ept, eating up the country, and the people
flying before them. In 113 B.C. the skirts of the Cimbri had
encountered a small Roman force near Trieste, and destroyed it. Four
years later another attempt was made to stop them, but the Roman army
was beaten and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not, however,
turn at that time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France. They
made their way through the Alps into Switzerland, where the Helvetii
joined them and the united mass rolled over the Jura and down the bank
of the Rhone. Roused at last into the exertion, the Senate sent into
Gaul the largest force which the Romans had ever brought into the
field. They met the Cimbri at Orange, and were simply annihilated.
Eighty thousand Romans and forty thousand camp-followers were said to
have fallen. The numbers in such cases are generally exaggerated, but
the extravagance of the report is a witness to the greatness of the
overthrow. The Romans had received a worse blow than at Cannae. They
were brave enough, but they were commanded by persons whose
recommendations for command were birth or fortune; "preposterous men,"
as Marius termed them, who had waited for their appointment to open
the military manuals.

Had the Cimbri chosen at this moment to recross the Alps into Italy,
they had only to go and take possession, and Alaric would have been
antedated by five centuries. In great danger it was the Senate's
business to suspend the constitution. The constitution was set aside
now, but it was set aside by the people themselves, not by the Senate.
One man only could save the country, and that man was Marius. His
consulship was over, and custom forbade his re-election. The Senate
might have appointed him Dictator, but would not. The people, custom
or no custom, chose him consul a second time--a significant
acknowledgment that the Empire, which had been won by the sword, must
be held by the sword, and that the sword itself must be held by the
hand that was best fitted to use it. Marius first triumphed for his
African victory, and, as an intimation to the Senate that the power
for the moment was his and not theirs, he entered the Curia in his
triumphal dress. He then prepared for the barbarians who, to the
alarmed imagination of the city, were already knocking at its gates.
Time was the important element in the matter. Had the Cimbri come at
once after their victory at Orange, Italy had been theirs. But they
did not come. With the u