: Frontier wars of Rome previous to the Cimbric invasion.]
The Romans were constantly at war on the frontiers. Besides the
natural quarrels which would arise between them and lawless
barbarians, it was the interest of their generals to make small wars
in order to gain sounding names and triumphs. Such wars, however, by
no means always ended in Roman victories; and while in the last thirty
years of the second century before the Christian era there were
many wars, there were also many defeats. [Sidenote: The Iapydes.]
Sempronius Tuditanus had a triumph for victories over the Iapydes,
an Illyrian nation; but he was first beaten by them. [Sidenote: The
Salyes.] In 125 the Salyes, a Ligurian people, who stretched from
Marseilles westwards to the Rhone and northwards to the Durance,
attacked Marseilles. Flaccus went to its aid, and triumphed over the
Salyes in 123. [Sidenote: The Balearic Islands.] Quintus Caecilius
Metellus subdued the Balearic Islands in the same year, and relieved
Spain from the descents of pirates, who either lived in those islands
or used them as a rendezvous. The Salyes again gave trouble in 122,
and Calvinus took their capital, which was most probably the modern
Aix, establishing there the colony of Aquae Sextiae. This colony was
the _point d'appui_ for further conquests. The most powerful nations
of Gaul were the Aedui and Arverni, whose territory was separated by
the Elaver, the modern Allier. The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui
and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same latitude, but on
the east of the Rhone. The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and
the proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the
Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the
king of the Salyes. [Sidenote: The Allobroges.] The Allobroges were
helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near
Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men. Fabius succeeded Domitius, and
marched northwards across the Isara. [Sidenote: The Arverni.] Near its
junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous
carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges. [Sidenote:
Defeat of the Arverni, B.C. 121.] The number of the slain amounted, it
is said, to 120,000 or 150,000. The king of the Arverni was caught and
sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects. It was the
year of the death of Caius Gracchus, of the famous vintage, and of a
great eruption of