Rome Refused to Fall: The Cimbrian War (113 - 101 BC) - ALL PARTS

It’s the dying years of the second century BC, and Roman Consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo marches to confront a new northern threat to the Roman Republic. Their Taurisci allies having requested aid, Carbo is confident he has the barbarians at ease and totally at his mercy. As he nears the city of Noricum, he spies out the best location from which to launch his ambush against the Cimbri and Teutones tribes; yet as thoughts of establishing a temporary camp cross his mind, messages begin to hurriedly pass down the column. The ground shakes with the beating of great war drums and the war cries of his foes echo in the cold breeze as thousands of Cimbri and Teutones warriors begin their charges. Carbo and his centurions frantically bark orders for their men to form up; alas the barbarian warriors swiftly smash into the surprised legionaries. Carbo’s hopes of betraying this foreign folk and proudly entering Rome in a Triumph melt away into the pit of his stomach as the screams of his men begin to shatter the air. The Cimbrian war had now truly begun. The Cimbrian War that began in 113 BC was sparked by Roman paranoia of migrating folk. A few years before the onset of hostilities, the Cimbri – a Germanic folk inhabiting the area roughly corresponding to the Jutland Peninsula – left their lands. Unfortunately little is known about them, even their Germanic identity is being disputed, with a possible Celtic origin. Strabo doubts that the flooding theory of displacement truly occurred, however, whatever their exact origins or reasons, the Cimbri – likely numbering in the hundreds of thousands – marched menacingly south. En route to their fated first encounter with a Roman army, the Cimbri, along with their allies the Teutones, were confronted by the Boii people in the Hercynian Forest – now modern-day southern Germany. Unwilling to cede their lands, the hoard was beaten back and forced on. It was then that the Germanic alliance was similarly denied settlement by the Scordisci, a Balkan tribe. Reorienting west, the clash with Rome swiftly became an inevitability. Yet it was not angry legionaries that the Germanic warriors initially faced, but their allies. The Taurisci folk inhabited the lands of Noricum, too close for comfort for both the native inhabitants and, as it transpired, for Rome. Unlike their hostile hosts beforehand, the Taurisci were unable to eject their unwanted guests and so sent word to Rome for aid. As “allies and friends of the Roman People” the Senate were all too willing to oblige. One of the year’s consuls Gnaeus Papirius Carbo raised an army of around thirty thousand men and marched north, taking up a position in a pass. Carbo, as with any hot-headed and eager Roman leader of his day, must have had hopes for battle and glory vying in his mind. Such an opportunity – to confront and crush an impressive enemy right on Rome’s doorstep could immortalise him, as well as gain him and his men vast riches, and perhaps even the most coveted of honours: the Triumph. How disappointment must have flooded over Carbo, then, on receiving the barbarian ambassadors. Far from a proud and belligerent folk, willing to play their part, the Cimbri and Teutones’ attitude was apologetic. Perhaps cognisant of Rome’s military reputation, they pledged to have no ill intentions, assuring the consul that they would vacate allied lands immediately. Perhaps through gritted teeth, Carbo agreed, and supplied guides to assist the unwanted guests out of Noricum. Yet behind the smiles and nods of understanding, Carbo had no intention of allowing the barbaric host to exit allied lands unbloodied. Ordering the guides to lead them by a specific path, the consul intended to march ahead and ambush the invaders further east. The traitorous move, however, was to prove his army’s undoing, as the Cimbri scouts tracked Roman movements.

Being alerted to Carbo’s betrayal, the Cimbri turned the tables on the Romans. Falling mercilessly on the Romans near Noreia, the sight of the larger, blue-eyed and raging northern warriors must have struck terror into the hearts of many a Roman that day. Crashing into the Roman column of march, Carbo’s legionaries had no hope of effectively resisting and the initial slaughter took merely minutes. Of the original thirty thousand fighting men, a mere six thousand escaped destruction, this given the fortuitous intervention of a great thunder storm and the proximity of nearby woods that permitted their retreat. Perhaps among the scattered parties huddled within their cover, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo too had survived. His dreams of glory and triumph as shattered as his army, he shamefully returned to Rome, where the people branded the consul’s defeat as a just reward from the gods for his duplicitous actions. Following Noreia, terrifying tales of the wrath of their foes, as well as darker whispered stories of the post-battle practices of the barbarian priestesses must have frozen Roman hearts as the victorious northerners moved on. Perhaps to the great relief of those same Romans awaiting the storm it never came. Like that great terror of the Second Punic War, the Cimbri and Teutones did not press their advantage, moving westwards rather than south. It would be Gaul who would suffer in the immediate years; Rome was instead granted a precious reprieve. In 109 BC, the northern problem once again reared its head. Now, the Allied barbarian army was in the vicinity of Gallia Transalpina, a full Roman province, which necessarily provoked a firm response. This came in the person and army of Consul Marcus Iunius Silanus, who was incidentally serving that year alongside Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the man overseeing the on-going Jugurthine War to the south. As in Noricum, the barbarian army sent emissaries to humbly request land for payment and perhaps (to their reckoning) they sweetened the deal further by suggesting that they could fight for Rome in return for a permanent home. Silanus sent these ambassadors on the Senate who predictably rebuffed the suggestion. While such an agreement was quite normal in the future later Imperial period, such a deal was anathema to these proud men. The result when the two forces came to blows was a grizzly repeat of Noreia. Silanus’ army was crushed, while its commander survived to be charged for the disaster. Luckily for Rome, however, the enemy’s decision not to ravage Italia itself was also repeated. The Cimbri and Teutones pressed on through Gaul, while the Tigurini raided Gallia Transalpina itself. This in turn caused a local Roman client tribe to revolt, exacerbating Rome’s problems in the region. In 107 BC, the Republic sought to reestablish its dominance across the Alps and sent Consul Lucius Cassius Longinus to meet the Tigurini threat. For a change, things seemed to be looking up for the Romans as Longinus’ legions defeated the barbarians near Tolosa, or modern-day Toulouse. Unfortunately for them the avarice of the victorious commander impeded his ability to finish the job. Though the Tigurini had been broken and driven west in disorder, Longinus was loathed to leave the captured baggage wagons and their loot. When the legions finally did zero-in on the Tigurini they had plenty of time to prepare. Reinforced, the allied army ambushed Longinus’ army somewhere in the Garonne valley, near modern-day Bordeax. This time, however, the Roman commander would not escape a soldier’s death. To rub salt into the collective wound, the surviving legate Caius Popillius Laenas was surrounded and forced into a humiliating surrender. With three straight defeats behind them, and nothing to shield the homelands themselves from barbarian aggression, Rome longed for a success. In 106 BC, the Consul Quintus Servilius Caepio did manage this. Caepio engaged and defeated a

recently-rebelled Volcae tribe. He seized Tolosa and if rumours were true much more besides. In taking the place, Caepio also seized a vast treasure that Orosius wrote amounted to one hundred thousand pounds of gold and one hundred and ten thousand pounds of silver. Though sending the hoard on to Massilia, the gold conveniently disappeared en route with fingers naturally pointing at Caepio. The theft of the treasure though would take a temporary back-seat to imminent events. With the northern threat still overshadowing the Republic, in 105 BC new consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was tasked with destroying the tribal alliance once and for all. But picking him for the expedition was not conducive to a smooth united response to the northern threat, especially considering that the Roman Senate had his co-consul Publius Rutilius Rufus at their disposal. Rufus was a proven commander, distinguished in the battle of Muthul, who had served alongside Jugurtha and Gaius Marius himself, under the command of Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War. In contrast, Mallius was a so-called novus homo; a ‘New Man,” one without a long and distinguished family background. Eager to forge his own military reputation, he succeeded in getting elected to lead the consular army against the northern invaders. Proconsul Caepio especially resented Mallius’ superior rank, given his own much more prestigious background. The result of this hostility within the Roman leadership was a disunited front against the decidedly united allied tribes. Moving down the east bank of the Rhone river, the barbarian host halted near the Roman settlement of Arausio. Hostilities began poorly for the Romans. Mallius had sent a small force under his legate Marcus Aurelius Scaurus to scout the enemy position, however, Scaurus failed to slip away unnoticed himself and, engaging with the Cimbri, his outnumbered men were annihilated, with the ill-starred Scaurus himself being dragged before Boiorix. Dignified in captivity, Scaurus bluntly refused to cooperate with his foes, Boiorix demanding he aid his forces against his compatriots. Bluntly rejecting the suggestion, Scaurus – after apparently even being presented with the opportunity to escape – stoically remained, unable to cope with the knowledge that he and not his men had escaped. Soon after he was executed. Meanwhile, division plagued the Romans. Mallius occupied a position apart from his nominal inferior, and though Mallius sent messages to Caepio to coordinate and combine their forces, Caepio brushed these off, urging Mallius to look to his own affairs. Despite not directly subordinating himself, however, Caepio did move his army to the vicinity, camping at first on the opposite side of the Rhone. What the Cimbri and their allies made of this fractured Roman response can only be guessed at, but it’s difficult to imagine anything other than confused delight washing over both Boiorix and his fellow commanders. The tribal coalition already vastly outnumbered the Romans, perhaps fielding up to three hundred thousand warriors, in contrast to a maximum of about eighty thousand Roman fighting men, with an additional forty thousand or so camp followers and others. In addition, Mallius had committed a fatal error in arraying his forces with their backs against the Rhone, cutting off any means of retreat. Mallius too was not enforcing strict discipline within his camp. Caepio’s men had urged their commander to convene with his hated rival and the conference went about as well as could be expected with the two men parting on bad terms, and Caepio outright refusing participation in Mallius’ plan of attack. Caepio, however, would not long hang back and perhaps fearful that Mallius would crush the enemy without him and thus take all the glory for himself, the proconsul re-located across the river and closer to the foe.

The final nail in the coffin for the Romans’ chances of a coordinated effort came with the tribal emissaries’ arrival. As with their previous interactions Boiorix and his fellow kings desired a settlement, but given their past victories they now demanded Mallius – as the superior officer on site – grant them free land to occupy and grain to feed them. Mallius, of course, rejected any deal as an “un-Roman” admission of weakness. The very fact, however, that the enemy had rightly sent their representatives to negotiate with Mallius provoked an envious rage in Caepio, with the proconsul declaring he would have ordered the northern envoys executed. Caepio – perhaps refusing to allow a mere novus homo from gaining credit for neutralising the barbarian threat – moved his forces out to strike first. Rebuffed once again, Boiorix and his fellow kings ordered their army to fall upon the divided Roman soldiers. Specific details on the battle are absent, however, it was Caepio’s army who surely first felt the wrath of the barbarian host. Caepio’s men must be imagined then confidently awaiting the wild charges; not an ordered and stoic line of warriors, but a tsunami of frenzied and rage-fuelled barbarians, each man on average of greater stature and frame. Their speed must have been shocking, this a noted tactic of the tribesmen, in conjunction with sheer numbers. The Cimbri are known to have used great drums, stretched across the sides of their wagons and thus we can only imagine the confidence of Caepio’s men disintegrate as an overwhelming beat shook the ground with the barbarians’ charges, the howls of foreign tongues piercing their ears, interspersed with their war cries. The initial waves may have been barely contained, but we do know that Caepio’s legionaries were shattered and routed; it’s likely then that the proconsul’s ranks were compromised or flanked, either way the survivors were driven back or fled towards the waiting ranks of Mallius’ army, who had deployed out from their camp. At this sight, Mallius’ ill-disciplined men were likely quickly infected by terror themselves, as the enraged Cimbi and their allies were not far behind Caepio’s army’s routing fragments. With just the remaining half of the total Roman forces Mallius’ men were easily overwhelmed too. Perhaps adding to this general horror were the additional novel threat of the Cimbric women. Unlike the Romans, these hardy women folk accompanied their men and even took up arms and fought themselves at times. It was now that the poor positioning of Rome’s armies completed the disaster: as both armies were pushed back, the river barred any easy escape. Facing either the wrath of the enemy or the near-certain death of the river, many chose the latter. Between sixty and eighty thousand soldiers were either put to the sword or drowned, though Orosius’ claim that just ten men escaped the calamity is perhaps gross hyperbole. What is known for sure is that this was a defeat on the scale of Cannae and later Teutoberg. Along with both armies’ near-total destruction, the camp followers were also set upon too, ratcheting up the death toll ever further. Among the survivors were both commanders, though Mallius hardly escaped unharmed, given he lost two sons that day. The proud Caepio slipped away, as well as one of his contubernales, a certain Quintus Sertorius. Sertorius, of course, would carve out his own place in Roman history as a firm foe of the Sullan regime. Remarkably, the future general, having been deprived of his steed, and after taking many wounds dived into the treacherous Rhone. Struggling with shield and armour against the powerful current, Sertorius outlived the day, later taking particular pride in his battle wounds, the most visible of which was a put-out eye. Back across the river, however, thousands of cornered or dying Romans were not so lucky.

Perhaps bizarrely to any Roman witness who yet survived, the tribesmen set about seizing the Roman plunder and dumping it into the river, while even the horses were herded into the water and drowned; legionaries were strung up, strangled where they lay or stabbed – perhaps in light of their overwhelming victory, to the Cimbri and their allies, this was all a grizzly offering to their gods. Maybe most horrific of all, a few particularly unlucky survivors may have been selected for special treatment by the Cimbric priestesses. Garbed in white and traversing the bloodied scene barefoot, these merciless ladies crowned their intended victims before these men were taken to be ritually killed: the luckier ones would have their throats slit, their blood caught in a brass drum and the priestesses receiving a divine message to relay to their leaders. The unluckier men were disembowelled or dissected: their innards examined for signs to presage military results. News of the disaster spread rapidly to Rome and a vast wave of mourning began, mixed with near-panic. Despite their general disgust of the practice, the Romans for the last time in their long history resorted to human sacrifice themselves, burying alive two Greek and Gallic men and women. Despite the magnitude of their latest loss, however, amazingly, the allied army did not press on to Italia, but instead split their forces. The Cimbri moved south-west across the Pyrenees, carving a new path of destruction through the Iberian Peninsula for the next three years. The Teutones remained to wander northern and western Gaul, with the hoard only uniting once again in 102 BC. Meanwhile, though surviving the disaster, both Mallius and Caepio would be prosecuted for their mismanagement of the battle. Mallius, in addition to losing his two sons, was also effectively broken politically too with Publius Rutilius Rufus in practice serving as sole consul. The seasoned Rufus acted decisively by raising another force to defend Rome. To hasten their training, he further hired gladiatorial trainers to teach the green troops. Though we know now that the northern threat to Rome was non-existent, this was far from certain for the shaken Roman people at the time. Rufus obviously took the threat seriously, as, in addition to the aforementioned, he also compelled young men to swear oaths not to leave Italia, while outright barring any man below twenty-five from embarking by boat from Italia, lest they shirk their duty to defend their Republic. Though a dark day in the Roman psyche, however, Arausio was the nadir of the conflict. The Jugurthine War was over, and the people turned to Gauis Marius, Rome’s victor and veteran military commander who was now free to turn his full attention to this greater barbarian threat. It is the dawn of 104 BC, and the bleak, freezing winter matches the darkness and despair in the very midst of every Roman heart. All around the seven hills - master of the Mediterranean for four decades - the screeching lamentations of the bereaved fill the alleys and insula tenements. Those citizens whose fathers, brothers, and husbands were not among the tens of thousands fallen on the cursed field of the Arausio still quake not only at the terrible sounds, but also at the petrifying prospect that the hordes of exultant Cimbri and Teutons will now march directly for the city. It is the nightmare prospect for the people that had presumed themselves invincible to the arms of all other tribes. That notion is now seen to be a dangerous illusion. The panic becomes acute when stories of the fates of the Roman survivors begin to circulate in the crossroads taverns and temples. Beneath the ceaseless din of the howling and prayers, it is said that the barbarians did not only put the unfortunate captive legionaries to death, they even drowned the horses of the Romans, holding them under the

water of a filthy Gaulish river until their kicking and bucking stilled to lifelessness. More nauseously still, while the majority of the legionaries were callously hung from the neck to slowly choke, others underwent a veritably hideous fate. These, it is whispered, were given over to the priestesses of the tribes, the witches committing the most unspeakable atrocities on their defenseless bodies. The city needs a champion. Just as the mother of cities appears to be in its blackest moment – the gods deliver the answer to its prayers. From the far reaches of Africa, it is announced that two conquerors are sailing home – the captured form of the Numidian king Jugurtha bound captive in the belly of their ship. Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla are powering toward the coast of Italy, their wits keen and their appetite hungry for war on those who have slaughtered and degraded their fellow citizens. All of Rome bursts into an exultation of thanksgiving, and the stage is set for a conflagration larger and more savage than anything Rome has seen since the Punic Army and its elephants crossed the Alps more than a century earlier. Marius’s return to Rome and his acceptance of the consulship are overshadowed completely by the losses on the Arausio. There is much patrician unease at Marius’s appointment, and it is incontestable that he is there at the behest of the people and not the aristocracy. Not only is he breaking with norms by serving a consecutive premiership, he is also elected without being present in Rome. This second term is no surprise to Marius himself, for while he was leading the war in Africa, a prophetess brought forth a vision of his future, and she told him he would be consul on no fewer than seven occasions. Already, those dissatisfied members of the patrician class are gravitating to Sulla – the man they claim deserves the real credit for leading the mission to capture Jugurtha. The jibes irritate Marius, but he and Sulla remain fast friends – for the moment. Marius’s task in this second, unusual consulship is an onerous one. While Rome has a greater reserve of manpower than all of its rivals and enemies, there is no state on earth that can lose close to 100,000 trained men in a single day and not feel the strain. It’s now generally agreed that Marius’s reforms of the Roman army are somewhat over exaggerated, but whatever the truth of his introducing a new design of pila or reforming the central tactical units from the maniple to the cohort, there is no doubt that he is at the forefront of transforming the legionary system as it had existed for the previous two centuries. Marius’s African Triumph lifts the populace from the gloom of the Arausio aftermath, with gargantuan displays of captured riches, prizes, and captives. It is a spectacle not seen in the four decades since Carthage and Corinth fell in the same year, and all of Rome is there to see it. The new man Marius and his patrician protege Sulla lap up the applause, while scorn, derision, and are poured onto the chained form of Jugurtha. Work for the coming campaign begins in the immediate aftermath of the triumph. Marius and Sulla have been discussing the correct approach to the war in the north since news of it first reached them in Africa, and they know precisely what it is that they need to do while in Rome. Requiring a completely new army, Marius has the senate relax the restrictions on landless men enlisting to the ranks, as well as making promises to the hard pressed Italian allies who have also suffered untold casualties in the catastrophe of Arausio. With his own legionaries almost entirely staying in Africa on the promise of land to reward their service, Marius’s initial force is a reserve legion raised the previous year by the consul Publius Rutilius Rufus.

This was originally intended to join the now destroyed main army in Gaul after further reinforcements had been raised, and with little physical work to occupy them in Rome, Rufus called in lanista gladiator trainers and put the reserves into a virile regimen of physical conditioning, drill, and weapon training. On inspecting the reserves a year later, Marius realizes that he has effectively inherited an army of elite prize fighters that also retains military discipline and tactical knowledge. He resolves that the rest of his army will follow this new course of training. Luckily for him, there is now no shortage of volunteers. His name acts like a talisman and men from across Rome and Italy join in their tens of thousands. It is well known that Marius’s African army became rich through booty and allocated lands, and Italy still has no shortage of young men who desire both of these things. With Rufus’s reserve legion as his central unit and an eager if skittish greater force numbering in the tens of thousands following in its wake, Marius moves north toward the Roman border outpost of Aqua Sextiae, with Sulla preparing himself for a number of missions behind enemy lines. Working alongside him will be Quintus Sertorius, the dashing young tribune who had been one of the very few to escape at Arausio. He had done this by swimming the Rhone in full armor and with his weapons – a very impressive demonstration of prowess. Together, Sertorius and Sulla will act as Marius’s eyes in Gaul, while the general himself strengthens the limbs of his army. Finding that the Cimbri and Teuton tribes have not followed up on their incredible opportunity to invade Italy, Marius chooses to push past Aqua Sextiae and makes a new outpost on the Rhone, building a veritable Roman bastion that would be impregnable to both assault and siege. While Sulla and Sertorius move out to reconnoiter the area, spying on the tribes of the region and opening negotiations to renew ally status where appropriate, Marius uses the time to hammer discipline and military mastery into his raw recruits. It transpires in the meantime that the tribes have moved west rather than south, and they are heading in the direction of Spain. Marius knows that there will be senators calling for the disbandment of his army with the passing of the immediate threat, but he senses that the republic has not seen the last of the Cimbri, the Teutons, and their confederates. In any case, Rome – the Roman people – demand vengeance for the humiliation on the Arausio. The honor of the republic cannot be cleansed until there is a reckoning. Marius bides his time, conditioning his men further with marches, learning the dips and rivets of the land of southern Gaul. He also commissions a very large dredging and expansion of the mouth of the Rhone, widening it for the easy access of supply ships – as well as running a canal from the river to the interior to supply his camps. There is a sharp exchange and subjugation of the Volcae – a people that Caesar will later record has raided as far as Greece, and other tribes learn the lesson and renew their alliance and submission to Rome. The year 103 ends with another consulship for Marius in absentia and Sulla making overtures to the Marsi tribe, persuading them to pledge fealty to Rome. By this time, Marius has received word that the Cimbri and Teutons are moving once more, steadily rolling in the direction of the legions for which they now hold no fear. They have been joined by the Ambrones. At some point, the tribes diverge, with the Teutons and Ambrones moving in one direction toward southern Gaul, their target almost certainly the rich port of Massalia, while the Cimbri seem to have moved directly toward Italy and bypassed Marius’s force. Seeing the situation through the intelligence network he has assembled, Marius elects to send his junior consul, Quintus Lutatius Catalus with a force to hold the Cimbri in place, while he moves

with the greater part of his army and neutralizes the threat of the Teutons and Ambrones. Sulla is sent with Catalus. There are rumors that the patrician officer is unhappy at a lack of recognition from Marius, but those in the know have it that Marius does not entirely trust the ability of Catalus, and he wants an able man on hand to steer proceedings with the holding force. Arausio was caused when the patrician Caepio would not cooperate with the new man Maximus. Being a new man himself, Marius does not want a repeat of the same disaster, and so he uses the high born but practical Sulla as his mouthpiece with Catalus. Catalus and Sulla make their way to the valley of Athesis, there to await the Cimbri who it is said number 400,000 tribespeople alone. Marius, meanwhile, has placed himself and his main force right in the path of the Teutons and Ambrones who have crossed the Rhone tributary known as the Druentia. The tribes see the elevated and well dug in Roman position, but their confidence following the annihilation of several Roman armies makes them feel invulnerable. The sheer number of their fighters is such that they imagine they can swarm and envelope the Roman camp like a bucket of water poured over an anthill. Marius, however, has prepared his camp with all of the necessary bulwarks and emplacements. Deep ditches surround his walls, backed by tall, packed earthen embankments. These are topped with sharpened timber stakes, between which the legionaries stand with slings, bows, and javelins. At their king Teutobad’s cry, the tribes rush forward, howling for blood – baying their vigor – and deriding the Romans for weak, stunted, feeble wretches. They clamber across the field and up the slope, sprinting to be the first to get to grips with the enemy. Next, some of them jump the ditch in one bound, others wait until branches and timbers are thrown down over it to allow them to cross. When a few Teutons make it past the ditch, through the projectiles, and up to the embankment, there are legionaries waiting there to hurl javelins. The Roman pila with their viciously thin barbs pierce through unprotected flesh and then wrench the victim to the ground, paralyzed with the weight of their wooden shafts and added lead bearings. The attack breaks off in the approaching gloom of evening, and the warriors and their leaders return to their fires to take account of their tactics and losses. The next day dawns with a renewed attack, and when this fails in the same manner as the first, the Teutons are reduced to calling out to the Romans to face them in the open field. The legionaries – whose zeal is at a high – wish to chase the tribesmen back down to their camp and immolate them in their entirety, but Marius will have none of it. He orders all to hold to their positions, and such is the command he enjoys over his men after their long training period – they now fear him to a greater degree than they do the enemy. This is precisely what Marius desires, for the next assault ends in the same manner as the last pair, and the legionaries now bat away the painted, screaming warriors with derision bordering on disdain. The legionaries have lost any fear that they had for the Gauls. The next day brings a repeat and even the tribal insults and challenges leveled at Marius himself draw only a mocking response. Teutabad realizes that Marius has provisioned his fortress to withstand a long siege, but he has no such means to feed his massive confederation in one place for any sustained length of time. After a third day of futile attacks, the orders ring out that the peoples will move south to Massalia once more and leave the cowardly Romans cringing behind their fence. They move off in their hundreds of thousands, oaths and insults the final shots they throw at the Roman palisade.

The legionaries watch them march – pride stung by the veto on offensive attacks by their commander – but the moment that the tribes cross the horizon, Marius gives his own order to strike the camp and move in pursuit. Now, the interminable period of training and conditioning comes into its own. Marius’s superbly fit legionaries can march at a faster pace for a longer period than any enemy force, helped along by the fact Marius has dispensed with many of the cumbersome wagons and slave retinues of earlier armies. His legionaries are self sufficient operatives, carrying their own kit and rations, ready to fight or construct a fortified camp at a moment’s notice. They shadow the tribes – marching alongside their streaming throng – and when the two hosts near the vicinity of Aqua Sextiae, Marius knows the ground on which he will place his formations. It is another clearing of elevated terrain, looking down on a stream and the massive tribal camp on the opposite bank. Here his legionaries have no direct access to the water; they will draw it only by coming into contact with the enemy, and Marius tells them that if they wish to drink, then the price they pay will be in blood. Whether it be their blood or the tribes’, that is up to them. In the evening, the legionaries work on their castra fortifications, but the camp followers are fending for themselves and they are now in the throes of thirst. Armed with any implements to hand, a few spears and swords that have found their way into their midst, as well as axes and hatchets, the stragglers venture down to the water to fill their skins and jugs. As they near the stream, they see and hear that it is the Ambrones who are closest to the bank, with some bathing and the great majority in their camp feasting and drinking after a long day of marching. Those close to the water shout on sight of the Romans, and the camp begins to stir like a wasps’ nest. The Roman camp followers are determined to get their fill and press on. Soon, there is fighting on the bank between the two sides, with more and more of the Ambrones’ joining from the camp. Others are inside, drunk and full of food, but nevertheless donning what armor they have and going to out to fight what they believe to be a Roman assault. Still Marius restrains the legionaries, even though a good number of the followers are Roman officers’ servants, and now a mass of Ambrones are crossing the stream onto the other side and shouting out their tribal name as a war cry. This is heard by the contingent of Ligurians – Rome's allies – who share a common origin with this tribe, but who are offended at their use of the name. The Ligurians charge down the hill and engage the Ambrones furiously, the noise and clamor deafening. The Ligurians are aided by the disparate state of the Ambrones, with the majority in the process of coming through the water and yet more still on the far side. The fight is vicious and wild, but a sound cuts through the din and causes an immediate reaction on both sides. It is the Roman carnyx... Marius has unleashed the legions... With the pent up fury of two years awaiting this moment, the Romans move like starving panthers released from their cage and onto a herd of trapped elk. Their momentum and ferocity is irresistible and the Ligurians almost have to step aside as the regulars hurl themselves down the slope and slice into the Ambrones on the bank. Panic and despair are the instant responses from the tribesmen, and they break and attempt to escape back over the river. The Romans do not pause and instead hurtle after them – it is said that so many are cut down that the water runs red with blood and chokes with carcasses. There is no respite on the far side, for the Romans form up once more and proceed to chase the

remaining Ambrones back up to their own camp. An incredible spectacle unfolds as the remainder of the inhabitants of the camp rush out to defend against this attack, and the Ambrones’ women beat their men back to fight the enemy as much as they rain blows down on the remorseless legionaries. With their kitchen knives and bare hands, they slash at the shields, ignoring serious wounds until they fall to the earth and a kinsman takes their place. Stories abound of women killing their own children so that they will not be enslaved by the legions and meet a fate worse than death. The fight is selfless; it is heroic; it is noble... But it is doomed. The Romans slaughter all. It is said that the Ambrones die in their tens of thousands, until – satisfied with their work for the moment – the Romans return to their camp to shelter for the night. Desolation is left in their wake. A dreadful slump follows when the night chill and darkness descends, for although the Romans have triumphed over one sizable portion of their enemies, the Teutons and the surviving Ambrones that have fled to them are still out there in the dark. Marius orders that there is to be no drinking or celebration. The battle is not over. As a confirmation of his words, howls and wails ring out in the darkness. The tribes are all around, and Marius commands every unit to stay on guard for a night assault. The legionaries thus spend the nocturnal hours in armor, eating what food they can lay hands on, and listening to the inhuman moans and shrieks that sound closer to the keening of animals than that of human beings. The next morning, the cold from the river seeps into exhausted limbs – the men ache to their very bones. Through the mist, there is no sign of the Teutons arranging themselves in force. Marius has the general alert stood down, and the legionaries are given leave to rest through the day, eat hot food, and replenish their strength. Their rejuvenated morale takes a slight dip, however, when more than 3,000 of their cavalry arm under Claudius Marcellus forms up and rides out of the camp – with no explanation given to the legionaries and auxiliaries. Feeling more exposed than previously, Marius’s men gird themselves for the struggles to come and follow their commander’s advice to sharpen and polish weapons and armor and otherwise spend their time in repose. On the other side of the river, the Teutons and the few remaining Ambrones seethe and whip themselves into fury. Fully convinced now that the Romans are cowards who will only attack when the circumstance are certain in their favor, they are incandescent at the atrocity committed the day before on the Ambrone tribe. Teutobad leads them in a vow of vengeance – attack will come whenever the opportunity presents itself. Night passes again without incident for both camps, and when morning arrives – the Teuton scouts watch in glee as the Roman porta gates open, and legionaries begin to file out into the open under the cover of archers on the palisade and a cavalry line in front. The Teuton sentries race back to report to their chiefs and within minutes their camp is teeming with warriors preparing themselves for battle. The tumult of the Teutons is contrasted with the silent order of the Romans – the cohorts now being assembled in large numbers – clearly offering the open battle that Teutobad has for so long been demanding from them. The Teutons race out from the camp in their hundreds and then in their thousands – across the shallow river and right up the hill where the Romans are getting into line. As the Romans take their positions, Marius’s message to them is relayed by the centurions: Launch the javelins the moment the enemy comes into range – have no fear, for the tribes will be at the disadvantage running up the slope.

Already, the Teutons are coming into range of the cavalry screen and the horsemen move off. Their numbers now are filling the eyeline of every legionary – they look like a churning ocean, a giant wave washing up the hill toward the suddenly thin seeming cohort ranks. There is a huge cheer as Marius is spotted, taking a place in the front line. Legionaries tighten the strap on their helmets, close their grip on the leather of sword and javelin. Their hysteric fear of the enemy is now well damped down by Marius’s insistence on them fending off the daily attacks on their camps, but there is the ever present tingling excitement of battle’s lethal threat. The Teutons are berserk with anger and bloodlust – pushing aside their own qualms in the knowledge that they have bested the Romans in open battle many times. The Romans hold fast while the tribesmen sprint ever closer, feeling that all it will take is contact and the horde will rip clear through the Romans and their camp like cyclone tearing a hut from its foundations. They are so close that they can feel the moment of battle upon them – swords and spears are raised high... And that is the second that the first volley of Roman spears is lashed forth. The javelins cut into the Teutons in their thousands, point blank, every one of them causing a grievous and paralyzing wound. It does not stop them. The men behind jump over their comrades and keep moving forward, screaming out to their gods for blood. The next volley has the same effect, and a second line of Teutons falls in multitudes. The centurions bawl for the men to draw their swords, and the third Teuton line, exhausted and slow after clambering over the heaps of dead and dying, rush up as fast as they can to the Roman front. There, their spears and swords clang off the reinforced canvas and calfskin wrapped shields, and the legionaries strike out with the deadly gladius thrusts. Some of the Teutons have success and make contact with the men behind the shield, but as each legionary falls, another takes his place. Within seconds, the Teuton line is being pushed back – Marius’s statement on the disadvantage of the slope proving unerringly accurate. Before a few minutes are out, the Romans are in control and the Teutons are struggling to stay in place and avoid being pinned against the now approaching river. Teutobad will not let his people be defeated so easily, however, and he harries more and more men forward, adding weight to the press and attempting to push through. The Roman line halts for a moment, and for that one second, the result seems to hang in the balance. Will the tribesmen’s valor and fortitude overcome the Roman superiority of terrain and tactics? The question is answered all too quickly. From the distance, at the rear of the Teuton line, the sound of cavalry trumpets blare. It is Claudius Marcellus and his 3,000 cavalrymen, who have concealed themselves in the woods at the rear of the enemy line and are now obeying Marius’s order to attack once battle has been properly joined. They rush down from the treeline, causing pandemonium in the Teuton army. Attacked from two sides, a ripple of panic trembles over the Teuton line, and still the Romans press them – the cavalry acting like the hammer and the legions like the anvil. It is too much. All too quickly, the Teuton resistance crumples, and the fighting men sprint to retreat and get to safety. The river acts like a trawl line – blocking and swirling with the press of men. The Romans press directly into it, cutting and hacking through, leaving casualties by the thousands. Like a remorseless pack of prey beasts, they move en masse, killing and eviscerating. The legions move over the river without trouble, and soon it is the turn of the Teuton’s camp to feel the wrath of fire and gladius. The screams of the dead and injured

rise up to the air along with the black smoke, the only color that the doomed see before they leave this earth being the reflection of fire in their killer’s eyes... Plutarch records that the deaths among the Ambrones and Teutons numbered in the hundreds of thousands, while those of the legions were negligible. Whatever the truth of these figures, it is clear that the Romans have inflicted a toll on their enemies far heavier than even than they themselves suffered at Arausio. The greater part of the tribal invasion forces are obliterated, and Marius is confirmed in yet another consulship. Now, with his six legions plus an equivalent number of auxiliaries, he strikes out to join Catalus’s holding force and confront the Cimbri. Marius will bring down those who were directly responsible for the devastation at Arausio, and then he will return to Rome as near to a king as any man in the history of the republic. For the moment, all of his auguries and prophecies are proving to be propitious of nothing but greatness and everlasting success... It is autumn, 102 BC, and while the army of Gaius Marius is maneuvering to its tremendous extermination of the Ambrones and Teutones in a series of battles at Aqua Sextiae, the holding legions of Quintus Lutatius Catulus are standing guard at the Alpine passes into Italy and feeling increasing apprehension and creeping dread. Although Catalus’s deputy Lucius Cornelius Sulla has continued the sterling work he undertook for Marius in bringing nearby Celtic tribes to Roman allied status, as well as securing optimum supplies and victuals for Catalus’s 20,000 strong force, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the legions are vastly outnumbered by the Cimbri and the barbarian host that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. With no word from Marius or to the fate of his force, Catalus makes the fateful decision to press forward with his six legions. He moves up the Athesis Valley to the elevated settlement of Tridentum and there attempts to engage the lethal Cimbrian horde before it reaches the peninsula of Italy. Should he fail, the road to Rome will lie open and defenseless before it. The Roman army pushes into the valley pass, searching for any sign of the oncoming hordes, but the only marker of change initially is the ever narrowing walls of the mountains either side. The wind takes on a chill and men wrap their cloaks closer around their shoulders when the first figures appear at the top of ridges, looking down with unseen faces onto the isolated and vulnerable legionary columns. The weak late year sun can make no inroads in this place, and the men now walk in constant shadow, the phantom figures overlooking them growing in number until they are a near constant presence on the horizon. Though Catalus’s attempt to make a stand in the cramped valley echoes the strategy of Leonidas and his 300 at the Battle of Thermopylae, the more pragmatic and militarily experienced officers on his staff like Sulla have no wish to become dead legends just yet. Sulla prevails on Catalus to draw back – providing the kind of sound advice from a fellow patrician that Marius hoped he would when he seconded him to the holding force – and Catalus eventually sees the sense of the argument. Ordering a withdrawal from the spooky and ever more hostile environment of the Tridentum and Athesis valley, Catalus seems to have made his decision not a moment too soon. The Cimbri surge after the Romans, using their shields to slide down snow capped slopes and ferociously attack the rear guards of the legions. The Romans use what missiles and other projectiles they can to keep the tribesmen at bay, deploying rear guards and cavalry sorties through the broken and frozen valley until they are in the open and can form the wide deployments best suited to their style of fighting. The withdrawal is a close run thing and

Catalus manages to get his still intact army to the Adige River. Orders are issued for the legionaries to begin constructing camps on both banks of the river – forging a barrier that will halt the tribes like salmon in a net. A bridge is constructed to link up with the bases across the water. Though the Cimbri are pursuing with vigor, the legionaries show their ability, and the improvised fortresses are thrown up in time. The swarming units of Cimbri run into a hail of Roman arrows, javelins, and missiles, and their advance is brought to a surly and bloodthirsty halt. Catalus and Sulla survey the milling horde with satisfaction. The retreat has been humiliating, but their orders are to hold the enemy in place, and above all they have avoided another disastrous massacre like the Arausio. They order the men to dig in further and prepare to wait out the bad months with the lethal threat of the Cimbri held in check. For their part, King Boiorix and his federation have no intention of merely sitting still until the Romans assemble the overwhelming force necessary to massacre them. The king is aware that he has inflicted the greatest defeat on the Romans since Hannibal – even exceeding the Carthaginian’s victims in number at the legendary battle of Cannae. A man who has waded up to his waist in the corpses of legionaries will not be stopped by mere wooden walls and sloppy towers. First, he orders that the tribe attempt to cross the water at a different point on the river, but this is unsuccessful, and it becomes clear that Catalus is guarding the only fordable point. To remedy this, Boiorix mobilizes and invests the vast human resources at his command and sends out massive work parties in two directions. Roman scouts observe in stupefied wonder the thousands upon thousands of Cimbri who have gone downriver. They spread out like a gargantuan pack of locusts and tear every tree from the countryside and roam the hills for rocks and timber. Catalus listens with incredulity as the scouts report to him that the Cimbri are building a dam, their obvious intention being to increase the water level at the Roman camps, flood the area, and swamp their defenses. Worse is to come. The scouts who have been spying on the work parties upriver on the Adige say that they too are stripping the countryside like whiteflies, but instead of making a dam, they are lashing timbers together into giant, irregular objects that are neither boat nor building. Catalus and his scouts cannot discern the purpose of this effort until the dam has begun to raise the water level and the Cimbri upriver launch the first of the timber boles down in their direction. The amalgamated timbers are missiles – utilizing the surging current of the river to propel the titanic weights into the Romans’ now exposed walls and the bridge. Catalus and the rest of his command stand agog at the attack. It is an ingenius tactic – the forts are now under constant bombardment - and all the while the waters rise and the log missiles thunder into the ever more exposed timbers of the walls. It is enough for the greater part of the Roman rank and file. While the more educated high command wonders how the tribesmen possess the skill to divert rivers and launch water borne missiles but cannot simply build their own bridge or boats to cross the river, enlisted legionaries begin to withdraw and disappear out into the countryside. Catalus knows that his position has now been rendered untenable and Plutarch records that he orders another general retreat and then brings his standard up to the front so that his men will not be shamed by their panicked escape. The Romans do their best to destroy the bridge over the Adige behind them, and a force of 500 men is left in one camp to act as a rear guard. Once the Cimbri make their crossing of the river, they launch an attack on this holdout, but the defense is so impressive that they allow the Roman

guards to depart as a gesture of goodwill. Catalus establishes a new defense on the Po, and the plains of northern Italy are now in the hands of tribes. Boiorix and his warriors gorge themselves on the wealth of the land, eating, drinking and lifting any valuables and people still unlucky enough to be in the area. With the campaign season coming to an end, they abandon the hard living of their recent travails and enjoy the splendor of Italy, even though the Romans still consider land north of the Po a part of Gaul. Marius in the meantime returns to Rome following the elimination of the Teutones and Ambrones at Aqua Sextiae and declines an immediate Triumph. Instead, he begins planning the next stage of the campaign in the spring. He also takes another consulship – the norms of the Roman political precedents and its mos maiorum system having now been completely abandoned. It is Marius’s fifth term – his fourth consecutively, and he stands above all other men in Roman history. For the Cimbri and their king Boiorix, the lands of the north of Italy are an ongoing wonderland in which all of their desires go fulfilled every day. By the time the spring of 101 BC has almost past, and the fruits of the previous year’s harvest have begun to run dry, they are ready to push further and gain ever greater rewards at the expense of the weakened Romans. The Cimbri begin to search for a crossing over the Po to plunge further into Italy, however, they find that Marius has now joined Catalus and that they have a strong force of more than 50,000 legionaries ready to fight. Though Boiorix does not know it yet, Marius has moved his victorious army south from Gaul, and they now form the steely core of his new force. Nevertheless, Boiorix is not intimidated by the host arrayed against him. The Roman army he liquified at Arausio was two and a half times as large as Marius’s current force, and Catalus’s repeated retreats in the previous year have done nothing to restore Roman prestige. Now, after months of good living, the Cimbri are convinced of their invincibility. But Marius too is confident, and when Boiorix seems unable to find a suitable crossing point on the Po, he moves his army north, into the open to face the enemy. The Cimbri send emissaries with their demands – land. Land enough for hundreds of thousands of their people and their allies. Marius, sitting with Sulla, Catalus, and other proud senators at his side, shakes his head. There will be land – in which to bury them. He wishes to do battle with the Cimbri. They and their kind will not further pollute the cities of Italy. The Cimbri reply that they will happily deal with the army of Marius as they did the army of Caepio, and then they will take what they please in the lands of the Romans. As soon as their allies arrive, they say, battle will joined. Marius’s eyebrows raise in surprise. What allies are these, he asks. Boiorix’s ambassadors tell him that the Teutones and Ambrones will soon join them as he has joined Catalus. Together, the peoples will have land from the Romans one way or the other. Marius chuckles. The Teutones and Ambrones have already been given land, he says cheerfully. Disconcerted for the first time at this unexpected development, the Cimbri demand Marius explain himself. Now, the Roman consul bursts into a deep and hearty belly laugh, waving a hand to his lictors. From a tent behind the conference space, a procession of chained men is led out, their faces cut and bruised, their bodies covered with filthy rags, and their eyes empty sockets without hope. The Cimbri see with alarm that they are Teuton nobles and royalty. Marius’s laughter subsides and he tells

the Cimbri that their allies have all the land they need. Those that are not in the slave markets are being spread as fertilizer by the farmers of Gaul. Their bones serve as fence posts. If that is the fate the Cimbri wish for themselves, then Marius will give it to them. The Cimbri are astounded and they rush back to inform Boiorix. His anger at Marius’s insults and threats outweigh his consternation at the fate of his allies, and he sends Marius a message that he will meet him at a time and place of his choosing. Marius cheerfully sends his reply. The armies will meet at the Raudine Plain, and there the gods will decide the faith of Rome and their greatest enemy since Hannibal. With their more compact numbers and Marius’s reformed logistical system, the Romans arrive at the plain before the Cimbri. Marius splits his veteran army of Gaul onto both flanks, with the left wing under his own direct command and the right wing under Sulla. Each flank numbers about 15,000 men, with a very strong cavalry component in each. Catalus, meanwhile, commands the center. His own army is not untested, but it lacks the edge that Marius has brought to those units that have served long years with him in southern Gaul, and this battle will require precision of a degree unknown in the great majority of fighting forces. Marius takes the auspices in the morning, and they are good – the bloody animal entrails held up for him to inspect showing that the day will bring another triumph. When the Cimbri arrive onto the plain, they are a staggering sight. It is said by the Roman scouts that their army is so large that it approaches 200,000 men and covers fully ten square miles. It is swarming in every point of the terrain visible to the Romans on the line. Many of Marius’s centurions and other officers begin to quietly question the wisdom of placing the army on so wide a vista, where the legions will indeed have room to deploy into their specialist fighting lines, but where the infinite masses of barbarians can also seemingly envelop them in a suffocating deluge. While the Cimbri form their wagon laager at the rear of their lines and continue the mammoth task of organizing their tens of thousands of fighters, more prescient Romans note that Marius has organized his own lines so that the early morning mist is partially concealing many of his units, and also that the sun and wind will be at the Roman backs once the day proceeds and the battle reaches its zenith. Marius has no intention of allowing the enemy to use the time he has snatched for his own men to form into their preferred formations. The Roman trumpets blow, and the order is given for a general advance. This has a disruptive and disquieting effect on the Cimbri. Because of the mist, they were unaware that the Romans had already deployed in full strength, but now in the full radiating gleam of the morning sunlight, they see an array of legions – both Roman and Italian - on the advance. The sun behind the Romans catches the burnished sheen on thousands of their uniform helmets and it appears to the Cimbri that the whole sky has caught fire. Boiorix is not intimidated, and he orders that the elite cavalry of the tribal army ride forward to meet the enemy. From behind their shields and underneath their visors, the legionaries watch them come on, dust flying into the air on the now scorching plain. The Cimbri horsemen wear animal shaped helmets and carry white shields, in contrast to the crimson of the Roman cloaks and guards. Their long swords glisten just as the Romans’ gear does while they swirl them back and forth, a haze of deadly movement. While the main Cimbri force still pulls itself to order, the noble riders of their clans pick up the pace and take to the gallop. The legionaries brace while the centurions scream for discipline and immovable strength in the face of the enemy. The riders are just yards out now, their appearance, war cries, and the sheer noise

of their heavy animals drumming in the already pounding ears of the legions. They emerge as though they are manifesting from a hidden realm, such are the reams of dust now filling the air behind them. Just at the moment that the Cimbri see the white of the Romans’ eyes, when they can feel such anticipation for the moment of contact that it is a taste in their mouths, the centurions bawl orders for the first volley. All along the Roman line, the pila are launched, and thousands of razor sharp javelins bury themselves into the fastest and bravest of the Cimbri’s elite warriors. The Cimbri are not to be thrown off their quarry, however, and the second and third lines of horsemen pummel forward. These are decimated in turn by the next wave of javelins – thousands of men stricken with the deadly spears. Then the centurions cry out for the legions to draw their gladii, and they begin the business of mortal hand to hand combat. The dust cloud descends over the main line, with the cavalry slashing at the Roman shields and the legionaries attempting to stab and slash at the horses’ exposed legs and flanks. The riders regroup and attempt another charge from a shorter distance, but again the shield line stands firm. The Cimbri infantry – tens of thousands strong – is now moving forward, and although the legionaries cannot see over the cavalrymen’s heads, they can sense the oncoming leviathan like a fisherman sensing a tsunami. The greater part of the Cimbri mounted attack falls on Catalus and Sulla’s lines, and in the fog of battle and the now swirling dust clouds, they cannot see Marius out on the left wing. He and his force are lost to the other Romans, who believe him to be adrift and aimlessly wandering the battlefield. In reality, Marius launches a flanking attack on the Cimbri, but Catalus and Sulla only see the Cimbri suddenly veer right on the impact of Marius’s assault. Units in both the Roman center and right flank believe that the Cimbri have broken entirely and begin to push forward, but their rush is premature and they suffer losses until the Roman commanders can restore order. The Cimbri cavalry meanwhile continues to retreat, while Marius’s forces press them hard from the flank. All it takes is a moment and the withdrawal turns to a rout. Panic spreads among the Cimbri horsemen, while the Romans keep up their steady advance, their lines overcoming the short lived flash of ill discipline. The horsemen rush backward, but they run straight into the oncoming lines of tribal infantry and the confusion claps down like a slap of thunder. As the panicked cavalry stalls in the attempt to ride through or around the massive blanket wall of warriors, the formation and line of the Cimbri is fatally undermined by the disruption. The now solid Roman line of infantry and cavalry on the flanks presses this tottering mass from the front, and the cavalry rush backward all the harder to escape. Without touching blades with the enemy, the main Cimbri army breaks under the deleterious effects of their own cavalry crashing and trampling into their line, as well as the psychological effect of the 50,000 legionaries now marching toward them. The Cimbri cease to be a fighting force and are now a frenzied rabble, flailing around for an escape route. With Marius and Sulla’s cavalry hemming them in on the flanks, and the legions pressing in front, the only way is back, but there, they run into their own wagon laager, upon which stands their women. The same scenario as Aqua Sextiae plays out, with the women of the Cimbri attacking their own men and trying to force them to go back and fight the enemy. The legions are now on the rear lines, however, and a terrible slaughter begins. Thousands upon thousands are held in place, while the legions relentlessly butcher and rend organ and limb. Seeing at last that there is no way out, the Cimbri women begin a mass suicide, both of themselves and their own children, while meanwhile, thousands are taken prisoner. Marius has triumphed once more, and in his

wake lies another charnel house field and another broken people. The battle of Vercellae is another titanic exercise in carnage – a hundred thousand Cimbri killed with yet tens of thousands more taken prisoner and lashed into slavery. The legions meanwhile lose just a few hundred men – a thousand at most according to reports. Marius returns to his city a hero on a par with Scipio or Cincinnatus – his stock high with the Italians also after conferring Roman citizenship on two of the allied legions in the wake of the fighting. His friendship with the capable and deadly Sulla remains a pact of steel, and there appears to be no prospect on the horizon for anything but a glorious and gilded future - both for the Republic and its most esteemed consul.