ny disasters, nor likely to turn
their thoughts to a surrender, unless force were employed, determine to
have recourse to extremities, and to make an attack on the citadel. A
signal being given at break of day, their entire multitude is marshalled
in the forum; thence, after raising the shout and forming a testudo,
they advance to the attack. Against whom the Romans, acting neither
rashly nor precipitately, having strengthened the guards at every
approach, and opposing the main strength of their men in that quarter
where they saw the battalions advancing, suffer the enemy to ascend,
judging that the higher they ascended, the more easily would they be
driven back down the steep. About the middle of the ascent they met
them: and making a charge thence from the higher ground, which of itself
bore them against the enemy, they routed the Gauls with slaughter and
destruction, so that never after, either in parties or with their whole
force, did they try that kind of fighting. Laying aside all hope of
succeeding by force of arms, they prepare for a blockade; of which
having had no idea up to that time, they had, whilst burning the city,
destroyed whatever corn had been therein, and during those very days all
the provisions had been carried off from the land to Veii. Accordingly,
dividing their army, they resolved that one part should plunder through
the neighbouring states, that the other part should carry on the siege
of the citadel, so that the ravagers of the country might supply the
besiegers with corn.

44. The Gauls, who marched from the city, were led by fortune herself,
to make trial of Roman valour, to Ardea, where Camillus was in exile:
who, more distressed by the fortune of the public than his own, whilst
he now pined away arraigning gods and men, fired with indignation, and
wondering where were now those men who with him had taken Veii and
Falerii, who had conducted other wars rather by their own valour than by
the favour of fortune, hears on a sudden that the army of the Gauls was
approaching, and that the people of Ardea in consternation were met in
council on the subject. And as if moved by divine inspiration, after he
advanced into the midst of the assembly, having hitherto been accustomed
to absent himself from such meetings, he says, "People of Ardea, my
friends of old, of late my fellow-citizens also, since your kindness so
ordered it, and my good fortune achieved it, let no one of you suppose
that I have co