Late in the second century BC Iron Age Europe found itself in the grips of major upheaval. The Roman Republic had conquered the tribes of the Italian peninsula and expanded their power across southern Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula to the Atlantic Ocean, as far east as Syria, Macedonia and Greece, and south across the Mediterranean Sea to Sicily, Egypt and Numidia.
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The Republic was in decline, rotting from within. Revolts and rebellions were common, wars of conquest drained its treasure and its youth. Its citizens were exploited and impoverished by the rich and greedy and its military was being transformed. Meanwhile, powerful and charismatic men like Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla were rising to positions of influence. The fathers of Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Marc Anthony, and others were vying for political positions, setting the stage for their sons to wrest power from the senate and create an empire.
 
Without warning, like a fiery meteor steaking across the night sky, a new threat appeared on the horizon, hurtling on a collision course with Rome. A powerful alliance of northern barbarians, led by an unknown king of an obscure tribe, appeared out of the northern mists. Boiorix and the Cimbri had come.