enormous procession to roll past him in their wagons toward the Alps.
Then, following cautiously, he watched his opportunity to fall on them.
The Teutons were brave, but they had no longer mere legionaries to fight
with, but a powerful machine, and the entire mass of them, men, women, and
children, in numbers which however uncertain were rather those of a nation
than an army, were swept out of existence.

The Teutons were destroyed on the 20th of July, 102. In the year following
the same fate overtook their comrades. The Cimbri had forced the passes
through the mountains. They had beaten the unscientific patrician Catulus,
and had driven him back on the Po. But Marius came to his rescue. The
Cimbri were cut to pieces near Mantua, in the summer of 101, and Italy was
saved.

The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions
were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves the
State for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still. They had
votes, and they used them; but they were professional soldiers with the
modes of thought which belong to soldiers, and beside the power of the
hustings was now the power of the sword. The constitution remained to
appearance intact, and means were devised sufficient to encounter, it
might be supposed, the new danger. Standing armies were prohibited in
Italy. Victorious generals returning from campaigns abroad were required
to disband their legions on entering the sacred soil. But the materials of
these legions remained a distinct order from the rest of the population,
capable of instant combination, and in combination irresistible save by
opposing combinations of the same kind. The Senate might continue to
debate, the Comitia might elect the annual magistrates. The established
institutions preserved the form and something of the reality of power in a
people governed so much by habit as the Romans. There is a long twilight