5.37
To such an extent does
Fortune blind men's eyes when she will not have her
threatened blows parried, that though such a weight
of disaster was hanging over the State, no special
steps were taken to avert it. In the wars against
Fidenae and Veii and other neighbouring States, a
Dictator had on many occasions been nominated as a
last resource. But now when an enemy, never seen or
even heard of before, was rousing up war from ocean
and the furthest corners of the world, no recourse
was had to a Dictator, no extraordinary efforts were
made. Those men through whose recklessness the war
had been brought about were in supreme commands as
tribunes, and the levy they raised was not larger
than had been usual in ordinary campaigns, they even
made light of the resorts as to the seriousness of
the war. Meantime the Gauls learnt that their
embassy had been treated with contempt, and that
honours had actually been conferred upon men who had
violated the law of nations. Burning with rage -as
a nation they cannot control their passions -they
seized their standards and hurriedly set out on
their march. At the sound of their tumult as they
swept by, the affrighted cities flew to arms and the
country folk took to flight. Horses and men, spread
far and wide, covered an immense tract of country;
wherever they went they made it understood by loud
shouts that they were going to Rome. But though they
were preceded by rumours and by messages from
Clusium, and then from one town after another, it
was the swiftness of their approach that created
most alarm in Rome. An army hastily raised by a levy
en masse marched out to meet them. The two forces
met hardly eleven miles from Rome, at a spot where
the Alia, flowing in a very deep channel from the
Crustuminian mountains, joins the river Tiber a
little below the road to Crustumerium. The whole
country in front and around was now swarming with
the enemy, who, being as a nation given to wild
outbreaks, had by their hideous howls and discordant
clamour filled everything with dreadful noise.