Anticipating the march of the Teutones, he hurried over the Alps into Gaul, and falling upon them at a favorable moment (at Aquæ Sextæ, not far from Marseilles, 102 B.C.), almost annihilated the entire host. Two hundred thousand barbarians are said to have been slain. Marius now recrossed the Alps, and, after visiting Rome, hastened to meet the Cimbri, who were entering the northeastern corner of Italy. He was not a day too soon. Already the barbarians had defeated the Roman army under the nobleman Catulus, and were ravaging the rich plains of the Po. The Cimbri, unconscious of the fate of the Teutones, sent an embassy to Marius, to demand that they and their kinsmen should be given lands in Italy. Marius sent back in reply, "The Teutones have got all the land they need on the other side of the Alps." The devoted Cimbri were soon to have all they needed on this side.
A terrible battle almost immediately followed at Vercellæ (101 B.C.). The barbarians were drawn up in an enormous hollow square, the men forming the outer ranks being fastened together with chains, to prevent the lines being broken. This proved their ruin. More than 100,000 were killed and 60,000 taken prisoners to be sold as slaves in the Roman markets. Marius was hailed as the "Saviour of his Country."
"The forlorn-hope of the German migration had performed its duty; the homeless people of the Cimbri and their comrades were no more" (Mommsen). Their kinsmen yet behind the Danube and the Rhine were destined to exact a terrible revenge for their slaughter.
THE SOCIAL, OR MARSIC WAR (91-89 B.C.).--Scarcely was the danger of the barbarian invasion past, before Rome was threatened by another and greater evil arising within her own borders. At this time all the free inhabitants of Italy were embraced in three classes,--_Roman citizens_, _Latins,_ and _Italian allies_. The Roman citizens included the inhabitants of the capital and of the various Roman colonies planted in different parts of the peninsula (see p. 246, note), besides the people of a number of towns called _municipia;_ the Latins were the inhabitants of the Latin colonies (see p. 246, note); the Italian allies (_socii_) included the various subjugated races of Italy.