The old pre-Roman road from Nimes to Aix certainly followed the high and dry ground to Tarascon, thence traced up the valley of the Durance. It could no longer follow the high ground, as that is broken into limestone peaks, but it followed up the river below them, carried above the rubble of the Durance. The first station after Tarascon was Glanum, now S. Remi. Then it went to Orgon, where it touched the Durance for the first time, and whence branched the roads to Italy--one by Mont Genèvre, the other by Aix and the coast. I suppose that Marius, following the barbarians, he on the heights, they in the valley, observed the direction they took to right or to left, from the precipitous crags of Orgon. It must be remembered that Marius had an army made up of demoralised soldiers, who had escaped from defeat by the barbarians, and of raw levies, and all were in deadly fear of their savage foes, so that he dare not bring them to a pitched battle till they had become accustomed to the sight of the Teutons and Ambrons, and were themselves impatient to come to blows with them.
The host of invaders turned south towards Aix. Marius pursued: there can, I think, be little question that he pursued the same tactics, exchanging a sandstone range for one of limestone, and following them steadily step by step, keeping the heights.
Now, if the camp of Marius was at S. Gabriel, and if the Teutons marched up the Durance valley to Orgon, and then turned to Aix, then, it seemed to me, on the spot, that no one save an idiot in command of the Roman soldiers could have done anything else than strike for the sandstone ridge and march along that, still observing the enemy.
Another theory relative to the Roman road is that it ran south of the chain of Les Alpines. This would not matter for the course of Marius, but would explain the fact of the monument of Marius being found at Les Baux; and Les Baux would then be the cliff whence he watched the march of the barbarians.
III. _To determine the position of the battles._
Plutarch does not distinguish between sites. He says that there were two battles separated from one another by two days, and that in the first Marius defeated the Ambrons. In the second he defeated the Teutons. He leaves us to infer that both battles were fought on the same field. But there are difficulties in supposing this.