Marcellus

and from that time on a Roman priest was legally exempt from military service only in case no Gallic war occurred again. Their alarm was also shown by their preparations for the war (neither before nor since that time, we are told, were there so many thousands of Romans in arms at once), and by the extraordinary sacrifices which they made to the gods.

For though they have no barbarous or unnatural practices, but cherish towards their deities those mild and reverent sentiments which especially characterize Greek thought, at the time when this war burst upon them they were constrained to obey certain oracular commands from the Sibylline books, and to bury alive two Greeks, a man and a woman, and likewise two Gauls, in the place called the forum boarium, or cattle-market; and in memory of these victims, they still to this day, in the month of November, perform mysterious and secret ceremonies.

The first conflicts of this war brought great victories and also great disasters to the Romans, and led to no sure and final conclusion; but at last Flaminius and Furius, the consuls, led forth large forces against the Insubrians. At the time of their departure, however, the river that flows through Picenum was seen to be running with blood, and it was reported that at Ariminum three moons had appeared in the heavens,