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.

The Victory and the Parties

The political parties of Rome continued their pitiful quarrels over the carcase, without troubling themselves about the great chapter in the world’s history the first page of which was thus opened, without even giving way to the pure feeling that on this day Rome’s aristocrats as well as Rome’s democrats had done their duty.  The rivalry of the two generals—­who were not only political antagonists, but were also set at variance in a military point of view by the so different results of the two campaigns of the previous year—­broke out immediately after the battle in the most offensive form.  Catulus might with justice assert that the centre division which he commanded had decided the victory, and that his troops had captured thirty-one standards, while those of Marius had brought in only two, his soldiers led even the deputies of the town of Parma through the heaps of the dead to show to them that Marius had slain his thousand, but Catulus his ten thousand.  Nevertheless Marius was regarded as the real conqueror of the Cimbri, and justly; not merely because by virtue of his higher rank he had held the chief command on the decisive