Collecting the troops by the sound of trumpet, so that the audience might be sufficiently large, he threw himself into an imposing attitude; but the imposition was seen through, and the reception he met with was far from flattering. He next called forward his son, and denouncing him as an officer who had disobeyed his governor in a double sense--his father and his consul--the lictors were ordered to proceed, by the execution of the son, to the execution of their duty. Manlius, having witnessed the ceremony, buried his face in his toga, expecting at least three rounds of applause; but the performance fell as dead as his unhappy offspring. On his return to Rome he was universally cut by the young men, who were peculiarly alive to a penalty that might be the death of any one of them. The remains of young Manlius were collected into a dreary pile, and the trophies he had illegally won were added as the materials for a bonfire. His obsequies were the first of the same kind among the Romans that we have been able to meet with, after a truly industrious analysis of every hole in which the dust of ages might be found, and a careful sifting of the ashes of antiquity. The two armies were still standing, when Decius Mus, who was most anxious to distinguish himself, and was watching intently to discover which way the cat would jump, observed a backward movement among his spearmen. His opportunity for glory had now arrived, and the gallant Mus, rushing recklessly to the scratch, behaved himself less like a mus than a lion in the conflict. He fell under a perfect shower of javelins, and lay on the field literally _piqué_ with the pikes of his enemies. The latter were dismayed, and his own friends animated by what had taken place; but the rule of contraries must here have prevailed, for the death of an adverse general should not have disheartened the Latins, while the sacrifice of their own chief was, if looked at in a proper light, but poor encouragement for the Romans. They, however, grew bold; but it was scarcely necessary for them to strike a blow, as the Latins yielded under the stroke of a panic. They fell in such numbers, that three parts are said to have perished, and only a fourth of the army remained to tell of the little quarter allowed them by the enemy.