ly upon their continued apprehension of it, when
the troops entered the gates in hostile array. During that night,
however, and the following day, the state by no means bore any
resemblance to that which which had fled in so dastardly a manner at the
Allia. For as there was not a hope that the city could be defended, so
small a number of troops now remaining, it was determined that the
youth fit for military service, and the abler part of the senate with
their wives and children, should retire into the citadel and Capitol;
and having collected stores of arms and corn, and thence from a
fortified post, that they should defend the deities, and the
inhabitants, and the Roman name: that the flamen [Quirinalis] and the
vestal priestesses should carry away far from slaughter and
conflagration the objects appertaining to the religion of the state: and
that their worship should not be intermitted, until there remained no
one who should continue it. If the citadel and Capitol, the mansion of
the gods, if the senate, the source of public counsel, if the youth of
military age, should survive the impending ruin of the city, the loss
would be light of the aged, the crowd left behind in the city, and who
were sure to perish[170] under any circumstances. And in order that the
plebeian portion of the multitude might bear the thing with greater
resignation, the aged men, who had enjoyed triumphs and consulships,
openly declared that they would die along with them, and that they would
not burden the scanty stores of the armed men with those bodies, with
which they were now unable to bear arms, or to defend their country.
Such was the consolation addressed to each other by the aged now
destined to death.

[Footnote 170: The aged were doomed to perish under any circumstances,
(_utique_,) from scarcity of provisions, whether they retired into the
Capitol with the military youth, or were left behind in the city.]

40. Their exhortations were then turned to the band of young men, whom
they escorted to the Capitol and citadel, commending to their valour and
youth whatever might be the remaining fortune of a city, which for three
hundred and sixty years had been victorious in all its wars. When those
who carried with them all their hope and resources, parted with the
others, who had determined not to survive the ruin of their captured
city; both the circumstance itself and the appearance [it exhibited] was
really distressing, and also the weep