Caius Marius   

and implacable hostility which so nearly ruined the whole Roman
empire. For many that envied Marius attributed the success wholly to
Sylla, and Sylla himself got a seal made, on which was engraved
Bocchus betraying Jugurtha to him, and constantly used it,
irritating the hot and jealous temper of Marius, who was naturally
greedy of distinction, and quick to resent any claim to share in his
glory, and whose enemies took care to promote the quarrel, ascribing
the beginning and chief business of the war to Metellus and its
conclusion to Sylla; that so the people might give over admiring and
esteeming Marius as the worthiest person.
But these envyings and calumnies were soon dispersed and cleared
away from Marius by the danger that threatened Italy from the west;
when the city, in great need of a good commander, sought about whom
she might set at the helm to meet the tempest of so great a war, no
one would have anything to say to any members of noble or potent
families who offered themselves for the consulship, and Marius, though
then absent, was elected.
Jugurtha's apprehension was only just known, when the news of the
invasion of the Teutones and Cimbri began. The accounts at first
exceeded all credit, as to the number and strength of the
approaching army, but in the end report proved much inferior to truth,
as they were three hundred thousand effective fighting men, besides
a far greater number of women and children. They professed to be
seeking new countries to sustain these great multitudes, and cities
where they might settle and inhabit, in the same way as they had heard
the Celti before them had driven out the Tyrrhenians, and possessed
themselves of the best part of Italy. Having had no commerce with
the southern nations, and travelling over a wide extent of country, no
man knew what people they were, or whence they came, that thus like
a cloud burst over Gaul and Italy; yet by their grey eyes and the
largeness of their stature they were conjectured to be some of the
German races dwelling by the northern sea; besides that, the Germans
call plunderers Cimbri.
There are some that say that the country of the Celti, in its vast
size and extent, reaches from the furthest sea and the arctic
regions to the lake Maeotis eastward, and to that part of Scythia
which is near Pontus, and that there the nations mingle together; that
they did not swarm out of their country all at once, or on a sudden,
but advancing by force of arms, in the summer season, every year, in
the course of time they crossed the whole continent. And thus,
though each party had several appellations, yet the whole army was
called by the common name of Celto-Scythians. Others say that the
Cimmerii, anciently known to the Greeks, were only a small part of the
nation, who were driven out upon some quarrel among the Scythians, and
passed all along from the lake Maeotis to Asia, under the conduct of
one Lygdamis; and that the greater and more warlike part of them still
inhabit the remotest regions lying upon the outer ocean. These, they
say, live in a dark and woody country hardly penetrable by the
sunbeams, the trees are so close and thick, extending into the
interior as far as the Hercynian forest; and their position on the
earth is under that part of heaven where the pole is so elevated that,
by the declination of the parallels, the zenith of the inhabitants
seems to be but little distant from it; and that their days and nights
being almost of an equal length, they divide their year into one of
each. This was Homer's occasion for the story of Ulysses calling up
the dead, and from this region the people, anciently called
Cimmerii, and afterwards, by an easy change, Cimbri, came into
Italy. All this, however, is rather conjecture than an authentic
history.
Their numbers, most writers agree, were not less, but rather greater
than was reported. They were of invincible strength and fierceness
in their wars, and hurried into battle with the violence of a
devouring flame; none could withstand them: all they assaulted
became their prey. Several of the greatest Roman commanders with their