Chapter 6
Before we turn our attention to Marius, we must first consider the events that had occurred on Rome’s northern borders during the period of 111–107 BC, to see how Rome was faring in the Northern Wars. When we last examined the situation, in the northeast the Scordisci had been driven from Greece and Roman armies were operating in Thracian territory, whereas in the northwest, Roman forces had been destroyed at the Battle of Noreia.
The Cimbric Wars II (109–108 BC)
Between the years 113 to 109 we have no trace of the Cimbri. The surviving Roman sources simply dismiss them as having continued their wanderings once more. Yet to dismiss them so easily diminishes their role as a genuine opponent for Rome, some mythical bogeymen that appear out of nowhere every few years. If anything, the Battle of Noreia merely confirmed an existing pattern for the Cimbri, of finding a hostile reception wherever they went. Even though on this occasion they were victorious, the Cimbri apparently decided that the region was unsuitable for peaceful settlement or would require too great a war to be worth their while, and continued their westward quest, which would take them into the fertile regions of Gaul. We do not know their route, or whether these years were a continued migration or whether they found somewhere to settle, even temporarily. By 109 BC, however, the Cimbri had begun to penetrate the Rhone valley and once again appeared on the fringes of Roman influence.
Again, we only have scant details for the events of 109–108 BC and even then the exact chronology is not clear. Furthermore, the details of Florus and the Periochae of Livy are at odds with each other. Of the two consuls of 109 BC, we have already discussed Q. Caecilius Metellus; the other consul was M. Iunius Silanus.
The surviving narrative histories give us two principle versions of the events of 109/108 BC. Firstly, there is the version given by Florus:
The Cimbri, Teutones and Tigurini, fugitives from the extreme parts of Gaul, since the ocean had inundated their territories, began to seek new settlements throughout the world, and excluded from Gaul and Spain, descended into Italy and sent representatives to the camp of Silanus and thence to the Senate asking that ‘the people of Mars (Rome) should give them some land by way of pay and use their hands and weapons for any purpose it wished’. But what land could the Roman people give them when they were on the eve of a struggle amongst themselves about agrarian legislation? Thus repulsed they began to seek by force of arms what they had failed to obtain by entreaties. Silanus could not withstand the first attack of the barbarians.236
Secondly we have the shorter Periochae of Livy:
consul Marcus Iunius Silanus lost a battle to the Cimbri. The Senate refused the demand of the envoy of the Cimbri for a home and land on which to settle.237
References to Silanus’ defeat can be found scattered throughout the remaining sources, including Velleius, who states that the battle took place in Gaul, and Eutropius who makes the unusual claim that Silanus defeated the Cimbri in Gaul.238Given the varying accounts, what are the main differences? In the first place, there are the key questions of where the battle took place and who the Romans were actually fighting.
Florus places the battle in Italy, whilst the others place it in Gaul. Given the Roman loss in the battle, we would expect to hear far more about it had it taken place in Italy, as such a defeat would be on a par with Hannibal and would have left Rome defenceless. Thus we can accept that the encounter took place in Gaul. The other issue we have is with the identities of the enemies facing Rome. Florus believes that Rome was faced with an alliance of the Cimbri, an existing threat, and the Teutones and Tigurini as well, whereas the Periochae of Livy has just the Cimbri returning. Throughout Florus’ account we see this grand alliance of ‘differing tribes’, whereas the other accounts only feature the Cimbri, until c.102 BC (see Chapter 9).
Although the lack of a detailed surviving narrative means we can never rule out the possibility that the other tribes were present, the balance of probability suggests that it was just the Cimbric tribes involved in these early stages.
The next issue concerns the Cimbric embassy, which asked the Senate for land to settle on (foreshadowing what eventually became Roman policy hundreds of years later in the late Imperial period). Florus would place this before the battle, with Silanus waiting for an answer from the Senate. The Periochae of Livy seems to place this after the battle. What is clear is that at some point in 109 BC, the wanderings of the Cimbri brought them back to Rome’s northern borders. Silanus, as consul, was dispatched to Gaul to intercept them. Given the fate of his predecessor Carbo, at the Battle of Noreia, it is possible that Silanus initially received the Cimbric envoys and forwarded them onto the Senate. For the Cimbri, seeking Roman permission to settle in Gaul, on Rome’s borders, would avoid further bloodshed. For Silanus, there was perhaps benefit in seeing whether the Senate would consider the request, despite the bad blood between the two sides. If nothing else it would allow him time to plan a battle were one needed.
It was almost inevitable that the Senate rejected the Cimbric demands, acceptance of which, given the earlier loss at Noreia in 113 BC, would only be taken as a sign of Roman weakness and encourage further uprisings in the region. Once again, we have no description of this crucial second battle against the Cimbri, other than that it was another Roman disaster. Silanus returned to Rome and was left alone for a while until in 104 he was prosecuted for his actions in the defeat, though he was acquitted.239 We are not even sure of the year that the battle took place, with the sources being vague and allowing it to be dated to either 109 or 108 BC. Recently, Evans has speculated that it took place to the northwest of the Alps near Lake Geneva, but there is no clear evidence for such an identification.240
If we are to follow the Periochae of Livy, after the victory the Cimbri sent the demand for land to the Senate, yet we hear no more about it; the conclusion drawn from the sources is that they continued their wanderings. Yet we have to ask ourselves whether this was the case. Twice now the Cimbri had defeated the Romans in battle and southern Gaul was a potentially excellent homeland for them. Given that they had already moved away from southern Gaul after the Battle of Noreia only to be forced back to the region, it does seem that they again left the region having once more proved their military superiority over the Romans. Frustratingly, we are left with nothing more than idle speculation centred on the Cimbri not wishing to remain in a region where there were hostile powers, even ones they could defeat.
We have no record of any activity in the north by the consuls of 108 BC, which lends weight to the theory that this unnamed battle took place in this year. The year 107 BC saw the situation become much worse for Rome. Being defeated twice in succession by the Cimbri clearly undermined Rome’s status as the hegemon of the region and it appears that the balance of power began shifting away from them. The Cimbric victory apparently stirred a number of local tribes against Rome, though whether this was through deliberate Cimbric agitation is unclear. A new threat to Rome arose in the form of the Tigurini, who came from Helvetia (Switzerland) and invaded the territory of the Nitiobroges, Roman allies in the region. As can be seen, the Tigurini travelled some distance from the Alps to the Atlantic, most probably via the Garonne River valley.241 Thus we see that the Roman control over the region was disintegrating.
Of the two consuls of 107, Marius received Numidia (as we will see in Chapter 7), whilst L. Cassius Longinus received Gaul, with orders to suppress these revolts and defeat the Tigurini. Orosius preserves the fullest report of Cassius’ campaign:
the consul L. Cassius, who was in Gaul, pursued the Tigurini as far as the Ocean (the Atlantic). When he was on his way back, he was surrounded and slain in an ambush laid by the enemy. Lucius Piso, a man of consular rank and at the time the legate of the consul Cassius, was also killed. The other legate, C. Publius, in accordance with the terms of a most disgraceful treaty, handed over to the Tigurini hostages and a half share of all the Roman baggage. This was done in order to save the surviving part of the army, which had fled for refuge to the camp. On returning to Rome, Publius was summoned to trial by the plebeian tribune Coelius on the charge that he had given hostages to the Tigurini. Consequently he had to flee into exile.242
If this was not enough, Caesar adds that the survivors were made to go under the yoke as a token of submission.243 Thus, for a second year in succession a Roman army had been slaughtered by a tribal enemy, this time the Tigurini. Again we have no other details of the battle, such as a location, or how Cassius and his army were able to be ambushed. Once again, we have a tribal army ambushing a Roman one and again we are reminded of the Teutoburg Forest massacre. Not only this, but for the second time in four years, a defeated Roman army had to submit to the yoke.
Thus the Cimbri and the Tigurini roamed free in Gaul, Rome’s military reputation was in ruins, and then we hear that the Volcae, Roman allies in southern Gaul rose up in revolt. As 107 BC ended, the war in Numidia seemed to be a growing irrelevance, with the threat from the north being the main cause of instability. Two Roman armies in two years had been defeated by two different invading barbarian enemies. As yet there was no direct threat to Italy, but given the apparent ease with which the tribes could defeat Roman armies and the collapse of the ‘Pax Romana’ in southern Gaul, it is clear where the real danger to Rome lay.
The Military Reforms of 109 BC
There is a further brief but highly interesting note on the domestic activities of the consuls of 109 BC. Asconius, in his commentary on one of Cicero’s speeches (the pro Cornelio), reports the following Cicero quote:
Gentleman of the jury, there are generally four ways in which a decision about a law can be traditionally taken by the Senate; one of these is a proposal to repeal a law, enacted during the consulship of Q. Caecilius and M. Iunius, in the case of laws which obstructed the military effort.
To which Asconius adds his own note:
He is referring to Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus and M. Iunius Silanus, who were consuls at the time of the war against the Cimbri, a war being conducted inefficiently and unproductively; indeed Iunius himself had little success against the enemy. So he repealed a number of laws passed during this time by the people, which had reduced the length of military service.244
This brief statement is of enormous interest as it appears that the consuls, faced with the renewal of the Cimbric threat in the north and the continuation of the war in Numidia, attempted to increase the pool of available manpower by overturning tribunician laws that restricted military service.
We have no further details as to which laws were repealed, or any resistance to these proposals from the serving tribunes. These issues will be explored in greater depth in Appendix III. What is clear is that the military strain Rome was under, fighting in Gaul, Thrace and Numidia, was forcing the ruling elites to look at ways to increase the available military manpower. Given what occurred under Marius in 107 BC, it is interesting to see an earlier attempt being made in 109 BC.
The Scordiscian Wars II (110–107 BC)
Although the war in the northwest saw a lull between 113 and 109, in the northeast, in Macedon and Thrace it was another matter. Rome’s victories against the Scordisci in 112–111 BC (see Chapter 1) again proved only to be a temporary lull in the fighting. The other consul of 110 BC, M. Minucius Rufus, was sent to Macedon and remained there until 106 and fighting the Scordisci once more, again earning himself a triumph (in 106 BC). Thus, even with war raging in Numidia, Rome was still engaged in wars with the Scordisci in Macedon and Thrace throughout this period.
We have three different types of evidence for Minucius’ activities: from the narrative sources, inscriptions in Greece and from the Fasti triumphales. The surviving narrative histories inform us of the following:
Minucius laid waste all the country [Thrace] along the Hebrus [the modern river Maritsa/Evros245], losing, however, many of his men as they rode across a river covered with treacherous ice.246
Minucius utterly defeated them in a battle near the River Hebrus, which flows from the high mountains of the Odrysae, and after these the survivors were completely annihilated by the proconsul Appius Claudius in a hot fight.247
Minucius crushed them on the frozen Hebrus.248
The general Minucius Rufus, hard pressed by the Scordiscans and Dacians, for whom he was no match in numbers, sent his brother and a small squadron of cavalry on ahead, along with a detachment of trumpeters, directing him, as soon as he should see the battle begin, to show himself suddenly from the opposite quarter and to order the trumpeters to blow their horns. Then, when the hill-tops re-echoed with the sound, the impression of a huge multitude was borne in upon the enemy, who fled in terror.249
About the same time [c.108 BC] took place the famous triumph over the Scordisci of Minucius,250
Proconsul M. Minucius fought successfully against the Thracians.251
[Who were defeated], as were the Scordisci and Triballi in Macedonia by Minucius Rufus.252
Archaeology has revealed that Minucius was awarded an equestrian statue by the people of Delphi, the base of which, and its inscription, still survives:
Marcus Minucius, son of Quintus Rufus, imperator after the Gauls, Scordisci, and Bessi, Thracians were defeated, because of his merits, was dedicated by the people of Delphi.253
Furthermore, the triumphal inscription for Minucius reveals that he triumphed over both the Scordisci and the Thracians.
Thus it is clear that Minucius fought and won a battle against the Scordisci and their allies on the River Hebrus, though at what point we do not know. It appears that this battle was a decisive one and a great Roman victory. Certainly, we hear no more of the Scordisci until the 80s BC, which given their persistence throughout the previous decade must show the size of the defeat. Once again we have the problem that we know almost nothing about the great battles the Romans fought in this region, though the Frontinus extract does give us some details. The Romans were heavily outnumbered by the Scordisci and their allies, but Minucius was able to fool them with a bluff into thinking that they were trapped between two Roman armies and they broke. Furthermore, we know that the battle took place in winter, due to the ice, an unusual occurrence for the Roman military. We do not know when the battle was fought but given that Minucius returned to Rome in 106 for his triumph, it should be placed either in the winter of 108/107 or 107/106. Given that he would need to rest and ensure order back in Macedon before his return to Rome, a longer timescale is the more likely, making 108/107 the most probable date. Thus the wars in the northeast, which had been continuing for over a decade, were brought to an end at the Battle of the Hebrus. This brought to a close one of the three major battle fronts that Rome was fighting on during this period.