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Whence it came that the Gauls recognizing the Roman envoys, turned against the Romans all the hatred which before they had felt for the Etruscans; and grew still more incensed when on making complaint to the Roman senate, through their ambassador, of the wrong done them, and demanding that the Fabii should be given up to them in atonement for their offence, not merely were the offenders not given up or punished in any way, but, on the contrary, when the comitia met were created tribunes with consular powers.
Then the Fabian family addressed the senate; the consul speaks in the name of the family: "Conscript fathers, the Veientian war requires, as you know, a constant rather than a strong force. Do you attend to other wars: assign the Fabii as enemies to the Veientians. We pledge ourselves that the majesty of the Roman name shall be safe in that quarter.
'To the good old plan That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can. The Fabii, on receiving this answer, were so foolish as to transgress the rule, owned by the savage Gauls, that an ambassador should neither fight nor be fought with; they joined the Clusians, and one brother, named Quintus, killed a remarkably large and tall Gallic chief in single combat.
Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws of nations, and in great anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome, demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him.
Again the Veientine state had to contend with the Fabii without any additional military armament: and not merely did they make raids into each other's territories, or sudden attacks upon those carrying on the raids, but they fought repeatedly on level ground, and in pitched battles: and one family of the Roman people oftentimes gained the victory over an entire Etruscan state, and a most powerful one for those times.
Further materials were furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the various tales that relate to the Fabii. Other tales gave a symbolic and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law.
And as long as there was nothing else to occupy them but mutual devastations, the Fabii were not only able to protect their garrison, but through the entire tract, where the Tuscan territory adjoins the Roman, they protected all their own districts and ravaged those of the enemy, spreading their forces along both frontiers.
And now the Fabii had such contempt for the enemy that they thought themselves such as could never be conquered at any place or time. In which confidence, seeing on a certain day herds of cattle on the plain, they ran forth to drive them, heeding not that they were distant from the fort a great space of plain.
He shall uproot Argos and Agamemnonian Mycenae, and the Aeacid's own heir, the seed of Achilles mighty in arms, avenging his ancestors in Troy and Minerva's polluted temple. Whither whirl you me all breathless, O Fabii? thou art he, the most mighty, the one man whose lingering retrieves our State.
But lest they should be blamed if any misfortune followed, the Senators referred the decision of the matter to an assembly of the people; in which assembly favour and wealth availed so much that the Fabii were not only let go unpunished, but were even chosen with three others to be tribunes of the soldiers for the year to come.
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