Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/43

Rh nation to the South. Under the influence of such a necessity we may almost say of despair, they had defeated four consular armies and driven a fifth panic-struck before them when they were eventually met and destroyed by the skilful tactics of C. Marius. Notwithstanding however the usual vaingloriousness attending the Roman announcements of their victories, it seems clear that Marius owed his success more to his policy than his prowess. He entrenched himself in a position where the Cimbri could not attack him, and it must have been only when they had consumed all their provisions, and had become disorganized and were wandering about destitute seeking forage that he attacked them at a disadvantage and destroyed them in detail. In no other way can we conceive how the Romans with only the loss of 300 men as they pretend could have massacred 100,000 or more of those who had so often and so signally defeated other Roman armies.

Previously to this fatal reverse the Cimbri had wasted their strength in several fruitless encounters both in Gaul and Spain where they also seem to have planted various colonies, or where scattered bands perhaps afterwards settled. Those who escaped the Romans may thus have led a wandering and precarious life, seeking to return to their own homes, where at length by the favor of the Emperor Augustus the remnants of their nation were at length permitted to return. Strabo informs us specifically of this fact and says that in his time they possessed their former country lib. 7. p. 293 adding they held Augustus in the highest honor for the favor thus shown them. Cæsar says that the Aduatuci in Belgic Gaul were descended from the Cimbri and Teutones who in their way to Italy had left their heavy bagage there behind with 6000 men to guard it lib. 2. § 29. Every other ancient authority coincides in declaring that great peninsula extending from the Elbe to the North Sea as the original seat of the Cimbri from whom it obtained the name of the Chersonesus Cimbrica. Pliny calls it Promontorium Cimbrorum excurrens in maria longe peninsulam efficit. H. N. iv. 27. Ptolemy 1. 2. c. 11 and P. Mela lib. iii. c. 3 speak of it in similar terms and Claudian iv. 335 calls the North Sea the Cimbric Sea. Finally, Tacitus says in his time the Cimbri held the shore of Germany nearest the Ocean, — now a small state but of exceeding glory. Eundem Germaniæ sinum proxime Oceano Cimbri tenent, parva nunc civitas sed gloria ingens. Tac. De Mor. Ger. c. 37.

All history therefore proves that the renowned Cimbri