Rome and its new consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio, in order to decisively settle the matter of the invading Cimbri and Teutones in 105 BCE, gather the largest force the Republic has fielded since the Second Punic War, and possibly the largest force it has ever sent to battle.

The force consists of over eighty thousand men, along with tens of thousands of support personnel and camp followers in two armies, one led by each consul.

The consuls lead their armies on their own armed migration to the Rhône River near Orange, Vaucluse, where, disliking and distrusting each other, they erect separate camps on opposite sides of the river; by so doing they leave their disunited force open to separate attack.

The overconfident Caepio foolishly attacks without support from Maximus; his legions are wiped out and his undefended camp overrun.

The now isolated and demoralized troops of Maximus are then easily defeated.

Thousands more are slain trying desperately to rally and defend his poorly positioned camp.

Only Caepio, Maximus, and a few hundred Romans escape with their lives across the carnage-choked river.

The Battle of Arausio is the costliest defeat Rome has suffered since Cannae: it’s losses and long-term consequences are far greater.

For the Cimbri and Teutones, it is a great triumph.

Instead of immediately gathering their allies and marching on Rome, the Cimbri proceed to Hispania, while the Teutones remain in Gaul.

Why they again fail to invade Italy remains a mystery.

Following the devastation of the Arausio, fear shakes the Roman Republic to its foundations.

The terror cimbricus becomes a watchword, as Rome expects the Cimbri at its gates at any time.

In this atmosphere of panic and desperation, an emergency is declared.

The constitution is ignored and Gaius Marius, the victor over Jugurtha of Numidia, is elected consul for an unprecedented, and arguably illegal, five years in a row, starting in 104 BCE.

Because of the destruction of the Roman force at Arausio and the pressure of the impending crisis, Marius is now given the latitude to construct a new army on his own terms.

Marius, ready to move against the Teutones by 102 BCE, chooses his ground carefully and builds a well-fortified camp on the top of a hill near Aquae Sextiae, where he lures the Teutones and their allies the Ambrones into attacking him.

During their attack, they are ambushed from the rear by a select force of five cohorts that Marius had hidden in a nearby wood.

The Teutones are routed and massacred and their king, Teutobod, is placed in Roman chains.

The Cimbri, who remain a formidable threat, return to Gaul in 101 BCE and prepare for the final stage of their struggle with Rome.

Marius's co-consul for this year, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, had failed to fortify the Alpine passes, through which the penetrate, for the first time, into northern Italy.

Catulus withdraws behind the Po River, leaving the countryside open to the invaders, but the Cimbri take their time ravishing the fertile region.

This gives Marius time to arrive with reinforcements—his same victorious legions from Aquae Sextiae.

The superiority of the new Roman legions and their cavalry are clearly demonstrated at Vercellae, near the confluence of the Sesia River with the Po on the Raudine Plain.

The Cimbri are virtually annihilated in the devastating defeat, and both their highest leaders, Boiorix and Lugius, fall.

The women kill both themselves and their children in order to avoid slavery.

Thus the war, which had begun with a mass migration, ends in defeat and mass suicide.

Meanwhile on the island of Sicily, another unsuccessful slave uprising against the Roman Republic, the Second Servile War had begun in 104 BCE and is finally suppressed in 100 BCE.

The panicked Senate and people of Rome had given Marius the power he needed to build his army; the failure of the Cimbri and Teutons to follow up on their victory has given him the time he needs to finish it.

The invaders will soon be confronted by an army of organized, highly trained, professional soldiers under the leadership of a brilliant and ruthless commander.

Quintus Lutatius Catulus is, with Marius, consul in 102 BCE, by which time Marius is ready to move against the Teutones.

Plutarch gives the numbers advancing on Italy as three hundred thousand armed fighting men, and much larger hordes of women and children.

The barbarians divide themselves into two bands, and it falls to the Cimbri to proceed through Noricum in the interior of the country against Catulus, and of a passage there, while the Teutones and Ambrones are to march through Liguria along the seacoast against the consul Gaius Marius, who has set up camp on the Rhône.

Marius, choosing his ground carefully, builds a well-fortified camp on the top of a hill near Aquae Sextiae, where he lures the Teutons and their allies the Ambrones into attacking him.

During their attack they are ambushed from the rear by a select force of five cohorts which Marius had hidden in a nearby wood The Roman accounts claim that in the ensuing massacre ninety thousand Teutons were slain and twenty thousand, including their King Teutobod, were captured.

The only surviving reports are Roman, but certainly the complete annihilation of the Teutons and Ambrones speaks to the crushing nature of their defeat.

The captured women commit mass suicide, which passes into Roman legends of Germanic heroism (Jerome, letter cxxiii.8, CE409): By the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans.

When the Teuton matrons heard of this stipulation they first begged the consul that they might be set apart to minister in the temples of Ceres and Venus; and then when they failed to obtain their request and were removed by the lictors, they slew their little children and next morning were all found dead in each other's arms having strangled themselves in the night.

Plutarch mentions (Marius 10, 5-6) that during the battle, the Ambrones began to shout "Ambrones!"

as their battle-cry; the Ligurian troops fighting for the Romans, on hearing this cry, found that it was identical to an ancient name in their country which the Ligurians often used when speaking of their descent, so they returned the shout, "Ambrones!".

Marius takes one hundred thousand prisoners.

Plutarch tells us that Ambrones alone numbered more than 30,000 and were the most warlike division of the enemy, who had earlier defeated the Romans under Manlius and Caepio.

The Ambrones have been destroyed.

Although Caesar mentions that the remnants of the Cimbri and Teutons formed a new tribe in Belgic Gaul, the Aduatuci, he does not mention any remnants of the Ambrones.

Aquae Sextiae has only evened the score, however: while the Teutons have been eliminated, the Cimbri remain a formidable threat.

The Cimbri return to Gaul in 101 BCE and prepare for the final stage of their struggle with Rome.

For the first time they penetrate through the Alpine passes, which Catulus had failed to fortify, into northern Italy.

Catulus withdraws behind the Po River, leaving the countryside open to the invaders.

But the Cimbri take their time ravishing the fertile region, which gives Marius time to arrive with reinforcements—his same victorious legions from Aquae Sextiae.

At Vercellae, near the confluence of the Sesia River with the Po on the Raudine Plain, the superiority of the new Roman legions and their cavalry is clearly demonstrated.

In the devastating defeat, the Cimbri are virtually annihilated, and both their highest leaders, Boiorix and Lugius, fall.

The women kill both themselves and their children in order to avoid slavery.

Thus the war, which had begun with a mass migration, ends in defeat and mass suicide.

The Romans supposedly killed one hundred and forty thousand of the barbarian invaders, and took captive more than fifty thousand.

Sulla had served on Marius' staff as tribunus militum during the first half of this campaign, but by 101 had transferred to the army of Catulus to serve as his legatus, and is credited as being the prime mover in the defeat of the tribes (Catulus being a hopeless general and quite incapable of cooperating with Marius).

Contemporaries assign more credit for the victory to Marius than to Catulus.

Despite their joint success, the two commanders regard each other as bitter rivals and after the war build competing temples to demonstrate divine favor.