t 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 which the treaty with the latter by no means bound
him to make--they complied and followed the guides whom Carbo had
assigned to them to escort them over the frontier. But these guides
were in fact instructed to lure the Cimbri into an ambush, where the
consul awaited them. Accordingly an engagement took place not far
from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained
the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss;
a storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete
annihilation of the Roman army. The Cimbri might have immediately
directed their attack towards Italy; they preferred to turn to the
westward. By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than by
force of arms they made their way to the left bank of the Rhine and
over the Jura, and there some years after the defeat of Carbo once
more threatened the Roman territory by their immediate vicinity.

Defeat of Silanus

With a view to cover the frontier of the Rhine and the immediately
threatened territory of the Allobroges, a Roman army under Marcus
Junius Silanus appeared in 645 in Southern Gaul. The Cimbri
requested that land might be assigned to them where they might
peacefully settle--a request which certainly could not be granted.
The consul instead of replying attacked them; he was utterly defeated
and the Roman camp was taken. The new levies which were occasioned
by this misfortune were already attended with so much difficulty, that
the senate procured the abolition of the laws--presumably proceeding
from Gaius Gracchus--which limited the obligation to military service
in point of time.(19) But the Cimbri, instead of following up their
victory over the Romans, sent to the senate at Rome to repeat their
request for the assignment of land, and meanwhile employed themselves,
apparently, in the subjugation of the surrounding Celtic cantons.

Inroad of the Helvetii into Southern Gaul
Defeat of Longinus

Thus the Roman province