ascertained; but the practice of having the army accompanied
and directed not by priests, but by priestesses, may be pronounced
an undoubtedly Germanic custom. Thus marched the Cimbri into
the unknown land--an immense multitude of various origin which had
congregated round a nucleus of Germanic emigrants from the Baltic--
not without resemblance to the great bodies of emigrants, that in our
own times cross the ocean similarly burdened and similarly mingled, and
with aims not much less vague; carrying their lumbering waggon-castle,
with the dexterity which a long migratory life imparts, over streams
and mountains; dangerous to more civilized nations like the sea-wave
and the hurricane, and like these capricious and unaccountable, now
rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding.
They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished;
and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was
no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the
marvellous meteor. When men afterwards began to trace the chain,
of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched
the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living
knowledge of it had long passed away.

Cimbrian Movements and Conflicts
Defeat of Carbo

This homeless people of the Cimbri, which hitherto had been
prevented from advancing to the south by the Celts on the Danube,
more especially by the Boii, broke through that barrier in consequence
of the attacks directed by the Romans against the Danubian Celts;
either because the latter invoked the aid of their Cimbrian
antagonists against the advancing legions, or because the Roman attack
prevented them from protecting as hitherto their northern frontiers.
Advancing through the territory of the Scordisci into the Tauriscan
country, they approached in 641 the passes of the Carnian Alps, to
protect which the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo took up a position
on the heights not far from Aquileia. Here, seventy years before,
Celtic tribes had attempted to settle on the south of the Alps, but
at the bidding of the Romans had evacuated without resistance the
ground which they had already occupied;(18) even now the dread of
the Transalpine peoples at the Roman name showed itself strongly.
The Cimbri did not attack; indeed, when Carbo ordered them to evacuate
the territory of the Taurisci who were in relations of hospitality
with Rome--an order whi