marched
out of Rome by the right-hand arch of the Carmental Gate, and proceeded
straight to the Cremera, a river which flows into the Tiber below Veii.
On the Cremera they established a fortified camp, and, sallying thence,
they laid waste the Veientine territory. For two years they sustained
the whole weight of the Veientine war; and all the attempts of the
Veientines to dislodge them proved in vain. But at length they were
enticed into an ambuscade, and were all slain. The settlement was
destroyed, and no one of the house survived except a boy who had been
left behind at Rome, and who became the ancestor of the Fabii, afterward
so celebrated in Roman history. The Fabii were sacrificed to the hatred
of the Patricians; for the consul T. Menenius was encamped a short way
off at the time, and he did nothing to save them.

3. CINCINNATUS AND THE AEQUIANS, B.C. 458.--The AEquians in their numerous
attacks upon the Roman territory generally occupied Mount Algidus, which
formed a part of the group of the Alban Hills in Latium. It was
accordingly upon this mount that the battles between the Romans and
AEquians most frequently took place. In the year 458 B.C. the Roman
consul L. Minucius was defeated on the Algidus, and surrounded in his
camp. Five horsemen, who made their escape before the Romans were
completely encompassed, brought the tidings to Rome. The Senate
forthwith appointed L. Cincinnatus dictator.

L. Cincinnatus was one of the heroes of old Roman story. When the
deputies of the Senate came to him to announce his elevation to the
dictatorship they found him driving a plow, and clad only in his tunic
or shirt. They bade him clothe himself, that he might hear the commands
of the Senate. He put on his toga, which his wife Racilia brought him.
The deputies then told him of the peril of the Roman army, and that he
had been made Dictator. The next morning, before daybreak, he appeared
in the forum, and ordered all the men of military age to meet him in the
evening in the Field of Mars, with food for five days, and each with
twelve stakes. His orders were obeyed; and with such speed did he march,
that by midnight he reached Mount Algidus. Placing his men around the
AEquian camp, he told them to raise the war-cry, and at the same time to
begin digging a trench and raising a mound, on the top of which the
stakes were to be driven in. The other Roman army, which was shut in,
hearing the war-cry, burst forth from their camp,