Furor Teutonicus

When it was over, the victors walked away with nothing, and with Italy lying open in front of them, they turned around and marched into Spain.

Rome eventually named what it thought it had seen there, Furor Teutonicus, the Teutonic Fury, a phrase that has outlived the empire by 15 centuries.

But the man who coined it wasn't really writing about the Teutons, and the fury he actually feared spoke Latin.

Before Furor was a stereotype, it was a character, and in the Aeneid, Virgil has Jupiter foretell the peace Augustus would bring.

Ancient tallies of the Cimbri casualties run from sixty-five thousand to over two hundred thousand, but whatever the case, the Battle of Vercellae was a total Roman blowout.

Rome had conquered the Germanic threat for now and hailed Gaius Marius as its third founder.

This is the background that's necessary to fully understand how the Teutonic fury became an enduring idea.

A generation later, Julius Caesar, whose aunt had married Marius, faced the Germanic king Ariovistus.