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Updated: May 8, 2025
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.
Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army privileges which could not be conferred by a consul, but only by a king.
Marius answered, that the Romans never consulted their enemies when to fight; however, he would gratify the Cimbri so far; and so they fixed upon the third day after, and for the place, the plain near Vercellae, which was convenient enough for the Roman horse, and afforded room for the enemy to display their numbers. They observed the time appointed, and drew out their forces against each other.
The two armies met below Vercellae not far from the confluence of the Sesia with the Po, just at the spot where Hannibal had fought his first battle on Italian soil.
The two armies met below Vercellae not far from the confluence of the Sesia with the Po, just at the spot where Hannibal had fought his first battle on Italian soil.
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.
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.
The result of the decisive battles of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae was to roll back the tide of northern immigration for three hundred years, and to prepare the way for the conquests of Caesar in Gaul.
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