24.
But the Romans were not yet sure of victory; on descending into the plain they found another fight awaiting them.
[2]
For the Gallic host, superior to any feeling for such losses, sprang up like a new army, and urged their fresh troops against the victorious foe.
[3]
The Romans, slowing down, came to a halt, for they were confronted, weary as they were, with a second struggle, and the consul, rashly exposing himself in the van, had received a javelin in his left shoulder that had like to have gone clean through it, and had withdrawn for a brief space from the fight.
[4]
And now the delay had almost lost them the victory, when the consul, whose wound had been dressed, rode up again to the front. “Why are you standing there, my men?” he exclaimed. “You have no Latin or Sabine foe to deal with, whom you may overcome in fight and transform from an enemy into an ally; we have drawn the sword against wild beasts, and we must have their blood or yield them ours.
[5]
You have repulsed them from your camp, you have driven them headlong down a sloping valley, you stand on heaps of your slain enemies; cover the plain with the same carnage you have spread upon the mountains.
[6]
Do not wait for the enemy to flee from you, while you stand still; you must move forward and attack them.”
[7]
Roused once more to action by these exhortations, they drove back the foremost of the Gallic maniples, and then, forming in wedges, burst through into the midst of the main [p. 439]array;
[8]
whereat the barbarians were thrown into1 confusion, having no definite orders nor commanders, and, turning, charged upon their fellows; and so, dispersed about the fields, and even carried past their own camp in the rout, they made for the highest point in the range of hills that met their eyes, namely, the Alban Citadel.2
[9]
The consul did not pursue them beyond their camp, for his wound was troubling him, and he was unwilling to send his troops against the hills which the enemy had occupied. Giving over to his soldiers the entire booty of the camp, he led back his army, flushed with victory and enriched with the Gallic spoils, to Rome.
[10]
The consul's triumph was delayed by reason of his wound, which also made the senate wish for a dictator, that there might be someone —in the illness of the consuls —who could hold the election.
[11]
Lucius Furius Camillus was appointed to that office, and Publius Cornelius Scipio was made his master of the horse. Camillus restored to the patricians their ancient possession of the consulship, and in recognition of this service was himself, with their warm support, elected consul, and announced the election of Appius Claudius Crassus as his colleague.
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