A gripping illustrated narrative of the Cimbrian (or Cimbric) War, in which the armies of the Roman Republic finally defeated the Germanic tribes of the Cimbri, Teutons, Ambrons and Tigurini.
Rome's victory in the Cimbrian War was born of several huge and devastating defeats at the hands of the Germanic tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutones, who had left their home territory on the Jutland Peninsula and migrated en masse southwards in the late 2nd century BC. In 113 BC, the consul Cnaeus Papirius Carbo was the first to be sent to deal with this potent threat, at the head of some 30,000 troops, but the Germans soundly defeated his forces at Noreia. Joined now by the Tigurini, the Cimbri-Teutones ventured westward into Gaul and in 109 BC the three tribes smashed a consular army under Marcus Iunius Silanus. In 107 BC the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus advanced to recover the situation, but again was humiliatingly defeated near Burdigala (Bordeaux). A further, much larger humiliation lay in store for Republican Rome in 105 BC, when a Cimbrian host, moving down the Rhône, wiped out two consular armies totaling 80,00 men at Arausio (Orange): the defeat that day was one of the worst in Roman history, and the Italic peninsula was now open to invasion. This work explores how, in the autumn of 105 BC, Caius Marius managed to contain the Germanic threat in the north, before crushing the Germanic threat to Rome in two successful battles, at Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) in Gallia Transalpina in 102 BC and at Vercellae (Vercelli) in Gallia Cisalpina in 101 BC. Packed with stunning illustrations covering all the major clashes of this epic and drawn-out war of the late Republic, this work brings to life for the first time Rome's vital quashing of the Germanic threat to her very existence, and documents the rise of one of the most important martial figures in her history, Caius Marius, who was also highly significant in Rome's transformation from Republic to Empire.