Here, seventy years before, Celtic tribes had attempted to settle on the south of the Alps, but at the bidding of the Romans had evacuated without resistance the ground which they had already occupied;( 18) even now the dread of the Transalpine peoples at the Roman name showed itself strongly.
The Cimbri did not attack; indeed, when Carbo ordered them to evacuate the territory of the Taurisci who were in relations of hospitality with Rome--an order which the treaty with the latter by no means bound him to make--they complied and followed the guides whom Carbo had assigned to them to escort them over the frontier.

But these guides were in fact instructed to lure the Cimbri into an ambush, where the consul awaited them.

Accordingly an engagement took place not far from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss; a storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete annihilation of the Roman army.

The Cimbri might have immediately directed their attack towards Italy; they preferred to turn to the westward.

By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than by force of arms they made their way to the left bank of the Rhine and over the Jura, and there some years after the defeat of Carbo once more threatened the Roman territory by their immediate vicinity.
Defeat of Silanus With a view to cover the frontier of the Rhine and the immediately threatened territory of the Allobroges, a Roman army under Marcus Junius Silanus appeared in 645 in Southern Gaul.