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Updated: May 15, 2025
VIII. This proposal appeared so humane, and was supported by so powerful a speech, that not only those who rose after Cæsar sided with, him, but many of those who had already spoken changed their opinions and went over to that of Cæsar, till it came to the turn of Cato and Catulus to speak.
Here his eye wandered around him for awhile, taking note indeed of the surrounding objects, the great temple of Jupiter Stator on the Palatine; the splendid portico of Catulus, adorned with the uncouth and grisly spoils of the Cimbric hordes slaughtered on the plains of Vercellæ; the house of Scaurus, toward which a slow wain tugged by twelve powerful oxen was even then dragging one of the pondrous columns which rendered his hall for many years the boast of Roman luxury; and on the other tall buildings that stood every where about him; although in truth he scarce observed what for the time his eye dwelt upon.
Much of our knowledge of those days is due to his pen, and the modern historian is perhaps likely to congratulate himself on the blindness of the people, which thrice refused Catulus the consulship and reserved him to be an actor and a witness in the crowning victory of the great year of deliverance. He had already been defeated by Serranus; he was now subordinated to the claims of Maximus.
Having said what was suitable to the occasion, he set out to join Catulus, whom he encouraged, and at the same time he summoned his soldiers from Gaul.
Here the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus was to guard the passes; but not fully acquainted with the country and afraid of having his flank turned, he had not ventured to advance into the Alps themselves, but had posted himself below Trent on the left bank of the Adige, and had secured in any event his retreat to the right bank by the construction of a bridge.
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.
Leaving Catulus, his colleague in the consulship, to check the Cimbri in Venetia, Marius went himself, taking Sylla with him, into the south of France. As the barbarian host came on, he occupied a fortified camp near Aix. He allowed the enormous procession to roll past him in their wagons toward the Alps. Then, following cautiously, he watched his opportunity to fall on them.
The consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, to whom fell the honour of conducting this fleet to the Sicilian seas, met there with almost no opposition: the two or three Carthaginian vessels, with which Hamilcar had made his corsair expeditions, disappeared before the superior force, and almost without resistance the Romans occupied the harbours of Lilybaeum and Drepana, the siege of which was now undertaken with energy by water and by land.
The most esteemed Roman officers, such as Gaius Marius, Quintus Catulus, and the two consulars of experience in the Spanish war, Titus Didius and Publius Crassus, placed themselves at the disposal of the consuls for these posts; and though the Italians had not names so celebrated to oppose to them, yet the result showed that their leaders were in a military point of view nowise inferior to the Romans.
Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra; Mortalis visust pulchrior esse deo-. The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the Cimbri, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric
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