Battle of Arausio: Rome's Worst Defeat
Two Roman armies were destroyed on the same day at Arausio on 6 October 105 BC, in the worst defeat Rome suffered between Cannae and Adrianople. The Cimbri and Teutones had been moving through Gaul for over a decade, and had already beaten three Roman forces sent against them. The disaster at Arausio was caused by Roman politics rather than by the enemy. The consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was a new man, the first of his family to hold office; the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio was a patrician of enormous pride who had been in Gaul the previous year and had probably stolen the treasure of Toulouse. Caepio refused to serve under Mallius, refused to camp with him, and moved his army to the opposite bank of the Rhône so as not to share a position with him. When Mallius opened negotiations, Caepio attacked separately to prevent him getting the credit. The Cimbri destroyed his army first, then crossed and destroyed the other, with the river at the Romans' backs. The ancient figure of 80,000 soldiers and 40,000 servants killed is inflated and the scale was comparable to Cannae. The Cimbri then went to Spain rather than to Italy, which is the only reason Rome survived it. Caepio was stripped of citizenship and died in exile. Marius was elected consul five years running, abolished the property qualification for service, and rebuilt the army into the professional force that destroyed both peoples in 102 and 101 BC. Those reforms tied soldiers to their commanders rather than to the state, which is the mechanism every later civil war ran on.
- Year: 105 BCE
- Category: Military
