e
Celts; and, after his quaestor Marcus Annius had come up with his
troops and in some measure mastered the enemy, these same Celts in
connection with Tipas the king of the Maedi (on the upper Strymon)
soon made a fresh irruption in still larger masses, and it was with
difficulty that the Romans defended themselves against the onset of
the barbarians.(13) Things soon assumed so threatening a shape that
it became necessary to despatch consular armies to Macedonia.(14)
A few years afterwards the consul of 640 Gaius Porcius Cato was
surprised in the Servian mountains by the same Scordisci, and his
army completely destroyed, while he himself with a few attendants
disgracefully fled; with difficulty the praetor Marcus Didius
protected the Roman frontier. His successors fought with better
fortune, Gaius Metellus Caprarius (641-642), Marcus Livius Drusus
(642-643), the first Roman general to reach the Danube, and Quintus
Minucius Rufus (644-647) who carried his arms along the Morava(15) and
thoroughly defeated the Scordisci. Nevertheless they soon afterwards
in league with the Maedi and the Dardani invaded the Roman territory
and plundered even the sanctuary at Delphi; it was not till then
that Lucius Scipio put an end to the thirty-two years' warfare with
the Scordisci and drove the remnant over to the left bank of the
Danube.(16) Thenceforth in their stead the just-named Dardani
(in Servia) begin to play the first part in the territory between
the northern frontier of Macedonia and the Danube.

The Cimbri

But these victories had an effect which the victors did not
anticipate. For a considerable period an "unsettled people" had
been wandering along the northern verge of the country occupied by
the Celts on both sides of the Danube. They called themselves the
Cimbri, that is, the Chempho, the champions or, as their enemies
translated it, the robbers; a designation, however, which to all
appearance had become the name of the people even before their
migration. They came from the north, and the first Celtic people
with whom they came in contact were, so far as is known, the Boii,
probably in Bohemia. More exact details as to the cause and
the direction of their migration have not been recorded by
contemporaries,(17) and cannot be supplied by conjecture, since the
state of things in those times to the north of Bohemia and the Main
and to the east of the Lower Rhine lies wholly beyond our knowledge.
But the hypothesis