of the battle.] However this may be, Marius had shown his usual good generalship.  He had fed his men before the battle, and so manoeuvred that sun, wind, and dust were in the enemy’s faces.  His own men were in perfect training, and in the burning heat did not turn a hair.  But the Northmen were fresh from high living, and could not bear up long.  When they gave way, the same scenes as at Aquae Sextiae took place among the women.  One hundred and twenty thousand men, it is said, were killed—­among them the gallant Boiorix, their king—­and 60,000 taken prisoners.  Disputes rose as to who had really won the day.  Marius generously insisted on Catulus sharing his triumph.  But it was to him that the popular voice ascribed the victory, and there can be little doubt that the popular voice was right.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMAN ARMY.

While Rome was trembling for the issue of the war with the Cimbri, she was forced to send an army elsewhere. [Sidenote:  Slave revolts.] There was at this time another general stir among the slave population.  There were risings at Nuceria, at Capua, in the silver mines of Attica, and at Thurii, and the last was headed by a Roman eques, named Minucius or Vettius.  He wanted to buy a female slave; and, failing to raise the money which was her price, armed his own slaves, was joined by others, assumed the state and title of king, and fortified a camp, being at the head of 3,500 men.  Lucullus, the praetor, marched against him with 4,400 men; but though superior in numbers, he preferred Jugurthine tactics, and bribed a Greek to betray Vettius, who anticipated a worse fate by suicide. [Sidenote:  Second slave rebellion in Sicily.] But, as before, the fiercest outbreak was in Sicily.  Marius had applied for men for his levies to Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who replied that he had none to send, because the Roman publicani had carried off most of his subjects and sold them as slaves.  Thereupon the Senate issued orders that no free member of an allied state should be kept as a slave in a Roman province. [Sidenote:  Weakness of Licinius Nerva.] P. Licinius Nerva, governor of Sicily, in accordance with these orders, set free a number of Sicilian slaves; but, worked on by the indignation of the proprietors, he backed out of what he had begun to do, and, having raised the hopes of the slaves, caused an insurrection by disappointing them.  He suppressed the first rebels by treachery.  But he was a weak man, and delayed so long in attacking another body near Heraclea, that when he sent a lieutenant to attack them with 600 men they were strong enough to beat him. [Sidenote:  Salvius elected king.] By this success they supplied themselves with arms, and then elected Salvius as their king, who found himself at the head of 20,000 infantry and 2,000 horse.  With these troops he attacked Morgantia, and, on the governor coming to relieve it, turned on him and routed