[Sidenote:  Nationality of the Cimbri.] Who these invaders were has been a matter of hot dispute.  Were they Celts?  Were they Teutons?  Did they come from the Baltic shores, or the shores of the Sea of Azof; or were they the Homeric Cimmerii who dwelt between the Dnieper and the Don?  Or did their name indicate their personal qualities, and not their previous habitation?  The following seems the most probable conjecture.  In the great plain which runs along the Atlantic and the southern shore of the Baltic, from the Pyrenees to the Volga, there had been in pre-historic times a movement constantly going on among the barbarous inhabitants like the ebb and flow of a great sea.  The Celts had reached Spain and Italy on the south, and Germany and the Danube on the east.  Then, making the Rhine their frontier, they had settled down into semi-civilised life.  Now the Teutonic tribes were in their turn going through the same process of flux and reflux; and impelled probably at this time by some invasion of other tribes, or possibly, as Strabo says, by some great inundation of the sea, these invading nations, for they were not armies but whole nations, came roaming southwards in search of a new home.  Celts there were among them, for the Helvetii had joined them, and therefore Helvetic chiefs.  But the names still exist in modern Denmark and near the Baltic.  Caesar did not think they were Celts.  The light hair and blue eyes of the warriors, and the hair of old age on the heads of children, which excited the astonishment of the Romans, are not Celtic characteristics.  We may therefore set them down as Teutonic by race.  The name Cimbri is probably derived from some word of their own, Kaemper, meaning champions or spoilers, and their last emigration was from the country between the Rhine, the Danube, and the Baltic.  They were a tall, fierce race, who fought with great swords and narrow shields, and wore copper helmets and mail. [Sidenote:  Their mode of fighting, etc.] The men in their front ranks were often linked together so as to make retreat impossible.  Their priestesses cheered them on in battle, and, when prisoners were taken, cut their throats over a great bowl, and then, ripping them up, drew auguries from their entrails.

[Sidenote:  Plan of the invaders.] The plan of the invaders was that one body, consisting of the Teutones, Ambrones, and Tugeni, should descend into Italy on the west, the Cimbri on the east.  Whence the Teutones had come to join the Cimbri we do not know.  They joined them in South Gaul. [Sidenote:  The Ambrones.] The Ambrones may have been a clan of the Helvetii, as the Tugeni were. [Sidenote:  Plan of Marius.] Marius waited for the western division at the confluence of the Isara and the Rhone, near the spot where Fabius had defeated the Arverni, his object being to command the two main roads into Italy, over the Little St. Bernard and along the coast.  He did not follow the example of his old commander