To hold the line, Catulus ordered heavily fortified camps built on both the near and far sides of the Adige, with a bridge connecting the two. But when Cimbric scouts located the Roman camp, their chiefs devised a clever strategy. A detachment of Cimbri headed downriver and began to construct a dam, “tearing away the neighboring hills, like the giants of old, carrying into the river whole trees with their roots, fragments of cliffs, and mounds of earth, and crowding the current out of its course.” Meanwhile, a second detachment went upriver and constructed floating projectiles, “heavy masses” that swept along the swift current and “whirl[ed] down the stream against the piles of the bridge… which made the bridge quiver with their blows.” With the banks of the river now flooding from the dam and the bridge being blasted with repeated projectiles, Catulus and his army began to suspect this was not going to end well.42
With the Roman camps flooded and broken, the Cimbri launched an all-out attack. By all accounts, the men holding the forward camp fought valiantly, but the legions on the far side of the river saw the situation as hopeless and ran. One cavalry detachment did not stop riding until they got all the way back to Rome—a story we know because among the riders was the son of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. When the young officer arrived in Rome, the princeps senatus refused to acknowledge him and cast him out of the family for his cowardice. After surviving the war with the Cimbri, the young man committed suicide in disgrace.43
Catulus’s own conduct during the battle became a matter of fierce debate. According to Catulus himself, when he discovered his army in flight, he sacrificed his own reputation for that of his men: “For finding that he could not persuade his soldiers to remain, and seeing that they were making off in terror, he ordered his standard to be taken up, ran to the foremost of the retiring troops, and put himself at their head, wishing that the disgrace should attach to himself and not to his country, and that his soldiers, in making their retreat, should not appear to be running away, but following their general.” But it is more likely that Catulus was trying to put a positive spin on a disorganized flight south.44
But even though the road to Rome now lay open, the Cimbri remained in the north. Apparently they fell under “the influence of a milder climate and of an abundance of drink, food, and baths.” They had always been looking for a home—perhaps this was it. But they may also have lingered because they were waiting to reunite with the Teutones and Ambrones, who should be coming through the western Alps any day now. They did not yet realize their cousins had already been wiped out.45
* No relation to the Lucius Cassius Longinus who was killed fighting the Tigurini in 107.
Freedom, democracy, laws, reputation, official position, were no longer of any use to anybody, since even the office of tribune, which had been devised for the restraint of wrong-doers… was guilty of such outrages and suffered such indignities.
APPIAN1
WITH THE CIMBRI OCCUPYING CISALPINE GAUL AND slaves still rampaging through Sicily, politics in Rome took a radical turn. The emergency atmosphere allowed Saturninus and his cronies to push the political envelope. They had already reintroduced violence when the tribune Norbanus forced the prosecution of Caepio with the help of an angry mob. Now, after helping Marius secure reelection, Saturninus had at his disposal a small army of Marius’s ex-soldiers ready to flex their electoral and physical muscle.
Joining Saturninus at the head of this new populare political army was Gaius Servilius Glaucia. Glaucia was despised by most of his fellow senators. Cicero calls him “the most abandoned wretch that ever existed.” Cicero also later said that though he does not recommend vulgar metaphors, it would have been accurate to call Glaucia “the shit of the Senate.” But even the dismissive Cicero admitted Saturninus was “keen and artful, and excessively humorous; and notwithstanding the meanness of his birth, and the depravity of his life, he would have been advanced to the dignity of a consul.” But Glaucia would not advance to the dignity of a consul—instead the depravity of his life would lead to his ruin.2
To give their coming takeover of Rome a veneer of moral authority, Saturninus and Glaucia invoked the memory of the now legendary Gracchi brothers. Saturninus displayed busts of the martyred Gracchi in his home and spoke of the martyred brothers in his speeches. So important was owning the Gracchan legacy that Saturninus appeared in the Forum one day with a young man who he claimed was the long lost son of Tiberius Gracchus. The young man was about the right age, and Saturninus demanded he be officially registered in the census and recognized as the legitimate heir of the Gracchi.3
