e general." While they are conversing in this way, it so happened,
that as a Gaul was driving away some cattle feeding on the outside of
the rampart two Roman soldiers took them from him. Stones were thrown at
them by the Gauls, then a shout was raised at the next Roman post, and
several ran forward on both sides. And now matters were not far from a
regular engagement, had not the contest been quickly stopped by the
centurions. By this event the testimony of Tullius was certainly
confirmed with the dictator; and the matter not admitting of further
delay, a proclamation is issued that they were to fight on the day
following. The dictator however, as one who went into the field relying
more on the courage of his men than on their numerical strength, began
to look about and consider how he might by some artifice strike terror
into the enemy. With a sagacious mind he devises a new project, which
many generals both of our own and of foreign countries have since
adopted, some indeed in our own times. He orders the panniers to be
taken from the mules, and two side-cloths only being left, he mounts the
muleteers on them, equipped with arms partly belonging to the prisoners,
and some to the sick. About a thousand of these being equipped, he mixes
with them one hundred horsemen, and orders them to go up during the
night into the mountains over the camp and to conceal themselves in the
woods, and not to stir from thence, till they should receive a signal
from him. As soon as day dawned, he himself began to extend his line
along the bottom of the mountain, for the express purpose that the enemy
should face the mountains. The measures for infusing groundless terror
being now completed, which terror indeed proved almost more serviceable
than real strength, the leaders of the Gauls first believed that the
Romans would not come down to the plain: then when they saw them begin
on a sudden to descend, they also, on their part eager for the fight,
rush forward to the encounter; and the battle commenced before the
signal could be given by the leaders.

15. The Gauls attacked the right wing with greater fierceness, nor could
they have been withstood, had not the dictator happened to be on the
spot, rebuking Sextus Tullius by name, and asking him, "Was it in this
way he had engaged that the soldiers would fight? Where now were the
shouts of those demanding their arms? where the threats that they would
commence the fight without the orders of