The Cimbri requested that land might be assigned to them where they might peacefully settle--a request which certainly could not be granted.
The consul instead of replying attacked them; he was utterly defeated and the Roman camp was taken.

The new levies which were occasioned by this misfortune were already attended with so much difficulty, that the senate procured the abolition of the laws--presumably proceeding from Gaius Gracchus--which limited the obligation to military service in point of time.( 19) But the Cimbri, instead of following up their victory over the Romans, sent to the senate at Rome to repeat their request for the assignment of land, and meanwhile employed themselves, apparently, in the subjugation of the surrounding Celtic cantons.
Inroad of the Helvetii into Southern Gaul Defeat of Longinus Thus the Roman province and the new Roman army were left for the moment undisturbed by the Germans; but a new enemy arose in Gaul itself.

The Helvetii, who had suffered much in the constant conflicts with their north-eastern neighbours, felt themselves stimulated by the example of the Cimbri to seek in their turn for more quiet and fertile settlements in western Gaul, and had perhaps, even when the Cimbrian hosts marched through their land, formed an alliance with them for that purpose.

Now under the leadership of Divico the forces of the Tougeni (position unknown) and of the Tigorini (on the lake of Murten) crossed the Jura,( 20) and reached the territory of the Nitiobroges (about Agen on the Garonne).

The Roman army under the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, which they here encountered, allowed itself to be decoyed by the Helvetii into an ambush, in which the general himself and his legate, the consular Lucius Piso, along with the greater portion of the soldiers met their death; Gaius Popillius, the interim commander-in-chief of the force which had escaped to the camp, was allowed to withdraw under the yoke on condition of surrendering half the property which the troops carried with them and furnishing hostages (647).