He was to march his troops through a vast wood, which the Gauls called Litana.

On the right and left of his route, the natives had sawed the trees in such a manner that they continued standing upright, but would fall when impelled by a slight force.

Posthumius had with him two Roman legions, and besides had levied so great a number of allies along the Adriatic Sea, that he led into the enemy's country twenty-five thousand men.

As soon as this army entered the wood, the Gauls, who were posted around its extreme skirts, pushed down the outermost of the sawn trees, which falling on those next them, and these again on others which of themselves stood tottering and scarcely maintained their position, crushed arms, men, and horses in an indiscriminate manner, so that scarcely ten men escaped.

For, most of them being killed by the trunks and broken boughs of trees, the Gauls, who beset the wood on all sides in arms killed the rest, panic-struck by so unexpected a disaster.