encountered with more material weapons. Marius had formed an army barely
in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory
wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine and the Danube.
The German forests were uncultivated. The hunting and pasture grounds were
too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were
rolling westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. The
Teutons came from the Baltic down across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The
Cimbri crossed the Danube near its sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and
Cimbri were Germans, and both were making for Gaul by different routes.
The Celts of Gaul had had their day. In past generations they had held the
German invaders at bay, and had even followed them into their own
territories. But they had split among themselves. They no longer offered a
common front to the enemy. They were ceasing to be able to maintain their
own independence, and the question of the future was whether Gaul was to
be the prey of Germany or to be a province of Rome.

Events appeared already to have decided. The invasion of the Teutons and
the Cimbri was like the pouring in of two great rivers. Each division
consisted of hundreds of thousands. They travelled with their wives and
children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and with the modern
South African Dutch, being at once their conveyance and their home. Gray-
haired priestesses tramped along among them, barefooted, in white linen
dresses, the knife at their girdle; northern Iphigenias, sacrificing
prisoners as they were taken to the gods of Valhalla. On they swept,
eating up the country, and the people flying before them. In 113 B.C. the
skirts of the Cimbri had encountered a small Roman force near Trieste, and
destroyed it. Four years later another attempt was made to stop them, but
the Roman army was beaten and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not,
however, turn at that time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France.
They made their way through the Alps into Switzerland, where the Helvetii