Mount Etna. [Sidenote: The Staeni.] In 118 B.C. M.
Marcius Rex annihilated the Staeni, probably a Ligurian tribe of the
Maritime Alps, who were in the line of the Roman approach to South
Gaul, and for this success he gained a triumph. In the same year it
was resolved, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, to colonise
Narbo, which was the key to the valley of the Garonne, and was on
the route to the province of Tarraconensis. Thus was established the
province named from the time of Augustus the Narbonensis, embracing
the country between the Cevennes and the Alps, as far north-east as
Geneva; and a road, called Via Domitia, was laid down from the Rhone
to the Pyrenees. [Sidenote: The Dalmatae.] In 117 B.C. L. Caecilius
Metellus triumphed over the Illyrian Dalmatae whom he had attacked
without cause, or never attacked at all, as it was said, for which he
was surnamed Dalmaticus. [Sidenote: The Karni.] In 115 M. Aemilius
Scaurus, whose name we have met with before, triumphed over the Karni,
a tribe to the north of the Adriatic. C. Porcius Cato, consul in 114,
was not so lucky. [Sidenote: The Scordisci.] He lost his army in
defending the Macedonian frontier against a tribe of Gauls called
Scordisci, who were in their turn defeated by M. Livius Drusus in 112,
and M. Minucius Rufus in 109 B.C. The year between their first victory
and first defeat was remarkable, not, indeed, because one Metellus
triumphed for what he had done in Sardinia, and another for what he
had done in Thrace; but in that year the Cimbri came in collision with
Rome. [Sidenote: First collision with Cimbri.] Cn. Papirius Carbo, the
consul, was sent against them as they had crossed or were expected to
cross the Roman frontiers. Some were in Noricum, and to them he sent
to say that they were invading a people who were the friends of Rome.
They agreed to evacuate the country; but Carbo treacherously attacked
them, and was disgracefully beaten at a place called Noreia.
[Sidenote: Defeat of Silanus.] Four years later, in the year 109, M.
Junius Silanus, colleague of Marius, met the same barbarians, who had
now crossed the Rhine, in the new province of South Gaul, and was in
his turn defeated.

[Sidenote: The Cimbri rouse the Helvetii.] The movements of the Cimbri
made the Helvetii restless. [Sidenote: Defeat of Longinus.] One of
their clans, the Tiguroni, which dwelt between the Jura, the Rhone,
and the lake of Geneva, defeated and slew the consul Longinus