+19.+ They abided by this treaty for thirty years: but at that time,
alarmed by a threatening movement on the part of the Transalpine
tribes, and fearing that a dangerous war was imminent, they diverted
the attack of the invading horde from themselves by presents and
appeals to their ties of kindred, but incited them to attack the
Romans, joining in the expedition themselves. They directed their march
through Etruria, and were joined by the Etruscans; and the combined
armies, after taking a great quantity of booty, got safely back from
the Roman territory. But when they got home, they quarrelled about the
division of the spoil, and in the end destroyed most of it, as well as
the flower of their own force. This is the way of the Gauls when they
have appropriated their neighbours’ property; and it mostly arises from
brutal drunkenness, and intemperate feeding. In the fourth year after
this, the Samnites and Gauls made a league, gave the Romans battle in
the neighbourhood of Camerium, and slew a large number. Incensed at
this defeat, the Romans marched out a few days afterwards, and with
two Consular armies engaged the enemy in the territory of Sentinum;
and, having killed the greater number of them, forced the survivors
to retreat in hot haste each to his own land. Again, after another
interval of ten years, the Gauls besieged Arretium with a great army,
and the Romans went to the assistance of the town, and were beaten in
an engagement under its walls. The Praetor Lucius[150] having fallen in
this battle, Manius Curius was appointed in his place. The ambassadors,
sent by him to the Gauls to treat for the prisoners, were treacherously
murdered by them. At this the Romans, in high wrath, sent an expedition
against them, which was met by the tribe called the Senones. In a
pitched battle the army of the Senones were cut to pieces, and the rest
of the tribe expelled from the country; into which the Romans sent
the first colony which they ever planted in Gaul—namely, the town of
Sena, so called from the tribe of Gauls which formerly occupied it.
This is the town which I mentioned before as lying on the coast at the
extremity of the plains of the Padus.
[Sidenote: B.C. 282.]
+20.+ Seeing the expulsion of the Senones, and fearing the same fate
for themselves, the Boii made a general levy, summoned the Etruscans
to join them, and set out to war. They mustered their forces near
the lacus Vadimonis, and there gave the Romans battle; in which the
Etruscans indeed suffered a loss of more than half their men, while
scarcely any of the Boii escaped. But yet in the very next year the
same two nations joined forces once more; and arming even those of them
who had only just reached manhood, gave the Romans battle again; and it
was not until they had been utterly defeated in this engagement that
they humbled themselves so far as to send ambassadors to Rome and make
a treaty.[151]
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