Boiorix
Boiorix led the Cimbri to the worst Roman defeat since Cannae and was killed six years later in the summer heat. The Cimbri came south from Jutland with the Teutones in the last decades of the second century BC - a migration of whole peoples with wagons, women and children rather than an invading army, driven by something the sources do not agree on and archaeology has not settled. He is named as their king in the later stages, and the picture the Roman writers give is consistent: a young leader, hot-tempered, who rode up to a Roman camp and challenged the consul to name a day and a place. At Arausio in 105 BC the Romans obliged him. Two Roman armies camped separately because a consul of noble family would not take orders from a commander of common birth, and were destroyed one after the other against the Rhone with something like eighty thousand dead. Rome elected Marius consul repeatedly in the panic that followed and let him rebuild the army from the propertyless. The Cimbri then separated from the Teutones, which lost them the war. The Teutones were destroyed at Aquae Sextiae in 102, and the Cimbri came through the Alps into Italy alone. At Vercellae in 101 BC Marius chose the ground, the time of day and the direction of the sun and dust, and the Cimbri fought in armour in high summer facing both. He was killed in the line. The women killed their children and themselves rather than be taken.
- Nationality: Cimbri
- Roles: head_of_state, military
