Ab urbe condita

They had gone to war in a feeling of contempt for their enemy as they believed that almost all the Roman fighting men had been annihilated by the Gauls, but when they heard that Camillus was in command they were filled with such alarm that they raised a rampart round them and barricaded the

rampart with trees piled up round it to prevent the enemy from penetrating their lines at any point. As soon as he became aware of this Camillus ordered fire to be thrown on the barricade.

The wind happened to be blowing strongly towards the enemy, and so it not only opened up a way through the fire, but by driving the flames into the camp it produced such consternation amongst the defenders, with the steam and smoke and crackling of the green wood as it burnt, that the Roman soldiers found less difficulty in surmounting the rampart and forcing the camp than in crossing the burnt barricade.

The enemy were routed and cut to pieces. After the capture of the camp the Dictator gave the booty to the soldiers; an act all the more welcome to them as they did not expect it from a general by no means given to generosity.

In the pursuit he ravaged the length and breadth of the Volscian territory, and at last after seventy years of war forced them to surrender.

From his conquest of the Volscians he marched across to the Aequi who were also preparing for war, surprised their army at Bolae, and in the first assault captured not only their camp but their city.

While[*](War with Etruria.) these successes were occurring in the field of operations where Camillus was the life and soul of the Roman cause, in another direction a terrible danger was threatening.

Nearly the whole of Etruria was in arms and was besieging Sutrium, a city in alliance with Rome. Their envoys approached the senate with a request for help in their desperate condition, and the senate passed a decree that the Dictator should render assistance to the Sutrines as soon as he possibly could.

Their hopes were deferred, and as the circumstances of the besieged were such as to admit of no longer delay —their scanty numbers being worn out with toil, want of sleep, and fighting, which always fell upon the same persons —they made a conditional surrender of their city.

As the mournful procession set forth, leaving their hearths and homes, without arms and with only one garment apiece, Camillus and his army happened just at that moment to appear on the scene. The grief-stricken crowd flung themselves at his feet; the appeals of their leaders, wrung from them by dire necessity, were drowned by the weeping of the women and children who were being dragged along as companions in exile . Camillus bade the Sutrines spare their laments, it was to the Etruscans that he was bringing grief and tears.