6.28
A report
had reached Praeneste that no army had been raised in Rome and no
commander-in-chief selected, and that the patricians and plebeians had
turned against one another. Seizing the opportunity, their generals had led
their army by rapid marches through fields which they had utterly laid waste
and appeared before the Colline Gate. There was wide-spread alarm in the
City. A general cry arose, "To arms!" and men hurried to the walls and
gates. At last, abandoning sedition for war, they nominated T. Quinctius
Cincinnatus as Dictator. He named A. Sempronius Atratinus as his Master of
the Horse. No sooner did they hear of this -so great was the terror which a
Dictatorship inspired -than the enemy retired from the walls, and the men
liable for active service assembled without any hesitation at the Dictator's
orders. Whilst the army was being mobilised in Rome, the camp of the
enemy had been fixed not far from the Alia. From this point they spread
devastation far and wide, and congratulated themselves that they had chosen
a position of fatal import for the City of Rome; they expected that there
would be the same panic and flight as in the Gaulish war. For, they argued, if
the Romans regarded with horror even the day which took its name from
that spot and was under a curse, how much more would they dread the Alia
itself, the memorial of that great disaster. They would most assuredly have
the appalling sight of the Gauls before their eyes and the sound of their
voices in their ears. Indulging in these idle dreams, they placed all their hopes
in the fortune of the place. The Romans, on the other hand, knew perfectly
well that wherever he was, the Latin enemy was the same as the one who
had been conquered at Lake Regillus and kept in peaceable subjection for a
hundred years. The fact that the place was associated with the memories of
their great defeat would sooner stimulate them to wipe out the recollection
of that disgrace than make them feel that any place on earth could be of ill
omen for their success. Even if the Gauls themselves were to appear there,
they would fight just as they fought when they recovered their City, just as
they fought the next day at Gabii, when they did not leave a single enemy
who had entered Rome to carry the news of their defeat and the Roman
victory to their countrymen.