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The men of Praneste, leading forth their army against the Romans, took up their position near the river Allia, on the very spot where the Romans had been routed by the Gauls, selecting this ground that it might inspire their own side with confidence, and dishearten their enemies with the unhappy memories which it recalled But although, for the reasons already noted, this was a course which promised success, the result nevertheless showed that true valour is not to be daunted by trifling disadvantages.
He marries Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, after having killed the dragons which guarded the fountain Allia, and sowed their teeth. From these armed men sprang up, who killed each other, except five. From these arose the five great families of Thebes, called Sparti. One of the Sparti marries a daughter of Cadmus, whose issue was Pentheus, who became king.
Whilst the army is being levied at Rome, in the mean time the enemy's camp is pitched not far from the river Allia: thence laying waste the land far and wide, they boasted one to the other that they had chosen a place fatal to the Roman city; that there would be a similar consternation and flight from thence as occurred in the Gallic war.
Even among heathens, the saying has often been verified, 'a sinful heart makes failing hand', and the battle on the banks of the River Allia, about eleven miles from Rome, was not so much a fight as a rout. The Roman soldiers were ill drawn up, and were at once broken.
For "if the Romans dread a day deemed inauspicious, and marked with the name of that place, how much more than the Allian day would they dread the Allia itself, the monument of so great a disaster. No doubt the fierce looks of the Gauls and the sound of their voices would recur to their eyes and ears."
But fame and the messengers of the Clusians, and then of the other states one after another, preceding them, the rapid advance of the enemy brought the greatest consternation to Rome; for, with their tumultuary troops hastily led on, they met them within the distance of the eleventh mile-stone, where the river Allia, descending from the Crustuminian mountains in a very deep channel, joins the river Tiber not far below the road.
It needed not the great broad-swords slung about their shoulders to tell them for Hannibal's Gauls creatures scarcely half human, whose name brought terror to the Roman maiden of the days of Cannae, as the sight of them had carried death or slavery to her less-favoured sister of the blacker days of the Allia. But Marcia showed little of womanish weakness.
These were disasters no less than the defeat on the Allia, and the Roman senate seems to have felt them as such and to have made use of the favourable turn, which the Italian relations assumed soon after the conclusion of the humiliating treaties with Carthage and Tarentum, with all energy to improve its depressed maritime position.
Acting more and more in open violation of all laws, both divine and human, he assumed the office of Pontifex Maximus, upon the day of the defeat at the Allia ; ordered the magistrates to be elected for ten years of office; and made himself consul for life.
These epithets may undoubtedly apply to the outcasts from the herd, the "Rogues" or hora allia, but so small is the proportion of these that there is not probably one rogue to be found for every five hundred of those in herds; and it is a manifest error, arising from imperfect information, to extend this censure to them generally, or to suppose the elephant to be an animal "thirsting for blood, lying in wait in the jungle to rush on the unwary passer-by, and knowing no greater pleasure than the act of crushing his victim to a shapeless mass beneath his feet."
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