by Polybius
18. In the early times of their settlement they did not merely subdue the territory which they occupied, but rendered also many of the neighbouring peoples subject to them, whom they overawed by their audacity. Some time afterwards they conquered the Romans in battle, and pursuing the flying legions, in three days after the battle occupied Rome itself with the exception of the Capitol. But a circumstance intervened which recalled them home, an invasion, that is to say, of their territory by the Venĕti. Accordingly they made terms with the Romans, handed back the city, and returned to their own land; and subsequently were occupied with domestic wars. Some of the tribes, also, who dwelt on the Alps, comparing their own barren districts with the rich territory occupied by the others, were continually making raids upon them, and collecting their forces to attack them. This gave the Romans time to recover their strength, and to come to terms with the people of Latium. When, thirty years after the capture of the city, the Celts came again as far as Alba, the Romans were taken by surprise; and having had no intelligence of the intended invasion, nor time to collect the forces of the Socii, did not venture to give them battle. But when another invasion in great force took place twelve years later, they did get previous intelligence of it; and, having mustered their allies, sallied forth to meet them with great spirit, being eager to engage them and fight a decisive battle. But the Gauls were dismayed at their approach; and, being besides weakened by internal feuds, retreated homewards as soon as night fell, with all the appearance of a regular flight. After this alarm they kept quiet for thirteen years; at the end of which period, seeing that the power of the Romans was growing formidable, they made a peace and a definite treaty with them.
19. They abided by this treaty for thirty years: but at that time, alarmed by a threatening movement on the part of the Transalpine tribes, and fearing that a dangerous war was imminent, they diverted the attack of the invading horde from themselves by presents and appeals to their ties of kindred, but incited them to attack the Romans, joining in the expedition themselves. They directed their march through Etruria, and were joined by the Etruscans; and the combined armies, after taking a great quantity of booty, got safely back from the Roman territory. But when they got home, they quarrelled about the division of the spoil, and in the end destroyed most of it, as well as the flower of their own force. This is the way of the Gauls when they have appropriated their neighbours’ property; and it mostly arises from brutal drunkenness, and intemperate feeding. In the fourth year after this, the Samnites and Gauls made a league, gave the Romans battle in the neighbourhood of Camerium, and slew a large number. Incensed at this defeat, the Romans marched out a few days afterwards, and with two Consular armies engaged the enemy in the territory of Sentinum; and, having killed the greater number of them, forced the survivors to retreat in hot haste each to his own land. Again, after another interval of ten years, the Gauls besieged Arretium with a great army, and the Romans went to the assistance of the town, and were beaten in an engagement under its walls. The Praetor Lucius having fallen in this battle, Manius Curius was appointed in his place. The ambassadors, sent by him to the Gauls to treat for the prisoners, were treacherously murdered by them. At this the Romans, in high wrath, sent an expedition against them, which was met by the tribe called the Senones. In a pitched battle the army of the Senones were cut to pieces, and the rest of the tribe expelled from the country; into which the Romans sent the first colony which they ever planted in Gaul — namely, the town of Sena, so called from the tribe of Gauls which formerly occupied it. This is the town which I mentioned before as lying on the coast at the extremity of the plains of the Padus.
20. Seeing the expulsion of the Senones, and fearing the same fate for themselves, the Boii made a general levy, summoned the Etruscans to join them, and set out to war. They mustered their forces near the lacus Vadimonis, and there gave the Romans battle; in which the Etruscans indeed suffered a loss of more than half their men, while scarcely any of the Boii escaped. But yet in the very next year the same two nations joined forces once more; and arming even those of them who had only just reached manhood, gave the Romans battle again; and it was not until they had been utterly defeated in this engagement that they humbled themselves so far as to send ambassadors to Rome and make a treaty.
These events took place in the third year before Pyrrhus crossed into Italy, and in the fifth before the destruction of the Gauls at Delphi. For at this period fortune seems to have plagued the Gauls with a kind of epidemic of war. But the Romans gained two most important advantages from these events. First, their constant defeats at the hands of the Gauls had inured them to the worst that could befall them; and so, when they had to fight with Pyrrhus, they came to the contest like trained and experienced gladiators. And in the second place, they had crushed the insolence of the Gauls just in time to allow them to give an undivided attention, first to the war with Pyrrhus for the possession of Italy, and then to the war with Carthage for the supremacy in Sicily.
21. After these defeats the Gauls maintained an unbroken peace with Rome for forty-five years. But when the generation which had witnessed the actual struggle had passed away, and a younger generation of men had taken their places, filled with unreflecting hardihood, and who had neither experienced nor seen any suffering or reverse, they began, as was natural, to disturb the settlement; and on the one hand to let trifling causes exasperate them against Rome, and on the other to invite the Alpine Gauls to join the fray. At first these intrigues were carried on by their chiefs without the knowledge of the tribesmen; and accordingly, when an armed host of Transalpine Gauls arrived at Ariminum, the Boii were suspicious; and forming a conspiracy against their own leaders, as well as against the new-comers, they put their own two kings Atis and Galatus to death, and cut each other to pieces in a pitched battle. Just then the Romans, alarmed at the threatened invasion, had despatched an army; but learning that the Gauls had committed this act of self-destruction, it returned home again. In the fifth year after this alarm, in the Consulship of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the Romans divided among their citizens the territory of Picenum, from which they had ejected the Senones when they conquered them: a democratic measure introduced by Gaius Flaminius, and a policy which we must pronounce to have been the first step in the demoralisation of the people, as well as the cause of the next Gallic war. For many of the Gauls, and especially the Boii whose lands were coterminous with the Roman territory, entered upon that war from the conviction that the object of Rome in her wars with them was no longer supremacy and empire over them, but their total expulsion and destruction.
22. Accordingly the two most extensive tribes, the Insubres and Boii, joined in the despatch of messengers to the tribes living about the Alps and on the Rhone, who from a word which means “serving for hire,” are called Gaesatae. To their kings Concolitanus and Aneroetes they offered a large sum of gold on the spot; and, for the future, pointed out to them the greatness of the wealth of Rome, and all the riches of which they would become possessed, if they took it. In these attempts to inflame their cupidity and induce them to join the expedition against Rome they easily succeeded. For they added to the above arguments pledges of their own alliance; and reminded them of the campaign of their own ancestors in which they had seized Rome itself, and had been masters of all it contained, as well as the city itself, for seven months; and had at last evacuated it of their own free will, and restored it by an act of free grace, returning unconquered and scatheless with the booty to their own land. These arguments made the leaders so eager for the expedition, that there never at any other time came from that part of Gaul a larger host, or one consisting of more notable warriors. Meanwhile, the Romans, informed of what was coming, partly by report and partly by conjecture, were in such a state of constant alarm and excitement, that they hurriedly enrolled legions, collected supplies, and sent out their forces to the frontier, as though the enemy were already in their territory, before the Gauls had stirred from their own lands.
It was
this movement of the Gauls that, more than anything else, helped the Carthaginians to consolidate their power in Iberia. For the Romans, as I have said, looked upon the Celtic question as the more pressing one of the two, as being so near home; and were forced to wink at what was going on in Iberia, in their anxiety to settle it satisfactorily first. Having, therefore, put their relations with the Carthaginians on a safe footing by the treaty with Hasdrubal, which I spoke of a short time back, they gave an undivided attention to the Celtic war, convinced that their interest demanded that a decisive battle should be fought with them.
23. The Gaesatae, then, having collected their forces, crossed the Alps and descended into the valley of the Padus with a formidable army,
furnished with a variety of armour, in the eighth year after the distribution of the lands of Picenum. The Insubres and Boii remained loyal to the agreement they had made with them: but the Venĕti and Cenomani being induced by embassies from Rome to take the Roman side, the Celtic kings were obliged to leave a portion of their forces behind, to guard against an invasion of their territory by those tribes. They themselves, with their main army, consisting of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, and twenty thousand horse and chariots, struck camp and started on their march, which was to be through Etruria, in high spirits. As soon as it was known at Rome that the Celts had crossed the Alps, one of the Consuls, Lucius Aemilius Papus, was sent with an army to Ariminum to guard against the passage of the enemy, and one of the Praetors into Etruria: for the other Consul, Gaius Atilius Regulus, happened to be in Sardinia with his legions. There was universal terror in Rome, for the danger threatening them was believed to be great and formidable. And naturally so: for the old fear of the Gauls had never been eradicated from their minds. No one thought of anything else: they were incessantly occupied in mustering the legions, or enrolling new ones, and in ordering up such of the allies as were ready for service. The proper magistrates were ordered to give in lists of all citizens of military age; that it might at once be known to what the total of the available forces amounted. And such stores of corn, and darts, and other military equipments were collected as no one could remember on any former occasion. From every side assistance was eagerly rendered; for the inhabitants of Italy, in their terror at the Gallic invasion, no longer thought of the matter as a question of alliance with Rome, or of the war as undertaken to support Roman supremacy, but each people regarded it as a danger menacing themselves and their own city and territory. The response to the Roman appeal therefore was prompt.
24. But in order that we may learn from actual facts how great the power was which Hannibal subsequently ventured to attack, and what a mighty empire he faced when he succeeded in inflicting upon the Roman people the most severe disasters, I must now state the amount of the forces they could at that time bring into the field. The two Consuls had marched out with four legions, each consisting of five thousand two hundred infantry and three hundred cavalry. Besides this there were with each Consul allies to the number of thirty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry. Of Sabines and Etruscans too, there had come to Rome, for that special occasion, four thousand horse and more than fifty thousand foot. These were formed into an army and sent in advance into Etruria, under the command of one of the Praetors. Moreover, the Umbrians and Sarsinatae, hill tribes of the Apennine district, were collected to the number of twenty thousand; and with them were twenty thousand Venĕti and Cenomani. These were stationed on the frontier of the Gallic territory, that they might divert the attention of the invaders, by making an incursion into the territory of the Boii. These were the forces guarding the frontier. In Rome itself, ready as a reserve in case of the accidents of war, there remained twenty thousand foot and three thousand horse of citizens, and thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse of the allies. Lists of men for service had also been returned, of Latins eighty thousand foot and five thousand horse; of Samnites seventy thousand foot and seven thousand horse; of Iapygians and Messapians together fifty thousand foot and sixteen thousand horse; and of Lucanians thirty thousand foot and three thousand horse; of Marsi, and Marrucini, and Ferentani, and Vestini, twenty thousand foot and four thousand horse. And besides these, there were in reserve in Sicily and Tarentum two legions, each of which consisted of about four thousand two hundred foot, and two hundred horse. Of the Romans and Campanians the total of those put on the roll was two hundred and fifty thousand foot and twenty-three thousand horse; so that the grand total of the forces actually defending Rome was over 150,000 foot, 6000 cavalry: and of the men able to bear arms, Romans and allies, over 700,000 foot and 70,000 horse; while Hannibal, when he invaded Italy, had less than twenty thousand to put against this immense force.
25. There will be another opportunity of treating the subject in greater detail; for the present I must return to the Celts. Having entered Etruria, they began their march through the country, devastating it as they chose, and without any opposition; and finally directed their course against Rome itself. But when they were encamped under the walls of Clusium, which is three days’ march from Rome, news was brought them that the Roman forces, which were on duty in Etruria, were following on their rear and were close upon them; upon which they turned back to meet them, eager to offer them battle. The two armies came in sight of each other about sunset, and encamped for the night a short distance apart. But when night fell, the Celts lit their watch fires; and leaving their cavalry on the ground, with instructions that, as soon as daylight made them visible to the enemy, they should follow by the same route, they made a secret retreat along the road to Faesulae, and took up their position there; that they might be joined by their own cavalry, and might disconcert the attack of the enemy. Accordingly, when at daybreak the Romans saw that the cavalry were alone, they believed that the Celts had fled, and hastened in pursuit of the retreating horse; but when they approached the spot where the enemy were stationed, the Celts suddenly left their position and fell upon them. The struggle was at first maintained with fury on both sides: but the courage and superior numbers of the Celts eventually gave them the victory. No less than six thousand Romans fell: while the rest fled, most of whom made their way to a certain strongly fortified height, and there remained. The first impulse of the Celts was to besiege them: but they were worn out by their previous night march, and all the suffering and fatigue of the day; leaving therefore a detachment of cavalry to keep guard round the hill, they hastened to procure rest and refreshment, resolving to besiege the fugitives next day unless they voluntarily surrendered.
26. But meanwhile Lucius Aemilius, who had been stationed on the coast of the Adriatic at Ariminum, having been informed that the Gauls had entered Etruria and were approaching Rome, set off to the rescue; and after a rapid march appeared on the ground just at the critical moment. He pitched his camp close to the enemy; and the fugitives on the hill, seeing his watch fires, and understanding what had happened, quickly recovered their courage and sent some of their men unarmed to make their way through the forest and tell the Consul what had happened. This news left the Consul as he thought no alternative but to fight. He therefore ordered the Tribunes to lead out the infantry at daybreak, while he, taking command of the cavalry, led the way towards the hill. The Gallic chieftains too had seen his watch fires, and understood that the enemy was come; and at once held council of war. The advice of King Aneroestes was, “that seeing the amount of booty they had taken, — an incalculable quantity indeed of captives, cattle, and other spoil, — they had better not run the risk of another general engagement, but return home in safety; and having disposed of this booty, and freed themselves from its incumbrance, return, if they thought good, to make another determined attack upon Rome.” Having resolved to follow the advice of Aneroestes in the present juncture, the chiefs broke up their night council, and before daybreak struck camp, and marched through Etruria by the road which follows the coast of the Ligurian bay. While Lucius, having taken off the remnant of the army from the hill, and combined it with his own fo
rces, determined that it would not be by any means advantageous to offer the enemy regular battle; but that it was better to dog their footsteps, watching for favourable times and places at which to inflict damage upon them, or wrest some of their booty from their hands.
27. Just at that time the Consul Gaius Atilius had crossed from Sardinia, and having landed at Pisae was on his way to Rome; and therefore he and the enemy were advancing to meet each other. When the Celts were at Telamon in Etruria, their advanced guard fell in with that of Gaius, and the men being made prisoners informed the Consul in answer to questions of what had taken place; and told him that both the armies were in the neighbourhood: that of the Celts, namely, and that of Lucius close upon their rear. Though somewhat disturbed at the events which he thus learnt, Gaius regarded the situation as a hopeful one, when he considered that the Celts were on the road between two hostile armies. He therefore ordered the Tribunes to martial the legions and to advance at the ordinary pace, and in line as far as the breadth of the ground permitted; while he himself having surveyed a piece of rising ground which commanded the road, and under which the Celts must march, took his cavalry with him and hurried on to seize the eminence, and so begin the battle in person; convinced that by these means he would get the principal credit of the action for himself. At first the Celts not knowing anything about the presence of Gaius Atilius, but supposing from what was taking place, that the cavalry of Aemilius had outmarched them in the night, and were seizing the points of vantage in the van of their route, immediately detached some cavalry and light armed infantry to dispute the possession of this eminence. But having shortly afterwards learnt the truth about the presence of Gaius from a prisoner who was brought in, they hurriedly got their infantry into position, and drew them up so as to face two opposite ways, some, that is, to the front and others to the rear. For they knew that one army was following on their rear; and they expected from the intelligence which had reached them, and from what they saw actually occurring, that they would have to meet another on their front.