The
Cimbrian War (113-101 BC) was fought between the
Roman Republic and the Proto-Germanic tribes of the
Cimbri and the Teutons (Teutones), who migrated from
northern Europe into Roman controlled territory, and
clashed with Rome and her allies. The Cimbrian War
was the first time since the Second Punic War that
Italia and Rome itself had been seriously
threatened. The timing
of the war had a great effect on the internal
politics of Rome, and the organization of its
military. The war contributed greatly to the
political career of Gaius Marius whose consulships
and political conflicts challenged many of the Roman
republic's political institutions and customs of the
time. The Cimbrian threat, along with the Jugurthine
War, inspired the Marian reforms of the Roman
legions, which would have a significant effect on
the history of the later Republic.
Rome eventually won the protracted and bloody war —
which inflicted heavier losses on the Roman armies
than they had suffered since the Second Punic War —
with the victories at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae
resulting in the almost complete annihilation of the
two Proto-Germanic tribes.
Migrations and conflicts
For unknown reasons (possibly due to climate change,
see Pre-Roman Iron Age) sometime around 120-115 BC,
the Cimbri left their original lands around the
Baltic sea in the Jutland peninsula and Southern
Scandinavia. They journeyed to the southeast, and
were soon joined by their neighbors and possible
relatives the Teutones. Together they defeated the
Scordisci tribe, along with the Boii, many of whom
apparently joined them. In 113 BC they arrived on
the Danube, in Noricum, home to the Roman allied
Taurisci. Unable to hold back these new, powerful
invaders on their own, the Taurisci called to Rome
for aid.
Initial Roman defeats
The following year Roman Consul Gnaeus Papirius
Carbo, led the legions into Noricum, and after
making an impressive show of force, took up a strong
defensive position and demanded the Cimbri and their
allies leave the province immediately. The Cimbri
set about to peacefully comply with Rome's demands,
when they discovered Carbo had laid an ambush
against them. Infuriated by this treachery, they
attacked and at the Battle of Noreia nearly caught
and slayed Carbo and annihilated his army.
Italy was now open to invasion, yet for some reason,
the Cimbri and their allies headed west over the
Alps and into Gaul. In 109 BC, they invaded the
Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis and defeated
the Roman army there under Marcus Junius Silanus.
That same year, they defeated another Roman army at
Burdigala (modern day Bordeaux) and killed its
commander the Consul Gaius Cassius Longinus Ravalla.
In 107 BC, the Romans lost again, this time to the
Tigurines, who were allies of the Cimbri they had
met on their way through the Alps.
Disaster at Arausio
In 105 BC, Rome and its new consuls Quintus
Servilius Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus decided
they had had enough of these invaders. So to settle
the matter once and for all, the Republic gathered
the largest force it had fielded since the Second
Punic War, possibly the largest force it had ever
sent to battle, with over 80,000 troops along with
tens of thousands of support personnel and camp
followers in two armies, one led by Caepio and one
led by Maximus. The
consuls led their armies on their own armed
migration to the Rhône River near Orange, Vaucluse
where they made separate camps on opposite sides of
the river. The two Roman commanders disliked and
distrusted one another, consequently their armies,
instead of acting as a single, overwhelming force,
would be separate entities for the Cimbri, Teutones
and their allies to destroy in detail. The
overconfident Caepio foolishly attacked without
support from Mallius Maximus, and his legions were
wiped out and his undefended camp overrun. The now
isolated and demoralized troops of Maximus were then
easily defeated. Thousands more were slain,
including Maximus himself trying desperately to
rally and defend his poorly positioned camp. Only
Caepio and a few hundred escaped over the
carnage-choked river with their lives. The Battle of
Arausio was the costliest defeat Rome had suffered
since Cannae. In fact the losses were far greater
and so were the long term consequences. For the
Cimbri and Teutones it was a great triumph, yet in
it and in their failure to follow up on it were to
be sown the seeds of their destruction. Instead of
immediately gathering their allies and marching on
Rome, the Cimbri went on to Hispania, while the
Teutones remained in Gaul. Why they did not, for a
second and fatal time, invade Italy remains a
mystery. Perhaps they thought easier plunder could
be found in Gaul and Spain. Possibly too, they might
have suffered heavy casualties in their triumphs
over the Romans and felt they were not yet strong
enough to take them on their home grounds. With
their reckless battle tactics, even their victories
could have been rendered costly. Theodor Mommsen
describes their methods of war thusly:
"Their system of warfare was substantially that of
the Celts of this period, who no longer fought, as
the Italian Celts had formerly done, bareheaded and
with merely sword and dagger, but with copper
helmets often richly adorned and with a peculiar
missile weapon, the -materis-; the large sword was
retained and the long narrow shield, along with
which they probably wore also a coat of mail. They
were not destitute of cavalry; but the Romans were
superior to them in that arm. Their order of battle
was as formerly a rude phalanx professedly drawn up
with just as many ranks in depth as in breadth, the
first rank of which in dangerous combats not
unfrequently tied together their metallic girdles
with cords." 1
So with all these tactical disadvantages, they had
to rely on superior numbers, their own fearsome
courage and mistakes by Roman commanders to bring
them victories. Yet they would soon be faced with a
Roman General who seldom made mistakes at the head
of a new Roman army which would prove a much
deadlier foe.
Marius takes command
Following the devastation of the Arausio, fear shook
the Roman Republic to its foundations. The terror
cimbricus became a watchword, as Rome expected the
Cimbri at its gates at any time. In this atmosphere
of panic and desperation, an emergency was declared.
The constitution was ignored and Gaius Marius, the
victor over Jugurtha of Numidia was elected consul
for an unprecedented, and technically illegal, five
years in a row, starting in 104 BC, and appointed
Imperator, supreme commander of the army, with
unprecedented powers which he would use to transform
the Roman army. Up until
this time the army had been a well trained, well
regulated Militia of all able-bodied, land-owning
male citizens. Marius replaced this with a standing,
professional force made up mostly of able bodied but
landless volunteers. He would improve and
standardize training, weapons, armor and equipment.
He would improve the command structure and make the
Cohorts the main tactical and administrative units
of the legions. Along with these new arrangements
would come new standards and symbols- the Aquila
which he taught his troops to revere and never allow
to fall into enemy hands.
While the panicked Senate and people of Rome gave
Marius the power he needed to undertake his military
reforms, the failure of the Cimbri and Teutones to
follow up on their victory would give him the time
he needed to finish them. They would soon be
confronted by an army of organized, highly trained,
professional soldiers under the leadership of a
brilliant and ruthless commander.
The Roman Republic strikes back
By 102 BC, Marius was ready to move against the
Teutones. He chose his ground carefully and built a
well fortified camp on the top of a hill near Aquae
Sextiae, where he enticed the Teutones and their
Ambrones allies to attack him. Once they did, they
were attacked in the rear by a select force of five
cohorts Marius had hidden in a nearby wood. The
Teutones were routed and massacred and their king,
Teutobod, placed in Roman chains. But Aquae Sextiae
had only evened the score: while the Teutones had
been eliminated, the Cimbri remained a formidable
threat.
In 101 BC, the Cimbri returned to Gaul and prepared
for the final act of their drama with Rome. For the
first time they penetrated through the Alpine
passes, which Marius' co-consul for that year,
Quintus Lutatius Catulus, had failed to fortify,
into northern Italy. Catulus withdrew behind the Po
River, leaving the countryside open to the invaders.
But the Cimbri took their time ravishing this
fertile region, which gave Marius time to arrive
with reinforcements — his victorious legions from
Aquae Sextiae. It would be at Vercellae near the
confluence of the Sesia River with the Po on the
Raudine Plain, where the superiority of the new
Roman legions and their cavalry would be clearly
demonstrated. In the devastating defeat the Cimbri
were virtually annihilated, and both their main
leaders, Boiorix and Lugius, fell. The women killed
both themselves and their children in order to avoid
slavery. Thus the war which began with migration,
ended in genocide and mass suicide.
Aftermath
The Cimbri were not completely wiped off the face of
the map or from the pages of history. A small
remnant population of Cimbri and Teutones remained
in northern Jutland, southern Scandinavia and the
Baltic coast at least until the 1st century. Their
allies, the Boii, with whom they intermixed, settled
in southern Gaul and Germania and would be there to
welcome and confront Julius Caesar, Marius' nephew,
in his campaigns of conquest.
It would be over century later before Rome would
suffer another great defeat at the hands of Germanic
tribes, at the Teutoburg Forest. And it would be
several centuries more before Germanic migrations
would again seriously breach the Roman frontiers and
threaten the Eternal City itself.
The political consequences resulting from the war,
however, would have a much more immediate and
lasting impact on Rome. The end of the Cimbrian war
would mark the beginning of the rivalry between
Marius and Sulla, which would eventually lead to the
first of Rome's great civil wars. Moreover,
following the final victory at Vercellae, and
without first asking permission from the Senate,
Marius granted Roman citizenship to his Italian
allied soldiers, claiming that in the din of battle
he could not distinguish the voice of Roman from
ally from the voice of the law. Henceforth all
Italian legions would be Roman legions and
henceforth the allied cities of the Italian
peninsula would seek a greater say in the external
policy of the Republic, leading eventually to the
Social War. Marius may
have saved Rome from the Proto-Germanic people, but
he had also initiated the beginning of the end of
its Republican form of government. The new soldier
class he created of landless, often impoverished
legionaries, though they swore an oath to the SPQR,
really owed their loyalty to the generals who
raised, led and, most importantly, paid them.
Generals such as Marius himself, Sulla, Crassus,
Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and of course Octavian,
would lead the way from Republic to Autocracy.
References
- Mommsen, Theodor, History of Rome, Book IV
"The Revolution", pp 66-72.
- Dupuy, R. Ernest, and Trevor N. Dupuy, The
Encyclopedia Of Military History: From 3500 B.C.
To The Present. (2nd Revised Edition 1986) pp
90-91.
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