedience, to confirm afresh the
wavering fidelity of the subject Gallic and Ligurian cantons, and to
obtain support and contingents within and without the Roman province
from the allies who were equally with the Romans placed in peril by
the Cimbri, such as the Massiliots, the Allobroges, and the Sequani;
and on the other hand, to discipline the army entrusted to him by
strict training and impartial justice towards all whether high or
humble, and to prepare the soldiers for the more serious labours of
war by marches and extensive works of entrenching--particularly the
construction of a canal of the Rhone, afterwards handed over to the
Massiliots, for facilitating the transit of the supplies sent from
Italy to the army. He maintained a strictly defensive attitude,
and did not cross the bounds of the Roman province.
The Cimbri, Teutones, and Helvetii Unite
Expedition to Italy Resolved on
Teutones in the Province of Gaul
At length, apparently in the course of 651, the wave of the Cimbri,
after having broken itself in Spain on the brave resistance of the
native tribes and especially of the Celtiberians, flowed back again
over the Pyrenees and thence, as it appears, passed along the shore
of the Atlantic Ocean, where everything from the Pyrenees to the
Seine submitted to the terrible invaders. There, on the confines
of the brave confederacy of the Belgae, they first encountered serious
resistance; but there also, while they were in the territory of the
Vellocassi (near Rouen), considerable reinforcements reached them.
Not only three cantons of the Helvetii, including the Tigorini
and Tougeni who had formerly fought against the Romans at the Garonne,
associated themselves, apparently about this period, with the Cimbri,
but these were also joined by the kindred Teutones under their king
Teutobod, who had been driven by events which tradition has not
recorded from their home on the Baltic sea to appear now on the
Seine.(24) But even the united hordes were unable to overcome the
brave resistance of the Belgae. The leaders accordingly resolved,
now that their numbers were thus swelled, to enter in all earnest on
the expedition to Italy which they had several times contemplated.
In order not to encumber themselves with the spoil which they had
heretofore collected, they left it behind under the protection of a
division of 6000 men, which after many wanderings subsequently gave
rise to the tribe of the Aduatuci on the Sambre. But, whether from
the difficulty of finding supplies on the Alpine routes or from other
reasons, the mass again broke up into two hosts, one of which,
composed of the Cimbri and Tigorini, was to recross the Rhine
and to invade Italy through the passes of the eastern Alps already
reconnoitred in 641, and the other, composed of the newly-arrived
Teutones, the Tougeni, and the Ambrones--the flower of the Cimbrian
host already tried in the battle of Arausio--was to invade Italy
through Roman Gaul and the western passes. It was this second
division, which in the summer of 652 once more crossed the Rhone
without hindrance, and on its left bank resumed, after a pause of
nearly three years, the struggle with the Romans. Marius awaited them
in a well-chosen and well-provisioned camp at the confluence of the
Isere with the Rhone, in which position he intercepted the passage
of the barbarians by either of the only two military routes to Italy
then practicable, that over the Little St. Bernard, and that along
the coast. The Teutones attacked the camp which obstructed their
passage; for three consecutive days the assault of the barbarians
raged around the Roman entrenchments, but their wild courage was
thwarted by the superiority of the Romans in fortress-warfare and by
the prudence of the general. After severe loss the bold associates
resolved to give up the assault, and to march onward to Italy past
the camp. For six successive days they continued to defile--a proof
of the cumbrousness of their baggage still more than of the immensity
of their numbers. The general permitted the march to proceed without
attacking them. We can easily understand why he did not allow himself
to be led astray by the insulting inquiries of the enemy whether the
Romans had no commissions for their wives at home; but the fact, that
he did not take advantage of this audacious defiling of the hostile
columns in front of the concentrated Roman troops for the purpose of
attack, shows how little he trusted his unpractised soldiers.
Battle of Aquae Sextiae
When the march was over, he broke up his encampment and followed
in the steps of the enemy, preserving rigorous order and carefully
entrenching himself night after night. The Teutones, who were striving
to gain the coast road, marching down the banks of the Rhone reached
the district of Aquae Sextiae, followed by the Romans. The light
Ligurian troops of the Romans, as they were drawing water, here came
into collision with the Celtic rear-guard, the Ambrones; the conflict
soon became general; after a hot struggle the Romans conquered and
pursued the retreating enemy up to their waggon-stronghold. This first
successful collision elevated the spirits of the general as well as of
the soldiers; on the third day after it Marius drew up his array for
a decisive battle on the hill, the summit of which bore the Roman
camp. The Teutones, long impatient to measure themselves against
their antagonists, immediately rushed up the hill and began the
conflict. It was severe and protracted: up to midday the Germans
stood like walls; but the unwonted heat of the Provengal sun
relaxed their energies, and a false alarm in their rear, where a
band of Roman camp-boys ran forth from a wooded ambuscade with loud
shouts, utterly decided the breaking up of the wavering ranks.
The whole horde was scattered, and, as was to be expected in a foreign
land, either put to death or taken prisoners. Among the captives
was king Teutobod; among the killed a multitude of women, who, not
unacquainted with the treatment which awaited them as slaves, had
caused themselves to be slain in desperate resistance at their
waggons, or had put themselves to death in captivity, after having
vainly requested to be dedicated to the service of the gods and of
the sacred virgins of Vesta (summer of 652).
Cimbrians in Italy
Thus Gaul was relieved from the Germans; and it was time, for
their brothers-in-arms were already on the south side of the Alps.
In alliance with the Helvetii, the Cimbri had without difficulty passed
from the Seine to the upper valley of the Rhine, had crossed the chain
of the Alps by the Brenner pass, and had descended thence through
the valleys of the Eisach and Adige into the Italian plain. Here
the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus was to guard the passes; but
not fully acquainted with the country and afraid of having his flank
turned, he had not ventured to advance into the Alps themselves, but
had posted himself below Trent on the left bank of the Adige, and had
secured in any event his retreat to the right bank by the construction
of a bridge. When the Cimbri, however, pushed forward in dense
masses from the mountains, a panic seized the Roman army, and
legionaries and horsemen ran off, the latter straight for the capital,
the former to the nearest height which seemed to afford security.
With great difficulty Catulus brought at least the greater portion of
his army by a stratagem back to the river and over the bridge, before
the enemy, who commanded the upper course of the Adige and were
already floating down trees and beams against the bridge, succeeded
in destroying it and thereby cutting off the retreat of the army.
But the general had to leave behind a legion on the other bank, and
the cowardly tribune who led it was already disposed to capitulate,
when the centurion Gnaeus Petreius of Atina, struck him down and cut
his way through the midst of the enemy to the main army on the right
bank of the Adige. Thus the army, and in some degree even the
honour of their arms, was saved; but the consequences of the neglect
to occupy the passes and of the too hasty retreat were yet very
seriously felt Catulus was obliged to withdraw to the right bank of
the Po and to leave the whole plain between the Po and the Alps in
the power of the Cimbri, so that communication was maintained with
Aquileia only by sea. This took place in the summer of 652, about
the same time when the decisive battle between the Teutones and the
Romans occurred at Aquae Sextiae. Had the Cimbri continued their
attack without interruption, Rome might have been greatly embarrassed;
but on this occasion also they remained faithful to their custom of
resting in winter, and all the more, because the rich country, the
unwonted quarters under the shelter of a roof, the warm baths, and
the new and abundant supplies for eating and drinking invited them
to make themselves comfortable for the moment. Thereby the Romans
gained time to encounter them with united forces in Italy. It was
no season to resume--as the democratic general would perhaps otherwise
have done--the interrupted scheme of conquest in Gaul, such as Gaius
Gracchus had probably projected. From the battle-field of Aix the
victorious army was conducted to the Po; and after a brief stay in
the capital, where Marius refused the triumph offered to him until
he had utterly subdued the barbarians, he arrived in person at the
united armies. In the spring of 653 they again crossed the Po,
50,000 strong, under the consul Marius and the proconsul Catulus,
and marched against the Cimbri, who on their part seem to have marched
up the river with a view to cross the mighty stream at its source.
Battle on the Raudine Plain
The two armies met below Vercellae not far from the confluence of
the Sesia with the Po,(25) just at the spot where Hannibal had fought
his first battle on Italian soil. The Cimbri desired battle, and
according to their custom sent to the Romans to settle the time and
place for it; Marius gratified them and named the next day--it was
the 30th July 653--and the Raudine plain, a wide level space, which
the superior Roman cavalry found advantageous for their movements.
Here they fell upon the enemy expecting them and yet taken by
surprise; for in the dense morning mist the Cimbrian cavalry found
itself in hand-to-hand conflict with the stronger cavalry of the
Romans before it anticipated attack, and was thereby thrown back
upon the infantry which was just making its dispositions for battle.
A complete victory was gained with slight loss, and the Cimbri were
annihilated. Those might be deemed fortunate who met death in the
battle, as most did, including the brave king Boiorix; more fortunate
at least than those who afterwards in despair laid hands on themselves,
or were obliged to seek in the slave-market of Rome the master who
might retaliate on the individual Northman for the audacity of having
coveted the beauteous south before it was time. The Tigorini, who had
remained behind in the passes of the Alps with the view of subsequently
following the Cimbri, ran off on the news of the defeat to their native
land. The human avalanche, which for thirteen years had alarmed the
nations from the Danube to the Ebro, from the Seine to the Po, rested
beneath the sod or toiled under the yoke of slavery; the forlorn hope
of the German migrations had performed its duty; the homeless people
of the Cimbri and their comrades were no more.
The Victory and the Parties
The political parties of Rome continued their pitiful quarrels over
the carcase, without troubling themselves about the great chapter in
the world's history the first page of which was thus opened, without
even giving way to the pure feeling that on this day Rome's aristocrats
as well as Rome's democrats had done their duty. The rivalry of
the two generals--who were not only political antagonists, but were
also set at variance in a military point of view by the so different
results of the two campaigns of the previous year--broke out immediately
after the battle in the most offensive form. Catulus might with
justice assert that the centre division which he commanded had
decided the victory, and that his troops had captured thirty-one
standards, while those of Marius had brought in only two, his
soldiers led even the deputies of the town of Parma through the heaps
of the dead to show to them that Marius had slain his thousand, but
Catulus his ten thousand. Nevertheless Marius was regarded as the real
conqueror of the Cimbri, and justly; not merely because by virtue of
his higher rank he had held the chief command on the decisive day,
and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to
his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae
had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae
Sextiae. But at that period it was considerations of political
partisanship rather than of military merit which attached the glory
of having saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones entirely to the name
of Marius. Catulus was a polished and clever man, so graceful a
speaker that his euphonious language sounded almost like eloquence,
a tolerable writer of memoirs and occasional poems, and an excellent
connoisseur and critic of art; but he was anything but a man of the
people, and his victory was a victory of the aristocracy. The battles
of the rough farmer on the other hand, who had been raised to honour
by the common people and had led the common people to victory, were
not merely defeats of the Cimbri and Teutones, but also defeats of the
government: there were associated with them hopes far different from
that of being able once more to carry on mercantile transactions on
the one side of the Alps or to cultivate the fields without molestation
on the other. Twenty years had elapsed since the bloody corpse of
Gaius Gracchus had been flung into the Tiber; for twenty years the
government of the restored oligarchy had been endured and cursed;
still there had risen no avenger for Gracchus, no second master to
prosecute the building which he had begun. There were many who
hated and hoped, many of the worst and many of the best citizens
of the state: was the man, who knew how to accomplish this vengeance
and these wishes, found at last in the son of the day-labourer of
Arpinum? Were they really on the threshold of the new much-dreaded
and much-desired second revolution?