About the year B. C. 113, a numerous tribe of savages, called Cimbri, but who were most probably Celts, had been set in motion in the south-east of Europe; and emigrating westward, they had communicated their restlessness to the Tutones, and undoubtedly German race, through whose territories they must have passed. Roving about in quest of settlements, sometimes together, and sometimes separately, the two barbarian hosts, consisting of men, women, and children, had thrown all Gaul into consternation; and as the Romans had already colonized the portion of Gaul contiguous to the Alps, the duty of checking the savages devolved on them, the more especially as there was some danger that Italy would be invaded. But such a moving mass of human beings, driven by that hardest of forces, hunger, was not easily to be checked; and army after army sent by the Romans to oppose them had been shivered to pieces. All Italy began to tremble, and there was a universal cry among the Romans, ‘Make Marius again consul.’ Accordingly Marius was chosen consul a second time in his absence (B. C. 104), that he might drive back the Cimbri. Meanwhile the poor homeless creatures had made a general rush towards Spain; and the Romans, to secure the services of Marius when they should be required, reëlected him to the consulship in B. C. 102. In the latter year, when Marius was consul for the fourth time, the barbarians, repulsed from Spain, directed their march towards the Alps. Fortunately, they divided themselves into two masses――the Teutones taking one route, the Cimbri another. The former, amounting to about 300,000 men, were met by Marius, and slaughtered, all except 90,000, who were made prisoners, and sold as slaves. Meanwhile the Cimbri had been making progress in their route, and to oppose them, Marius was elected to a fifth consulship (B. C. 101). Another bloody field, in which about 140,000 were slain, and 60,000 taken prisoners, delivered Italy from its fears. Strange and affecting thought, that half a million of human beings, women and children, should be wandering through Europe for years, poor outcasts, with their little carts and cooking-kettles, and that a civilized nation should have been compelled, by the necessity of self-preservation, to take means to sweep them out of existence!