about to join battle, Aruns, the son of Tarquin, and Brutus, the
Roman consul, attacked one another, not by chance, but with fell hatred
and rage, the one urging his horse against the tyrant and enemy of his
country, the other against the man who drove him into exile. Falling
upon one another with more fury than judgment, they made no attempt to
defend themselves, but only to strike, and both perished. The struggle,
so terribly begun, was continued with equal ferocity on both sides,
until the armies, after great losses, were separated by a tempest.
Valerius was in great straits, not knowing how the battle had gone, and
observing that his soldiers were despondent when they looked at the
corpses of their comrades, and elated when they saw those of the enemy,
so equal and undecided had been the slaughter. Yet each side, when it
viewed its own dead close by, was more inclined to own itself defeated,
than to claim the victory because of the supposed losses of the enemy.
Night came on, and it was spent as may be imagined by men who had fought
so hard. When all was quiet in both camps, we are told that the grove
was shaken, and that from it proceeded a loud voice which declared that
the Etruscans had lost one man more than the Romans. Apparently it was
the voice of a god; for immediately the Romans raised a bold and joyous
shout, and the Etruscans, panic-stricken, ran out of their camp and
dispersed. The Romans attacked the camp, took prisoners all that were
left in it, something less than five thousand, and plundered it. The
dead, when counted, proved to be eleven thousand three hundred of the
enemy, and of the Romans the same number save one. This battle is said
to have been fought on the Calends of March. Valerius triumphed after it
in a four-horse chariot, being the first consul that ever did so. And it
was a magnificent sight, and did not, as some say, offend the
spectators; for, if so, the habit of doing it would not have been so
carefully kept up for so many years. The people were also pleased with
the honours which Valerius paid to his colleague in arranging a splendid
funeral for him; he also pronounced a funeral oration over him, which
was so much approved of by the Romans that from that day forth it became
the custom for all good and great men at their deaths to have an oration
made over them by the leading men of the time. This is said to have been
older even than the Greek funeral orations, unless, as Anaximenes tel