mius Alba had opposed his troops to
them: and they made the victor give ground, until the dictator came up,
as his own men were now retreating. To that quarter the whole weight of
the battle was now turned. On Messius alone the fortune of the enemy
depends. Many wounds and great slaughter now took place on both sides.
By this time not even the Roman generals themselves fight without
receiving wounds, one of them, Postumius, retired from the field having
his skull fractured by a stroke of a stone; neither the dictator could
be removed by a wound in the shoulder, nor Fabius by having his thigh
almost pinned to his horse, nor the consul by his arm being cut off,
from the perilous conflict.

29. Messius, with a band of the bravest youths, by a furious charge
through heaps of slaughtered foes, was carried on to the camp of the
Volscians, which had not yet been taken: the same route the entire body
of the army followed. The consul, pursuing them in their disordered
flight to the very rampart, attacks both the camp and the rampart; in
the same direction the dictator also brings up his forces on the other
side. The assault was conducted with no less intrepidity than the battle
had been. They say that the consul even threw a standard within the
rampart, in order that the soldiers might push on the more briskly, and
that the first impression was made in recovering the standard. The
dictator also, having levelled the rampart, had now carried the fight
into the camp. Then the enemy began in every direction to throw down
their arms and to surrender: and their camp also being taken, all the
enemy were set up to sale, except the senators.[156] Part of the plunder
was restored to the Latins and Hernicians, when they demanded their
property; the remainder the dictator sold by auction: and the consul,
being invested with the command of the camp, he himself, entering the
city in triumph, resigned his dictatorship. Some writers cast a gloom on
the memory of this glorious dictatorship, when they state that his son,
though victorious, was beheaded by Aulus Postumius, because, tempted by
a favourable opportunity of fighting to advantage, he had left his post
without orders. We are disposed to refuse our belief; and we are
warranted by the variety of opinions on the matter. And it is an
argument against it, that such orders have been entitled "Manlian," not
"Postumian," since the person who first set on foot so barbarous a
precedent, was likel