Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 226 - The Cimbrian War

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Rome kills 80,000 of their own soldiers because of a personal beef. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Theodor Mommsen. The History of Rome IV "The Revolution" Plutarch. Life of Marius. Richard Evans. Rome's Cimbric Wars Peter Tsouras. The Cimbrian War, 113-101 BC Mike Duncan. The Storm before the Storm

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad free and is totally supporter driven we use that money to pay our bills buy research materials that make this show possible and support charities like the curtis red crescent the flint water fund and the halo trust consider joining the legion of the old

crow today and now back to the show hello and welcome to another lovely episode of the DonkCast. The name that I have given this show, everybody hates to include myself. I'm Joe, and with me is Liam. Hi, Joe. How are you doing today, buddy? I'm all right, man. I'm a little tired, but yeah, I'm good. You know, life's not that bad, I guess. That's all you can aim for sometimes.

I'm quite tired myself um i'm like i yeah i'm one of those people that early too yeah normally i wake up pretty fast like if i stand up and get out of bed um i'm good to go um unfortunately i did not do that this morning my alarm went off and then i laid there for 15 minutes oh you lazy turd who would do that certainly not me not liam are you a sneeze guy yeah i'm a piece of shit about it yeah oh like when they're like oh five more minutes but you know you're not actually falling asleep i'm lying i'm lying to myself and everybody else baby nice i can never do that um i always because i i swear i think it's because uh like because i grew up in the army where i always had a roommate and if you had a if you had a snoozing roommate you were going to murder them

yeah although corinne's also a snoozer she just lies about it she's like no i'm not yes she is yes she fucking is um now liam uh a while back for a bonus episode actually wasn't that much of a while i believe it was like two months ago we talked about uh the battle of cry uh where the romans got absolutely massacred to the point that uh they had they had like a crisis of faith and began sacrificing humans again well fine which we We've all done it. And then you have to cut someone's throat at the Temple of Artemis. You do what you gotta do.

It was weird when I went to rehab. Like, okay, the first step is sacrifice this baby. Go on. It's been a while. We talk about Rome occasionally. Of course, we have. In case you're not a supporter of the show, we have an entire bonus series.

We watch HBO's room. Uh, there's the plug. Uh, I did not intend to do that with, uh, with this episode. You can also buy something for our tea spring store by our works.

And we donate to the Flint water trust and the halo, but a halo. Oh, you, you almost had it. It's backwards. Um, I really do need to update that at some point.

You're old. Leave me alone. I'm not old. I'm young at heart. That's not true. My heart is also old. He said his bones disintegrating into crab meat. My heart looks like pulled pork at the moment.

I feel it. We enjoy talking about Rome on this show because it's funny uh there is as a long storied history of mythical level fuck-ups and this is one of those now this actually started off i wanted to write only about the battle of arusio uh and then i realized the entire kimbrian war is dumber than hell and we'd have to talk about the hell yeah i mean it's piles of dead romans dirt slick with the spilled olive oil of a discarded generation uh you gotta love it you gotta cook it you gotta you gotta slice it thin though you gotta slice that murder lost generation thin yeah so you can pan fry it.

We've talked about some pretty interesting ways to lose a battle here on the show. I mean, not an exhaustive list, but not supplying your soldiers with clothes, having a really dire disease, or, of course, the time with the Paraguayan military once lost a battle to a field of cacti. It's hard out here it's tough it's tough and i don't think we've ever had i mean of course we've talked about commanders and subordinates just absolutely hating one another probably every series we talk about that soldiers don't change no they do not um but i think this is the first time where we've had literally tens of thousands of people die because of just spite uh between commanders and uh yeah yeah it they died over a personal beef and this is the first time i actually heard this battle was because i didn't

major in like classics or anything um it was uh Duncan's book, The Storm Before the Storm, which is one of the sources I use. It's really fucking good. Good book. Good book. The whole Cimbrian War is a catalog of Roman fuck-ups to the point it eventually birthed what we know today as the Roman military.

Because when you think of the Roman military, you think of the legions formed of largely poor landless men. They serve for a very long time. And if they survive, they have a pretty sick benefits package at the end. It's like the foundation of what most people in the West see as a professional military. This is what started it. And that was because they ran out of guys that owned land because they killed too many of them. And not to mention the man who spearheaded those reforms, Gaius Marius, despite being considered one of the saviors of Rome at the time, he also took a nice pickaxe to the foundation of the Roman Republic, which would lead to one of many Roman civil wars, and eventually, of course, the empire. Now, the Roman Republic at the time was at what I think is fair to consider the height

of Republican power before it all impl of imploded and got taped together. Yeah. Like, cause like the empire was pretty unstable for a very long time. Um, and, uh, kind of got cobbled back together.

Uh, this is the Republican era before Caesar, uh, you know, got stabbed a whole bunch of times and change things. Um, it had been nearly a third of a century since the last time we talked about Rome and the war against Carthage. I believe it's the $5 level.

You can go listen to how we talk about that. I think it's like two hours long because I'm bad at editing. But they had annihilated Carthage. On top of carrying out one of history's first well-recorded genocides, they also destroyed their only peer foe. So there's no one to really stand up to them anymore. They controlled most of the Mediterranean either directly or indirectly through a system of tribute city-states, which were a little more than puppets. They had also subdued the Greek League and established a province by stomping a hand by stomping through a handful of uh gaelic

tribes so they're definitely already um expanding into western europe as well so in essence rome was allowed to do pretty much whatever it wanted with only a loose collection of germanic tribes to oppose them uh and this would be like oh boy howdy where they go yeah i mean you don't want a whole bunch of italians showing up and kicking around your stuff. Biting and scratching. And this is like an era of continuous expansion. So, yeah,

you're not going to... The relationship, too, is quite complicated. We're going to have to talk about this as well. One of the ways they did this is people knew who Rome was, right right when the Romans and their big fancy shields or whatever show up on your front lawn they kind of run a protection racket like it'd be a real shame if everybody burned your shit to the ground

how would you like to be a vassal state exactly and a lot of people would you know like you know that sounds fine because the other option is like you murdering my family and enslaving my wife. So, you know, I guess I'll pay you taxes. I guess I'll take it. Yeah. And I mean, it also did come with a guarantee because a lot of these tribes were quite unstable where they lived. They were migratory.

So, you know, it kind of sucks when another tribe shows up and starts burning your shit down. And if you sign up with Romans, people generally didn't do that anymore because they knew a whole bunch of like guys named Giuseppe were going to show up and start stabbing you. Giuseppe. And that's saying that's a good arrangement, but I know what arrangement I would take. The other options end with my horrible death. So, you know, the other option ends with my horrible death from like i don't know exploding butthole syndrome you will get dysentery and it will suck i think dysentery was just like a normal state of being back then like every nobody had nobody took a solid shit until like 1956 what a way to go man. No other group of people fought the Romans so long and so

consistently as the Germanic tribes. Though, of course, as always, these people are not monoliths, and this is not an exhaustive history of Germanic tribes, so bear with me here. Someone's going to get mad at me. They always do. I'm going to get mad for not centering Gaelic voices or something. How could you do this,

Joe? We see you, we're not not listening so it probably shouldn't come as much a surprise when i say that uh it's this kind of constant fucking around in western europe that would eventually lead to thousands of romans eventually finding out and this leads us to our main characters of the day the kimbry Originally, probably maybe from the Jutland area of what would today be Denmark. Their history is one of those situations where it's full of a lot of people shrugging and trying to piece together things. In all likelihood, we'll probably never know. A lot of people

did not leave written histories behind. You end up getting secondhand histories written by Romans who thought they were barbarians. So we're not entirely sure. What we do know is that they're Germanic people. They took part in a seasonal migration south. They would pick up and move south mostly to Iberia or Spain

during the colder winter months. So they'd freeze their tits off up in their house in Denmark. I didn't know it got that cold in Denmark, but sure. It does. It seems like it would. It was also during this time that they normally came in contact with other tribes. And this is mostly a good thing. They would trade and intermarry.

This wasn't like a war situation. It was kind of like a seasonal hangout in in warm spain you know they all went on a holiday or something like the english just you know and it's uh it's kind of interesting because this is kind of how all of their diplomacy was also done it's like oh we'll wait until winter and we'll talk to everybody. However, this normal cycle was thrown off in around 120 BC, and nobody's entirely sure why. It's written that some kind of environmental disaster happened in the northern end of Jutland, which forced the Kimbre, the Teutones, and the Imbrones to all pick up their shit and yeah get the fuck out of jutland once and for all

um now roman historians thrabo said this wasn't the case and instead they were you know warlike barbarian conquering people on the march which i seriously doubt nobody's entirely sure but we do know that these tribes throwing it throwing it all together and randomly invading their neighbors was a bit of out of character to just chalk them up to being bloodthirsty barbarians. Most people think it was kind of like an unseasonable, catastrophic flood, and they had to leave. Together, numbering around two. Yeah, they got that primordial Nazi meth chocolate. They just went to town really you know if there's one thing if you go back in history and just sprinkle and every conflict that couldn't be like guns or

tanks or jets or nukes i would 100 just give everybody nazi meth chocolate and see what happens oh yeah was there a the didn't the mre guy eat nazi meth chocolate i don't know i don't i want to find out now i think he did i don't know i mean can you just make a youtube video of you doing meth like is it allowed i mean i there's a reddit for meth i don't know yeah probably i mean we're not monetized on youtube let me see if i can do that how you guys don't monetize on youtube don't worry about it i mean i know there's really easy ways to be demonetized mostly it's like posting violent content and you have a slideshow speaking of like the drug subreddit it's like one of the weirdest i fell into this pit that i couldn't sleep um and every drug reddit

is subreddit is like oh you think you're thinking about quitting you fucking pussy like i know whatever i want except the heroin subreddit or like yeah bro this sucks don't do heroin yeah i can confirm actually it's like the one subreddit where everybody's fully aware of how they ended up there you know um or the the weed subreddit where everybody uh posts like i don't know it's like the mid 2000s and they think that weed will cure you of being deaf or something it will it will yeah we know this to be true actually yeah science idiots yeah now together these three uh these three tribes i'm generally just going to call them the kimberi i'll make different i'll make uh i'll point them out when they're different because generally when you read about this war, everybody's just called the Kimberi. They were the most numerous of the three tribes, but bear with me.

They also brought their entire life with them as well. But generally, their military is numbered at around 200,000, which probably means it was actually less than that. Whenever you're reading Roman sources about the so-called barbarian invasions, they put their numbers at exceedingly high, especially when it comes to conflicts that they lost. So it looks like, yeah, we were simply outnumbered 16 to 1. Like that doesn't seem- Can you believe this? And they smashed into a few Celtic tribes, which ended with them actually losing. The Kimberi got driven back. And it's not like they could just go home.

Remember, it's like an ecological nightmare, apparently. But what did happen was drive them in a different direction away from the celtic tribes and towards a tribe that they believed to be weaker and after recovering and doing whatever it is that danish people do they cross the danube and they launched them they launched another attack in noricum against a tribe called the turiski uh i assume that is the world's first indigenous Polish people. Congratulations, boys. These are actually a federation of Celtic tribes,

but they were, more importantly than that, close allies with the Roman Republic. Now, there's no evidence that the Cimbri actually knew that they were allies with the Republic. It's not like they're playing... You guys did? Guys? It's not like they're playing... Guys? It's not like they could play Rome Total War and open the

allies tab. They just stormed in there and started stabbing a whole lot. They did kind of nail the fact that they were weaker, and the Tauruski got scattered and were unable to repel the Cimbri from their lands. This forced them to ask Rome for help. Now, as you can imagine,

Rome was not a huge fan of the situation. Not only... So it's not like they gave a shit about the safety of the Celts. If it was up to them, they would probably just have empty land. They would prefer not to have Celts there, but if they allowed their tributes to get

their teeth kicked in by someone, I don't know, named Oliver Olsenson dressed in the most boring. It was less likely that other tribes would see working with the Romans is worth it because if you don't guarantee their safety, then what's the point, right? You can't have a bunch of dudes bumping Barbie girl, just rock it and fuck up your protection racket like that.

If you can't tell, I tried really hard to make fun of Danish people for this episode and I came up with nothing. Every time I thought of something... I got this. I know you got it. Hing-a-ding-a-derg-it. What I'm going to do is go to Copenhagen and I'm going

to cycle through 40% cycling usage and then what I'm going to do is try to drown a migrant in the'm gonna cycle through 40 cycling usage and then what i'm gonna do is try to drown a migrant in the sea full a whole boat full of migrants and i'm gonna drown them and i'm gonna rip the babies out from their mother's arms hinga digga durgan isn't my country so perfect shut the fuck up that that's swedish yeah whatever dude it's scandinavian it's all the same and i say that as a person person of Swedish descent, so shut up. See, every time we try to make fun of the Danish, we end up thinking there's somebody else.

Because who gives a shit about the Danish, dude? Our American is showing. Sorry, are you a nuclear power? No, then I don't want to talk to you. Oh, so suddenly you're pro-Israel. Hmm, interesting. They maintain a state. What is it that they do they're just like no we don't know if we have nuke shut up yeah please ignore that please ignore whatever

we did with apartheid south africa that's not important to this discussion at all it's the same relationship that my dad had with me which is i you acknowledge they exist you simply don't talk about them oh well he's dead and you're not so who won that one yeah scoreboard motherfucker uh now when uh when the request for help came to rome it came just as the republic was starting to show some pretty serious cracks in its foundation and was in the beginnings of its own very long transition into empire we've talked a bit before about this on occasion but i don't expect to just reference you back to other episodes this was the transfer of pretty much the entire economy and republic's wealth into a very small number of hands

while the poor and landless had no opportunities whatsoever good thing that's never gonna happen again yeah thank god we figured that one out boys do you want to give a shout out to the Danish resistance who fought heroically and evacuated many Jews to safety in Sweden that said your country can still burn to the ground once again

welcome to Liam's I hate Europe corner really do, man. The only reason that my current country gets away with it is nobody's entirely sure if we're Europe or not. So, ha! Aren't you Asia? You're Asia, right? You're Asia, yeah. What side of the Urals are you on?

I guess the Urals don't go that far, do they? No, I'm in the Caucasus. Oh, that's right. Alright, well, time to grow a beard and become an MMA fighter, Joe. I'm not in the North Caucasus. I am in in the Caucasus. Oh, that's right. All right. Well, time to grow a beard and become an MMA fighter, Joe. I'm not in the North Caucasus. I am in the South Caucasus. Oh, God. Did you say you're joining the Chechen Army?

Oh, no. Yeah, I read this book by a really interesting guy named Kadyrov. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go back, go back, go back. Let me check my itinerary. I have a one-way trip to Grozny coming up. He wants to talk to me about a podcast I made. I'm sure I'm never going to talk to you again.

Goodbye, Joe. More specifically for the Latifundia, which is these massive Roman plantations. I think we talked about this way back in the Spartacus series. There was so much Roman expansion. That's where Rome's slaves came from. It was like storming through Europe, snatching up all these slaves. They completely displaced working people that worked the lands before then. So those people are now largely unemployable. They can't even join the army for what I assume is a garlic and oil-based GI bill. They can't... Because you have to be a landowner

to join the military. So through this transfer of wealth and the massive discarding of an actual employed population on the fields, they actually ran out of people who could enlist. Because they centralized all of these lands and only a out of people who could enlist uh because when you you they centralized all these lands and only a handful of people and those people were were maybe nobles willing to like try to become consul like they're not going to i don't know join the fucking military right

this is a on top of their you know war with carthage which caused them over like hundreds of thousands of people, and the land that was snatched up by the rich, fewer and fewer landowners existed, which meant that there was a much smaller pool for people to draw officers and men from the Roman military because of the landowning requirement. And it wasn't even a little bit of land. It was a pretty decent amount of land that you had to own. It's called the property law

and not necessarily just land. You had to be decently upper middle class. The American equivalent of this is owning a house in a suburb. Welcome to Joesville. Yeah, I pay you in script.

Oh no, don't do that like you would own like a decent uh i don't know like starter home which like now in the u.s probably costs like a half million dollars i mean it's not that much different here now do the influx of like a hundred thousand russians since they invaded ukraine all of the rents are like times 10 um yeah because it's not like it was the poor and downtrodden russians trying to escape the draft it was people who happen to have tens of thousands of euros in liquid cash that flood across the border yeah now like this uh so this brings some pretty serious problems um and you know a lot of people are dead a lot of people are disenfranchised.

Now, the smaller pool means the quality gets worse and worse because maybe you are a landowner, but you're not super healthy, so you didn't quite qualify for military service. Now Rome's like, fine. So it's all bad. And not to mention, a lot of people didn't lose their land because they died.

I mean, a lot of generations of men were hemorrhaged fighting Hannibal, but then their surviving families generally would sell their land to these large landowners, probably for, I don't know, a slightly used toga or whatever. But military campaigns took fucking decades back then. Right. Because what else is... Yeah.

Yeah. If you're gonna pack it up and like i don't know go stab germanic people you're gonna be gone from your land for possibly a decade yeah that's yeah and then the the checks stop coming and then uh your wife is uh your daughter's pregnant things are going poorly for you check out romecast yeah yeah it's the yeah the the historically accurate HBO one of the things is like when these guys were also like effectively the managers of this land some of them had slaves

some of them didn't but when they're gone for so long their fields kind of fall into disarray so they end up cranking up debts to try to take care of their land whatever and now they can't repay those debts so eventually they end of their land, whatever. And now they can't repay those debts. So eventually they end up, their land falls into disrepair.

It's going to cost too much or too long to fix, and they need to feed their family. So they sell it, again, to the same people who are stockpiling these parcels of land into these latifundias. So by the very act of Rome expanding, you've effectively nuked your economy. Almost like war is bad. Except for a few people. Who's Alan Hamilton

sends its regards? It was really good for the people who ended up building the Latifundia. All of those people ended up being senators and councils and shit later on. Sure, sure. Now, enter Roman consul Gnaeus Paprius

Carbo, who was co-consul with Gaius Copernicus. And as consul, Carbo was ordered by the Senate to take the legions and guard the Alpine passes that led into Italy from the advancing Cimbri since they already stomped through some tribes and got there.

This is where the Cimbri see Romans show up. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We had no idea these guys were Roman allies. Now, look, we know now. We're fine with packing up and going back home, if you let us. Our bad. Honest mistake. And honestly, that does seem to be true,

because picking a fight, if you're fleeing from home and you have no place to turn back to fighting the largest power across the mountains seems like a good idea right Carbo agreed to this because you know why not and he sent some guides lead the Kimberley away from Italy and back up into West and Northwestern

Western Europe however Carbo is kind of a dick the guides he was he gave them were actually leading them directly towards a prepared ambush spot where Roman soldiers were waiting for them where they would be slaughtered. Now, this didn't happen, but there's two theories as to why that didn't happen.

The tribes simply didn't trust the Romans, and they set their own scouts ahead and found the ambush. Or, one of the guides is like, hey, Carbo's about to fuck you. His boys are hiding up there. We don't know which. People tend to think it's the second one because the guides were generally members of Germanic or Gaelic tribes, and they weren't the biggest fans of the Romans either.

So either way, the Cimbri were onto them, leading to the Battle of Norea. As the Romans were laying an ambush, they were not exactly ready for a toe-to-toe fight because we've talked a bit before how the Romans need to stay in formation in order to for their war doctrine to work correctly. We don't have a ton of information on this battle, but at least

20,000 Romans were killed and Carbo barely made it out alive. It's thought of maybe only about 5,000 of were killed and Carbo barely made it out alive. It's thought of maybe only about 5,000 of the original Roman force of 25 to 30 managed to survive the surprise German butcher shop.

Now, according to Appian, the only reason that Carbo and those 5,000 or so men escaped was because the slaughter went on for so long, the sun eventually went down, um, and it was kind of like a starless night. So it was very,

very dark. And they were around trying to try to bounce. And they kind of like slipped out the back. Um, and then when the Kimberians realized like, Hey, there's these guys running away, like a driving thunderstorm hit the area.

And it was so it was such a bad storm that like they couldn't be located to it anything yeah now as if this wasn't bad enough for old carbo he was brought up on charges by marcus antonius for you know hemorrhaging an entire military uh and rather than face the music and probably be exiled as like we'll talk about it again later but one one of the things that Rome would tend to do to people at their councils who, you know, threw 30,000 dudes into a buzzsaw is that they would exile them with like no,

you can have no hearth or home within like 800 miles of Rome. Like nobody can give you food or water or anything. Yeah. That's probably what he was going to get. And instead he killed himself. Fair enough. Probably would too. He embodied the tried and true samurai ethic of, at first you don't succeed,

kill yourself so it doesn't happen again. I think my guidance counselor gave me the same advice. Jesus! Remember how I was telling you about the manpower crunch that Rome was having? Well, that's about to get significantly worse. The war had been going on for years now.

It had started in 113 BC and is now 105 BC. The Romans had so many setbacks, they didn't really want to chase the Germanic ghosts into the woods and get stabbed again. again. So the councils of the day, Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was the great uncle of Julius Caesar and a decorated war hero, put together an army to wait at the northern border as a defensive strategy and only

strike if the Cimbrians re-entered Roman lands and threatened Italy again. But for some reason he did not command this army itself and nobody's entirely sure why. He could have been sick or just didn't want to I mean why not he's consul he doesn't have to do it

he has all the glory that he needs maybe he had tickets to Warped Tour and couldn't make it that day I was a Warped Tour kid oh yeah now normally he probably would have picked Gaius Marius to lead this army because he was considered the best military commander in Rome outside of Rufus himself.

But Marius is away in Africa. Rome being Rome was involved in a completely different war. Spend it as a baby. This war called the Jugurthine War. What a name. We'll eventually talk about the Jugurthine war because it is an episode of roman history that is just dumber than hell um but uh you know so marius was distracted at the moment for empire stuff and so he had to find somebody else which led him to gnaeus malius

maximus who's a guy who had virtually no military experience, but did have the bonus of Rufus trusted him. So that was it. Oh, well, that's good, I guess. It's all we need, baby. Yeah, he was co-counsel, and he was what's known as a novus homo or a new man. Now, this is a name given to someone when they're the first ones in their family to enter politics,

whether it be Senate or be elected council. And Maximus was council. Now, these Novus Homo were universally looked down by their peers because, I mean, we've talked about it, I believe, on the show before that Roman democracy was a fucking joke. It was the Senate was nothing but nobles. Families passed their seats down to members of the same family, etc. Another person who believed that these novus homo did not need to be in charge of anything was actually the army's second in command, Quintus Servilius Capio. Now, Capio hated the idea of

being subordinate to a novus homo, despite the fact that Maximus outranked him in every way. He was consul for the year. He was in command of the military. It didn't matter. Capio was from a very prestigious family. He only thought and only cared about his superiority that he thought he was owned by his birth. So much so that he refused to listen to any of Maximus' orders.

Oh, this is going to go well. Yeah, he split the army in half, taking half under his own command. They marched separately. He refused to listen to orders. They didn't even camp together. Capio would camp miles and miles away from Maximus. What a dick. Yeah, it gets worse

there. I said it. Hell yeah. While I'm here on the soundboard, you know what? They would not have had a problem with this if they were... That's so wow.

Now, if only they understood homie law if capio understood a concept of the greater unifying theory of homies this would not have happened anyway go listen to the rome cast um yeah yeah highly recommend it eventually this force got to the Rodan River with Capio simply refusing to cross it with Maximus and camping on the other side of the river. It's like a sitcom where they draw a fucking line down the middle of the room except it's a whole ass map like I'm not crossing this fuck you that's why

and this is where Maximus probably realized because this is his first like major command he's like wow if you're you're subordinate doesn't actually want to listen to you there's nothing you can do about it like and that even though he's counsel like if he you know treats capio like the piece of shit that he is his political career is fucking dead because capio's family is going to kneecap him or something so after arguing with him and trying to get him to cross the river he's eventually just sent a runner all the way back

to Rome to request official orders for Capio to cross the fucking river from the Senate Jesus and the Senate the Senate probably sighed rolled their eyes and jotted some shit down on an extra piece of like I don't know butt skin

paper handed it off to the runner they ran all the way the fuck back mind you this is all the way in northern fucking italy um and gave it to maximus only then would capio listen and cross the river and even then when he crossed the river to the be on the same side he refused again to camp alongside him i mean mean, Capio might go down as the pettiest bitch that we've ever talked about. That's amazing. That truly is amazing. Yeah. I don't know anybody who's

going to be more petty than him, and you'll find out why I say that in a minute. Now, seeing a sizable army camped out in front of him, the Kimbering King Boyerix decided, you know, maybe we should talk this one out, you know,

wait, wait for a better day. So he went to Maximus's camp knowing that he was in charge and began negotiating terms. So, you know, maybe tens of thousands of people didn't need to die. And maybe he'd get some land out of the deal.

Like they're looking for effectively guaranteed land because they can't go home. At one point, they have a negotiation like, how about you give us land at your northern border and we'll act as your border patrol. That's one of the things that they wanted to do and Rome wasn't a huge fan of that. But they ended up going to Maximus' camp to talk it out. Now, his demands at the time were just to let the tribes pass into Iberia, which Rome also controlled parts of. Maximus' orders were only to get him away from Italy and preferably away from Roman-controlled lands. So he probably would have agreed to this.

Like, yeah, just go to Spain and attack the tribes that we're not friends with and we're cool you know but Maximus is more than happy to negotiate these terms and uh and met with the king this infuriated Capio now drama if this entire thing ended with two sides coming together and hashing it out like a bunch of wussies he would not be able to show everybody in rome how much more of a man than he was of this fucking novus homo commoner right like and not to mention if maximus negotiated an end to this conflict he would get all the fucking props not capio and make him look even worse so he had to find a way to richard nixon the fuck out of this negotiation deal, which of course means kill tens of thousands of people for no reason.

As soon as negotiations were done for the day and Boyerix went back to his camp, Capio ordered a full scale attack on his camp with the men in his army. Because remember, it's split in half. This is on such short notice that his men were not put into any kind of battle formation, nor did he have any plan or strategy. Not to mention, he was outnumbered by estimated 100,000 people.

I have no idea what his plan was here. I mean, he had 40,000 people. The Roman army is about 80,000, give or take, with it split in half. So he has 40,000. It's not that the Cimbrian group whether with the embrones and the tutanes is 2 000 200 000 people and he attacked up a hill god bless him yeah we love to

say it they were fucking annihilated like to the point that i have to think boyer except this is a prank or something like what a way to go he's like you guys really gonna do this is they're like marching towards you like all right okay sorry and they were they were slaughtered very quickly um like when you're that badly outnumbered in ancient warfare you just get surrounded which is exactly what happened somehow capio survived completely unharmed but almost nobody else in his miller that nobody almost nobody else did right now because he was not told of this attack maximus really didn't have time to prepare for any kind of countermeasure like most likely picking up stakes and fucking running because now he's down to 40 000 or so min himself because he was negotiating he didn't exactly have the most

defensible position his back was to the Rodan River. There was no retreat. And now Boerix, probably rightly, I mean, how can you blame him, just got attacked by a Roman army and he thought, well, the asshole I was talking to yesterday must have been in on it because logically, irrationally, why would he think that there was a fucking petty personal

beef that led to 40,000 people dying? So he couldn't order a retreat. He really didn't have time to put up any kind of defenses. He got his men in a line and they were just slowly hacked to pieces or drowned as they tried to flee.

It didn't take long for 80,000 Romans to be dead, which was the largest defeat since the Battle of Cannae that we talked about in our last Roman episode. Pretty much all of Maximus' family was in his army as either officers or camp followers, and all of them were dead, but he managed to escape somehow. But the two army commanders got back to Rome, largely unhurt.

And rightfully, Capio got the majority of the blame, but they were both prosecuted for losing their armies and banished from Rome. Capio's sentence was honestly hilarious. It was so severe. He was banished, of course, but he was also fined 800,000

pounds of gold, which I need to point out here was more than the roman treasury yeah that's a lot yeah um now nobody's really sure what happened to either of them after this um but uh it does note that uh the fine was never paid yeah fair enough now at this point the road to italy was and you know therefore rome was wide open to the Cimbri. However, for reasons kind of unknown, they left it alone, kind of like Hannibal did. That's the same easy explanation for this is that they kind of figured if we start storming towards Rome, we don't have the means to get our asses handed to us.

Right. And so we're going to go pick on the soft underbelly of northern Rome, maybe skip off to go to Spain, soft underbelly of Northern Rome. Maybe skip off to go to Spain, take some of those guys out too. Softer targets. Instead of attacking Rome, the Cimbri busted a left

and went towards Gallia, picking up more and more new allies. Because they're also taking losses as well, right? They need some new people. Kind of like uh during the battle of cana episode people realize like oh the fuck room hype train is full steam ahead let's join them um like they went through france and burned and looted their way across land with the gauls unable to stop them and then they went down to spain anyway doing pretty much the same thing

now this ended up being a massive fuck up on the part part of King Blaerix. The rest of Rome's armies were away in Africa, and there was no army waiting for them in Italy. They had just given Rome breathing room to slap something together, and what they would slap together would effectively be the Roman military that we know. For starters, the

Jugurthine War came to an end, and Gaius Marius was free to return to Rome. Then, Rome, clearly desperate, elected him to be council again. Now, at the time, Rome had a law where you could not hold the office of council twice within 10 years. And Marius had just held it three years prior. And they were like, we don't care, elect him. He wasn't even back in Rome when he got news that he was council again. And a small sign out here, they would actually elect him four more times in a row, effectively nuking

the foundations of the Roman Republic to give him power. Good job, guys. Marius saw that the army was cooked due to the stupid landowning law and everything we talked about leading to fewer and fewer people actually owning land on top of the 80,000 people who just got fed into a wood

chipper. He realized he didn't have much of a recruiting pool to work from. And Capio and Maximus also got rid of the last full standing army that he had at hands over nobility beef. So looking around, Marius jettisoned that dumb fucking law. He's like, no, we're not doing it. He got the Senate to agree to at first temporarily get rid of the landowning law, which would then become permanent, becoming what is infamously known as the Marian reforms of the military. He created a system that everybody's probably mostly aware of that listens to this show. Landless men were now allowed to join, which is as a bonus because they were all piss broke. They wouldn't have to supply their own gear, which old armies did. Everything would be supplied by the state, which meant everything became standardized in order to simplify this process.

And the men serving were given a government salary and pretty decent benefits, which would include a plot of land at the end of their service. There are also organizational changes, which led to a more streamlined, better working, and faster moving army. For example, a lot of the people that died, not all, of course, but behind every Roman army before this era, there was a massive group of camp followers. These people would carry Roman gear. They would, you know, sex workers, cobblers, butchers, whatever you name it. Whatever you got. Yeah. They got rid of those.

Instead of relying on an expansive and cumbersome camp follower system, which they tended to bog armies down, Romans would have to carry everything on their backs. This also had the benefit of making Roman soldiers effectively athletic freaks. You're carrying shit on your back, you force march them endlessly. And I'm not going to say that they were any better in shape than a lot of soldiers are today. But I'll just say one of the first things the new soldiers would have to do reportedly even before they issued a weapon and taught how to fight

is to prove they can march 20 miles in five hours while carrying about 45 pounds on their back. Don't like that. Which I can't do. Nope. So they effectively created an entire predator army made up of Italians carrying spears and swords. But I repeat myself.

There it is. However, training a bunch of randos to do war and specifically guys who had never done any kind of military service before because they weren't allowed to, takes time. But the Kimbrians gave them time. In the meantimeimbrians gave them time. In the meantime, the Cimbri had broken off from their buddies,

the Teutones and the Embrones, and they were launching what is effectively an invasion of Northern Rome from two different angles, one from Gallia and Narbonissus, and the other down the Mediterranean coast. And that's when Marius had to throw his new boys into shape. And his new model legion marched out to meet meet the Tetones and the Embrones first because he was council. His co-council was marching out to meet the other ones. We'll talk about that in a second. Marius' first plan, because he's outnumbered in this.

He doesn't have hundreds of thousands of people at his disposal. And he wanted to drag the Tetones and the Embrones into effectively a grindhouse battle over a siege. So he built a fortified camp and lured them into attacking it, which they did over the course of three days. And the Tatones just absolutely massacred themselves against the walls of the fort. Now, Marius' idea is like, well, they have to attack us. We're sitting right here. Why wouldn't they attack us they want to kill roman soldiers and that's when uh the tetones hit them with the old uh uno reverse card or or expert uh uh division skills they just went around them now we actually don't we actually don't need to attack you by. And the funny thing is, as they were marching by, where Gaius' forces were entrenched, they yelled out, quote,

Do you have any messages for your wives? We'll be with them soon. Oh. Sick burn. Yeah. Now, again, Amarius had built several legions of freak athletes, so he simply chased them down. They broke their camp and marched diagonally at them until he got them in a disadvantageous position, which in this case was back against the river on the downslope of a hill, which would become the Battle of Aquate Sexte. downslope of a hill at the, which would become the battle of Aqua Tesexte.

Um, the Tatunis and the Ambrones were not as, I mean, these guys were forced to leave their home. They've been on the march for years now. They're tired, they're beaten up. And then you have this Roman legion who's fresh, uh,

much better shape, much better fed, much better, uh, like supplied who effectively just slowly marched towards them like fucking Jason. By the 13th, it was just a bunch of centurions. Now that they're

back against the river, the Tetones still outnumbered them 2 to 1. However, Marius had actually snuck around behind them with 4,000 men and put them in an ambush position, which lay at the flank of the Tetoni army. Now, the Tetonis were smart enough to not charge directly up a hill because it's stupid, but their hold over their men was kind of tenuous. There wasn't a very rigid military structure yet. There's a lot of Germanic and Gallic tribes that

effectively just adopt Roman military doctrine and function mostly because a lot of them would end up being in the roman military uh the kimbranes hadn't done that yet they did they still were they were able to do shield walls and stuff like that but they didn't exactly have a rigid command structure um so that meant when the Romans charged with their cavalry and then immediately doubled back upon contact, slowly some groups of the Titone line broke and chased after them, which led to something of a slow trickle effect of men all following the guy next to them rather than their orders to chase down these cavalry. Which it's not that unheard of. to chase down these cavalry, which it's not that unheard of. I mean, about 80% of warfare in this era isn't so much hearing orders as it is following the guy next to you and hoping he heard the orders, right? So before long, you effectively have a snowball effect of an army

kind of running piecemeal up this hill directly back to where the Roman legions are. And the legions shredded them with spears, uh, these peel them, which we've talked about before, which bend upon contact and snap off. So they can't be thrown back. Yeah.

And they then, after, you know, getting some speed holes punched in them by spears, they slammed into the Roman shield wall. Now this convinced the Tatoni is that, you know what? We may have fucked up here.

We should probably pull back. And they went to, yeah, we're a little in too deep. And as they broke contact to try to run back to where this whole thing started, the 4,000 men in hiding in the woods popped up and surrounded them. Now, the Romans on top of the hill

also advanced down towards them, meaning the tired and slightly spear-holed Tatones got themselves pinned between two Roman forces, and it turned into a large-scale massacre. What a way to go, man. That sucks. Thinking you're winning one second, and you catch a pilum in your spine.

And you're like, oh, that's gone poorly. The Teutone force broke and tried to run, but then their own king surrendered, realized that, well, we had fun, boys. It's over now. That was it for them. According to Plutarch, Marius' legions killed around 100,000 Teutones, while others placed a number of more realistic 50,000. The Romans also just kind of like left their bodies where they fell. They gave them no funeral rites whatsoever, which was often the case, but not always.

gave them no funeral rites whatsoever, which was often the case, but not always. Again, according to Plutarch, this led to all of those bodies in this field melting into the soil, causing the soil to become incredibly enriched and having

a cornucopia of new fruits and vegetables. Oh, lovely. Yeah, corpse farms. Love to eat dead guy pears, yeah. It's like you bite into a fresh apple and it starts bleeding. Go and add corpse farm to our corpse

infrastructure list. We got another one, folks. After all of Marius' hard work, we come to his co-consul Quintus Latutius Catulus. Now, he was the guy that was supposed to be confronting the Kimbri force, and instead he just packed it up and left. King Boerix's army just walked right into northern Italy unopposed

while Catulus just kind of hung back. Now, the Kimbri stayed put, looting their way across the top of the boot there. Now, kind of like I said about the Tatones, they had been marching in at war for a really long time. They were fucking tired. They wanted to just camp out and live off of northern Italy and wait for winter to pass because you don't campaign

in wintertime. And they sat on the north fattening themselves and resting. Once again, this is a bad idea because this gave time for Marius to cross the length of northern Italy and join up with Catalyst and be able to join their forces to

maybe 50,000 men and Boerix at this point had maybe 60,000. Now, mind you, he had no idea that Tatones had caught that Roman smoke and he assumed that they were on their way to join them. This led to something that you generally only think happens in movies,

what I call the tactical shit talk in the middle of a pitched battlefield. You know, that like movie trope that you assume doesn't actually happen in real life. Now, these two, there's also a time where Boerix is slowly being pushed back across Northern Italy. And eventually they met in the middle of a field.

And, you know, pushed back across northern Italy. And eventually they met in the middle of a field. And he was not wanting to commit to battle because he was waiting for the Teutones or they'd be able to outnumber them by tens of thousands. And that's when in front of Boerix, Marius kicked out the chain Teutone king out in front of his army and told Boerix that he didn't have to wait for the Teutones because the Romans had already given them plenty of land. You get it? Because he killed them and then left them in the sun. Get it?

Oh, Jesus. Burn. Yeah. Enjoy your course, idiots. We'll give you plenty of fucking, I don't know, like dead guy celery. Dead guy Levitz. Now, royally pissed off, Boerick has demanded that

marius at a time and a place for them to meet and finally settle this goddamn thing like oh okay you give the demands huh guy and they agreed they fight uh to fight in a place called uh vercalay in july 30th 101 b BC. Now, almost immediately, the advantage went to the Romans. The Cimbri were almost entirely on foot and had very few cavalry. And they used these cavalry to guard their flanks,

which is something that you would do playing a video game. Not so much one when you're fighting much heavier Roman horse. Right. Also, you wouldn't secure your flanks with cavalry. Real big fuck up there for boyer x

so the more numerous roman cavalry opened the battle by simply rushing out and attacking both flanks of the kimbrace force um now the roman cavalry were for the probably one of the few times you get to say this in roman history better uh rome's not exactly known for their superior cavalry forces um now rather than supporting their own flanks and flexing their infantry around to try to support them and secure them, they simply abandoned their flanks, marching their center forward to attack the Roman line. This meant that as soon as the Roman cavalry chased off the Cimbrian cavalry, they simply had to double back around and attack the Cimbrian center from behind, which would pin them against the Roman shield wall.

Now, another side effect of this heavy press of men slamming together... Oh, yes. Do with that phrasing what you will. This actually benefited the Romans more and more because the Roman fighting style was claustrophobic. Like, they used

short, slashing, stabbing swords to pull you in close and gut you and pin you against their shields. Now, to make matters worse, when the Cimbri attempted to form a shield wall to defend, because that's the best way to do that kind of fighting, the Cimbrian cavalry, running from the Roman cavalry,

stampeded through their own line. Oh, I hate to see it. Imagine, you're like, don't worry, boys. We have them right where we want them. You catch like a fucking horse hoof to the side of the head. No, thanks, man. I mean, I can't think of a better way to break up an infantry line than a screaming mass

of like a size horse. Yeah. The Kimberley Army broke as their defensive cohesion, you know, got horsed and they tried and they tried to run, but this turned this entire situation into a rapid-paced massacre. King Boerix himself attempted to rally enough men to form a defense, and him and everybody with him were killed. After watching their king die, people began to surrender in large numbers, and some of them were taken to life. Most of them were put into slavery. And it's thought that a pretty decent number of these guys would actually go on to be soldiers in Spartacus's revolt during the

Third Servile War, which we have talked about in a previous series. So yeah, weird connection line there. And thus ended the Cimbrian threat to rome however as you can imagine some people were pretty pissed that marius had been elected to council ship so many goddamn times um you know they effectively nuked their own laws to continue giving him power this isn't super unheard of i suppose like there's the roman concept of the dictator where someone would be put in charge for a very limited amount of time to handle a very specific threat um and then they would leave that power and this is kind of why marius has picked his counsel so many times but then he was elected counsel after the war again so people like huh so he's just he's just in office forever now, huh? We just don't learn our lesson.

And he also kind of proved to everybody that the Senate's power was quite fungible. Yeah. Because he came up with an idea. Because at this point, you're not Roman. If you lived outside of the city of Rome and within Italy, you were Italian. Or these other groups of people, they were not considered Roman. If you lived outside of the city of Rome and within Italy, you were Italian or these other groups of people that were not considered Roman. So after the war, Marius kind of on his own extended Roman citizenship to all of their Italian allies, which was considered like an outrage in Senate because of racism. And this pissed off pretty much all of the other old school powerful

people. This amongst his constant election pissed off a guy named Sulla and started a pretty powerful political beef between the two, which would of course lay the groundwork for Rome's

first of many civil wars we love happy endings don't we on the show so how are you feeling about the kimbrians now uh that's not very bright i mean i i do love the robins just like in an expedition of foolishness kept getting kept getting themselves got that's pretty funny I do like that one of their best resources was just like unemployed dudes yeah we can feed so many more unemployed guys into that

buzzfeed of like that buzzsaw than you can like we can stay it's like it's like this it's all day asshole yeah we can be stupid longer than you can stay solvent situation but in military affairs. I gave him stop. Yeah.

I hope everybody enjoyed that. Liam, we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion. We have a good one today. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to the show like this person did. You can ask me on Patreon and I will. This is probably the fastest turnaround we've ever had for a question from the Legion. So, you know, and not that this episode is coming out anytime soon today's question is i have a question from the legion you find a magical lamp with a genie inside they'll grant you one wish however that wish can

only change something that is that only mildly irritates you what would you change uh oh i would not get bug bites not get bug bites. Not get bug bites. Hmm. I hate bugs, dude. Or I would never have to see a rodent again. What kind of bugs? Like mosquitoes? Like your skin is just impregnated with deet?

Yes, yes, yes. Out here living in the tropics of Philadelphia, yes. Oh, and if people who talk in the elevator, they have to be executed. I think anytime I hear someone's phone like they're on speakerphone in public, their cell phone just explodes in their hand like a hand grenade. Yeah, okay. I'll buy that.

I was on the metro the other day, which is... I haven't been on many metros, admittedly, but I will say the Yerevan metro is incredibly loud. You can't talk to the person next to you. I mean, exactly. It's not exactly the newest fucking train system on Earth. And I swear to God, there's a guy next to

me the other day talking on speakerphone on the Metro, and I have no idea how the hell that was happening. Execution by firing squad. It's like, you've become so annoying that you have transcended sense you're doing it because you hate your fellow man now everybody thank you so much for

listening to the show today uh if you like our show consider donating to it on patreon uh patreon.com slash lions by donkeys uh and or follow the the link in the notes. It'll take you right there. $1 gets you a ton of stuff or don't donate to the show. It's your money. Don't donate to the show, you fucking pussies. And you can leave us a review, which a lot of people have done. We love seeing the five-star reviews

because outside of that, we really don't know what you think of the show unless you leave us hate mail, which we do get occasionally blow me relations liam this is the spot where you plug your shows well there's your problem 10 000 losses see it or screw it thank you and and until next time uh i don't think of large scale government around the. I'm going to go around the forts. Until next time, think of large-scale government employment properties that benefit people. Later.