In early October 105, a forward patrol from Mallius’s legions scouting the approach of the Cimbri unexpectedly ran right into the main body. The patrol was surrounded and destroyed. Realizing the Cimbri would be arriving any minute, Mallius begged Caepio to cross the Rhône and join their armies together. Caepio mocked Mallius, saying that he would be happy to cross the river and help the frightened novus homo consul, who was obviously quaking in his boots over nothing. The two Roman armies converged near Arausio on the east bank of the Rhône, but out of a mixture of hubris and spite, Caepio still refused to join his army to Mallius’s. Caepio even blew off envoys from the Senate who begged him to submit. Caepio not only refused, he camped with his army situated between his colleague Mallius and the Cimbri. The long-held suspicion is that Caepio’s grand plan was to bring the Cimbri to battle first and force Mallius to play a supporting role, embarrassing the new man and capturing all the glory for himself. When ambassadors from the Cimbri came to make their request for land, Caepio roundly abused them and sent them packing.34
We do not know whether Caepio then marched out to instigate battle or whether he waited for the Cimbri to come to him, but it’s clear he provoked the disaster to come. He never once seemed to realize that the Romans were about to face hundreds of thousands of Cimbric warriors and that even combined, the Romans would be outnumbered. When the battle began, it is likely that Caepio’s forward army was overwhelmed by the first wave. Pushed backward, Caepio’s forces would have run into Mallius’s army and created a confused tangle without form, direction, or unity of purpose. This frustrated mob of confused legionaries was then surrounded by the Cimbri and pinned against the Rhône. With nowhere to go and all order lost, the Cimbri consumed the trapped legions like acid eating through flesh.35
By nightfall, the Romans were not just defeated, they were annihilated. The sources place the total dead at somewhere between 60,000 to 80,000 legionaries plus another 40,000 camp followers. Everyone agrees that almost no one made it out alive. There were some survivors who got away—both Caepio and Mallius made it back to Rome, as did a young officer named Quintus Sertorius, who was able to swim across the river to safety (he would go on to become one of the greatest generals in Roman history). Many more Romans were presumably taken as slaves. But, taken together, it is clear that the Battle of Arausio was one of the single greatest disasters in the history of Rome from its founding in 753 BC to the fall of the west in AD 476. All now seemed lost in Gaul.36
But a funny thing happened on the way to Armageddon—the Cimbri again withdrew. The ancient historians never spend much time trying to explain the motives and actions of the Cimbri, so it’s left to modern historians to speculate that in all likelihood the Cimbri were never interested in invading Italy, but instead simply wanted to keep the violent and aggressive Romans bottled up on the Italian peninsula. So after demonstrating to the Romans three times in a row that they best not mess with the Cimbri, the tribe withdrew again and migrated west toward Spain.37
The panic in Rome must have been severe. With the elections for next year’s consulship approaching, there was no question who the people thought could stave off the end of Roman civilization, which appeared to be the stakes. The Assembly did not want another incompetent Carbo, or overmatched Silanus, or fatally arrogant Caepio. The people wanted Gaius Marius. The Assembly tossed aside two more pieces of mos maiorum to get their wish. Roman law still forbade a man from serving a second consulship within ten years of his first election, and a candidate had to be physically present in Rome to stand for election. The Assembly ignored both rules and elected Marius in absentia to his second consulship in three years. Marius settled loose ends in Numidia and prepared to return to Rome.38
ON JANUARY 1, 104, Gaius Marius celebrated the beginning of his second consulship with a triumph. Not since the glory days of the conquest of Carthage and Greece had a triumph been this spectacular. Aemilianus’s parade after Numantia (a parade Marius himself would have marched in) was a famous disappointment. Since then it had been a string of victories against various Gallic and Thracian tribes whose spoils paled in comparison to the treasures Roman consuls had once returned from campaign with. But Marius’s triumph was of “great magnificence.” Treasure, slaves, and wondrous ornaments of the exotic African kingdom paraded to wild cheering from a population still reeling from the disaster at Arausio just three months earlier.39
