Still their front could not be made equal to that of the enemy, though by thinning their line they rendered their centre weak and scarcely connected.

There was on the right a small eminence, which it was determined to fill with bodies of reserve; and that circumstance, as it was the first cause of their dismay and flight, so it proved their only means of safety in their flight.

For Brennus, the chieftain of the Gauls, being chiefly apprehensive of some design[169] being intended in the small number of the enemy, thinking that the high ground had been seized for this purpose, that, when the Gauls had been engaged in front with the line of the legions, the reserve was to make an attack on their rear and flank, directed his troops against the reserve; certain, that if he had dislodged them from their ground, the victory would be easy in the plain for a force which had so much the advantage in point of numbers: thus not only fortune, but judgment also stood on the side of the barbarians.

In the opposite army there appeared nothing like Romans, either in the commanders, or in the soldiers.

Terror and dismay had taken possession of their minds, and such a forgetfulness of every thing, that a far greater number of them fled to Veii, a city of their enemy, though the Tiber stood in their way, than by the direct road to Rome, to their wives and children.