returned from Spain and, joining the other
tribes, prepared to invade Italy. The Teutons and Ambrones followed the
direct route from southern Gaul, while the Cimbri and Tigurini moved to
the north of the Alps to enter Italy by the eastern Alpine passes. Marius
permitted the Teutons and Ambrones to march by him, then he overtook and
annihilated them at Aquae Sextiae. In the meantime, the Cimbri had forced
the other consul, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, to abandon the defence of the
eastern passes and had crossed the Adige into the Po Valley, where they
wintered. Marius returned to Italy to join his colleague and face the new
peril. In the next year, while consul for the fifth time, he met and
destroyed the Cimbri on the Raudine plains near Vercellae. Thus Italy was
saved from a repetition of the Gallic invasion of the fourth century B. C.

The vitality of the Roman state was by no means exhausted as the defeat of
the barbarians shows, and men of energy and ability were not lacking, but
under the existing regime it required a crisis to bring them to the front.

*The Second Sicilian Slave War, 104-101 B. C.* While the barbarians were
knocking at the gates of Italy, Rome was called upon to suppress a series
of disorders in other parts of her empire, some of which were only quelled
after considerable effort. In 104 B. C. occurred a serious rebellion of
the slaves in Sicily, headed by two leaders Salvius and Anthenion, the
former of whom took the title of King Typhon. The rebels became masters of
the open country, defeated the forces sent against them, reduced the
Sicilian cities to the verge of starvation, and were only subdued by a
consular army under Manius Aquillius in 101 B. C.

*War with the Pirates.* Before the slave war in Sicily had been brought to
a close the Romans were forced to make an effort to suppress piracy in the
Mediterranean. Piracy had been on the increase ever since the decline of
the Rhodian sea power, following the Second Macedonian War, for as there
were no longer any rival maritime powers Rome had neglected to maintain a
navy adequate even for policing the seas. The pirates were at the same
time slave traders, who made a business of kidnapping all over the
Mediterranean but particularly in the east to supply the slave mart at
Delos. In 104 B. C. the king of Bithynia complained to the Senate that
one-half of his ablebodied men had been carried into slavery. This traffic
was winked at by the Romans, since