[Sidenote: Frontier wars of Rome previous to the Cimbric invasion.] The Romans were constantly at war on the frontiers. Besides the natural quarrels which would arise between them and lawless barbarians, it was the interest of their generals to make small wars in order to gain sounding names and triumphs. Such wars, however, by no means always ended in Roman victories; and while in the last thirty years of the second century before the Christian era there were many wars, there were also many defeats. [Sidenote: The Iapydes.] Sempronius Tuditanus had a triumph for victories over the Iapydes, an Illyrian nation; but he was first beaten by them. [Sidenote: The Salyes.] In 125 the Salyes, a Ligurian people, who stretched from Marseilles westwards to the Rhone and northwards to the Durance, attacked Marseilles. Flaccus went to its aid, and triumphed over the Salyes in 123. [Sidenote: The Balearic Islands.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus subdued the Balearic Islands in the same year, and relieved Spain from the descents of pirates, who either lived in those islands or used them as a rendezvous. The Salyes again gave trouble in 122, and Calvinus took their capital, which was most probably the modern Aix, establishing there the colony of Aquae Sextiae. This colony was the _point d'appui_ for further conquests. The most powerful nations of Gaul were the Aedui and Arverni, whose territory was separated by the Elaver, the modern Allier. The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same latitude, but on the east of the Rhone. The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and the proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the king of the Salyes. [Sidenote: The Allobroges.] The Allobroges were helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men. Fabius succeeded Domitius, and marched northwards across the Isara. [Sidenote: The Arverni.] Near its junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges. [Sidenote: Defeat of the Arverni, B.C. 121.] The number of the slain amounted, it is said, to 120,000 or 150,000. The king of the Arverni was caught and sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects. It was the year of the death of Caius Gracchus, of the famous vintage, and of a great eruption of Mount Etna. [Sidenote: The Staeni.] In 118 B.C. M. Marcius Rex annihilated the Staeni, probably a Ligurian tribe of the Maritime Alps, who were in the line of the Roman approach to South Gaul, and for this success he gained a triumph. In the same year it was resolved, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, to colonise Narbo, which was the key to the valley of the Garonne, and was on the route to the province of Tarraconensis. Thus was established the