[1] However, when he arrived with his army, the proconsul in the field, Quintus Servilius Caepio, refused to cooperate with Mallius because of his novus homo status.
The proconsul's army remained on the far side of the River Rhône, keeping them disunited, even in defiance of envoys from the Senate.
The prosecution was led by Saturninus, who was able to secure a conviction which drove Mallius into exile,[3] placing Mallius under an aquae et ignis interdictio by a rogatio; that is, like Cicero later, he was "denied water and fire", a formulaic expression of banishment (see Law of majestas).
[3] The defeat at Arausio created fear in Rome for the safety of the Italian peninsula and the continuation of the Republic.
The Assembly then took the unprecedented and then-illegal step of electing, in absentia, Gaius Marius, then proconsul in Africa prosecuting the Jugurthine War, to a second consulship in three years to deal with the threat.