ABSTRACT
Sulla’s brilliant diplomatic coup meant the end of the Jugurthine War. Bocchus was duly rewarded for his services with the title of friend and ally and, in addition, seems to have been given that part of Numidia which Jugurtha had once promised him. Marius returned to Rome to celebrate a triumph on 1 January 104, but its pomp and pageantry could not hide the fact that he came to a troubled city. Romans had a strong traditional memory of the day in 390 when the Gauls had taken and sacked their city, and now once again they faced a similar threat. Sometime around 120, in a sinister movement of peoples which fore-shadows the barbarian invasions that were to destroy the Roman Empire several centuries later, two Germanic tribes, the Teutones and the Cimbri, left their homes in Jutland and Holstein to wander through Europe. After gathering to themselves other lesser nations, they first came into contact with the Romans in 113 when they routed an army commanded by the consul Cn. Papirius Carbo. Two more Roman defeats followed in the years 109 and 107. A further disaster in 105 had even more serious consequences. The consul Mallius and the proconsul Caepio were overwhelmed at Arausio (Orange). The road to Italy and Rome seemed to lie open to the barbarians.1
