uld wait for his colleague, in order that, joining their armies,
they might carry on the war with united courage and counsels; and
that, meanwhile, the enemy should be prevented from his unrestrained
freedom in plundering by the cavalry and the light-armed auxiliaries;
in a fury hurried out of the council, and at once gave out the signal
for marching and for battle. "Nay, rather," says he, "let him be
before the walls of Arretium, for here is our country, here our
household gods. Let Hannibal, slipping through our fingers, waste
Italy through and through; and, ravaging and burning every thing, let
him arrive at the walls of Rome; let us move hence till the fathers
shall have summoned Flaminius from Arretium, as they did Camillus of
old from Veii." While reproaching them thus, and in the act of
ordering the standards to be speedily pulled up, when he had mounted
upon his horse, the animal fell suddenly, and threw the unseated
consul over his head. All the bystanders being alarmed at this as an
unhappy omen in the commencement of the affair, in addition word is
brought, that the standard could not be pulled up, though, the
standard-bearer strove with all his force. Flaminius, turning to the
messenger, says, "Do you bring, too, letters from the senate,
forbidding me to act. Go, tell them to dig up the standard, if,
through fear, their hands are so benumbed that they cannot pluck it
up." Then the army began to march; the chief officers, besides that
they dissented from the plan, being terrified by the twofold prodigy;
while the soldiery in general were elated by the confidence of their
leader, since they regarded merely the hope he entertained, and not
the reasons of the hope.

4. Hannibal lays waste the country between the city Cortona and the
lake Trasimenus, with all the devastation of war, the more to
exasperate the enemy to revenge the injuries inflicted on his allies.
They had now reached a place formed by nature for an ambuscade, where
the Trasimenus comes nearest to the mountains of Cortona. A very
narrow passage only intervenes, as though room enough just for that
purpose had been left designedly; after that a somewhat wider plain
opens itself, and then some hills rise up. On these he pitches his
camp, in full view, where he himself with his Spaniards and Africans
only might be posted. The Baliares and his other light troops he leads
round the mountains; his cavalry he posts at the very entrance of the
defile, som