Quote Originally Posted by delablake
mhm and Rome learned how to stop worrying and love the bomb...lol
now, 3 years later Marius wiped out these two Germanic tribes consisting of about 400.000 people at Aqua Sextiae (102BC) and Vercellae (101BC) suffering less than marginal losses. Now, that's getting your asses handed...
The tribes had splitted, and it would be interesting to know the actual fighting numbers of the tribes in those battles.

Considering they were entire tribes on the move, a large amount of the people would be women, children, elderly or men unfit to fight I'd reckon, AND the rest would be men with no professional training or good, uniform armours, who then get pitted against 40 000 - 50 000 legionnaries & auxilia, led by none other than Gaius Marius himself.

And, of course, attacking the opponent before they were ready at Vercellae did kind of help. Naturally, there's no need to follow the honour codes of the "barbarians", but it does take quite a bit of the glory away from the victory.