laminian
way, with a design of sacking the defenceless mistress of the world.
But Aurelian, who, watchful for the safety of Rome, still hung on their
rear, found in this place the decisive moment of giving them a total
and irretrievable defeat. [37] The flying remnant of their host was
exterminated in a third and last battle near Pavia; and Italy was
delivered from the inroads of the Alemanni.

[Footnote 34: Victor Junior in Aurelian.]

[Footnote 35: Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 216.]

[Footnote 36: The little river, or rather torrent, of, Metaurus, near
Fano, has been immortalized, by finding such an historian as Livy, and
such a poet as Horace.]

[Footnote 37: It is recorded by an inscription found at Pesaro. See
Gruter cclxxvi. 3.]

Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new
calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their
invisible enemies. Though the best hope of the republic was in the valor
and conduct of Aurelian, yet such was the public consternation, when the
barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a decree
of the senate the Sibylline books were consulted. Even the emperor
himself from a motive either of religion or of policy, recommended this
salutary measure, chided the tardiness of the senate, [38] and offered
to supply whatever expense, whatever animals, whatever captives of any
nation, the gods should require. Notwithstanding this liberal offer, it
does not appear, that any human victims expiated with their blood the
sins of the Roman people. The Sibylline books enjoined ceremonies of a
more harmless nature, processions of priests in white robes, attended
by a chorus of youths and virgins; lustrations of the city and
adjacent country; and sacrifices, whose powerful influence disabled
the barbarians from passing the mystic ground on which they had been
celebrated. However puerile in themselves, these superstitious arts were
subservient to the success of the war; and if, in the decisive battle of
Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of spectres combating on
the side of Aurelian, he received a real and effectual aid from this
imaginary reenforcement. [39]

[Footnote 38: One should imagine, he said, that you were assembled in a
Christian church, not in the temple of all the gods.]

[Footnote 39: Vopiscus, in Hist. August. p. 215, 216, gives a long
account of these ceremonies from the Registers of the senate.]

But whatever confidenc