The Cimbri initially set about complying peacefully with Rome's demands, but soon discovered that Carbo had laid an ambush against them. The following year the Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo led the legions into Noricum, and after making an impressive show of force, took up a strong defensive position and demanded that the Cimbri and their allies should leave the province immediately. Unable to hold back these new, powerful invaders on their own, the Taurisci called on Rome for aid. In 113 BC they arrived on the Danube, in Noricum, home to the Roman-allied Taurisci. Together they defeated the Scordisci, along with the Boii, many of whom apparently joined them. They journeyed to the southeast and were soon joined by their neighbors and possible relatives the Teutones. Migrations and conflictsįor reasons unknown, sometime around 120–115 BC, the Cimbri left their original lands around the Baltic sea in the Jutland peninsula and Southern Scandinavia. Some of the surviving captives are reported to have been among the rebelling Gladiators in the Third Servile War.
Rome was finally victorious, and its Germanic adversaries - who had inflicted on the Roman armies the heaviest losses that they had suffered since the Second Punic War with victories at the battles of Arausio and Noreia - were left almost completely annihilated after Roman victories at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae. The Cimbrian threat, along with the Jugurthine War, inspired the landmark Marian reforms of the Roman legions. The war contributed greatly to the political career of Gaius Marius, whose consulships and political conflicts challenged many of the Roman republic's political institutions and customs of the time.
The timing of the war had a great effect on the internal politics of Rome, and the organization of its military. The Cimbrian War was the first time since the Second Punic War that Italia and Rome itself had been seriously threatened.
While Arausio was a massive defeat and did result in some political upheval, it resulted in few notable long term events and the tribes we're never able or willing to exploit the victory.The Cimbrian or Cimbric War (113–101 BC) was fought between the Roman Republic and the Germanic tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutones, who migrated from the Jutland peninsula into Roman controlled territory, and clashed with Rome and her allies. It also became a story of legend among Germanic tribes and later German nationalism until post ww2. Teutoburg Forest was the most devastating event during Augustus's reign and ended Roman attempts to take over Germany. The fact that Rome recovered from that and prior similarly devastating defeats to win the war showed how even the perfect doesn't equal winning the war and it defined the Roman mindset for years to come.Ĭarrhae resulted in the death of one of the Roman heads of state, fueled the rivalry between Ceasar and Pompey, and began the Roman-Persian rivalry that lasted until the Muslim conquests. This caused Rome to mobilize their entire country to aid the war effort against Carthage.
Even some of the later defeats like the capture of Valerian at Edessa or the disaster at Adrianople in 378 have left a bit of a mark.īut the Battle of Arausio seems like it should be a huge fucking deal, apparently it was the single largest defeat in all of Roman history, almost 100,000 casualties at this one battle! The Cimbrian war was the last time Italy itself would be threatened by an existential threat for centuries, the war was instrumental for Marius and his reforms, and it probably marked the entrance of Germanic tribes as major players in Roman history, why doesn't this get a bunch of documentaries, movies and videogames?!Ĭannae was not only a rare example of a battle plan working exactly as intended but killed off much of the male adult population of Rome and forced the Romans to conduct guerrilla war against Hannibal. People know about things like the catastrophe at Cannae and Hannibal's genius, Crassus meeting a miserable end against the horse archers at Carrhae, or the treachery and cunning of Arminius in the Teutoburg Forest. I was just doing a little reading on Rome and I couldn't help but think that it's really weird the way that the Cimbrian war seems like a bit of a footnote in Roman history when their other major enemies and defeats are so notorious and still have a certain pop history notoriety.
0 kommentar(er)
