Roused at length to a sense of their danger by the frequent messengers who came hurrying in from the north the Romans hastily got together such troops as they could find, and marched out to meet the enemy, who had now advanced as far as the river Allia, little more than eleven miles from the city. Livy tells us that the generals formed no camp, constructed no rampart to protect them in case of a reverse, and offered no sacrifice. The battle-line had to be widely extended if they were to be protected against a flanking movement; but this could not be done without perilously weakening the centre. It mattered, however, little or nothing what arrangements were or were not made. There was nothing like a battle; only a blind panic and headlong flight. "No lives," says Livy, "were lost in battle." But thousands were cut down in the pursuit, while the fugitives, so densely packed was the throng, hindered each other from escaping; many perished on the Tiber bank, where they stood helpless, the enemy behind, the impassable stream in front; not a few were drowned, some who, unable to swim, yet threw themselves into the stream, in the wild hope of somehow struggling through, or, being swimmers, were weighed down by their heavy armour. Of those who escaped the greater part made their way to Veii. These neglected to send any tidings of their safety to Rome. Those who reached Rome did not even stop to shut the gates of the city, but hurried to take possession of the Capitol. All this sounds very romantic, not to say improbable. It is strange to find these barbarous Gauls so strict in demanding an observance of international laws. And then the battle--there was, indeed, nothing Roman about it. Where were the three Fabii, all in high command, whose valour had been so conspicuous at Clusium, but on the Allia are unable either to rally their soldiers or to strike a blow for themselves? And the sacrifices--is it credible that so regular a custom, observed almost mechanically, was for this one occasion omitted? And the behaviour of the fugitives--what could be more unlikely? If they were in too great a hurry to shut the city gates, were there no old men or boys to do it? Livy manifestly piles up every possible neglect or misdoing to heighten the dramatic contrast between reckless pride and humiliating defeat. But that a great disaster occurred at the Allia, it is impossible to doubt. Allia was, indeed, as Virgil calls it, _infaustum nomen_, an ill-starred name. For centuries afterwards its anniversary, the 15th of July, _Dies Alliensis_, was marked as one on which no public business could be transacted. When Tacitus wishes to describe the height of reckless impiety in Vitellius, one of the short-lived Emperors who succeeded one another after the fall of the Julian Cæsars, he says that he was so regardless of all law, human or divine, that he actually published an edict on the fatal Day of Allia.