Ab urbe condita

There was great slaughter on both sides, but the Gauls were in the end repulsed, and fled in the direction of Tibur as though it were a Gaulish stronghold. The straggling fugitives were intercepted by the consul not far from Tibur; the townsmen sallied out to render them assistance, and they and the Gauls were driven within their gates.

So the consul was equally successful with the Dictator. The other consul, Fabius, crushed the Hernici in successive defeats, at first in comparatively unimportant actions and then finally in one great battle when the enemy attacked him in full strength. The Dictator passed splendid encomiums on the consuls, both in the senate and before the people, and even transferred to them the credit for his own success.

He then laid down his office. Poetilius celebrated a double triumph —over the Gauls and over the Tiburtines. It was considered a sufficient honour for Fabius to be allowed to enter the City in an ovation.

The Tiburtines laughed at Poetilius' triumph. “When,” they said, “had he ever met them in a pitched battle? A few of them had come outside their gates to watch the disordered flight of the Gauls, but when they found that they, too, were being attacked and cut down indiscriminately they retreated into their city.

Did the Romans deem that sort of thing worthy of a triumph? They must not look upon it as too great and wonderful a thing to create disorder in an enemy's gates; they would themselves see greater confusion and panic before their own walls.”

Accordingly, the following year, when M. Popilius Laenas and Cnaeus Manlius were the consuls, an army from Tibur marched in the early hours of the night when all was still against the City of Rome.

The citizens, suddenly aroused from sleep, were alarmed by the danger of a nocturnal attack and one quite unlooked for, and the alarm was heightened by their ignorance as to who the enemies were and whence they came.

However, the word quickly passed “To arms”; the gates were protected by pickets and the walls manned. When the early dawn revealed a comparatively small force before the walls and the enemy turned out to be none other than the Tiburtines, the consuls decided upon an immediate attack. They issued from two separate gates and attacked the enemy, as they were advancing to the walls, on both flanks.

It soon became obvious that they had been trusting more to the chances of a surprise than to their own courage, so little resistance did they offer to the very first onset of the Romans.

Their expedition turned out to be an advantage to the Romans, for the apprehensions aroused by a war so close to their gates stifled a nascent conflict between the patricians and the plebs.