Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was a Roman politician and general.
A novus homo ("new man"), Mallius was elected to the consulship of the Roman Republic in 105 BC. He was sent as consul to the province of Transalpine Gaul to stop the migration of the Cimbri and the Teutons. [1] However, when he arrived with his army, the proconsul in the field, Quintus Servilius Caepio, refused to cooperate with Mallius because of his novus homo status. The proconsul's army remained on the far side of the River Rhône, keeping them disunited, even in defiance of envoys from the Senate. [2] With Caepio encamping between Mallius' army and the Cimbri, the migrating tribes attacked and overran both armies in detail at the Battle of Arausio. [2]
Mallius lost his sons in the battle and after his return to Rome he was impeached for the loss of his army. The prosecution was led by Saturninus, who was able to secure a conviction which drove Mallius into exile, [3] placing Mallius under an aquae et ignis interdictio by a rogatio ; that is, like Cicero later, he was "denied water and fire", a formulaic expression of banishment (see Law of majestas). [4] The proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio, blamed by all the ancient historians for the defeat, [5] was also exiled. [3]
The defeat at Arausio created fear in Rome for the safety of the Italian peninsula and the continuation of the Republic. The Assembly then took the unprecedented and then-illegal step of electing, in absentia, Gaius Marius, then proconsul in Africa prosecuting the Jugurthine War, to a second consulship in three years to deal with the threat. [6]
This article concerns the period 109 BC – 100 BC.
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. Victor of the Cimbric and Jugurthine wars, he held the office of consul an unprecedented seven times.
Quintus Lutatius Catulus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 102 BC. His consular colleague was Gaius Marius. During their consulship the Cimbri and Teutones marched south again and threatened the Republic. While Marius marched against the Teutones in Gaul, Catulus had to keep the Cimbri from invading Italy. In this he failed; the Cimbri succeeded in invading the Po Valley. In 101 BC Catulus, as proconsul, continued the war against the Cimbri. Marius, elected consul for the fifth time, joined him and together they campaigned against the Germanic invaders in the Po Valley. At the Battle of Vercellae Marius and Catulus decisively defeated the Cimbri and ended the Germanic invasion. After Vercellae the two feuded, and Catulus consequently committed suicide following Marius's victory in the civil war of 87 BC.
Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was a Roman statesman who served as consul in 115 BC. He was also a long-standing princeps senatus, occupying the post from 115 until his death in late 89 or early 88 BC, and as such was widely considered one of the most prestigious and influential politicians of the late Republic.
Publius Rutilius Rufus was a Roman statesman, soldier, orator and historian of the Rutilia gens, as well as a great-uncle of Gaius Julius Caesar. He achieved the highest political office in the Roman Republic when he was elected consul in 105 BC.
The Battle of Vercellae, or Battle of the Raudine Plain, was fought on 30 July 101 BC on a plain near Vercellae in Gallia Cisalpina. A Germanic-Celtic confederation under the command of the Cimbric king Boiorix was defeated by a Roman army under the joint command of the consul Gaius Marius and the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. The battle marked the end of the Germanic threat to the Roman Republic.
The Battle of Arausio took place on 6 October 105 BC, at a site between the town of Arausio, now Orange, Vaucluse, and the Rhône river. Two Roman armies, commanded by proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio and consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, clashed with the migratory tribes of the Cimbri under Boiorix and the Teutons under Teutobod.
The First Man in Rome is a 1990 historical novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough, and the first in her Masters of Rome series.
Quintus Servilius Caepio was a Roman statesman and general, consul in 106 BC, and proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul in 105 BC. He was the father of Quintus Servilius Caepio and the grandfather of Servilia.
The Battle of Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) took place in 102 BC. After a string of Roman defeats, the Romans under Gaius Marius finally defeated the Teutones and Ambrones as they attempted to advance through the Alps into Italy. The Teutones and the Ambrones were defeated. Some of the surviving captives are reported to have been among the rebelling gladiators in the Third Servile War. Local lore associates the name of the mountain, Mont St Victoire, with the Roman victory at the battle of Aquae Sextiae, but Frédéric Mistral and other scholars have debunked this theory.
Gaius Norbanus, nicknamed Balbus was a Roman politician who was elected consul in 83 BC alongside Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus. He committed suicide in exile at Rhodes after being proscribed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla shortly after the latter's victory in the civil war.
The Ambrones were an ancient tribe mentioned by Roman authors. They are believed by some to have been a Germanic tribe from Jutland; the Romans were not clear about their exact origin.
The Battle of Noreia, in 113 BC, was the opening battle of the Cimbrian War fought between the Roman Republic and the migrating Proto-Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutons (Teutones). It ended in defeat, and near disaster, for the Romans.
The Cimbrian or Cimbric War was fought between the Roman Republic and the Germanic and Celtic tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutons, Ambrones and Tigurini, who migrated from the Jutland peninsula into Roman-controlled territory, and clashed with Rome and her allies. The Cimbrian War was the first time since the Second Punic War that Italia and Rome itself had been seriously threatened.
Quintus Servilius Caepio was a Roman patrician, statesman and soldier. He was the son of Quintus Servilius Caepio who was consul in 106 BCE and who lost his army during the Battle of Arausio. He was elected praetor some time in the last 90s BC and fought for Rome during the Social War. He was killed in the second year of the war while fighting the Marsi by Quintus Poppaedius Silo.
The gens Servilia was a patrician family at ancient Rome. The gens was celebrated during the early ages of the Republic, and the names of few gentes appear more frequently at this period in the consular Fasti. It continued to produce men of influence in the state down to the latest times of the Republic, and even in the imperial period. The first member of the gens who obtained the consulship was Publius Servilius Priscus Structus in 495 BC, and the last of the name who appears in the consular Fasti is Quintus Servilius Silanus, in AD 189, thus occupying a prominent position in the Roman state for nearly seven hundred years.
The Gold of Tolosa was a treasure hoard seized by the ancient Roman proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio from the Volcae town of Tolosa, modern-day Toulouse.
The Battle of Burdigala was a battle of the Cimbrian War that occurred in the year 107 BC. The battle was fought between a combined Germanic-Celtic army including the Helvetian Tigurini under the command of Divico, and the forces of the Roman Republic under the command of Lucius Cassius Longinus, Lucius Caesoninus, and Gaius Popillius Laenas. Longinus and Caesoninus were killed in the action and the battle resulted in a victory for the combined tribes.
The gens Mallia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Due to its relative obscurity, the nomen Mallius is frequently, but erroneously amended to the more common Manlius. The only member of this gens to obtain any of the higher curule magistracies under the Republic was Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, consul in 105 BC.
Gnaeus Servilius Caepio was a Roman politician who was consul in 141 BC; his colleague was Quintus Pompeius. He was the elder brother of one of his immediate successors in the consulship, Quintus Servilius Caepio, and the homonymous son of the consul of 169 BC.