Their irresistible onward sweep against the Etruscans seems to have taken place in the early part of the fifth century, some time after the first migratory tribes had wandered out of Gaul. During the last three decades of the century the Celtic swarms also crossed the Padus and extended their conquests into the lowlands as far as the Adriatic Sea. So engrossed were the Etruscans of the regions between the Arno and the Tiber in their efforts to repel these invading hordes, that they had neither time nor thought to give to Veii which had been harassed by the Romans since 405. This war, during the course of which Veii was first blockaded in 404, then regularly invested in 403, marks a threefold epoch in the history of Rome. With it the Romans took the first step in the perilous path of foreign conquest, and departed from their old-time custom of short summer campaigns, the troops remaining the whole winter through in the lines and camps with which Veii was surrounded. This innovation was made possible by a resolution adopted by the senate that foot soldiers should be paid wages by the state; and a great amelioration was brought in the condition of the peasants and their grown sons, who were obliged to leave their farms in charge of their wives and servants while serving in the army, though they were under the same necessity of raising tribute as before. The perseverance of the Romans, coupled with the ability of their first true military leader, M. Furius Camillus, at last gained for them a victory over the stubbornly defended town. The list of Rome’s great generals opens with the name of the conqueror of Veii. A man possessing in the highest degree all the qualities of a commander, he first came into prominence in 401; and it was as dictator, in 396, that he took Veii by storm and completely destroyed it as a political commonwealth, thereby achieving the greatest victory, from a political, military, and territorial point of view, that had fallen to the Roman arms since the expulsion of the Tarquinians. [Sidenote: [395-391 B.C.]] The warlike spirit of the Romans and their thirst for conquest were raised to a high pitch by this success. Soon their might extended unbroken from the limits of the Ciminian forest, then an impenetrable wilderness, which they conquered between 395 and 391, to the southern frontiers of Latium. But their difficult apprenticeship was not yet at an end, for just then the Celts subjected them to a test which their political and military ability could not withstand; and both in its inner and outer development the Roman state received a check from which it could not readily recover.[b] LEGENDS OF THE VOLSCIAN AND ÆQUIAN WARS