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A more pitiful position can hardly be conceived than that occupied by the hero of Aquae and Vercellae after such a disaster all the more pitiful, because people could not but compare it with the lustre which only a few months before surrounded the same man.
On the battle- fields of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus, were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo- Grecian world, and the last dull rolling of which has reached almost to our own times. But in internal development also this epoch bears the same character.
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 day, and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae Sextiae.
At Turin, as well as I could gather from my chats with this or that centurion or soldier or liberated slave, they had set free the inmates of the ergastulum by the Segusio Gate and had then turned aside to that by the Vercellae Gate, but had ignored the larger ergastulum by the Milan Gate; though they had marched out of Turin, necessarily, by that gate.
These nations of northern warriors slaughter several Roman armies in Gaul, and in 102 attempt to penetrate into Italy, The military genius of Marius here saves his country; he defeats the Teutones near Aix, in Provence; and in the following year he destroys the army of the Cimbri, who had passed the Alps, near Vercellae. The war of the Italian allies against Rome.
The story how Marius, having destroyed the hordes of Ambrons and Teutons, and secured Italy on the west, returned to the Peninsula, and finding that the Cimbri were streaming down from the north-east, met them near Vercellae, and there defeated and slaughtered them also, I leave for other pens to describe. That battle took place on July 30th.
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 day, and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae Sextiae.
On the battle- fields of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus, were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo- Grecian world, and the last dull rolling of which has reached almost to our own times. But in internal development also this epoch bears the same character.
Vercelli Campi, the Plains of Vercellae, famous for a victory the Romans obtained there over the Cimbri. The city of that name is in Piedmont on the river Sesia, on the borders of the duchy of Milan
Although the general might have clouded the memory of his glorious days by a succession of pitiful proceedings, now that the deliverer of his country was running for his life, he was once more the victor of Vercellae, and with breathless suspense all Italy listened to the incidents of his marvellous flight.
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