![]() ![]() The guests boasted of their triumph against the Roman Republic and of the treasures amassed in their epic journey. En route the Celtic Tigurini of western Switzerland gave the wanderers a warm welcome. They crossed the Alps, and skirting their northern reaches, marched into Gaul by way of the lowlands between the Jura and Vosges Mountains. In face of this disaster, Carbo took his life by poison.Īfter their victory, the Cimbri and Teutones did not press on toward Italy perhaps because remnants of Carbo’s army still guarded the passes. It would have been completely annihilated had it not been for a severe tempest that put an end to the battle. The Roman army was suddenly in very serious trouble. Carbo sprung his trap near Noreia but failed to scatter the barbarians, who rallied and viciously counterattacked. In reality, Carbo’s guides led the Cimbri and Teutones into a Roman ambush. Carbo praised the barbarian envoys, and in a gesture of goodwill, offered guides to take them back across the Noricum borders. When the Cimbri and Teutones heard that the people of Noricum were friends of the Roman Republic, they sent word that they would leave them in peace. The Teutones, Courtesy of Heritage History A Failed Roman Army Ambush It was they who boldly formed the front ranks in battle. A few of the chiefs, their retainers, and warriors of renown may have sported body armor and wielded iron long swords. Cavalry was uncommon and the bulk of the warriors fought as infantry. Having had little contact with the civilized world, the half-naked Cimbri and Teutones warrior probably had little more than a wooden shield for protection, his principal weapon a wooden, bone, or for some an iron-tipped spear. Although outnumbered, Carbo felt that his disciplined legions could deal with the crudely armed barbarian rabble. To meet this new barbarian incursion, Consul Papirus Carbo was sent to bar their way in the heights north of Aquileia, near present-day Venice. This placed them dangerously close to the borders and interests of the Roman Republic. ![]() They now threatened the Celtic kingdom of Noricum, a close trading partner of Rome, and the iron mines of Noreia. As a result of this encounter, the Scordisci were pushed south into Macedonia while the Cimbri and Teutones were deflected westward toward Italy via the valley of the Drave and the passes of the Carnic Alps. There they clashed with the Celtic Scordisci. In Bohemia they met the Celtic Boii whose resistance persuaded the two tribes to trek farther south into the Balkans. Starting from northern Denmark, the Cimbri and Teutones first wandered south along the Elbe, then east along the Danube. The Epic Journey of the Cimbri and Teutones The precise number of Cimbri and Teutones will never be known, but it is likely that together the two tribes numbered less than 150,000 men, women, and children, a figure on par with the larger German tribes of the 5th to 7th centuries AD. Plutarch claimed that there were 300,000 warriors. Classical historians hopelessly exaggerated their numbers, either to justify Roman defeats at the barbarians’ hands or to magnify the scale of the final Roman victories. A scattering of tribes were forced to seek homelands elsewhere they were led by the Teutones and Cimbri. Whether they were Germans or Celts, the incredible saga of the Cimbri and Teutones began during the late 2nd century BC when a rise in the ocean level inundated large tracts of the Danish coast. However, classical historians might have transmitted German names to us in Celtic form because they were more familiar with the Celtic language. Nevertheless, the names of their chieftains are Celtic, which leads some modern historians to maintain that the Cimbri and Teutones were Celts. This Germanic argument is based on the location of the Cimbri and Teutones’ homelands in northern Denmark, which were within the Germanic and outside of the Celtic domains. Modern scholars generally believe that the Cimbri and Teutones were Germans. Others pondered if they were Galloscythians, a mix of the Gauls and the Scythian peoples of the eastern steppes, or the Cimmerians of Greek legend who lived in eternal darkness at the world’s edge. Most claimed that they were Germans some thought they were Celts. The Cimbri and Teutones’ origin mystified the Romans who in those days knew little of the realms and peoples of northern Gaul and Germany. In lumbering wagons, literally huts on wheels, they traveled with their entire families alongside herds of livestock. Clad in primitive hides and furs and rumored to be eaters of raw flesh, the tall, blond, and blue-eyed people appeared to the Romans as a race of savage giants. In 113 BC the Cimbri and Teutones marched into Roman history when they appeared on the Balkan frontier. ![]()
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