They came from afar, northward, from the Cimbrian peninsula, nowadays Jutland, and from the countries bordering on the Baltic which nowadays form the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig.

A violent shock of earthquake, a terrible inundation, had driven them, they said, from their homes; and those countries do indeed show traces of such events.

And Cimbrians and Teutons had been for some time roaming over Germany.
The consul Papirius Carbo, despatched in all haste to defend the frontier, bade them, in the name of the Roman people, to withdraw.

The barbarians modestly replied that they had no intention of settling in Noricum, and if the Romans had rights over the country, they would carry their arms elsewhere.

The consul, who had found haughtiness succeed, thought he might also employ perfidy against the barbarians.