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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.
The Romans, engrossed with the war with the Cimbri and the insurrection of their Italian subjects, allowed his empire to be silently aggrandized. On his return, Mithridates continued his aggressions, and formed an alliance with his father-in-law, Tigranes, king of Armenia, but avoided a direct encounter with the great Occidental power which had conquered the world.
It was not till the latter half of 653 that he returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double honours decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the same time a novice in politics.
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
When the foe appeared his men took to flight; but the detachment on the east side stood its ground, and kept the enemy from crossing the bridge in pursuit. The Cimbri admired their bravery, and when they had forced the bridge let its defenders go. Pursuing Catulus, they cut him off from a river for which he was making, probably the Ticinus, though according to some, the Po.
But, whether from the difficulty of finding supplies on the Alpine routes or from other reasons, the mass again broke up into two hosts, one of which, composed of the Cimbri and Tigorini, was to recross the Rhine and to invade Italy through the passes of the eastern Alps already reconnoitred in 641, and the other, composed of the newly-arrived Teutones, the Tougeni, and the Ambrones the flower of the Cimbrian host already tried in the battle of Arausio was to invade Italy through Roman Gaul and the western passes.
On they swept, eating up the country, and the people flying before them. In 113 B.C. the skirts of the Cimbri had encountered a small Roman force near Trieste, and destroyed it. Four years later another attempt was made to stop them, but the Roman army was beaten and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not, however, turn at that time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France.
Upon which they requested him to name a field and a day for battle. Marius answered that Romans never consulted their foes on such points, but he would humour them, and named the Campi Raudii, near Vercellae. Such a story bears falsehood on the face of it. It is absurd to suppose that the Cimbri had not heard of the defeat of the Teutones, which had taken place more than a year before.
Because in the dozen years intervening between 80 and 68, the political situation had gradually grown calmer, and a new air of conciliation had begun to blow through the city, troubled by so much confusion, burying in oblivion the bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into fresh life admiration for Marius, that hero who had conquered the Cimbri and the Teutons.
This name is thought to be identical with those of Cimmerians and Cimbri, under which the Greek and Roman historians describe a barbarous people, who spread themselves from the north of the Euxine over the whole of Northwestern Europe. The origin of the names Wales and Welsh has been much canvassed.
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