The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

[102-101 B.C.]

According to Plutarch,f over one hundred thousand men were either killed or taken prisoner. Livyh gives the numbers in the two battles as two hundred thousand dead and ninety thousand prisoners. Among the prisoners was the gigantic King Teutobodus, among the slain a number of women, some of whom met their death on the wagons in a desperate resistance, others killed themselves to avoid slavery and a life of shame. The battle-field of Aquæ Sextiæ is said to have been so fertilised by the amount of blood and corpses, that in the following summer it bore an utterly disproportionate crop of fruit; the neighbouring Massiliots fenced their vineyards with the enormous bones of the slain.

Meanwhile the Cimbrians had arrived in Noricum without hindrance and crossed into Italy through the Alpine passes. Q. Lutatius Catulus, the second consul of the year 102, had at first held the Alpine passes, but when the enemy appeared in great numbers he withdrew to the Adige and entrenched himself there on the west bank which the enemy was approaching, at the same time securing a retreat to the other side by means of a bridge. Here, too, he was not able to hold his position long. When the Roman soldiers saw these giant barbarians hurling rocks and trunks of trees into the river to make a dam, whilst others amused themselves by sliding down the glacier on their shields as if they were sleighs, when they saw some using great trees as battering-rams against the supports of the bridges whilst others threw themselves into the river and swam across, they were seized with such a panic of terror, that heedless of their general, they fled, abandoning their camp. In order to avoid what was becoming a shameful flight, Catulus raised the standard, and hurrying to the front himself led the men over the bridge. He was, however, obliged to leave a contingent behind in the camp on the left bank. The barbarians seized the camp, but with great generosity they permitted the garrison who had fought for their native country to depart unharmed.

Catulus retreated along the southern bank of the river Po, and left the Cimbrians to plunder and devastate the country north of the river. No actual battle took place; for Catulus was waiting for the approach of Marius, the Cimbrians for the approach of the Teutones.

After Marius, named consul for the fifth time in the year 101, had waited a short time in Rome, whither he had been summoned from Aquæ Sextiæ by the senate, he betook himself to Catulus in upper Italy, and left his own troops to follow him there from Gaul in the spring of 101. After their arrival, he and Catulus together led their troops over the Po and drew near to the enemy. The Cimbrians desired to postpone further fighting till the arrival of the Teutones, and sent envoys to Marius with the demand that he should grant them and their brothers the country and towns they might ask for. Marius asked who their “brothers” might be, and when they named the Teutones, all present laughed, and Marius replied with scorn: “Have no care for your brothers, we have already given them land to dwell in, and they shall keep it forever.”