d plundering
ground for these savages, and Marius established himself in a camp on
the banks of the Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring his
provisions from the sea, which still remains. While he was thus engaged,
he was a fourth time elected consul.

[Illustration: MARIUS.]

The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant to march eastward round the
Alps, and pour through the Tyrol into Italy; the Teutones to go by the
West, fighting Marius on the way. But he would not come out of his camp
on the Rhone, though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to ask the
Roman soldiers what messages they had to send to their wives in Italy.

When they had all passed, he came out of his camp and followed them as
far as Aquae Sextiae, now called Aix, where one of the most terrible
battles the world ever saw was fought. These people were a whole
tribe--wives, children, and everything they had with them--and to be
defeated was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure was made with
their carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to help
the men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over,
they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves.
The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was left
to bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and is
still known as Les Pourrieres.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AT THE CAPITOL AT
ROME.]

While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings came that he was a fifth
time chosen consul; but he had to hasten into Italy, for the other
consul, Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and Marius met him
on the Po retreating from them. The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy for
themselves and their allies the Teutones. "The Teutones have all the
ground they will ever want, on the other side the Alps," said Marius;
and a terrible battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as entirely cut
off as their allies had been.

Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a reward to the brave soldiers
who had fought under him, he made one thousand of them, who came from
the city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and this the patricians disliked
greatly. His excuse was, "The din of arms drowned the voice of the law;"
but the new citizens were provided for by lands in the Province, which
the Romans said the Gauls had lost to the Teutones and they had
reconquered. It was very hard on the Gauls, but tha