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In this condition they left the city, and encamped by the river Allia, about ten miles from Rome, and not far from the place where it falls into the Tiber; and here the Gauls came upon them, and, after a disgraceful resistance, devoid of order and discipline, they were miserably defeated.
But this defeat wiped out the memory of the former one, and the day was always afterwards called that of the Allia, from the river of that name. It is a vexed question whether we ought to consider some days unlucky, or whether Herakleitus was right in rebuking Hesiod for calling some days good and some bad, because he knew not that the nature of all days is the same.
It was about five o'clock in the evening, or a little later, and we had hardly cleared the foot of the hill and got to the plain below, when a rustling of leaves and a crackling of dry brushwood were heard on our right, followed immediately by the trumpeting of a hora allia , which was making towards us. We all fled, followed by the elephant.
There should also be something to symbolize the protectress of Italy against the Gauls, whose irruptions Rome, though defeated at Allia, succeeded ultimately in arresting and hurling back, to the general benefit of Italian civilization which, we may be sure, felt very grateful to her for that service, and remembered it when her existence was threatened by Hannibal, with Gauls in his army.
Yet, so far from any mark of infamy being sought for, which might be fixed upon these troops, the city of Rome was recovered by means of those very troops who had fled to Veii from the Allia; and the Caudine legions, which had returned to Rome without their arms, being sent back armed to Samnium, brought under the yoke that very enemy who had exulted in the disgrace which, in this instance, attached to them.
There was the dies denominalis, which was the fourth of the kalends; nones and ides of every month, over and above the anniversary of every great defeat which the republic had sustained, particularly the dies alliensis, or fifteenth of the kalends of December, on which the Romans were totally defeated by the Gauls and Veientes; as Lucan says et damnata diu Romanis allia fastis, and Allia in Rome's Calendar condemn'd.
And the unfair treatment which Camillus had received now bore disastrous fruits, for no man dared to use authority except to flatter and gain the favour of the people. They proceeded about eleven miles from the city, and halted for the night on the banks of the river Allia, which joins the Tiber not far from where their camp was pitched.
These levied an army with all haste and marched forth, meeting the Gauls at the river Allia, where, flowing down from the mountains of Crustumeria in a very deep channel, it is joined to the Tiber, about eleven miles from Rome.
It was not till the Gauls were marching upon Rome that a Roman military force crossed the Tiber and sought to bar their way. Not twelve miles from the gates, opposite to the confluence of the rivulet Allia with the Tiber, the armies met, and a battle took place on the 18th July, 364.
At first they thought that this would be done at the first coming of the enemy; but afterwards believed that it would be delayed until nightfall, that the terror might be increased by the darkness. Nevertheless all men bore themselves bravely, and altogether unlike to them who had turned their backs in such shameful fashion at the river Allia.
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