But both gods and men interfered to prevent the Romans from owing their lives to a ransom. For by some chance, before the execrable bargain was completed, all the gold being not yet weighed in consequence of the altercation, the dictator comes up, and orders the gold to be removed from their midst, and the Gauls to clear away. The latter, demurring to this, affirmed that they had concluded a treaty; but he denied that the agreement was a valid one which had been entered into with a magistrate of inferior authority without his orders, after he had been nominated dictator; and he gave notice to the Gauls to get ready for battle. He ordered his men to throw their baggage in a heap, and to get ready their arms, and to recover their country with steel, not with gold, having before their eyes the temples of the gods, and their wives and children, and the site of their native city disfigured by the calamities of war, and all that they were solemnly bound to defend, to recover, and to revenge. He then drew up his army, as the nature of the place admitted, on the site of the half-demolished city, which was naturally uneven; and he secured all those advantages for his own men, which could be selected or acquired by military skill. The Gauls, thrown into confusion by this unexpected event, took up arms, and governed by fury rather than prudence rushed upon the Romans. But now fortune had changed; now the aid of the gods and human skill assisted the Roman cause. At the first encounter therefore the Gauls were routed with no greater difficulty than they had found in gaining the victory at the Allia. They were afterwards beaten when the Romans were again under the conduct and auspices of Camillus, in a more regular engagement at the eighth stone on the Gabine road, whither they had betaken themselves after their defeat. There the slaughter was universal: their camp was taken, and not even one person was left to carry news of the defeat. The dictator, after having recovered his country from the enemy, returned into the city in triumph; and in the soldiers’ rough jests such as they are wont to make, he was styled, with praises by no means undeserved, “Romulus,” and “Parent of the country,” and “Second founder of the city.”

THE RISE OF HANNIBAL

Punica, Book I

Silius Italicus

Translated by J. D. Duff, 1934