Catiline having departed from Rome, with part of his followers came into Tuscany, where Manlius, one of his principal fellow-conspirators, who was captain, had gathered his people in the ancient city of Fiesole, and Catiline being come thither, he caused the said city to rebel against the lordship of the Romans, assembling all the rebels and exiles from Rome and from many other provinces, with lewd folk disposed for war and for ill-doing, and he began fierce war with the Romans. The Romans, hearing this, decreed that Caius Antony, the consul, and Publius Petreius, with an army of horse and many foot, should march into Tuscany against the city of Fiesole and against Catiline; and they sent by them letters and messengers to Quintus Metellus, who was returning from France with a great host of the Romans, that he should likewise come with his force from the other side to the siege of Fiesole, and to pursue Catiline and his followers. Sec. 32.--_How Catiline and his followers were discomfited by the Romans in the plain of Piceno._ Now when Catiline heard that the Romans were coming to besiege him in the city of Fiesole, and that Antony and Petreius were already with their host in the plain of Fiesole, upon the bank of the river Arno, and how that Metellus was already in Lombardy with his host of three legions which were coming from France, and the succour which he was expecting from his allies which had remained in Rome had failed him, he took counsel not to shut himself up in the city of Fiesole, but to go into France; and therefore he departed from that city with his people and with a lord of Fiesole who was called Fiesolanus, and he had his horses' shoes reversed, to the end that when they departed the hoofprints of the horses might show as if folk had entered into Fiesole, and not sallied forth thence, to cause the Romans to tarry near the city, that he might depart thence the more safely. And having departed by night, to avoid Metellus, he did not hold the direct road through the mountains which we call the Alps of Bologna, but took the plain by the side of the mountains, and came where to-day is the city of Pistoia, in the place called Campo Piceno, that was below where to-day is the fortress of Piteccio, purposing to cross the Apennine mountains by that way, and descend thence into Lombardy; but Antony and Petreius, hearing of his departure, straightway followed after him with their host along the plain, so that they overtook him in the said place, and Metellus, on the other side, set guards at the passes of the mountains, to the end he might not pass thereby. Catiline, seeing himself to be thus straitened, and that he could not avoid the battle, gave himself and his followers to the chances of combat with great courage and boldness, in the which battle there was great slaughter of Romans from the city and of rebel Romans and of Fiesolans; at the end of which fierce battle Catiline was defeated and slain in that place