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