The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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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.