Cimbrian War - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Cimbri were not completely wiped off the face of the map or from the pages of history. A small remnant population of Cimbri and Teutones remained in northern Jutland, southern Scandinavia and the Baltic coast at least until the 1st century. Their allies, the Boii, with whom they intermixed, settled in southern Gaul and Germania and were there to welcome and confront Julius Caesar, Marius's nephew, in his campaigns of conquest. Some of the surviving captives are reported to have been among the rebeling Gladiators in the Third Servile War.

The political consequences from the war had an immediate and lasting impact on Rome. The end of the Cimbrian war marked the beginning of the rivalry between Marius and Sulla, which eventually led to the first of Rome's great civil wars. Moreover, following the final victory at Vercellae, and without first asking permission from the Senate, Marius granted Roman citizenship to his Italian allied soldiers, claiming that in the din of battle he could not distinguish between the voices of Romans and the Italic allies. Henceforth all Italian legions became Roman legions and the allied cities of the Italian peninsula progressively began to demand a greater say in the external policy of the Republic, leading eventually to the Social War.