her, raised itself upon its wings, and wounded with
its beak and claws the face and eyes of the enemy, so that, terrified
by so marvellous a thing, he was easily slain by Valerius. Now, up to
this time the foremost lines of both armies had remained quiet; but when
Valerius began to strip the spoils from the body of the dead man, the
Gauls ran forward to hinder him. Then with yet greater speed ran the
Romans to his help; and there was a great fight about the dead body. And
Camillus seeing that the men were confident by reason not only of the
valour of Valerius, but also of the manifest favour of the Gods, he
cried aloud, "Soldiers, do as Valerius hath done, and slay multitudes
of Gauls as he hath slain their champion." Thus was there won a great
victory over the Gauls, for though some of them fought valiantly, the
greater part fled before even the Romans had come within a spear's cast
of them. As for Valerius, he was made Consul in the year following,
though he was but twenty and three years of age (It was not lawful in
those days that a man should be Consul till he was forty and two years
of age); and he and his posterity after him had for themselves the
surname of Corvus, which is, being interpreted, a crow. In the four
hundred and twelfth year after the building of the city there was war
between the Romans and the Samnites, in which war, when the one Consul,
Valerius, had won a great victory, the other, Cornelius, was well-nigh
destroyed together with his army. For, leading his soldiers into a
certain narrow pass, he did not perceive that it was surrounded on all
sides by the enemy, and that these were also on the higher ground
above him. And while he doubted what he should do (for it was no longer
possible that he should return by the same way by which he came), a
certain Decius Mus, being a tribune of the soldiers, perceived a hill
above the camp of the enemy, and that this hill might easily be climbed
by soldiers lightly armed. Thereupon he said to the Consul, "Cornelius,
seest thou that hill? Thereby we may save ourselves if we only make
haste and occupy it; for the Samnites are blind that they have not
occupied it before. Give me only the front rank and the spearmen of one
legion; and when with these I shall have climbed to the top, do thou
move forward with the legions, fearing nothing, for the Samnites cannot
follow thee, having to pass this hill. As for us, the fortune of the
Roman people or our own valour will